It makes something which is fundamentally human and tries to make it mechanical. Morality is a matter of human values. — T Clark

One reason why the Papacy rejected Martin Luther's epistemic defense at his trial, in which he wanted to review the arguments mechanically, "through scripture and reason", is because the Papacy very much prefers the system of a living magisterium:

The magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church is the church's authority or office to give authentic interpretation of the Word of God, "whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition." According to the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, the task of interpretation is vested uniquely in the Pope and the bishops. Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth.

Tradition and Living Magisterium

Is all revealed truth consigned to Holy Scripture? or can it, must it, be admitted that Christ gave to His Apostles to be transmitted to His Church, that the Apostles received either from the very lips of Jesus or from inspiration or Revelation, Divine instructions which they transmitted to the Church and which were not committed to the inspired writings?

The Church in Rome received secrets, orally transmitted, outside the Bible. That is why the Bible is not sufficient as a source. Mechanically deriving conclusions through scripture and reason is therefore not permissible. The Church must have the opportunity to override the scripture when it suits her.

Between Catholics and the Christian sects of the East there are not the same fundamental differences, since both sides admit the Divine institution and Divine authority of the Church with the more or less living and explicit sense of its infallibility and indefectibility and its other teaching prerogatives, but there are contentions concerning the bearers of the authority, the organic unity of the teaching body, the infallibility of the pope, and the existence and nature of dogmatic development in the transmission of revealed truth.

It is not permitted onto the believers to question the principle that the Papacy is always right, even when it is not. The Papacy is infallible and "indefectible".

If the believers detect a contradiction in a Papacy's teaching, even by using mechanical means, the believers must believe both the Papal teaching as well as its very opposite. Furthermore, since the ability to engage in politicking, and also selling indulgencies, is badly damaged by any requirement of consistency, the believers must not use mechanical means to detect inconsistencies, as such would be considered inhumane.

Unique readability affords definition by recursion, and definition by recursion affords the method of models, which provides that every statement has exactly one meaning per a given model. — GrandMinnow

You will find comments about unique readability, similar to mine at math.stackexchange.com . Unique readability plays a role in model theory, but it plays an even much bigger role outside of it.

Why is the unique readability of wff's important?

The bottom line is that a statement cannot have unambiguous meaning unless you have a precise unambiguous way of interpreting (reading) it. Even in natural language almost all sentences have unambiguous grammatical structure and more or less clear semantic interpretation, which is not an accident, because otherwise it would fail to be a viable means of communication!
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You will quickly realize that formal systems for mathematical logic are miniscule in complexity compared to programming languages, but you will also see clearly the reason for the exacting precision in defining a formal system.
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If we didn't have unique readability, then the language would be useless - we wouldn't be able to say that a sentence is "true" or "false". We could have a sentence that was true under one reading, but not under the other.

But then the problem is that these other scientists don't see you as one of them if you don't think within their paradigm, and so it becomes hard to be acknowledged and for your ideas to be considered by these peers, and so it's not necessarily the cream that rises to the top, rather it's a system that perpetuates itself while accepting little influence that it sees as coming from outside, and then the more complicated the theories within the paradigm are the harder it is to make the system evolve, and I submit that this is why fundamental physics has become pretty much stagnant for the past decades. — leo

Well, when you first need several billions of dollars to build a particle accelerator of sorts, then you will probably not see much spontaneous innovation or creative thinking.

The most powerful accelerator currently is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, built by the European collaboration CERN. Other powerful accelerators are KEKB at KEK in Japan, RHIC at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the Tevatron at Fermilab, Batavia, Illinois.

The environment around that kind of gigantic investment assets will automatically create excess orthodoxy in their core business. You won't see much innovation, unless the idea costs even more. Then, they will undoubtedly listen. If you can attractively justify why the next toy needs to be ten times more expensive, your employer will promote you, and even the funding agencies will love you.

Now that CERN has apparently put together the largest toy in the world, I guess that Fermilab is throwing its best teams at the administrative paperwork that will explain why the next biggest toy of the world now needs to be built in Batavia, Illinois. Believe me that they have already set aside the land for that.

Still, I've got to admit that one particular sideshow at CERN, by some external consultant of sorts, i.e. Tim Berners-Lee, seems to have nicely taken off, to say the least.

His originally relatively obscure concoction, which at the beginning of the nineties he called, "my www project", has actually done surprisingly well. He even shoehorned a hack on SGML into that project, some kind of simplification of that markup apparatus, which became yet another markup language (but not YAML, which is another hack by someone else) of which I cannot or don't want to remember the name for the time being.

"the life in question is to be lived honorably, and so as not to bring disgrace on humanity. "The moral life is at an end if it is no longer in keeping with the dignity of humanity.... The moment I can no longer live inhonor but become unworthy of life..., I can no longer live at all.... The preservation of life is, therefore, not the highest duty" (Immanuel Kant) — tim wood

In "The logic of risk taking", Nassim Taleb says something very similar:

Who is “You”?

Let us return to the notion of “tribe” of Chapter x. The defects people get from studying modern thought is that they develop the illusion that each one of us is a single unit, without seeing the contradiction in their own behavior. In fact I’ve sampled ninety people in seminars and asked them: “what’s the worst thing that happen to you?” Eighty-eight people answered “my death”.

This can only be the worst case situation for a psychopath. For then, I asked those who deemed that the worst case is their own death: “Is your death plus that of your children, nephews, cousins, cat, dogs, parakeet and hamster (if you have any of the above) worse than just your death? Invariably, yes. “Is your death plus your children, nephews, cousins (…) plus all of humanity worse than just your death? Yes, of course. Then how can your death be the worst possible outcome?

In fact, we are mostly talking about around 3 days of suffering before death, and apparently it can even be shortened to 12 hours:

How long does it take to die of thirst? It very much depends on the conditions, if you are in very hot humid conditions, in the sun, dehydrated worst case scenario maybe even 12 hours. On the other hand, in ideal conditions it could be 3-5 days.

Dying of thirst is apparently not that bad:

Terminal dehydration (also known as voluntary death by dehydration or VDD) has been described as having substantial advantages over physician-assisted suicide with respect to self-determination, access, professional integrity, and social implications. Specifically, a patient has a right to refuse treatment and it would be a personal assault for someone to force water on a patient, but such is not the case if a doctor merely refuses to provide lethal medication.

One survey of hospice nurses in Oregon (where physician-assisted suicide is legal) found that nearly twice as many had cared for patients who chose voluntary refusal of food and fluids to hasten death as had cared for patients who chose physician-assisted suicide. They also rated fasting and dehydration as causing less suffering and pain and being more peaceful than physician-assisted suicide. Patients undergoing terminal dehydration can often feel no pain, as they are often given sedatives and care such as mouth rinses or sprays.

Studies have shown that for terminally ill patients who choose to die, deaths by terminal dehydration are generally peaceful, and not associated with suffering, when supplemented with adequate pain medication.

So, if I understand it right, a 12-hour long steam bath, a water spray, and a good dose of painkillers should spare other people from having to "assist" ...

Proving unique readability is necessary for proving the definition by recursion theorems. — GrandMinnow

Not only!

