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wolfhnd » June 29th, 2018, 3:25 pm wrote:
Should these individuals be taken more seriously than other pundits because of their scientific credentials?
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wolfhnd » June 29th, 2018, 5:25 pm wrote:Everyone should have a right to speak on any subject they choose. Using your scientific credentials to promote political points of view or pontificate on subjects outside of your area of expertise will garner displeasure from scholars on those subjects.
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wolfhnd » June 29th, 2018, 4:25 pm wrote:Should these individuals be taken more seriously than other pundits because of their scientific credentials?
BadgerJelly » June 30th, 2018, 1:21 am wrote:One thing I do find curious is the lack of philosophers. I guess the idea of popular philosophical works is contrary as intense study is needed - that said it appears philosophical ideas bleed throuh well enough via psychology, linguistics and, law and political theory.
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mitchellmckain » July 27th, 2018, 5:05 pm wrote:wolfhnd » June 29th, 2018, 4:25 pm wrote:Should these individuals be taken more seriously than other pundits because of their scientific credentials?
The only epistemological superiority involved is due to the existence of objective demonstrable evidence. Otherwise opinion is just a opinion and any credibility given to these opinions is subjective. Let me remind you what that means:
1. If it is subjective then we have no reasonable basis for expecting others to agree.
2. If it is subjective then it is only rational to accept a diversity of thought and belief.
In other words... SURE, you can take them more seriously. It is just unreasonable to expect others to do so as well.
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Reg_Prescott » July 27th, 2018, 4:32 am wrote:mitchellmckain » July 27th, 2018, 5:05 pm wrote:wolfhnd » June 29th, 2018, 4:25 pm wrote:Should these individuals be taken more seriously than other pundits because of their scientific credentials?
The only epistemological superiority involved is due to the existence of objective demonstrable evidence. Otherwise opinion is just a opinion and any credibility given to these opinions is subjective. Let me remind you what that means:
1. If it is subjective then we have no reasonable basis for expecting others to agree.
2. If it is subjective then it is only rational to accept a diversity of thought and belief.
In other words... SURE, you can take them more seriously. It is just unreasonable to expect others to do so as well.
This all sounds a bit far-fetched to me, Mitchell. If it were the case, as you insist above, that unlike subjective evidence (whatever that means) where "we have no reasonable basis for expecting others to agree", scientific evidence is "objective and demonstrable", then shouldn't we expect scientists to always agree on what does, and what does not, constitute evidence for which particular theories?
Reg_Prescott » July 27th, 2018, 4:32 am wrote:Clearly this is not the way things stand. Counterexamples could be adduced pretty much ad infinitum, I think.
Reg_Prescott » July 27th, 2018, 4:32 am wrote:Some scientists felt (circa 1600) that various phenomena constituted evidence for the Ptolemaic model; others that the very same phenomena supported, instead, the Copernican model.
Reg_Prescott » July 27th, 2018, 4:32 am wrote:Some scientists believe the fossil record constitutes evidence for Darwinian gradualism; others hold that it supports punctuated equilibrium. Then again, some like myself, albeit not a scientist, feel that the fossil record provides evidence for no particular theory; it's just a baffling, buzzing, blooming confusion.
Reg_Prescott » July 27th, 2018, 4:32 am wrote:In the early-mid 20th century, the apparent fit of western Africa with eastern South America, as well as the similarity of flora and fauna, was regarded by some as evidence for continental drift. Others demurred.
Reg_Prescott » July 27th, 2018, 4:32 am wrote:Seems to me you're overplaying your hand.
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Reg_Prescott » July 27th, 2018, 4:48 am wrote:To add a little more, evidence, I think is one of the most vexed concepts both in science and elsewhere. You write, Mitchell, as if the concept is entirely unproblematic, at least in scientific contexts.
Reg_Prescott » July 27th, 2018, 4:48 am wrote:The other day I was watching a documentary on Youtube about Bigfoot (I'll link if required). The scientific expert commentating on the program told us at one point that there is "no evidence" for the existence of said hairy brute. Thirty minutes or so later, however, the very same expert assured us that the evidence is "weak".
I trust the problem is obvious: on pain of contradiction or equivocation, the evidence cannot be at once both weak and non-existent.
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wolfhnd » July 27th, 2018, 4:38 pm wrote:The reason that scientists are taken seriously on subjects they were not formally trained in is they are trained to be objective. That seems like a sad commentary on society because we could assume that the educational system teaches everyone the importance of evidence. Isn't evidence important in the political process?
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Brent696 » July 27th, 2018, 12:39 pm wrote:>>>>>mitchellmckain » July 27th, 2018, 12:37 pm
There is no objective evidence of Bigfoot. PERIOD.
