What are some examples of scientism?

[TagliatelliMonster]

I suppose it is meant to suggest that if I can accept the intangible reality of space and time I should be equally open to the intangible spiritual, heavenly, and unworldly.

That indeed seems to be the sole purpose of all this cryptic mumbo jumbo and the insistence on labeling everyone that doesn't agree as a ...*ahum*... "philosophical materialist existentialist" , with a side dish of "scientismist"

 

[RestlessSoul]

Is tangibility, the ability to touch something the only criteria by which we judge whether a phenomenon is a property or characteristic of the physical world?

Is a mountain a tangible thing? Where exactly does the mountain begin and the valley end? When exactly is a mountain a mountain and not a hill?

I also appreciate your use of the word ethereal:

ethereal - adjective ethe·re·al i-ˈthir-ē-əl
1a: of or relating to the regions beyond the earth
b: CELESTIAL, HEAVENLY
c: UNWORLDLY, SPIRITUAL
2a: lacking material substance : IMMATERIAL, INTANGIBLE
b: marked by unusual delicacy or refinement
this smallest, most ethereal, and daintiest of birds-William Beebe
c: suggesting the heavens or heaven
3: relating to, containing, or resembling a chemical ether

I suppose it is meant to suggest that if I can accept the intangible reality of space and time I should be equally open to the intangible spiritual, heavenly, and unworldly.

The difference, however, lies in what can be experienced. Without experience, they simply remain inventions of the mind.

But people do have spiritual experiences, the world’s libraries are full of accounts of them. It’s possible you’ve had spiritual experiences yourself, and then discounted them because they can’t be reconciled with your materialist world view. I’ve seen a few people on this forum tell stories like that.

Once you fully grasp the possibility, supported by scientific as well as philosophical conjecture, that there are no fixed philosophical or methodological points on which to build your intellectual edifice; once you truly understand that everything we think of as solid is transient and dependent on a frame of reference; once the conviction takes root that there are indeed “more things in heaven and earth Horatio, than are dreamed of in thy philosophy”, then maybe the doors of perception can begin to open for you.

 

[cladking]

I'm not sure we can say that with great confidence. The past is full of occasions when the great insight was to solve the problem by identifying the key basics ─ as with Newton and gravity, or the refining and re-refining of the concept of the elementary particle, both through history and into the quantum age ─ so that we look down and find a new footing to build up from.

Yes, there are numerous things we might learn that would give us insight into how to study consciousness and define terms. I don't believe there is any direct route to this goal however so it seems improbable that anything that provides clues will be interpreted correctly. We might always ascribe all observation to our existing beliefs in things like human "intelligence", instinct, and Evolution. It is very difficult to even see the individual where all life and all consciousness exist when we are fixated on species and groups. I got to my theories indirectly and with much less dependence on reductionism. I no longer even think in reductionistic terms except as it applies to hypothesis formation and experiment design.

Actually I believe the entire edifice has to come down brick by brick and the entire foundation relaid. This is not so daunting a task as it sounds because our vast knowledge and specific understanding will allow much of it to be done virtually as a thought experiment. In essence we merely need to reconsider all axioms, definitions and experimental interpretation with an eye toward including the observer and the other eye to the nature of mathematics. Most of our knowledge is sound because it's founded on bedrock experiment/ reality but merely expressed in terms that distort.

It seems to me that each of these insights is another link in the reductionist chain. But of course we presently have a lot of missing links.

Yes. This is the problem. Reality is composed of far more missing links than things we understand. We are virtually blind to this because we see what we believe and can extrapolate our beliefs to apply to virtually all things. We all must do it because it's how we think. Humans (homo omnisciencis) are unique among all (known) life forms in that they think. Other life experiences reality only in terms of what they know. They do not think. We are mostly blissfully unaware of our own nearly complete ignorance. All other life and ancient man could "directly" see their ignorance because it left huge gaps in their perception.

And I think this is how we'll get to understand our brains.

Maybe.

(Relevant to your early remarks, I also think studying the societies of our fellow-primates is capable of making us more aware of our own evolved traits. I quoted some observations of Yudkowsky >here< as an idea worth thinking about.)

I'll research this later. The link is apparently broken.

Can you indicate what these new paradigms might be, or what categories they'd address? Or is it a case of, we'll know them when we see them?

Mostly it's a matter of defining terms such that they can be studied and are more in line with existing experiment. "Consciousness" is the place to start and the short definition is that it is a quality given by God/ nature (smoke 'em if you got 'em) that confers upon individuals the ability to survive and prosper. But we also need a scientific language with many words that have a single meaning. And we need to attempt the invention of a new metaphysics that is like natural metaphysics and can be used to study nature through Observation > Logic. This will be too complex for humans to use so essentially it is more akin to a computer programming project.

Many of the terms that we take for granted have definitions that run wholly counter to experiment. Fixing them will provide a new perspective which I believe will provide a more accurate view of reality.

 

[MikeF]

No human brain ever created or rode a bicycle. It is what happens in the human brain that made these possible. And what happens there are cognitive associations that could not and would not happen in the "objective physical reality" that the scientism crowd thinks defines the reality of existence.

Getting a little silly here. If by the word 'create' you are forcing a definition synonymous with 'build', then sure, no lump of neural gray matter built a bicycle.

So we are in full agreement on how cool cognitive associations can be. However, when you say that those associations "could not and would not happen in 'objective physical reality.'" I can only smile and shake my head, for those associations are objectively happening in every human brain. Now I certainly concede that such association would not occur but for brains (so not a characteristic restricted to human brains), meaning if no brains with the capacity for abstraction exist then no creative abstract associations can be formed.

No, they are not. They are meta-physical. They are cognitive phenomena, not physical phenomena. A thought is not the electrochemical interaction that generates.
"The product of" but not the same as. Time is the "product of" motion in space. But time is a cognitive phenomenon. It's a relational awareness. Not a physical phenomenon.

I think we both must concede that humanity is still rather ignorant as to how *exactly* brains work. However, given cognitive phenomena's dependence on a physical platform and the ability to affect and manipulate cognitive phenomena by physical means, it seems unrealistic to consider cognitive phenomena as anything other than objectively physical.

Unicorns are not about unicorns. They are symbols representing a set of ideas that have nothing to do with unicorns. The abstraction transcends physics and enables an awareness of possibilities that could not have otherwise existed. And we can act on that new awareness to create new things that would not otherwise exist. Like a bicycle. Without that abstracted metaphysical awareness those possibilities were not possible. Metaphysical awareness transcends the limitations of the physicality that enables it to occur. This is what you are refusing to acknowledge.

Yeah, I think I and my fellow scientismist understand and appreciate the abstractions we human beings create and use. We also appreciate being able to differentiate between what is a physically existent thing and what is an abstraction. Not everyone seems able to make such distinctions.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Getting a little silly here. If by the word 'create' you are forcing a definition synonymous with 'build', then sure, no lump of neural gray matter built a bicycle.

So we are in full agreement on how cool cognitive associations can be. However, when you say that those associations "could not and would not happen in 'objective physical reality.'" I can only smile and shake my head, for those associations are objectively happening in every human brain. Now I certainly concede that such association would not occur but for brains (so not a characteristic restricted to human brains), meaning if no brains with the capacity for abstraction exist then no creative abstract associations can be formed.
...

No for the bold one. Objective:
- expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations
- of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers : having reality independent of the mind
- involving or deriving from sense perception or experience with actual objects, conditions, or phenomena

You don't understand objective and subjective and this is it.
Your brain is for some of it functions not objective. As long as you subjectively believe that, this will go on.

 

[MikeF]

No for the bold one. Objective:
- expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations
- of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers : having reality independent of the mind
- involving or deriving from sense perception or experience with actual objects, conditions, or phenomena

You don't understand objective and subjective and this is it.
Your brain is for some of it functions not objective. As long as you subjectively believe that, this will go on.

Subjective thoughts are objectively occurring.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Subjective thoughts are objectively occurring.

No, they are not. That is a contradiction in terms. Your model rest on everything is independent of brains and that is also the case for brains, that they are independent of brains.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

But people do have spiritual experiences, the world’s libraries are full of accounts of them.

Sure. Just like they are full of accounts of people "experiencing" alien abduction, bigfoot, lochness, fortune telling, crystal healings, voodoo rituals, etc etc etc etc.