If your statement correctly parses into two different syntax trees, then it almost always has two different interpretations. Greek and Roman antiquity were already very well aware of this problem:

Ibis redibis nunquam per bella peribis

What exactly does that sentence mean? If your parsing strategy is greedy, it means exactly the opposite of what it means in a lazy parsing strategy:

greedy: you will go, you will never return, in (the) war you will perish
lazy: you will go, you will return, never in war will you perish

It materializes as a shift-reduce conflict in the associated automaton. It is a problem with the grammar itself, and actually not just with this particular sentence. The conflict merely reveals itself in this particular sentence, but it is grammar wide.

This is also the material of which the more advanced network intrusion attacks are made. We can generally not ignore that kind of problems because the overall cost must now globally already run in the trillions of dollars.

Meanwhile, mathematics is usually written in a combination of formal and informal notation along with natural language. — GrandMinnow

Informal commenting versus more strictly regulated language is obviously normal practice. Still, it makes sense to machine-verify the regulated scope, at the very least, for well-formedness. It does not take much effort, and I wonder why anybody should be encouraged to publish formulas that are not even well-formed? E.g. MathJax could do more basic validation. That requires the use of more formal scope delimiters. Of course, we do not need to push it to the point that the editor only accepts expressions that are provable from the theory at hand, or so. That would obviously go too far.

This is not ordinarily problematic, since it is usually clear enough how one would formulate such semi-formal writings into pristine formalization (permitting proof of unique readability) if one wanted to do that. — GrandMinnow

That sounds very yagni ("You aren't gonna need it"). In principle, I agree with yagni, but sometimes it is not the right approach, while the really hard problem is to know when it matters and when it doesn't.

Missing Comma Costs Millions

The essence: Delivery drivers who work for Oakhurst Dairy, a Portland, Maine-based company, will be entitled to an estimated $13 million in overtime pay after winning a three-year legal dispute with their employer. An appeals judge ruled that lack of a comma made interpretation of the phrasing of an agreement vague.

The post-mortem of a successful network intrusion almost always reads like that, and leaves the following impression:

What? Really? You must be kidding me!

Especially in cryptography, a lot of mathematical language ends up being implemented pretty much verbatim in software, without even checking the logic again; because that was supposed to have been done in the mathematical work anyway. An ambiguous syntax tree for a mathematical expression could then lead to billions of dollars in losses.

Is assisted suicide for adult people who wish to die, immoral? Are there good arguments against assisted dying? Or should people have the right to die a relatively painless death if they wish to do so? Why should you keep living if life becomes unbearable and does not get better? Why do some people perceive assisted suicide as immoral? What would assisted suicide make immoral if the person really wants it? — Baskol1

Morality is either properly reductionist, i.e. axiomatic, or else, invariably subject to infinite regress. As Aristotle wrote, "If nothing is assumed, then nothing can be concluded". Therefore, morality always requires the explicit appointment of Kantian categorical imperatives.

In other words, any objective answer entirely depends on the axiomatic foundation for morality that you retain.

At the same time, atheism does not propose a documented, axiomatic foundation for any question in morality, and is therefore always a baseless exercise in infinite regress. Hence, on mere epistemic grounds, I cannot take atheist answers seriously.

In the wikipedia page, you can find the various religious views on euthanasia. On the whole, across theologies, outright termination of human life is not allowed, but reducing suffering certainly is. Furthermore, there is no obligation to give or accept life-extending medical treatment.

In my experience of talking with scientists about philosophy, I have found that many times most scientists seem to look down on it like if it were just speculative non-conducive discussions about random thoughts that anyone can make up. — Shushi

It is probably more related to what Linus Torvalds quipped: "Talk is cheap. Show me the code." In that kind of context, Linus demands that you do something considered objectively "hard" in order to first gain respect.

For example, in the philosophy of engineering, they want you to first show why they should respect you as an engineer. Generally spoken, in the philosophy of X, they want you to show your real proficiency in X.

From there on, aptitude and knowledge of philosophy is considered impressive. Peers will respect you more as a practitioner in the field of X, if you have a deep understanding of the philosophy of X, and ultimately of general philosophy. Free-standing, general philosophy, however, is not much appreciated, because there is the impression that everybody can just spout whatever vague ideas, i.e. mere verbiage.

It is the same with sales and management. You cannot sell airplane repair services, if it is obvious that you have never held a screw driver in your hands, ever in your life. You cannot manage programmers, if they detect that you cannot write a line of code. These people will not accept you in those circumstances. They will simply not respect you. Still, if you can really do the work itself, and you are good at philosophy, then you will automatically rise to the top of your field. Thought leaders in any field are always good philosophers, and they typically work their way through the philosophy classics too, because that really helps.

People tend to learn things in the wrong order. Theory follows practice, and not the other way around. That is why you better get lots of work experience in your field first, before even getting a degree. The other way around will often make you sound like an arrogant prick who seeks to "skip the hard part".

as though my only options are choosing between endorsing this or that form of aggression — Virgo Avalytikh

Welcome to the real world.

Since I am sceptical of the State tout court, it is little comfort that there may be ways of keeping the power of this coercive monopoly ‘reined in’. — Virgo Avalytikh

Not reining it in, is even a worse approach.

I don't feel the need to choose between aggressive States or aggressive soon-to-be States. — Virgo Avalytikh

In all practical terms, what is a Libyan supposed to do now that he has been "liberated" from Khadaffi?

There is not even an aggressive soon-to-be State. The desire to lower aggression and violence within the Libyan perimeter has been unattainable for more than five years now. Trade and commerce have come to a standstill. There are shortages of everything.

Since the fighter jets who took out Khadaffi took off from France, I guess that the Libyans will soon have to jump into life rafts, cross the Mediterranean, and apply for welfare benefits on arrival in Marseille.

Are you sure that you want to replicate that scenario -- dismantling the perimeter -- elsewhere? Is there really a need to generalize this?

Yes, it is not a problem in itself to refer to 'games'. If is fair enough to say that Hilbert took mathematics, in a certain regard, as concerned with symbol games. But it is egregiously incorrect - blatantly against the clear evidence of Hilbert's writings - to claim that Hilbert took mathematics to be merely a matter of symbol games. — GrandMinnow

In the section, formation rules, of the wiki page on first-order logic, you can see how they quickly gloss over a glaring issue in the current practice of mathematics:

The role of the parentheses in the definition is to ensure that any formula can only be obtained in one way by following the inductive definition (in other words, there is a unique parse tree for each formula). This property is known as unique readability of formulas.

The traditional Russell-Whitehead notation is not necessarily unambiguous.

That is probably normal, because the notation was originally introduced for human use and human consumption, in 1910-1913, during the publication of Principia Mathematica (PM).

PM obviously does not contain an EBNF specification for its notation, and is actually not even aware of the glaring problem of ambiguity in its notation. The BNF metalanguage was introduced only in 1959.

Just look at how the gloss over the following issue:

Each author's particular definition must be accompanied by a proof of unique readability.

In all practical terms, it means that the author is supposed to provide the EBNF grammar along with the generated parser tables in order to demonstrate the automaton associated with his grammar is conflict free. That is serious work.

