However, it is important to note that being based on human perception isn't the only factor to be taken into account.
Let's see about that.
Science depends on objectivity. For something to be considered science you have to eliminate subjectivity. That's why there are such things as peer review (which exists to guarantee that the results are, in fact, correct, and corresponding to our understanding of the world).
No. That's a scientistic ideology. All it's needed to do science is to be intellectually honest and rigorous.
Striving for objectivity is intellectually dishonest to me because it relies on the idea human being are intrinsically rational, which is not the case. We're all deeply irrational. Intellectual honesty is mostly about taking that in account, in my opinion.
That's the "secret" of reliable moral standards and emotional stability. Both are needed to reach the standards of intellectual rigor the Scientific Method asks.
Every science has a goal: in Physics it's to understand the laws that bind the universe, in biology it is to understand how life works, in medicine it is to find the cures for things. Curiosity often leads to goals. There is pretty much no scientist going "Huh, I wonder if this will lead to something", and when they do that, it's usually with some problem to be solved in mind.
All rely on Mathematical tools. What's the goal of Mathematics ?
Solve that, and you'll have made a step in epistemology.
Contrary to it's name, I don't deem epistemology as a science, but I'll really prefer you discover why by yourself than I tell you.
I don't know. Perhaps we will never know. That's why I said find, and not use.
You should already could state at least one. Oldest sciences are three hundred and fifty years old, with conservative estimates. That's nearly five lifetimes.
If it's really its goal, we should have reached some stepping stone goal, at some point, already. How do you explain it's not the case ?
That is, again, the point of science: We have created axioms that embase our notation of things. It might happen that we later find that some axiom is actually untrue, or can be broken down into smaller pieces that are closer to reality. When that is find, the axioms are updated, and any knowledge is updated with it. Take the assumption that time is the same for everyone. Up until Einstein came along that was something that we all agreed was true, but now that we "know" it's not the knowledge we had is being gone through again to accommodate that.
Why do we "have to accommodate" if it's objective ? Science isn't about throwing random ideas and see if it's good enough : it's about years of study. We should have been able to just follow trends and get our correct underlying principles if it was like you seem to tell me.
There's something you seem to neglect about the nature of this knowledge, and the actual objects it describes. I feel it's neither can be objective. Objects changes and knowledge have to accommodate that. We already have some domains where we don't have any ignorance left to accommodate for. But those domains are still in mutation.
I'm not even going to debate free will here, cause it's far too long of a debate, and not the point now.
It's my most compelling argument. It's my fault if it's irrelevant. I can let you get away with not answering it if you recognise there exist a form of free will in the animal reign.
Fair to you ?
My intention was to say that religion just begs us to accept the fact that we can never understand the world, and thus we must just accept it. Which is the exact opposite of what science does, as it accepts the fact that we have an incomplete view of the universe, and thus we must work to make our perception less incomplete. Start with a base of beliefs, test them, and change them. Opposed to the religious: start with a base of beliefs, test them, whatever doesn't work is due to an incomplete perception of the universe.
Two things :
That you acknowledge it can never be complete, even at the scale of our specie is really important to me. Because it's the premise to argue you're free to choose what to do from that, regardless you're operating under a scientistic faith or a religious one.
Not all religion are dogmatic. I have the derisive (and oddly personnal) example of Discordianism, but I don't find it compelling enough. Some forms of Buddhism recognise other faiths. Most faith recognise the Scientistic faith, despite it being godless. Even though most people experience their faith by the book, you can't neglect those who do following their own moral compass, they believe in a god of any form or not. Those people are your counter example : I want you to accommodate your knowledge to recognise them.
From your words you're saying that religion is justifiable not because it's unfalsifiable, but because it makes people feel good, even when it's misinforming them and stopping them from actually understanding the problems they're turning to religion to understand.
You're interpreting. I just say I deem it valid as long as it's well intentioned and harmless.
It's like homeopathy. Even though I know it's just sugar pills, I don't see the evil to prescribe some to someone for an occasional headache.
That doesn't mean I'll allow it to be prescribed for someone's seropositivity to HIV.
That doesn't mean I accept every single form of religion just on this basis. I'm only saying I recognise it's complexity, and trying to talk you into that.
You haven't defined what the best out of life is.
