Another argument I came up with against the materialistic evolution theory is the DNA molecule. I read that according to the calculations made by Leonard Adleman, a cm3 of DNA can store 1 trillion CDs worth of information, which is 700000 petabytes. Recently on another thread I stated how impressed I was of the efficiency microSD card storage, but compared to DNA, it's nothing. I calculated that DNA is about 1.4 million times more efficient, so it will take a half century for us to reach that kind of storage capacity, if it's even possible (if Moore's law turns into a wall), so how would the evolution believers explain how blind and brainless natural laws could create a much more efficient storage medium than humans -- intelligent beings -- have been able to create?
marzojr wrote:
You also acknowledge in the process just how much important and useful you perceive science to be by trying to frame non-science as science
You seem to be implying that I'm somehow against science because I said that modern science is as good as ancient science.
I guess you also missed earlier when I showed that the so-called non-science (spiritual science) is more scientific than material science, because it makes less assumptions about the universe. Material science makes the unfalsifiable assumption about a world external to consciousness, while spiritual science doesn't make that assumption.
I told about this to Warp earlier and he was so stunned that he couldn't come up with anything to say, probably because he couldn't do anything but agree with me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
Religions don't equate to spiritual science, they are just based or inspired by that science, and contain many foolish things, but they also retain some truths that were discovered by spiritual science thousands of years ago. For example in Hinduism and some Muslims (mostly in Sufism) accept the reality of our illusionary world (Maya).
However, even though spiritual science may be more scientific than material science, it doesn't necessarily make it "better" somehow. Spiritual science isn't that useful when dealing with this illusonary world because it deals with reality, which is nothingness. Similarly, it's hard for material science to research the areas that spiritual science researches, like the ultimate cause for existence and truth, because material science only deals with things that can be seen (illusion/memory).
For an accurate worldview, and to understand dualities like the wave-particle duality and the creation-evolution duality, it's necessary to use both sciences. When material science deals with very small and fast things like in quantum physics, it's starting to come close to the spiritual reality that cannot be observed (nothing), so it's becoming increasingly hard to observe those things, because in the end, there is nothing to observe at the fundamental level of an illusionary world.
-- you are basically saying fields of knowledge are worthless unless they are science. Nice job :-p
So, don't you agree that fields of "knowledge" are useless unless they are science? What other systematic and reliable way is there to gain useful and accurate information about the world? How is anything "knowledge" if there's not some science behind it?
Warp wrote:
From all your nonsense, this is the only one I couldn't pass.
I wish you had responded some more because it could have turned into a very humorous discussion.
But let me answer your question about the age of the earth: The age of the earth was found by spiritual scientists thousands of years ago. The astral internet I mentioned earlier contains information about the age of the earth, which you can access if you have the scientific background to do that, but most humans today don't, since we have turned to materialism.
It's probably also possible to calculate the age and future of the earth and our galaxy by using some astrological calculations, like how long a day is, how long a year is, how long a world year is, and so on, until you reach a certain number, then compare those with the life cycle of some other entity. According to spiritual science, everything goes in increasing and decreasing cycles of birth and death, darkness and light.
For example, to calculate one rotation of our galaxy, we would take the world year (earth axis rotation) of 25920 and multiply it by one third of it (8640) we should get the time it takes for our galaxy to rotate once. The number is 223,948,800 years.
Read more here about the age of the earth: http://davidpratt.info/age.htm
You also acknowledge in the process just how much important and useful you perceive science to be by trying to frame non-science as science
You seem to be implying that I'm somehow against science because I said that modern science is as good as ancient science.
I guess you also missed earlier when I showed that the so-called non-science (spiritual science) is more scientific than material science, because it makes less assumptions about the universe. Material science makes the unfalsifiable assumption about a world external to consciousness, while spiritual science doesn't make that assumption.
[omitted]
-- you are basically saying fields of knowledge are worthless unless they are science. Nice job :-p
So, don't you agree that fields of "knowledge" are useless unless they are science? What other systematic and reliable way is there to gain useful and accurate information about the world? How is anything "knowledge" if there's not some science behind it?
I believe you missed his point. He criticized you because the word "science" usually implies that the field in question accepts realism, so with this in mind, there can be no science that rejects the postulates that a common reality exists, natural laws exist, and they can be found using systematic testing (*). His point was that using the term "science" to give more credit to spiritual knowledge implicitly implies that scientific knowledge is superior. (Personally, I think saying that other fields are worthless just because of that term is kinda pushy, but it's what he said.)
It seems though that you have a conceptual problem here. "Knowledge" existing does not imply that there's a science behind it, whether non-scientific knowledge is useful or not is a matter of debate, sure, but that changes nothing about the concept. And Popper's falsifiability is not a line that divides science and non-science, it was brought up with this purpose but most philosophers today criticize it and seek alternative definitions. Most argue that it's a tough job to say whether evolution is falsifiable, for example, and that theories that are found inconsistent can be fixed by ad hoc hypothesis while still being considered scientific.