Some people seem to be reinventing the wheel on this matter:

As a corollary, we see that the well-formed formulas of the classical propositional logic, written in Polish notation, are uniquely readable. The unique readability of wffs using parentheses and infix notation requires a different proof.

You can trivially prove that postfix Polish notation can be executed/verified by a stack machine, while infix first requires translation to postfix. Therefore, it does not require a different, but an additional proof, i.e. that all infix expressions can unambiguously be translated to postfix. Again, that can be achieved by demonstrating the the associated automaton is conflict free.

So, to come back to what you were saying about Hilbert, yes, there is a very important "language game" going on, indeed. Entire areas in mathematics do not pay enough attention to it, and still indulge in ambiguous notation that is not machine verifiable.

So, what about finally getting the "symbol games" right?

Since I am sceptical of the State tout court, it is little comfort that there may be ways of keeping the power of this coercive monopoly ‘reined in’. I would say, cut out the middle man, and do away with it. — Virgo Avalytikh

How?

So, say that we get rid of Khadaffi. No problem. We just cut out the middle man.
Then, what happens next?

The Second Libyan Civil War is an ongoing conflict among rival factions seeking control of the territory and oil of Libya.

Many Libyans blamed the GNC and the interim government for a continued lack of security in the country. The interim government struggled to control well-armed militias and armed groups that established during the revolution. Libyans in Benghazi especially began to witness assassinations and kidnapping and perceived the GNC to be turning a blind eye to the deteriorating security situation in the east.

As of February 2015, damage and disorder from the war has been considerable. There are frequent electric outages, little business activity, and a loss in revenues from oil by 90%.

It is the militias operating across the country, thought to number nearly 2,000, who are really calling the shots.

Neighboring countries.

Algeria. The Algerian military said it was engaged in an operation aimed at tracking down militants who infiltrated the country's territory in Tamanrasset near the Libyan border.
Egypt. Egyptian authorities have long expressed concern over the instability in eastern Libya spilling over into Egypt due to the rise of jihadist movements in the region.
Tunisia. Post-revolutionary Tunisia also had its share of instability due to the violence in Libya as it witnessed an unprecedented rise in radical Islamism with increased militant activity and weapons' smuggling through the border.

Is all of this really better?

Why is it significant that Taleb does not differentiate between the various salafi sects and pays lip service to his political allies?

Because in the Christian-Lebanese political view, there are no fanatical radicals in Hezbollah. They do not exist in the whole of Shia Islam, including Iran. Why? Well, it's obviously politically more expedient for them to believe that.

So, in the new political game, everybody points to everybody else's fringe groups to generalize from there.

You may well be sceptical of some alternative way, but I would argue that, since the State exists in violation of the ‘perimeter of lowered aggression’ which it is allegedly responsible for maintaining, I could scarcely imagine how a system of private justice could do a worse job. — Virgo Avalytikh

There exist successful strategies that rein in the excess power of the State.

A first solution is to first and foremost direct the individual's loyalty to his extended family instead of the State. It apparently works like a charm:

{In Iraq} the extraordinarily strong family bonds complicate virtually everything Americans are trying to do here. Liberal democracy is based on the Western idea of "autonomous individuals committed to a public good", but that's not how members of these tight and bounded kin groups see the world.

There is a good reason why strong family ties have disappeared in the West, allowing the State to lord over thoroughly atomized and ultimately helpless individuals:

Cousin marriage was once the norm throughout the world, but it became taboo in Europe after a long campaign by the Roman Catholic Church. Theologians like St. Augustine and St. Thomas argued that the practice promoted family loyalties at the expense of universal love and social harmony. Eliminating it was seen as a way to reduce clan warfare and promote loyalty to larger social institutions -- like the church.

The Church had mistakenly hoped that they would become the main beneficiary of thoroughly individualizing and isolating individuals in society. It did not work, because it is the State that cashed in on the benefits instead. Just temporarily, of course.

Once you start peeling the onion, there is no stopping it. So, the destruction of the innermost layer of onion, i.e. the nuclear family, was clearly inevitable. Without some form of nuclear family, sexual reproduction becomes a rather difficult proposition.

Republicans in the United States expected a quick, orderly transition to democracy in Iraq. But one writer who investigated the practice warned fellow conservatives to stop expecting postwar Iraq to resemble postwar Germany or Japan.

Successful anti-Statism requires strong intermediate layers between the individual and the State, which drastically reduce its power. Furthermore, the religious community is yet another layer, this time above the State, that further delegitimizes and reins in the State's power. It is these additional layers that turned the occupation of Iraq into a complete failure for the occupying forces.

Pretty much like libertarians, I am certainly not a fan of an overly powerful National State. Still, I am only willing to use instruments against excess State power for which there is historical evidence that they really work.

But they simply are salafi movements — ssu

It is always possible to conjecture a link between everything and everything else. For example, scientific racists brandish selective IQ tests to support their views. Therefore, everybody who uses IQ tests is a scientific racist.

Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al Shabaab and ISIS are Salafist movements. — ssu

In the Persian Gulf states, the majority of the Salafis reside in Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. 46.87 per cent of Qataris and 44.8 per cent of Emiratis are Salafis. Salafis are the "dominant minority" in Saudi Arabia. The 4 million Saudi Salafis make up 22.9 per cent of the population. They are concentrated in Najd. By contrast, Bahrain has 5.7 per cent Salafis, and Kuwait has a population that is 2.17 per cent Salafis.

Western observers and analysts, associate the movement with the jihadis who espouse violent attacks against those they deem to be enemies of Islam as a legitimate expression of Islam.

The otherwise neutral and objective page in Wikipedia considers that point of view to be a form of black mouthing.

Reductionism in ethics is a total folly. — RW Standing

I looked up the definition first:

Reductionism is any of several related philosophical ideas regarding the associations between phenomena which can be described in terms of other simpler or more fundamental phenomena.

It is a bit vague as a concept, but the example in mathematics definitely clarified the concept to me:

In mathematics, reductionism can be interpreted as the philosophy that all mathematics can (or ought to) be based on a common foundation, which for modern mathematics is usually axiomatic set theory. Ernst Zermelo was one of the major advocates of such an opinion; he also developed much of axiomatic set theory.

Agreed, but it may fail to mention an important principle: Every Turing-complete axiomatization is equivalent in expressive power.

So, axiomatic set theory is not more powerful than axiomatic function theory (lambda calculus) or axiomatic combinator theory (SKI calculus), and so on. There is an unlimited number of such equivalent axiomatizations possible.

Concerning ethics, axiomatic derivation from scripture is beyond any reasonable doubt the core principle in Jewish and Islamic law. Reductionism is also the central epistemic argument that Martin Luther used in his defence at his hearing in Worms, in front of the emperor, Charles V:

If you can show me through scripture and reason that I would be wrong, I will retract what I have said.

The prosecutor acting on behalf of Papacy could have answered something along the lines of, "As an Augustinian monk, you are a member of our staff, and in our employ, and therefore you are held to do what we tell you to do." The prosecutor didn't. He said something utterly damaging instead:

The Bible itself is the arsenal whence each evil heretic has drawn his deceptive arguments.

