Who here believes in "Scientism"?

[Marwan]

Hello. I just want to say that I had to come to a decision, and it was not always an easy one, because nay-sayers can be persuasive. Even if they're wrong and cannot be "proven" wrong. I am in favor of the Bible, not something that supposedly disproves the Bible.

The Christians are pagans who praise a man and claims God had begotten a son and that He is three in one.

They are pagans like the Hindus who claim self-divinity.

 

[vulcanlogician]

There are actually different views, among scientists themselves, about whether or not it produces objective truth, cf. “Shut up and calculate!”

Science produces predictive models of the physical world, which are by their nature never final. It has been said that in science, all truth is provisional. So if we speak of “objective truth”, in the context of science, we need to qualify quite a bit what we mean by that.

By which time we are doing philosophy, of course…….

Well said.

The models for knowledge are debated in science as well as philosophy.

What's your position on scientism if you don't mind my asking?

For me, science’s limitations (which are significantly human limitations) are fundamental to the question of scientism.

As I mentioned earlier I think the most useful definition is “excessive belief in the accuracy and scope of scientific methods when applied to all areas of enquiry".

Scientism is dead in the water on principle.

But if you want to explore the nuances of why it is wrong, I'm all on board. Science isn't perfect in providing knowledge. But who gives a ****? You're inviting that kind of argument when there's no need.

Let's take the supposition that humans have knowledge, and we are biased to understand the world according to many knowledge-prejudices. So that, knowing things is a strictly human endeavor. But doesn't your dog "know" when you are about to leave.

Isn't that just "any kind of knowledge. And if you use the word "universal you kinda wanna account for them all.

 

[exchemist]

Well said.

The models for knowledge are debated in science as well as philosophy.

What's your position on scientism if you don't mind my asking?



Scientism is dead in the water on principle.

But if you want to explore the nuances of why it is wrong, I'm all on board. Science isn't perfect in providing knowledge. But who gives a ****? You're inviting that kind of argument when there's no need.

Let's take the supposition that humans have knowledge, and we are biased to understand the world according to many knowledge-prejudices. So that, knowing things is a strictly human endeavor. But doesn't your dog "know" when you are about to leave.

Isn't that just "any kind of knowledge. And if you use the word "universal you kinda wanna account for them all.

My position on scientism? I think it is what happens when a person tries to use science to do more than it is intended for and to overclaim its utility. Science is for understanding and predicting the natural world. But human experience does not consist only of experience of nature. There are other disciplines, worthy of equal respect intellectually, that address those other aspects of human experience.

I do not think there are many people who are so Gradgrindian as to claim that science is the only way to make sense of our world, but there are a few. Dickens did not invent Gradgrind out of thin air. There are such people.

 

[Augustus]

Scientism is dead in the water on principle. But if you want to explore the nuances of why it is wrong, I'm all on board. Science isn't perfect in providing knowledge. But who gives a ****? You're inviting that kind of argument when there's no need.

One purpose of science is to gain reliable and accurate information that is useful for decision making.

"Excessive belief in the accuracy and scope of scientific methods when applied to all areas of enquiry" means you are getting increasing amounts of incorrect and potentially harmful information that is not useful yet carries the prestige marker of being 'scientific'.

I don't really see how one can consider science a valuable tool, and not consider scientism, to some extent, a problem.

 

[YoursTrue]

This seems to be a curious inference from the available evidence as many scientists are also philosophers. When Einstein engaged in the philosophy of science was he doing so because he though it offered genuine value to the scientific process or because he just wanted to avoid having his ideas held up to scrutiny?

Good question. I believe there will be a resurrection, and Einstein might be called back from the dead. Then perhaps we'll see how he feels about that.

 

[YoursTrue]

One purpose of science is to gain reliable and accurate information that is useful for decision making.

"Excessive belief in the accuracy and scope of scientific methods when applied to all areas of enquiry" means you are getting increasing amounts of incorrect and potentially harmful information that is not useful yet carries the prestige marker of being 'scientific'.

