It would depend on the context now wouldn't it?

Do you want a hypothetical example of why it might be obvious that someone is virtue signaling? A real world anecdote perhaps?

Religious Philosophy

What is philosophy?

How do you know they are virtue signaling and not actually virtuous? Just saying they're "just signalling" doesn't make it so. — Echarmion

Sometimes they doth virtue signal too much, me thinks...

The great thing about labeling behaviours as "virtue signaling" is that you get to identify the signaler as a hypocrite and can dismiss both them and their behaviour without having to actually go to the considerable inconvenience of questioning your own behaviour. — Echarmion

That's of course nonsense, and not anything I said. — Echarmion

So why should we question our own behavior when we encounter someone that is "virtue signaling"?

Is it because we should be jealous of their virtue?

Sorry, I asked him for examples of philosophers pontificating. I don't think the Pope is an example of a philosopher. — David Mo

I didn't realize that the grand pontiff had to swear an oath of celibosophy...

And the list of "spiritualisms" I don't know what it's about. — David Mo

You asked for a list of philosophies that don't reason what they say...

Do you not consider them philosophies because they don't reason what they say?

If so, then that's circular reasoning (your conclusion is actually just a premise; aka: begging the question)

What is philosophy?

The great thing about labeling behaviours as "virtue signaling" is that you get to identify the signaler as a hypocrite and can dismiss both them and their behaviour without having to actually go to the considerable inconvenience of questioning your own behaviour. — Echarmion

Yea, @Bitter Crank!

Other people proclaiming how virtuous they are makes you relatively less virtuous by comparison... You must therefore question your own behavior post-haste! (After all these years, your virtue remains fully intact I trust!).

A face that only a Heavenly Father could love:

Could you give some examples? Let's say ten. If there's a lot of them, it should be easy to do. — David Mo

List of religions and spiritual traditions.

Please give examples of "pontification", as you called it. — David Mo

(the Pope addresses US congress on the topic of Capital Punishment)

From Webster:

In ancient Rome, the pontifices were powerful priests who administered the part of civil law that regulated relationships with the deities recognized by the state. Their name, pontifex, derives from the Latin words pons, meaning "bridge," and facere, meaning "to make," and some think it may have developed because the group was associated with a sacred bridge over the river Tiber (although there is no proof of that). With the rise of Catholicism, the title "pontifex" was transferred to the Pope and to Catholic bishops. Pontificate derives from "pontifex," and in its earliest English uses it referred to things associated with such prelates. By the early 1800s, "pontificate" was also being used derisively for individuals who spoke as if they had the authority of an ecclesiastic.

About your battery of questions: Which one do you want to start with? Because all at the same time I'm afraid I can't do it. I have my own time limits. — David Mo

They're rhetorical questions. They're meant to stand unanswered as devices of persuasion. You need not answer them now, or ever; just thinking about them is enough...

That's a simple philosophical opinion. You should argue better to be a reasoned opinion. Because the characteristic of philosophy is that it reasons what it says. Not like in your case, where you just set your opinion down as the only reasonable one. — David Mo

And why have you not reasoned why philosophy reasons what it says? (I think you mean philosophy employs reason (i.e: it's logical.rational). However, there are lots of philosophies that don't reason what they say (and some that don't even bother trying); if we want to talk quality then we can deal in standards of reason and evidence (whatever your persuasion may be)).

Being reasonable doesn't have much to do with run of the mill "spiritual" and otherwise subjective corners of the philosophical world (I'm looking at you, Theology), so I wouldn't exactly say "reasons what it says" is a necessary characteristic of philosophy.

But is it sufficient? Is anything that reasons what it says therefore under the semantic umbrella of "philosophy"?...

I wonder...

Can an existing and accepted "philosophy" become ex-philosophy should we discover it un-reasoned?

Both of us seem to have a rather subjective definition for what we consider philosophy to be. Is philosophy decidedly not merely stating one's opinion? What about debating opinions? If I show logical inconsistencies or fallacious use of reason in your statements, does that make the discourse philosophical?

That's a simple philosophical opinion. — David Mo

Eh, this is a fallacious appeal to simplicity...

You should argue better to be a reasoned opinion. — David Mo

Why?

Because the characteristic of philosophy is that it reasons what it says. — David Mo

That's circular though isn't it? You should argue good because philosophy is good arguments? Aren't you just appealing to your own definition?

Not like in your case, where you just set your opinion down as the only reasonable one. — David Mo

I didn't actually set my opinion down as the only reasonable opinion :halo:

I specifically used the words "I think" to underline where I invoked opinion, and I'm quite open to being persuaded otherwise.

I went on to invoke quality ("else it's shitty philosophy")....

I even summated with a "more or less"...

Can you at least tell me if it's more or if it's less???

Are we just debating standards and etiquette?

Can philosophy just be a mere series of questions?

They say that it's a love of knowledge, but I suspect it's rather a love of articulation and pontification.

To wonder, to explore, to learn, and to capture that learning in a communicable (or at least memorable) format.

I don't think philosophy needs to be academic, but I think it ought be high quality. (else it's shitty philosophy).

Philosophy is more or less the oftentimes superfluous process of refining our learned understanding of things. How, what, and why depends on your given persuasions...

It would be difficult without force to do so, as history shows. But you would need to convince them that the slaves were human just as much as the slave owners. Maybe force isn't always necessary, since the British slave trade was eventually abolished by those who opposed it in Parliament. — Marchesk

One of the issues with natural rights is that they're more or less only extant or operant if a given group of humans endorses and enforces them (where force as moral maintenance tends to be less necessary the more universally agreeable the status quo is).

For example, it's true that the inherent subjectivity in my original appeal can be incorporated into a justification of slavery, but it's not as if we might accidentally reason our way into a state of slave-ownership (it takes force to create and maintain slavery, and at least in many cases it takes force to end it). In my view, natural rights are more like a post-hoc rationalization of the current way of things, and sometimes the way we want things to be (as persuasive appeals, they do have utility, but not at the extremes).

Consider that you could go back in time and unambiguously demonstrate to slave owners that black people are people too; equals (and also women while you're at it). Even in accepting that they're greedily exerting force and oppression to exploit others, are we sure that the idea of universal natural rights would persuade them to relinquish their position of power?

Instead, I advise a full spectrum of moral persuasion (make an inductive-cumulative argument rather than a deductive argument). Where persuasion fails, the threat of force sometimes becomes relatively more effective, with the last resort being the use of force itself. I realize the irony of advocating for the use of force to achieve moral ends, but sometimes our world creates situations where no agreement and cooperation can be made, and our perfect moral spheres breakdown into self-preservation without fail.

Ultimately, humans are immensely swayable and occasionally unreasonable beasts, and because of the high stakes with which we play (against each-other), It is absolutely imperative that we exhaust each and every avenue of rational and emotional persuasion which can help us reduce mutual risk and maximize returns, because our seemingly inexorable return to violence and inconsiderate use of force (upon each-other) is always looming.

Toward that end, my go-to tactic of moral suasion is basic but effective: appeal directly to the most fundamental drives and values that nearly all humans hold; the desire to be free and unmolested from and by others; to have the opportunity for movement and to thrive (to seek happiness); to go on living with future security. By building the case for non-aggression and cooperation that is based around these nearly universally agreed upon personal values, not only do we start with values that resemble natural rights, we inherently frame them in a way that is relevant to the context and circumstances individuals or groups must operate in (the constraints of environment). Nearly natural rights might not get the shiny sticker of ultimate objectivity from philosophy departments, but they are far more practical. In the case of the slave owner, I would indeed move very quickly to the threat of force (revolt and rebellion) if I failed to persuade them that freeing slaves and ending slavery from a place of cooperation was in their interests.

That might be historically true, but if we want natural rights to be something more than what those in power need and want, then it to ought to apply to everyone. For example, because you're human, you should have the right to determine your own life, and not be the property of someone else. And thus slavery was a violation of natural rights, no matter how the people at the time, or any time, rationalized it. — Marchesk

"We" in my remark was meant to be inclusive of all affected parties. The need to extend moral consideration to others is a necessary starting point; a given. Consequentialism can't really exist without it.

Slave owners didn't think of their slaves as people (they were considered property). Since my own take can possibly be used to justify slavery if "we" (meaning individuals) ignore the wants and needs of other people (or define certain groups as non-persons), how would you instead persuade a slaver or slave-owner that they violating natural rights?

More to the point, how would you use the idea of natural rights to persuade and compel them to change their behavior?

Give your Buddha's feet a rub on my behalf...

I can at least pretend to have a few zen moments before the second half of this god forsaken year comes to fuck us all...

The little things are all we have left, lol....

Maybe he's losing it. — frank

And the cracks might be beginning to show what was skillfully hidden all along.

...

Why can't we have even a single nice thing these days?...

I don't think any men have come forward claiming to have been assaulted by him. — frank

Sexually no, but I don't think Biden is bi-sexual.

Biden does seem to be losing his temper quite often of late though. Challenging his supporters to fist fights and what not...

Raped if we do, raped if we don't... -Murica'.

To be fair, since we are less confident about the veracity of the claims against Biden than the claims against Trump (and since there's only one claim against Biden) we can still take the statistically better option and vote for Biden, the least raping-est candidate left standing!

Gosh, just imagine how glorious it will be:

"Introducing White-house Plus! Now with 50% less rape!"

I don't think any men have come forward claiming to have been assaulted by him. I think it's more of a sexual thing than an authority issue. I think he was checking to see if she would respond to him. She didn't, so we have a story of the beginning of a rape without the follow-through. — frank

I haven't actually been paying full attention to the details (scandal exhausts me at this point), but I think the story is that he inserted his finger into her vagina while she was suck between him and a wall. That's full blown "rape". If it was, in Biden's mind, a normal and acceptable sexual advance, then i think that strengthens my point.

Normal human beings do not go around compulsively and casually extracting sexual gratification from others without adequate context and consent. I only know of one stereotype that does this ("the charismatic leader"); perhaps it's because high charisma leaders with authority can consistently get away with it (the lack of repercussions is certainly a factor which allows these manipulative personalities to develop).

It speaks directly to his leadership style (as off-base as that might sound).

He must be (or think himself), or was at one point, a charismatic and authoritarian leader (his underlings are just that, underlings, who are there to service him, and they should be thankful for it). All that really matters to him is therefore the continuation of his own authority. Needing to perform well as an actual leader (effective high level decision making) is actually secondary because his underlings take care of all of that. He is a people person, through and through.