The Papacy therefore flatly rejected the Bible as a legitimate axiomatic foundation for religious law. It would be unsuitable for that purpose, since it is replete with deceptive arguments.

Since there is clearly nothing to reduce arguments in Christian religious law to -- according to the Papacy -- reductionism is indeed a folly in Christianity. Without axiomatic foundation, it would just be a silly exercise in infinite regress.

Atheist ethics do not even have a basic document to which they could possibly reduce their conclusions to, i.e. a list of Kantian categorical imperatives. Hence, the core method of atheist ethics is necessarily: infinite regress, along with the occasional, impredicative circular reasoning.

Reductionism in ethics is indeed a folly when you have nothing to reduce your conclusions to.

Mathematicians will sometimes speak of 'beautiful' equations. — Wayfarer

A beautiful object tends to acts like a Schelling point. When you are in the middle of nowhere, and you don't particularly know where you are going either, just like when you are halfway a proof, you may need to make the decision to go left, right, or ahead.

Picking the most beautiful alternative often works really well.

In the process of discovering of new knowledge, intuition is much more important than existing knowledge. You can certainly rationalize after the facts, but while you are still looking for a solution, rationality does not help particularly much. A developed sense for beauty tends to be much more effective.

In my opinion, purely rational people do not discover anything new. As far as I am concerned, a sense for beauty is another mental faculty, entirely independent from rationality.

The issue here is an uninteresting semantic one. 'Aggression' has a specific meaning in the context of libertarianism: it is the initiatory (in distinction from 'defensive') use of force; hence 'non-aggression principle'. — Virgo Avalytikh

Trade does not even exist outside a "perimeter" of lowered aggression and violence.

Biological life does not "trade" in the wild. Everything in nature revolves around confiscation.

If I think that the flesh around your bones would be better off in my stomach, I am not going to ask for your opinion, and I am certainly not going to ask what you would like in return.

A commerce-friendly "perimeter" of lowered aggression and violence needs to be created at great effort, and then painstakingly maintained.

Libertarians seem to believe that such "perimeter" would naturally materialize out of the fricking blue. That is why I am a bit wary of libertarian views. These views are simply too naive to my taste.

you can know something is truly beautiful or not by thinking about it, but not by feeling or seeing. — Sameer

How it works for me, is like this. In my professional life, I quite often have had to deal with other people's code, especially, when I was contracting. If other people's code looks beautiful, it is probably correct. If it looks like shit, it is probably full of bugs.

For example, I remember having had to deal with the SMF forum software. After looking at the code for 10 seconds, I knew that the thing had to be full of issues. Why? Because the code looks like shit.

Example of one of the monsters sitting in that source tree:

https://github.com/SimpleMachines/SMF2.1/blob/release-2.1/Sources/Load.php

It is almost a manual for how-not-to-do-it. It is truly hideous.

The client had made the choice to use SMF long ago. It was obviously not possible to reverse that choice on the fly. They were having lots of trouble with the product, and so, they asked me to look into it, on a contract basis. I did. I marginally fixed a few things and then moved on, because I hate working on things while covered in excrement.

So what is beauty?

It is often an instinctive summary of the fact that everything probably works fine.

It is the same with a beautiful girl.

You don't need to double check if her liver works properly, if her heart rhythm is healthy, if her bones are firm enough. Seriously, no need for that. If she looks beautiful, her body inevitably satisfies the myriad of hidden rules and regulations that govern its functionality.

There are undoubtedly lots and lots of mathematical equations that impose their rules onto how things should be in a female body -- we mostly do not even know what they are -- and her body and face satisfies them all. That is why she looks so good.

In my opinion, you do not need to think about beauty. On the contrary, your sense of beauty rather spares you of having to think.

It is the same in mathematics. When a proof looks beautiful, it is also much more likely to be correct. If on the contrary, it is full of ugly hacks, then no, then there must be a problem somewhere. Just keep looking for where the problem really is, and you will surely uncover it.

All that it really has going for it is that it happens to be the status quo. — Virgo Avalytikh

Well, yeah, we are waiting for someone to show that another solution would be viable. In the meanwhile, I indeed think that it is in our own interest to make-do with the existing mess.

I am a great fan of cryptocurrencies. I hold pretty much 99%+ of my own financial assets in bitcoin, except for a small amount of physical gold and a small revolving buffer of USD.

So, it's not that I would particularly be in favour of State-orchestrated fiat bankstering.

I feel that a system of (tit-for-tat) trade -- within the perimeter of lowered aggression and violence -- is necessary, because giving everyone else hamlet-style sharing rights on your assets, does not scale properly.

Still, tit-for-tat trade needs to be supplemented with mandatory and voluntary charity; simply, because not everybody seems to be equally able to adjust to the requirements of commerce, and may also not be able to draw assisting resources from extended family. A good example are stranded travellers, or even people who have had to flee their native "perimeter". I draw heavily on Islamic views here.

So, I am not --completely-- in favour of the status quo, because I do reject fiat bankstering and State-controlled social security. I also reject involvement of the State in education and healthcare. In fact, I am wary of State involvement in practically anything, except in duly monitoring the security perimeter.

But there is no reason to think that this has to be a State. — Virgo Avalytikh

It is the number one instrument currently in use for that purpose.

It amounts to circling the wagons, so that the level of violence inside the perimeter becomes drastically lower than outside. This in turn facilitates trade, which in turn tends to increase income and wealth inside the perimeter, which in turn increases the potential pay-off of a successful attack.

Maybe, maybe, maybe it is possible to lower violence and aggression within the perimeter by other means, but I would first want to see that in practical operation.

In the meanwhile, awaiting a successful example of how such alternative could work, I am not much of a fan of removing the legions sitting on top of the outer boundaries of the perimeter or shutting down the patrols within the perimeter, because otherwise I would need to quickly resort to looting all the good stuff before anybody else does.

So the inner-dynamic of the gang demonstrates why the leap that you make to Statism is unwarranted — Virgo Avalytikh

Ganging together makes you more successful at looting and pillaging anything that is not too hot or too heavy. No doubt about that. Once the gang exists, it will not disband itself for as long as there is stuff to confiscate from non-gang members. If everybody within the perimeter has become a member of the gang, the gang will still not disband itself, because then it can protect the outer boundaries of the perimeter and also patrol inside, in exchange for a fee, or so.

Each individual treats peacefully with everyone else, because if he doesn’t, he has the rest of the society to answer to; at the very least, they will not associate with him thereafter. — Virgo Avalytikh

The gang will simply coerce these people, in successive rounds of face fisting. It will be a case of "give me what I want, or else!" That strategy works like a charm, seriously,

Your solution to the problem of criminality, it seems, is to place our trust in a criminal gang of unparalleled scale — Virgo Avalytikh

Well, I don't really trust them either, and it obviously does not solve the problem gracefully.

Nature is just as responsible for producing peaceful cooperation as it is for animalistic aggression — Virgo Avalytikh

When you trade, you need to give in return something of sufficient value to the other person. It is often cheaper to attack him and confiscate what you want. In fact, it is even better not to hesitate, because if you don't do it, then someone else will.

