response to Fooloso4's post about Platonism moved to this thread which is about Platonism.

Yes, I'm saying it's beyond science, but not that this is a failing of science. God is not detectably present here in the world (I mean detectable by any form of scientific measurement), and this will not change unless God does. — Pattern-chaser

How do you know that?

We have found all sorts of things we could not before. Scientific measurement is not static.

If you want to argue that God must be utterly transcendent, which some but not all theists believe, then you have a foundation for saying that (empirical) science can't demonstrat God's existence. But then, how would you know God is utterly transcendent?

how would you know God is utterly transcendent? — Coben

Of course I wouldn't, in absolute terms. So I'm reduced to guesswork, as we humans so often are. There has never been even the smallest piece of scientifically-acceptable evidence that God has detectable/measurable existence in the space-time universe that science describes so well. So I reluctantly guess that this will continue to be the case. What alternative is there?

The Point is, Science is a Joke. Done.

Science is a Joke — SpaceNBeyond

I disagree. Science is a powerful and useful tool, which has delivered all kinds of useful stuff. It's just that science is not applicable to every problem and every situation.

There is a certain pattern of people defending science in principle without actually knowing anything about it. For clarity, I'm not defending science-denial, woo, mysticism, I'm trying to defend scientific thinking from its own idealisation; scientism is just as bad for science as woo.

Of course I wouldn't, in absolute terms. So I'm reduced to guesswork, as we humans so often are. There has never been even the smallest piece of scientifically-acceptable evidence that God has detectable/measurable existence in the space-time universe that science describes so well. So I reluctantly guess that this will continue to be the case. What alternative is there? — Pattern-chaser

Well, being agnostic about it. There are all sorts of things that there was absolutely no evidence for that then turned out to be there or the process behind something to the building blocks to something. There was absolutely no evidence there was water on Mars. There was absolutely no evidence that elephants could communicate over large distances. And in the later case natives and Westerners who stated their belief in it were told they were wrong. The ultrasound comminucation was found. We just found out we hadn't noticed most of the matter and energy in the universe. There was absolutely no evidence, then there was a bit, then more, and now it is consensus accepted that there is dark matter and energy. That's most of everything. That space and time are not absolute. No evidence for that. In fact there was no evidence when Einstein deduced it. Only later, after technology changed, could we test it. The examples could go on and on, many seem now right in front of our noses.

Indeed. Or rather, usually there is some sort of evidence, but the scientific consensus chooses not to interpret it as evidence. It also used to be scientific consensus that continental drift doesn't exist, or that we would never reach the Moon. The naïve view is to say that now we know better, but the problem is throughout history the scientific consensus thought they knew better. Now there is the scientific consensus that dark matter exists, even though there is evidence that it isn't the case, but the consensus chooses to interpret that evidence as problems to solve, supposedly the fundamentals are settled and it's only a matter of working out the details. It's also a historical constant that those going against the consensus are ridiculed and ostracized: there is strong incentive to continue developing the consensus, and little incentive to question it.

If those who maintain the consensus refuse to challenge their fundamental assumptions, outside ideas do not get through to them. Evidence that the model doesn't fit some observations is seen as a sign that there are some variables to tweak in the model, or that those who made these observations are crazy or hallucinated, but not as a sign that the model needs to be fundamentally changed. In the end it is not some outside truth that determines the consensus, it is people.

If those who maintain the consensus refuse to challenge their fundamental assumptions, outside ideas do not get through to them. Evidence that the model doesn't fit some observations is seen as a sign that there are some variables to tweak in the model, or that those who made these observations are crazy or hallucinated, but not as a sign that the model needs to be fundamentally changed. In the end it is not some outside truth that determines the consensus, it is people. — leo

Connected to this is the assumption that phenomena, if correctly interpreted by those experiencing them, entail that all of science or some large area is now false. Which is generally not the case. Science itself does manage to integrate really radical shifts - such as the whole qm set of phenomena - and it doesn't mean that everything before gets thrown out. IOW when faced with an anomolous phenomenon, to them anomolous, they interpret what it would mean, as if this could be known, and as if it would be catastrophic in relation to current knowledge. As a way of saying it is not possible. The idea of not weighing in on the possibility seems completely lost. It is as if they must draw a conclusion now. And that conclusion will be in the negative..

The idea of not weighing in on the possibility seems completely lost. It is as if they must draw a conclusion now. And that conclusion will be in the negative.. — Coben

Indeed, if they don't see how it could be integrated to their models then they find it more convenient to assume that the anomalous phenomena are hallucinations or delusions of those who experienced them, or to assume that eventually these phenomena will be explained in some mundane way that doesn't challenge their fundamental assumptions. People who spend their whole career working within a set of assumptions don't want to see these assumptions challenged, because their career depends on them, so they will fight to defend them no matter the evidence.