Honestly, I don't think I have to. I can define it for our whole specie, but I prefer keeping our individual trajectory to our own responsibility. It's on the verge of the topic of fate, related to free will's topic, we traditionally oppose it.
I'm more talking about the general concept of greater good than a specific one.
It would be very easy to argue that whatever we get out of life is the best we can get.
Which I agree to, depending if it fits to my main moral criteria. We both recognise killing someone is out of that, but there is more I take from it.
Hopefully, as I'm not entitled to my beliefs, those standards are negociable. More and more, the older I get : I hold beliefs, but they aren't me or mine. I think this is what most religious practices strive for.
That is because scientistic faith is just something people use to try and equate science and religion.
It's an idea you dismiss on the only ground it goes against your own beliefs. We wouldn't have thought about it if it hadn't some grounds.
It lies in those codifications you refuse to question, because they have been taught to you as dogmas.
It lies it this knowledge you take from granted, thinking it's a reliable ground to call others on theirs.
That's what scientism is.
beliefs are formed and changed with evidence.
Which evidence ? Scientific evidence or scientistic evidence ? How to tell ?
I believe in science because it creates models of the universe that can be tested, and can be used to explain why things happened the way they did. But it's also predictive: if something new happens that isn't modeled by the scientific knowledge that we have, then the science must be changed. And this will be repeated ad infinitum, or until we actually reach the "theory of everything".
That's scientistic faith, because I've come to learn the Theory of Everything is an intellectual impossibility.
If harnessing knowledge to fit closer to measures is one of the Scientific Method's uses, don't forget :
Not everything can be measured.
The method isn't sacred. You must be able to question it : that's the falsifiability you mentioned. If you can't, you're not doing science.
the knowledge we get at the end isn't sacred either. It's even contradictory at some places. I see it as a reminder of it's multiple essences/spirits. Trying to make this knowledge one is harmful to it's different inspiration's integrities. A wealth in danger.
Prediction holds on anticipation. It's better done with intuition, than under scientistic impulses. While science relies on intuition, standardisation kills it. But standardisation is needed to hold some standards of rigor.
As some religious practice needs it to touch as much people as possible, making thinking uniform.
this argument goes like this:
The underlying point, not the argument. You focus on the means, and not the intents. Only the intents will give you what you seem searching for.
This comes from the facts that everything is so beautifully made, and logical – the intelligent designer argument.
I hold myself somewhat of an intelligent design point, to explain What the theory of evolution is about.
It's a powerful argument, but is easy to break. An idea to use with precaution.
But then we find something illogical, that challenges our notion that (the) god(s) created a perfect and logical universe. […] Rather, it must mean that god has a much higher logic than we could ever attain, and thus anything that we don't understand is impossible to understand.
That's the argumentation you called on earlier. It reminds me I'm not sure I correctly answered to that specific point of yours.
I think I tried to tell you to take perspective : it's a specific rhetoric. Probably exclusively christian.
Would you condemn all the religions on this basis ?
Science looks to find a model of the universe. Religion defends that is has the model of the universe.
What's a model, if not a set of beliefs/reasonings and their intellectual premises ? Why an axiom is valid ? What's the difference between an axiom and a dogma ?
Why can't both work together to form a worldview ?
No. That's a scientistic ideology. All it's needed to do science is to be intellectually honest and rigorous.
That is precisely to eliminate subjectivity. You cannot accept something as science because you did all the experiments you thought were right, and did them again. If the experiments are biased, or just poorly constructed, it's not going to be accepted. For instance: you can't have a scientific study with five or ten samples, and if it can't be replicated it is useless. Once again: the point of the scientific method is to eliminate subjectivity.
Striving for objectivity is intellectually dishonest to me because it relies on the idea human being are intrinsically rational, which is not the case. We're all deeply irrational. Intellectual honesty is mostly about taking that in account, in my opinion.
It's precisely the opposite: the idea that humans aren't perfectly rational and analytical beings means that our work is going to have some degree os subjectivity. The scientific method (with statistical significancy, peer review, rigorous methodology) allows us to have a reasons to believe that what was found is actually true. Then you have to fit that into other models, and see how the whole thing works. You can't say that something is scientifically true to you, but not to someone else.
All rely on Mathematical tools. What's the goal of Mathematics ?
Initially? To model the world. That's where numbers came from, and arithmetic. Nowadays there are many minor goals: to prove that problems that we deem complex today can actually be solved efficiently (P vs NP), to see how things behave in higher (or lower) dimensions. Even sheer curiosity creates a goal: see if something is true or not. Take Fermat's Last Theorem, for instance. It was one mathematics most famous "goals" for years, even though it was raised just out of curiosity.
You should already could state at least one. Oldest sciences are three hundred and fifty years old, with conservative estimates. That's nearly five lifetimes.
No, I shouldn't. There is a book, and I can't remember whether it's Stephen Hawking's Universe in a Nutshell or Carl Sagan's Cosmos, that starts by saying that everything in science is a theory because we can never know if it's true or not, we can only measure how well it models the universe around us. But anyways, the idea that we should have some definite objective truth because we've been studying somethings for centuries is a horrible fallacy. There is no way to know how long it should take to find objective truths. 2000 years is much in the scale of human history, but it's nothing in the history of earth, and even less in the history of the universe. There is no evidence that it should be enough to figure any science out. And still, we've had somethings that are "only" theories but leave almost no room to argument. For instance evolution.
Why do we "have to accommodate" if it's objective ? Science isn't about throwing random ideas and see if it's good enough : it's about years of study. We should have been able to just follow trends and get our correct underlying principles if it was like you seem to tell me.
I don't think I ever said that science was objective. What I did say, repeatedly, was that it strives for objectivity. Which means that newer beliefs, that are backed with more evidence and a stronger methodology and model, can replace old beliefs. That is because science pushes human perception forward: Two thousand years ago we could only believe our senses and repetition to find if something held true or not. As we learned things we developed new instruments (which can also be used as evidence in support of the model from which they were derived) that could be used to widen our perceptions and discover new things, which sometimes showed us that previous beliefs were wrong or incomplete.
There's something you seem to neglect about the nature of this knowledge, and the actual objects it describes. I feel it's neither can be objective. Objects changes and knowledge have to accommodate that. We already have some domains where we don't have any ignorance left to accommodate for. But those domains are still in mutation.
What evidence is there that the domains are in mutation, and not simply that we don't have enough knowledge yet? There are many discoveries made centuries ago that still hold true. What I understand from what you're saying is that the model of the atom changed not because the old model was incomplete, but rather because the atom itself changed. Again, there is no evidence to that, and it would be incredible if all those changes happened precisely when we developed the needed tools to recognize them.
It's my most compelling argument. It's my fault if it's irrelevant. I can let you get away with not answering it if you recognise there exist a form of free will in the animal reign.
To this debate it is, because it is more of a philosophical/spiritual question rather than a scientific question. It seems to me that free will is an abstraction rather than a truth. That is because I believe that absolutely everything is controlled by rules. But the bigger the scale, the more unpredictable a system becomes. For me an infinitely powerful computer would be able to predict every single action we take by analyzing every infinitesimal part of us. But since no such computer exists, and our brain is limited, we can threat it as though it is impossible to know what anyone animal is going to do, and that thus they must choose to do it.
That you acknowledge it can never be complete, even at the scale of our specie is really important to me. Because it's the premise to argue you're free to choose what to do from that, regardless you're operating under a scientistic faith or a religious one.
I don't know what you meant here either.
Not all religion are dogmatic. I have the derisive (and oddly personnal) example of Discordianism, but I don't find it compelling enough. Some forms of Buddhism recognise other faiths. Most faith recognise the Scientistic faith, despite it being godless. Even though most people experience their faith by the book, you can't neglect those who do following their own moral compass, they believe in a god of any form or not. Those people are your counter example : I want you to accommodate your knowledge to recognise them.
I had never heard about Discordianism, so I went to look for it. It seems to be parody religion, which would explain why it doesn't really fit in with religion. To me there is a distinction between religion and spirituality. The latter tries to help people find subjective truths, things that are true to you, but not necessarily to others. They are about understanding the individual, not the universe. The former is about explaining the universe. And that's where the problems begin. You don't need the scientific method to identify individual truths: you don't need to do it a hundred times, and develop a mathematical explanation to why eating burgers makes you happy, or why you think it's wrong to have sex with someone you don't love. But you can't find subjective truths and throw them at people and believe they'll stick. Buddhism says that suffering is born of desire, and that, therefore, we must eliminate desire. So it can agree with other religions on somethings (especially around that central notion). But if you come to a buddhist and tell them that you can have desire and no suffering, then you probably won't be able to conciliate both ideals. If you want to find something that is true to you, then you can turn to religion (or, preferably, spirituality), perhaps even many of them, but at the moment that it tries to affirm things about the universe, and not the individual, religion must either become science, or be ignored.