That otherwise absolutely sound strategy will not work, however, if some kind of stronger power creates a safe haven around himself that encompasses both of you, and prevents you from implementing the otherwise cost-effective solution of attacking and confiscating.

Trade only makes sense when violent confiscation doesn't.

When that stronger power gets disabled, all odds are off. People immediately start looting before someone else does, and they are right, because in those circumstances you can indeed expect shortages of everything, all over the place. So, if someone who looks weaker, carries food along, beat him up and make it yours, before someone else does.

You also need to be careful if you visibly have anything that someone else could want, because everybody else will want to rip it off before someone else does.

Of course, all of that works even better if you gang together. That allows you to attack and strip clean everybody who doesn't belong to a gang. When those easy targets are exhausted, the next thing to do is to ambush the weaker gangs and duly appropriate their loot too.

The situation will eventually stabilize when the biggest and most violent gang has subjugated all other gangs and appointed their leader to Big Brother of the New Safe Haven. Now that Big Brother is watching you, and prevents you from ambushing, attacking, and violently confiscating stuff from weaker-looking suckers, trade can resume again.

Conclusion. Trade doesn't work without Big Brother watching you.

Someone who knows, can do something with that knowledge. — Pantagruel

Maybe there is a need here to distinguish between "to know" and "to understand".

So my first question is: Is an authoritative source sufficient evidence? Does the person who has experimentally verified an hypothesis have "more knowledge" than a person who has read about and understands those experimental results? — Pantagruel

You may want to treat the test report as a witness deposition in the historical method, to be corroborated with other witness depositions.

I think that he has more knowledge because for him as an eyewitness the test results are more certain than for someone who was not present but only receives the test report. The eyewitness does not need to corroborate his own testimony, unlike the receiver of the testimony.

Versus a person who does not understand the experimental results but obtains information from what he or she believes is a reliable source? — Pantagruel

Someone who does not understand the theory tested, still has a copy of the knowledge, which he could possibly transmit, but not possibly apply. So, yes, he could still be a teacher or so. It wouldn't be the first time.

No he isn't. — Wayfarer

O sorry, you are right. He is still there. He must have paperwork problems with Satan's immigration office. They will let him through some day. They always do! ;-)

One may conclude, having levelled one such objection, that the legitimacy or at least the necessity of the State, or of collective ownership, is thereby vindicated. — Virgo Avalytikh

perhaps there really are problems which would plague a system of private ownership and non-aggression, and that it would be genuinely extremely difficult to deal with the problem from within that system. — Virgo Avalytikh

Constraining the fundamentally violent nature of life, is actually a feat in civilization.

Resource gathering is territorialist. This is "my plot of land", and "let's violently kick every competitor out of the picture", is one legitimate reason for the fundamentally violent situation in nature. "Let's tear all other males to pieces, if need be, and then coerce the females", is another fundamentally violent trait in nature.

Competition is an interaction between organisms or species in which both the organisms or species are harmed. Limited supply of at least one resource (such as food, water, and territory) used by both can be a factor. According to the competitive exclusion principle, species less suited to compete for resources should either adapt or die out, although competitive exclusion is rarely found in natural ecosystems.

Aggression is overt or covert, often harmful, social interaction with the intention of inflicting damage or other unpleasantness upon another individual. It may occur either reactively or without provocation. Aggression between conspecifics in a group typically involves access to resources and breeding opportunities. One of its most common functions is to establish a dominance hierarchy. This occurs in many species by aggressive encounters between contending males when they are first together in a common environment ... Aggression is, thus, aggravated during times when high population densities generate resource shortages.

Violence and aggression are universal across human societies, and have likely been features of human behavior since prehistory. For men at risk of never finding a mate, the fitness benefit to engaging in aggressive, violent behavior could outweigh the potential costs of fightings, especially if fighting alongside a coalition.

While male-male competitionThe presence winning male suppresses mating behaviours of the losing males because the winning male tends to produce more frequent and enhanced mating calls in this period of time. can occur in the presence or absence of a female, competition occurs more frequently in the presence of a female. Before copulation, intrasexual selection - usually between males - may take the form of male-to-male combat. Finally, sexual conflict is said to occur between breeding partners, sometimes leading to an evolutionary arms race between males and females.

Non-violence and non-aggression is a relatively unstable, artificially constructed situation. It should never be considered "natural".

In the event of societal collapse, of inter-societal conflict, or any breakdown in the painstakingly constructed and enforced "law and order", then for reasons of sheer survival, we must immediately revert to assuming generalized aggression as well as inflicting generalized aggression. A healthy distrust of civilization and its ability to maintain itself, is absolutely necessary.

Therefore, any philosophy that considers non-violence and non-aggression to be "natural" is a dangerous delusion.

How do you know it is widespread? — Moliere

Another search term yields some more interesting results: how widespread is scientism?

• The Folly of Scientism. A forthright expression of this viewpoint has been made by the chemist Peter Atkins, who in his 1995 essay “Science as Truth” asserts the “universal competence” of science. In their 2007 book Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized, for example, philosophers James Ladyman, Don Ross, and David Spurrett go so far as to entitle a chapter “In Defense of Scientism.” An additional strength of the falsifiability criterion is that it makes possible a clear distinction between science properly speaking and the opinions of scientists on nonscientific subjects. We have seen in recent years a growing tendency to treat as “scientific” anything that scientists say or believe. The debates over stem cell research, for example, have often been described, both within the scientific community and in the mass media, as clashes between science and religion. If we confine our definition of the scientific to the falsifiable, we clearly will not conclude that a particular ethical view is dictated by science just because it is the view of a substantial number of scientists.
  
• Against scientism.I posit that scientism is an underrated problem in the modern world, causing a large amount of damage. The appeal of science had the required overinflated trust of a significant part of the population, to make them override both their common sense and natural inclinations. “Science shows” is a ubiquitous statement in science reporting, and it is mostly a lie. Scientific journalism thus foists these uncertain facts into the minds of the unsuspecting populace. A recent example is from this Guardian article, with the first line: “We may have suspected it already, but now the science backs it up: unmarried and childless women are the happiest subgroup in the population.” “Science backs it up” — the motto of scientism. In conclusion, scientism is causing large amounts of misinformation and harm. My hope is that as more people become more aware of this issue, they will show more epistemological humility; and that scientific reporters will oversell scientific results less, and people will be more sensibly critical when they do.
  
• Science beyond Scientism. Others make even bolder claims, namely that all knowledge is to be delivered by the natural sciences or that only those things exist which are mentioned in our best scientific theories. What these varieties of scientism have in common is that they imply that the boundaries of science are to be extended (far) beyond what most people consider to be limits of science. There is the claim, especially in neuroscience, that free will is an illusion. Morality is an illusion. Religious belief is illusory.
  
• The Problem with Scientism. That said, there is a pernicious and increasingly influential strand of thought these days — normally referred to as “scientism” — which is not only a threat to every other discipline, including philosophy, but risks undermining the credibility of science itself. Scientism is explicitly advocated by a good number of scientists (predictably), and even some philosophers. The first sign is when words like “science” and “scientific” are used uncritically as honorific terms of epistemic praise. For instance, in advertisement: “9 out of 10 dentists recommend brand X.”
  
