To me it's just metaphysics masked as science to twist science beyond its proper realm. In free societies, individuals are more or less expected to work out their own salvation in the usual ways. Science creates tools for the pursuit of goals that are synthesized with politics, religion, art, etc.
I want science for its neutrality (as something that gives me just the facts), because I want to decide what to make of them (perhaps or rather always with help from non-scientific culture.) — foo
For me there's a tension in your writing between the cultural critic and the metaphysician, which I may be mistakenly projecting. Do you understand yourself to be stating preferences? Doing politics at an abstract level? 'Our culture would be better if...X' Or are you ultimately saying that science is blind to an important objective truth. 'This or that non-scientific approach nevertheless offers us objective truth, not just preference or opinion.' — foo
(Speaking of which, one of the seminal writers for me was Theodore Roszak, who coined the term itself in his book 'Making of a Counter-Culture') — Wayfarer
Later in life, I've realised the profoundness of the classical Western philosophical tradition, on which I see scientific materialism as kind of parasitic outgrowth. — Wayfarer
I don't call that metaphysics. As I mean metaphysics, it's the discussion of what discussably, describably is.
In your quote of Plotinus, he's talking about something other than metaphysics. He isn't discussing, but only asserting. — Michael Ossipoff
Metaphysical statements should be supportable and supported. Because there are one or more metaphysicses that neither have nor need any assumptions or brute-facts, then there's no need for brute-facts or assumptions in metaphysics. — Michael Ossipoff
Plotinus's statement sounds similar to things that are said in Vedanta writings. Those Vedanta writings, and Plotinus's statement, could be interpreted as meta-metaphysics that I don't understand, and which (I feel) says more detail than can really be said about meta-metaphysics--or else as metaphysics that doesn't meet my standard of support, and absence of assumptions or brute-facts. ...and of complete uncontroversialness. — Michael Ossipoff
Do you understand yourself to be stating preferences? Doing politics at an abstract level? 'Our culture would be better if...X' Or are you ultimately saying that science is blind to an important objective truth. — foo
With respect to the last question - nothing is ultimately objective. I take that to be one of the most important implications of the Critique of Pure Reason. But I’m also not an out-and-out relativist. Understanding the implications of that is one of the main tasks of philosophy. — Wayfarer
Epistemologists sometimes say that knowledge is "objective" if there is agreement amongst individuals concerning the thing known. Generally, when people say that scientific knowledge is "objective", it is in this sense that they use the word, peer reviewed or something. It doesn't mean "objective" in the sense of "of the object, because knowledge is property of the human beings, not the objects which are known. Nor is it really "objective" in the sense of an aim or a goal of a subject, because it is common to many subjects. It is a sense of "objective" which means "inter-subjective". We must be careful not to confuse this sense of "objective" which is inter-subjective, with "objective" in the sense of "of the object". — Metaphysician Undercover
The latter form of "objective" is proper to the subject. — Metaphysician Undercover
I had been saying that I take issue with the idea of science as the ‘arbiter of what is meaningful and important’. And I do maintain that science often occupies that role in modern culture, and that a lot of it is grounded in evolutionary theory. — Wayfarer
there have been a large number of popular philosophy books published in the last decade, which appeal to evolutionary science, to argue on the basis of the science to ‘show there probably is no God’. And that is the kind of thinking I’m responding to. — Wayfarer
But note that this then relegates beliefs to the domain of individual, the private - tantamount to, if not exactly the same as, a matter of opinion. — Wayfarer
I did not devise the idea that scientific materialism is generally antagonistic to philosophies of those kinds, and that evolutionary theory is often used in support of that. The whole tendency of positivism, of various kinds, and various forms of economic and scientific materialism, is to undermine or attack belief in the spiritual aspect of the human being. So here I’m calling it out, and I willl continue to do so. — Wayfarer
I don't understand what your position is on this at all. — Pseudonym
we (or I at least) have been asking for some evidence to back up that claim, some quote or activity of 'modern culture' where science is acting as the arbiter of what is meaningful — Pseudonym
I don't think anyone is seriously claiming that science is the arbiter of what is meaningful and important.
— Pseudonym
Wayfarer: Many serious people claim it regularly, e.g.:
"the worldview that guides the moral and spiritual values of an educated person today is the worldview given to us by science" — Steve Pinker — Wayfarer
Not that I wouldn't rather cut my own arm off than agree with anything Steven Pinker says, but he specifically says here that science guides moral and spiritual values, not 'all that there is'. — Pseudonym
He's claiming that science can provide us with a method of obtaining morals and of determining what have traditionally been called 'spiritual' values. That is a far cry from your claim that it tries to be "the arbiter of what ought to be considered meaningful and important." — Pseudonym
But in claiming that science 'provides us with a method of obtaining morals, etc', he is making the exact claim that you said that 'nobody seriously is making'. — Wayfarer
I don't get why you can't see the difference between someone claiming that science can make falsifiable statements about morals.... — Pseudonym
It sounds like you're just opposed to science making any claims at all that you don't personally approve of — Pseudonym
Popper (as I explained yesterday) devised the criterion of falsifiability specifically for the kinds of empirical claims that science is suited to examine. — Wayfarer
but in respect of ‘the meaning of ethical statements’, then that is plainly not a concern of science as such. — Wayfarer
You’re simply seeing the argument through a perspective which simply assumes that science is the only real source of knowledge. Your approach is textbook positivism: science is the only source of real knowledge, if it can’t obtain knowledge of ethics, then neither can anything else. Oh sure, people can like opera, or religion, or ski-ing, but that’s just their personal stuff. When it comes to what really counts, that’s the knowledge ‘in the public square’, and only science can deliver it. — Wayfarer
some prominent and perfectly rational neuroscientists think that morality contains kinds of empirical claims that science is suited to examine. — Pseudonym
some people think it is. — Pseudonym
You can't win an argument just by repeatedly stating what you think is the case — Pseudonym
if more people agree with their claim than agree with yours then that is the direction rational society will take — Pseudonym
I don't get why you can't see the difference between someone claiming that science can make falsifiable statements about morals and someone claiming that science can decide everything in the world that is meaningful. — Pseudonym
some prominent and perfectly rational neuroscientists think that morality contains kinds of empirical claims that science is suited to examine. — Pseudonym
Such as...? — Wayfarer
some people think it is. — Pseudonym
Such as...? — Wayfarer
You can't win an argument just by repeatedly stating what you think is the case — Pseudonym
Right, so I suggest you desist. — Wayfarer
But what we (or specifically I or you) should seek as oppose to what we tend to seek does not seem to be in that domain. I can't think what it would mean to test an 'ought.' — foo
Science can therefore make predictions (which is its job) about what we 'are' going to do and how we 'are' going to feel in certain circumstances. — Pseudonym
I think this is exactly what it does mean. It means that, if my knowledge of the object is exactly the same as your knowledge of the object in some meaningful way, then our knowledge must be truly "of the object" because it is unaffected by our own subjectivity, It is related purely to the object. — Pseudonym
So agreement between us, though it does make "objectivity" in the sense of "inter-subjective", it does not make "objectivity" in the sense of "of the object" because it still might be wrong. — Metaphysician Undercover
Science does not claim to achieve objectivity any more than it claims to achieve truth, its about methods which approach those things. — Pseudonym
If you and I both think the sun goes around the earth, that is a good deal closer to being likely to be a property of the object than my personal opinion that the sun is held up by the moon on strings, which no one else seems to share. — Pseudonym
Its not that the scientific method is a guarantee of objectivity and truth, it's a far cry from that. But it's the best system we have, nothing else is going to get closer to true knowledge 'about the object'. — Pseudonym
The scientific method deals with descriptions — Metaphysician Undercover
Common sense knowledge deals with descriptions; science moves to the next level; the level of explanation. — Janus
There is no scientific explanation of what it means to be an object, or to be a property of an object, because these are not empirical principles, empiricism being fundamental to the scientific method. — Metaphysician Undercover
Are you saying that you think metaphysics must be completely uncontroversial to be metaphysics? — Metaphysician Undercover
the difference could just be a matter of wording. — Michael Ossipoff
What it means to be an object can be thought in at least two ways. First it can be thought as a sheer definition, which would be a common sense descriptive approach.
Or the attempt can be made to think it in a comprehensive way that incorporates common sense, scientific knowledge, epistemology, phenomenology and metaphysics; an all-encompassing investigation, which will yield a picture that includes the human cognitive process as it is experienced, understood and judged to be. Obviously this second view of what it means to be an object cannot be a static, timeless one; it will be evolving along with the rest of human thought. — Janus
Basically I consider the evidence from neuroscience to be sufficient to consider that the self and free-will are both illusion — Pseudonym
Which is why discussion is pointless - because if that is true then there is no means of ‘persuasion by rational argument’. You can’t change someone’s mind if there’s no mind to be changed. — Wayfarer
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.