(*) If one's gonna be very picky, that requirement is not necessary. Formal sciences, like math, statistics and theoretical computer science say effectively nothing about reality, but their denomination as sciences is problematic from a philosopher's viewpoint.
EDIT: I don't know why the font is so large...
EDIT 2: Thanks, jimsfriend!
how would the evolution believers explain how blind and brainless natural laws could create a much more efficient storage medium than humans -- intelligent beings -- have been able to create?
The answer is easy: Natural selection. (Of course fully understanding the answer is much more difficult and requires entire courses of basic biology, chemistry and other sciences.)
Life on Earth has had billions of years of natural selection to refine the contents of DNA. That's such an immense amount of time that it's difficult for the human mind to grasp. In comparison, humans have had something like 50 years to develop storage devices.
I told about this to Warp earlier and he was so stunned that he couldn't come up with anything to say, probably because he couldn't do anything but agree with me.
Yeah, that must be it.
(In reality, though, when the level of nonsense exceeds a certain threshold, one stops caring and reading. Even amusement on nonsense has its limits. At some point it becomes boring rather than amusing.)
The age of the earth was found by spiritual scientists thousands of years ago.
Damn, and I was hoping you were going to present the lunar recession rate argument. Because it's an actually interesting topic from which people could actually learn something. Well, I suppose it would have been too rational for you.
I believe you missed his point. He criticized you because the word "science" usually implies that the field in question accepts realism, so with this in mind, there can be no science that rejects the postulates that a common reality exists, natural laws exist, and they can be found using systematic testing (*). His point was that using the term "science" to give more credit to spiritual knowledge implicitly implies that scientific knowledge is superior.
That is correct. I can't imagine what went through nfq's mind to think that the two sentences were logically disconnected from one another to only bother replying to the latter sentence -- the trust of the point is exactly the devaluing of the meaning of the word 'science' that happens when one attempts to label all fields of "knowledge" with it in a desperate attempt to grasp legitimacy that people like him seems to feel to be otherwise forever beyond the grasp of those fields. Then second sentence just adds to it by pointing out that he demeans all of those other fields in the process (irregardless of whether they deserve to be called sciences).
p4wn3r wrote:
(Personally, I think saying that other fields are worthless just because of that term is kinda pushy, but it's what he said.)
This is the general feeling I got from people that try to frame non-science as science; I am quite happy with clearly separating the two and enjoying the benefits (if any) of either. I just get peeved when someone tries to take ass-pulling and attach a label of 'science' to it in a desperate grasp to gain legitimacy without having to earn it.
His point was that using the term "science" to give more credit to spiritual knowledge implicitly implies that scientific knowledge is superior.
I know, and I like I said, I agree that scientific knowledge is superior to any "other knowledge", and I'm not sure knowledge is possible without science because science is a way of gaining knowledge, and I don't know any other way of gaining knowledge except by doing science. So, for example, if the people who created the ideas postulated in religions didn't do science to arrive at their conclusions, it's not knowledge, it's just speculation. But I believe they did do science, although it was mostly a science based on mind rather than matter. You might disagree that it's science, but they used the scientific method, so I think it's appropriate to call it science.
His point was that using the term "science" to give more credit to spiritual knowledge implicitly implies that scientific knowledge is superior.
I know, and I like I said, I agree that scientific knowledge is superior to any "other knowledge", and I'm not sure knowledge is possible without science because science is a way of gaining knowledge, and I don't know any other way of gaining knowledge except by doing science. So, for example, if the people who created the ideas postulated in religions didn't do science to arrive at their conclusions, it's not knowledge, it's just speculation. But I believe they did do science, although it was mostly a science based on mind rather than matter. You might disagree that it's science, but they used the scientific method, so I think it's appropriate to call it science.
Because this is one of your less loony posts in this topic, I'm going to interject to say that a necessary (and perhaps sufficient) condition for a theory to be scientific is that it is falsifiable. If it isn't falsifiable, it isn't science. This will keep you from making spurious claims like, "They used the scientific method, but you might disagree that it's science."
Some credit goes to Warp for bringing up falsifiability earlier, but I would make it my main point of attack on non-scientific theories.
Because this is one of your less loony posts in this topic, I'm going to interject to say that a necessary (and perhaps sufficient) condition for a theory to be scientific is that it is falsifiable. If it isn't falsifiable, it isn't science. This will keep you from making spurious claims like, "They used the scientific method, but you might disagree that it's science."
Thanks for the ad hominem, and it's good you brought up falsifiability again, because earlier I mentioned (twice) the unfalsifiable assumption about a world outside our mind, which modern science seems to assume to be true. That can't be falsified because we are in our minds and we can't get "out of our minds" :P to observe some hypothetical external world, and all experiments take place in our mind. Mind-based science doesn't have this assumption about the world, which would make it more scientific as far as falsifiability goes.
