These aren't even in the same category. One can do philosophy as a hobby, just like literature, art, and science. If something is a hobby that doesn't exclude it from these categories.

So far it seems to me that you're attached to the notion that science must be institutionalized, and institutionalized in one particular way. — Moliere

Yes, knowledge that isn't institutionalized isn't science. It's trial and error. Something people have always done. It has less predictive value than methodological naturalism, which requires archives, publication, peer review, funding, etc.

Guys doing desultory experiments without any standards or means to publish and review their results aren't doing science. You're just confusing the fact that we in fact do currently have science, so those guys can do it in their garage. Take away the institutions that support the publication and preservation of the domain of knowledge garnered by methodological naturalism, and all you have is cranks.

By the way, three cheers for science. It makes modern life possible. I love science. Nobody is attacking it here.

It just has nothing to offer philosophically. I've had this discussion many times, even with some people here, but honestly, the idea that curiosity or personal motives are what make science science is simply naïve. It's a social practice embedded in social goals - in this case, useful predictions. Once it stops promoting those goals better than the alternatives, science will cease.

The scenario of the really good cancer-curing oracle shows that.

Zizek is probably planning a book right now, entitled "I Told You So"

But of course hardly anybody but the super rich are in the stock market. Over 85% of all equities are owned by the top 10%. The top 1% owns about half. So the stock collapse is just rich people selling to rich people. Hardly any working folk any where in the world have any stake in any stock market, and to the extent they do, it's meaningless to their financial future.

Somebody is now going to mention 401k's - as if any working people actually have any meaningful pension any more. A total myth exposed by the fact that the average American has put away about $10K for his or her retirement. The stock market is utterly irrelevant to 90 percent of Americans

Is your objective simply to point out the hypocrisy of those who claim to be conservatives by showing that they receive the same sort of government subsidies they condemn when received by those on the left? — Hanover

No my purpose is to show that those who support these thugs by claiming "they have a point" are using counterfactual memes, which is basically all conservatives ever do.

Bundy's militia of goons and conservative "intellectuals" think exactly alike.

Before the enlightenment, too, there were always people interested in nature. As long as we are not attached to the notion that modern scientific institutions are not the defining feature of science, it goes back to ancient philosophy, so I would claim. This is the result of looking at science as a social practice. — Moliere

We're going to have to disagree on this historically. An interest in nature has nothing to do with science. Neanderthals were interested in nature, and had very good trial and error skills. Do do creationists. That's not what makes science.

Science is methodological naturalism, which we do because it provides better predictions than trial and error, the bible, oracles, haruspicy, or rain dances. It just does. The minute it doesn't we won't do science. That has nothing do with being interested in nature.

Why would anyone want to do philosophy!" — Moliere

Hardly anybody does. And even less so as social funding for it dries up. Most philosophers nowadays teach (for minimal pay) while writing books as public intellectuals.

If there were only as many scientists as there were philosophers, there would be no modern science. There are probably less than a 100 "full time" philosophers in the world, if that even makes sense. Imagine the state of science of there were only 100 scientists.

But this of course makes my point in another way. Philosophy makes no predictions. It's like literature. We don't expect it to produce results. And we don't require a level of continued production of philosophy at an institutional level. Indeed we'd distrust that. We all recognize there are very few great novels or philosophers, and institutions can't produce them. And that's OK. Our physical health and welfare doesn't rely on the production of great novels or great philosophical texts.

In contrast, our health and welfare does depend on the continued production of scientific knowledge that makes good predictions. So if science stopped doing that, we'd stop thinking about science altogether. It wouldn't be producing what we want form it at the levels that we require. Philosophy does, more or less, because we don't ask for useful predictions, and it doesn't provide any.

Lavoisier funded his own experiments. Mostly out of interest. — Moliere

That's a hobby, not science. Without the Enlightenment and the ultimate institutionalization of science, Lavoisier's work would be an historical curiosity. Moreover, early science was relatively inexpensive. Not any more.

In any case I never said all scientists had to be funded socially, just that it was the sine qua non of science. Unless people want to pay for science, it just won't happen, like everything else in a society.

How practical do you suppose the inflationary model of the Big Bang is? — Marchesk

Potentially extremely useful since any understanding of fundamental states of matter may have tremendous predictive value.

But in any case, this goes to nothing. Not every scientific theory has to be useful - science has to be. In the context of the useful predictions of science (is that really in doubt?), there may be all sorts of explanations with minimal value which arise for all sorts of reasons. The domain of science has a huge archive of explanations that may have no value now, but which may have value in the future as they are correlated with other theories. Hence sciences fixation with the archive.

Point is, if science weren't a useful social practice they wouldn't arise at all. There wouldn't even be the material culture to come up with the inflationary model of the Big Bang unless science provided useful predictions about dentistry and computers.

I agree with you that science is a social practice. In specific I would say that science is the social practice which scientists do -- not the social practice that is popularly understood, but the actual one which scientists perform. — Moliere

Yeah but they perform it because people want it and we build schools, publish text books about it, offer jobs, and fund it. They would stop performing it if nobody cared. It would dwindle into a hobby for cranks, like people who pursue alchemy.

This would happen not only because nobody would pay for their services, but bright people would no longer want to be scientists. Why would anybody want to pursue a domain of knowledge that has been surpassed by other domains that performs what it does only better? They'd not only not get paid, they'd be wasting their talents on an obsolete practice.

Also, "prediction" isn't something which all humans are drawn to for all time. I would say people want their desires satisfied, and that a desire present today is a cure for cancer, but I wouldn't say that this has a bearing on what science is. Again, why would it? What do people's desires have to do with the practice of science? — Moliere

Of course people do other things beside practical prediction. We have literature, art, love, sports, religion. They have no predictive value. But we already have those. If science doesn't provide predictive power, why would anybody do it? It can't compete with those domains for humanistic values, and if it can't cure cancer but a prophet can, everybody's going to go to the prophet, not to the oncologist.

Only a fool would go to an oncologist who's is inferior at treating cancer than a oracle. And so oncology will die out (as it should).

I'm not quite sure why you would deny that. Why would people study oncology if oracles are better at what oncologists do? You seem to be suggesting that scientists do science because they love science. You're missing the point. They love science because it works. If it stopped working (i.e., if other domains worked better), their explanations would be nugatory and so why would scientists love pursuing a domain that other domains are better at? The explanation satisfy our curiosity because they work, not the other way around.

People may flock to whatever it is they're drawn to -- but what people flock do isn't a criteria of science anymore than prediction is. Why would that matter? — Moliere

Because science is a social practice. It requires social institutions, social sanctions, social approval, and funding, to happen.

If nobody wants scientists (i.e., nobody wants to pay them because Big Data or the Anti-Christ makes better predictions), there won't be any more science. We'll have the National Institutes of Big Data or Haruspicy instead of Health.

Surely you don't disagree with the fact that scientists are the result of schools, jobs, funding, publishing, transmission and archiving of knowledge, etc. Science isn't in people's heads and isn't the result of the quirks of individuals.

Sure they do.

So the feeling entails an action or non-action about your life in the future. It matters in what you do next or don't do. It involves considerations of alternatives and possibilities for your life. It's not just a feeling at all.

Sense any self-examination there? I do.

We disagree. The explanation only matters to the extent that it provides useful predictions. It's a backformed validation.

It's easy to show that. If an oracle started to provide better predictions on how to cure cancer than medical science, every cancer patient on the planet would flock to him. They'd be crazy not to. Damn the oncologist and his explanation. We only privilege the explanation because it works (better than the alternative)

The Enlightenment properly concluded that methodological naturalism results in better predictions than the old alternatives (supernaturalism, speculative philosophy). We don't know why. We don't have to. That's a philosophical question bracketed off by science. Maybe it's God. Doesn't matter. Science can't inquire into its own method, since it is limited to that method.

As to the other aspects of science (knowledge, understanding, discovery, whatever) - they would all go out the door the minute we found a better engine of prediction. I doubt that we will, but it's not far fetched. If Big Data results in better predictions than methodological naturalism in the future, for reasons unknown, we'll do Big Data mining, not MN. We'd be crazy not to.