People have all kinds of wacky experiences which they then interpret as whatever.

I don't doubt them having experiences. It's their explanations and interpretations thereof that are unconvincing.

It’s possible you’ve had spiritual experiences yourself, and then discounted them because they can’t be reconciled with your materialist world view. I’ve seen a few people on this forum tell stories like that.

What "materialist" view?
Why can't it be just because of people being aware of how ones experiences can be misleading and how they are aware of the importance of evidence and alike?

For example, I could "experience" hearing a voice. I could then "interpret" that as a god talking to me. I could also "interpret" that as aliens talking to me. I could also "interpret" that as a paranormal, yet otherwise normal, human being talking to me via telepathy.

Or I could assume that I am hallucinating and that those mushrooms I ate 30 minutes earlier had something to do with it. Or I could assume that I might need to see a psychiatrist to get myself some anti-psychotic medicine.

See, this is the point.... It is a matter of INTERPRETATION of the experience.

I don't doubt people having experiences.
But that doesn't mean I will blindly accept whatever explanation / interpretation they claim for that experience.

I submit that you won't either (except perhaps when it feeds into your a priori religious beliefs in good ol' confirmation bias).

Once you fully grasp the possibility, supported by scientific as well as philosophical conjecture, that there are no fixed philosophical or methodological points on which to build your intellectual edifice; once you truly understand that everything we think of as solid is transient and dependent on a frame of reference; once the conviction takes root that there are indeed “more things in heaven and earth Horatio, than are dreamed of in thy philosophy”, then maybe the doors of perception can begin to open for you.

In other words: shut down your intellect and just believe?

Let me ask you an honest question: do you think it is possible for people to have an experience, come to a conclusion of what the experience really was and then be wrong about that?

If you agree that that is possible, then please tell me: how do you differentiate a correct interpretation from an incorrect one?

 

[MikeF]

But people do have spiritual experiences, the world’s libraries are full of accounts of them. It’s possible you’ve had spiritual experiences yourself, and then discounted them because they can’t be reconciled with your materialist world view. I’ve seen a few people on this forum tell stories like that.

Once you fully grasp the possibility, supported by scientific as well as philosophical conjecture, that there are no fixed philosophical or methodological points on which to build your intellectual edifice; once you truly understand that everything we think of as solid is transient and dependent on a frame of reference; once the conviction takes root that there are indeed “more things in heaven and earth Horatio, than are dreamed of in thy philosophy”, then maybe the doors of perception can begin to open for you.

@TagliatelliMonster responded much as I would have done in his post #128.

I would simply reiterate that we human beings are imperfect and fallible in a wide variety of ways. We cannot rely solely on our personal experience. It is through a composite picture of many, many experiences that we begin to form a better understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

No, they are not. They are meta-physical. They are cognitive phenomena, not physical phenomena. A thought is not the electrochemical interaction that generates.

Actually, we already know that that is incorrect.
Your thoughts most definitely are electrochemical interactions in the brain.

In fact...................... there is good evidence to suggest today that these interactions in your brain fire BEFORE you even realize your thought.

Our Brains Make Up Our Minds Before We Know It | Psychology Today
Brain makes decisions before you even know it | Nature

If you make a decision, the interactions detectably happen before you are even aware of having made a decision. There's a delay between the firing of those interactions and you "realizing" the thought.

Literally ALL available evidence points to the brain being responsible for thoughts, ideas, decisions, etc.
The brain isn't some hardware where the "software" that people call " the mind" runs on. All the evidence we have supports the idea that the brain IS the mind.
That they are one and the same.

Now you will likely again come with your "...-ist" and "..-ism" labels, "accusing" me of being a "philosophical materialist" etc. But is nonsense of course.

I just go by the actual available evidence. Unlike you, I don't have any particular a priori beliefs about this. I'm actually open-minded. It's you and others like you who enter this discussion already convinced that there is such a thing as a "mind" or "soul" or whatever that somehow exists absent a physical brain.

I don't have such a priori beliefs. I'm happy going where the evidence takes me.
And I see NO evidence of such a "mind" or "soul" or whatever that is somehow seperate from a physical brain.