There is no objective evidence of ghosts. PERIOD.
There is no objective evidence of UFOs. PERIOD.
There is no objective evidence of God or gods. PERIOD.
There is no objective evidence of faeries. PERIOD.
There is no objective evidence of psychic powers. PERIOD.
ergo all the evidence for these things is subjective. PERIOD.<<<<<<<<
Is this your subjective opinion?
Brent696 » July 27th, 2018, 12:39 pm wrote:All evidence, PERIOD, passes through the subjectiveness of your own mind, all evidence is interpreted within one context or another.
Brent696 » July 27th, 2018, 12:39 pm wrote:When any evidence it termed to be unquestionable, then it has become deified and thus falls back to a subjective state. Many people have deified science just as others would deify religious doctrines.
Brent696 » July 27th, 2018, 12:39 pm wrote:There is a video of bigfoot, it is objective evidence,
Brent696 » July 27th, 2018, 12:39 pm wrote:5 people say they saw (John Doe) kill (John Doe) with a knife, apart they are subjective, together they become objective by a preponderance, and yet they could all be wrong.
Brent696 » July 27th, 2018, 12:39 pm wrote:Is light a wave or a particle, the wave function proves it is not a particle, it could be, but we come up with another theory as to how we can keep our particle and just make it act like a wave.
Brent696 » July 27th, 2018, 12:39 pm wrote:All evidence becomes subjective the moment you choose to believe it.
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Brent696 » July 27th, 2018, 5:49 pm wrote:Mitchell
And so you have stated your subjective opinion, thank you
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wolfhnd » July 28th, 2018, 9:02 am wrote:There is a problem with objectivity in the scientific sense. If like Sam Harris you insist that freewill does not exist, which may be objectively true, then the whole moral framework of personal responsibility and morality collapses.
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wolfhnd » July 27th, 2018, 8:02 pm wrote:There is a problem with objectivity in the scientific sense. If like Sam Harris you insist that freewill does not exist, which may be objectively true, then the whole moral framework of personal responsibility and morality collapses.
Social constructs, such as in mathematics, are absolute but science does not deal with absolutes but refinement of approximates. For somethings such as subatomic particles the approximates are very precise. For other things, such as how the brain functions, the current models may be very imprecise. The current state of science is not very good at modeling complex chaotic systems.
Freewill is real not because of evidence in the scientific sense but because it must be true for the complex chaotic social structure to function. It would be unfair to say freewill is a socially constructed fantasy because it is real in the sense that money is real.
As has been argued here many times the reductionist nature of empirical evidence is essential to being informed but it is limited in application where reduction is impossible or undesirable. That would be the case for most political dialogue and a central failing of ideas such as scientific socialism.
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Brent696 » July 27th, 2018, 9:05 pm wrote:wolfhnd » July 27th, 2018, 8:02 pm wrote:There is a problem with objectivity in the scientific sense. If like Sam Harris you insist that freewill does not exist, which may be objectively true, then the whole moral framework of personal responsibility and morality collapses.
Ok, this is an interesting dilemma, in theology some might say if God made us as sinners, then He cannot condemn us for sinning. So in this sense, God made us sinners, (bear with me even if you are not a believer), but we are made as self aware individuals, and being self aware makes me also responsible for my actions because God doesn't make me sin. (Sin: falling short of the mark, like an arrow that falls short of the target)
Brent696 » July 27th, 2018, 9:05 pm wrote:Being a sinner, as I understand it, refers to our created nature. We are literally, like everything else, created from nothing. This means that even though we APPEAR as something for this short duration of time, the foundation of our Being is still nothing. We exist only as we are dependent upon the temporal existence of time and space, wherein there are localities available, one of which is the center of the "I am" of my consciousness. So even to possess self consciousness, I alone have to be responsible because I POSSESS it. See?
Brent696 » July 27th, 2018, 9:05 pm wrote:Also there is a fallacy with God punishing people for their sin, most of modern theology sees it this way but they are mistaken, why is another issue. But as Created Being, dependent upon time and space, even as a disembodied soul which is also subject to time and space, death is built into the system. At the same time we were created, so was our death determined, this is finitude. The idea that God has to step in to punish is based upon the idea of inherent immortality for the soul, but that belief is unscientific, everything created will also perish, that is what the evidence says.
Brent696 » July 27th, 2018, 9:05 pm wrote: Of course all of this God talk here IS JUST A METAPHOR I am using in address free will, I have to make disclaimers so the God police don't come after me. Is it truly free, NO, if it was I could eat all the donuts I wanted and not gain weight. Just like everything else in a finite universe, even evidence, it is all relative to context. To Paraphrase "You can choose right, or you can choose left, but even if you choose not to choose, you still have made a choice."