Generally in modern science it's assumed that consciousness is merely a byproduct of matter (brain). In ancient science, or idealism, it's reversed, that everything is assumed to take place inside the mind, and matter is a byproduct of the mind. The difference is that we don't know if matter is real, while we know that we (the mind) exists.
But it's necessary to have both an illusion and reality, to have a coherent reality. The mind is a duality, and it needs dualities like mind and matter, you and me, creation and evolution, male and female, in order to exist, even though these dualities are just thoughts that the mind creates.
So we have to disagree a bit to push the world outside ourselves, to create a separation between self and the world, so that we can say "I am" (that's how the "I am/God" in the Bible is created).
a necessary (and perhaps sufficient) condition for a theory to be scientific is that it is falsifiable.
I'm not so closely acquainted with the philosophy of science to say anything conclusive about falsifiability being sufficient for a hypothesis to be scientific, but I'm pretty certain that it's not sufficient for it to be useful.
A hypothesis might be falsifiable in theory but not in practice because of the impossibility of testing, observing and/or measuring (even if indirectly) said hypothesis. If a hypothesis cannot be corroborated by testing and observation, it's not a very useful hypothesis.
For example the hypothesis "there's intelligent life outside of this universe" is, as far as we know, completely untestable. It's theoretically falsifiable (if there were a way to observe the outside of this universe, we could test the hypothesis) but not in practice. Hence the hypothesis is not very useful.
Direct observation is not a necessity for a hypothesis to be scientific, thought. Some hypotheses can be inferred from indirect observation. For example there has been no direct, unambiguous observation of a black hole (*), yet we can infer their existence from how the geometry of space works (which is something that can be measured). There's little doubt that black holes (or at the very least something extremely similar) exist.
However, if a hypothesis cannot be tested even indirectly, it's not very useful even if it's theoretically falsifiable.
(*) There are many suspected black holes out there, but they are too far to be directly observable. It would be like trying to observe a planet in another galaxy.
Thanks for the ad hominem, and it's good you brought up falsifiability again, because earlier I mentioned (twice) the unfalsifiable assumption about a world outside our mind, which modern science seems to assume to be true. That can't be falsified because we are in our minds and we can't get "out of our minds" :P to observe some hypothetical external world, and all experiments take place in our mind. Mind-based science doesn't have this assumption about the world, which would make it more scientific as far as falsifiability goes.
This solipsistic assumption you describe is not as safe to escape unfalsifiability as you think:
it must assume at least as much as the hypothesis that there is an external world (mechanisms for how minds can exist outside of brains, as are all minds we can observe to exist; how these minds came to be; how these minds can be intelligent, self-aware and able to generate a shared illusion of a consistent external world; etc), so it is not simpler;
It is just as unfalsifiable as the assumption that there is an external world outside your mind;
it is more harmful to you if wrong.
The first bullet is just gravy; the second bullet is important, but it the last one that is the killer one (pun intended): if you assume that there isn't external world and act like it, but you are wrong, you can get severely injured or dead; if you assume there is an external world and you act like it, but you are wrong, nothing bad comes out of it.
So for all practical purposes, it is irrational and dangerous to assume that there is no external world outside of one's mind.
One thing that in my opinion speaks a lot in favor of the world actually existing is that it behaves consistently.
The behavior of the universe is not dependent on your mental state. It doesn't matter if you are asleep, emotional, delusional, hallucinating, drugged, sick or mentally injured, the universe will still work in a completely consistent manner, as it always has. Imaginary worlds inside one's head do not behave even nearly as consistently, but their rules can change arbitrarily.
It is my understanding that one of the cornerstones of science was the realization that the universe behaves consistently. This idea has not always been as self-evident as it is today.
(For example in ancient Greece there were philosophers who thought that, for example, rocks thrown in the air would behave differently depending on the "will" of the rock itself. According to them, even rocks were "conscious" at some level, and they tended towards a natural state, such as being on the ground, which is why rocks fall to the ground. However, this could change from rock to rock, and from throw to throw.
More prominently, though, there was this widespread view that the natural laws governing the Earth were distinct from the natural laws governing the skies. They were separate and independent. It was actually a kind of revolution in scientific thinking that natural laws might actually be the same everywhere, and behave always in the same manner, consistently.)
One thing that in my opinion speaks a lot in favor of the world actually existing is that it behaves consistently.
I completely agree with you; in particular, the whole theory of relativity (even Galileo's version of it, which was for mechanics only) are a testament to that -- the notion that the world is consistent regardless of who is observing from where. This is why I mentioned the consistency of the world as one of the things that must be explained for the solipsistic model to stand a chance.
His point was that using the term "science" to give more credit to spiritual knowledge implicitly implies that scientific knowledge is superior.
