On the topic of the self and the continued existence of external objects.

It's in the Appendix of the Treatise.

Oh.

I believe you are using "naturalism" in a sense that excludes things like "selves", "identity", "free will" and so on. I don't think so. — Manuel

By assuming humans are direct products of the natural world, along the lines of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution... — ucarr

I don't see how you arrive at your above interpretation from my claim directly below it.

The gist of my current inquiry into your understandings about the limits of science re: understanding the world into which we humans are born i.e. our natural, earthly world, takes focus upon what I suppose to be a necessary break in the connection of human to natural, earthly world.

I've been supposing this gap between the two explains the scientific limitations you describe.

My underlying premise is that human, as a product of natural earth, has no gap separating it from natural earth, unless human, in addition to natural earth, has another source for its identity.

I say this to make clear I assume all attributes of human identity (including "selves", "identity", "free will" and so on) have their source in nature.

My other underlying premise is that science is the only judge of truth.

I don't think there is an unbridgeable gap between human identity and the natural world. — Manuel

Are you claiming science is one type of inquiry amongst a multiplicity of types of inquiry?

Do you believe some humans, via inquiry, know things about themselves & the world that cannot be examined & verified by science?

Do you believe there are types or sets of claims that are non-scientific?

Do you believe there exist humans who make non-scientific claims about themselves and the world, and, in so doing, make claims that possess truth derived from inquiries correctly vetted & verified non-scientifically?

If your answer to the above is "yes," then I believe it's a radical claim that draws a boundary around the scope of science WRT searching out & discovering the truth about our natural, earthly world.

I've been supposing this gap between the two explains the scientific limitations you describe.

My underlying premise is that human, as a product of natural earth, has no gap separating it from natural earth, unless human, in addition to natural earth, has another source for its identity.

I say this to make clear I assume all attributes of human identity (including "selves", "identity", "free will" and so on) have their source in nature.

My other underlying premise is that science is the only judge of truth. — ucarr

I don't posit a gap between human beings and the rest of nature. In so far as you include all these topics (identity, etc.) as belonging to nature, I agree.

The third claim, I don't agree with. I don't think science can say a lot about truth in relation to literature or art or culture. It says a bit, but not much that is illuminating. Could that change? Perhaps, but I'm skeptical of this.

Putting these "high level" topics aside, yeah, I think science is a much better source of reliable information than any alternative, religious, spiritual or mystical.

Do you believe there are types or sets of claims that are non-scientific?

Do you believe there exist humans who make non-scientific claims about themselves and the world, and, in so doing, make claims that possess truth derived from inquiries correctly vetted & verified non-scientifically? — ucarr

We enter into semantic territory here. You can use the word science, to mean "good" or "useful", as in "that person has his cooking down to a science" or "that politician has his negotiation tactics down to a science", but I don't take these claims to be theoretical.

So, if we put the semantics aside, yes, I do think there are things which science cannot tell us much about, namely, international relations and inter-personal relations (among other topics), they are simply too complex. Physics works so well, in part because it deals with the simplest structures we can discover.

It's not clear that saying "this is a non-scientific truth" is helpful. I prefer to say that science does not say much about X, Y or Z.

We enter into semantic territory here. — Manuel

Do we really?

I suspect you invoke "semantics" here in order to lay a foundation for evasion.

You can use the word science, to mean "good" or "useful", as in "that person has his cooking down to a science" or "that politician has his negotiation tactics down to a science", but I don't take these claims to be theoretical. — Manuel

In your interpretation of the above examples, "good" or "useful" are not sufficiently specific, and I think you know that. Your examples are a way of saying someone achieves their goals by following a process or set of rules in calculations or other problem-solving operations. The emphasis is upon logical, focused efficiency in getting to the goal. This definition is much closer to the scientific method, and thus the examples are not loosey-goosey applications of what "science" denotes. Moreover, your examples are clearly about applied science, not theoretical science, so, of course, such claims are not theoretical, thus denying such fails to add additional distance between the examples & science.

You give no reactions to two important words I used. "Claims," formally speaking = proposition. "Inquiry," formally speaking = experimentation. The formal versions of the two words, as you know, are firmly rooted within science. My hunch is that you wish to avoid committing to a position that says humans conduct inquiries culminating in claims that are emphatically non-scientific.

I make the above conjecture in relation to

I do think there are things which science cannot tell us much about, namely, international relations and inter-personal relations (among other topics), they are simply too complex — Manuel

in order to argue that international relations and inter-personal relations et al are, as you know, studied with methods not easily characterized as non-scientific.

Physics works so well, in part because it deals with the simplest structures we can discover. — Manuel

If you think elementary particles & their interrelationships are simple, it must be the case you've merely glanced at studies of these phenomena.

I am not evading anything here, I'm replying to what I think you're asking, by giving you answers that approximate what happens in my experience, that and trying to be as clear as I am capable of being, is all I can do in these conversations.

We may differ in our experiences and our intuitions and that's fine.

In your interpretation of the above examples, "good" or "useful" are not sufficiently specific, and I think you know that. — ucarr

Which is why I said the word "science" can be used in various ways - as it is in fact used.

The emphasis is upon logical, focused efficiency in getting to the goal. This definition is much closer to the scientific method, and thus the examples are not loosey-goosey applications of what "science" denotes. — ucarr

If that is what you take the scientific method to be, OK. I wouldn't disagree that it has those components, but clearly the results and depth achieved in physics are very different from the results achieved in sociology.

