Is atheism a threat to humanity?

[mikkel_the_dane]

Uhh.

That in no way relates to what I wrote.

Are you feeling ok?

Doing e.g. morality as morality is unknown to science, because you can't with science do morality. So it is outside science, yet knowable.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Doing e.g. morality as morality is unknown to science, because you can't with science do morality. So it is outside science, yet knowable.

You can't do morality properly without science, as science informs you on the consequences of your actions and the state and workings of the external world - which is the kind of information that seems quite relevant when engaging in moral evaluation of some action or behaviour.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

You can't do morality properly without science, as science informs you on the consequences of your actions and the state and workings of the external world - which is the kind of information that seems quite relevant when engaging in moral evaluation of some action or behaviour.

How the Trolley Problem Works

Yes, now solve this one only using science. You don't even need science to understand the consequences and how the external world works.

 

[Satans_Serrated_Edge]

Doing e.g. morality as morality is unknown to science, because you can't with science do morality. So it is outside science, yet knowable.

Actually it isn't.

Morality is simply a title we give to what we see as 'correct' behaviour, and it varies from culture to culture, and time period to time period.

It isn't knowledge so much as consensus.

The common underlying principles can be explained by empathy, which can be explained by behavioural and cognitive science, the latter being measurable by monitoring brain activity.

But none of this speaks to the premise of mind without brain, which is the premise you challenged before you got hopelessly entangled in your own flowery language while gazing into your own navel.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

How the Trolley Problem Works

Yes, now solve this one only using science. You don't even need science to understand the consequences and how the external world works.

If you don't understand what the result is of a trolley impacting a human or groups of humans, then there isn't even a (recognized) problem to solve.

You should read what I write and respond to what I actually write, not what you imagine me to write.
I never said nore implied that science solves or can solve moral dilemma's.

What I actually said, was that science informs us about the consequences of our actions.
In this case, what the consequence is of hitting a person with a trolley.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

...
But none of this speaks to the premise of mind without brain, which is the premise you challenged before you got hopelessly entangled in your own flowery language while gazing into your own navel.

I am not speak of mind without brain. I am talking about that you can't use naive empiricism.
You can look at all the brain scans and what out, but you won't understand it, unless you have first person internal experience.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

If you don't understand what the result is of a trolley impacting a human or groups of humans, then there isn't even a (recognized) problem to solve.

You should read what I write and respond to what I actually write, not what you imagine me to write.
I never said nore implied that science solves or can solve moral dilemma's.

What I actually said, was that science informs us about the consequences of our actions.
In this case, what the consequence is of hitting a person with a trolley.

I am not hitting a person with a trolley. I am either letting 5 humans be hit by not pulling the lever or letting them not be hit, by letting one human be hit.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Science is all of our knowledge and the reliable ways of getting to it, testing it, and verifying it. It's a living thing that expands and changes as we learn. With this in mind saying something is outside science is saying something is unknowable, for now and always

Agreed. We can conceive of formal science in the laboratory or observatory, and the informal science of daily life. We've seen that automobiles can kill, an induction derived from experience. We want to cross the street safely, and we have a hypothesis that this means crossing when there are no cars coming, so we do an experiment to gather data by looking left and right, and if the street is clear, we test our idea that now is a safe tie to cross.

But these are essentially the same process - formal and informal science - and as best I can tell, the only path to truth as I have defined it.

morality as morality is unknown to science, because you can't with science do morality. So it is outside science, yet knowable.

I know my conscience directly. It is evidence that I have one, evidence I can interpret and draw reliable conclusions from. From prior experience, I know the consequences of obeying and disobeying my conscience. Applying reason to evidence, I determine how I should behave in order to reap the reward of knowing I did the right thing and avoid the punishment of guilt and shame that my conscience will surely dole out if I do the wrong thing.

Having those experiences, having them be reproducible and predictable, generalizing from them to generate a rule that will help anticipate and control outcomes - that's all informal science, because it's the same process done in a laboratory to generate a useful induction about physical reality, only here I am determining my personal reality so that I can navigate life as painlessly as possible, including my inner life.