The problems suggests that QM has foundational issues. When you can't make heads or tails over something behaving like a wave in one experiment, but behaving like a particle in another, then maybe things need to be rethought to make better sense of the experimental results. — Marchesk

This doesn't follow at all.

Those observations are the observations. They are empirical. They don't accord with our everyday experience, but why should the quantum world do so? Trying to resolve the quantum in terms of the everyday sounds like a mistake to me, but even if it's not, what would be the purpose of the resolution?

The purpose of science is to provide explanations that provide useful predictions. QM does that extremely well. even if the explanations often don't accord with the everyday. I'm not sure what predictions would or could flow out of your interpretation but I do know that if they are superior, then people will deem the explanation as superior to others. And if they don't result in superior prediction, people will not deem the explanations as superior (valid). But they don't sound like they would have predictive power - they sound like a way to "make sense" rather than to make predictions. The former is irrelevant to a scientific explanation.

In short, the evaluation of explanatory value is the result of the ultimate predictive power of the explanation, not whether it "makes sense" in our everyday way of understanding things.

ZING!

Lots of difference sources from Heidegger to Marcuse to Connolly to Foucault to Popper to Kuhn to Marx to Polanyi to Kitcher to Fleck to Solomon to Gould. Does it matter?

Edit: I see your reply was to Moliere. Jumped the gun a bit.

And naturally you missed the point of the article, which as that changing from viewing the fundamental constituents of physics as fields and particles to properties and their relations, gets rid of many of the problems with QM leading to various interpretations. That's what philosophy can offer science. — Marchesk

The "problems" are good things, not bad things, for science.

But in any case, whether particles popped into existence or didn't isn't a philosophical issue; it's an empirical one.

What are you talking about? Put it plainly or not at all. I don't want to jump to the conclusion that you're merely echoing an obscure Heideggerian phrase of faux significance in a context in which it is out of place, but you have been unwilling to explain yourself clearly, in a manner in which I can readily grasp, and I simply don't care enough to study Heideggerese. — Sapientia

Thoughtful response.

Sure it does. That's the difference between the ontic and the ontological.

That may take the thread a bit too far astray. But the long and short of it is this -- "falsifiability" is an outdated and (I would say, and most phil-o-sci today would agree) wrong theory proposed by Popper to differentiate science from metaphysics. It's interesting, but it's far too simplistic. — Moliere

Science doesn't have to differentiate itself from philosophy since its starting point has already done so.

Methodological naturalism does not ask metaphysical questions, nor does it seek metaphysical explanations of facts at issue (or supernatural ones or ones from speculative philosophy).

The sine qua non of science is whether it makes useful predictions (or more precisely predictions about things that are more useful than the alternatives). The explanations are judged as valid or not by their predictive power, not the other way round.

So philosophy can (and should) argue whether science should do this, or what a fact really is, or what constitutes causation, etc. But it doesn't affect science at all, which is a social practice that has a rather defined domain and purpose. Nobody is going to do science (or pay for it) the minute we find better ways to make useful predictions - say by asking a prophet who installs himself in the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem, who will provide better cures for cancer or whatever.

I'm not holding my breath for that.

Anyway, the experiments to test the Copenhagen versus the Everette Interpretation, such as they are, constitute another way of saying which one has more predictive power (if any). The one that does, "wins". That's always relative to an alternative, not to an absolute. More predictive power than the alternative . . .

Just a little background on these rightwing welfare queens and how they leech off taxpayers

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-armed-oregon-ranchers-who-want-free-land-are-already-getting-a-93-percent-discount/

If the general point is that blacks have it tougher than whites in the US, where if you could pick your skin color, you'd be prudent to choose white, I suppose I could agree. Of course, that revelation is hardly provocative and exciting. If you're asking, though, whether this Oregon situation is proof of anything important, it's really not, other than showing that folks are at the ready to race bait at the drop of a hat. — Hanover

Calling the recognition that black protesters are treated more harshly than white protesters (to the point of being shot) "race baiting" is just the kind of thing I expect from conservatives and its utterly bad faith arguments about race in America.

Playing the "playing the race card" card, as usual.

↪Landru Guide Us Evidently, not what you think it does. You can assert otherwise until the cows come home, but that won't make it so. — Sapientia

I think you're stymied. Now, what does the feeling that your life is worth living entail? Describe it without examination of said life.

Yes. MY life has been examined. Yes, there are lives that are worth living which have not been examined, either by 'feeling' ok about it or by taking the Minnesota Multiphasic Life Examination Inventory. — Bitter Crank

You have shifted categories.

One involve evaluating your life. The other evaluating somebody else's. The latter is not at issue in this topic and is not and cannot be the same type of examination. The former is existential. The latter is a form of empirical knowledge accrued by apply a standard (of your own).

Obviously these two can diverge, and do diverge, which is why only the former is relevant here. What do you care whether I or somebody else evaluates your life as not worthwhile, if you think it is - and vice versa. If you think your life isn't worth living, no amount of empirical data provided by me will change that. Your examination of your life is not empirical.

The idea that a life CAN be worth living without examination rests on several possible pillars. — Bitter Crank

The distinction here is ontic versus ontological. I thought I made it clear I was talking about the ontological/existential case. Of course anybody can say that God or Bertrand Russell thinks life is worth living and then say they believe him. That has nothing to do with an existential determination that one's own life is worth living. It has to do with an idea about it.

I'm sure what you mean by this, Tiff.

I'm no expert on the history of Oregon, but know it to be relatively new as a state. Before becoming a state it was a federal territory, of course, but as such was formed by my understanding from land possessed by Native Americans who were breezily disregarded by the U.S. and Great Britain as they alternately disputed and resolved their claims over the land. The federal government, I believe, legally owned what is now Oregon until it began giving and selling its property to white settlers. It didn't sell all its land in Oregon, however. It retained land, including that which is now this wildlife refuge. Under a law which in 1908 authorized the president to designate federal lands as such a refuge, Teddy Roosevelt created Mulhear Wildlife Refuge by Executive Order, that year.

So, my understanding (which may be incorrect) is that no rancher ever owned this property. Whether they were "there" before the BLM I don't know; it's a fairly new federal agency. I don't know whether they were there before Oregon became a territory either, though I doubt it. If they were, however, their presence would make no difference as far as legal ownership of the property is concerned, no more than the presence of the Native Americans long before any white person settled on the land made any difference. It belongs to the federal government; only the federal government can lease the land, and it has every right to do so. What the ranchers may think about title to the land is not relevant. The federal government has no reason to recognize any ownership claim of the ranchers.

This dispute is about money, which is being manipulated for their benefit by people who want more money. — Ciceronianus the White

Yep. I was actually involved in some of the litigation with the BLM for leasing public land to ranchers purposely below fair market value (by manipulating auctions for the ranchers' benefit). And then allowing the ranchers to degrade public land by overgrazing.

So Tiff is just making stuff up. Or rather following the militia narrative. Pitiful counterfactual stuff.

Doesn't ISIS spread mindless self-serving narratives AND kill people? I might be wrong because I don't know ISIS principles and an effort to find out might draw suspicion upon myself (yay democracy!). — Soylent

Sure ISIS does, but nobody in the US takes them seriously (except some disturbed individuals).

In contrast, conservatives defend the goons in the Bundy Militia and think their ideas are just peachy. The GOP presidential candidates have all lauded Cliven Bundy for his standoff with the BLM last year or so where he refused to pay his lease fees for use of federal land. Bundy threatened to shoot federal agents. Rand Paul visited him and heaped praise on him. So there's a vast difference. The loony ideas of the gun nuts basically afflict a third of our population that considers itself conservative. That's a threat to democracy ISIS isn't.

Aristotle. Now I know why Rand was so screwed up.

In other words the only skin in the game I have, is the right to bear arms, — ArguingWAristotleTiff

The Kool Aid has been drunk deeply.

