It is entirely possible that the evident success of science, broadly if quietly acknowledged in modern society, is part of the problem. Maybe you're not the only one to whom it has occurred to model their approach to knowledge acquisition on science. Consider that what distinguishes science from ordinary informal reasoning is the positing of invisible entities and hidden forces; what we see in the world is the effect of these invisible armies at work. That suggests two solutions: yours, get people to do their science better; mine, get them to stop doing science at all. In favor of my approach, they're already demonstrably competent at doing jobs and planning birthday parties and judging produce, but real science is actually pretty hard. — Srap Tasmaner
science is basically just common sense writ large. — Janus
I know what you're getting at, and I said something similar earlier -- that science is common sense made systematic -- but it's not really not, and that's clear for reasons in what you quoted: science produces results that have an air of paradox about them, that tables are not solid, that the air is billions of invisible things, that the earth goes around the sun. — Srap Tasmaner
Where it's not subtle but just complicated is in law, which very nearly is just common sense writ large, or ought to be. (Philosophers don't think nearly enough about law.) — Srap Tasmaner
Right, but I would say that the idea that things are not necessarily what they seem is itself an example of common sense. — Janus
By saying that science is common sense writ large, what I was referring to was the methodology, not the content — Janus
the methodology of common sense investigation being initial observation, prediction and experiment (or further observation to see if the predicted results do obtain) — Janus
are you referring to natural law? — Janus
science produces results that have an air of paradox about them, that tables are not solid, that the air is billions of invisible things, that the earth goes around the sun — Srap Tasmaner
My "challenge", if that's the word, to Hirnstoff was this: how much does the program of improving discussion on the internet depend upon some particular epistemology or some particular view of science? Or depend on accepting those views? — Srap Tasmaner
I happen to hold different views. So what? We're having an enjoyable conversation. Why does everyone want to convert me? Am I the only one that finds that a little odd given the topic of our discussion? Dawnstorm tried to point out that just saying "tools" instead of "beliefs" wasn't going to get you there. We have since then been arguing over my divergent views of the tools. Why are we doing that? — Srap Tasmaner
Most people, at least in my mind, accept science as a good way to reach an objective truth about things. — Hirnstoff
If you want to argue that my attempt to improve online discourse, will inevitably lead to fundamental disagreements like this, I disagree, because I don't think that this is how most people think about the world and their pursuit of truth. — Hirnstoff
I can still easily integrate each example you proposed into my existing philosophical framework — Hirnstoff
because reaching "objective truth" is not what science does. There is, in science, no Great Book of Truth; there is the Great Book of the Not Yet Disproven with a multivolume appendix, the Great Book of the Hard-to-say. — Srap Tasmaner
But I am saying that because your views on the nature of science are detachable from the project, they ought to be detached — Srap Tasmaner
you're failing to engage with people by finding common ground, you're treating your own view as the default, as the needed common ground, and it's not — Srap Tasmaner
I hope you're still enjoying the discussion and I hope you find something worth thinking about in the views I've expressed. — Srap Tasmaner
it's just hard to see, and it's definitely not what you think it is, since in this case what you think it is is what we're debating. — Srap Tasmaner
trying to convince my friend that the earth isn't flat — Hirnstoff
First there are gorgeous videos. That's probably where I would start with my kids, or anyone's kids, if they just didn't yet know what the earth is like. We can now just look and see; we don't have to guess or theorize or calculate anything. — Srap Tasmaner
People who today believe the earth is flat are people who've never been told otherwise or serious conspiracy loonies. Are the latter the target audience for your work? It's a pretty special case. — Srap Tasmaner
But the difference is that in ordinary reasoning there being entirely new kinds of entities, and those invisible to boot, or entities not being what we thought at all but capable of entirely different behavior -- that's not on the table. — Srap Tasmaner
And my objection here is that it's not that simple: the content includes the theoretical framework, and what's more since Galileo that framework will be mathematical. — Srap Tasmaner
Well Isaac will tell you a lot of that predicting is done "on your behalf", so to speak, by systems in your brain -- it's System 1, not even within your awareness. But besides that -- while I like this story about how science works, it's a bit of a fairy-tale. — Srap Tasmaner
Why does everyone want to convert me? — Srap Tasmaner
I disagree; I think invisible entities have always been prominent features of human thought; probably because the phenomenon of movement, which is everywhere in nature, cannot be explained in terms of anything visible. — Janus
This may be true of physics; and perhaps even chemistry. But they do not constitute the whole of science, and they are certainly not independent of observation. — Janus
Assuming for the sake of argument that Issac is correct; how would he have found that out if not by observation, etc.? — Janus
How do you imagine science is done, and if you have an example of some different procedure than observation, hypothesis, prediction and further observation it would help if you could detail it. — Janus
As someone who has been doing research for nearly twenty years, I now can’t help but wonder if the topics I chose to study are in fact real and robust. Have I been chasing puffs of smoke for all these years?
I have spent nearly a decade working on the concept of ego depletion, including work that is critical of the model used to explain the phenomenon. I have been rewarded for this work, and I am convinced that the main reason I get any invitations to speak at colloquia and brown-bags these days is because of this work. The problem is that ego depletion might not even be a thing. By now, many people are aware that a massive replication attempt of the basic ego depletion effect involving over 2,000 participants found nothing, nada, zip. Only three of the 24 participating labs found a significant effect, but even then, one of these found a significant result in the wrong direction! — Michael Inzlicht
No one doing science is ever just doing observation-hypothesis-prediction-observation. — Srap Tasmaner
It would require considerable ingenuity to concoct experimental manipulations, except the most minimal and trivial (such as a very slight modification in the word order of instructions given a subject) where one could have confidence that the manipulation would be utterly without effect upon the subject's motivational level, attention, arousal, fear of failure, achievement drive, desire to please the experimenter, distraction, social fear, etc., etc. So that, for example, while there is no very "interesting" psychological theory that links hunger drive with color-naming ability, I myself would confidently predict a significant difference in color-naming ability between persons tested after a full meal and persons who had not eaten for 10 hours, provided the sample size were sufficiently large and the color-naming measurements sufficiently reliable, since one of the effects of the increased hunger drive is heightened "arousal," and anything which heightens arousal would be expected to affect a perceptual-cognitive performance like color-naming...
Suffice it to say that there are very good reasons for expecting at least some slight influence of almost any experimental manipulation which would differ sufficiently in its form and content from the manipulation imposed upon a control group to be included in an experiment in the first place. In what follows I shall therefore assume that the point-null hypothesis H0 is, in psychology, [quasi-] always false...
It is not unusual that (e) this ad hoc challenging of auxiliary hypotheses is repeated in the course of a series of related experiments, in which the auxiliary hypothesis involved in Experiment 1 (and challenged ad hoc in order to avoid the latter's modus tollens impact on the theory) becomes the focus of interest in Experiment 2, which in turn utilizes further plausible but easily challenged auxiliary hypotheses, and so forth. In this fashion a zealous and clever investigator can slowly wend his way through a tenuous nomological network, performing a long series of related experiments which appear to the uncritical reader as a fine example of "an integrated research program," without ever ,once refuting or corroborating so much as a single strand of the network
In Lost in Math, I explain why I have become very worried about what is happening in the foundations of physics. What is happening? you ask. Well, nothing. We have not made progress for forty years.
Inherited religions are just that -- inherited. Aside from those, in the modern world, the positing of hidden forces and previously unknown types of entities is the province of science. I quite literally cannot imagine what you would have in mind as an exception. — Srap Tasmaner
This may be true of physics; and perhaps even chemistry. But they do not constitute the whole of science, and they are certainly not independent of observation. — Janus
Not following you here. — Srap Tasmaner
It seems that humans have always imagined hidden forces to explain observed phenomena. — Janus
Yeah? Look at the quote you're responding to. If you step outside your house on a nice day and suddenly a tree limb cracks and crashes to the ground, you think it would be perfectly normal, just common sense, to spin out some tale about invisible gremlins collecting wood for their home, or about a tree-pruning force that must have swept through your yard and snapped that limb, or ...
That would be perfectly ordinary. That's what you're claiming. — Srap Tasmaner
My main point, to reiterate, has been that the very act of positing invisible entities, of whatever kind, is a feature of all cultures, and is thus itself commonsensical. — Janus
the contrast I have in mind is not that between an unscientific conception of man-in-the-world and a scientific one, but between that conception which limits itself to what correlational techniques can tell us about perceptible and introspectible events and that which postulates imperceptible objects and events for the purpose of explaining correlations among perceptibles. — PSIM
But I really can't do a good job, any job, of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else that you're more familiar with, because I don't understand it in terms of anything else that you're more familiar with.
The "way of thinking" that emerges in the un-self-censored anonymity of internet forums is what I call the "Either-Or" attitude, which denies any middle position between opinions, and allows for no common ground in discussions. Hence, innocent exchanges of information (opinions) quickly turn into emotional diatribes or win-lose debates. This recent trend reflects a coarsening of culture in the modern era. Yet it's not due to a difference in human nature, but to rapid changes in technology., which have allowed societies to fragment into a variety of interest groups. Mega-Cities, and the Net-connected-world, are becoming un-civilized and dis-connected. If the Us-vs-Them trend continues, we may experience a return to "nature, red in tooth and claw".A much better way would be to identify with our way of thinking instead of our knowledge. Critical thinking skills are becoming more and more crucial in this age of informational floods. And these "tools" with which we can analyse the value of new information should be the centerpiece of our identity. — Hirnstoff
BothAnd Philosophy : So in order to understand the whole truth of our existence, we need to look at both sides of every polarized worldview. In the non-fiction world, we don’t always have to choose either Good or Evil, but we can look for a moderate position near the Golden Mean, the sweet spot I call "BothAnd".
http://bothandblog5.enformationism.info/page6.html — Gnomon
And I completely agree that Etiquette has to be another big part of the solution. — Hirnstoff
As long as by this one doesn't mean, 'thou shalt not offend.' Offense is the inescapable nature of the negative essence of philosophy. — JerseyFlight
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