All I see is evidence that the mind IS the brain.


Granted, there is still a LOT left to unravel about the workings of the brain.
A lot of questions remain.

But that doesn't change anything about the available evidence so far.
If future evidence points in another direction, I will happily go that direction.

Until then, I see no reason to.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

@TagliatelliMonster responded much as I would have done in his post #128.

I would simply reiterate that we human beings are imperfect and fallible in a wide variety of ways. We cannot rely solely on our personal experience. It is through a composite picture of many, many experiences that we begin to form a better understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

So learn that brains are in some cases subjective.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Sure. Just like they are full of accounts of people "experiencing" alien abduction, bigfoot, lochness, fortune telling, crystal healings, voodoo rituals, etc etc etc etc.

People have all kinds of wacky experiences which they then interpret as whatever.

I don't doubt them having experiences. It's their explanations and interpretations thereof that are unconvincing.



What "materialist" view?
Why can't it be just because of people being aware of how ones experiences can be misleading and how they are aware of the importance of evidence and alike?

For example, I could "experience" hearing a voice. I could then "interpret" that as a god talking to me. I could also "interpret" that as aliens talking to me. I could also "interpret" that as a paranormal, yet otherwise normal, human being talking to me via telepathy.

Or I could assume that I am hallucinating and that those mushrooms I ate 30 minutes earlier had something to do with it. Or I could assume that I might need to see a psychiatrist to get myself some anti-psychotic medicine.

See, this is the point.... It is a matter of INTERPRETATION of the experience.

I don't doubt people having experiences.
But that doesn't mean I will blindly accept whatever explanation / interpretation they claim for that experience.

I submit that you won't either (except perhaps when it feeds into your a priori religious beliefs in good ol' confirmation bias).



In other words: shut down your intellect and just believe?

Let me ask you an honest question: do you think it is possible for people to have an experience, come to a conclusion of what the experience really was and then be wrong about that?

If you agree that that is possible, then please tell me: how do you differentiate a correct interpretation from an incorrect one?

Of course one can be wrong, about the validity of any number of experiences. And things that are real in relation to one object, person, or circumstance are not necessarily so to another, which comes back to my original point; whether one relies on reason, instinct, or intuition, nothing is certain, nothing is fixed.

Still, one person may come to trust the intuitive part of the mind, as much as another may trust in pure reason; the truly wise man may be he who does not claim certainty can be derived from either.

For myself, and I know I'll lose you here; I trust infinite God more than my finite self.

 

[PureX]

I suppose it is meant to suggest that if I can accept the intangible reality of space and time I should be equally open to the intangible spiritual, heavenly, and unworldly.

The difference, however, lies in what can be experienced. Without experience, they simply remain inventions of the mind.

An "experience" is both a physical and a metaphysical phenomenon, because to perceive is to conceive. The material becomes the ideological.

To experience a loud noise is not just to collect the soundwaves with our ears and transfer them into our brains. It's also our brains registering and quantifying and qualifying that sound, resulting in our awareness of "a loud noise" having just occurred. The physical sound has to become an idea for us to have "experienced" it. Because that's what it means to "experience" something as a human.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

An "experience" is both a physical and a metaphysical phenomenon, because to perceive is to conceive. The material becomes the ideological.

To experience a loud noise is not just to collect the soundwaves with our ears and transfer them into our brains. It's also our brains registering and quantifying and qualifying that sound, resulting in our awareness of "a loud noise" having just occurred. The physical sound has to become an idea for us to have "experienced" it. Because that's what it means to "experience" something as a human.

Yeah, the world is a narrative of ideas in effect.

 

[MikeF]

An "experience" is both a physical and a metaphysical phenomenon, because to perceive is to conceive. The material becomes the ideological.

To experience a loud noise is not just to collect the soundwaves with our ears and transfer them into our brains. It's also our brains registering and quantifying and qualifying that sound, resulting in our awareness of "a loud noise" having just occurred. The physical sound has to become an idea for us to have "experienced" it. Because that's what it means to "experience" something as a human.

I simply cannot accept your terms as you like to use them. I understand they have meaning for you and express your feelings on the subject, but I do not find your use of the word 'metaphysical' as being useful. To me, such a word is used in a wide variety of ways to mean different things. In other words, there is a lot of baggage associated with such a word.

