Who here believes in "Scientism"?

[PureX]

Why are you confident that what is beyond human ability to understand through science is readily understandable through some other means?

Like Shakespeare, perhaps? Or Beethoven's 5th Symphony? Science can't explain any of these. All it can do is track our biological responses.

How do you differentiate between something that realistically describes "that which is beyond human understanding" and that which is simply made up?

There never was a difference. The really weird thing is that you think there's supposed to be.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Science *is* philosophy. It is simply philosophy that incorporates human error mitigation. I would say that much of what is called philosophy today consists of: 1) those who seek a refuge from error mitigation, 2) those who simply wish to speculate about things beyond our current ability to meaningfully evaluate or test, which is perfectly fine as long as it regarded as speculation, 3) those who wish to advocate for a particular position within the arena of subjective preference (may or may not incorporate an objective understanding of reality and the species Homo sapiens), and 4) those who wish to focus specifically on purely analytic abstract systems such language, mathematics, and logic.



What reality *is* and how Homo sapiens add value, meaning, purpose, and ability to function in reality are two separate issues. Hopefully the latter is informed by the former.



What a way to spin it!

How about it took two and a half millennia (in the West) to overcome Christian dogma and repression.

Philosophy from the Greek, Philo - love, Sofia - wisdom, meaning literally the love of wisdom.

In what way does science deal with either love or wisdom?

 

[MikeF]

Like Shakespeare, perhaps? Or Beethoven's 5th Symphony? Science can't explain any of these. All it can do is track our biological responses.

<sigh> Then "what" explains Beethoven's 5th Symphony? What exactly is being explained? How is the explanation justified?

There never was a difference [between what is beyond human understanding and what is made up]. The really weird thing is that you think there's supposed to be.

Really? I don't think you are really absorbing what I say.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Scientism does not exit as a faith.
Science is the best means we have to answer"scientific" Questions.
Religions purport to give answers to questions on religion, however faiths often contradict each other.
Eventually all believers in religions,will be seen a primitive and ignorant by the majority of people.

 

[MikeF]

Philosophy from the Greek, Philo - love, Sofia - wisdom, meaning literally the love of wisdom.

In what way does science deal with either love or wisdom?

Wow. That's your argument? What areas of inquiry, in your opinion, did the ancient Greeks consider the term "philosophy" to cover? Was it all about love and/or wisdom? What did wisdom consist of for them?

This from Wikipedia (I know, it's Wikipedia, but its convenient):

"Before the modern age, the term philosophy was used in a wide sense. It included most forms of rational inquiry, such as the individual sciences, as its subdisciplines. For instance, natural philosophy was a major branch of philosophy. This branch of philosophy encompassed a wide range of fields, including disciplines like physics, chemistry, and biology. An example of this usage is the 1687 book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton. This book referred to natural philosophy in its title, but it is today considered a book of physics."​

​

Why the schism then between philosophy, which encompassed all rational inquiry prior to the schism, and what would be considered science after the schism. I stipulate that it is because those engaged in what remained of philosophy did not wish to be held to the standards and principles that were being established within science to mitigate human error in the inquiry process.

 

[MikeF]

This is a very common misconception among the scientism crowd. They have elevated science in their minds to such an extent that for them it has become the pinnacle of all human understanding and truth. So that science is mathematics, and science is philosophy, and science is the art of applied reason and logic, and science is ... well ... just EVERYTHING good!

But it's really not. All it really is, and all it ever was, is a means of ascertaining the mechanisms of physical functionality. That's it. It can employ mathematics, and reason, and logic, and even creativity. But in the end all it does is help us determine the mechanisms of physical function.

Yes, "science is mathematics, and science is philosophy, and science is the art of applied reason and logic, and science is ... well ... just" ... all of that employed under standards and principles that both acknowledge human fallibility and make every effort to mitigate that fallibility. And yes, mitigating human error is a good thing.

 

[Bear Wild]

Why are you confident that what is beyond human ability to understand through science is readily understandable through some other means? How do you differentiate between something that realistically describes "that which is beyond human understanding" and that which is simply made up?



Has our current understanding of human behavior not moved beyond Freud and Jung?

Of course our understanding has increased since Freud and Jung. They for me represented a split between a pure scientific approach and a combined approach of science with mythological and ancestral wisdom. It is clear that science if revealing more and more of how we think and behave but new understanding of mythologic has also expanded our understanding. They both can complement each other.