A quote from Max Planck comes to mind: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it".

Indeed, if they don't see how it could be integrated to their models then they find it more convenient to assume that the anomalous phenomena are hallucinations or delusions of those who experienced them, or to assume that eventually these phenomena will be explained in some mundane way that doesn't challenge their fundamental assumptions. People who spend their whole career working within a set of assumptions don't want to see these assumptions challenged, because their career depends on them, so they will fight to defend them no matter the evidence. — leo

But the truly sad thing is that even if these phenomena are real, they are merely assuming that it would go against current science. It could simply be forces, phenomena, realms, whatever, that haven't been detectable, so far, by scientific measuring, and which do not contradict what we know about other phenomema they have been able to track.

Some says ghosts are real. Scientists immediately make assumptions about the necessary ontology of ghosts, then conclude that it goes against current science. But within there own history, changes have come that put earlier models into more restricted frames (but do not eliminate them) or change some of the metaphysics of the science but not the use of the former knowledge - say in the example of Einstein demonstrating false assumptions in Newton, but not at all reducing the effectiveness of Newtons theorums in their contexts. And their assumption that it must be a binary winner take all clash is as radically speculative as they accuse their opponents of being.

But the truly sad thing is that even if these phenomena are real, they are merely assuming that it would go against current science. It could simply be forces, phenomena, realms, whatever, that haven't been detectable, so far, by scientific measuring, and which do not contradict what we know about other phenomema they have been able to track.

Some says ghosts are real. Scientists immediately make assumptions about the necessary ontology of ghosts, then conclude that it goes against current science. But within there own history, changes have come that put earlier models into more restricted frames (but do not eliminate them) or change some of the metaphysics of the science but not the use of the former knowledge - say in the example of Einstein demonstrating false assumptions in Newton, but not at all reducing the effectiveness of Newtons theorums in their contexts. And their assumption that it must be a binary winner take all clash is as radically speculative as they accuse their opponents of being. — Coben

Yes, I think this is a consequence of the materialist mindset that permeates the scientific community. And of the implicit belief that the important things are already known and we just have to work out the details, measure the variables in the models with more precision and so on. As you point out these beliefs are not treated as scientific hypotheses that can be tested or challenged, which is one example of the non-objectivity of scientific practice. So where do ghosts fit in that view? Since they don't have evidence of them with their usual instruments, and they try to explain them within a materialist mindset, then they immediately conclude that ghosts are imagination, or hallucinations, or delusions, in other words a specific pattern of brain activity. Without assuming materialism and without assuming that we already know the important things, there is a lot more room for inquiry.

Scientific theories are basically algorithms that allow to compute predictions from observations. To say that ghosts are inconsistent with these algorithms would be to assume that these algorithms are valid everywhere and at all times and for everyone, whereas an open-minded scientific inquiry would make no such assumption. The science of our era looks more like religion to me. I believe, or at least I hope, that people will wake up to this, if we don't we'll just keep repeating the mistakes of the past, with people attempting to impose their religion onto others, waging ideological wars, except next time we'll have more powerful technology to destroy one another.

I wouldn't say we are born with knowledge that makes it to where we don't need learn things, especially language, or math either.

Yes, I think this is a consequence of the materialist mindset that permeates the scientific community. — leo

And materialism no longer means anything. Waht is considered material is a set of 'things' that now includes fields, massless particles, particles in superposition, dark matter, dark energy. That which is considered physical is that which is considered real. It is no longer a stand on what kind of substance. Anything scientists decide is real, regardless of what it is like, will be subsumed under materialism or physicalism. So it is treated as a metaphysical stance, agains dualisms or other monisms, when in fact the term has lost its onological meaning and now just means real. And this add to their and the sense that certain phenomena must contradict science were these phenomena real. But that is jsut silly.

AL-GHĀZALĪ (1058–1111), argued for the begiining of the universe as a part of his argument for the existence of God. The first thing that struck me about this was that he found a way to show that the universe had a beginning long before modern science conceded in a lamenting fashion. The Greeks understood that the universe was made of atoms (not the kind with an electorn and nucleus, but just a tiny, fundmental building block of all things) long before science caught up. There are many things that people knew to some degree, long before science did, through the power of the mind simply by thinking and rationalizing things. From what I understand, Tesla would build and test things in his mind. When he did it in reality it was just as his mind had imagined. The scientific method is not the only way we know things. It can be wrong, and will be wrong at times as long as people are doing it because people are biassed and data must be interpreted. The death and rebirth of God has been announced. His death was announced by philosophers because the leaders in philosphy at the time were atheist. His rebirth was announced in a time when the leading philosophers were theists. The scientific method was introduced to us by theist and I believe Christians carried the day for some time in all of the sciences. Right now militant athesit are at the helm. 50 to 100 years from now, Intelligent Design may carry the day.