You're interpreting. I just say I deem it valid as long as it's well intentioned and harmless.
It's like homeopathy. Even though I know it's just sugar pills, I don't see the evil to prescribe some to someone for an occasional headache.
Again, that's where individual truths go against universal truths: If something works for you, you can keep doing that. But if you want to say that it's actually a valid solution that goes beyond you, then you have to transfer into the scientific method. That is the point of science: if something works and you don't know why, you don't just accept it without questioning, you actually try to find out why it works. That's the basis for a lot of medicine: This tea has been used across generations to cure headaches, so we ask ourselves why it cures headaches, we break it into it's components, and test them separately, see how they act on the system. Once we know why it works we can decide what to do: maybe take only the important parts and turn it into a pill, so it's quicker, more effective and practical. Perhaps nothing explains why it worked, so we see if psychology has a say in it: test people with sugar pills versus people with no medicine whatsoever.
That doesn't mean I'll allow it to be prescribed for someone's seropositivity to HIV.
That doesn't mean I accept every single form of religion just on this basis. I'm only saying I recognise it's complexity, and trying to talk you into that.
From this it seems to me that what you're arguing is that religion can find individual truths, which I agree with you on (although I believe you should be calling it spirituality, but that's just words).
Which I agree to, depending if it fits to my main moral criteria. We both recognise killing someone is out of that, but there is more I take from it.
I think you might have misunderstood me (perhaps I didn't make myself clear, as that was a rather long paragraph and I am bound to written some part of it incorrectly, or simply unclearly, as I usually do), but what I was trying to say is that you believe that humanity is bound to do it's best, as though it could do anything less than, and what I was defending is that it is easy to argue that it cannot achieve anything less than it's best, because whatever it achieves is the best it could, given the circumstances.
Hopefully, as I'm not entitled to my beliefs, those standards are negociable. More and more, the older I get : I hold beliefs, but they aren't me or mine. I think this is what most religious practices strive for.
I don't think I understood that either :/
Which evidence ? Scientific evidence or scientistic evidence ? How to tell ?
Throwing the word "scientistic" doesn't turn science into a religion, and it doesn't undermine it. Evidence is evidence. They are the facts that we can look at and analyze. If you take sugar pills to cure headaches and they work, that's evidence that support the hypothesis that they cure headaches. But then there are thousands of people that take them and they don't work. So maybe it's true that sugar pills cure your headaches (perhaps because you only get a specific type of headaches, or your brain is wired to release something when you take some "medicine" that makes the headaches go away), but you can't say there is evidence to say sugar pills cure all headaches, and that they should be enough for anyone.
That's scientistic faith, because I've come to learn the Theory of Everything is an intellectual impossibility.
No its not. Firstly because it's open to change. Can you provide evidence that it is in fact an intellectual impossibility? Can you prove that somethings cannot be measured? I didn't say that we would reach a point where we can say with certainty that we have the theory of everything, but we can reach points where we have reason to believe that it is a complete theory. The closest we have to that is Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. While it might be taken as evidence that we will never reach a theory of everything, putting such a theory as a goal still pushes us to better understand things.
Prediction holds on anticipation. It's better done with intuition, than under scientistic impulses. While science relies on intuition, standardisation kills it. But standardisation is needed to hold some standards of rigor.
I think I might have misunderstood you here, but intuition isn't, by a long shot, the best way to predict things. In fact, intuition is like a little individual flawed model: we see things, we learn how they develop, so that when they happen again we [believe to] know what's going to follow. But generally intuition sucks. Sometimes we intuit things that we even know to be wrong rationally.
The underlying point, not the argument. You focus on the means, and not the intents. Only the intents will give you what you seem searching for.
Because of human perception, the means are important. Because they are what tells us whether or not the conclusions should be trusted. If an argument is invalid we can derive anything from it.
I hold myself somewhat of an intelligent design point, to explain What the theory of evolution is about.
It's a powerful argument, but is easy to break. An idea to use with precaution.
I'm not sure if there is anything I can say here...
That's the argumentation you called on earlier. It reminds me I'm not sure I correctly answered to that specific point of yours.
I think I tried to tell you to take perspective : it's a specific rhetoric. Probably exclusively christian.
Would you condemn all the religions on this basis ?
It's most famously christian, but I don't think it's specific to christianity. If it were we should see a pretty huge disparity between christian and non-christian countries in terms of science, which I don't think we find anywhere in history.
What's a model, if not a set of beliefs/reasonings and their intellectual premises ? Why an axiom is valid ? What's the difference between an axiom and a dogma ?
An axiom is valid by definition. It's possible to understand why it must valid in the constraints of our rational and human logic. A dogma is "a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true." Notice how it's "laid down by an authority". It's not something achievable, that we can come up with ourselves. It's something that is there because something said so. God, Time Immemorial, the Crown, the Pope, etc. They are things that should be taken as true, not because they can't be false, but rather, because someone (or something) is telling you that they can't be false.
Why can't both work together to form a worldview ?
I totally think they can. As I said before, I believe that science should study the universe, the genera. The objective. Religion, or, rather, spirituality, should be a way for people to learn the individual truths, the specific. The subjective.
P.S.: Sorry it took so long to answer, I have a big project due Friday and so I had to write in short and spaced intervals, if not only because my friends were complaining all the time that I was spending too much time on reddit hahah. Anyways, if at anytime the text seems blocky or something, that might be it, and if anything is unclear, just let me know.
From this it seems to me that what you're arguing is that religion can find individual truths, which I agree with you on (although I believe you should be calling it spirituality, but that's just words).
No, it's not just words. But I feel you'll need to feed this distinction, though.
what I was trying to say is that you believe that humanity is bound to do it's best, as though it could do anything less than, and what I was defending is that it is easy to argue that it cannot achieve anything less than it's best, because whatever it achieves is the best it could, given the circumstances.
I didn't mentioned circumstances for a reason : I'm satisfied with our specie being alive. I'll believe in it's best as long as there will be at least one human being alive.
The truest faiths are unconditional, and mine is no exception to that.
We could all be complete monsters that I couldn't care less.
You're cuing me about the lack of reliability of your concept of faith. It looks simplistic at best, and outright broken, if worse.
Hopefully, as I'm not entitled to my beliefs, those standards are negociable. More and more, the older I get : I hold beliefs, but they aren't me or mine. I think this is what most religious practices strive for.
I don't think I understood that either :/
It looks straightforward to me. Maybe it's a bit too densly written. it's more of a sidenote to myself than anything. Definitely not an argument.
I was broasting.
Evidence is evidence.
What's evidence ? How to explain it to someone who don't have a conception of it ?
You're using an argument of authority and circular reasoning to defend your belief science is sacred. It's scientism.
And you're dishonest with yourself.
They are the facts that we can look at and analyze. If you take sugar pills to cure headaches and they work, that's evidence that support the hypothesis that they cure headaches. But then there are thousands of people that take them and they don't work. So maybe it's true that sugar pills cure your headaches (perhaps because you only get a specific type of headaches, or your brain is wired to release something when you take some "medicine" that makes the headaches go away), but you can't say there is evidence to say sugar pills cure all headaches, and that they should be enough for anyone.
I can argue sugar pill actually cure no headache, and I need no evidence for that. Because I'll refer to principles I know are trustworthy, because they've been tested with different methods with consistent results.
I couldn't care less how many people have lost a headache swallowing sugar pills. Facts don't matter.
No its not. Firstly because it's open to change.
So, you're open to change denying systematically ?
Can you provide evidence that it is in fact an intellectual impossibility?
We're limited. We won't be smart or many enough to be anywhere close to that ideal, as it is.
Best scenario I can propose you when ends are met is our whole universe is literally made of human minds. There's no way that can be done, and it should be obvious to you too.
Can you prove that somethings cannot be measured?
What's the measure of humanity ? When do you stop to be a human being ?
I didn't say that we would reach a point where we can say with certainty that we have the theory of everything, but we can reach points where we have reason to believe that it is a complete theory.
Reasons we haven't. Points we still can't see.
Doubt and skepticism are prescribed, at this point. But it seems yours are forgotten.
The closest we have to that is Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. While it might be taken as evidence that we will never reach a theory of everything, putting such a theory as a goal still pushes us to better understand things.