Brent696 » July 27th, 2018, 9:05 pm wrote:wolfhnd » July 27th, 2018, 8:02 pm wrote:That would be the case for most political dialogue and a central failing of ideas such as scientific socialism.
See, now I had to go look up the term "scientific socialism", but "reason" also is relative, I have told people socialism looks great on paper, it might SEEM reasonable, it just doesn't work basically because people are not reasonable. If your having to do all the work because the guy next to you won't get off his butt and do his share, and you will always get paid the same, then pretty soon you are both sitting down. People are envious (comparing), people are greedy for laziness or greedy to earn more if they desire to work harder, socialism does not factor in a true understanding of man.
Brent696 » July 27th, 2018, 9:05 pm wrote:So to address Reg/Colin's point, there is no true objective standard, evidence is never objective but rather always relative to context, in his case it is the question that creates the context. In newton's world up was up and down was down, Einstein comes along and what is light, a wave, no its a particle, no its a wave, I know where it is but not how fast its moving, science lost any claim to absolute evidence when they opened the door to the quantum universe.
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wolfhnd » July 28th, 2018, 1:09 pm
I have some issues with philosophy because it doesn't seem bounded. I see no evidence however that science can do anymore than inform moral consideration. Complex issues have to be artificially restrained in a reference frame of time and space with uncertainties that dilute the value of scientific evidence.
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Reg_Prescott » Sat Jul 28, 2018 12:30 am wrote:I've experienced great difficulty, both here and elsewhere, trying to get the point across that "evidence" is a relational term: evidence is always evidence for (or against) a particular theory/hypothesis/law/conjecture or whatever.
A lump of coal, or a smoking gun, or whatever else is not evidence in and of itself. We can all agree (I suppose) that it's a lump of coal. In the absence of a theory or theories, however, to which it is somehow related, it's just a lump of coal.
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wolfhnd » July 29th, 2018, 11:42 am wrote:
I agree with BIV that this is getting at the crux of the matter. There is no doubt that the theory of science has objectivity demonstrated with physical evidence that it can transform human life. The question of sufficiency and scope remains.
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Reg_Prescott » July 29th, 2018, 12:18 am wrote:But suppose we try to give Mitchell's insistence on the objectivity of scientific evidence a sympathetic hearing. The only possible sense I can make of the key term -- objective -- in this context is epistemic. To wit:
Reg_Prescott » July 29th, 2018, 12:18 am wrote:It is epistemically objective that Taipei is the most populous city in Taiwan. There is a fact of the matter; this is not a matter of opinion. Any naysayer is just plain wrong.
Reg_Prescott » July 29th, 2018, 12:18 am wrote:It is epistemically subjective that mangoes taste better than lychees. This is a matter of opinion. There is no fact of the matter to which we may appeal.
Reg_Prescott » July 29th, 2018, 12:18 am wrote:Now when we apply the same schema to the concept of scientific evidence, let E be our evidence and T be our theory. To claim that it is epistemically objective that E constitutes evidence for T would be to claim that E stands in the right kind of relationship to T; the relationship that binds evidence to theory.
For example, we might assert that the precession of the perihelion of Mercury constitutes evidence for general relativity theory but not evolutionary theory inasmuch as the said phenomenon stands in the right relation to the former, but not the latter, theory.
So far so good, chaps. All we need to do now (*cough splutter*) is clarify the nature of the relationship by virtue of which it is epistemically objective that any given E constitutes evidence for a particulary theory T. There must be a fact of the matter. In virtue of what fact or facts does E constitute evidence for T.
Reg_Prescott » July 29th, 2018, 12:18 am wrote:Attempts to clarify the nature of the evidence-theory relationship is the business of philosophy of science. And, hate to tell you, folks, but the news ain't good.
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I've experienced great difficulty, both here and elsewhere, trying to get the point across that "evidence" is a relational term: evidence is always evidence for (or against) a particular theory/hypothesis/law/conjecture or whatever.
A lump of coal, or a smoking gun, or whatever else is not evidence in and of itself. We can all agree (I suppose) that it's a lump of coal. In the absence of a theory or theories, however, to which it is somehow related, it's just a lump of coal.
mitchellmckain » July 29th, 2018, 5:09 pm wrote:Fortunately the work of scientific inquiry doesn't depend on such rhetoric and most scientists could care less. This is after all nothing but philosophy (methodology of rhetoric), so if you expect the scientists to take notice and give a crap then I suggest you do not hold your breath. Philosophy like religion pretty much blows every which way like the wind and fashion. Without objective evidence what reason do have to take such things seriously? I see very little reason to do so at all.
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