**SOON TO BE PUBLISHED AS A BOOK**

The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience

Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson.

April 9th 2024

It's tempting to think that science gives us a God's-eye view of reality. But we neglect the place of human experience at our peril. In The Blind Spot, astrophysicist Adam Frank, theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser, and philosopher Evan Thompson call for a revolutionary scientific worldview, where science includes - rather than ignores or tries not to see - humanity's lived experience as an inescapable part of our search for objective truth.The authors present science not as discovering an absolute reality but rather as a highly refined, constantly evolving form of experience. They urge practitioners to reframe how science works for the sake of our future in the face of the planetary climate crisis and increasing science denialism.

Since the Enlightenment, humanity has looked to science to tell us who we are, where we come from, and where we're going, but we've gotten stuck thinking we can know the universe from outside our position in it. When we try to understand reality only through external physical things imagined from this outside position, we lose sight of the necessity of experience. This is the Blind Spot, which the authors show lies behind our scientific conundrums about time and the origin of the universe, quantum physics, life, AI and the mind, consciousness, and Earth as a planetary system. The authors propose an alternative vision- scientific knowledge is a self-correcting narrative made from the world and our experience of it evolving together. To finally "see" the Blind Spot is to awaken from a delusion of absolute knowledge and to see how reality and experience intertwine.

The Blind Spot goes where no science book goes, urging us to create a new scientific culture that views ourselves both as an expression of nature and as a source of nature's self-understanding, so that humanity can flourish in the new millennium.

Also a Youtube Playlist of lectures and workshop sessions conducted following the original publication of the Aeon essay.

The essay and book are strongly influenced by phenomenology. Evan Thompson is a notable philosopher in that school and co-author of The Embodied Mind (with Francisco Varela and Eleanor Rosch), the seminal text of that movement.

The authors propose an alternative vision- scientific knowledge is a self-correcting narrative made from the world and our experience of it evolving together. To finally "see" the Blind Spot is to awaken from a delusion of absolute knowledge and to see how reality and experience intertwine.

Sounds very interesting. I've read some essays by Thompson and Varela and seen a few lectures. I've been particularly struck by how humans co-create reality together. I suspect this approach might disestablish notions of God and the transcendent, along with notions of absolute reality held by some scientific positions.

Have a look at Frank and Gleiser's Bigthink page. Many interesting articles on science and philosophy. Adam Frank says he's a long-time Zen practitioner, not that it really shows up in his writings, other than his questioning of scientific materialism. They're certainly not apologists for any form of theism. Actually, on further perusal... Gleiser says he's agnostic but he did win a Templeton award for 'science and spirituality'.

Oh, and an interview with Adam Frank on his Zen practice and its relation to science.

Physicists are in love with the idea of objective reality. I like to say that we physicists have a mania for ontology. We want to know what the furniture of the world is, independent of us. And I think that idea really needs to be re-examined, because when you think about objective reality, what are you doing? You’re just imagining yourself looking at the world without actually being there, because it’s impossible to actually imagine a perspectiveless perspective. So all you’ve done is you’ve just substituted God’s perspective, as if you were floating over some planet, disembodied, looking down on it. And, so, what is that? This thing we’re calling objective reality is kind of a meaningless concept because the only way we encounter the world is through our perspective. Having perspectives, having experience: that’s really where we should begin. — Adam Frank

Just the point of the Mind Created World. And what he's talking about is actually the nature of being.

The natural sciences are observational-experimental methods, force-multiplied by mathematical techniques, for the manifest purpose of publicly correcting "common sense" experiences (e.g. folk psychologies, customary intuitions (i.e. stereotypes, clichés, X-of-the-gaps stories, etc), cognitive biases, institutional (dogmatic) superstitions, etc) in order to testably explain aspects of the natural world and ourselves. The notion of a "blind spot of science" is, at best, a worn-out, old romanticist caricature or otherwise, worse, akin to a polemical categorical mistake: science no more engages in (explicit) philosophy or mysticism / subjectivism than jack-hammers are used instead of chainsaws to cut down trees; in fact, it's the best tool(kit) humanity has ever invented insofar as natural science is the attempt to (abductively, fallibilistically) solve more-than-subjective problems, which is a feature, IME, and not a bug (i.e. "blind spot"). Btw, I'm familiar with Glieser & Thompson and respect a lot of their work, respectively, but think this thesis is ludicrously antiquated (though yes, fashionably evergreen with the tie-dyed, pseudo-luddite incognecenti :sparkle: :roll:). That said, I'm sure I'll read the book ...

