What are some examples of scientism?

[MikeF]

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

Dang, I'm I already starting to loose my scientism cred? I was just beginning to embrace the label.

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.

I would say that language is de facto an abstraction.

I fully agree that there is no fixed or permanent association with a particular label (be it a word, symbol, sounds, or picture) and a specific associated meaning or definition. It all comes down to usage and context. We try to standardize these associations to some degree to facilitate clarity of communication. It becomes tiresome and inefficient if a particular label points to a different meaning unfamiliar to others, for each individual that uses it.

I assume that "Ancient Language" points to a specific thing for you and does not refer to ancient languages in general. If it is a specific language, as a language my assumption would be that it would consist of labels that reference meanings. Regardless, as a language, I would still classify it as abstraction.

 

[PureX]

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.

That's your baggage, apparently. The meaning I'm applying the term to has no "baggage". I am referring to the phenomenon of cognitive abstraction that we use to define and contextualize our experience of physical existence. Without this meta-phenomenon, we would not be able to connect our many and constant ongoing experiences of being into any sort of apparently cohesive whole; from which, we determine how to move through the world.

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

"A loud noise" is an idea resulting from a specific experience of physicality. But by itself that idea has very little value or significance to us. It needs to be placed in context with other ideas to illuminate it's significance. And when we do so, that contextualized set of ideas is called an "ideology". Which fits quite well among every sub-definition you listed, below. So I don't see what you're objecting to.

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.

Well, as I just stated, a 'singular' thought is of almost no use or significance. it needs to be placed in context with many other individual thoughts to give it that use and significance. Thus, the necessity for ideology.

 

[cladking]

Dang, I'm I already starting to loose my scientism cred? I was just beginning to embrace the label.

Sorry. I can understand why anyone who understands or believes in science might want the label. But as I define the term it applies to you far less than most.

I would say that language is de facto an abstraction.

Yes. I very much agree. Nothing in language has any meaning at all until and unless you think about it. Human (homo omnisciencis) language is symbolic, analog, and abstract. No other language used by consciousness is.

We try to standardize these associations to some degree to facilitate clarity of communication.

Few people notice how tenuous and ephemeral real communication is. After they parse others' sentences with definitions and connotations they always make perfect sense and are usually apt. But no two people will parse anything the same way.

I assume that "Ancient Language" points to a specific thing for you and does not refer to ancient languages in general.

I believe humans (homo sapiens) once had a representative, digital and concrete language that was used worldwide. This language had many mutually intelligible dialects. In about 2000 BC the language because it was metaphysical became too complex and failed. It was a simple matter of not enough individuals could use it to operate the states. It was replaced with many pidgin languages that were formatted like ours and derived from the various Ancient Language dialects. Of course none are mutually intelligible.

Regardless, as a language, I would still classify it as abstraction.

No, words were representative and had fixed meanings. It was the same formatting as used by all other consciousness on earth. Users of AL did not experience "thought" and had no idea what any abstraction was.

 

[InChrist]

Inspired by this thread: Who here believes in "Scientism"?

This thread is open to anybody who would like to share examples of comments they consider to display scientism. They could be comments you've encountered personally, comments made by famous figures or even purely hypothetical comments that a proponent of scientism might say.

It would also be helpful if you could explain why you feel your example qualifies as scientism.

Please don't call out specific RF members.

“Follow the science” is an example of scientism. This statement has often been repeated by politicians, media and some who claim to be or are scientists. It definitely has a religious connotation.


“The clearest problem with the admonition to “believe in science” is that it is of no help whatsoever when well-credentialed scientists–that is, bona fide experts–are found on both (or all) sides of a given empirical question. Dominant parts of the intelligentsia may prefer we not know this, but dissenting experts exist on many scientific questions that some blithely pronounce as “settled” by a “consensus,” that is, beyond debate. This is true regarding the precise nature and likely consequences of climate change and aspects of the coronavirus and its vaccine. Without real evidence, credentialed mavericks are often maligned as having been corrupted by industry, with the tacit faith that scientists who voice the established position are pure and incorruptible. It’s as though the quest for government money could not in itself bias scientific research. Moreover, no one, not even scientists, are immune from group-think and confirmation bias.