I know, and I like I said, I agree that scientific knowledge is superior to any "other knowledge", and I'm not sure knowledge is possible without science because science is a way of gaining knowledge, and I don't know any other way of gaining knowledge except by doing science. So, for example, if the people who created the ideas postulated in religions didn't do science to arrive at their conclusions, it's not knowledge, it's just speculation. But I believe they did do science, although it was mostly a science based on mind rather than matter. You might disagree that it's science, but they used the scientific method, so I think it's appropriate to call it science.
OK, we have to discern what we know from what's defined already. It's important to understand what concepts mean because otherwise you're unable to understand what people are saying or, in your case, fall into contradiction. I do not object to you saying "I believe this should be science because the accepted definition of science is flawed because of this, this and this". However, saying "This is science because it rejects realism" is like saying that 6 is an odd number because it leaves a remainder of zero when divided by 2. It simply makes no sense.
A similar thing refers to the world "knowledge". I encourage you to look for its meaning.
Bobo the King wrote:
I'm going to interject to say that a necessary (and perhaps sufficient) condition for a theory to be scientific is that it is falsifiable. If it isn't falsifiable, it isn't science.
I'm afraid it's not as simple as that. For example, there's an ongoing debate discussing whether evolution is falsifiable, one person brings up something that would kill evolution, and another one argues that it can still be fixed by something else, we could really go all day discussing this. I much prefer Kuhn's way of seeing science, he argues that science works based on paradigms that influence the way we interpret evidence (for example, when they believed planets moved attached to spheres, inconsistencies were resolved by adding more spheres to the model), until a time where the proposed model is such a monster that they discard it and use something else instead. This issue is known in philosophy as the "Demarcation problem" if you want to know more about it.
marzojr wrote:
The first bullet is just gravy; the second bullet is important, but it the last one that is the killer one (pun intended): if you assume that there isn't external world and act like it, but you are wrong, you can get severely injured or dead; if you assume there is an external world and you act like it, but you are wrong, nothing bad comes out of it.
I don't agree with him, but to be completely fair, I never found pragmatic arguments like this really convincing, because their premise generalizes to way too many things.
For example, take Max Planck's case at the dawn of quantum mechanics: "I can fix Rayleigh-Jeans law by instead of integrating energy, assuming it's quantized by the frequency and doing a series summation instead. I have no justification for its correctness instead of a mathematical trick to solve the problem." Publishing this (like he did) could get him strong criticism, while ignoring it wouldn't do any bad. So pragmatism can in some cases stall science.
Warp wrote:
One thing that in my opinion speaks a lot in favor of the world actually existing is that it behaves consistently.
The behavior of the universe is not dependent on your mental state. It doesn't matter if you are asleep, emotional, delusional, hallucinating, drugged, sick or mentally injured, the universe will still work in a completely consistent manner, as it always has. Imaginary worlds inside one's head do not behave even nearly as consistently, but their rules can change arbitrarily.
It is my understanding that one of the cornerstones of science was the realization that the universe behaves consistently. This idea has not always been as self-evident as it is today.
Interesting, I think idealism's biggest merit is not really if reality is a mind-generated thing, but that it's impossible to exist any knowledge outside of the mind. We can't really know whether the behavior of the universe is independent of our perception because everything that we know from the universe comes from perception, and when your perception changes, you feel things around you differently too.
Moreover, the human mind seems to have a framework that it must work within (perhaps this is even a requirement for survival). For instance, it retains pleasant experiences and blocks traumatic ones, it makes inductive reasoning extremely natural to us, possibly because we wouldn't be able to survive if this didn't come included in it. So, the way the mind is shaped greatly affects the knowledge inside it, but no mind is equal to another, so different people will think differently, so it seems reasonable to question whether knowledge is a universal thing. A crucial step to get out of depression is to actually realize that your thoughts are extremely affected by stuff you cannot control and that the horrible view you had of the world was caused by something inside your head that was created while you weren't paying attention.
I believe human knowledge is extremely based on human intuition, even the ones that are extremely formal. The postulates they have are accepted because they are intuitive and most laws derived from them are written only because it makes it easier to understand. At a higher level, we almost don't see things proved up to their formal threshold, but rather have intuitive explanations of the proofs. And formal sciences will greatly affect the way we formulate natural laws, so it's reasonable to believe that another civilization, whose minds work differently from ours, will deduce different natural laws.
You may not like me calling your theories loony, but that's exactly what they are. You are wrong about falsifiability and I will not sugar-coat that point. An ad hominem would be calling you loony, and while I'm far from perfect, I've been through enough debates to not venture down that road.
Warp wrote:
A hypothesis might be falsifiable in theory but not in practice because of the impossibility of testing, observing and/or measuring (even if indirectly) said hypothesis. If a hypothesis cannot be corroborated by testing and observation, it's not a very useful hypothesis.