I am not confident but unsure everything will be understandable by other means. As complexity increases scientific study becomes increasingly difficult to apply with full understanding. How much AI will influence this is still not known. Ecological systems are still beyond our full understanding through science. Human behavior is still beyond our full understanding through science. That does not mean we cannot have intuitive knowledge and experience which gives a level of understanding where scientific descriptions at this time cannot. Combining the intuitive and the scientific was the path Jung took and I agree with it. What he has proposed has been improved on since but the understanding of the extent of the unconscious including our inherited unconscious is underestimated in my opinion in the pure scientific approach.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Wow. That's your argument? What areas of inquiry, in your opinion, did the ancient Greeks consider the term "philosophy" to cover? Was it all about love and/or wisdom? What did wisdom consist of for them?

This from Wikipedia (I know, it's Wikipedia, but its convenient):

"Before the modern age, the term philosophy was used in a wide sense. It included most forms of rational inquiry, such as the individual sciences, as its subdisciplines. For instance, natural philosophy was a major branch of philosophy. This branch of philosophy encompassed a wide range of fields, including disciplines like physics, chemistry, and biology. An example of this usage is the 1687 book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton. This book referred to natural philosophy in its title, but it is today considered a book of physics."​

​

Why the schism then between philosophy, which encompassed all rational inquiry prior to the schism, and what would be considered science after the schism. I stipulate that it is because those engaged in what remained of philosophy did not wish to be held to the standards and principles that were being established within science to mitigate human error in the inquiry process.

Yes, I’m aware that in Newton’s day physics was referred to as natural philosophy. The two disciplines have diverged since then, though I don’t think there was any schism, which would imply an ideological rift.

While the natural sciences are concerned with the structure and behaviour of the observable, material world, philosophy is concerned with such diverse concepts as epistemology, logic, ethics, and meaning.

I wholeheartedly reject your speculative and unsubstantiated stipulation, and recommend an introductory course in philosophy of science, which might give you some insight into how these two fields of enquire differ from and relate to each other.

 

[MikeF]

Yes, I’m aware that in Newton’s day physics was referred to as natural philosophy. The two disciplines have diverged since then, though I don’t think there was any schism, which would imply an ideological rift.

While the natural sciences are concerned with the structure and behaviour of the observable, material world, philosophy is concerned with such diverse concepts as epistemology, logic, ethics, and meaning.

I wholeheartedly reject your speculative and unsubstantiated stipulation, and recommend an introductory course in philosophy of science, which might give you some insight into how these two fields of enquire differ from and relate to each other.

Of course you reject it. I find it interesting that you have zero'd in on the transition period, the scientific revolution itself.

What about for the ancient Greeks? What umbrella of thought did the study of man and nature fall under? Prior to the scientific revolution, was the study of man and nature under the purview of philosophy or something else?

 

[TLK Valentine]

Or maybe alcohol, or opiates. But no, I'm not talking about warm fuzzy feelings, and I'm not claiming anything. I'm pointing out that there may be more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.

Agreed, my Danish Prince - but in matters of science, "Heaven" is somewhat above our pay grade. Science is focused on the Earthly plane.

And so far, everything here runs with nearly clockwork precision in accordance with certain patterns - call them "natural laws" if you like - that we can recognize, identify, and eventually use to make predictions. While we often stumble along the way, we're steadily moving in the right direction.

 

[Brian2]

It depends what they mean. In my experience that remark is not saying the God doesn't exist. It is simply saying that there are alternative explanations as well. You DO sometimes run across "hard atheists" who DO claim there is no God, but in my own life, the atheists I've known have all been "Soft Atheists" who make no such claim, but simply do not have a belief in God.

Saying that they simply do not believe in God really means that at the moment, for them, God is not real, does not exist. And when you look at the evidence they require before they will believe in God, it is easy to see that they believe in scientism and that they are hard atheists in everything but label.
Let's face it, even hard atheists will believe in God with the evidence that the so called soft atheists require.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Saying that they simply do not believe in God really means that

No, I understand that the distinction can be tricky to understand, but the more you learn about it, the more significant it becomes. The source that was most helpful to me was this one on the psychology of atheism:

 

[RestlessSoul]

Agreed, my Danish Prince - but in matters of science, "Heaven" is somewhat above our pay grade. Science is focused on the Earthly plane.

