I don't believe that is a very technical definition but I think I know what you are trying to get at. To keep it short, it sort of is like people are more motivated to do things out of fear rather than out of the positive effects of doing such an action.

Well, to be honest, I was just answering your question, "why don't we?". My reply was pretty much just a matter of identifying the problem, we can recognize ourselves to be engaged in wrongful activities, but still not have the will power to rectify this. Now, finding the solution is another matter altogether. Maybe the first step is to quit looking at will power as a "mysterious power", and recognize it as a fundamental capacity which can be exercised and strengthened.


I think what I was saying, is that we all get set in our ways, it's a matter of habit. Our habits are what provide us with our comfort. But each one of us can look at a number of different habits and determine that these are not really aspects of the best way of living; in other words, bad habits. A word that comes to mind is "luxury". I think Plato used something like "relish".

But to break a bad habit requires that one makes an effort, and this is to step outside of one's comfort zone, so it is a sort of self-inflicted pain. If we encourage each other, the pain is lessened, but if I see that others are engaged in the very activity which I am taking pains to curtail, I might use this as an excuse not to put myself through that suffering, despite knowing that I ought to.

The tower of Babel is upon us. — magritte

Yes. And it seems that no one can afford to stop building that tower even higher.

Jean Piaget, in the book Insights and Illusions of Philosophy, says the following:

"…only what gives effective knowledge are the sciences, philosophy gives only a sense of orientation and values…"

Meditate on this phrase.

He thinks that effective knowledge is that which was given by scientific experiment and, beside knowledge, there is an ornament, which is a sense of orientation and values. It happens that, to know if this scientific experiment is true and if it is valid — this is a question of orientation and values. Where does scientific knowledge exist except within the field of guidance and values? It never existed in itself, it is just an invention of the mind. Now, if the sense of guidance that allows you to judge a scientific experiment is not knowledge in itself, the result of the scientific experiment can never be knowledge.

Science appeals to the authority of the naturalistic premise and the unity of logical discourse, but none of these things, in isolation, has authority. An explanation cannot be natural because it is necessarily part of a metaphysical conception of the whole.

The unity of a logical discourse is only possible to apprehend if we already have the capacity to perceive unity and wholeness in general. It is the unity of the real that allows human action and the existence of a logical discourse, but that same discourse can deny in its content that same unity of the real — and here is the source of all mistakes in philosophy, which is denial of the unity of the real in order to put in its place a fictional world of discourse where a separate knowing self reigns. Thus, individuals believe more in the content of reasoning than in the conditions that allowed its creation. The only validation that is requested is that of the cropped scientific experience that the scientific community accepts and not the real and personal experience, thus entering into a collective delusion.

True scientific knowledge has existed for a very long time, before the philosophers even. Science in itself (to know the properties of reality) is not a immoral or insane act. I think the main problem with science today and probably for the last hundred years, is that many of the research institutes are needing funding and only big corporations is able to fund the projects. If the corporations are the main funders for scientific knowledge, who says they wouldn't only do so if it was only for their own interests? Their interests are to feed the pyramid scheme that keeps their wealth and power working properly.

Is there a way we can change our modern beliefs in science in order to change the world today?

The belief that modern science is in pursuit of universal truths seems to result in the sentiment that its progression is, if not benevolent, inevitable. Just as premodern Truths mobilized prevailing armies and colonizers, modern Truths mobilize the production of prevailing technologies. Given the current trajectory of science and technology, I think there is a possibility that our faith in a haphazardly financed science will be eclipsed by trust in a well-constituted economic order that credits a plurality of social entrepreneurs, each with scientific agendas constrained by a nonviolent contest for economic power.