He likes to get real close to people he's attracted to... Close enough to really smell them...

Close enough to sexually assault them

The question isn't whether we have or do not have natural rights, or even whether they're "real". The question is what basic rights do we want for ourselves and for others? Why? How to promote them? And how to uphold them?

Strictly speaking natural rights seem to depend on the needs and wants of the people who make them up.

Even lawyers aren’t allowed to read it in college because it is requires accepting the existence of God as a premise. — ernestm

Lawyers and students can read and believe what ever the hell the want though. (there is no restricted reading material in the U.S.A. Why are you making this completely unsubstantiated claim?). They don't actively teach that lawyers must believe in god. Is that what's bothering you?

So now, because Franklin called the natural rights 'self evident,' everyone from the stupidest buffoon to the President of the United States thinks their opinion of law is more important than even the greatest scholars of Constitutional Law. — ernestm

Who is the greatest constitutional scholar? Obama?

Do they believe that rightness of laws should or must stem from God?

Whatever you think of Obama, he was one of those scholars, and one of the very few people I ever knew, who not only knew Locke's argument but could understand it. — ernestm

I'm gonna go ahead and call this an "appeal to Obama" (a popular contemporary informal fallacy).

Most people did not even know Obama's specialty as an attorney was constitutional law. But virtually everyone touts off this ridiculous statements about what he said that was right or wrong. That demonstrates the gross stupidity of almost the rest of the entire country. — ernestm

You seem very concerned with how badly educated and stupid everyone is.

Is that because they don't believe in God?

As corroboration of which, it is very easy to show how even natural rights are not self evident. France has different natural rights: equality, liberty, and fraternity. Everyone in France thinks their different natural rights are self evident. That proves natural rights are NOT self evident. Almost no one realizes that either, perhaps maybe 0.02% of the USA at most. — ernestm

So because some people differ on what or how they define natural rights, they must be completely non-self evident?

What if we don't live in some all or nothing Yaweh fever-dream where there is either perfect order and meaning to everything or else it's all indiscernible and meaningless chaos?.

What if natural rights aren't perfect and absolute, but instead are useful heuristics? What if the underlying values they are meant to support don't come from god, but instead come from the human condition?

That’s all one should need to know to recognize that one's own opinion of constitutional and common law is really rather more insignificant as a 6-year-old child's opinion of what driving laws should be. — ernestm

So you want us all to worship your god... What else is new?

I guess myself and many others aren't willing to accept that we must suffer the political equivalent highway-robbery.

We all feel like Trump really needs to be defeated in November, but there is actually a cost for throwing principles to the wind. As @Baden points out:

Not only do they lose the election but they also lose any moral high ground they had over the GOP with women, and suburban moms stay at home disgusted at both parties. — Baden

I don't know if Biden can win, even with Trump telling people to drink and inject bleach in the peak of his botched pandemic response.

Biden is a gaff machine unto himself, and I'm not exactly a fan of his economic views and track record (he would rather cut medicare and medicaid than risk the ire of wealthy and corporate donors/lobbyists). He doesn't even seem to be DNC status quo; the dems get elected and try to balance the budget without dicking social programs, then a republican gets elected, hypocritically spends more than the dems (especially on military) while slashing taxes; rinse and repeat. Biden differs (is lesser) because he doesn't even seem to give a shit about not dicking the poor.

And what is with his old-school prejudice against weed?

This man is so out of touch that he simultaneously is trying to represent the will of a majority of Americans while also thinking it his moral duty to enforce his antiquated moral sentiments on the rest of us.

And the rape accusation...

"ALL WOMEN WHO SPEAK UP SHOULD BE LISTENED TO AND BELIEV-YGT^w$tg$%h$%.. ERROR- 404 123 TAKE BACKS!!!!"

Maybe it's a politically motivated false accusation; it should not end the campaign (it should be investigated asap due to the public's need for accurate information about their candidates IMO). But the fact that democratic loud and bleeding hearts are exceptionally silent on this is just loathsome. You can't kick up an ultimate fuss about rape-culture and then not look stupid when you do a full speed 180 the moment it's no longer convenient...

Long story short, Biden is at this point as difficult a sell as Hillary Clinton was, but probably worse. Trump will probably have less support this go-round, I'm just afraid it won't be enough to counteract the hoards of disenfranchised and dissatisfied potential democrats, who once more, will vote third party, or Trump, out of raw desire to spite the DNC and its self-serving system.

How do you know this is justice?

Maybe Flynn struck a deal with the deep-state who controls everything and causes all of Trump's failures.

This is really suspicious if you ask me. Why would the corrupt DOJ give quarter to an innocent and graceful champion that was hand selected by Trump?

This is how we know that he is now working against Trump as a part of the continuous governance of insidious and mostly democratic deep-state actors.

Finally a version of socialism republicans will accept: take money from the poor and redistribute it directly to the rich.

I mean, if the rich people go away, whose ass-hole are our goods and services going to trickle down and out of???

Let me know when you conduct this experiment. I wish you the best of luck, but I won't hold my breath. Personally I think it's a waste of time. But in any case, the point stands: there's no evidence for your claim. So why say it? That's not scientifically sound either. — Xtrix

Why ask me for an appeal to authority when you can just dismiss it as an appeal to authority?