So the “believe the science” chorus gives the credentialed mavericks no notice unless it’s to defame them. Apparently, under the believers’ model of science, truth comes down from a secular Mount Sinai (Mount Science?) thanks to a set of anointed scientists, and those declarations are not to be questioned. The dissenters can be ignored because they are outside the elect. How did the elect achieve its exalted station? Often, but not always, it was through the political process: for example, appointment to a government agency or the awarding of prestigious grants. It may be that a scientist simply has won the adoration of the progressive intelligentsia because his or her views align easily with a particular policy agenda.

But that’s not science; it’s religion, or at least it’s the stereotype of religion that the “science believers” oppose in the name of enlightenment. What it yields is dogma and, in effect, accusations of heresy.

In real science no elect and no Mount Science exists. Real science is a rough-and-tumble process of hypothesizing, public testing, attempted replication, theory formation, dissent and rebuttal, refutation (perhaps), revision (perhaps), and confirmation (perhaps). It’s an unending process, as it obviously must be. Who knows what’s around the next corner? No empirical question can be declared settled by consensus once and for all, even if with time a theory has withstood enough competent challenges to warrant a high degree of confidence. (In a world of scarce resources, including time, not all questions can be pursued, so choices must be made.) The institutional power to declare matters settled by consensus opens the door to all kinds of mischief that violate the spirit of science and potentially harm the public financially and otherwise.”


Scientism: When Science Becomes Religion

 

[MikeF]

I am referring to the phenomenon of cognitive abstraction that we use to define and contextualize our experience of physical existence.

Cognitive abstraction works. A much more specific term relevant to the discussion.

"A loud noise" is an idea resulting from a specific experience of physicality. But by itself that idea has very little value or significance to us. It needs to be placed in context with other ideas to illuminate it's significance. And when we do so, that contextualized set of ideas is called an "ideology". Which fits quite well among every sub-definition you listed, below. So I don't see what you're objecting to.

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​

Well, as I just stated, a 'singular' thought is of almost no use or significance. it needs to be placed in context with many other individual thoughts to give it that use and significance. Thus, the necessity for ideology.

And here I would argue that with sound, we create a catalog of abstract references to what we have experienced. The experience provides the context or association. When a sound is heard it is compared to the catalog to find associations. This process is not ideological.

I see ideology as an attitude that we set, or are indoctrinated into, towards social and political abstract constructs. Not all thought is culturally or politically related.

 

[blü 2]

We might always ascribe all observation to our existing beliefs in things like human "intelligence", instinct, and Evolution.

But to be fair, what else are we to do? Either we formulate a testable hypothesis and test it, or we're just guessing, no?

It is very difficult to even see the individual where all life and all consciousness exist when we are fixated on species and groups.

My own view is that consciousness is overrated, even misleading, as a phenomenon. As you've probably noticed from your reading, the conscious mind is often the last to know what the brain is actually doing ─ you'll recall those real-time brain experiments from maybe a decade ago showing that the brain had not only decided what it was going to do, but had begun to do it clear seconds before the consciousness of the subject was aware that he'd decided anything.

That's part of the appeal to me of the global workspace hypothesis.

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.

Well, good luck to us both in our exploring. Which reminds me of TS Eliot's line from somewhere,"We shall not cease from exploration /And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time."

Sorry about that link. Here's the actual quote:

... human beings [have] four times the brain size of a chimpanzee. 20% of a human’s metabolic energy [goes] into feeding the brain. Humans [are] ridiculously smarter than any other species. [...] Ending up with that gigantic outsized brain must have taken some sort of runaway evolutionary process, something that would push and push without limits.
[...]
Harry had once read a famous book called Chimpanzee Politics. The book had described how an adult chimpanzee named Luit had confronted the aging alpha, Yeroen, with the help of a young, recently matured chimpanzee named Nikkie. Nikkie had not intervened directly in the fights between Luit and Yeroen, but had prevented Yeroen’s other supporters in the tribe from coming to his aid, distracting them whenever a confrontation developed between Luit and Yeroen. And in time Luit had won, and become the new alpha, with Nikkie as the second most powerful ...
... though it hadn’t taken very long after that for Nikkie to form an alliance with the defeated Yeroen, overthrow Luit, and become the new new alpha.

It really made you appreciate what millions of years of hominids trying to outwit each other – an evolutionary arms race without limit – had led to in the way of increased mental capacity.

’Cause, y’know, a human would have totally seen that one coming.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]​

 

[rational experiences]

The heard man's human over conscious feedback the theist scientist voiced.

Said if a reaction Moses Jesus sacrificed earth mass already happened then stopped I won't be owning the same paths now.