I don't really see how one can consider science a valuable tool, and not consider scientism, to some extent, a problem.

My uncle was a doctor; my cousin was a nuclear physicist in California; another cousin is a doctor, another is a lab technician. Oh, lest I forget, another heads up a lab. With all that in mind, I respect lab results. Meaning I have my blood tested from time to time to see "what's going on." Of course a person trained in reviewing the results would give the answer. I respect that.

 

[MikeF]

My counter-criticism to your last point would be that there are those in other fields who try to pass off opinion as objective truths.

People may do that in many fields, I’m not sure it defines any of them though.

Many of those who fall prey to scientism seem to want certainty and bemoan that "it's just an opinion", but many opinions are correct and sometimes we just need to make a decision which ones we are going to trust as being useful even if we can't demonstrate they are "objectively" true.

This is exactly my point. Whether it is an insistence on claiming certainty where none is possible, or passing off subjective preference as universal truth, all of it speaks to human fallibility and wherever humans are involved, in the pursuit of any knowledge seeking endeavor you wish to claim, these very human failings have to be acknowledged and addressed.

It is not a science problem, it's a people problem, which is the very thing that science is designed to address and mitigate.

My points relate to the idea there are areas where we cannot have objective truths either due to the intrinsic nature of that issue (how do we demarcate science from not science or what ethical systems are best for example), or the current limits of our ability to study these issues scientifically with any degree of accuracy (many of the things that fall within the purview of social sciences).

This is exactly wrong. We do not demarcate what is science from what is not science because science *is* the demarcation tool. It is the tool to demarcate between what is objective and corresponds to the real world, what is subjective preference, and what is purely analytic abstraction. Science is the demarcation tool with the mandate to identify and mitigate sources of human error in both the demarcation process and knowledge acquisition process.

To declare areas of inquiry explicitly off limits to science can only be seen as a desire to shield those areas from this process of demarcation and error mitigation.

Michael Oakeshott classifies different types of knowledge and the problems of limiting things to scientific knowledge:

Technical knowledge can be learned from a book; it can be
learned in a correspondence course. Moreover, much of it can be
learned by heart, repeated by rote, and applied mechanically: the
logic of the syllogism is a technique of this kind. Technical knowledge,
in short, can be both taught and learned in the simplest meanings
of these words.

On the other hand, practical knowledge can
neither be taught nor learned, but only imparted and acquired. It
exists only in practice, and the only way to acquire it is by apprenticeship
to a master - not because the master can teach it (he cannot),
but because it can be acquired only by continuous contact with one
who is perpetually practising it. In the arts and in natural science what
normally happens is that the pupil, in being taught and in learning
the technique from his master, discovers himself to have acquired
also another sort of knowledge than merely technical knowledge,
without it ever having been precisely imparted and often without
being able to say precisely what it is. Thus a pianist acquires artistry
as well as technique, a chess-player style and insight into the
game as well as a knowledge of the moves, and a scientist acquires
(among other things) the sort of judgement which tells him when
his technique is leading him astray and the connoisseurship which
enables him to distinguish the profitable from the unprofitable
directions to explore.

Now, as I understand it, Rationalism is the assertion that what I
have called practical knowledge is not knowledge at all, the assertion
that, properly speaking, there is no knowledge which is not technical
knowledge. The Rationalist holds that the only element of
knowledge involved in any human activity is technical knowledge,
and that what I have called practical knowledge is really only a sort
of nescience which would be negligible if it were not positively mischievous.
The sovereignty of 'reason', for the Rationalist, means the
sovereignty of technique.

A ace salesperson may know many things about human psychology, and I’d bet on them to outperform the world’s leading expert on the science of persuasion in persuading someone to buy a car. The scientist can better justify why their knowledge is “true”, but I wouldn’t say the salesperson simply has subjective opinion on human psychology, they have identified something real.

I wouldn’t say the only way to think of knowledge is a) true false as established by science or b) opinion and subjective preference.

