The vision of Marx was about how to arrive at what he thought was a just society growing up in a time where capitalism caused a lot of problems locally. It fails as a economic theory because all economic theories fail but the crux of his work is how to ensure the benefits of economic activity doesn't concentrate in the hands of the few, who have no moral claim to it merely as provider of capital (which they often only accumulate through injustice, inheritance or dumb luck). — Benkei
The best system to avoid concentration of power is democracy. So we should abolish autocratic systems of governance in every area of human life, including the economy. — Benkei
Sure, make it ...
Can't science more or less take a role of "justified" in knowledge as justified true belief?
— Aug 13, 2024 — jorndoe
falsifiable (in principle always tentative/provisional). — jorndoe
The models adapt to accumulating evidence/observations if you will. Might be worth noting that the methodologies became more evidence/observation-driven/dependent, say, in the 1600s. Model-falsifiability is a must these days. — jorndoe
Well, science can redo conventional wisdom, make something counter-intuitive acceptable, and help put rovers and stuff on Mars. :) — jorndoe
With something like sociology or psychology (about ourselves), things become more complicated, and we may have to contend with less accurate/stable theories. — jorndoe
It is hard to see how Marx loved knowledge. — Lionino
Doesn't science more or less take the role of "justified" in knowledge as justified true belief? — jorndoe
That may seem overly depreciative/critical, yet science remains the single most successful epistemic endeavor in all of human history bar none, and doesn't carry any promise of omniscience — the forums depend on science. — jorndoe
I'm thinking that scientific methodologies are a means for models to converge on evidence/observations.
The models are revisable/adjustable and falsifiable (in principle always tentative/provisional).
So, in a way, sufficiently stabilized/usable models become parts of scientific theories, where "sufficiently" means within some domain of applicability or category of evidence/observations. — jorndoe
It is appropriate. A journalist, political thinker, (terrible) economist surely, but philosopher? Hardly. Even calling him a historian is strange, at least for what is understood today with 'historian'. An ideologue and sociologist first and foremost. — Lionino
Perhaps the real question is sciences like Physics, Chemistry or even Philosophy in general. — ssu
But great that you are optimistic! :) — ssu
I think there's no reason to have this in the lounge... this is an open Philosophy Forum and hence the threads in the first page aren't so different from this in the end. — ssu
An interesting question is if science will change, or will it be rather similar to what we have now even in the distant future, let's say 200 years from now in 2224. Now we can see very well where science was in 1824, just on this verge of a huge sprint that was taken in the late 19th Century and in the 20th Century. Yet in 1824, what typically was taught in the universities of the time and what was publicly known might be different than we think now. But how close science in 2224 to science in 2024? The more similar it is, I think it's more depressing as one would hope that astonishing new ideas would come around.
But will they? — ssu
Sure, and that's not what I was saying. A scientist need not be interested in the whole of the natural world to be interested in the natural world. — Leontiskos
I'm not really sure where to start with these sorts of claims. Do words pick out anything at all? — Leontiskos
It would seem that we are back to Aristotle's defense of the PNC in Metaphysics IV. — Leontiskos
Sure, but none of these pick out science in particular. For example, this describes an honest law firm as much as it describes anything else. — Leontiskos
I want to say that a scientist is ultimately interested in understanding the natural world, and he does things that achieve that end — Leontiskos
We know that it has implicit criteria for inclusion given the fact that you qualify it every time it produces a false conclusion, such as in the case of Fauci or in the case of scientists who are not properly "acting as scientists." — Leontiskos
Aristotelian definition in the broad sense is not something you can do without. — Leontiskos
However there's still a lot of academic and scientific studies that people, who have done them, would enjoy if their ideas would be picked up by others. — ssu
Still, I think that there is a problem when there simply are so many scientists and academic researchers, group behavior kicks in and an incentive emerges to create your own "niche" by niche construction: a group creates it's own vocabulary and own scientific jargon, which isn't open to someone that hasn't studied the area. Then these people refer to each others studies and create their own field. Another name for this could be simply specialization: you create your own area of expertize by specialization on a narrower field. When there are a masses of people doing research, this is the easy way to get to those "new" findings. Hence even people in the natural sciences can have difficulties in understanding each other, let alone then the people who are studying the human sciences. Perhaps it's simply about numbers: 30 scientists can discuss and read each others research and have a great change of ideas, but 3 000 or 30 000 cannot. Some kind of pecking order has to be created. The end result is that you do get a science that is "Kuhnian" just by the simple fact that so many people are in science. — ssu