Just playing Devil's Advocate here, but it might be that you've selected an arbitrary characteristic (e.g., skin colour) as the distinguishing feature. Perhaps white people have more friends in law enforcement (and this itself might be institutionalized racism) and so when a situation like this occurs it's not the colour of their skin that saves them but the personal connections they have to prevent the escalation. In cases where violence erupts, there might be a variety of causes and singling out skin colour is not entirely productive, even if it is somewhat (mostly) appropriate. — Soylent

I really think skin color in this case is merely an index for an ideology of privilege and anti-democratic agitprop.

Conservatives, even on this forum, are sympathetic to the goons because they represent them on various levels - most importantly an anti-democratic mentality that is basically adolescent (I should get what I want, and if I want to break the rules and light fires on public land, then tough luck for other people, who are stupid!).

Conservatism has genuinely conflated the Other with democracy and rule and law, and so it thinks of whiteness in terms of their own privilege and immunity from following the rules. The result of various self-serving narratives (like the one Bundy is pitching - it's our land - and ArguingWAristotle repeating here mindlessly). Totally puerile. But that's what modern conservatism is: an ideology of adolescent boys with guns.

That's why these militia goons are much more dangerous than ISIS. ISIS can just kill people. Conservatism can put the US into the thrall of mindless self-serving narratives.

And what does caring about life entail? Come on, you can say it.

Another reason it won't happen (although I'm not really conceding the well thought out point that it's only their whiteness that is acting as their shield) is because they took over a shed deep in the wilderness that no one really cares about other than the media and those who see it as an analogy to something great big and important, as opposed to it really just being a shitty old shed in the freezing ass woods of Oregon. — Hanover

Again, as others have pointed out, if Muslim extremists or the Black Panthers took over an isolated area, the GOP would be demanding air strikes. So you're really not dealing with the issue of how big a role race plays in this.

What exactly am I making up in my post? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

I love it when conservatives can't remember what they just posted.

The land is public. Always has been. Your idiotic claim that the welfare ranchers have always owned it and now they've been dispossessed by the mean federal government (i.e., our democratic government) is a typical conservative meme. That is, a lie.

Gunnuttery is the kool aid of the Right.

You'll need to complete your thought experiment with some additional facts. Why exactly have these Muslims seized this federal outpost? Are they trying to start a Muslim state, or are they just cattle ranchers who happen to be Muslim? It would seem that if their objective is to start a theocracy in the rugged hills of Oregon, then there'd be a reason to take that threat more seriously (especially in light of ISIS) than a bunch of pissed off ranchers who want better access to grazing land. — Hanover

The Bundy types do want to start a theocracy, and more to the point, they want to claim my public lands and not pay for it, so they are trying to take over land, and more to the point, they want to destroy our democracy and replace it with a rightwing style gang state, best described as fascism.

So by your own standard, we should be shooting these creeps with snipers while Fox news cheers the shooting on. But of course, they're white guys, so that won't happen.

Are you seriously claiming that before you cared about your life and where it was going, you had a general feeling that you cared about your life and where it was going?

Time travel emotions?

"The unexamined life is not worth living" does not have to be true. It could be not true. It could be that unexamined lives are worth living, and the examination itself doesn't make the examined life worth living. — Bitter Crank

But it is true. If you don't examine your life (and that's the only life that matters when it comes to living it), then it isn't worth living for you, since worth requires evaluation.

The problem with taking a position that you clearly don't believe in is that no one will take you seriously when you say it, but maybe it was fun to say it anyway.

I think they should kill everyone everywhere. That way, there'll be no more violence. — Hanover

I am deadly serious. People like Bundy are attacking our democracy. ISIS just attacks buildings and people. The former is a real threat. The latter just a tragedy. ISIS is not going to destroy the US. But the rightwing mentality of militias might.

Surround the area, give them five minutes to surrender. If they don't, wipe the scum out.

The BLM leases public land, BACK to the ranchers that have been there since before the BLM. Does that not sound a bit illogical to you? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Typical of gun nuts, now you're just making stuff up.

That's a straw man. Who do you think has insisted that they haven't examined their life? Where have they supposedly done so? — Sapientia

Worse than that, you and John have insisted that some other people (I take it dumb regular people unlike you) don't examine their lives, but just have general feelings about their lives. I think it is usually the rich and powerful who live unexamined lives; most people have to examine their lives because they are so precarious.