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"A movement needs a moral cause beyond glamorizing disbelief"

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ant

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Re: "A movement needs a moral cause beyond glamorizing disbelief"

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@Taylor

Did it come from my own mind?
Of course not. I dont have nearly enough intellectual strength for a thought like that.

Im still trying to understand "philosophers" like Dawkins and Harris.

It's part of a thesis by the philosopher of science Quine that stuck in my memory.

There's a misconception circulating that science provides an objective interpretation of reality.
In order for that claim to be taken literally, we first must examine its methods of reasoning

Quine and Feyerbend developed interesting philosophical theses that questions what otherwise would not be questioned.

Of course, each has his critics.
Everyone has.

Thinking critically of science is anathema for certain people.
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Re: "A movement needs a moral cause beyond glamorizing disbelief"

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ant wrote: Thinking critically of science is anathema for certain people.
Like who?

Unless you're talking about creationists, you've constructed an elaborate strawman about how people think evolution, or science in general, is some kind of certain, complete source of knowledge. But there is literally no one that you're arguing against.
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Re: "A movement needs a moral cause beyond glamorizing disbelief"

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Ant wrote:Thinking critically of science is anathema for certain people.
Without directly saying it you're likely referring to members of BookTalk.org currently participating in this discussion. And if you're not you should be more clear so that vague accusations like that aren't taken personally by people that don't deserve such an insult.

To me this sentence is illogical. You cannot practice the scientific method without thinking critically. Critical thinking is part of the scientific method.

Just because people disagree with your conclusions doesn't mean they didn't examine your ideas, and the ideas of science, with a critical eye.
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Re: "A movement needs a moral cause beyond glamorizing disbelief"

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I now I cant make general statements without clarifying precisely what or whom I am referring too?

Everyone here generalizes at some time or another.

I feel like am being softly censored now.

I admiti was too heavy handed yesterday. But now I have to specific in everything I say in order to avoid knee jerk reactions??

Id appreciate you clarifying what your expectations of me are Chris, and how it is you see that people here are always specific and how I am being problematic if I dont follow their lead.

Id appreciate it if youd do this by private message.

thanks
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Re: "A movement needs a moral cause beyond glamorizing disbelief"

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Dexter wrote:
ant wrote: Thinking critically of science is anathema for certain people.
Like who?

Unless you're talking about creationists, you've constructed an elaborate strawman about how people think evolution, or science in general, is some kind of certain, complete source of knowledge. But there is literally no one that you're arguing against.

I'm pretty sure you've been critical, in the positive sense, of scientific methodology. Honestly, I must have missed a post wherein you were.
Also, you've been here a bit longer than I have.

Having said that, can you link me to a post of yours wherein you spoke critically or questioned methodology.

If you do not feel like linking me to one, I'll accept that it's in the archives somewhere and I'll have to look on my own at some point.

Thanks.

By the way, do you have any thoughts on what I've said regarding Quine's thesis?

His work is complex and probably beyond me. I'd like to know your thoughts on his ambiguity of language arguments and its relationship to forming valid propositions.
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Re: "A movement needs a moral cause beyond glamorizing disbelief"

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Flann wrote:How can morals be determined by physical science?
Social sciences, soft sciences, not physical sciences. To understand how it's proposed, read Harris' book. I'm not saying he's definitely correct, but your dismissal is unwarranted.
Flann wrote:In his hyper-deterministic physics and chemistry world the very idea of spirituality and meaning seems absurd.
It's not absurd at all. Carrier did a good job covering this in his book. When you call determinism "hyper", does that make it more extreme and worthy of dismissal?
ant wrote:Actually, the objectivity you claim as being part of science is subject to the analyticity of its claims to truth.

but analyticity itself is dependent on synonymous agreement of terms used in an analytic statement.
Science can't turn an analytical eye to itself. That is what the philosophy of science is for, and is what we've engaged in since you've joined this forum. This is what Quine was doing when he wrote his article. The two dogmas of empiricism as Quine describes them are problematic because the only we have to communicate the findings of science is language. Language is imprecise and varies across cultures, not to mention an abstraction of something real(it will always have less information than what is referred to). This doesn't mean science isn't objective, in the way the term is understood within the philosophy of science.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analytic-synthetic/
ant wrote:How do you understand what Quine is saying about the falsity of analytic statements and their impact on knowledge claims?
Analytic propositions require the terms to be synonymous. But synonymity requires both words to refer to precisely the same thing. Quine calls this cognitive synonimity. This will never be truly resolved between people until we implant computers in our heads to give us exact definitions for all words, shared collectively. I don't even know if such a thing would be possible. By attacking the two dogmas of empiricism, Quine presents view of science that is more relativistic, or holistic. This paints a picture of scientific findings that is even stronger than that of the logical positivists.
Thinking critically of science is anathema for certain people.
Who do you have in mind? The philosophy of science is my favorite. I can vouch for every member on Booktalk that they think critically when it comes to science. That is the entire appeal of science, after all.
Having said that, can you link me to a post of yours wherein you spoke critically or questioned methodology.
Questioning the verbal structure of theories is not the same as questioning the scientific method. Both should be questioned, of course, but they are entirely different topics in the philosophy of science.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Re: "A movement needs a moral cause beyond glamorizing disbelief"

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ant wrote: I'm pretty sure you've been critical, in the positive sense, of scientific methodology. Honestly, I must have missed a post wherein you were.
Also, you've been here a bit longer than I have.