And so far, everything here runs with nearly clockwork precision in accordance with certain patterns - call them "natural laws" if you like - that we can recognize, identify, and eventually use to make predictions. While we often stumble along the way, we're steadily moving in the right direction.

Except we don’t live in a clockwork, mechanical universe at all; that misconception belongs to the old Newtonian physics, which is at least a century out of date. At a more fundamental level than is immediately available to our senses, reality is far stranger and more counter-intuitive than the deterministic interactions between discrete entities, which we perceive in daily life.

 

[PureX]

<sigh> Then "what" explains Beethoven's 5th Symphony? What exactly is being explained? How is the explanation justified?

It's the language of resonance and imagination. The pictures being painted in our minds in response to the sounds we are hearing. Art is the voice of cognition, itself, speaking to us, and to each other. It's not about the mechanisms, it's about the CONTENT resulting from those mechanisms. You know, the stuff the scientism crowd dismisses as 'make-believe'.

 

[PureX]

Agreed, my Danish Prince - but in matters of science, "Heaven" is somewhat above our pay grade. Science is focused on the Earthly plane.

And so far, everything here runs with nearly clockwork precision in accordance with certain patterns - call them "natural laws" if you like - that we can recognize, identify, and eventually use to make predictions. While we often stumble along the way, we're steadily moving in the right direction.

Let's call those "natural laws" what they really are. They are a set of possibilities and impossibilities being imposed on the expression of existential reality. But imposed from where? By what? To what purpose? These are the questions that science cannot ask because science is limited to eploring the physically interactive mechanisms of those imposed possibilities and impossibilities. And this can't even address the non-physical and metaphysical mechanisms being generated by those imposed possibilities and impossibilities. Which is why we humans have developed art, and philosophy, and religion, to help us explore THOSE manifestations of these imposed possibilities and impossibilities.

But the scientism crowd ignores these other avenues of exploration, as it ignores all the non-physical and metaphysical expressions they explore, Claiming they are not "real".

 

[TLK Valentine]

Except we don’t live in a clockwork, mechanical universe at all; that misconception belongs to the old Newtonian physics, which is at least a century out of date. At a more fundamental level than is immediately available to our senses, reality is far stranger and more counter-intuitive than the deterministic interactions between discrete entities, which we perceive in daily life.

Indeed it is far stranger... how is that a problem?
The more we learn, the more we learn that we have more to learn.

 

[PureX]

Indeed it is far stranger... how is that a problem?
The more we learn, the more we learn that we have more to learn.

So, in fact, we are becoming more ignorant.

Just sayin'.

 

[TLK Valentine]

Let's call those "natural laws" what they really are. They are a set of possibilities and impossibilities being imposed on the expression of existential reality. But imposed from where? By what? To what purpose? These are the questions that science cannot ask because science is limited to eploring the physically interactive mechanisms of those imposed possibilities and impossibilities.
And this can't even address the non-physical and metaphysical mechanisms being generated by those imposed possibilities and impossibilities. Which is why we humans have developed art, and philosophy, and religion, to help us explore THOSE manifestations of these imposed possibilities and impossibilities.

And art, philosophy, and religion are great expressions of human imagination - a wondrous effect of our talent for pattern recognition.

And while those endeavors can explore, they cannot provide definitive answers any more than science can. We can only speculate.

But the scientism crowd ignores these other avenues of exploration, as it ignores all the non-physical and metaphysical expressions they explore, Claiming they are not "real".

It is a limitation of the scientific method that it restricts itself to hard facts, which the metaphysical has few of. And it's true that hardcore materialists often disregard such efforts altogether as futile.

Science is a useful tool for those who recognize its limitations - as is art, philosophy, and religion.

 

[TLK Valentine]

So, in fact, we are becoming more ignorant.

Just sayin'.

Pretty much. Isn't it wonderful?
"The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing." ~Socrates.

 

[Marwan]

I disbelieve in science and believe in what science cannot see or study.

I testify that there is no god or deity worthy of worship but God, and that the angels and spirits and demons exists, and that the soul exists, and that hell and heaven exists.

The Glorious Quran tells us to believe in unseen as part of the pillars of Faith.

I don't believe, I know and have seen the unseen, even the impossible, God Himself (by His Grace).