Who here believes in "Scientism"?

[mikkel_the_dane]

The article you cite is excellent, but it is very general and broad and covers philosophies not generally accepted in science and some like logical positivitism that no longer accepted by science.

The Social science methodology is discussed in detail in later posts, and acknowledged to have separate Methodology that not meets the standards of Methodological Naturalism. Nonetheless as the objective knowledge of human behavior and neurological scientific knowledge Methodological Naturalism is increasing used in Social Sciences as described in the later more extensive article.

Again, again and again it has everything to do with what you think and your attitude toward Methodological NAturalism, which you reject based on a vague nebulous ontological philosophy,

I don't reject science as such. I just consider some parts of human culture science where you don't and so in reverse properly.
So we might be able to agree what natural science is in some sense, but we might not be albe to do it for all claims claimed to be natural science.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

It is very obvious you are confused by a negative arrogant biased agenda against science with pejorative accusations of Scientism,

All these sources are excellent to consider, but unfortunately your vague nebulous very biased beliefs against Methodological Naturalism leads you to a shotgun approach of references without an objective consideration of their context in the actual applications of science where the rubber meets the ground in reality,

Well, I have evidence that I have the best knowledge in the word and it is scientific because it makes subjectively sense to me that it is the best knowledge in the world.
Now you wouldn't accept that as science and nor would I, but we have posters who claim that natural science is the best method for knowledge in the world. yet when asked for evidence, they give none.

So yes, I accept natural science, but not that it is the best or only method for knowledge in the world as I have never seen evidence for that.
It is that simple.

 

[shunyadragon]

Well, I don't think it is relevant if I believe anything about the universe other than as belief.
What is relevant is if you claim that the universe is physical and you can show so using science?
So do you claim that the universe is physical? If yes, then how do you know that using science?

First, I have explained in detail that this question is unanswerable by objective methodology. Philosophies cannot anse=wer the question because all they can do it=s "think" about it. If the question is unab=nswerable why are keep asking the question?

I have asked you if you believe the universe is physical, and you dodged the question and continue to present an independent personal vague nebulous off topic questions that do not relate to your pejorative accusation of Scientism.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

First, I have explained in detail that this question is unanswerable by objective methodology. Philosophies cannot anse=wer the question because all they can do it=s "think" about it. If the question is unab=nswerable why are keep asking the question?

I have asked you if you believe the universe is physical, and you dodged the question and continue to present an independent personal vague nebulous off topic questions that do not relate to your pejorative accusation of Scientism.

Well, give me evidence that the universe is physical. It is that simple, since you are a scientist. Just give the evidence!!!

 

[shunyadragon]

Well, I have evidence that I have the best knowledge in the word and it is scientific because it makes subjectively sense to me that it is the best knowledge in the world.
Now you wouldn't accept that as science and nor would I, but we have posters who claim that natural science is the best method for knowledge in the world. yet when asked for evidence, they give none.

Methodological Naturalism is the foundation of science in the falsification of theories and hypothesis based on the objective verifiable evidence of our physical existence. It is a consistent predictable method. Social Sciences utilize Methodological Naturalism, but because the deal with subjective issues of human behavior and social relationships it does not meet the standards of strict Methodological Naturalism.

So yes, I accept natural science, but not that it is the best or only method for knowledge in the world as I have never seen evidence for that.
It is that simple.

Not simple your vague nebulous view of natural science and pejorative accusations of "Scientism" cloud any possible objective consideration of natural science

 

[shunyadragon]

Well, give me evidence that the universe is physical. It is that simple, since you are a scientist. Just give the evidence!!!

It is not that simple and you know that. Can you present a reason why the question is answerable?

, I have explained in detail that this question is unanswerable by objective methodology. Philosophies cannot answer the question because all they can do it=s "think" about it. If the question is unanswerable why are keep asking the question?

I have asked you if you believe the universe is physical, and you dodged the question and continue to present an independent personal vague nebulous off topic questions that do not relate to your pejorative accusation of Scientism.

Give me the evidence that it is not physical!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Methodological Naturalism is the foundation of science in the falsification of theories and hypothesis based on the objective verifiable evidence of our physical existence. It is a consistent predictable method. Social Sciences utilize Methodological Naturalism, but because the deal with subjective issues of human behavior and social relationships it does not meet the standards of strict Methodological Naturalism.

Not simple your vague nebulous view of natural science and pejorative accusations of "Scientism" cloud any possible objective consideration of natural science

So what is your evidence that we have a physical existence? To me that is philosophy. And not religion nor sicence.
And I still don't get the difference between small and large letter in Methodlogical Naturalism. What is that about?

 

[shunyadragon]

So yes, I accept natural science, but not that it is the best or only method for knowledge in the world as I have never seen evidence for that.
It is that simple.

It is not that simple. I have asked you before but you failed to answer. What is the better method, or even any other method for knowledge of the world? You have stated this before, but refused to answer the question in response to your claim.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

It is not that simple and you know that. Can you present a reason why the question is answerable?

, I have explained in detail that this question is unanswerable by objective methodology. Philosophies cannot answer the question because all they can do it=s "think" about it. If the question is unanswerable why are keep asking the question?

I have asked you if you believe the universe is physical, and you dodged the question and continue to present an independent personal vague nebulous off topic questions that do not relate to your pejorative accusation of Scientism.

Give me the evidence that it is not physical!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No, I can't give you evidence of a negative, but you can test if the universe is physical or if you can't it is not science. Then it is philosophy.
That is the point. That the universe is physical is not science and that we have a physical exisgtence is not science. It is philosophy.

 

[shunyadragon]

So what is your evidence that we have a physical existence? To me that is philosophy. And not religion nor science.

It is not that simple and you know that. Can you present a reason why the question is answerable?

, I have explained in detail that this question is unanswerable by objective methodology. Philosophies cannot answer the question because all they can do is "think" about it. If the question is unanswerable why are keep asking the question?

I have asked you if you believe the universe is physical, and you dodged the question and continue to present an independent personal vague nebulous off topic questions that do not relate to your pejorative accusation of Scientism.


Give me the evidence that it is not physical!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And I still don't get the difference between small and large letter in Methodlogical Naturalism. What is that about?

Typos you can ignore it.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

It is not that simple. I have asked you before but you failed to answer. What is the better method, or even any other method for knowledge of the world? You have stated this before, but refused to answer the question in response to your claim.

I can't answer with natrual science which is the better method, because better is subjective and can't be answered by natural science. That is the point. There are no empirical referent for better. It is subjective and doesn't belong in natural science.
It is social, cultur, relgious and/or philosophy depending on a given person's worldview.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

It is not that simple and you know that. Can you present a reason why the question is answerable?

, I have explained in detail that this question is unanswerable by objective methodology. Philosophies cannot answer the question because all they can do is "think" about it. If the question is unanswerable why are keep asking the question?

I have asked you if you believe the universe is physical, and you dodged the question and continue to present an independent personal vague nebulous off topic questions that do not relate to your pejorative accusation of Scientism.


Give me the evidence that it is not physical!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Typos you can ignore it.

Well, it really doesn't matter if I beleve the universe is physical. The evidence matters or lack of same, if we are to do natural science.
Have you ever consider that the claim that the universe is physical, is subjective?

 

[shunyadragon]

That is discussing the degree to which social sciences can utilise the same methodologies as the natural sciences.

Yes.

You are conflating "the methodologies of the natural sciences" with "methodological naturalism".

No.

The article is not about whether or not the social science use MN (they do), but relates to a different philosophical question "The Unity of Science" i.e. the extent to which different sciences can be considered to form part of the same unified methodological and explanatory framework.

I believe the article as a whole addresses this,

See for example:

The Unity of Science (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

I do not claim to answer all the questions, You are free to add your own references,

You are becoming aware that the answers are not necessarily that simple as tiyr previous demands for simple answers,

 

[shunyadragon]

I don't reject science as such.

Face it you are being vague, nebulous and evasive and reject science as is is

I just consider some parts of human culture science where you don't and so in reverse properly.

Reverse properly??? How vague and nebulous.

So we might be able to agree what natural science is in some sense, but we might not be able to do it for all claims claimed to be natural science.

Too vague and nebulous to be meaningful.

 

[shunyadragon]

That is discussing the degree to which social sciences can utilise the same methodologies as the natural sciences.

You are conflating "the methodologies of the natural sciences" with "methodological naturalism".

The article is not about whether or not the social science use MN (they do), but relates to a different philosophical question "The Unity of Science" i.e. the extent to which different sciences can be considered to form part of the same unified methodological and explanatory framework.

See for example:

The Unity of Science (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Part II: Naturalism in the social sciences : a short review

Analyzing human psychology​

Evolutionary psychology is typically understood as the study of human behavior as a collection of evolutionary traits, which exist due to their ability to enable an individual’s survival and reproduction. Such reasoning is endemic in the evolutionary science, where it is common that an organism has specific properties that are both genetically heritable (they are to some extent caused by the organism’s genetic information, and are therefore passed to descendants) and adaptive (they cause this organism to spread their genetic information further, by having more descendants). Such traits are said to fulfill some evolutionary “function” to the organism : as an example, humans have kidneys because kidneys efficiently filtrate toxins, and human ancestors which were comparatively less able to filtrate toxins had comparatively higher death rate.

As human psychology is driven by a cognitive structure that is in part genetically heritable, this line of argumentation is in principle valid in its context. Evolutionary psychology is however radical in its attribution of functionality to a wide array of human behavioral regularities, in contrast to the supposedly conservative way evolutionary biology defines and studies evolutionary traits (Bateson and Laland 2013, 201) The underlying argument is that human psychology follow a property of “massive modularity” allowing the scientist to methodologically reduce it to isolated mechanisms oriented toward specific functions (Barrett and Kurzban 2006). Indeed, any instance of stereotypical behavior with strong adaptive consequences is likely to have emerged due to selection of semi-autonomous mechanisms (the so-called “modules”) underlying it at some point in the past, and to have remained adaptive until now (or until a recent period). Importantly, such modules are deep structures which are typically not accessible to introspection, which provides a prior to look for causes of contemporary behavioral patterns in their ecological meaning to our common ancestors rather, than in the reasons humans invoke to explain their choices.

While humans are to some extent more individually intelligent than other primates, their most exceptional features are related to the way they interact and communicate with each other, allowing them to organize as functional social groups (Wilson, Van Vugt, and O’Gorman 2008) and to navigate the politics of such groups (Leech and Cronk 2017). Most basically, their brain development allows humans to handle a large number of social relation (R. I. M. Dunbar and Shultz 2007) and to organize collective action (Gavrilets 2015), which combined to their preference for fairness in social relations complicates aggression as a strategy (Wrangham 2019; Shilton et al. 2020). These basic adaptations to collective life in turn allow human societies to develop an array of collaborative structures (Boehm 2009; Wilson, Ostrom, and Cox 2013), therefore extending the domain of cooperation and most importantly facilitating the development of complex skills through social learning through extending a long juvenile period (Burkart, Hrdy, and Schaik 2009; P. J. Richerson and Boyd 2020). This array of psychological traits, along with the social, ecological and cultural features they enable, work as a “human evolutionary complex” in the sense each of them does not predict much of human ecology in isolation, but their interplay constitute a dynamic fundamental to the evolution of modern humans.

A common thread to these psychological adaptations, both in their ancestral and contemporary expressions, is their ambivalence between egoist and prosocial functions. As a paradigmatic example, seemingly altruistic behavior such as grooming and other forms of interpersonal care appear to be in part driven by individual adaptation to maintain economic and political relations (Barclay 2013), while still being essential to social cohesion (R. Dunbar 1998). The same argument holds for internalization of social norms (morality) (Gavrilets and Richerson 2017) and for social identity (Harvey Whitehouse and Lanman 2014), which benefits to the individual are mediated by reputation rather than interpersonal cooperation (Barclay 2013). The case of language is however the most interesting : a central adaptation to social cohesion (R. Dunbar 1998), coordination (E. A. Smith 2010), and reinforcement of social norms (D. Smith et al. 2017) ; language also serves to further an individual’s political interest through coalition management (Dessalles 2014) and motivated reasoning (Mercier 2011). In other words, while language as a social phenomenon is the backbone of human social organization, its recruitment in reasoning is driven to further one’s influence upon others rather than build reflexivity upon one’s action.

Evolutionary psychology is therefore relevant to address the large array of social behavior underlying the cohesion of human societies, even though its somewhat loose use of adaptive claims earns it a reputation of pseudoscientificity (S. E. Smith 2020). In particular, it is extremely apt to capture and formalize the interplay between imbricated levels of social organization by exposing how their cognition allows humans both to maintain a cohesive social structure and to exploit it to their personal advantage - and often through the very same psychological mechanisms. Evolutionary psychology as a social science fails however to consider emerging effects from complex patterns of interaction (Guénin–Carlut 2020), which is made even more stringent by the insistence from prominent sympathizers that their discipline is a sufficient alternative to preestablished social sciences.

 

[wellwisher]

Within the last few months or so, it's been claimed that there are "many" here at RF who believe in and/or advocate for "scientism", i.e., the notion that science is the means to answer all questions, or at least is the means to answer all questions worth answering.

I've been a member here for quite some time, but I can't recall seeing anyone advocating such a view. So, to clear this up I'm starting this thread for all of you RF members who do. If you are an advocate for "scientism", please reply to this post with something like "Yes, I am an advocate for scientism as you have described it".