You're asking for me to show you the ultimate scientific authority, but the rub is that science eschews ultimate authority. When pressed, scientists say things like "nature", by which they mean experimental evidence (observations of nature).

I haven't once said anything remotely like that, because before we can "couple" non-science with "science," we have to know what "science" is. — Xtrix

Huh? You opened the post by bringing up an ill-defined anecdote about how scientists say their god is nature (do you need me to quote everything line by line?), and then you stated that Descartes framework of natural philosophy "dominates every other understanding in today's world".

This is just bad reasoning. What do you think scientists meant by "nature" and "god", and why is that relevant to why natural philosophy dominates every other understanding in today's world?

Isn't it possible that modern science is not dominated by Cartesian or natural philosophy?

No one can offer a definition that shows Aristarchus wasn't doing science but Galileo was, for example, so who cares? — Xtrix

Why do you get to get to ask me to prove an unending series of negatives? First you'll goad me into showing Aristarchus wasn't doing science, then you can just keep pulling random names out of a hat until I get too tired to carry on... If some ancient philosopher based their epistemological framework around the predictive power of their mathematical or explanatory models, then maybe they employing the modern scientific method to some extent. But really, who cares?

You, on the other hand, have repeatedly tried to demarcate science, ignoring evidence that doesn't fit. Also not scientifically sound. I can make guesses as to why this is, psychologically, but otherwise it's not very interesting to me. — Xtrix

You're just making veiled ad hominems and appeals to character with this. Accusing me of ignoring evidence that doesn't fit is just an allusion that you have relevant evidence that I have not addressed (just state the evidence concisely and clearly so that at the very least other readers can see how poor a job I am doing), and mentioning my psychological state is a fallacious appeal to character bordering on ad hominem.

The experimental evidence is in our face phenomenon... — VagabondSpectre


That's not what you said. You said:

You're looking at it backward actually. QM and GR are "in our face" phenomenon that we cannot deny. — VagabondSpectre


So quantum mechanics and general relativity are "experimental evidence" now? That's completely meaningless as well. — Xtrix

I'm having a hard time comprehending what you're trying to say here. "In our face phenomenon" refers to the experimental observations that force us to accept GR and QM as strong models. If you think you have a "gotch'ya" here, you don't. You're just be semantically obtuse or else misunderstanding. Calling things "meaningless statements" in a vacuum is non-persuasive.

No, you contrasted "rationality" by conflating it with "rationalism" (hence why you mentioned Descartes) which is completely wrong. Inductive reasoning already assumes reason (it's right there in the word), and hence rationality - ratio is Latin, which translates as "reason." — Xtrix

Have you ever heard of the "etymological fallacy"? It's sort of similar to equivocation; definitely an excellent source of wanton misinterpretation...

To be fair to Descartes, the first two meditations are pretty interesting. He lays out groundwork for the utility of falsification, and also that our ideas are shaped by our available senses, but if I recall correctly he went on to just assume a bunch of random nonsense. Merely doubting senses and applying skepticism is not the more fully fledged conception of science that is based around experimental predictive power.

You're trying to win the argument by somehow showing that I am technically incorrect, when you have not seem to understood or addressed the statement I have made. Even if my critique of Descartes has been unfair (not giving him enough credit as a scientist, I guess), you're still not actually addressing my position; you're just rejecting it out of hand.

Once again, just to be clear, modern science employs an inherently inductive method to actually confirm and usefully deploy its models in the real world; that's what has let it advance so much compared to less strictly focused schools
.
We have reliable computers because the models and understanding that were used to create the underlying hardware focused on precision and accuracy in their anticipation of how systems unfold. (even in computer "science", predictive power ("robustness" in terms of an application or program) is still the major standard that drives development. We want programs that can do more, and can do it quicker, and to do that we require more reliable (or more efficient with no reliability loss) low level algorithms).

So what is the point of this thread again? I know you feel you have been amply clear, but just indulge me. Did you just want to wax about the hidden nature of the physical universe without needing to actually entertain scientific models?

Why didn't you call the thread "basis for ancient science"?

That's a completely meaningless statement.

Both are scientific theories. They're not "read off" from nature without any contribution of the thinking mind; there's nothing "backwards" about this. — Xtrix

The experimental evidence is in our face phenomenon... The experimental evidence is what forced people to reluctantly accept GR, and so too the story goes with QM. Our thinking minds tend to want to reject these things as spooky and unintuitive nonsense, and it is only the experimental evidence that manages to persuade us in the end.

Stop trying to demarcate science — Xtrix

Stop trying to couple it with non-science.

The claim that "modern science is cardinally focused..." is so far totally unsupported. Says who? — Xtrix

Interesting question, but appealing to authority is not scientifically sound.

We would have to do a random sampling of active or historical scientific inquiries, and then do quantitative and statistical analysis to determine whether or not they were heavier on evidence gathering and predictive modeling, or heavier on making unfalsifiable hypotheses.

Once we have gathered and preprocessed the data, we could make a null hypothesis like "we expect to see an even distribution of the predictive model approach vs the untested hypothesis generating approach". Then when we actually crunch the numbers, assuming our sample is sufficiently large, if we see large deviation in one direction or the other, we then have a potentially significant signal that tells which direction to lean regarding the claim "modern science is cardinally focused on understanding the world through empirical evidence and predictive power, not mere "rationality"; (what Descartes did)".