This is the scientific approach to personal ethics, which begins by discovering how one's conscience reacts and acting accordingly. We can do something similar with societal ethics when there is a consensus on how society should be. We enact rules to help facilitate that state, and test whether they achieved the desired result. So, slavery and alcohol are made illegal, one benefiting lives and the other leading to unforeseen consequences that were judged worse than the problem being addressed. So, rational ethics says keep the one law and throw out the other. This is reason being applied to evidence. The moral imperatives don't come from reason applied to evidence, but what to do about them does.

As stated, you are confused. And no wonder, when you choose to believe lies instead of investigating on your own.

Some people aren't equipped to investigate properly on their own. When they try, they often go off the reservation. They are better advised to seek the opinions of experts.

Well, eye witnesses can make such claims...... then it's up to you to prove them wrong.

This is the kind of thing that can happen when you allow your thinking to be too independent before mastering the basics.

There are plenty of innocent souls in prison right now because of "evidence".

What you are calling evidence that led to false convictions was mostly faulty eye-witness testimony. We are now in a robust age of new forensic science, which examines physical evidence, and has shown countless times how much less reliable other types of evidence are. Science to the rescue.

The more scientific one can make any undertaking, the more reliable it is. Justice is now more scientific and more accurate. More perps are identified and more innocents exonerated. That's knowledge, and that's where useful knowledge comes from.

"evidence " is only used to "prove" an allegation, or in this case a "hypothesis " and has NOTHING to do with finding "facts" (TRUTH).

Truth is the quality facts possess, facts being linguistic strings (sentences, paragraphs) that accurately map a portion of reality, knowledge being the collection of ideas that do this.We cannot have a fact without evidence properly understood, such as that there is a pencil on the table. To call that a fact means that there is a pencil on the table, and that can only be confirmed or disconfirmed with evidence, usually looking at the table and seeing a pencil evident.

If what you call fact, truth, or knowledge is not connected to evidence (empiricism), then your ideas won't be of value to either of us. I've read your comments on vibration being the fundamental nature of matter and energy, a claim apparently not rooted in empiricism, and not surprisingly, an idea that can't be used for anything. I can't call that truth - just speculation.

Evidence is anything evident to the mind. Subjective evidence is evidence not available to others, such as the bad taste I get from eating brussels sprouts. That's a repeatable experience based in evidence that allowed me to make a generalization about brussels sprouts that allows to predict and in this case control outcomes, and thus a fact for me as meaningful as any other.

What is called objective evidence is the source for facts that apply to all of us, like water makes things wet, and apples fall from trees. Unlike subjective evidence, intersubjective consensus is expected here.

So any experience evident to the mind is evidence of something. The question is what is it evidence of? That's where the reasoning skills come in. Some people tell me that the universe is evidence for a god. I believe that they are misinterpreting the evidence. The universe is evidence that there is a universe of this type, not where it came from. We can only speculate there and make a list of logical possibilities, none of which can be ruled in or out at this time.

How about the Christian Bible? Once again, we are told that this book is evidence that its contents are true. I frequently hear that the evidence for resurrection is in the Gospels. I disagree. The Bible is evidence that it was written. It is evidence for none of the things it claims, all of which can only be known to be true or false by examining outside of its pages, and properly judging what the relevant findings mean.

How about a living cell? We are also told that this is evidence of a god. Disagree again. This is evidence that life is possible and actual. We have two logical possibilities for its origin, naturalistic processes and intelligent design, and once again, we can rule neither in nor out at this time.

How about when you have an experience that you consider a connection with that god and you report it to others? What should they consider this report to be evidence of, a god? Why isn't also evidence for a mental state misunderstood as sensing a god? It could be either, and neither can be ruled in or out. Even if I have the experience myself, and I have when I was a Christian, I will not conclude that I experienced a god any longer as I did then. I drew a faulty conclusion because I misinterpreted the evidence of my own mental state and assumed that it was a god I was detecting.

the earth is flat...….according to the "science" of that day,
remember that one ?

That was a good working model for people at one time. The earth looks flat if one cannot see ships sinking as they reach or horizon, and the sun appears to be moving around it in 24 hour cycles. This is a reasonable way to understand the evidence of our senses, and works as well as Newton's theory of gravity, which was also the once the state of man's understanding of gravity. In both cases, evidence inconsistent with those ideas finally arose and the models had to be modified to account for the new evidence. This, too, is science

intellectual idiots in white coats

"You stare into your high definition plasma screen monitor in the comfort of your air conditioned home and in the glow of electric lighting, type into your cordless keyboard, then hit enter, which causes your computer to convert all that visual data into a binary signal that's processed by millions of precise circuits.

"This is then converted to a frequency modulated signal to reach your wireless router where it is then converted to light waves and sent along a large fiber optics cable to be processed by a super computer on a mass server, one of untold numbers of computers interconnected into a powerful network of intercommunicating computers bringing the world and all of its information to your laptop.

"This sends that bit you typed to a satellite orbiting the earth that was put there through the greatest feats of engineering and science, all so it could go back through a similar pathway to make it all the way here to my computer monitor 15,000 miles away from you just so you could express your disappointment in science and say, "Science is all a bunch of man made hogwash."- anon.

 

[Satans_Serrated_Edge]

I am not speak of mind without brain. I am talking about that you can't use naive empiricism.
You can look at all the brain scans and what out, but you won't understand it, unless you have first person internal experience.

Ok, so then you are off on an unrelated tangent.

Again.

Have you anything to add to THIS discussion?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Ok, so then you are off on an unrelated tangent.

Again.

Have you anything to add to THIS discussion?

Yes, you can't live your life only doing observation, nor can you live your life without observation.
Now to end this, so you can complain some more.
Some people to the effect of: Science is better than anything else. The joke is that it is not known with science. The word "better" is subjective. So they are claiming something subjective about an objective method. Great fun. In a sense it is like claiming something subjective is objective, just like some religious people do.
In short, objectivity is better than subjectivity. But "better" is subjective and objectivity is a subjective process.
So it is not only religious people, that claim something without evidence. So non-religious people can also be subjective and claim it is objective. So it is not a tangent. The confusion between subjective and objective/evidence is not unique to religious people.
Now fire away.

 

[Satans_Serrated_Edge]

Yes, you can't live your life only doing observation, nor can you live your life without observation.
Now to end this, so you can complain some more.
Some people to the effect of: Science is better than anything else. The joke is that it is not known with science. The word "better" is subjective. So they are claiming something subjective about an objective method. Great fun. In a sense it is like claiming something subjective is objective, just like some religious people do.
In short, objectivity is better than subjectivity. But "better" is subjective and objectivity is a subjective process.
So it is not only religious people, that claim something without evidence. So non-religious people can also be subjective and claim it is objective. So it is not a tangent. The confusion between subjective and objective/evidence is not unique to religious people.
Now fire away.

Sigh.

 

[Augustus]

The second you can reproduce knowledge though a repeatable methodology, it becomes science.

If you can't reproduce it in such a way, it isn't really knowledge.

Then history isn't knowledge, and the ability to differentiate between science and religion isn't knowledge, and countless other things that we didn't formulate as a result of a repeatable methodology. And things like maths and logic would, at best, occupy a somewhat grey area.

When we deal with both complexity and uncertainty, we often have to rely on experience based heuristics that may not be factually true, but are ultimately beneficial guides for behaviour. Heuristic - Wikipedia

In other situations, we may acquire tacit knowledge, something we understand implicitly from experience yet can't really articulate Tacit knowledge - Wikipedia

You are just expressing some simplistic form of logical positivism that went out of fashion 75 or so years ago.

Even your cave man clubbing example is in fact science.

Not according to the normal usage of the term it's not, and not according to the ideas of the vast majority of scientists and philosophers of science.

