Materialism

[altonhare]

OK, Altonhare, I'll subscribe to that for the purposes of fruitful discussion.
I don't hold to that distinction tightly in daily speech and conduct, but for this forum and thread it seems reasonable.

Great. I argue that anything that falls under the "faith" category is religion and is a personal issue which should be kept out of public institutions, but which anyone absolutely has the right to exercise. I additionally argue that faith is inherently unscientific. It is against the scientific spirit.

[StevenO]

OK, Altonhare, I'll subscribe to that for the purposes of fruitful discussion.
I don't hold to that distinction tightly in daily speech and conduct, but for this forum and thread it seems reasonable.

Great. I argue that anything that falls under the "faith" category is religion and is a personal issue which should be kept out of public institutions, but which anyone absolutely has the right to exercise. I additionally argue that faith is inherently unscientific. It is against the scientific spirit.

You are endowing science with something that belongs in the same category as believe and faith. I think it is sufficient to say that science deals with the testing of testable theories.

Still, "believe" and "faith" are an integral part of science since the trouble is that a test has two unknowns for one result: you have a theory that is either good or bad and an experimental setup that is either good or bad. The result of the experiment says only true or false. Now, how would you determine that a true outcome of the experiment is the result of good theory and good experiment and not bad theory with bad experiment? And how would you determine that a false outcome of the experiment is a result of bad theory and good experiment and not of good theory and bad experiment? You can suggest this is unimportant but let's just throw in some numbers. Let's say that we have a smart and optimistic theorist that estimates his chance that his theories are right at 10%. Now he designs an experiment that gives results with has an neglectible measurement error, but there is actually a conditional change of 90% that the experimental setup is wrong since the theory was bad in the first place. The respective changes on the outcomes are then:

true:good:good = 0.1 x 0.1 = 1% => Chance that outcome is a correct "true"
true:bad:bad = 0.9 x 0.9 = 81% => Chance that outcome is an incorrect "true"
false:bad:good = 0.9 x 0.1 = 9% => Chance that outcome is a correct "false"
false:good:bad = 0.1 x 0.9 = 9% => Chance that outcome is an incorrect "false"

Off course actual practice is more complicated than this example but the conclusion is that there are so many things just in the logical setup of experiments that can lead to an incorrect result that some amount of faith will have to be applied...

[Plasmatic]

The short answer to the description of Poppers nonsense above is that it pressupposes what it claims is uncertain. The ability to determine a "false" indicator with certainty as opposed to "faith".

You can suggest this is unimportant

Or one can suggest it that if science was what is claimed above, then it is the same as voodoo. Of course Poppers student did take this to that conclusion indeed.

[StevenO]

The short answer to the description of Poppers nonsense above is that it pressupposes what it claims is uncertain. The ability to determine a "false" indicator with certainty as opposed to "faith".

You can suggest this is unimportant

Or one can suggest it that if science was what is claimed above, then it is the same as voodoo. Of course Poppers student did take this to that conclusion indeed.

I can imagine if you're an Ayn Rand supporter, it must be very scary to read the work of a real science philosopher, especially Popper

But, the numbers above are not from Popper, it is just my simple example of how hard it is to perform good science. If you design an experiment based on a theory that is uncertain, the probability of first and second order mistakes (as incorrect results) easily explodes. You can call it voodoo, I would prefer "comedy of errors". Just look at the current state of physics to see what I mean. Miles Mathis a.o. has shown that many famous results, like for instance the Cavendish experiment, were working by compensation of errors. Planetary orbits are only stable under the current model if we assume planets have been set into orbit at just the right speed and stay there forever. Ignoring the impact of gravitational and base E/M fields at atomic level made us end up with the monstruous Standard Model. The list of errors stacked on errors is nearly endless.

I make my living testing stuff, so I know how easy it is to assume you have something really new "working", while actually you either performed the wrong test or did'nt test at all. Often you even find your assumptions from the past were wrong for years. You often find that the theory you used was already wrong, which mostly comes down to finding that the assumptions used in the theory were incorrect.

[altonhare]

OK, Altonhare, I'll subscribe to that for the purposes of fruitful discussion.
I don't hold to that distinction tightly in daily speech and conduct, but for this forum and thread it seems reasonable.

Great. I argue that anything that falls under the "faith" category is religion and is a personal issue which should be kept out of public institutions, but which anyone absolutely has the right to exercise. I additionally argue that faith is inherently unscientific. It is against the scientific spirit.

You are endowing science with something that belongs in the same category as believe and faith. I think it is sufficient to say that science deals with the testing of testable theories.

I said faith was unscientific and not part of science, I didn't say belief was part of science.

Indeed beliefs are not part of science proper. But a belief is something a scientist may hold, while faith is not. A belief is a claim which a scientist will revoke under certain circumstances. Faith is a claim which the claimant has no circumstances for revoking.

Someone runs an experiment in their lab and decides that they believe X, another decides they believe Y. If they are scientists they can imagine a situation which would cause them to change their beliefs. If they are religious they cannot imagine a situation which would change their beliefs.

However science itself is simply the collection of explanations (theories) proposed by man.

Off course actual practice is more complicated than this example but the conclusion is that there are so many things just in the logical setup of experiments that can lead to an incorrect result that some amount of faith will have to be applied...

Absolutely not!

[Birkeland]

I can imagine if you're an Ayn Rand supporter, it must be very scary to read the work of a real science philosopher, especially Popper

The scare, or better still, the amusement lies in understanding how primitive Popper really is. Feeling amused by Popper requires mastering the conceptual stage of cognition. An intellectual stage, seemingly, too painstaking and impossible to reach if your thoughts are collapsing into themselves in an infinite process of regression - a closed loop slowly retracting itself from reality, spinning around in ever smaller epicycles like the mathematical breakdown of a fractal until the mind reaches a zero-point where it freezes and encapsulates itself in a state of faith, rejecting any knowledge of what goes on outside itself. In this mental Twilight Zone, myths are born and gods pops up. But in the end, and slowly, very slowly, when cracks in the pottery starts to form, everyone is starting to understand what a foolish thing it is.

• The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see - Ayn Rand

The joke is on you and Karl Popper - get real.

[StevenO]

I said faith was unscientific and not part of science, I didn't say belief was part of science.

Indeed beliefs are not part of science proper. But a belief is something a scientist may hold, while faith is not. A belief is a claim which a scientist will revoke under certain circumstances. Faith is a claim which the claimant has no circumstances for revoking.

There are two very distinct meaning of the word "faith". One is a strong belief in supernatural powers controlling human destiny and the second is complete confidence in a person or plan, etc. The second has a definite place in science. We need to have faith that the laws of nature don't change at will, otherwise doing experiments becomes impossible. The theory of relativity is based on a faith that the laws of nature are identical for each local observer.

Someone runs an experiment in their lab and decides that they believe X, another decides they believe Y. If they are scientists they can imagine a situation which would cause them to change their beliefs. If they are religious they cannot imagine a situation which would change their beliefs.

After a test a belief can change in a proven truth. Then you suddenly drop in the phrase "religious", I assume you mean "religious faith" would prevent the scientists from changing their beliefs. I agree that would be unscientific, but it is not the only meaning of the word "faith".

However science itself is simply the collection of explanations (theories) proposed by man.

Science is the testing of theories. There are more pitfalls in that than dreaming them up.

Off course actual practice is more complicated than this example but the conclusion is that there are so many things just in the logical setup of experiments that can lead to an incorrect result that some amount of faith will have to be applied...

Absolutely not!

Absolutely. Unless you can prove that theories, experiments and our current laws of physics are flawless.

How would you explain Saturn's precession anomaly as measured by Cassini? Is it a measurement error, a mysterious new force or a flaw in the theories of Relativity?

[StevenO]

I can imagine if you're an Ayn Rand supporter, it must be very scary to read the work of a real science philosopher, especially Popper

The scare, or better still, the amusement lies in understanding how primitive Popper really is. Feeling amused by Popper requires mastering the conceptual stage of cognition. An intellectual stage, seemingly, too painstaking and impossible to reach if your thoughts are collapsing into themselves in an infinite process of regression - a closed loop slowly retracting itself from reality, spinning around in ever smaller epicycles like the mathematical breakdown of a fractal until the mind reaches a zero-point where it freezes and encapsulates itself in a state of faith, rejecting any knowledge of what goes on outside itself. In this mental Twilight Zone, myths are born and gods pops up. But in the end, and slowly, very slowly, when cracks in the pottery starts to form, everyone is starting to understand what a foolish thing it is.

• The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see - Ayn Rand

Resorting to ridicule instead of arguments is a clear sign of desperation. Pretending your "philosophy" is on a "higher" level is akin to religious faith. For something to be science it has to testable, not "metaphysical".

The joke is on you and Karl Popper - get real.

Hmmm...let's get real by rebutting this silly introduction to an expensive 5.5 hour Popper bashing session by the Ayn Rand book club:

Karl Popper was a minor philosopher, but a major transmitter of Kantian skepticism into the culture.