You might want to say "correlation is not causation" and that would indeed be very astute. We could take our analysis to completion by gathering additional data of factors which we think might impact cardinal focus of individual scientific inquiries. Using something like muti-variate regression analysis, we could potentially generate a model between the relationships of circumstantial factors and the cardinal focus of scientific inquiry in general. We could then use these relationships to create a statistical model that tells us what the most likely cardinal focus of a given scientific inquiry is if we are given the specific factors that we checked in our analysis. If our model generates predictions with very high or useful precision and accuracy then we call it robust.

Even though we're obviously not addressing the critical and deeply hidden truths that all philosophers yearn to masticate, nor are we necessarily offering sensical explanations of why scientific inquiry varies from case to case: we're successfully and humbly generating a model that can reliably give us predictions of sufficient accuracy. Nothing more, nothing less.

To repeat: the very fact that Newtonian physics turned out to be "wrong" not in terms of calculation but in the bigger picture led to a remarkable re-evaluation of the history of science. See David Hilbert, et al. — Xtrix

What was the picture being described by the laws of motion?

There is not one (they're generalized formulas)... Only speculations we derive from it at our own epistemological risk...

The kind of materialistic assumptions that newton's laws ostensibly implies were a whole different brand of claim. Newton said: I can predict the movement of this thing through space over time; and he could, with wonderful accuracy (the fact that the laws of motion do so well and are themselves so elegant is an interesting subject for discussion because it generates claims of intelligent design, but they aren't scientific claims (that is to say, they cannot be falsified)).

Einstein came along and said "if we view this space thing and this time thing as this other thing, then we can increase the accuracy of our predictions about our future observations of "things" (I'm using scare quotes because these fundamental discoveries were and are still valid only up to their testability and accuracy; they do not inherently contain claims about necessarily deeply hidden truths or ontological assumptions.

Quantum mechanics makes this point clear; we inductively gather that GR and the Newtonian scale models are actually emergent phenomenon from a very complex, vast, and fast moving multiverse of strange tiny particle-waves. Given this stunning evident truth, we might react and say "well i guess all the other stuff is just bull-shit", and you would be right only in so far as people have drawn inappropriate assumptions from scientific models and knowledge in the first place.

Scientific models are inherently a heuristic or stochastic approach to knowledge; they are not guaranteed to be optimal in terms of absolute truthiness in description (far from it in fact), instead they only promise predictive power. In this sense (and considering QM) models describing phenomenon above the atomic scale are necessarily simplifications. They're not actual truth, they're only reliable models.

So when Newtonian physics turned out to be "wrong", what you should actually be saying is that we found a more accurate/reliable/robust model which encompasses the Newtonian model. The scientific truthiness of Newtonian laws of motion actually don't change with subsequent discoveries, they're still just as reliable as they were before (and often still used due to the special circumstances that demand GR level precision).

Once we realize that the truth metric of science is not the elegance or validity of "why" like explanations, but instead high precision and accuracy in experimental predictive power, it re-contextualizes the whole shebang.

I never stated anything about a "god of nature." — Xtrix

I don't mean a god over nature, I mean god from nature; the god of nature... It's what you said in your opening post so I'm not sure why you're not interpreting this correctly.

The first paragraph of your OP paints the picture:

Most of today's scientists will claim to assume "naturalism" in their endeavors. Someone famous once said that "I believe in God, I just spell it n-a-t-u-r-e." I've heard this a lot from the likes of Sagan, Dennett, Dawkins, Gould, and many others -- especially when contrasting their views with religious views or in reaction to claims that science is "just another religion."

You stated this and then launched headlong into a historical analysis, under the allusion that your findings with respect to ancient naturalism can usefully color our understanding of modern science:

It's worth remembering that science was simply "natural philosophy" in Descartes' day, Newton's day and Kant's day. This framework and its interpretation of the empirical world dominates every other understanding, in today's world, including the Christian account (or any other religious perspective, really). Therefore it's important to ask: what was (and is) this philosophy of nature? What is the basis of its interpretation of all that we can know through our senses and our reason? — Xtrix

No, because neither you nor I know what "modern science" is. We can't pinpoint when it begins. We can only speculate as to what makes it 'distinct' from any other rational inquiry. So far, its successes in technological advances and some kind of "method" has been offered. I don't find that very convincing. — Xtrix

I have no trouble with saying modern science is different in many respects with whatever the Greeks were doing. As I said before, it's undeniable that many things have changed. But when you look at what's going on, at its core, it seems like what we call "doing science" is actually something that's been with us (as human beings) for a long time indeed. — Xtrix

I'm having a hard time comprehending which of the above positions you actually occupy.

Do we not know what modern science is, and therefore cannot say how it differs from what ancient Greeks were doing? Or are there obvious differences between what ancient Greeks were doing and modern science? If so, what are those obvious differences? (hint: predictive power and a focus on experimental methodology).

If you want to try and get at *the very core of human inquiry and knowledge*, then you have no reason to refer to the problem of induction as irrelevant. The thing we and the ancients share is that we both lived or live in worlds that appear to have causal consistency. We observe things, use those observations to formulate an idea or an action, and then we observe the effects of those ideas and actions. In general, we want our actions to create more desirable observations. The only real signal we have to refine our ideas and actions is the observable results of those actions. The ancients kinda knew this, but they did not seem to realize that instead of focusing on how elegant an idea sounds in and of itself (or how persuasive it may be to the rational mind), we should be forced to reject it if experimental evidence controverts it, and beyond this, that we can never actually test the validity of such speculative ideas unless they can actually generate predictions that can be tested.

With these last two sentences, we have a robust definition of the scope of science (being concerned with observable phenomenon and falsifiable models) that does depart from the more full blown realm of philosophical inquiry that the ancients were engaged it. It's a drastic departure from the focus of those ontic schools that instead presupposed some anthropically biased/pleasing framework. Modern science doesn't even require the assumption that nature is consistent; inductively it appears to have consistency, and if one day causal consistency fails, so be it). We hope, though, that fundamental laws will remain consistent if only so that our scientific models remain useful (and so that our world doesn't fall apart).

It's just not so simple -- and who really cares, anyway? — Xtrix

I thought you wanted to comment on modern science via commenting on ancient science. Am I wrong?

You're equivocating between the epistemological foundations of modern science (it's the inductive method), and other schools which are less strict.

"Remember, modern science is cardinally focused on understanding the world through empirical evidence and predictive power, not mere "rationality"; that's what Descartes did." -Vagabond


You say this, and yet a moment earlier talked about "induction." Is logic and reason involved in "science" or not? — Xtrix

Gaining knowledge using predictive power as a confidence signal IS induction. Inductive arguments are inherently statistical (they are either strong or weak); we gather evidence, and likelihoods and reliabilities (patterns in observations) give us insight about how to make reliable predictions. Fundamentally, all knowledge is gathered this way, but that's another discussion entirely.

So when I say "science relies on the inductive method, not mere rationality", I'm actually pointing to the specific form of "logic" (induction) that scientific proofs require as their literal standard for truth and knowledge.

You've not read the articles indicating a real question about the safety of ventilators on covid patients. — Hanover

Even if I had read an article suggesting ventilators are doing more harm than good, I wouldn't contradict currently established medical advice and practice unless the evidence was strong.

What is the evidence? If it's just more statistical brow-raising then I've already addressed it: we expect to see higher mortality where more serious medical interventions are used (because this means the condition of the patient is worsening or becoming too risky (risk of death)). We can ask three obvious questions from seeing a high figure like 80%... We can ask whether or not ventilators are killing the patients, we can ask whether the patients being given ventilators are already in serious condition, and we can ask whether we're only giving ventilators to the most seriously affected patients due to a shortage of said ventilators.

Do the articles that question ventilator safety address these concerns? Can you provide a link?

The article you actually did link does not at all assert that ventilators are killing patients (although this is the ambiguous click-bait interpretation they intended for the title). Technically all they do is report a figure, but they also offer mitigating explanatory factors like incomplete data (they only had data from properly logged cases), and the fact that most people dying and/or being given ventilators have pre-existing conditions.

Out of the three possible speculative conclusions we could draw, why leap to pointing the gun at ventilators? Is there not ample evidence that there is a shortage of ventilators and that Corona is decidedly a deadlier virus than the common cold?

You're not thinking straight. Ventilators are necessary to keep people who can't breathe for themselves alive (regardless of what illness they suffer from). There may be some risk involved in their use but there is no evidence that there is any general risk that outweighs the benefits and the benefits are clear. See the studies listed. — Baden

I don't know man... Like, over 90% of people who receive brain surgery for gunshot wounds to the head die, or are at least never the same afterward.

We should probably stop doing brain surgery on these poor souls. They've already suffered enough dammit!

No wait guys, I got it!

It's an imbalance of the humors; we've actually been in a tragic comedy this whole time!!!!

We know people are dying on ventilators at alarming rates. — Hanover

You can say it's because they were really sick and going to die anyway, or you can say the ventilator killed them. — Hanover

Do you know what mechanical ventilation is?



How are ventilators killing people? (What's that? You don't know how ventilators are killing people?)

If you're blindly making an argument based on correlation, then I can do that too: People who are most likely to die from Corona virus are often given ventilators in an attempt to save their lives. The fact that all the ventilators are being used, combined with the fact that 80% of ventilated patients are dying, probably indicates that A) we don't have enough ventilators, and B) COVID-19 is a deadly virus.

If they killed people, we'd stop using them. — Hanover

I'm kinda curious as to why you think ventilators are killing people. Nothing in the article you posted suggests this.

People with more severe reactions are more likely to receive a ventilator, and they're also more likely to die as a result of the virus.

You left out where he suggested injecting disinfectants...

Next he will be tweeting out recipes for Bleach martinis.

I'm slowly starting to really like Cuomo, not knowing much about him...

https://twitter.com/TPMLiveWire/status/1253362593772822530

Watch him murder Mitch McConnell with calm words.

You're not describing a modern scientific attitude or position though (science accepts that the jury is still out on "all there is"). Asking for some kind of grand definition for everything is not a scientifically coherent question. — VagabondSpectre


No one is asking for a "grand definition of everything." Nor have I said that -- not once.

It's not a very definite worldview.... — VagabondSpectre


It most certainly is, as I have repeatedly explained. — Xtrix

Here is where I get turned around. First you aver that scientists admit a god of nature as some kind of serious and relevant sentiment that can help us understand modern science (as if it is an operant world-view; as if it contextualizes the entirety of it)....

To then contrast this directly with the sentiments of old (namely, that nature itself was the expression of some intelligent creator that imbued everything with order and purpose), makes the above interpretation harder to avoid. In so far as we have abandoned superstitious and ungrounded appeals and hypotheses such as those, then yes, we can understand modern science as differing from the kind of thing that Aristotle was engaged in. It's a kind of "actually check and let nature be the judge" attitude.

But you actually are trying to say that modern science must be the same thing that the ancients were engaged in, because there is inquiry involved in both, and because there are some etymological relationships....

I think I understand what you're trying to do: you are trying shed light on the inherent epistemological limitations (the doubts) of modern science by showing how it is similar to previous and falliable phases of human inquiry. Philosophically you're right, but scientifically you're wrong; the scientific method is literally built around the inductive method, and has made the relationship between certitude and existing theories a core feature of what allows science to adapt.

Aristotle really did want to explain everything; to put everything into a neat and discrete category; ordered and comprehensible. Modern science reserves this attitude for secretive wet dream. It's hubris. Instead it admits that it is woefully incomplete, and instead of judging itself by all or nothing standards, it uses experimental reliability (predictive power) as a guide. This is something that ancients really had a hard time keeping faith with (they tended to accept whatever sounded the most persuasive, fallacy or no). Not having such strongly grounded fundamentals (see:modern physics vs ancient stories about existence and stuff, or see ancient astrology vs modern astronomy, etc...), it was simply not possible to resist whatever best and explanation they happened to have at the time. Science in its modern incarnation started with an admission of said uncertainty.

But your notion that science "progresses" is itself a picture that isn't really justified. In some ways it does, in others it doesn't. But in any case, the best scientists are well aware that theories today will morph and adapt in the future -- that's just basic. It's pure hubris to assume otherwise. — Xtrix

I can basically defeat this sentiment merely by saying "computers". By what standard has modern science not progressed?

In any case, the progression of science along the lines of utility, reliability, and predictive power cannot be denied. The entire thread seems to sniff in this direction though... That science isn't so great; that's it's "just the same old _____".

That being said, to say we get "less wrong now" than in the past is impossible to measure, so there's no sense talking about it. Were Humphry Davy, Faraday, and their contemporaries "less wrong than right" compared to our contemporaries today? Who knows. In fact it's almost certain there are far more hypotheses that aren't confirmed by the data in today's world simply by the sheer amount of what's being undertaken. But who cares? That's not how science is judged. The activity of trying to understand the world rationally continues, regardless. — Xtrix

I want to highlight the last sentence in this:

"The activity of trying to understand the world rationally continues, regardless."...

Remember, modern science is cardinally focused on understanding the world through empirical evidence and predictive power, not mere "rationality"; that's what Descartes did.

No, they don't. In fact the statement is borderline incoherent. See above. — Xtrix

The statement is coherent, you're just rejecting or not comprehending it. Allow me to paraphrase and split it up

All scientists believe that we get less wrong now than in the past (or at least, what we got wrong in the past, we get less wrong today).

Scientists believe that modern theories are generally more accurate and complete (less error prone) than the theories of their predecessors. At the very least, our ancient predecessors got many specific things wildly wrong for which we actually have reliable and accurate models (i.e: less wrong)).

In a nut shell, we have more accurate and precise predictive power.

Yes, if one thinks of the "progress" of science as akin to climbing a mountain or filling out a crossword puzzle -- as "accumulation" of some kind. True, that's how the history of science looked for nearly 300 years until Einstein, and I'm sure you'll find many who still think that way. But that doesn't mean we have to take it seriously. — Xtrix

Einstein did not overturn Newton... Can't stress this enough... It's not like Einstein's theories and proofs suddenly changed the reproducible results of centuries of repeated physical experiments.

These deeper realities in theoretical physics do have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of how the world works at the quantum level (and how things like spacetime and matter emerge), but it wont actually "overturn" previously established scientific models unless they give us greater predictive power, nor do they affect the utility of existing models should they be improved upon.

Even if we can model how matter emerges from quantum particle waves, it's going to be useless with respect to anticipating the motion of large scale masses through space, and we will still, and perhaps forever, default to the Newtonian approach plus the tweaks offered by GR, which yield ridiculously and stupendously accurate and reliable results.

Just what I said. To take one example, quantum mechanics and relativity will doubtlessly in the future be either brought together or re-interpreted somehow, or subsumed under a newer theory. And so on forever, really. Much of all of this has to do with the questions we ask, the problems we face as human beings -- and that in turn is dependent on our values, our goals, our interests, etc. — Xtrix

You're looking at it backward actually. QM and GR are "in our face" phenomenon that we cannot deny. The next breakthrough will not overturn them, it will encompass them. It will explain how GR and QM can both be true from some other observed (probably speculative at first) reality.

Depends on what "empirical tracks" are, and what field you're talking about — Xtrix

The tracks are myriad. If you want a quick way to look at the epistemological strength of a scientific field, look at the reproducibility of its experimental evidence, and the scope and accuracy of its predictions.