I remember another historian who went to great lengths to write one of her historical books to be as easily readable for the layman as she could do only then to be scolded by her peers for the book not being "academic" enough. For some to be as understandable as possible isn't the objective, the objective is to limit those who don't know the proper terms out of the discussion, even if they could participate in the discussion. Naturally people will simply argue that just like with abbreviations, we make it easier for people to read it when we use the academic jargon. But there can really be other intensions also. — ssu
(Yes, it's the length of the equation, even if mathematical beauty would say otherwise) — ssu
That's just what a definition is. — Leontiskos
"X is what Xers do" is a tautological and uninformative statement. — Leontiskos
- I'm finding Google increasingly useless at searching for minutia of late. Any subtlety gets lost in irrelevancies. — Banno
Yes, it is. It is called equivocation, and it is also a non-definition. Someone who does not know what scientists do will simply not be able to identify scientists. — Leontiskos
I think it is, and more than that, I think those who says it's not will not be able to give a coherent account of what a science is. That's what we've begun running into, here. — Leontiskos
Why not? — Leontiskos
Here is a good article to begin debunking the guess/check paradigm: Cartwright on theory and experiment in science. — Leontiskos
This is a bit like describing tennis as, "Swing-hit-run-swing-hit-run..." That's not what tennis is. It's a physical-reductionistic cataloguing of certain events that occur within the game of tennis. — Leontiskos
Why share? Is it necessary? — Leontiskos
But what is the activity? — Leontiskos
Link'Tis sweet, when, down the mighty main, the winds
Roll up its waste of waters, from the land
To watch another's labouring anguish far,
Not that we joyously delight that man
Should thus be smitten, but because 'tis sweet
To mark what evils we ourselves be spared; — Lucretius, The Nature of Things, Book II Proem
The theater will never find itself again--i.e., constitute a means
of true illusion--except by furnishing the spectator with the
truthful precipitates of dreams, in which his taste for crime, his
erotic obsessions, his savagery, his chimeras, his utopian sense of
life and matter, even his cannibalism, pour out, on a level not
counterfeit and illusory, but interior. — Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and its Double, VII. The Theater and Cruelty
Ban academic paywalls. That's a cause I can get behind. Especially when it's taxpayer-funded research. But even the so-called privately funded universities take plenty of taxpayer dough. Ban the paywalls.
ps -- I came to the thread late and I see that wonderer1 and others have made this point. — fishfry
Does bookkeeping involve wonder and investigation? I'm not sure science is bookkeeping at all. It seems more basically to be an investigation of the unknown in nature. — Leontiskos
Agree 100%, that research results paid for by tax dollars should in general be more freely available. However, I'm afraid the fraction of the electorate that cares much about the issue is rather small, and I don't forsee much change anytime soon. — wonderer1
Earlier in this thread, apokrisis wrote about sustainable agriculture and estimated it might work with a world population of about a billion. It strikes me that the kind of anarchist system you are talking about might work at a similar scale. That means that both are post-apocalyptic scenarios. — T Clark
Are there examples of large scale, politically effective anarchist organizations. It seems almost like a contradiction in terms. — T Clark
I guess that's where politics and ethics comes in. We need everyone, or at least enough of us, to agree on what doing good means in this context. And then we're back where we started. — T Clark
The only way to arrive at truth is to desire truth, — Leontiskos
and those who desire truth as a means to something else do not desire truth qua truth. Scientists were once lovers of truth, and because of that they were reliable. But now that science has become a means, scientists are no longer reliable. Their science (and its truth) is a means to some further end, and because of this the science has lost its credibility. When the scientist was a man who sought truth we believed him to be speaking truth, but now that the scientist is an employee of institutions, we believe him to be acting in the interests of those institutions.
Covid is a very good example. Fauci appealed to his scientific bona fides to inform us that masks are ineffective against Covid-19. We later learned that he was lying in order to ensure enough personal protective equipment (PPE) for medical professionals. We thought the scientist was speaking the truth, whereas in fact he was acting in the interests of his institution by speaking outright lies.