Also, let's keep this focused on the point of the thread, which means no debates about what is or isn't "scientism", whether gods exist, evolution/creationism, or anything else. The thread quite literally has a singular purpose and I'd like to keep it that way.

I sort of believe this, but for me to be a full card carrying member of Scientism, the philosophy of science would need to be updated. This philosophy is why there is the condition; questions worth answering. There are many questions that cannot be answered with the current philosophy. Worth answering is a deflection to save face and maintain bias.

The current philosophy is about looking at the outside world, in the third person, through the five senses. The scientist and the experiment need to be separated, so we can remain objective. Things of consciousness, like dreams, cannot be investigated that way. Dreams have to be witnessed from within often as you sleep. You need to become both the scientist; observer, and the experiment; source of the unconscious phenomena and observe when it phenomena is ready; natural, not when you are ready.

As another example, say we wished to characterize human nature, or that which is common to all humans, independent of culture and education. That would be worthwhile. This would require everyone, from all means, consensus of humans, verify what is being claimed as our common human nature, applies to them through their own self awareness; observer and observed in themselves. I believe it is possible, but not with the current rules, where a select group decide that for all; self claimed experts and current philosophy.

As a different example, it can be proven, by science (if considered worth answering), that the classic nuclear family is the most efficient social construct. The intimacy and closeness, due to blood connections, provide for more cooperation and longer lasting teams. In this case, even though this question can be proven by science, science is afraid to go there, due to politics. This means politics often leads scientism with the slogan and addendum; of questions worth answering, screened by those who provide the money and funding. Science is not cheap and needs benefactors who have resources to give. via quid pro quo input, as to what will and will not be explored. Alternatives to manmade climate change is another example of that taboo. This political stuff occurs inside the brain and can be hidden from science by science.

On the other hand, using your own brain and conscious mind, to explore human nature and consciousness, does not need resources since we are born with both the capability and the natural tools. Therefore it it less subject to bribery and extortion, allowing full spectrum science to be done by unlimited explorers, at their convenience.

For example, one good question is, what is going on inside people who believe in God, that is not seen by science, where the observer has to remain separated from the observed? Science needs to be able to access this extra data and not dismiss it to avoid its own short fall. Scientism is half way there, but it can be made whole, so we can answer the mysteries of consciousness, which sees, hears, tastes, smells and touches reality, before it is processed by subroutines of consciousness and unconsciousness; learned and natural bias.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Face it you are being vague, nebulous and evasive and reject science as is is


Reverse properly??? How vague and nebulous.


Too vague and nebulous to be meaningful.

Yeah, the problem is that a lot of the words you use have no objective referent.
Now if you want to understand natural science, you have to learn when you are subjective.
Otherwise you could consider a claim science, when it is not.

So in short there is no best or only knowledge, because what that is, is subjective.
To understand that, you have to be able to understand that what knowledge is as the method of knowledge is a norm and best is in effect a feeling.

 

[shunyadragon]

Well, it really doesn't matter if I beleve the universe is physical.

It matters for the reason you persist to the point of being obnoxious asking a question that cannot be answered even by philosophers.

The evidence matters or lack of same, if we are to do natural science.
Have you ever consider that the claim that the universe is physical, is subjective?

No, to do science you do not remotely have to consider if the universe is physical. You simple do science as the our physical existence is by objective evidence and observation.

My answer was clear and specific, it is subjective and unanswerable, based on belief as is the existence of God.

The question is why your obnoxious persistence asking a question that cannot be answered.

 

[shunyadragon]

Yeah, the problem is that a lot of the words you use have no objective referent.
Now if you want to understand natural science, you have to learn when you are subjective.
Otherwise you could consider a claim science, when it is not.

Not a meaningful response based on your obnoxious vague nebulous philosophy.

Science deals with the objective variable evidence and observations as it is, and not your silly obnoxious subjective questions that cannot be answered. Simply the subjective is of the mind only.

So in short there is no best or only knowledge, because what that is, is subjective.

No

To understand that, you have to be able to understand that what knowledge is as the method of knowledge is a norm and best is in effect a feeling.

No, back to your vague nebulous Ontological Idealism where reality is feelings. How bizarre.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

It matters for the reason you persist to the point of being obnoxious asking a question that cannot be answered even by philosophers.

No, to do science you do not remotely have to consider if the universe is physical. You simple do science as the our physical existence is by objective evidence and observation.

My answer was clear and specific, it is subjective and unanswerable, based on belief as is the existence of God.

The question is why your obnoxious persistence asking a question that cannot be answered.

Well, problem is that existence is philsophy and not science. You can't observe existence or even that we have a physical existence.
So you really have to learn to check your words.