So life's bio sacrificed now will remain the same. As old sacrificed biology. Not true as sex brings forth body type by two varied humans never one human.

I can pass sun metal transmitters now through newly born biology human animals and it not affect living biology. I'm so intelligent he says.

As the ism of scientism you a human self says only because you don't want to be hurt as a liar. Why consciousness gets life destroyed as behaviour not science is involved.

Choice and beliefs. Also personality and personal relationships. Human.

Yet criminal theists always agree other humans however can get hurt as like rich man I want. My behaviour like a rich man I'll do whatever I want. My cult group allows it.

Why they experiment in our heavens as if it's humans sciences New science laboratory. Although we have a tribunal who says it's illegal who knows they are doing it.

So predictive human conscious feedback past man behaviour behaviour now gives his advices today.

As if men have transcended life and death in science only about all destruction. And is now original designer science man pretending no science change on earth ever occurred.

He begins again new lying.

The human says we are being probed... cloned by alien science machine causes as we bodily are attacked by increasing technology transmitters taking over our biology in the heavens.

Science is machine exact. Ignores what all other machines are causing as any type machine is exact to design only. Man's causes man's status controlled. His science only.

Machines became science of man that had increased the old alien causes.

He's notified. He knows. He copies so he begins to bio clone by mind changes self possessed. Bio life by man ipulation. As if a man by heavens machine cloned life.

He then thinks he's doing all activity by machines only as he's the machines designer controller. What scientism is...total fakery.

Self possessed human man's consciousness. Warned.

Theism was a man living who thought invented fake preached humans sciences beliefs. As lots of human only told stories. Just a human.

Whose personal human behaviour is atrocious.

Proven by flag use. I pretend I can claim name and own anything I desire.

As just a human living on one planet only.

Reasoned as the sun his theism had attacked everything. Proving he's behavioural possessed in mind by science causes.

Scientism.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

It would also be helpful if you could explain why you feel your example qualifies as scientism.

I think it might be more helpful to here from a biologist with a second PhD in philosophy (Massimo Pigliucci) speaking in front of self-labeled skeptics (as a self-identified member) in a talk given for the Center for Inquiry (which "strives to foster a secular society based on reason, science, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values") on this topics:

 

[PureX]

Cognitive abstraction works. A much more specific term relevant to the discussion.

But cognitive abstraction is not the topic. The topic is the transcendence of physical limitations that result from this meta-physical phenomenon. Which is why you don't like that term. And likely why you don't like the term "transcendent". And why you won't like any term that shows physicality not to be the be-all and end-all of existence.

And here I would argue that with sound, we create a catalog of abstract references to what we have experienced. The experience provides the context or association. When a sound is heard it is compared to the catalog to find associations. This process is not ideological.

The process is absolutely ideological, because a remembered sound is an idea of that sound. Not an actual sound. And comparing and contextualizing ideas is by definition an "ideological" process.

I see ideology as an attitude that we set, or are indoctrinated into, towards social and political abstract constructs. Not all thought is culturally or politically related.

Perhaps it's time to stop defining words based on a flawed godless materialist philosophy of existence.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

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

You explained nothing. You just made assertions using cryptic jargon.
I asked you to be specific.

Perhaps I'm just not at home with the jargon. That's very much possible. That's why I asked to be specific.
This is what I do when I don't understand something. I ask questions for clarification and so that I may learn.

When you then fail to clarify, it only tells me that you don't understand it properly yourself.
If you understand a subject, you should be able to explain it to someone who doesn't.

Just repeating the cryptic jargon is not helpful.

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.

Is this you saying that objective facts don't exist?

When I for example state that if you let go of your keys, they will fall to the ground... am I then expressing an objectively known fact or am I then just expressing a subjective opinion which may or may not be correct?

This is why I asked what the practical impact is of all this (imo) drivel.
I'm not seeing it at all.

How does any of this change our ability to investigate and learn about the workings of the universe (in its broadest sense)? How does any of this change our ability to use science to learn about the workings of the universe?

Why do you think this point is important?

 

[Erebus]

I think it might be more helpful to here from a biologist with a second PhD in philosophy (Massimo Pigliucci) speaking in front of self-labeled skeptics (as a self-identified member) in a talk given for the Center for Inquiry (which "strives to foster a secular society based on reason, science, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values") on this topics:

Excellent video! Thank you for sharing that. I would encourage everybody participating in this thread (and everybody debating scientism in general) to give it a watch.