Well needless to say I don't believe any of that, as you know. If you made even a slight effort to understand by taking a few moments to think, instead of reacting, you'd see that fairly easily. In fact your apparent emotional reaction and frustration with all of this is in itself interesting. — Xtrix

I've been sensing a bit of an attitude from you as well... Curious...

Normally my posts start out pretty dryly, and I end up reciprocating... Curiouser...

And that's where we stand currently. If science interprets "all there is" (being as a whole) as, essentially, "physical nature," then that's a very definite worldview -- a very important ontology. It's opposed, say, by Christian ontology where all that is, all of being, is "creation" and "God." — Xtrix

You're not describing a modern scientific attitude or position though (science accepts that the jury is still out on "all there is"). Asking for some kind of grand definition for everything is not a scientifically coherent question.

It's not a very definite worldview....

So my point is: let's look at the words and see if their history through the ages gives us an clues or illuminates our current, powerful (and dominant, at least among educated people) understanding of being. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. I personally think it does, and helps us become a little less dogmatic and guards against the pitfalls of "scientism" and, more importantly, a kind of nihilism that Nietzsche analyzed and warned us about. Why is this, in turn, important? I've already written enough, so I won't bore you further, but it turns out this has definite real-world consequences which we all are currently living in — Xtrix

You keep suggesting that modern scientists "conception of being" hinges on the developmental history of science, but what if someone creates a brand new theory of matter? In order to understand the cutting edge, do we actually need to examine the hilt or the pommel? In the case that modern models deviate entirely from models of old, we don't actually need the models of old to comprehend the new, but we absolutely need to examine the new in and of itself.

When it comes to scientific over-confidence, there's no broad heuristic which you can derive to safely make a rule of thumb. Some scientific models are wrong, and they will be changed, and many individuals and scientists are vastly over-confident in their models. This isn't an inherent feature of science though; some scientists aren't over-confident, and some models may never be changed. To determine where the over-confidence lies, it is 100% required to address the contemporary models and evidence themselves, otherwise you're reasoning about the way things are without actually looking at the way things are.

Perhaps it's true we get less wrong now, but that's not what scientists tend to think — Xtrix

Of course it's what scientists tend to think. If scientists did not believe they could get less wrong in the future, they would not believe in that science could progress.

All scientists believe that we get less wrong now than in the past (or at least, what we got wrong in the past, we get less wrong today).

Think about this for a second... If science has no progressed since Aristotle, how pathetic does that make modern science and scientists?

hey acknowledge that there is still much we don't know, we're probably on the wrong track, that hundreds of years from now what we know currently will be outdated, etc — Xtrix

What do you mean "probably on the wrong track"?

Are you aware of the empirical tracks that science at large is presently mapping?

You're making an almost purely relativistic comparison. "Science today is not perfect, science yesterday was not perfect, therefore science does not progress, it will always be the same, and what we know now is just as wrong as when we read the portents from sheep guts".

How could it be otherwise? Of course he was a champion for observation, calculation, and precise reasoning. This has nothing to do with the myths of dropping balls from Pisa or experimenting with a frictionless plane, for example. I find it odd that you declare it a "ludicrous assertion" yet don't provide one example of a Galileo experiment, even in your citing Wikipedia. If he performed one, that's fine -- maybe he did. But the major breakthroughs he made were mainly thought experiments. This is not meant as a criticism of Galileo.

But more importantly, this statement of mine was in response to your claim about experimentation, and so I think you're very much missing the point. — Xtrix

Experimentation (reliable prediction) is still the bottle-neck through which Galileo's assertions must pass to enter the modern body of scientific knowledge. Yes he conducted many real experiments, notably with pendulums if you must have an anecdote.

I'm not saying that thought experiments have no place in doing science, I'm saying that the crux of modern science (again, why it has been successful) is the demand for actual observable experiments to confirm the prior speculations.

here's plenty of work in the philosophy of science, even today, as you know. There's things published all the time. Whether "scientists at large" (not sure what this means) "use it" (use what, exactly?) is irrelevant: I'm talking about the philosophy of science. That would indicate it's a job for philosophers, not scientists. I realize most scientists regard philosophy with a great deal of contempt, in fact, so it wouldn't surprise me if they don't bother with the philosophy of science at all. — Xtrix

What is philosophy of science in your view?

? Masonry skills? "Apriori mathematics"? What are you talking about? Your history is very confused. — Xtrix

So the Greeks never constructed any lasting stone monuments? They didn't innovate any fundamental mathematical theorems? Care to offer a correction?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_architecture#Masonry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras

So they were just like us, in other words. Plenty of bullshit everywhere -- as many scientists admit freely -- that we're simply not yet aware of.

But we have "some bright people," too. — Xtrix

If modern science was full of shit, then satellites would fall out of the sky, smart phones would stop working, vaccines would not work, the new Tesla autopilot would crash more often than humans, etc...

The whole point is to reduce the bull-shit; that's the scientific shtick. Making a relativistic comparison to ancient bull-shit and saying "oh sure, everything we know now is probably bull shit" is fine, but the evidence is stacked against you. We know more than we did, what we know now is more reliable, and less likely to turn out inaccurate (the benefits of reproducible experimentation...). Unless the universe itself changes, Newton's laws of motion are not going to suddenly become useless for predicting the movement of masses through space. Einsteins general relativity isn't going to suddenly stop providing accuracy increasing tweaks and depth to the Newtonian system, etc...