Prior to the Soviet Union collapsing some people predicted it would happen, for reasons that later turned out to be correct. They were not doing science, but they did offer useful and accurate insights into the world.

Many others said incorrect things about the USSR, and at the time no one could prove who was right or wrong. But the people who were proved right with hindsight were correct in the observations at the time they made them. Sometimes this may be the best we can do.

The World is too messy to just have true/false and opinion/preference as categories of information.

All of this is based on a flawed, narrowly defined caricature of what science is.

A major contributor in a generic sense rather than quantified, one of many and far from the worst. But certainly something that contributes significantly to the problem (of course it can also help mitigate the problem too).

Look at a field like psychology where by some estimates more than half of published research is false (whatever the percentage is, it’s significantl).

The more research I read, the more misinformed I would become, regardless of any actual knowledge I acquired.

In physics, a leading expert will have vastly better knowledge than a non-scientific but astute observer of the natural world. I’m not sure we can guarantee that someone deemed a leading expert in psychology would necessarily have a more useful understanding of human behaviour than a highly astute observer of human society.

Wisdom requires the acquisition of useful knowledge and the avoidance of anti-knowledge (incorrect information retained as true that can cause problems).

Medical science, eugenics, scientific racialism, flawed economic theories, mental health treatments, dietary advice, etc are some areas where this has caused harm in the past.

(And to be clear, the point is science is a major source of false information, not science is a major source of false information therefore Jesus/tarot cards/moon crystals/etc. )

All these issues relate to human behavior, both human error and the complexity of modeling human social systems where the the active elements involved do not exhibit fixed properties (behaviors), rather, they are dynamic entities, the complexities of which are too numerous to get into, but simply put, they can be intuitive and counter-intuitive, predictable and unpredictable.

The level of difficulty in solving the problem does not negate the necessity to correctly demarcate the elements involved and ensure error mitigation in the investigative/problem-solving process. To claim otherwise would only seem to indicate a desire to express opinions on these questions free from error mitigation.

 

[YoursTrue]

The Christians are pagans who praise a man and claims God had begotten a son and that He is three in one.

They are pagans like the Hindus who claim self-divinity.

I disagree with your conclusions.

 

[YoursTrue]

This is exactly my point. Whether it is an insistence on claiming certainty where none is possible, or passing off subjective preference as universal truth, all of it speaks to human fallibility and wherever humans are involved, in the pursuit of any knowledge seeking endeavor you wish to claim, these very human failings have to be acknowledged and addressed.

That is the difference between me now and me in the past when I did not have the cognitive ability to question those teaching me in school as if what they asked me to believe from the textbooks were truly facts. If that were the case back then, and I could leave the class without losing credits, I would have.

 

[vulcanlogician]

"Excessive belief in the accuracy and scope of scientific methods when applied to all areas of enquiry" means you are getting increasing amounts of incorrect and potentially harmful information that is not useful yet carries the prestige marker of being 'scientific'.

Yeah, but, you see, if you are going to argue THAT point then you and I are going to disagree. Non-useful (or even harmful) truths are true nonetheless. Even though we both want to refute scientism, we're gonna butt heads on this issue.

It may be harmful to disclose to the world that an imminent, world-destroying asteroid will impact Earth in three days. Why is that a harmful truth? People would go out and commit every heinous crime imaginable. The world would be evil and chaos for it's last three days of existence. So it's possibly bad to inform the world of that. But, the fact of the matter is, the asteroid is still coming. The truth of that is not in dispute. It's a scientific fact. The "harmfulness" of information doesn't count against its truth value.

So I would implore you not go that route to argue against scientism. Your argument is problematic for several reasons. Even though (so far as I can tell) your conclusion is correct.

edit: "incorrect" information is a different issue. But still not a good argument against science. Sure, science occasionally gets things wrong. But it corrects itself eventually. No other discipline or path to knowledge is exempted from this reality. ALL attempts at knowledge get things wrong sometimes. Largely speaking, science is pretty good at addressing it's own errors and mistakes.

 

[vulcanlogician]

Gradgrindian

Vocabulary increased.

I had to look that up, but I'm glad I did. That's a good word to know.

 

[Augustus]

Yeah, but, you see, if you are going to argue THAT point then you and I are going to disagree. Non-useful (or even harmful) truths are true nonetheless. Even though we both want to refute scientism, we're gonna butt heads on this issue.

It may be harmful to disclose to the world that an imminent, world-destroying asteroid will impact Earth in three days. Why is that a harmful truth? People would go out and commit every heinous crime imaginable. The world would be evil and chaos for it's last three days of existence. So it's possibly bad to inform the world of that. But, the fact of the matter is, the asteroid is still coming. The truth of that is not in dispute. It's a scientific fact. The "harmfulness" of information doesn't count against its truth value.

So I would implore you not go that route to argue against scientism. Your argument is problematic for several reasons. Even though (so far as I can tell) your conclusion is correct.

You did add an edit, but you left this here so I’ll just point out that the above has nothing to do with what I wrote and does not remotely reflect my views.

edit: "incorrect" information is a different issue. But still not a good argument against science. Sure, science occasionally gets things wrong. But it corrects itself eventually. No other discipline or path to knowledge is exempted from this reality. ALL attempts at knowledge get things wrong sometimes. Largely speaking, science is pretty good at addressing its own errors and mistakes.

It is an argument against scientism. Conflating argument against scientism with arguments against science leads you down blind alleys.

If this thread wasn’t about scientism and was instead just people talking about where science is highly reliable and where it less reliable, I’m pretty sure no one would have any arguments against the idea it is far more reliable in certain areas than others.

Would you say it is therefore possible for individuals to be overconfident in the accuracy of scientific methods in at least some fields of enquiry?

If so, would you consider this a problem given some will use this to make very important decisions.

 

[vulcanlogician]

You did add an edit, but you left this here so I’ll just point out that the above has nothing to do with what I wrote and does not remotely reflect my views.

Do you think I was trying to misrepresent your views to make my own views seem more palatable? If so, sorry. I'm not trying to do that. Do you think that was my goal?

If this thread wasn’t about scientism and was instead just people talking about where science is highly reliable and where it less reliable, I’m pretty sure no one would have any arguments against the idea it is far more reliable in certain areas than others.

@SavedByTheLord Do you have any objections to this idea? And: are you a person?

 

[exchemist]

Yeah, but, you see, if you are going to argue THAT point then you and I are going to disagree. Non-useful (or even harmful) truths are true nonetheless. Even though we both want to refute scientism, we're gonna butt heads on this issue.

It may be harmful to disclose to the world that an imminent, world-destroying asteroid will impact Earth in three days. Why is that a harmful truth? People would go out and commit every heinous crime imaginable. The world would be evil and chaos for it's last three days of existence. So it's possibly bad to inform the world of that. But, the fact of the matter is, the asteroid is still coming. The truth of that is not in dispute. It's a scientific fact. The "harmfulness" of information doesn't count against its truth value.

So I would implore you not go that route to argue against scientism. Your argument is problematic for several reasons. Even though (so far as I can tell) your conclusion is correct.

edit: "incorrect" information is a different issue. But still not a good argument against science. Sure, science occasionally gets things wrong. But it corrects itself eventually. No other discipline or path to knowledge is exempted from this reality. ALL attempts at knowledge get things wrong sometimes. Largely speaking, science is pretty good at addressing it's own errors and mistakes.

Scientism is inappropriate reliance on science, typically by extending its remit too far or by dismissing other relevant but non-scientific considerations. So your asteroid example is a poor one. A better one (though possibly not perfect either) might be something like demolishing terraced housing in London after the war, to replace the houses with tower blocks. From a scientific viewpoint, these were modern, hygienic, efficient at using space, etc. Yet many became vandalised, graffiti-ridden hotbeds of drugs and crime. What was ignored was the lack of human scale and the consequent feelings of alienation they inspired in the occupants.

Another might be a view that the appeal of a musical composition can in principle be accounted for purely by analysing the frequencies and rhythms of the notes - a sort of silly reductionism, applied on principle.

 

[vulcanlogician]

Scientism is inappropriate reliance on science, typically by extending its remit too far or by dismissing other relevant but non-scientific considerations. So your asteroid example is a poor one. A better one (though possibly not perfect either) might be something like demolishing terraced housing in London after the war, to replace the houses with tower blocks. From a scientific viewpoint, these were modern, hygienic, efficient at using space, etc. Yet many became vandalised, graffiti-ridden hotbeds of drugs and crime. What was ignored was the lack of human scale and the consequent feelings of alienation they inspired in the occupants.

Another might be a view that the appeal of a musical composition can in principle be accounted for purely by analysing the frequencies and rhythms of the notes - a sort of silly reductionism, applied on principle.

I worked hard on my asteroid example, man. It was just a hypothesis. I didn't intend it to be a conclusion. But yeah, I admit. It was pretty lame.

If I understand you right, you are an anti-reductionist as far as music goes. Even though music can be understood mathematically, it is not reducible to mathematics. And even though mathematics can explain music a bunch of the time, it doesn't fully explain music. Nor can it, most of the time.

 

[vulcanlogician]

@exchemist I'm not trying to be pedantic. I just want your straightforward answers to the stuff in my last post, whatever they are.

 

[exchemist]

I worked hard on my asteroid example, man. It was just a hypothesis. I didn't intend it to be a conclusion. But yeah, I admit. It was pretty lame.

If I understand you right, you are an anti-reductionist as far as music goes. Even though music can be understood mathematically, it is not reducible to mathematics. And even though mathematics can explain music a bunch of the time, it doesn't fully explain music. Nor does it, most of the time.

No indeed. I too can have a conversation on harmony, or consonant and dissonant intervals, in terms of physics, and we can have a discussion about the compromises of equal temperament and other tuning regimes. But reductionism in music is a bit of a dead end in my view. It can only take you so far and can't get anywhere near accounting for the impact music has on the listeners or performer. The same is true of other arts and literature.

But I'll give you another example from the practical world. I watched a video today about the cuts to the UK railways network made by a notorious guy called Beeching in the 1960s. The object was to reduce the losses being made by the railway and in this it was partly successful. All very scientifically done, by analysing passenger traffic volumes by route and closing the most unprofitable lines - thousands of miles of them. However, what was left out out of the calculations was the effect on the communities cut off by the closures: the social dimension and the wider impact on the economies of these places. These intangible aspects of decision-making are quite often neglected by the people of a scientific persuasion, as they have difficulty putting a value on them in their cost/beneft calculations. Science doesn't help a lot in assessing such things.

I should confess here that, having a background in physical science, I am a bit of a sceptic about the social "sciences". This, I fear, is an arena where a supposedly scientific approach can lead to a false sense of certainty, since the human systems being studied seem to me far too complex to model with great confidence, in general. Science is great for studying nature, but I think its extension into other areas should be treated with caution and supplemented with other inputs.

 

[vulcanlogician]

I should confess here that, having a background in physical science, I am a bit of a sceptic about the social "sciences". This, I fear, is an arena where a supposedly scientific approach can lead to a false sense of certainty, since the human systems being studied seem to me far too complex to model with great confidence, in general. Science is great for studying nature, but I think its extension into other areas should be treated with caution and supplemented with other inputs.

The "soft" sciences are not as resolute as the hard sciences in most cases. We agree there.

But aren't they still sciences? Don't they all (even the soft sciences) still submit themselves to evidence?

 

[exchemist]

The "soft" sciences are not as resolute as the hard sciences in most cases. We agree there.

But aren't they still sciences? Don't they all (even the soft sciences) still submit themselves to evidence?

Not everything that is evidence-based is science.

 

[MikeF]

Not everything that is evidence-based is science.

Not to be cheeky, but how is it determined to be evidence?