I also found it interesting to have a look at some of the comments on that video. The speaker's criticism of scientism was met with outright hostility from a few people, including one commenter who speculated that perhaps it means he's a flat earther. That "you're with us or against us" attitude strikes me as people viewing science as a sort of personal identity rather than a tool of inquiry.

 

[MikeF]

But cognitive abstraction is not the topic. The topic is the transcendence of physical limitations that result from this meta-physical phenomenon. Which is why you don't like that term. And likely why you don't like the term "transcendent". And why you won't like any term that shows physicality not to be the be-all and end-all of existence.
The process is absolutely ideological, because a remembered sound is an idea of that sound. Not an actual sound. And comparing and contextualizing ideas is by definition an "ideological" process.
Perhaps it's time to stop defining words based on a flawed godless materialist philosophy of existence.

Let's try a different approach. If I draw a picture of a person on a sheet of paper, be it a simple stick figure or a more realistic one, I could draw that figure of a person in a range of sizes, from quite small to a figure with the top of the head close to one border of the page and the bottom of the feet at the opposite border. Regardless of size, the figure is an abstract representation of a person. I can also draw other abstract figures to represent other things, say an apple for example. Let's say I draw a figure of a person holding an apple and the apple is proportionally sized relative to the figure of a person to the same ratio we generally find between an actual person and apple. This abstract representation, however crudely drawn could represent something we might actually experience in the physical world.

Now, say we draw an apple that is much larger on the page than the figure of a person we draw, and we draw the figure of a person sitting on the apple. Here we have drawn two recognizable abstract representations of a person and an apple, but we have drawn them in proportions that cannot be found in our physical world.

In every drawing, the abstract representation is a physical thing made up of paper and graphite (if we only draw with a pencil) and that physical representation, the properties of paper and graphite, are governed by physical laws.

Cognitive thought is simply abstraction created with a different medium, one of neurochemistry as opposed to pencil and paper. Cognitive abstraction transcends physicality no more or no less than the abstractions of our pencil and paper drawings. If this is all you mean by metaphysicality, then we are speaking about the same thing, talking apples to apples if you will.

 

[MikeF]

I think it might be more helpful to here from a biologist with a second PhD in philosophy (Massimo Pigliucci) speaking in front of self-labeled skeptics (as a self-identified member) in a talk given for the Center for Inquiry (which "strives to foster a secular society based on reason, science, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values") on this topics:

This is interesting, however I see it mainly as a defense or justification for Philosophy or Philosophy as distinguishable and separate from Science.

The speaker, Massimo Pigliucci, uses 6 criteria proposed by Susan Haaek to identify or recognize scientism as a starting point for his analysis. They are:

Susan Haaek's scientism criteria:
1. Using words like "science" and "scientific" as honorific terms of generic epistemic praise.
2. Adopting the manners and terminology of science regardless of whether they are useful or not.
3. An obsession with demarcating science from pseudoscience. - dis
4. A preoccupation with identifying a scientific method to demarcate science from other activities.- dis
5. An attitude that seeks to deploy science to answer questions beyond its scope.
6. Denying or denigrating the usefulness of non-scientific activities, particularly within the humanities.​

In his talk, Dr. Pigliucci disagrees with criteria 3 and 4, and I concur.

For criteria 1 and 2, I see these more as examples of charlatanism and would characterize these categories as such.

That leaves us with criteria 5 and 6, and it is in these two categories that his talk takes up a firm defense for Philosophy and his criteria for defining science and creating a box in which to place science or scientific inquiry in. I would say that this is the philosophers version of category 3 except it would be an obsession (or perhaps an earnest desire ) with demarcating philosophy from science.

His arguments used to limit science to a box of his definition contradicts his own criticisms of Haaek's forth criteria. I disagree with his characterization of science and take issue with his points on these last two criteria.

All that being said, the talk does bring up real concerns and actual problems with both the way science is understood outside of the science community as well as how it is used/promoted in society, by both scientist and lay people.

Though I do not agree with all of his conclusions, the problems highlighted are real ones that should be acknowledge and addressed.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Let's try a different approach. If I draw a picture of a person on a sheet of paper, be it a simple stick figure or a more realistic one, I could draw that figure of a person in a range of sizes, from quite small to a figure with the top of the head close to one border of the page and the bottom of the feet at the opposite border. Regardless of size, the figure is an abstract representation of a person. I can also draw other abstract figures to represent other things, say an apple for example. Let's say I draw a figure of a person holding an apple and the apple is proportionally sized relative to the figure of a person to the same ratio we generally find between an actual person and apple. This abstract representation, however crudely drawn could represent something we might actually experience in the physical world.

...

Here it is a simple as I can do it.
Look as something around you. Any object. Now describe your experience of it. Now look at the physical world and describe your experience of it. You can't because it is a concept in your mind. A category for some experiences. But not all of your experiences are external and that is how the world is not just physical. The world is more than the category of physical.

Physical is a relationship in you in how you categorize some of your experiences.

 

[cladking]

But to be fair, what else are we to do? Either we formulate a testable hypothesis and test it, or we're just guessing, no?
My own view is that consciousness is overrated, even misleading, as a phenomenon. As you've probably noticed from your reading, the conscious mind is often the last to know what the brain is actually doing ─ you'll recall those real-time brain experiments from maybe a decade ago showing that the brain had not only decided what it was going to do, but had begun to do it clear seconds before the consciousness of the subject was aware that he'd decided anything.

That's part of the appeal to me of the global workspace hypothesis.
Well, good luck to us both in our exploring. Which reminds me of TS Eliot's line from somewhere,"We shall not cease from exploration /And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time."

Sorry about that link. Here's the actual quote:

... human beings [have] four times the brain size of a chimpanzee. 20% of a human’s metabolic energy [goes] into feeding the brain. Humans [are] ridiculously smarter than any other species. [...] Ending up with that gigantic outsized brain must have taken some sort of runaway evolutionary process, something that would push and push without limits.
[...]
Harry had once read a famous book called Chimpanzee Politics. The book had described how an adult chimpanzee named Luit had confronted the aging alpha, Yeroen, with the help of a young, recently matured chimpanzee named Nikkie. Nikkie had not intervened directly in the fights between Luit and Yeroen, but had prevented Yeroen’s other supporters in the tribe from coming to his aid, distracting them whenever a confrontation developed between Luit and Yeroen. And in time Luit had won, and become the new alpha, with Nikkie as the second most powerful ...
... though it hadn’t taken very long after that for Nikkie to form an alliance with the defeated Yeroen, overthrow Luit, and become the new new alpha.

It really made you appreciate what millions of years of hominids trying to outwit each other – an evolutionary arms race without limit – had led to in the way of increased mental capacity.

’Cause, y’know, a human would have totally seen that one coming.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]​

I think our biggest difference is that I don't believe "intelligence" even exists as we define or experience it. The difference in "intelligence" between a chimp and a man is nominal. Humans have a great deal more knowledge and ability to process and exercise it. Humans have the ability through complex language to pass learning to each successive generation so individuals don't all have to start at square one as animals do. We mistake consciousness and knowledge for intelligence.

A modern bicycle is the product of countless thousands of discoveries and inventions each made by individuals over 40,000 years. While it requires a little experiential skill to ride a bicycle this hardly makes a bike rider "intelligent". If you go back and look at each discovery and invention you'll find each is incremental and typically highly limited in scope suggesting none of the inventors must have had "intelligence" either.

The way we think is determined by language, formatted by language, and this hides the nature of consciousness from each user. It creates mirages like "intelligence" and hides facts like all trains of thought are circular; the conclusion is necessarily dependent on the definitions, assumptions, and axioms. Right off the bat you can see that one axiom, that we are each intelligent, underlies the work of every thinker.


To perform reductionistic science requires that we devise, perform, and execute experiment but since we reason in circles it is still incumbent on us to not only exercise care in interpretation but to hold every interpretation in terms of the assumptions that generated it. We must also compare, contrast, and hold EVERY experiment in mind. This is where science has failed since the 19th century. Without applied science and philosophical science or understanding of metaphysics paradigms become more important than experiment itself. This is in no small part why so many people believe in "Peers" and "Science": experiment is not only checked for repeatability and logic but also for conformance with the paradigms.

You raise some interesting points that will require some thinking on my part. This intelligence arms race must have had a cause other than the advent of complex language as my theory holds yet without complex language "intelligence" has very little utility. Perhaps the same mutation that resulted in larger brains also created complex language but this would push everything much too far back in time since humans didn't act human before 80,000 years ago. I suppose I haven't had a lot I need to research recently so I can try looking at this.

Thanks for the links.

 

[PureX]

Cognitive thought is simply abstraction created with a different medium ...