You give no reactions to two important words I used. "Claims," formally speaking = proposition. "Inquiry," formally speaking = experimentation. The formal versions of the two words, as you know, are firmly rooted within science. — ucarr

No, I did not know that the "formal versions of the two words... are firmly rooted in science". I don't know what this means.

So if I claim that Putin is a war criminal, I am making a scientific proposition? It seems to me I'm giving a moral opinion, to which, I'm sure many people would agree, and other would not.

If I inquire into the causes of the invasion of Ukraine or the invasion of Iraq, I am doing experimentation? That's sounds strange to me.

My hunch is that you wish to avoid committing to a position that says humans conduct inquiries culminating in claims that are emphatically non-scientific.

I make the above conjecture in relation to. . . — ucarr

If you read what you quoted, I never said that the work done in international relations (IR) is "non-scientific".

It can be good research or bad research, and you may call it "scientific" if you wish.

I hesitate to call work done in IR as "scientific", not because there isn't good work done in the field, I think there is, but because most of it, especially the "theory" division or IR, is pretty awful and has virtually no relation to what happens in the world.

So if I say that IR is "scientific", I think that lowers the achievements of physics and biology. But it does not follow that if something isn't science it's bad or irrational.

If you think elementary particles & their interrelationships are simple, it must be the case you've merely glanced at studies of these phenomena. — ucarr

What phenomena is simpler than physics? It studies (for instance) what happens to a particle as it goes through a slit. That is much easier to study than a human being, which is composed of trillions of particles.

Physicists can ask hard questions about simple things, using complex mathematical formulations. In human affairs, we are mostly guessing: just read the news.

And I don't think there is an unbridgeable gap between human identity and the natural world. Human identity is something we have to deal with, it's a phenomenon of nature, realized in human beings, of which science can say very little about. — Manuel

Science also relies on the imputation of identities to natural particulars and kinds; for example a particular tree or species is itself distinguishable from all others.

Yes, and this is quite an interesting case you point out. I'd even argue that this is even slightly more philosophy than science, in so far as we are using concepts to stipulate a class of objects in nature as being different from each other, which we then categorize as TREES, ROCKS, FLOWERS, and so on.

After we do that (and it's done virtually automatically), we can begin to do the more refined empirical work which science deals with such as, what is this rock composed of or what biological phenomena interacts with this tree such that the tree has X and Y property, and so forth.

I agree that in a way such categorization is primordial, but I think it is arguable that it is greatly augmented and refined by scientific investigation. The idea that things are identifiable, stable and invariant is essential to the practice of science, it seems.

It's merely a matter of emphasis: I would add that picking out a TREE by the features we pick out it by, is very curious. We don't, for instance, consider the dirt the tree is on to be part of the tree, but nothing in nature should prevent us from doing this.

Having said that, yes, you are right. It is an interesting fact about the way we do science, that we do manage to extract very particular information about specific configurations of matter, and discover all kinds of stable relationships between members of the same group of thing. So I think your point is a better illustration than mine.

I know it sounds like stoner talk, but it's nonetheless intriguing.

We don't, for instance, consider the dirt the tree is on to be part of the tree, but nothing in nature should prevent us from doing this. — Manuel

That's true maybe on the electronic level, but could we not say the dirt is not part of the living growing tissue of the tree, or not part of the self-organizing organism?

All the great epics start with those assumptions. Well, actually that's not true.

You could start a great epic with that assumption, though. Except it might all end up being for nothing. Pointless adventures. — Tate

Indeed, keeping it simple (& stupid) always helps - black & white thinking simplifies to the point where living becomes child's play. No one would/should hold that against anyone who does live a life like that - our brains can't handle the (alleged) complexity that inheres to reality. Sooner or later, analysis paralysis sets in and you'd wish that you had never encountered the words "it's not that simple" and the like.

I suppose we could, but, if the tree isn't placed in dirt it cannot grow.

I am not evading anything here, I'm replying to what I think you're asking, by giving you answers that approximate what happens in my experience, that and trying to be as clear as I am capable of being, is all I can do in these conversations. — Manuel

I see you are a diplomatic person who shows consideration for others.

As I go forward, let me check my language lest it become rife with combative ambition.

What I've Learned

If inquiry doesn't include signature procedures including math models, research, testing of tangibles, compiling of data & analysis, it may not be science proper. Orthodox science is specific to the degree it has limitations of application.

A spectrum of human experiences are resistant to scientific investigation and sensible persons, including scientists, have no problem with that.

One shouldn't be a geeky extremist.

Sure man, it's something that took me (and continues to take) time to figure out. One may disagree with a lot of what the positivists believed in, but clarity in language use, ends up being important, otherwise one starts to say things one doesn't clearly believe.

I have nothing against science, it is the greatest intellectual achievement of human beings. But with that, you get a lot of things masquerading as science or exaggerating the expertise of certain professions.

I think one should be on guard in these situations.

:victory:

what is there? — Manuel

Any object is either a collection of objects or it is a non-composite object (empty collection). There seem to be no other possibilities. And we have a rigorous theory that can in principle describe the compositional structure of all those objects: set theory. Which also happens to be the foundation of mathematics.

The butler was visiting a friend.

The maid was with the wife.

Ergo,

The murder was committed by someone else, a third person was in the house!

Non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate (Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity). — Novacula Occami

When you hear hoofbeats behind you, don't expect to see a zebra. — Dr. Theodore Woodward

:snicker: