Scientism

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Well ... beyond "trusting our senses" and using already present dispositions, empirical evidence is surely attainable.

All empirical evidence requires at least that we trust our senses and typically a good deal more. Trusting our senses is the most minimal, barest, faintest, and weakest form of empirical evidence, but all empirical evidence requires this as a foundation.

If we are going to be stopped by Platonian arguments about experience, we aren't ever going to get anywhere.

Not "Platonian" or Aristotelian. The most elementary critiques began with Descartes and Kant and the serious ones began with Popper, Quine, and Kuhn (and of course modern physics and the failure of Hilbert's program).

 

[leibowde84]

All empirical evidence requires at least that we trust our senses and typically a good deal more. Trusting our senses is the most minimal, barest, faintest, and weakest form of empirical evidence, but all empirical evidence requires this as a foundation.


Not "Platonian" or Aristotelian. The most elementary critiques began with Descartes and Kant and the serious ones began with Popper, Quine, and Kuhn (and of course modern physics and the failure of Hilbert's program).

All of them built off of Plato though.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

All of them built off of Plato though.

According to A. N. Whitehead, sure. However:
1) Plato's account of truth is entirely different from the empiricism of the sciences
&
2) Most of modern scientific methods and much of epistemology are distinctly anti-platonic. The entirety of embodied cognition, for example, not to mention Bayesian inference and many of the most popular, modern methods underlying empiricism. After all, empirical methods are merely observations, and these are innate to humans. It is the systematic, analytic evaluation of perceptual information and the corresponding nodes in our conceptual networks used to interpret all empirical data that make empiricism any better than folklore.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

It is the systematic, analytic evaluation of perceptual information and the corresponding nodes in our conceptual networks used to interpret all empirical data that make empiricism any better than folklore.

This is the method Russian farmers used to feed millions, it never acquired the label 'science', because it actually worked and sold itself on it's own merits

'Science' is the label Stalin used for his 'superior methods' which starved those millions to death.

Scientism to me is any like instance where the label 'science' is used in lieu of the method. Those still using the method are labeled 'science deniers' as were Russian farmers

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

This is the method Russian farmers used to feed millions, it never acquired the label 'science', because it actually worked and sold itself on it's own merits

'Science' is the label Stalin used for his 'superior methods' which starved those millions to death.

Scientism to me is any like instance where the label 'science' is used in lieu of the method. Those still using the method are labeled 'science deniers' as were Russian farmers

There is no scientific method, but there are scientific methods, and I agree with you absolutely that regarding "science" abstracted from the sciences and the methods of the sciences is a mistake that is oft repeated and dangerously so.

 

[Doug Shaver]

I’ve been criticized a lot for using the term “scientism”, and I would like to argue that this criticism is unwarranted and mistaken. When I do a quick Google search for the definition of scientism I see that it is “excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques”. I do not think this definition does it much justice. More appropriately, scientism is a religious exaltation of science and anti-theism.

I've been accused of scientism a few times, but the accusers have never defined it in those terms. By your definition, I'm not guilty. And I also don't know anybody who is guilty.

 

[Willamena]

Scientism is like when people say, "Studies show that this is so, so it must be so because science revealed it." That's excessive (perhaps fallacious is a better term) belief in the power of scientific knowledge/techniques.

 

[Windwalker]

Scientism is like when people say, "Studies show that this is so, so it must be so because science revealed it." That's excessive (perhaps fallacious is a better term) belief in the power of scientific knowledge/techniques.

Like I say, Scientism is when "science reveals" is taken the with the same level of faith as "scripture reveals". There's a big difference between reliable sources, and the "God (Science) said it, I believe it, that settles it for me!," mentality.

 

[Willamena]

Like I say, Scientism is when "science reveals" is taken the with the same level of faith as "scripture reveals". There's a big difference between reliable sources, and the "God (Science) said it, I believe it, that settles it for me!," mentality.

Yes. It's essentially no different than belief in magic.

 

[leibowde84]

Like I say, Scientism is when "science reveals" is taken the with the same level of faith as "scripture reveals". There's a big difference between reliable sources, and the "God (Science) said it, I believe it, that settles it for me!," mentality.

But, no one "knows" what God has said, is saying, or will say. Every claim of this can easily be refuted with plausible doubt.

 

[Windwalker]

But, no one "knows" what God has said, is saying, or will say.

They believe they do because they read his "word", which is evidence to them. They however are unaware of the pitfalls of interpretations.

Every claim of this can easily be refuted with plausible doubt.

Same with beliefs in scientific certitudes. Not really different, despite the one being the "better" tool.