L0rca; 1, Preacher; 0.

[l0rca]

I got into an internet argument with a Theologian/Preacher sort of guy the other day on my website. I wrote about consciousness, and he responded, and the argument quickly went into epistemology.

http://theheliotrope.wordpress.com/2007/08/18/a-point-about-consciousness/

Anyway, I think I gave him a spanking. But I wouldn't be surprised, by his last brief reply, if he thought he was still completely right.

One of the highlights:

Consider axiom reasoning the best way we might have to weigh the value of different systems which model the world around us. You ask yourself: what about the axioms I derive my models from is most essential to my models? Or ask: could I replace my axioms with completely different ones and still arrive with the same rationalization for my model?

You can replace any spiritual idea for another, and arrive with the same rationalized consistency for noumena and phenomena. The same level of prediction remains, and its falsifiability remains vaguely in the dark.

Falsifiability and prediction are of course values based on scientific axioms, and their worth is not communicable to spiritualism — but axiom reasoning is. We can always ask ourselves if we can arrive at the same conclusions we have if we switched up our axioms. In science we can not do this, and it is the need for falsifiability and prediction that hold us above rationalizations that can fall among any other set of axioms. Science has more rigor, and less and less can its reasonings be compromised.

Falsifiability and prediction are myths that science perpetuates. Science, like any other cultural system, is self-fulfilling. It sees what it wants to see.


What do you people think? Anyone have any thoughts about the original post? He claims the idea about consciousness is "bleak". I think it is huge and vast; just because it does not compliment our autonomous intuitions about consciousness does not mean that nature itself has not developed an intricate and beautiful way to craft our thinking selves.

[geni]

In science we can not do this, and it is the need for falsifiability and prediction that hold us above rationalizations that can fall among any other set of axioms. Science has more rigor, and less and less can its reasonings be compromised.

Hmm you got as far as Popper but missed Lakatos and Feyerabend .

[l0rca]

Hmm you got as far as Popper but missed Lakatos and Feyerabend .

You're definitely right. I don't know who those two are.

Go on and tell about them.

[GeeMack]

Falsifiability and prediction are myths that science perpetuates. Science, like any other cultural system, is self-fulfilling. It sees what it wants to see.If he's willing to hold to such a ludicrous caricature of what science is actually all about, there seems little chance that he can effectively understand anything else you might have said.

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Originally Posted by Him
Falsifiability and prediction are myths that science perpetuates. Science, like any other cultural system, is self-fulfilling. It sees what it wants to see.

And Him is posting to you on the Internet?

By their fruits you shall know them. Matthew 7: 15-16

[cyborg]

Falsifiability and prediction are myths that science perpetuates. Science, like any other cultural system, is self-fulfilling. It sees what it wants to see.

Translation: that is devastating to my assertions. I will therefore pretend it comes down to an arbitrary choice but that somehow my choice is arbitrarily better.

[geni]

You're definitely right. I don't know who those two are.

Go on and tell about them.

I think trying to explain 50 years worth of arguments over the philosophy of science is slightly beyond me.

Feyerabend is Paul Feyerabend the guy behind scientific anarchism. Not to useful as a method athough it provides a reasonable description of scientific history.

Imre Lakatos has his Research Programme philosophy. To an extent it tries to sit between Popper Feyerabend. The problem is that it would be extreamly hard to apply in practice and it really only fits scientific history because of the elements of scientific anarchism it includes. I would argue it is however more useable than Thomas Kuhn's paradigm shift stuff which is rather depressing.

[jimlintott]

Originally Posted by Him
Falsifiability and prediction are myths that science perpetuates. Science, like any other cultural system, is self-fulfilling. It sees what it wants to see.

I wonder if he realizes how many scientific discoveries were accidental, like penicillin?

I wonder if he could explain how an accidental discovery is self-fulfilling?

[geni]

Originally Posted by Him


I wonder if he realizes how many scientific discoveries were accidental, like penicillin?

I wonder if he could explain how an accidental discovery is self-fulfilling?

Oh that one is fairly trivial. At the time germ theory was the dominant theory. If the dominant theory of illness had still be vital force based the discovery that certian types of mold killed bacteria would not have been considered to be of any real significance.

[l0rca]

I think trying to explain 50 years worth of arguments over the philosophy of science is slightly beyond me.

Feyerabend is Paul Feyerabend the guy behind scientific anarchism. Not to useful as a method athough it provides a reasonable description of scientific history.

Imre Lakatos has his Research Programme philosophy. To an extent it tries to sit between Popper Feyerabend. The problem is that it would be extreamly hard to apply in practice and it really only fits scientific history because of the elements of scientific anarchism it includes. I would argue it is however more useable than Thomas Kuhn's paradigm shift stuff which is rather depressing.

How about some reading material? <3

[Dr Adequate]

The obvious question, then, is how he explains

(1) The historical fact that scientists change their mind when presented with evidence.

(2) The success of science. I don't see any other "cultural systems" which "see what they want to see" putting men on the moon, or abolishing smallpox, or splitting the atom, or sequencing the human genome.

"The priests used to say that faith can move mountains, and nobody believed them. Today the scientists say that they can level mountains, and nobody doubts them." - Joseph Campbell

[geni]

How about some reading material? <3

What Is This Thing Called Science? is fairly popular if slightly agender driven.

[geni]

The obvious question, then, is how he explains

(1) The historical fact that scientists change their mind when presented with evidence.

Not consitantly. Sometimes they do sometimes they do not. Comeing up with a working model of when and why is kinda tricky.

For example there was a time when our best model of how the whole big bang thing worked resulted in a situation where some stars appeared to be older than the universe. When presented with this evidence did scientists adopt a different theory?


(2) The success of science. I don't see any other "cultural systems" which "see what they want to see" putting men on the moon, or abolishing smallpox, or splitting the atom, or sequencing the human genome.

Putting men on the moon can for the most part be done with Newtonian physics so scientists could have gone for the Einstein or Newtonian model and it wouldn't have mattered much.

You can split the atom using Rutherford’s model of the atom.

Sequencing the human genome is only meaningful if you accept that DNA rather than protiens are the carriers of gentic information (I think protiens were the competeing theory back in the 30s) and in any case it probably isn't posible to complete useing current technology.

The success of science is rather hard to argue with but only untill the question moves onto why it is sucessful.


"The priests used to say that faith can move mountains, and nobody believed them. Today the scientists say that they can level mountains, and nobody doubts them." - Joseph Campbell

You are aware that there is a nuclear weapons are not real conspiracy theory right?

[ponderingturtle]

Oh that one is fairly trivial. At the time germ theory was the dominant theory. If the dominant theory of illness had still be vital force based the discovery that certian types of mold killed bacteria would not have been considered to be of any real significance.

Look at Ignaz Semmelweis as the example of this, he showed that hand washing lowered the maternal death rate from as high as 35% to less than 1%, but it was still not accepted, at least at the time.

[ponderingturtle]

You can split the atom using Rutherford’s model of the atom.


But why would you and how would you know what isotopes to use?

[geni]

But why would you

Because it's there. Rutherford got as far as the transmutation of nitrogen into oxygen.


and how would you know what isotopes to use?

Experimentation.