Let's see if the mainstream agrees with that. Wikipedia says: "He is considered one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century.". Too bad for this Rand sect that everything is so public these days. I have not been able to find any such qualification for Objectivism nor Ayn Rand, except from members of the book club themselves.

Posing as an exponent of scientific method, he promoted a philosophy whose key tenets are that induction is a myth, that scientific theories are at root arbitrary constructs and that the absence of falsification—rather than positive evidence—is the standard for adopting scientific conclusions.

Nice attempt at a strawman but too obvious for any person of science. Popper holds that "Science is the testing of testable theories" and "A theory is scientific only if it can be falsified and should be dropped as soon as it is falsified". Indeed that will lead to the conclusion that a proof by induction is not really a proof as Popper explains here:

A principle of induction would be a statement with the help of which we could put inductive inferences into a logically acceptable form. In the eyes of the upholders of inductive logic, a principle of induction is of supreme importance for scientific method: "... this principle", says Reichenbach, "determines the truth of scientific theories. To eliminate it from science would mean nothing less than to deprive science of the power to decide the truth or falsity of its theories. Without it, clearly, science would no longer have the right to distinguish its theories from the fanciful and arbitrary creations of the poet's mind."
Now this principle of induction cannot be a purely logical truth like a tautology or an analytic statement. Indeed, if there were such a thing as a purely logical principle of induction, there would be no problem of induction; for in this case, all inductive inferences would have to be regarded as purely logical or tautological transformations, just like inferences in inductive logic. Thus the principle of induction must be a synthetic statement; that is, a statement whose negation is not self-contradictory but logically possible. So the question arises why such a principle should be accepted at all, and how we can justify its acceptance on rational grounds.

It also leads to the conclusion that the axioms of science are basically tautologies in the sense of pointing at a white dog and saying "I define this to be a white dog". It also means that our physical theories are prone to be falsified by every new observation or experiment:

"No matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white."

That is only rational:

When I speak of reason or rationalism, all I mean is the conviction that we can learn through criticism of our mistakes and errors, especially through criticism by others, and eventually also through self-criticism. A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others — not by simply taking over another's opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others. The emphasis here is on the idea of criticism or, to be more precise, critical discussion. The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth; nor does he think that mere criticism as such helps us achieve new ideas. But he does think that, in the sphere of ideas, only critical discussion can help us sort the wheat from the chaff. He is well aware that acceptance or rejection of an idea is never a purely rational matter; but he thinks that only critical discussion can give us the maturity to see an idea from more and more sides and to make a correct judgement of it.

The "absence of falsification" is a deliberate misrepresentation of Popper, which does not surprise me.

The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.

[Plasmatic]

"Any Rand book club wrote:
Posing as an exponent of scientific method, he promoted a philosophy whose key tenets are that induction is a myth, that scientific theories are at root arbitrary constructs and that the absence of falsification—rather than positive evidence—is the standard for adopting scientific conclusions."

Nice attempt at a strawman but too obvious for any person of science. Popper holds that "Science is the testing of testable theories" and "A theory is scientific only if it can be falsified and should be dropped as soon as it is falsified". Indeed that will lead to the conclusion that a proof by induction is not really a proof as Popper explains here:

Are you actually denying that the description above is not accurate of Popper? Every proponent of Popper I know would smile proudly at the lectures description.

It also leads to the conclusion that the axioms of science are basically tautologies in the sense of pointing at a white dog and saying "I define this to be a white dog". It also means that our physical theories are prone to be falsified by every new observation or experiment:

Popper rejected that "synthetic/"empirical" perceptually based statements,in other words observations, could be proven. He does so on the basis of skepticism of the senses and the rejection of defining concepts by essentials. What he put in in place of induction and valid concepts was intuition/revelation and arbitrary concepts that had no connection to reality.

So I ask you were did your 1's,A's, and swans in your deductive propositions come from?

The "absence of falsification" is a deliberate misrepresentation of Popper, which does not surprise me.

You have repeatedly quoted Popper:

"A theory is scientific only in so far as it is falsifiable, and should be given up as soon as it is falsified."
- Karl Popper

And since Popper rejected any positive evidence as proof you are absolutely wrong. Do you actually claim Popper doesn't reject positive evidence as proof?

t also leads to the conclusion that the axioms of science are basically tautologies in the sense of pointing at a white dog and saying "I define this to be a white dog". It also means that our physical theories are prone to be falsified by every new observation or experiment:

Obstensive definition is the only way to refer to axioms because they are the irreducible context of all knowledge. Any way this is an example of the poverty of rejecting sense data and essential characteristics as the origin of concepts. It leads one to reject what one is seeing as a basis for what one is referring to, on the basis that one may see something else in the future.

[altonhare]

I said faith was unscientific and not part of science, I didn't say belief was part of science.

Indeed beliefs are not part of science proper. But a belief is something a scientist may hold, while faith is not. A belief is a claim which a scientist will revoke under certain circumstances. Faith is a claim which the claimant has no circumstances for revoking.

There are two very distinct meaning of the word "faith".

I am arguing that there is only one, and that is a claim which a person cannot imagine relenquishing under any circumstance. A Christian cannot imagine what would convince him that Jesus is not his Savior etc. A scientist can imagine what would convince him that i.e. relativity is an incorrect description of Nature. A scientist believes that relativity is an essentially correct description. A theist has faith in God (or whatever).

One is a strong belief in supernatural powers controlling human destiny and the second is complete confidence in a person or plan, etc.

"Supernatural power controlling human destiny" is a common description of God. The question is not whether the person decides to slap the label "God" on their claim, but whether they can imagine a scenario/observation which would convince them otherwise.

"Complete confidence" just means someone "strongly believes". The question again is not what label they throw on it "person, plan, etc." but, again, if they can imagine an observation/scenario which would change their belief. This is what distinguishes religious from the nonreligious.

The second has a definite place in science. We need to have faith that the laws of nature don't change at will, otherwise doing experiments becomes impossible. The theory of relativity is based on a faith that the laws of nature are identical for each local observer.

At best a scientist BELIEVES these things, and can be convinced otherwise via certain observations. Only a theist would have FAITH in them, such that the theist would consider them incontovertible under any circumstance.

Science is the testing of theories. There are more pitfalls in that than dreaming them up.

Irrelevant. All that is required of a nonreligious belief is that the person state at least 1 observation that would convince them to give up the belief.

Off course actual practice is more complicated than this example but the conclusion is that there are so many things just in the logical setup of experiments that can lead to an incorrect result that some amount of faith will have to be applied...

Absolutely not!

Absolutely. Unless you can prove that theories, experiments and our current laws of physics are flawless.

I don't feel like you're listening to me, which is why I'll repeat again. A scientist assumes it's NOT flawless, so that his belief IS controvertible, and X is what would controvertit.

How would you explain Saturn's precession anomaly as measured by Cassini? Is it a measurement error, a mysterious new force or a flaw in the theories of Relativity?

Which explanation is irrelevant, an explanation is just one possibility. The BELIEF in a particular explanation is either Right or Wrong. A scientist states what would change his/her belief. A theist does not. Or, many times, a theist proposes scenarios that demand the impossible (a contradiction) but try to disguise it so that the contradiction isn't obvious.

[StevenO]

Posing as an exponent of scientific method, he promoted a philosophy whose key tenets are that induction is a myth, that scientific theories are at root arbitrary constructs and that the absence of falsification—rather than positive evidence—is the standard for adopting scientific conclusions."

Nice attempt at a strawman but too obvious for any person of science. Popper holds that "Science is the testing of testable theories" and "A theory is scientific only if it can be falsified and should be dropped as soon as it is falsified". Indeed that will lead to the conclusion that a proof by induction is not really a proof as Popper explains here:

Are you actually denying that the description above is not accurate of Popper? Every proponent of Popper I know would smile proudly at the lectures description.

All descriptors are given a negative connotation here above, I guess that would hardly make any proponent smile.

I think you should read the description of the inductive method by Popper as I quoted above. Popper holds that induction could be either logical induction, which would be a tautology or a synthetic method, like art.

It also leads to the conclusion that the axioms of science are basically tautologies in the sense of pointing at a white dog and saying "I define this to be a white dog". It also means that our physical theories are prone to be falsified by every new observation or experiment:

Popper rejected that "synthetic/"empirical" perceptually based statements,in other words observations, could be proven. He does so on the basis of skepticism of the senses and the rejection of defining concepts by essentials. What he put in in place of induction and valid concepts was intuition/revelation and arbitrary concepts that had no connection to reality.

Pointing at a white dog and defining it "white dog" does not describe reality for you?

So I ask you were did your 1's,A's, and swans in your deductive propositions come from?

From my senses.

The "absence of falsification" is a deliberate misrepresentation of Popper, which does not surprise me.

You have repeatedly quoted Popper:

"A theory is scientific only in so far as it is falsifiable, and should be given up as soon as it is falsified."
- Karl Popper

And since Popper rejected any positive evidence as proof you are absolutely wrong. Do you actually claim Popper doesn't reject positive evidence as proof?

You're misrepresenting again. Positive evidence is proof until negative evidence comes around. That's all.

It also leads to the conclusion that the axioms of science are basically tautologies in the sense of pointing at a white dog and saying "I define this to be a white dog". It also means that our physical theories are prone to be falsified by every new observation or experiment:

Obstensive definition is the only way to refer to axioms because they are the irreducible context of all knowledge. Any way this is an example of the poverty of rejecting sense data and essential characteristics as the origin of concepts. It leads one to reject what one is seeing as a basis for what one is referring to, on the basis that one may see something else in the future.

I'm not sure if I understand your language here. Why would seeing a black dog in the future change the facts regarding white dogs?

[Plasmatic]

Steven Im happy to inform you that you are not a proponent of Poppers theories!

Every description in the lecture excerpt ,Popper would proudly claim as his own . He would laugh at the idea that the content of the concepts in his deductions come from the "senses". He would laugh at the idea that induction is logical whatever. He rejected the idea that any appeal to observation as a basis for definition was valid. In fact he rejected that talking about where the meaning of concepts come from was important at all. He rejected that one could provide "proof" [a positive success word]of anything!

You are not familiar with Popper it seems.

By the way you switched from claiming a strawman was present in the description,which is the claim it was not true of Poppers theories,to it having a negative connotation.

I can support all of my claims above from Poppers own words.

[webolife]

Hey, I guess I think more simply than y'all...

Since it seems agreed to define FAITH for this thread as a blind adherence to some unsubstantiated non-falsifiable tenet, can we all agree that that kind of "faith" is not a part of scientific inquiry? If so, I'm still left with BELIEF in a substantiated but not utterly proven theory, model, or paradigm as an essential part of every scientific endeavor. If we can agree that this belongs in science by virtue of our ability to state some observation or finding that would falsify our belief, does that satisfy all parties?

I've called it a "faith base", but I'm willing to drop that if we agree to the above.
Not only would I persist in claiming that every person operates from such a standpoint of belief, I opine that since science is a truly human endeavor, all science is built on it.

Things are real [or not] not because they fit [or not] into an Oist's lexicon, and not because we comprehend them [or don't]. Limiting ourselves to an Oist [or materialist] perspective to me limits our ability to discover truth through science.

[Plasmatic]

Things are real [or not] not because they fit [or not] into an Oist's lexicon, and not because we comprehend them [or don't]. Limiting ourselves to an Oist [or materialist] perspective to me limits our ability to discover truth through science.

I prefer not to get into Oism as such, save in the Oist thread,however your first 2 above statements correspond directly with Oism!

But I would replace the third this way. Limiting ourselves by refusing to evaluate our conceptual choices in light of new context is what "limits our ability to discover truth "!

[StevenO]

There are two very distinct meaning of the word "faith".

I am arguing that there is only one, and that is a claim which a person cannot imagine relenquishing under any circumstance. A Christian cannot imagine what would convince him that Jesus is not his Savior etc. A scientist can imagine what would convince him that i.e. relativity is an incorrect description of Nature. A scientist believes that relativity is an essentially correct description. A theist has faith in God (or whatever).

Denying reality is not going to help your case. Just Google "define: faith" and these two meanings pop up. Looks like we are just playing wordgames again.

The question is not whether the person decides to slap the label "God" on their claim, but whether they can imagine a scenario/observation which would convince them otherwise.

"Complete confidence" just means someone "strongly believes". The question again is not what label they throw on it "person, plan, etc." but, again, if they can imagine an observation/scenario which would change their belief. This is what distinguishes religious from the nonreligious.

The second has a definite place in science. We need to have faith that the laws of nature don't change at will, otherwise doing experiments becomes impossible. The theory of relativity is based on a faith that the laws of nature are identical for each local observer.

At best a scientist BELIEVES these things, and can be convinced otherwise via certain observations. Only a theist would have FAITH in them, such that the theist would consider them incontovertible under any circumstance.

You just want to keep it simple and reserve the word "faith" for religion and "belief" for science. That is not how language is used. A scientist can have both, but a scientist is at all times rational and thus willing to change his faith or beliefs based on new insights.

Science is the testing of theories. There are more pitfalls in that than dreaming them up.

Irrelevant. All that is required of a nonreligious belief is that the person state at least 1 observation that would convince them to give up the belief.

If you call testing "irrelevant" then you have no idea what science is apparently or you want to do science without the real work. A theory is useless if it cannot be tested. You will have to verify that the one observation is a valid falsification of the theory. Somebody could have painted the swan black. Also, a black swan does'nt invalidate any previous observations of white swans, it just falsifies the theory that all swans are white, to be replaced with a more accurate theory.