Your example hypothesis is not falsifiable by any practical measure. We will never have full-sky coverage of the observable universe. You might write a science fiction story in which paradigms are broken and new technology is invented, but in today's world, it's just that-- fiction.
I consider a better example a particle that is predicted to be created in a 30 TeV collision (the LHC can produce a maximum of about 3 TeV collisions). Today it isn't falsifiable, but it's certainly plausible that it might be falsifiable ten or twenty years down the line. I would argue that if the measurement is at least on the technological horizon, the theory is falsifiable and is therefore scientific. Another example that I'm more familiar with is magnetic reconnection, which is heavily theorized to occur in nature but has never been directly observed. The Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission will send four satellites into space to obtain the direct observations that would potentially validate (or more importantly, refute) the theory. One should be careful, however, about what the experiment shows. Magnetic reconnection is a popular explanation for comet tail disconnection events and validation of the theory by the MMS mission does not give credence to magnetic reconnection specifically over other theories for disconnection events. (I wrote a term paper on this stuff and I think it shows.)
My main point, however, is that where the rubber meets the road, it's often quite easy to differentiate the non-falsifiable theories from the falsifiable ones. Most of nfq's claims are not falsifiable.
p4wn3r wrote:
I'm afraid it's not as simple as that. For example, there's an ongoing debate discussing whether evolution is falsifiable, one person brings up something that would kill evolution, and another one argues that it can still be fixed by something else, we could really go all day discussing this.
You've brought up one of my favorite examples and it's one that I like to share with my classes. I begin my lecture on falsifiability by putting two theories on the board. The first theory is, "Evolution is a natural phenomenon." The second theory is, "At 3:00 PM tomorrow gravity will reverse itself." I then ask my students which of these two theories is scientific. Most of them mutter that the first one is. I explain to them that the first theory is ill-stated and not falsifiable while the second theory (ridiculous as it may be) can be shown to be false and is therefore the scientific theory. I've never had my students complain to me, but I nevertheless worry that they will be offended by my (simplified) statement that evolution is not scientific, so I reassure them that the theory can be saved if it is posed more carefully. I then put up on the board a new theory, "Humans and apes share a common ancestor," and explain that fossil records could diverge between the two (or they could remain "parallel") but that isn't what we observe, so this new theory is falsifiable.
To address evolution as a whole, I would say that one should study genetic drift (this is well outside my field of research, so someone in the know should chime in) and attempt to make crude but quantitative predictions about how much evolution will "inevitably" (statistically) occur. This argument gives rise to the idea that a Precambrian rabbit would falsify evolution. In this context, there are all sorts of fossils we could see "out of order" but don't and so evolution is fairly strongly falsifiable. The tricky part is accurately modeling genetic drift, but I'm sure much smarter minds than my own have tackled the problem.
I'll look into the demarcation problem when I get a chance.
nfq wrote:
For an accurate worldview, and to understand dualities like the wave-particle duality and the creation-evolution duality, it's necessary to use both sciences.
This sentence caught my eye just as I was getting ready to post my reply. There is no wave-particle duality in the sense that you are using the term. In fact, disciplined physicists hate the term "wave-particle duality" because it implies that light is somehow inconsistent. Horseshit. To the contrary, light is the one thing that physicists know best (I even brag to my students that as far as I'm aware, physicists know everything there is to know about light, as long as it doesn't interact with anything). Light follows one, consistent equation and that is all. The so-called duality only arises because of our preconceived notions of what a particle is and what a wave is. If you slightly expand your definition of a particle, you will come up with a complete theory of light that is entirely particle-based. (I have heard of other physicists preferring wave-based theories, but I am quite confident that any such theories are equivalent and this is just a difference in terminology.) Your claim that, "it's necessary to use both sciences," is wrong. There is one science of light and it is perhaps physicists' most successful theory.
For example, there's an ongoing debate discussing whether evolution is falsifiable
Is this an actual debate among scientists, or is it just creationists inventing problems that aren't there (and claiming that it's a "debate")?
There are many ways to falsify evolution. For example, if all species had completely unrelated DNA, with no shared parts, that would pretty much destroy the idea of common ancestry. Also if DNA of different species consisted of a wild mishmash of parts of other species' DNA (so that it would be impossible to build a hierarchical tree of common elements), that would also be quite impossible to explain by evolution.
The history of life on Earth could also be used to falsify evolution. If it were confirmed with all possible tests and measurements, and without any reasonable doubt, that modern animals lived in the pre-cambrian, for instance, that would be quite a puzzle to solve, and it would pretty much destroy the evolutionary history of life on Earth.
Natural selection is falsifiable. Simply show extensive studies on how the environment does not affect in which direction species change.
(Of course another question is that evolution is difficult to falsify, because alternative explanations for seeming contradictions are always possible. For example, even if there were a species with a random mishmash of DNA from other species, without it belonging anywhere in the cladistic tree, that doesn't actually mean that evolution is false. It's theoretically possible that it's some kind of genetic experiment created by unknown means, either by humans or by some alien species.)
