Secular Humanism

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Whatever your personal attitude towards science and rational analysis, there is nothing outside the capability of science to examine and theorize about. Your insistence that there are fields that rationality cannot invade is a rather amusing personal arrogance but it seems rather deeply embedded in your personality and it is not for me to pursue that further.

No, it really doesn't. Science creates testable hypotheses about natural phenomena and tests them.

What you are describing is known as "psychology", what I am describing is not psychology. I am talking about an abstract philosophical field of study, which has nothing to do with science methodologically, and addresses a question that isn't necessarily very empirical. To conflate one with the other is just a deep and perverse confusion.


Dussel, the idea is wrong to the point of stupidity. I pointed to a number of fields that are non-scientific. Fields that by their very nature are humanities, and usually considered so by most individuals. In any case, how about this: the philosophy of science. How do you scientifically investigate the proper methods of scientific investigation? You can't. It would be circular. What about mathematics: a field that is a priori by nature? Not science. Logic? The same as math. And so on and so forth.


Morality isn't though, so it isn't a matter of science. Morality is a matter of abstract "rightness" or "wrongness" in human action, and is generally understood as such by ethicists, as far as I can tell. Morality refers to oughts, which are not derived from natural circumstances as pointed out by Hume. If scientists study natural circumstances, that which is, then by the Is-Ought problem, they do not get any special knowledge on morality, which invalidates both yours and Sand's scientism on the matter of morality.


Umm..... yes, there are, this is well established. Almost nobody disputes this matter. The issue of whether you have an invisible, incorporeal goblin sitting on your shoulder is indisputably outside of the realm of science due to it's lack of impact upon the natural world. The issue of whether or not space gnomes exist in another universe that we shall never have contact with is not a scientific question. The issue of whether or not heaven exists for souls is not a scientific question. The issue of whether spirits exist in rocks is not a scientific question. The issue of whether humanity has a grander purpose in this universe is not a scientific question. The nature of scientific knowledge is not a scientific question. Heck, all of those meta-scientific questions that invade the philosophy of science are by definition not scientific questions, because they are questions ABOUT science and how science should work, and to make them scientific questions would be ridiculously circular.

A personal arrogance? The fact that you ascribe personal arrogance to disagreements with your idiotic follies seems more like an annoyance deeply embedded into your own personality.

In any case, I think my point on this matter is reasonably clear, and I do not think that there is a single reason I have to budge on this matter to your rather fringe opinion that I regard as an outright category error and dead in the water from the very wretched start.

I'm terribly sorry, but you are in total error on the province of science since subjects upon which there is no confirmable data are still well within the capability of science to set up possible verifiable observations. The matter of a multiverse is one of those opportunities and that is now under serious investigation. Exobiology, whatever forms it postulates, is also a discipline that has, at the moment no verifiable examples but is quite active in respectable scientific circles. You would do well to examine some of the supposed impenetrable philosophical barriers you have erected in your outlook and discover how permeable they really are.
Philosophy, like theology, is, after all, one of the basic initial stirrings of human curiosity that start scientific inquiry but science , unlike philosophy and theology, is not satisfied with mere speculation but looks to the solidity of actual data input for confirmation. This last step is vital and is that which has granted the world the spectacular benefits of our technological civilization.

Science does not deny absolutely the possibilities that philosophy toys with but it assigns a level of probability to them and incoming data can elevate or depress this level of probability. But it all can be contained within the realm of science and whether or not it remains quiescent on a speculative shelf or not is dependent upon data and how this data can be incorporated within the mosaic of the many scientific fields.

Sand, almost every word of your is either in error, or misses the point so egregiously that I have to wonder if you aren't mentally handicapped. You hit the lowest hanging fruit I gave, and you still missed the point to some extent. And out of that list, there were some questions that you never addressed, but that were more clearly further away from science.

As for permeability? No, I disagree with your assessment. There are some matters that can only be speculative, because no amount of physical evidence can point to them due to the lack of physical data.

As for the reason why you persist in this folly? Well, I'd guess that the real issue on your part is just a worship of science, not any rational foundations at all. I mean, the statement "science can study all things" is beyond the realm of science to claim, but you still proclaim it, and you still promote a blatant idiocy and still somehow do not see it as so. I mean, I pointed out a second issue: the philosophy of science, which by definition cannot be science because science defining itself is utterly circular. I can also point to mathematics, which is a priori and thus speculative. I can point to the ontology of knowledge. I can point to philosophy of religion. I can point to a lot of things that almost everyone on all sides of the issue would consider not to be science, but still to be studies. This very discussion is not within the realm of science, since we are arguing about what is and isn't in the realm of science, a non-scientific question.

Long story short, you are wrong. You are wrong so obviously that your refusal to see this cannot be anything but a perverse obtuseness. I mean, you are engaging in an obvious self-contradiction by claiming that science includes the things that are defined as not being science, that are methodologically different than science by nature, and so on. You're just wrong. The fact that this question debated over isn't science is further proof that you are wrong and openly engaging in self-contradiction. I don't see the point in any further discussion, as I do not trust you to see how obviously and blatantly wrong you are, and I'd rather talk to a brick wall than you about this matter, as at least the brick wall is a better discussion partner.

I am sure that you would find a brick wall a much more amiable partner in discussion since you find challenges to your suppositions so discomforting and can merely cry out "wrong" when I pose that rational discussion is worthwhile in any area while a wall is comfortably mute. I wish you well in your walled up intellectual prison but it is unappealing to me.

Sand, do you think that science can solve - for instance - the problem of induction?

I assume you are posing a philosophical rather than an electrical or military problem. You will have to be more explicit as I am not familiar with the problem.

It is interesting that you describe someone as "worshipping" science for saying that it can be used to study all things, when your own attitude seems to be one of unthinking acceptance of and belief in science the label/value judgement as if it were something "real", ( other than a symbol ).

It is a label which is applied to information/activities/fields according to rules and specifications which change according to the value systems of the society at any time. And which even then is debated and disputed on a regular basis.

Nothing is science until it is declared to be science, but your references to it suggest that you believe it is some kind of immutable/absolute thing, rather than a term applied by consensus among a fairly small group of people, who, ( like the Catholic church in the middle ages controlling what received the label of religion ), hold a lot of power as a result.
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Last edited by ouinon on 17 May 2009, 8:50 am, edited 3 times in total.

Sorry, I should have been. I forgot that there are many meanings of induction. Yes it's a philosophical problem. Wikipedia - Problem of Induction.

Insofar as I can figure what you are interested in the process of reasoning where a general assumption is acquired from a series of consistent observations. For example, if the Sun has risen in the morning ever since human history has been aware of day and night is it reasonable to assume it will do so forever? One might think so if one were not aware of the reasons for sunrise or that the rising of the Sun is merely our perception of the rotation of the planet before a glowing star. From other sources we are aware that the rotation of the Earth is a rather long temporary affair and the Sun's capability to produce light is permanent only to our extremely short presence in the universe. In due time the Earth will not only slow its spin but eventually fall into the Sun and the energy that powers the Sun has a very long but eventually limited life. In other words a small series of observations is insufficient to declare permanence.
Induction is obviously a useful and necessary procedure in the pursuit of knowledge but general principles must be proposed from a series of individual observations and then deduction from these principles must be further tested to affirm a more solid base of understanding. But the progress of scientific understanding never declares absolute permanence to any principle. It is frequent scientific experience that instances are revealed over time of violations of assumed principles and this usually opens new understandings of the nature of the interactions of matter and forces in the universe. This is what makes science so useful and fascinating.

One of the beauties of science is that it raises more questions than it answers. Never a dull moment and work to be done forever and forever. Compare that with the lock-boxes of philosophy and religion. Philosophy and Religion imprison the mind and spirit. Science liberates them.

ruveyn

Science is not perfect and doesn't claim to be. Religion doesn't solve the problem of induction. I fail to see how absolutism is better relativism for that.

God of the gaps............

A better example of that sort for what I'm wondering about would be perhaps:

I cast chemical x into a vat of water.
Upon the chemical x contacting the water, the vat explodes.
Process is repeated tousands of times by many different people in many different places.
Conclusion: chemical x contacting water causes explosion.

As far as I'm aware, it would be considered fact that chemical x causes this explosion, and the scientific community (assuming such a thing, as a whole, exists) would use this fact as a stepping-stone onto further knowledge. That is not to say that this would never again be reviewed, but if it is considered to survive all scrutiny it will be accepted. This can only be accepted, though, if inductive reasoning is considered an okay thing to do.



But the point of the problem of induction is that there is no way to make any induction without first making the assumption that inductions work. So induction cannot be a useful tool for scienctific inquiry if one wants to be so pure with their science as to accept nothing unless it can be scientifically proven (unless, of course, one has a scientific proof of induction).



Inductions do not have to be a declaration of permenance. I could induce from seeing a bus pass my house each Wednesday at 4.00pm for five years that the current bus timetable schedules a bus in such a way as to cause it to pass my house at 4.00pm. In doing this I'm not assuming that a bus will pass my house at this time for all of eternity.

~

I appreciate all this you have said above, but it's not what I was trying to ask for. We use inductive reasoning a lot in nonscientific settings.

I was thinking more about the fact that if I was to say that male blackbirds are black birds, you would agree. Why? Because we accept have seen male blackbirds and they have all been black. We're making an induction and it's ok to make. Why? Can science tell us? Science must be able to tell us, if your belief that there is not a question outside of the scope of scientific enquiry is a correct one.


EDIT



Sand said that science had a scope which extended to all problems, as far as I understand it. So I was asking about Sand's view. I agree with what you have just said.



I'm sorry, I do not understand, where is the relevance of this to anything I have said?

By inferance

You have entirely bamboozled me now. What?