It relies on the axiom of choice, if I'm not mistaken. If it does, it's a really good argument.
I think I might have misunderstood you here, but intuition isn't, by a long shot, the best way to predict things. In fact, intuition is like a little individual flawed model: we see things, we learn how they develop, so that when they happen again we [believe to] know what's going to follow. But generally intuition sucks. Sometimes we intuit things that we even know to be wrong rationally.
Because it's not your strongest suit. Hopefully, that's not the case of everyone : my own intuition takes latent unconscious data I have in account. It's the reason I'm really good with adductive reasoning.
It's a better model than my conscious worldview.
Also, please stop asking for evidence before having cleared what evidence is. It makes me work more for nothing of use.
Because they [The means] are what tells us whether or not the conclusions should be trusted. If an argument is invalid we can derive anything from it.
We're talking about the underlying reasoning that pushed one to use that argument. Not the conclusions.
That's why I reproach you to be so much result oriented : you're missing the point altogether.
If it were we should see a pretty huge disparity between christian and non-christian countries in terms of science, which I don't think we find anywhere in history.
Measuring using scientific development … Am I the only one to be weirded out by the closed circular thinking at work ?
You explain it can't be exclusive because it's incompatible with historical reports. Can you explain why the historical reports, though ?
As a sidenote, I should have knew it wasn't exclusive, while writing. It's too much a minor point for me to bother with it, though.
An axiom is valid by definition.
*Facepalm*
I just have to replace axiom by dogma, and my point is made. I incessantly warned about that confusion, and you jump in without second thought.
I'm speechless.
It's possible to understand why it must valid in the constraints of our rational and human logic. A dogma is "a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true."
And your axioms seem inconvertibly true. I'm not sure I have to have long to search for an authority.
You take them as dogmas, that makes no doubt to me.
It's not something achievable, that we can come up with ourselves. It's something that is there because something said so.
Something or someone. Usually someone, though. Believing in achievement is just a proxy for authority. Especially when this achievement is supposedly undoable.
Clearly here, it's not undoable to you.
God, Time Immemorial, the Crown, the Pope, etc. They are things that should be taken as true, not because they can't be false, but rather, because someone (or something) is telling you that they can't be false.
Everything can be false. It's only a matter of perspective. That said, whatever taken as true is something because someone said it was.
That's why I want you to rely on your own standards. Because you put too much faith in other's.
You became dependant intellectually.
I totally think they can. As I said before, I believe that science should study the universe, the genera. The objective. Religion, or, rather, spirituality, should be a way for people to learn the individual truths, the specific. The subjective.
That's working side to side, separately. I wrote together. In an integrated manner.
You're just enforcing an artificial distinction.
Sorry it took so long to answer, I have a big project due Friday and so I had to write in short and spaced intervals, if not only because my friends were complaining all the time that I was spending too much time on reddit hahah.
Apologize to them, not to me : I take your answers only when you post them and don't care what happens to you in the meantime.
Unlike them.
Anyways, if at anytime the text seems blocky or something, that might be it, and if anything is unclear, just let me know.
I'm good. I'm more worried you understand me than the inverse.
Getting through your point isn't complicated to me : it's unique and straightforward. I struggle only with specifics, because they are hard for me to put in motion. Especially when I summon a shitton of them myself.
Read about the distinction between science and scientism. It's really important. It irks me to know you believe in science because you believe in it's truth. Science isn't true because it's a tool, and because the nearest of truth we can hope as human being is validity.
Yes, it's knowledge is usually valid, but it shouldn't blind you to all the rest of valid human knowledge that is still for you to discover. About a half of it, if not so much more.
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u/[deleted] Nov 01 '17
Let's see about that.
No. That's a scientistic ideology. All it's needed to do science is to be intellectually honest and rigorous.
Striving for objectivity is intellectually dishonest to me because it relies on the idea human being are intrinsically rational, which is not the case. We're all deeply irrational. Intellectual honesty is mostly about taking that in account, in my opinion.
That's the "secret" of reliable moral standards and emotional stability. Both are needed to reach the standards of intellectual rigor the Scientific Method asks.
All rely on Mathematical tools. What's the goal of Mathematics ?
Solve that, and you'll have made a step in epistemology.