For example, there's an ongoing debate discussing whether evolution is falsifiable
Is this an actual debate among scientists, or is it just creationists inventing problems that aren't there (and claiming that it's a "debate")?
It's among scientists and philosophers of science, according to the one semester course I've taken on epistemology. It'd be naive to say that creationists are not involved, but their interference there doesn't downgrade the issue.
As I said before, whether it's falsifiable or not is an extensive subject. I think it is, but I don't feel like elaborating or analysing it further, because unfalsifiability doesn't really mean it's non-scientific. Moreover, I think the increasing number of people who use Popper's dated and heavily criticized falsifiability to separate science keeps this discussion going on much more than creationist arguments.
It's actually natural that falsifiability is so popular among laymen and pop science magazines, because an elegant and short explanation is obviously much more appealing and convincing than a lengthy and extensive one.
This issue is known in philosophy as the "Demarcation problem" if you want to know more about it.
Philosophers of science hate to hear it, but there are few things less useful for the practice of science than the philosophy of science; most scientists know (or care) very little about it, and for those that do know (or care about) it, it does not affect how they do science. In fact, knowledge of statistics and cognitive biases is much more useful for the practice of science than philosophy of science.
The main problem with philosophy of science is that most philosophers that engage in it are neither scientists nor do know much of how science actually works.
Please note that I am not discarding the insights that can be gained from philosophy of science, or discouraging it; I am just pointing out that it has to be taken with a (large) grain of salt.
But there is more:
p4wn3r wrote:
I don't agree with him, but to be completely fair, I never found pragmatic arguments like this really convincing, because their premise generalizes to way too many things.
This may be a shocker for you, but the entire edifice of science is pragmatic: if something works and is useful, it is used; if it doesn't work or is not useful, it is discarded. This is included:
p4wn3r wrote:
For example, take Max Planck's case at the dawn of quantum mechanics
Here is a prime example of scientific pragmatism: the "trick" he used to fit the curve was done on pragmatic grounds ("it works"); it was later recognized as useful when Einstein used the idea to explain the photoelectric effect ("it works"), which ultimately led to quantum mechanics ("it works"). The entire rationale for accepting and using quantum mechanics is this -- "it works": it does a better job at predicting the outcome of experiments than the alternatives.
Likewise, special relativity was published by Einstein on pragmatic grounds -- Einstein himself knew that there were several problems on the foundations of special relativity that he could not satisfactorily solve at the time; he published it anyway because he judged it the only pragmatic way forward (again, "it works"). He latter addressed these issues in general relativity, but only after the insights gained from Minkowski about how special relativity make the world into a 4-dimensional space-time.
It is pragmatism all the way down.
p4wn3r wrote:
We can't really know whether the behavior of the universe is independent of our perception because everything that we know from the universe comes from perception, and when your perception changes, you feel things around you differently too.
Meanwhile, the measurement instruments keep inconveniently measuring the same things and giving the same results regardless of your changes in perception.
Warp wrote:
p4wn3r wrote:
For example, there's an ongoing debate discussing whether evolution is falsifiable
Is this an actual debate among scientists, or is it just creationists inventing problems that aren't there (and claiming that it's a "debate")?
It is the latter, of course: the only noise over the falsifiability of evolution comes from people that know nothing about it. Evolutionary biologists, and other scientists that make research that depends on evolution, make falsifiable predictions based on evolution every day, then proceed to test them.
Warp wrote:
Natural selection is falsifiable. Simply show extensive studies on how the environment does not affect in which direction species change.
It is so much falsifiable that one can reasonably argue that it has been falsified as far as being the sole mechanism to remove randomness and define fitness in evolution; it is still the main driver of evolution, but there are several other selection mechanisms that sometimes run counter it.
Philosophers of science hate to hear it, but there are few things less useful for the practice of science than the philosophy of science; most scientists know (or care) very little about it, and for those that do know (or care about) it, it does not affect how they do science.
I always thought that philosophy of science is just the "meta-level" discourse on what is the so-called scientific method, what is good and bad science (and pseudoscience), how scientific tests should be performed, the notion and importance of peer reviewing (and the reason for it), how evidence should be interpreted and what makes evidence valid or invalid, how test results should be interpreted, what is the most rational approach for determining how the universe works, the role of rational skepticism in science, and so on.
(As opposed to just doing the hard work, perform the physical observations, measurements and tests, writing and publishing papers showing your results, and so on.)
I don't agree with him, but to be completely fair, I never found pragmatic arguments like this really convincing, because their premise generalizes to way too many things.