"Simply"? That abstraction is the jump from the realm of the physical, to the realm of the ideal (meta-physical). A realm of existence beyond and transcendent of the limitations of time, space, matter, and motion. A realm where unicorns can breathe, and dance, and fly (or whatever). And because this meta-physical realm of ideas exists, and we can experience it, new possibilities become available to us that were not otherwise possible. MANY of them. A whole new universe of possibilities, in fact.

The neural-chemistry made cognitive abstraction possible, but that cognitive abstraction is the doorway to a whole new realm of existential possibilities. A realm of existence that transcends and surpasses the realm of possibilities afforded by the physicality, alone. To be a human being is to live with one foot in each of these realms of existence: the physical/material realm, and the meta-physical/ideal realm. And how we negotiate this predicament defines us: both as individuals and as a species.

It's a strange and fascinating predicament, and surely not one to belittle or ignore.

 

[MikeF]

"Simply"? That abstraction is the jump from the realm of the physical, to the realm of the ideal (meta-physical). A realm of existence beyond and transcendent of the limitations of time, space, matter, and motion. A realm where unicorns can breathe, and dance, and fly (or whatever). And because this meta-physical realm of ideas exists, and we can experience it, new possibilities become available to us that were not otherwise possible. MANY of them. A whole new universe of possibilities, in fact.

The neural-chemistry made cognitive abstraction possible, but that cognitive abstraction is the doorway to a whole new realm of existential possibilities. A realm of existence that transcends and surpasses the realm of possibilities afforded by the physicality, alone. To be a human being is to live with one foot in each of these realms of existence: the physical/material realm, and the meta-physical/ideal realm. And how we negotiate this predicament defines us: both as individuals and as a species.

It's a strange and fascinating predicament, and surely not one to belittle or ignore.

Seems like we are on the same page to me. I would only add that being realistic is not the same thing as belittling.

 

[PureX]

Seems like we are on the same page to me. I would only add that being realistic is not the same thing as belittling.

Not to be too picky. But the "same page" would entail understanding that ideas are real. And that physicality does not determine what is real and what is not. Meta-physicality does. And that "objective reality" is a subjective, meta-physcal ideal. Not a fact of existence.

These are realizations that the materialist/scientism crowd fight against, constantly.

 

[MikeF]

The "same page" would entail understanding that ideas are real. And that physicality does not determine what is real and what is not. Meta-physicality does. And that "objecive reality" is a subjective, meta-physcal ideal. Not a fact of existence.

These are realizations that the materialist/scientism crowd fight against.

Hmm. Ok. The physical world exists regardless of what we think about it; it objectively exists. As such, the objective status of the physical world is not a subjective ideal, the physical world simply is what it is and we can either choose to discover it as it is, or not.

I certainly agree that some folks project a subjective ideal onto the physical world and work hard to preserve that artificial construct of reality, and this of course will conflict with those who wish to simply understand the physical world as it is. Perhaps it is these folks who wish to understand the physical world as it is that you label materialist/scientism.

 

[PureX]

Hmm. Ok. The physical world exists regardless of what we think about it; it objectively exists.

Not to us.

For anything to exist, to us, requires our recognition of 'it' (an idea set), and of 'existing' (an idea set), and of the logical synergy of these idea sets. Your assertion that "it objectively exists" is a philosophical proposition that you cannot possibly prove, because you cannot, not be the biased (subjective) observer. Whatever "apart from you" is, is by definition not within your purview. So any assertion you (me, or anyone) make about it is forever going to be unfounded.

Thus, this "objective reality" you are asserting is an unfounded assumption. Which makes it a subjective (you being the subject) assumption, and not an objective fact.

As such, the objective status of the physical world is not a subjective ideal, the physical world simply is what it is and we can either choose to discover it as it is, or not.

But I have just shown you why it IS a subjective ideal. And you have no way of testing your assertion to prove otherwise because you can't observe anything "apart from you".

I certainly agree that some folks project a subjective ideal onto the physical world and work hard to preserve that artificial construct of reality, and this of course will conflict with those who wish to simply understand the physical world as it is. Perhaps it is these folks who wish to understand the physical world as it is that you label materialist/scientism.

It is not possible to "understand the physical world as it is". Because understanding is a metaphysical phenomenon. It's a huge complex of synergized idea sets which are themselves cognitive abstractions derived from physical 'input'. We humans are both in the game, watching the game, and judging the game all at the same time. We are certainly NOT objective.