• Science and scientism. The purpose of this book is to show the pervasiveness of the doctrine of scientism. But how could it have come about that this mistake is so widespread, if it is a mistake? Most of the theologically liberal wing, in contrast, long ago adopted scientism, because they confused it with science. What's more, as we will see, several of the historic forms that scientism has taken actually do involve ceremonials and rituals of religious intent.

So, yes, the fake scientism religion is literally everywhere. Wherever you find the delusional, unwashed masses, you will be able to admire the artifacts, ceremonials, and rituals of scientism. They simply believe it. They don't care that they shouldn't, because they find solace in the false promise of the omnipotence of science.

How do you know it is widespread? — Moliere

Let's check what the top search results are for e.g. "I believe in science".

• Why I Don’t “Believe” in “Science”. or some years now, one of the left’s favorite tropes has been the phrase “I believe in science.” Elizabeth Warren stated it recently in a pretty typical form: “I believe in science." So what Warren really means by saying “I believe in science” is “I believe in global warming.” They use it as a way of declaring belief in a proposition which is outside their knowledge and which they do not understand. It is meant to use the reputation of “science” in general to give authority to one specific scientific claim in particular, shielding it from questioning or skepticism. In support of one particular political solution: massive government regulations.
  
• “I Believe in Science!” – Something No One Should Say. “I believe in science,” said Hillary Clinton. “We should not have people in office who do not believe in facts and truths and modern science,” said Leonardo DiCaprio. What these two have in common with the general public is their misunderstanding of the nature of science. The physical sciences are not, cannot possibly be the only means of gaining knowledge. The view that science (physical sciences) is the only means of gaining knowledge about reality is called scientism – a patently false proposition. It’s an unsettling sign of an imminent idiocracy – incredibly naive statements made by public officials and laymen who increasingly believe that science is the new god – the new idol of worship and infallibility. It is a sad day when science becomes an idol of worship – a compulsory belief system with its own initiations, rites, and hymns.
  
• I Believe in Science. It implies that I can’t be a believer in science and also believe in God. In other words, science has disproven God. Or science and God don’t go together, or science and religion are mutually exclusive. It’s strange in part because science is tasked with studying the way the natural world works and is thus not even capable of disproving something beyond its scope. So why is this such a popular view in today’s society? There are certainly also many in the scientific and academic community who propagate this view as well.

There are undoubtedly other search terms that can shed light on the world of that fake scientist religion, its media-clergy, and how the manipulative political class seeks to handsomely benefit from further deceiving the already delusional unwashed masses.

So, yes, the fake religion of scientism is incredibly widespread.

Richard Dawkins is dead now. So, one of the popes of scientism is no longer advocating their scientism faith. As Richard M. Stallman said on Steve Jobs: "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone."

In mathematics an axiom is produced and stated to serve some purpose, and accepted because of its usefulness — Metaphysician Undercover

Most generally, axioms are arbitrary:

These terms and axioms may either be arbitrarily defined and constructed or else be conceived according to a model in which some intuitive warrant for their truth is felt to exist.

In this context, I certainly subscribe to the formalist philosophy in mathematics:

According to formalism, mathematical truths are not about numbers and sets and triangles and the like—in fact, they are not "about" anything at all.

So, into science creeps unsound premises, from mathematicians, which are accepted because they are extremely useful. — Metaphysician Undercover

Mathematics helps science maintain consistency in its theories. Nothing more. Nothing less. It is up to the scientists themselves to determine if they want to use a particular tool and if they find the tool actually useful. In my impression, scientists generally consider the consistency-maintaining contribution of mathematics to be useful to them.

It is a similar situation with spreadsheets and accountants. A spreadsheet helps accountants to maintain consistency in their one-off financial reporting tasks. Accountants seem to be quite ok to use spreadsheets as a tool in their jobs.

On the other hand, take engineers: mechanical; electrical; chemical; civil; aeronautical; genetic et cetera. These fields all rely on the same empirically proven laws and principles. — Denovo Meme

If you look at the footnotes in the page on the philosophy of engineering, you will see a good number of books on the subject. So, you can safely say that if X is an abstraction -- such as X=engineering -- then there will invariably exist a philosophyOf(X).

The philosophy of engineering is an emerging discipline that considers what engineering is, what engineers do, and how their work affects society, and thus includes aspects of ethics and aesthetics, as well as the ontology, epistemology, etc. that might be studied in, for example, the philosophy of science.

My original post was an appeal for someone to say what philosophy uses to gain credibility? — Denovo Meme

I do not believe that gaining mainstream credibility is much of a goal in philosophy. It is simply not for everybody. Philosophy has always been an activity more or less confined to a particular intellectual elite. You either like it or you don't.

Investigating what science is and what philosophy might meta-be does not help Joe Average to put food on the table. Joe wants to know how to use science and philosophy to pay the electricity bill. — Denovo Meme

Why would philosophers be interested in how Joe wants to pay his electricity bill? There is not much "meta" to this question. So, it does not seem like a particularly legitimate topic in philosophy. There are so many subjects that a person can study. Why would our electricity-bill Joe even want to study philosophy?

Sorry, I don't have much to say to electricity-bill Joe.

I really do wish to know why we should listen to philosophers. — Denovo Meme

Well, then don't.

People, who join this forum, do so because they/we like discussing philosophy. That means that this is not the best place to hang out for people who do NOT like discussing philosophy.

You sound like someone who goes to a football club in order to tell people that you do not like football. Why are you even wasting your time doing that? People who go to a football stadium to watch football, simply like football. If you don't, you can always go to the tennis court and watch things there instead. Football club members do not need to justify why they like their sports. They just do.

Be positive and pick something you like. Being negative and picking something you do not like, will not get you anywhere.

You can tell electricity-bill Joe that it is the same in business. Would he go to apply for a job at a widget factory, insisting that he does not like widgets, and that he thinks that making widgets is a waste of time?

The very first thing that electricity-bill Joe needs to do, is to be open minded, try to be a bit more likeable, and be receptive for possible opportunities that may arise wherever he goes.

When I read or discuss a bit of philosophy I become frustrated with the way people quote a philosopher as if the philosopher has the answer. — Denovo Meme

Quoting a philosopher does not mean that your answer is correct because of that. It only means that you subscribe to a particular school of thought.

For example, if you look at the schools of thought in the philosophy of mathematics, you will find that the top nine schools are: Platonism, Logicism, Formalism, Conventionalism, Intuitionism, Structuralism, Embodied mind, Fictionalism, and Social constructivism.

There is no definitive, philosophical answer as to the nature of mathematics:

It is a profound puzzle that on the one hand mathematical truths seem to have a compelling inevitability, but on the other hand the source of their "truthfulness" remains elusive. Investigations into this issue are known as the foundations of mathematics program.

So, we have tentative answers, each represented by a school, which each have their followers.

Science has fundamental laws and principles by which we obtain a 0.05 answer. — Denovo Meme

The philosophy of science has its own schools of thought, which argue about the nature of science:

The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultimate purpose of science.