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of consciousness and the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality.
Wikipedia​

metaphysical - adjective
1: of or relating to metaphysics metaphysical truth; metaphysical speculation
2a: of or relating to the transcendent or to a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses; fleeing from experience to a metaphysical realm - John Dewey
b: SUPERNATURAL; fate and metaphysical aid doth seem to have thee crown'd - William Shakespeare
3: highly abstract or abstruse; also : THEORETICAL
metaphysical reasoning
4often capitalized : of or relating to poetry especially of the early 17th century that is highly intellectual and philosophical and marked by unconventional figurative language - metaphysical poets
merriam-webster.com​

I also take issue with your use of the word ideological.

ideology - noun
1a: a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture
b: the integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program
c: a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture
2: visionary theorizing
meriam-webster.com​

I do not see it as useful or meaningful to characterize all cognitive thought as ideological.

 

[PureX]

Be specific.

What "philosophical paradigm" and what "subject at hand"?

Why is it that all posts in this topic are so vague, cryptic and ambiguous?

I just explained that to you, literally. And I explained why you can't understand it.

Physicality does not determine reality. Meta-physicality does. Reality isn't a thing in the world, it's an idea of the world in the mind. Truth isn't a thing in the world, it's an idea of the world in the mind. And as such they are subjectively derived ideals, not objectively derived facts. "Objectivity" is an ideal being created in your mind.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

...

I do not see it as useful or meaningful to characterize all cognitive thought as ideological.

Now it stops. You don't see anything in this regard. You cognitively think that you speak of a we that is not there and that you don't have an ideology, because of ideas, that make sense to you.
But you don't understand that, because you don't doubt yourself. Everybody else is fallible, but not you. You are the correct we for all humans, because you are not a product of culture and psychology. Everybody else is, but not you.

Because you can't doubt yourself and your subjective understanding, you don't understand what we are trying to explain to you.
I learned to do that and yes, thus I know I am fallible and can't have the knowledge, you subjectively believe you have.
That is where it ends, if you test if you are fallible. Yes, you are. That is the condition of being a human in regards to the philosophical idea and ideology of knowledge.
What is independent of your mind is metaphysics in the end. Read some more philosophy than just Karl Popper and learn that all what we have been doing is philosophy.

 

[MikeF]

Now it stops. You don't see anything in this regard. You cognitively think that you speak of a we that is not there and that you don't have an ideology, because of ideas, that make sense to you.
But you don't understand that, because you don't doubt yourself. Everybody else is fallible, but not you. You are the correct we for all humans, because you are not a product of culture and psychology. Everybody else is, but not you.

Because you can't doubt yourself and your subjective understanding, you don't understand what we are trying to explain to you.
I learned to do that and yes, thus I know I am fallible and can't have the knowledge, you subjectively believe you have.
That is where it ends, if you test if you are fallible. Yes, you are. That is the condition of being a human in regards to the philosophical idea and ideology of knowledge.
What is independent of your mind is metaphysics in the end. Read some more philosophy than just Karl Popper and learn that all what we have been doing is philosophy.

My dear Mikkel, to say one cannot characterize all (as in the entirety of) thought as ideological is not the same thing as saying there isn't any ideological thought.

 

[cladking]

Yeah, I think I and my fellow scientismist understand and appreciate the abstractions we human beings create and use. We also appreciate being able to differentiate between what is a physically existent thing and what is an abstraction. Not everyone seems able to make such distinctions.

First off you are much less a scientismist than most people. It's easy to tell because you can discuss and understand premises.

Secondly every word in every human language today has no fixed meaning therefore no word is entirely abstract or entirely concrete. Even words used with a concrete meaning STILL have a level of abstraction because they are defined with abstractions, are symbolic, and because their meaning must be parsed. Ancient Language had no definitions or abstractions and can not be parsed.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

My dear Mikkel, to say one cannot characterize all (as in the entirety of) thought as ideological is not the same thing as saying there isn't any ideological thought.

Humans with enough developed brains are all products of ideology when it comes to their overall worldviews. And, yes, that includes you and I also.