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Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 11:17 am
by Interbane
Robert: "Well, with the greatest of due respect, Burton is wrong. Evolution is absolutely 100% certain."

Unfortunately it's not. I believe it with absolute certainty, but that is my belief. You believe the same I see. The reality is, we must maintain that there is for example, one in a billion to the billionth power that there is a chance that we've missed something that will throw a wrench in the theoretical gears. If you can prove absolutely that we aren't merely avatars in the video game of advanced aliens, you'd reduce that fraction by a small amount, but it would still not be an absolute certainty.

Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 6:41 pm
by Robert Tulip
Interbane wrote:If you can prove absolutely that we aren't merely avatars in the video game of advanced aliens, you'd reduce that fraction by a small amount, but it would still not be an absolute certainty.
I know where you are coming from with the modern Cartesian myth of the deceiving demon and Hume's stupid idea that maybe the sun will not rise tomorrow. My point is that this 0.001% is a big enough crack to open up a modern nihilism in which we do not have faith in our senses. I would rather say, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed you can move mountains, but that faith should be in science not in superstition. Creationists have that superstitious faith which is why they have the courage of their convictions. Rationalists also need faith in the power of evidence. The stakes are too high to accept that maybe science is wrong.

Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 9:16 pm
by DWill
Robert Tulip wrote: I would rather say, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed you can move mountains, but that faith should be in science not in superstition. Creationists have that superstitious faith which is why they have the courage of their convictions. Rationalists also need faith in the power of evidence. The stakes are too high to accept that maybe science is wrong.
It seems a bit odd to me to bring the language of religion into science. Does knowledge have to be understood as absolute knowledge anyway, in order to be useful to us? And maybe a good thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the research in science carries a certainty of way less than 99.99%. Any good scientist, I think, will accept that maybe his science is wrong. Remember also that the evolution/cosmology question is only one area of application for science.
DWill

Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 9:59 pm
by Interbane
DWill: "Does knowledge have to be understood as absolute knowledge anyway, in order to be useful to us?"


That's a good rhetorical question, and I agree with the answer.

Robert: "...Hume's stupid idea that maybe the sun will not rise tomorrow."

What's so stupid about that?

Robert: "...that faith should be in science not in superstition."

I had a debate a few years ago on this forum with MadArchitect about faith. After many pages, we agreed that there should be a distinction with regards to defining faith. There is "simple faith", which is our faith in our senses, and faith in those things that are almost utter certainties(the sun will come up tomorrow). Simple faith should be had at all times to avoid entering that endless deconstructionist nihilism.

Then there's "complex faith", which is a faith in an ideology, theology, person, etc. In this sense, faith alone is useless. A foundation of reasoning, evidence, facts, etc. must first be built. Since this foundation alone lacks absolute certainty, faith is the glue that we have to hold it together. The whole that is created allows us to trust, and allows us to have confidence.

If there are foundational gaps too large, or there isn't enough of a foundation, faith is again useless. I see a gaping chasm in religion, but since the central tenet of religion is faith, it's pushed down peoples throats so mush that they build a bridge with it to span the chasm.

Robert: "The stakes are too high to accept that maybe science is wrong."

Are you assuming a dichotomy, where science is either right or wrong? Perhaps some of the conclusions we arrive at via the scientific method may be wrong, but the fact that we have advanced technology says that at the very least, the scientific method is successful at coming within close proximity to the truth by eliminating what is false. The truth of science could be thought of as being on a sliding scale rather than simply a dichotomy. I'll add that I think it's bumping elbows with the truth end of that scale based on its results.

Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 12:12 am
by Robert Tulip
DWill wrote:Does knowledge have to be understood as absolute knowledge anyway, in order to be useful to us? And maybe a good thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the research in science carries a certainty of way less than 99.99%. Any good scientist, I think, will accept that maybe his science is wrong. Remember also that the evolution/cosmology question is only one area of application for science. DWill
Yes, much is uncertain, as Burton shows, but that is no reason to doubt the certainty of things that are certain, eg the basics of evolution and celestial mechanics. My point is that we should build a foundation for thought upon the certainties which have been discovered by our amazing modern minds. Leaving open a sophistical chink of doubt may seem logical but it gives a moral room to believers in superstition which I feel is unwarranted.
It seems a bit odd to me to bring the language of religion into science.
The mustard seed faith line is from Matthew 17:20. What I am advocating is an evolution of scientific thought away from total skepticism towards a recognition that science connects us to the absolute. I am deliberately merging the mythic ideas of science and religion here to present an integrated worldview, because the rejection of religious language by scientists seems to be a significant factor in public indifference towards scientific knowledge. A bit of well based fervour doesn't necessarily go astray. Another great line from JC is from John 15:1 "I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener." The way I interpret this in scientific terms is that Christ is like an artery connecting human existence to absolute truth, ie to the nature of the universe. Jesus does not even need to exist for this line to be meaningful (although I think he does). It is about understanding the structure of the relation between human spirituality and the cosmos through the mythic identity of the Christ idea as an archetype of human perfection.

Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 1:07 am
by Interbane
Robert: "Leaving open a sophistical chink of doubt may seem logical but it gives a moral room to believers in superstition which I feel is unwarranted."

It seems you're indirectly admitting absolute truth isn't attainable, yet we should overlook this admission to circumvent superstitious proposals. Knowing something yet believing differently doesn't fly for me.

Robert: "What I am advocating is an evolution of scientific thought away from total skepticism towards a recognition that science connects us to the absolute."

Science proves nothing absolutely true, no matter how much you might wish it. It only proves things wrong. What is left of any given target of experimentation is then a fair approximation of the truth. The workings of the scientific method may appear skeptical in nature, but on closer examination it's little more than trial and error. If something fails, document it as false and try something else. If the results of an experiment finally correspond exactly to the hypothesis, the resulting theory still isn't considered absolutely true. It's considered "as of yet not able to be disproven". There is a huge difference.

"The way I interpret this in scientific terms is that Christ is like an artery connecting human existence to absolute truth, ie to the nature of the universe."

You used scientific terms, but the sentence as a whole pulls those terms out of context via analogy, and the sentence remains entirely religious. You're coming very close to abusing the meaning of science in an attempt at a marriage between science and religion.

Falsifying Popper

Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 4:39 am
by Robert Tulip
Interbane wrote:It seems you're indirectly admitting absolute truth isn't attainable, yet we should overlook this admission to circumvent superstitious proposals. Knowing something yet believing differently doesn't fly for me.
Your use of the word 'attainable' is worth exploring further. I do think absolute truth is attainable, but only by junking the baleful assumptions of logical positivism. Positivist disciples of Hume and Popper say they "know" that it is possible that all human history is an alien dream. I argue such "knowledge" is absurd. The fact that I cannot "prove" that our planet exists to your exalted standards of positivist faith indicates that I am suggesting different standards for knowledge. There is a good discussion of related issues in Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, where he argues that human 'being in the world' is a necessary assumption for thought and so is unproveable without a leap into circular reasoning. This assumption that we exist operates rather like Euclid's axioms in geometry. Of course Euclid's axioms about lines and points are contestable, but they remain a very useful working model for many purposes in geometry. I am arguing that the axiom that absolute truth is attainable is similarly useful, including as a strategy to circumvent superstitious proposals, in your felicitous phrase.
Science proves nothing absolutely true, no matter how much you might wish it. It only proves things wrong. What is left of any given target of experimentation is then a fair approximation of the truth. The workings of the scientific method may appear skeptical in nature, but on closer examination it's little more than trial and error. If something fails, document it as false and try something else. If the results of an experiment finally correspond exactly to the hypothesis, the resulting theory still isn't considered absolutely true. It's considered "as of yet not able to be disproven". There is a huge difference.
Your faith in Popper's dogmatic skepticism is touching. (For others, Interbane is repeating the so-called falsificationist theory of the widely influential philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper.) I think Popper's theory is crap. What about the successes of science? Sorry, but science has found that planets travel in ellipses, and used this knowledge to send probes to the far reaches of the solar system. If the knowledge was false we would not have close up pictures of Saturn. Case closed. Sure, we don't know everything, but what we do know is true. If we are not sure it is not knowledge. If it is true it cannot be falsified. If we know we know. You are arguing there is no such thing as knowledge. That is silly.
You're coming very close to abusing the meaning of science in an attempt at a marriage between science and religion.
"The meaning of science" deserves abuse if dogmatic Popperians use it to claim there is no certainty in the world. The way I see it, David Hume developed theories which were useful two hundred years ago as part of a rational critique of dogmatic religion, but his ideas have now fossilised into a new scientific dogma, which it seems you believe. My God, you aren't even sure that the earth goes around the sun!! How timid can you get? If my views are heretical to the religion of scientism then so be it. Following Hegel, we can say that Hume presented reason as the antithesis of faith, and what is now required is a synthetic integration between faith and reason.

Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 3:25 pm
by Penelope
Robert...I want to post something here to support your very erudite argument towards faith.

And maybe...someone will read this and rejoice.....

You are obviously a very educated, and thinking, feeling person.

There are those on this forum..who are thinking...but ignoring the feeling..

I have, honestly learned a lot on here....I have learned to take more into account 'facts'....I have learned to reject preconceived notions.

But, none-the-less....there is something more about us than flesh and blood, more than the five senses.....
We are something more....

Re: Falsifying Popper

Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 4:00 pm
by DWill
Robert Tulip wrote: If the knowledge was false we would not have close up pictures of Saturn. Case closed. Sure, we don't know everything, but what we do know is true. If we are not sure it is not knowledge. If it is true it cannot be falsified. If we know we know. You are arguing there is no such thing as knowledge. That is silly.
I didn't hear that argument (that there is no such thing as knowledge) being made, and I don't think it's even implied. I think you're using quite a special definition of knowledge, possibly with a theological element. Knowledge in the everyday world is working knowledge. We can use knowledge even if we don't understand everything about a subject. We may understand more about it later, or understand it differently. There is no need to wonder whether or not it is "absolute" knowledge. The proof lies in results, as I think Interbane said, and if one feels the need to declare that results prove that nothing about a piece of knowledge will ever change or be added to (which the word absolute implies), one can do so, but at some peril, it seems to me. The height of Mt. Everest has been revised a couple of times; who's to say it couldn't be again?

The theory of evolution represents knowledge that we have applied in many ways. Yes, it is perverse to deny the reality of the concept. We still don't know, though, many particulars about the workings of evolution. It is hardly "case closed" from that point of view. What to do about people who won't listen to reason concerning the basic concept, I have no idea.

A theory seeks to be the best explanation that we have for complex phenomena. In saying that it is just that--the best available explanation--we in no way imply any doubt about the report of our senses. The evidence for the theory was composed of such reports.

Re: Falsifying Popper

Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 5:50 pm
by Robert Tulip
DWill wrote:
Robert Tulip wrote: If the knowledge was false we would not have close up pictures of Saturn. Case closed. Sure, we don't know everything, but what we do know is true. If we are not sure it is not knowledge. If it is true it cannot be falsified. If we know we know. You are arguing there is no such thing as knowledge. That is silly.
I didn't hear that argument (that there is no such thing as knowledge) being made, and I don't think it's even implied. I think you're using quite a special definition of knowledge, possibly with a theological element. Knowledge in the everyday world is working knowledge. We can use knowledge even if we don't understand everything about a subject. We may understand more about it later, or understand it differently. There is no need to wonder whether or not it is "absolute" knowledge. The proof lies in results, as I think Interbane said, and if one feels the need to declare that results prove that nothing about a piece of knowledge will ever change or be added to (which the word absolute implies), one can do so, but at some peril, it seems to me. The height of Mt. Everest has been revised a couple of times; who's to say it couldn't be again? The theory of evolution represents knowledge that we have applied in many ways. Yes, it is perverse to deny the reality of the concept. We still don't know, though, many particulars about the workings of evolution. It is hardly "case closed" from that point of view. What to do about people who won't listen to reason concerning the basic concept, I have no idea. A theory seeks to be the best explanation that we have for complex phenomena. In saying that it is just that--the best available explanation--we in no way imply any doubt about the report of our senses. The evidence for the theory was composed of such reports.
Thanks DWill. I am suggesting a more conventional use of the term 'absolute' than you describe. For example, it is absolutely true that Australia and the USA both border the Pacific Ocean. It is not about a mystical vision of ultimate totality, just a simple statement of fact. All facts are absolutely true. To the extent claims are not absolutely true, they are not facts. So the claim that Mount Everest is exactly 29028 feet tall (a factoid that I dredge from childhood memory) cannot be described in any sense as absolute, especially since Everest has grown higher since then. Nor is some of the detail of how evolution operates known with absolute certainty. But the facts that Everest is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, and that life evolves by natural selection, are absolutely true. The claim that all knowledge is provisional does imply an unwarranted level of uncertainty