What is the philosophical equivalent? — Denovo Meme

Concerning the concept of "the philosophy of philosophy", i.e. the metaphilosophy:

Metaphilosophy (sometimes called philosophy of philosophy) is "the investigation of the nature of philosophy". Its subject matter includes the aims of philosophy, the boundaries of philosophy, and its methods.

There is the following problem:

Nicholas Bunnin and Jiyuan Yu write that the separation of first- from second-order study has lost popularity as philosophers find it hard to observe the distinction. As evidenced by these contrasting opinions, debate persists as to whether the evaluation of the nature of philosophy is 'second order philosophy' or simply 'plain philosophy'.

The situation is a bit like with metamathematics, which is just an ordinary theory in mathematics.

Metamathematics is the study of mathematics itself using mathematical methods. This study produces metatheories, which are mathematical theories about other mathematical theories.

Quite a few people object to calling Hilbert Calculi or Gödel's incompleteness theorems "metamathematical"; or at least drop the "meta" prefix. These theories do not feel different from other mathematics. They use exactly the same method. So, they are often referred to as just mathematical.

We could say that for the function meta(X), which maps the domain of knowledge onto itself, the choices X=philosophy and X=mathematics are fixed points, because meta(philosophy)=philosophy and meta(mathematics)=mathematics. This is absolutely not the case for science, however. Furthermore, this is generally not the case for any other discipline.

If the domain of knowledge has exactly two fixed points, then according to Lefschetz fixed-point theorem its Euler characteristic is also two, and therefore, the domain of knowledge would somehow look like a polyhedron.

There is no epistemic standard for spiritual beliefs that I’m aware of. — Noah Te Stroete

I will use the term "religion" as a synonym for "spiritual beliefs" in this context. This ignores the issue that they may not be 100% one and the same thing, but ok, that is part of the cost of doing business.

In my opinion, the first problem is that religion covers at least two epistemically different propositions.

The first proposition is that God created the heavens and the earth, and the second one that there is something like religious law -- provided by God, because that is the connection -- which is a set of rules that we are not supposed to break.

The first proposition is a historical question. Did it really happen like that? So, question belongs to the epistemic domain of history. So, the question becomes: Can we corroborate witness depositions for this? Well no, there were no humans at that point. Hence, the question is out of reach in the historical epistemic domain.

There is actually nothing special about questions being part of the historical epistemic domain, but not answerable by it. If for the one or the other reason, there were no witnesses to an event, then the historical method will simply have to throw in the towel.

The second proposition is about religious law. Can it consistently give answers to whether a particular type of behaviour is moral or not? In other words, is religious law complete? The epistemic standard for religious law depends on the religion. Judaism and Islam are axiomatic from scriptures. Christianity is mostly ecclesiastic.

So, the epistemic standard in (Judaism and) Islam is that the justified answer to a question of morality is provided by the wide consensus of religious scholars, i.e. muftis, inasmuch as they axiomatically derive their answer from scripture. The epistemic standard in Christianity is that the answer by the Papacy -- or your other church leader -- is deemed to be correct (=consistent), even if it isn't; just ask Martin Luther.

You should read Quine's two dogmas. He makes a good case against apriori justification. — aporiap

Interesting.

Concerning Quine's dogma one, "Analyticity and circularity", and "the notion of synonymy, which Quine holds as unexplained", I certainly agree. Furthermore, it is exactly because of this problem that Alonzo Church spent an inordinate amount of effort avoiding sheer naming in his lambda calculus.

The λ-calculus incorporates two simplifications that make this semantics simple. The first simplification is that the λ-calculus treats functions "anonymously", without giving them explicit names. The second simplification is that the λ-calculus only uses functions of a single input.

This dogmatic simplification was absolutely necessary for Alonzo Church to be able to give an answer to Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem (negative), along with Alan Turing, who arrived there via an independent route, both of them coincidentally in 1936.

So, now the answer to David Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem goes by the name of Church-Turing thesis.

Quine only published his dogma one in 1951. Hence, he was in fact, a bit late to the game for his dogma one.

Concerning Quine's dogma two, "Quine maintains that reductionism is another "metaphysical article of faith", yes, I completely agree.

Axiomatic derivation reduces theorems to underlying, unexplained axioms. So, if we equate the term "metaphysical" with presuppositionalism (apriori knowledge), then yes, mathematics is by design indeed presuppositionalist.

So?

Isn't this again a case of fake morality concerning the term "metaphysical", considered "bad"? Why is it "bad"?

The entire domain of mathematics, generated by the axiomatic method, is staunchly presuppositionalist. Does that mean that mathematics is "bad"?

Concerning Quine's holism:

Instead of reductionism, Quine proposes that it is the whole field of science and not single statements that are verified. All scientific statements are interconnected.

That is utterly wrong.

No, Quine's holistic solution is not even wrong.

A scientific statement stands by itself, because it can only be tested experimentally by itself. Experimental testing of one scientific statement says nothing about any other scientific statement. You would have to experimentally test that one too.

Mathematical theories are indeed axiomatic systems, of which the statements are interconnected.

An entire such system has indeed its systemic (system-level) properties.

Scientific theories are not axiomatic systems.

Quine fails to distinguish between mathematics (provability) and science (testability). That is why the holistic amalgamation that he proposes, is rather silly.

Of course. To say that their knowledge is not-scientific is not the same as to say that their knowledge is not-valuable. — Moliere

In that case, mathematics is also not valuable, because it is also not-scientific, and staunchly so.

This kind of fake morality ("not-scientific knowledge is not-valuable") is a mainstay in the vulgarizing and ultimately also vulgar, pseudo-scientific mainstream press. You will see CNN journalists displaying their amazing ineptitude -- the blind leading the blind -- when they further mislead the already delusional unwashed masses.

As long as it has the trappings and superficial appearance of science, the delusional populace will swallow it all. Of course, they will never ask to repeat any inexistent experimental tests, because they do not even understand the nature of their own fake religion.

Scientism is a mental disease. Seriously.

In which case the kind of scientism you are arguing against would be unjustified. — Moliere

Science is a one epistemic domain in the field of knowledge. There is nothing wrong with that.

It is the beliefs [1] that it is the only epistemic domain [2] that it is complete (can answer every question), that irritate me to no end.

What do you think of my notion that scientism is not a set of beliefs as much as it is a character trait -- the trait of feeling too strongly about science? — Moliere

Scientism is so incredibly widespread, and its fake morality so prevalent with the unwashed masses, especially in the West, that it cannot merely be a character trait. There is an entire, organized media-clergy preaching its heresies. The political class loves it too. The political manipulators happily subscribe to it, because it increases their power. Scientism is a fake religion that comes with its own fake morality. It is simply obnoxious.

Would you say that the methods of a plumber, a machine operator, a lighting technician, or a cook are based on his criterion? I wouldn't. — Moliere

They may occasionally do some experimental testing.

In fact, experimental testing is a systematic protocol in various supply chain situations. It is often specified upfront in commercial contracts. The next paragraph describes a very common commercial practice:

In destructive testing (or destructive physical analysis, DPA) tests are carried out to the specimen's failure, in order to understand a specimen's performance or material behavior under different loads. These tests are generally much easier to carry out, yield more information, and are easier to interpret than nondestructive testing. Destructive testing is most suitable, and economic, for objects which will be mass-produced, as the cost of destroying a small number of specimens is negligible.