This may be a shocker for you, but the entire edifice of science is pragmatic: if something works and is useful, it is used; if it doesn't work or is not useful, it is discarded.
p4wn3r wrote:
For example, take Max Planck's case at the dawn of quantum mechanics
Here is a prime example of scientific pragmatism: the "trick" he used to fit the curve was done on pragmatic grounds ("it works"); it was later recognized as useful when Einstein used the idea to explain the photoelectric effect ("it works"), which ultimately led to quantum mechanics ("it works"). The entire rationale for accepting and using quantum mechanics is this -- "it works": it does a better job at predicting the outcome of experiments than the alternatives.
Likewise, special relativity was published by Einstein on pragmatic grounds -- Einstein himself knew that there were several problems on the foundations of special relativity that he could not satisfactorily solve at the time; he published it anyway because he judged it the only pragmatic way forward (again, "it works"). He latter addressed these issues in general relativity, but only after the insights gained from Minkowski about how special relativity make the world into a 4-dimensional space-time.
It is pragmatism all the way down.
That looks much better, your first argument was that one should accept doing something because the contrapositive would be dangerous. Just being picky, accepting scientific theories because they work is actually instrumentalism, so this is not really an argument to say that science is pragmatic, but since pragmatism uses instrumentalism, you don't get into much trouble.
marzojr wrote:
p4wn3r wrote:
We can't really know whether the behavior of the universe is independent of our perception because everything that we know from the universe comes from perception, and when your perception changes, you feel things around you differently too.
Meanwhile, the measurement instruments keep inconveniently measuring the same things and giving the same results regardless of your changes in perception.
Yet, two people can read two identical texts and interpret them differently.
it must assume at least as much as the hypothesis that there is an external world (mechanisms for how minds can exist outside of brains, as are all minds we can observe to exist; how these minds came to be; how these minds can be intelligent, self-aware and able to generate a shared illusion of a consistent external world; etc), so it is not simpler;
I don't see why it would need to "assume a hypothesis that there is an external world". How the mind and self-awareness is created from nothingness is explained metaphorically in mythology such as the Norse creation stories. Maybe the nothingness is what you refer to when you say that there has to be an external world, but nothingness is not an hypothesis, but a logical necessity and starting point (and also the end point, because it's the Alpha and Omega in the Bible), as it's the only thing that requires no justification for 'existing'.
I also don't think consciousness can exist without brains or bodies, we always have to limit ourselves to a body (even if it may be different after this life) in order to have something to identify ourselves with, in order to exist.
It is just as unfalsifiable as the assumption that there is an external world outside your mind;
I guess the difference is that an external world is an assumption, but consciuosness is not an assumption because we know we exist. So even though the sensation "I am" may not be possible to falsify, it is nevertheless a reality, which is something that cannot be said with certainty about the world.
Furthermore, if there is a world outside consciousness, how would it be possible for us to be conscious of it? If you observe or feel something, it means that it's in your mind.
if you assume that there isn't external world and act like it, but you are wrong, you can get severely injured or dead;
Maybe if you don't understand how it works. A videogame has no external reality either, but it doesn't follow that there are no rules and that we can walk through a doors for example... or well, as TASers, we know there are exceptions to rules, but it's very rare for a person to be so conscious of reality as Jesus, that they can walk on water for instance.
Thinking that everything is an illusion doesn't change anything about it, it still feels as real as always, because the mind will keep rejecting that it's an illusion, to make it seem real. However, with technology, the limitations of the illusion disappear more and more. For example, telepathy is considered fiction, because it assumes that we are all connected and one, but with cellphones, technology has made us realize that connection again. As far as mind-based science goes, that is telepathy, because it's a mind connecting to another mind, and there is no external world, the cellphones are just part of the mind.
If you really realize that everything is an illusion though, it will cause the mind to disappear like Buddha did when he attained nirvana. He realized that his ego was just a thought, so the universe disappeared for him, because the duality of me+world ceased to exist. So in that sense, I can agree that the idea can be considered to be "dangerous", because the idea can make us cease to exist and return to reality, which the mind fears.
The same danger-argument could be used against the idea of an external world, that it can lead to evil and death, because we perceive everyone to be separate from us, so we fear them and get angry at small differences, can't love them as much as ourselves, which leads to war and so on. When we realize that everything is one, we don't have to take everything so seriously, we can love everyone as ourselves.
Even though modern science doesn't agree that the mind creates everything, it's still discovering those things, like our oneness with the universe, the illusion of matter (99% space), because modern science is also just a tool for the mind.
Warp wrote:
One thing that in my opinion speaks a lot in favor of the world actually existing is that it behaves consistently.
So does a videogame world, but that doesn't mean that the characters live in an external world. But of course, there is inconsistencies here too, otherwise we wouldn't be arguing about this. We would all agree with each other and not ask any questions about anything, because everything would be logical and self-evident.
According to them, even rocks were "conscious" at some level, and they tended towards a natural state, such as being on the ground, which is why rocks fall to the ground.