Having said that, can you link me to a post of yours wherein you spoke critically or questioned methodology.

If you do not feel like linking me to one, I'll accept that it's in the archives somewhere and I'll have to look on my own at some point.

Thanks.

By the way, do you have any thoughts on what I've said regarding Quine's thesis?

His work is complex and probably beyond me. I'd like to know your thoughts on his ambiguity of language arguments and its relationship to forming valid propositions.
I’m not offended by your strawman arguments by the way, I’m just going to call them out when I see them. I don’t think you’re going to find other people here arguing against claims that literally NO ONE holds. Most people naturally consider that a waste of time.

I’m not particularly critical of scientific methodology, but you don’t have to know much about the history and philosophy of science to know that it does not proceed ever perfectly into certain knowledge. Obviously there are issues such as the incentives for publishing, replicating studies, even fraud. If there were only 5 people who had worked on evolutionary theory, I’d be worried about it. But to quote Gould again, it would be perverse to withhold judgement on the basic facts of evolution, to use that as an example.

I happen to have read some Quine, he was a brilliant philosopher and I don’t claim to have much knowledge of his work. It seems he pretty much blew up the analytic/synthetic distinction, it’s interesting for philosophers but that is not really relevant for the kind of scientific facts and theory that we’re talking about. No one is claiming analytic truth for some claim, it would probably not be a very interesting claim.
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Re: "A movement needs a moral cause beyond glamorizing disbelief"

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Science can't turn an analytical eye to itself. That is what the philosophy of science is for, and is what we've engaged in since you've joined this forum. This is what Quine was doing when he wrote his article. The two dogmas of empiricism as Quine describes them are problematic because the only we have to communicate the findings of science is language. Language is imprecise and varies across cultures, not to mention an abstraction of something real(it will always have less information than what is referred to). This doesn't mean science isn't objective, in the way the term is understood within the philosophy of science.
Of course it means science is NOT an objective interpretation of realty.
Our interpretations of data, generated by propositions, are contextually based.

Language as a closed system is referential unto itself. It's the ambiguity of language that both limits the accuracy of our interpretations and is the cause of differences in conceptual references.
This doesn't mean science isn't objective, in the way the term is understood within the philosophy of science.
What is science?

We now have to question how you are defining science in order to separate it from our expressions that manifest it as a method of discovery.

Is it "proper method"?

Which method, then?

I liked your little beginning summary of Quine's "two dogmas"
That is correct and how I remember it.

I will have to look at it, but I try to speak without google by my side.
But, thank you for that.
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Re: "A movement needs a moral cause beyond glamorizing disbelief"

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Dexter wrote:


I happen to have read some Quine, he was a brilliant philosopher and I don’t claim to have much knowledge of his work. It seems he pretty much blew up the analytic/synthetic distinction, it’s interesting for philosophers but that is not really relevant for the kind of scientific facts and theory that we’re talking about. No one is claiming analytic truth for some claim, it would probably not be a very interesting claim.
Okay. And I can appreciate that you have. It's hard stuff.

Then what is scientific knowledge, defined as "objective"?

Interbane just wrote that before I posted.

Was he wrong, or not precise enough?
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Re: "A movement needs a moral cause beyond glamorizing disbelief"

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Taylor wrote:It will quite literally take me the remainder of my days to make heads or tails of this quote.
The landscape of philosophy grows more complex with each generation. As philosophers zoom in on concepts, they realize the concepts relate in different ways to other concepts, and that they have even further granularity. Zoom in again on these granular concepts, and they in turn have granularity. Each granule is a concept, with a term for it as well as it's relationship to other concepts, and learning even a portion of it takes a lifetime of study.

I don't fully know how the concepts fit together that ant was using, which is why my language was more general. My understanding is surface-level. Sometimes, the philosopher is so zoomed in that he loses the conceptual forest for the trees. Stating things simply is an art in philosophy. I'm just guessing, but I'd say ant also only has a surface level understanding of what he was talking about.

Something johnson once said has always stuck with me, even though I love philosophy. It's that philosophy is the "arm chair quarterbacking of reality". It's fun to zoom in, but it should always be done practically, and never lose focus of how these things mesh with our experience.
ant wrote:Of course it means science is NOT an objective interpretation of realty.
Of course not. Science is not an interpretation. It's a set of methods for examining the world. How the findings are expressed should be objective as possible. If you're speaking of the idealist version of objectivity, you won't find it. This is a bit different from the objective/subjective distinction as it's commonly applied.
We now have to question how you are defining science in order to separate it from our expressions that manifest it as a method of discovery.

Is it "proper method"?

Which method, then?
The goings-on here are not a reinvention of the wheel. The methods depend on the discipline. There are different methods in physics than in psychology, for example. There are also some methods that are general, meant to eliminate human bias in general across the entire enterprise.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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