You can ask Walmart how they make sure that their Chinese suppliers do not get into a habit of filling the containers with mere sand. The fact that Walmart does not report on their work in experimental testing, is mostly because they do not carry it out with a view on black-swanning a scientific theory.

Still, according to Nassim Taleb, most (empirical) theory was born from recording, systematizing and idealizing existing practice:

Theory is born from (convex) practice more often than the reverse (the nonteleological property). Textbooks tend to show technology flowing from science, when it is more often the opposite case, dubbed the "lecturing birds on how to fly" effect v vi. In such developments as the industrial revolution (and more generally outside linear domains such as physics), there is very little historical evidence for the contribution of fundamental research compared to that of tinkering by hobbyists.

So yes, plumbers, machine operators, lighting technicians, cooks know a lot of things that were never systematized scientifically. They may have stumbled upon them through sheer serendipity, through trial and error, and possible also by experimentally testing them. These things have never been documented or otherwise formalized into science or engineering, because nobody has ever bothered to do so. I personally suspect that the entire industry would collapse if this knowledge does not get transmitted from one generation of workers to the next.

So to you "science" is knowledge specifically, it seems. Yes? — Moliere

To me, "science" is every belief that you can justify by experimentally testing it; and therefore, that you can also "black-swan", by systematically looking for counterexamples in such tests.

If you can justify a belief, then yes, then it is knowledge.

Science are beliefs that are backed by experimental test reports, i.e. their justifications. Mathematics is different. Mathematics are beliefs that are backed by axiomatic derivation from other beliefs, i.e. their justifications, and ultimately always from unexplained beliefs, i.e. the axioms of the theory.

As far as I am concerned, every legitimate knowledge-justification method will generate around itself its epistemic domain of knowledge. Epistemology itself does that too.

Let's put this to you, then: You wouldn't call theoretical discussions scientific knowledge. But would you still count theoretical publications in physics as doing science? It is still science, even if it is not knowledge, right? — Moliere

As long as we clearly distinguish between hypothesis/conjecture (no experimental test available) and theory (experimentally testable), I am ok with the hypothetical-theoretical discussions.

We need to be able to black-swan a scientific theory, i.e. search for a counterexample, otherwise it is not a scientific theory.

Since all scientific theories obviously start their life cycle as mere conjectures, I am certainly not against the activity of conjecturing. So, yes, it is "pre-science". Conjectures are the staging area for science. They are therefore necessary.

I'm afraid I do not believe what Karl Popper believed about science. — Moliere

Well, at the highest level of epistemology, concerning the nature of science, or the nature of mathematics, or the nature of any knowledge field, really, we have a conversation, with sometimes acrimonious debates. We have schools of thought, and we may or may not have a majority view, i.e. a consensus.

There is obviously criticism on Popperian falsificationism.

If the criticism is useful, I will certainly adopt it. Still, the descriptions of the criticism in the link above, of why they dislike Karl Popper's falsificationism, does not sound convincing to me.

I personally very much like Popper's views, because they allow for the concept of "epistemic domain", and to shift the debate on the nature of the various knowledge disciplines away from the otherwise arbitrary concept of "subject matter".

As far as I am concerning, a knowledge discipline is not "about something". A knowledge discipline is what you can justify with a particular method. Therefore, it is an epistemic domain.

So, I personally consider Karl Popper to be a gigantic step forward.

And if there be more to science than just these qualities I'd wonder -- how would you differentiate theoretical discussions on the existence of the ether from, say, discussions on the existence of God? — Moliere

Theoretical discussions about possible scientific hypotheses have not yet managed to pass the unforgiving knowledge-justification filter in science. The justification will become available only after successful experimental testing.

A scientific theory that has not been experimentally tested is not a scientific theory (=justified) but a scientific hypothesis or conjecture (=unjustified).

Therefore, discussions on the existence of God are not part of epistemic domain of science. If you want to make them part of the domain, you will have to propose how exactly the hypothesis is supposed to be experimentally tested.

Hence, adding the question concerning the existence of God to the scientific domain is first and foremost a question of experimental test design.

In the meanwhile, all the pseudo-scientific-sounding hypotheses about the existence of God, usually atheist ones, are objectively just a pile of bullshit, as they are in gross violation of the rules and regulations governing the epistemic method that generates the scientific domain.

Generally mathematics is grouped in with the sciences. — Moliere

Ahum, correction!

Mathematics was possibly somehow grouped in with sciences.

You see, the easy part is reading the classics, but the hard part is to know what exactly still makes sense.

Ever since Karl Popper published his seminal article, Science as Falsification, science has become defined as the collection of propositions, i.e. the epistemic domain, that can be tested experimentally.

Mathematics utterly rejects experimental testing as an epistemic method. Mathematics belongs to the epistemic domain of axiomatic derivation.

You see, according to the classics, in terms of subject matter, mathematics was about quantities, i.e. numbers (Diophantes arithmetica), and anything that you can reasonably draw with unmarked straightedge and compass, i.e. Greek geometry (Euclid).

They generally still held that view in 18th century, while this view was already fundamentally outdated in the 12th century, after Algorithmi's publication, the "Liber Algebrae".

That is why they undoubtedly did not see it coming when Carl Friedrich Gauss published his theorems on the fundamental limitations of (geometrically) constructible numbers, which can only represent the absolutely simplest radical field extension (√2):

This has the effect of transforming geometric questions about compass and straightedge constructions into algebra. This transformation leads to the solutions of many famous mathematical problems, which defied centuries of attack.

Grouping in mathematics with science is even a bigger misconception than the idea that mathematics would be about quantities or numbers. Seriously, not everything in the classics is still applicable today.

A mathematical problem underlying fundamental questions in particle and quantum physics is provably unsolvable, according to scientists at UCL

Well, that is again mathematics (abstract-Platonic provability) answering the question and not science (real-world testability) itself.

I never would claim that science is omniscient and I myself am a critic of scientism. But it's implausible to deny the fact of scientific discoveries and principles. So we have to be able to grant science the considerable credit where it's due, without at the same time claiming that it is all-knowing, even in principle. — Wayfarer

Agreed.

Scientism points to the fact that science badly lacks humility. That is a fundamental problem. The scientific method does not allow them to know when they do not know. The method simply does not allow for self-awareness. That is why they are so delusional to believe that they know everything; which is obviously ridiculous.

Seriously, this impossibility of self-inquiry is an enormous flaw in the scientific method. As a result, the false belief in its own delusional omnipotence has been snowballing for centuries now, and has even gone mainstream as to infect the unwashed masses with this dangerous disease. For heaven's sake, who is going to save the delusional populace from their delusions? I do not think that it can be done.

In comparison, mathematics is incredibly humble.

While reasoning from its arbitrary starting points, mathematics admits that it is unable to answer many otherwise applicable questions about these arbitrary starting points. Gödel's discovery of this theorem turned him into one of the most admired grandees in the field. Furthermore, the formalist philosophy admits that on the whole a good mathematical theory is meaningless (has nothing to do with the real world) and useless (no direct application possible).