Every illusion and separated object tries to fall back into the nothingness where they came from. That's the cause of gravity for example. That's why rocks attract rocks, males and females attract, creation and evolution attract, and so on. But there is also repulsion between all dualities in the mind. Even though rocks attract, their electromagnetic nature also causes them to repel each other, so that they can't be quite one. Oneness is only possible in the mind.
The behavior of the universe is not dependent on your mental state. It doesn't matter if you are asleep, emotional, delusional, hallucinating, drugged, sick or mentally injured, the universe will still work in a completely consistent manner, as it always has.
Well, that would be true if you assume that there is a universe outside the mind. But if we don't assume that, there's many ways our mind can affect our universe. For example, I can change the universe with my mind by typing this message or moving my hands with my mind.
If the mind and the universe are the same, drugs do change the "universe" (mind), even though it stays largely the same for other minds.
Another example: when I'm done with one day and I'm tired, my mind has to shut down and return to reality, otherwise my universe will start falling apart for resisting the reality of nothingness too long. It's called hallucination, insanity and death. When I have energy on the other hand, I might want to go for a walk outside, which changes the universe, because just like in a videogame, I'm not really moving anywhere when I'm walking, the mind is just generating a universe. That's why it takes energy for things to move, because it takes processing power from the mind to generate a lot of new things.
Then there are of course things like telepathy, telekinesis and so on, which I won't go into now, this post is already too long. These anomalies are by the way, relatively easy to explain if the mind generates the universe, but hard otherwise.
More prominently, though, there was this widespread view that the natural laws governing the Earth were distinct from the natural laws governing the skies.
That's interesting, I haven't heard of that. Are you sure they weren't talking metaphorically? Often in ancient times earth referred to matter and heaven referred to mind.
Bobo the King wrote:
You may not like me calling your theories loony, but that's exactly what they are.
Sure, in your mind, and those who agree with you. But not in my mind.
I know people get offended when I say that some scientific theories wrong, but usually I'm just joking or exagerating, to generate some discussion. So keep that in mind.
After all, my theory is that nothing exists, so if I really believed that, I couldn't discuss, so in order to not disappear into chaos by agreeing with everyone, I have to disagree with some things.
You are wrong about falsifiability
Ok, but why doesn't everyone on this forum and the universe agree with you? Are they objectively wrong?
There is no wave-particle duality
Exactly, just as there is no you and me duality, we are all one mind in multiple bodies and nothing exists in reality. That was my point about the duality: that it's illusionary.
I think nfq might be interested in Rupert Sheldrake's research. [URL=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnA8GUtXpXY]1[/URL], [URL=www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpudgs9ZTfg]2[/URL]
Btw, do you think it's more reasonable to assume that we are different and completely seperate people or that there is a Cosmic Unity (or a world soul) that is resonating with our brains in individual ways and thus produces a sense of indvidual consciousness, while there'd be only one real essence of consciousness? Is it more reasonable to assume consciousness is generated solely by the brain? I think it's still a difficult question, even nowadays.
Thanks Kuwaga, those seem interesting. I would say there is only one cosmic mind (or "God") that expresses its infinity and limits through everything. Because all brains and bodies are different, the mind turns out different depending on the body.
It's hard to think of a universe could start from scratch somewhere in the past without a mind and develop to this point. Natural laws have very limited creative powers, and materialism also doesn't seem to have any explanation on what they are, what causes them or why they behave like they do.
If everything is in the mind, the past is also in the mind (memory), so the problem lies in explaining how the mind/universe is continuously created at the present moment rather than in the past.
Ok, but why doesn't everyone on this forum and the universe agree with you? Are they objectively wrong?
Science is not a democracy.
(And although there is lively discussion among us, I don't see p4wn3r and Warp actively disagreeing with me. We're having a subtle discussion on the practicality of falsifying evolution. I don't think any of us disagree that most of your claims are not falsifiable.)
nfq wrote:
There is no wave-particle duality
Exactly, just as there is no you and me duality, we are all one mind in multiple bodies and nothing exists in reality. That was my point about the duality: that it's illusionary.
It's hard to think of a universe could start from scratch somewhere in the past without a mind
That doesn't explain anything because it still leaves open the question where that mind came from. The only thing you have done is add an additional (and needless) step into the process.
materialism also doesn't seem to have any explanation on
That's a completely null argument. No deductions can be done from that argument (if you deduce something from it, you are only arguing from ignorance, which is worth nothing).
They say (basically) that at certain points in the past, life forms were exposed to high amounts of radiation or something like it
Serendipitously, while browsing wikipedia, I happened to stumble across the source of the above misunderstanding. It's confusing radiation in physics (which is the emission of energetic particles) with evolutionary radiation in biology (which is the rapid diversification of species that fill empty ecological niches). The two terms are in no way related to each other, besides using the word "radiation" (two completely different meanings of it).
I always like it when I can learn something new from these types of discussion.