The natural sciences are observational-experimental methods, force-multiplied by mathematical techniques — 180 Proof

Quite. I was composing something along those lines myself. That the ability to combine mathematical logic and hypotheses have given rise to a quite astonishingly powerful method. But that doesn't invalidate their critique. You know yourself the numbers of posters who routinely post here directly out of that 'blind spot' typically in threads about philosophy of mind ('consciousness') and related subjects. It is quite a justified critique in my view. So, don't agree at all it is ludicrously antiquated, quite the contrary, it is pervasive and barely understood by many people.

"Blind spot? What 'Blind Spot' !?! I don't see no BLIND SPOT :rage: '

The natural sciences are observational-experimental methods, force-multiplied by mathematical techniques, for the manifest purpose of publicly correcting "common sense" experiences (e.g. folk psychologies, customary intuitions (i.e. stereotypes, clichés, X-of-the-gaps stories, etc), cognitive biases, institutional (dogmatic) superstitions, etc) in order to testably explain aspects of the natural world and ourselves. — 180 Proof

With the right woman, that kind of gorgeous language will get you laid around here. Better than any sonnet….

With the right woman, that kind of gorgeous language will get you laid around here. Better than any sonnet…. — Tom Storm

Yeah .. but when I rub my scars, mate, I only remember the wrong ones. :yum:

:cool:

↪Wayfarer The natural sciences are observational-experimental methods, force-multiplied by mathematical techniques, for the manifest purpose of publicly correcting "common sense" experiences (e.g. folk psychologies, customary intuitions (i.e. stereotypes, clichés, X-of-the-gaps stories, etc), cognitive biases, institutional (dogmatic) superstitions, etc) in order to testably explain aspects of the natural world and ourselves — 180 Proof

The natural sciences are conventionalized versions of philosophy whose ‘advantage’ over the latter is not that they secure better access to truths about the world, or that they progress and philosophy doesn’t , or that they progress faster than philosophy, but that they conceal individual differences in point of view by using a generic, flattened down vocabulary, which mathematics excels at. As such , they constitute a kind of common sense with respect to the more nuanced and particularized sense of the best philosophy. They represent the progress of an in-common standardized and technicized sense. Testability and falsification dont eliminate or minimize bias, they tighten up and standardize the conceptualization of a bias ( paradigm) so it can be utilized by a community of researchers in productive ways, and to make it easier to overthrow one bias is favor of a new bias.The blind spot keeps us from recognizing these things.

I understand philosophy to be concerned with making explicit the gaps in – limitations of – rationality as manifest in, or expressed by, use of concepts and is not concerned with, or capable of, providing any "access to truths about the world". And science, for its part, concerns only the best available approximations – fallibilistic explanations of aspects– of the world.

Sure, which is why have literature and art. And a good deal of philosophy. Good thing too, otherwise, a world with only science (as narrowly construed) would be quite boring and dry, akin to reading calculations made by a computer.

The only philosopher I can think of who thinks science is the only game in town when it comes to human understanding, is Alex Rosenberg, as presented in his book The Atheists' Guide to Reality.

It's not only absurd and insulting, rather, it is not even wrong. Thankfully, few people are this insane.

The blind spot keeps us from recognizing these things. — Joshs

What do you think of Thompson's comment towards the end of the video, about idealism being a philosophical crutch?

From around 36:23 -

One (claim) is that nothing exists outside of or apart from experience. That's not the claim I'm making. That's a first order claim about existence. It amounts to what philosophers call subjective idealism, that everything exists inside the mind, or that everything that exists is dependent on the mind. But the claim I'm making isn't about existence. It's about meaning or sense or intelligibility. The claim is that how things appear to us, how they show up for us in the life world, in our perception and action, is a necessary condition of the possibility of things being intelligible at all. So in philosophical jargon, this is a transcendental claim, in Kant's sense of transcendental. It's about the conditions of possibility of the intelligibility of things, such as the past, or time, given that they are, indeed, intelligible. So there's no problem with ancestrality statements understood as statements about facts in the past, before there was subjectivity. Rather, the point is that such statements have no sense or intelligibility once you remove the life world. In that case, the statements suffer from a kind of presupposition failure, and they have no significance. They're neither true nor false. They don't refer at all. — Evan Thompson

Aligns with the argument made in Mind-Created World.

The idea that things ‘go out of existence’ when not perceived, is simply their ‘imagined non-existence’. In reality, the supposed ‘unperceived object’ neither exists nor does not exist. Nothing whatever can be said about it. — Wayfarer

The idea that things ‘go out of existence’ when not perceived, is simply their ‘imagined non-existence’. In reality, the supposed ‘unperceived object’ neither exists nor does not exist. Nothing whatever can be said about it. — Wayfarer

That seems a rather silly thing to say to me. A rather significant element of my lived experience is based in knowing that in many cases that there is a huge amount that can be said about it.

What is the point of such a binary statement?

Can you give me a reason to think that it is not a case of Going Nuclear?

:up: :up: