I'm not a scientist man!

[DinoDoc]

What on earth could be more important than gauging a representative's state of mental acuity?

Asking questions that actually matter? Topics like the economy and foreign policy? I couldn't give a rat's arse what a person who has no real influence on the educational curriculum of the States believes as a personal matter. Should Obama be asked at every interview what his opinion of the fate of abortion survivors should be?

Spoiler :

For the record, he voted against a state bill to require assistance be provided to any infant that was born — even if it was as a consequence of an induced abortion.

I want someone who decides climate change policy to be conversant with some facts regarding natural history.

Then for God's sake, ask about ing global warming rather than waste the reader's time asking irrelevant questions about Creationism.

 

[Angst]

before i say anything in this post, i'd like to put out there that you guys are all marvellous and that this thread has some really good nuggets in between

Is science something that philosophy can study in any meaningful way? Apparently not.

[...]

The role of philosophy in science is much like the role of religion. It is basically useless and for the most part non-existent.

hahahaha wat

i get that you were discussing with global skeptic but these statements in isolation are... not very respectable

I'm sorry for the triple post, but I have a genuine question to proponents of teaching the controversy. Do you agree with placing this sticker on evolution books in schools?

the video you posted, and Miller's points about that sticker, is excellent. i'm enjoying it right now

Not homeschooled currently but was homeschooled for several years.

Honestly curious, how would that relate to this discussion and why?

he was trying to rationalize your quite questionable views on what to teach children

Intelligent design as a theory is rubbish anyway. If animals were designed then it certainly wasn't intelligently.

holy crap that Route of the vas deferens thing looks awkward. is that really inside me!? it scares me

Deists?

deism doesn't necessiate evolution actually, some conceptualize the inactivity of the deus as after humans were created...

The Creationist spotlight

banana

 

[Andvare]

holy crap that Route of the vas deferens thing looks awkward. is that really inside me!? it scares me

If you like that, then the video of the dissection of the laryngeal nerve in a giraffe would probably be interesting too. Be warned though, that it is an actual giraffe neck that is being dissected.


There is, as you would know, some benefits in living in Denmark. A YEC would probably not be elected into office. On the other hand, I really wish we would have an actual separation of church and state.

 

[Angst]

You from Denmark too?

I have nothing intrinsically against the fact that state and church isn't separated. It brings peace to some people; welfare is about people feeling good, after all. If there is some Benthamian way of analyzing the cost-effeciency of happiness provided by the taxated subsidies to the church, I could more easily support the policy. It's like how parts of our high school subsidies are spent on high school parties; it's state-paid entertainment, in the end.

It's not a topic I'm hellbent on one way or the other, really, it's just something that's never really discussed.

I'm all for stopping subsidizing the monarchy, however. Sure, they should still be kings, they just shouldn't get the support. It would actually be a really awesome situation; they're royal, but like the rest of the population.

 

[Andvare]

You from Denmark too?

I have nothing intrinsically against the fact that state and church isn't separated. It brings peace to some people; welfare is about people feeling good, after all. If there is some Benthamian way of analyzing the cost-effeciency of happiness provided by the taxated subsidies to the church, I could more easily support the policy. It's like how parts of our high school subsidies are spent on high school parties; it's state-paid entertainment, in the end.

It's not a topic I'm hellbent on one way or the other, really, it's just something that's never really discussed.

You do make a good point, I must grant you that. However, I really dislike the way that not all religions benefit equally, and that I cannot choose not to pay to the church, even though I can choose to not be a member.

I'm all for stopping subsidizing the monarchy, however. Sure, they should still be kings, they just shouldn't get the support. It would actually be a really awesome situation; they're royal, but like the rest of the population.

That would be something.

(Yeah, I'm Danish, the nationality that is, not the pastry.)

 

[Angst]

The issue of paying tax to something you're not part of nor support is heftily discussed by certain members on these forums, as you know. I can manage paying that little extra bit; the support I get in return is plentily fine. Being a student subsidized by the non-studying citizens fx. I can manage to pay taxes in return.

I see the church as slowly disappearing, of course. Not just through slow pressure on the subsidies, but because of a growing atheist tendency, some aggressive progressives and the growing Muslim population. The institution of Denmark as a monoreligious and monocultural nation state is dwindling, and I'm actually ok with that. That will, most possibly, cause the church as an institution to eventually disappear.

I mean, pragmatically, rationally I'm against state subsidies to the church. I'm merely for it emotionally, if people are for it emotionally. So yay if people will stop wanting it to exist and decide to have it abolished. Until then, if people want it to exist, let it exist. That's democracy for ya.

 

[Formaldehyde]

hahahaha wat

i get that you were discussing with global skeptic but these statements in isolation are... not very respectablea

That's not all that surprising since you are apparently not a scientist, man.

What role do you think religion and philosophy actually play in day-to-day science besides none? That is, outside of ethics as I specifically mentioned in that paragraph.

Speaking of which, why didn't you quote my entire statement instead of deliberately taking it out of context "in isolation"?

Is science something that philosophy can study in any meaningful way? Apparently not. Once you get outside the realm of the ethics of science, it would seem to be just so much sophistry and resentment that science has supplanted philosophy in the study of the natural world since the use of the scientific method became predominant. That is, if Feyerabend is any indication.

It leads to such absurd statements as this:

The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's doctrine. Its verdict against Galileo was rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for motives of political opportunism.[2][3][4]

 

[Global Skeptic]

That's not all that surprising since you are apparently not a scientist, man.

What role do you think religion and philosophy actually play in day-to-day science besides none? That is, outside of ethics as I specifically mentioned in that paragraph.

Speaking of which, why didn't you quote my entire statement instead of deliberately taking it out of context?

Okay, can the scientific method be used as an actual ethical system?
If, yes, explain how.
If, no, then ethics is either not a part of reality or the scientific method can't be used on all of reality.

 

[Angst]

because my thoughts were about galileo

i admit i misread your post tho. thought it was humaniora-bashing. my brain is tired.

that said, much high-level science is actually said to be pseudo-philosophy by the physicists i know. and from what i understand they tell me about, they're actually right.

i think you're understating what philosophy really is. just because it's branched doesn't mean there are remnants of philosophy in its branches. scientific fields - especially the theoretical ones - are not exceptions.

the standard philosophy degree? yes, it's useless in science. but one of my friends is actually going to begin a scientific philosophy degree next semester. it's named scientific theory or somesuch and is basically about the framework in which the method exists. then of course it branches into whatever he sees interest in.

edit: ethics have nothing to do with it really

 

[Global Skeptic]

because my thoughts were about galileo

i admit i misread your post tho. thought it was humaniora-bashing. my brain is tired.

that said, much high-level science is actually said to be pseudo-philosophy by the physicists i know. and from what i understand they tell me about, they're actually right.

i think you're understating what philosophy really is. just because it's branched doesn't mean there are remnants of philosophy in its branches. scientific fields - especially the theoretical ones - are not exceptions.

the standard philosophy degree? yes, it's useless in science. but one of my friends is actually going to begin a scientific philosophy degree next semester. it's named scientific theory or somesuch and is basically about the framework in which the method exists. then of course it branches into whatever he sees interest in.

edit: ethics have nothing to do with it really

I have no problem with science as such The problem starts when people believe it can explain reality as such. I.e. from the fact that the scientific method works on parts of reality, doesn't follow it works on all

 

[Angst]

that depends on what you mean by that

science is horrible when implemented as a method upon the humanities for exactly

soft sciences are difficult too

 

[Global Skeptic]

that depends on what you mean by that

science is horrible when implemented as a method upon the humanities for exactly

soft sciences are difficult too

Can you determine with the scientific method, whether an act is morally/ethically right or wrong?

 

[Angst]

I have a quite certain position on ethics that makes answering that question a problem. I don't think much of them; they're abstractly fine but in applied form inherently messy. It's nice that philosophers bash about it and weigh different implications of things, but in the end, philosophy failed creating an ethical system (ie a system which objectively determines the rightfulness or wrongfulness of something). I am amoral myself and reject the use of any of these; the only sustainable system I've encountered is the Nietzschean, and it's kind of insane in most applications.

But anyways... A thing "being right or wrong" - that distinction isn't actually "real". It's rather abstract. Of course the scientific method has issues with that. So no, scientific method can't do that. It requires concrete, real results.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I'm not really sure what scientific philosophy means. Is it another buzzword for experimental philosophy? If so, it isn't really science at all. It is philosophy which uses empirical data.

And you can't get much more "real" than the realm of science. Ethics really has nothing to do with basic scientific research. It only really pertains to the application of science, or actually the misapplication of it. Trying to apply ethics to basic scientific research leads to such absurdities as banning stem cell research.

 

[Angst]

I'm not sure what to make of that sentence (That science's realm is the "most real") but yeah science doesn't really consider abstract values as something you can apply its method to.

Even the ethics of scientific method has very little to do with scientific method, I think. Thinking of scientific method as a tool, say, a hammer, to try to understand a nail, ethics is nothing but the glove between the hand and the hammer. The hammer is the method, not the glove, the hand or the nail.

Wow that got a little far out. Was I in any way understandable?

 

[Andvare]

That's not all that surprising since you are apparently not a scientist, man.

What role do you think religion and philosophy actually play in day-to-day science besides none? That is, outside of ethics as I specifically mentioned in that paragraph.

Speaking of which, why didn't you quote my entire statement instead of deliberately taking it out of context "in isolation"?

You do know that science today is based on philosophy, right?
Natural science mostly uses positivism, while other, softer, sciences move beyond that.
While natural sciences does not bother itself all that much with philosophy, partly because it has math to do its talking, it does not mean that philosophy has nothing to give to science, especially the softer ones, which would be lost without it.

 

[Formaldehyde]

It is based on philosophy just as much as any other academic topic is. But the bottom line is that it really has no more applicability to modern science anymore. Scientists are no longer natural philosophers, and they haven't been since the advent of modern scientific methodology. The disciplines are completely separated and have been for centuries now. The only aspect which is directly applicable is basic logic.

The "soft" sciences really aren't science at all to a large extent, which is why they continue to be so dependent upon philosophy.

 

[Crezth]

@Andvare: Erm, that's nice and all, but other than being a preachy platitude doesn't really answer Formy's question. That being: what can philosophy offer science today? I'm sure he is well aware of modern science's roots in the philosophical methods, but that really has little bearing on whether or not the next Socrates can tell us about the states of subatomic particles.

Science insofar as it is institutionalized has nailed down the epistemology. I don't think it has any particular need for pondering the origin of the universe from logical abstractions, especially not when it is getting to the point that it can do that via materialism.

 

[Andvare]

Okay, can the scientific method be used as an actual ethical system?
If, yes, explain how.
If, no, then ethics is either not a part of reality or the scientific method can't be used on all of reality.

I'd say that ethics is not a part of objective reality, but is a construct of our created reality.
That does not make it less important, or less real for that matter.

However because it is constructed, we might be able to figure out how it was constructed.


(BTW, I really preferred your other title. While a Prince that is against war, is kinda funny, a Warlord that is against war is hilarious.)

 

[Andvare]

It is based on philosophy just as much as any other academic topic is. But the bottom line is that it really has no more applicability to modern science anymore. Scientists are no longer natural philosophers, and they haven't been since the advent of modern scientific methodology. The disciplines are completely separated and have been for centuries now. The only aspect which is directly applicable is basic logic.

The "soft" sciences really aren't science at all to a large extent, which is why they continue to be so dependent upon philosophy.

That is BS.
As long as they use the scientific method, they are as scientific as physics. Or how would you propose you measure how science-y they are?

@Andvare: Erm, that's nice and all, but other than being a preachy platitude doesn't really answer Formy's question. That being: what can philosophy offer science today? I'm sure he is well aware of modern science's roots in the philosophical methods, but that really has little bearing on whether or not the next Socrates can tell us about the states of subatomic particles.

Science insofar as it is institutionalized has nailed down the epistemology. I don't think it has any particular need for pondering the origin of the universe from logical abstractions, especially not when it is getting to the point that it can do that via materialism.

The softer sciences have a hard time applying a mathematical structure to their fields because the fields are so chaotic.
To compensate they use other structures, structures that comes from philosophy. These have been continually changed (and at least partly improved), even in this millennia.

The softer sciences are less precise than the natural sciences, but that does not make them non-sciences, otherwise the only science that would exists, is physics or math depending on your POV.

To claim that philosophy has nothing to give to science, is as ignorant as claiming that there is nothing left to discover in physics. It might even be true, but that does not make it less ignorant.