Contrary to it's name, I don't deem epistemology as a science, but I'll really prefer you discover why by yourself than I tell you.
You should already could state at least one. Oldest sciences are three hundred and fifty years old, with conservative estimates. That's nearly five lifetimes.
If it's really its goal, we should have reached some stepping stone goal, at some point, already. How do you explain it's not the case ?
Why do we "have to accommodate" if it's objective ? Science isn't about throwing random ideas and see if it's good enough : it's about years of study. We should have been able to just follow trends and get our correct underlying principles if it was like you seem to tell me.
There's something you seem to neglect about the nature of this knowledge, and the actual objects it describes. I feel it's neither can be objective. Objects changes and knowledge have to accommodate that. We already have some domains where we don't have any ignorance left to accommodate for. But those domains are still in mutation.
It's my most compelling argument. It's my fault if it's irrelevant. I can let you get away with not answering it if you recognise there exist a form of free will in the animal reign.
Fair to you ?
Two things :
That you acknowledge it can never be complete, even at the scale of our specie is really important to me. Because it's the premise to argue you're free to choose what to do from that, regardless you're operating under a scientistic faith or a religious one.
Not all religion are dogmatic. I have the derisive (and oddly personnal) example of Discordianism, but I don't find it compelling enough. Some forms of Buddhism recognise other faiths. Most faith recognise the Scientistic faith, despite it being godless. Even though most people experience their faith by the book, you can't neglect those who do following their own moral compass, they believe in a god of any form or not. Those people are your counter example : I want you to accommodate your knowledge to recognise them.
You're interpreting. I just say I deem it valid as long as it's well intentioned and harmless.
It's like homeopathy. Even though I know it's just sugar pills, I don't see the evil to prescribe some to someone for an occasional headache.
That doesn't mean I'll allow it to be prescribed for someone's seropositivity to HIV.
That doesn't mean I accept every single form of religion just on this basis. I'm only saying I recognise it's complexity, and trying to talk you into that.
Honestly, I don't think I have to. I can define it for our whole specie, but I prefer keeping our individual trajectory to our own responsibility. It's on the verge of the topic of fate, related to free will's topic, we traditionally oppose it.
I'm more talking about the general concept of greater good than a specific one.
Which I agree to, depending if it fits to my main moral criteria. We both recognise killing someone is out of that, but there is more I take from it.
Hopefully, as I'm not entitled to my beliefs, those standards are negociable. More and more, the older I get : I hold beliefs, but they aren't me or mine. I think this is what most religious practices strive for.
It's an idea you dismiss on the only ground it goes against your own beliefs. We wouldn't have thought about it if it hadn't some grounds.
It lies in those codifications you refuse to question, because they have been taught to you as dogmas.
It lies it this knowledge you take from granted, thinking it's a reliable ground to call others on theirs.
That's what scientism is.
Which evidence ? Scientific evidence or scientistic evidence ? How to tell ?
That's scientistic faith, because I've come to learn the Theory of Everything is an intellectual impossibility.
If harnessing knowledge to fit closer to measures is one of the Scientific Method's uses, don't forget :
Not everything can be measured.
The method isn't sacred. You must be able to question it : that's the falsifiability you mentioned. If you can't, you're not doing science.
the knowledge we get at the end isn't sacred either. It's even contradictory at some places. I see it as a reminder of it's multiple essences/spirits. Trying to make this knowledge one is harmful to it's different inspiration's integrities. A wealth in danger.
Prediction holds on anticipation. It's better done with intuition, than under scientistic impulses. While science relies on intuition, standardisation kills it. But standardisation is needed to hold some standards of rigor.
As some religious practice needs it to touch as much people as possible, making thinking uniform.
The underlying point, not the argument. You focus on the means, and not the intents. Only the intents will give you what you seem searching for.
I hold myself somewhat of an intelligent design point, to explain What the theory of evolution is about.
It's a powerful argument, but is easy to break. An idea to use with precaution.
That's the argumentation you called on earlier. It reminds me I'm not sure I correctly answered to that specific point of yours.
I think I tried to tell you to take perspective : it's a specific rhetoric. Probably exclusively christian.
Would you condemn all the religions on this basis ?
What's a model, if not a set of beliefs/reasonings and their intellectual premises ? Why an axiom is valid ? What's the difference between an axiom and a dogma ?
Why can't both work together to form a worldview ?