Which do you think is more likely?

a) Almost all of the contemporary scientists and philosophers of science who have spent large parts of their life dealing with the demarcation problem are so stupid they couldn't understand that science is just all repeatable knowledge.

b) The issue is far more complex than you seem to think

Knowledge, in the clearest epistimological(philosophical) sense, is 'justified true belief'. Scientific(reproducible, falsifiable) methods are the only reliable path to the 'justified' and 'true' parts of that definition.

What constitutes knowledge (or justified or true) is a philosophical question, and thus not knowledge according to you.

And then we have to consider that falsifiability is not something which the majority of contemporary scholars see as a clear demarcation between science and not science any more.

2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT?

Falsifiability

In a world where scientific theories often sound bizarre and counter to everyday intuition, and where a wide variety of nonsense aspires to be recognized as "scientific," it's important to be able to separate science from non-science—what philosophers call "the demarcation problem." Karl Popper famously suggested the criterion of "falsifiability"—a theory is scientific if it makes clear predictions that can be unambiguously falsified.

It's a well-meaning idea, but far from the complete story. Popper was concerned with theories such as Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxist economics, which he considered non-scientific. No matter what actually happens to people or societies, Popper claimed, theories like these will always be able to tell a story in which the data are compatible with the theoretical framework. He contrasted this with Einstein's relativity, which made specific quantitative predictions ahead of time. (One prediction of general relativity was that the universe should be expanding or contracting, leading Einstein to modify the theory because he thought the universe was actually static. So even in this example the falsifiability criterion is not as unambiguous as it seems.)

Modern physics stretches into realms far removed from everyday experience, and sometimes the connection to experiment becomes tenuous at best. String theory and other approaches to quantum gravity involve phenomena that are likely to manifest themselves only at energies enormously higher than anything we have access to here on Earth. The cosmological multiverse and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics posit other realms that are impossible for us to access directly. Some scientists, leaning on Popper, have suggested that these theories are non-scientific because they are not falsifiable.

The truth is the opposite. Whether or not we can observe them directly, the entities involved in these theories are either real or they are not. Refusing to contemplate their possible existence on the grounds of some a priori principle, even though they might play a crucial role in how the world works, is as non-scientific as it gets.

Edge.org

 

[Satans_Serrated_Edge]

Doing e.g. morality as morality is unknown to science, because you can't with science do morality. So it is outside science, yet knowable.

But it isn't, as I pointed out and listed the reasons for already.

 

[Satans_Serrated_Edge]

Then history isn't knowledge, and the ability to differentiate between science and religion isn't knowledge, and countless other things that we didn't formulate as a result of a repeatable methodology. And things like maths and logic would, at best, occupy a somewhat grey area.

When we deal with both complexity and uncertainty, we often have to rely on experience based heuristics that may not be factually true, but are ultimately beneficial guides for behaviour. Heuristic - Wikipedia

In other situations, we may acquire tacit knowledge, something we understand implicitly from experience yet can't really articulate Tacit knowledge - Wikipedia

You are just expressing some simplistic form of logical positivism that went out of fashion 75 or so years ago.



Not according to the normal usage of the term it's not, and not according to the ideas of the vast majority of scientists and philosophers of science.

Which do you think is more likely?

a) Almost all of the contemporary scientists and philosophers of science who have spent large parts of their life dealing with the demarcation problem are so stupid they couldn't understand that science is just all repeatable knowledge.

b) The issue is far more complex than you seem to think



What constitutes knowledge (or justified or true) is a philosophical question, and thus not knowledge according to you.

And then we have to consider that falsifiability is not something which the majority of contemporary scholars see as a clear demarcation between science and not science any more.

2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT?

Falsifiability

In a world where scientific theories often sound bizarre and counter to everyday intuition, and where a wide variety of nonsense aspires to be recognized as "scientific," it's important to be able to separate science from non-science—what philosophers call "the demarcation problem." Karl Popper famously suggested the criterion of "falsifiability"—a theory is scientific if it makes clear predictions that can be unambiguously falsified.

It's a well-meaning idea, but far from the complete story. Popper was concerned with theories such as Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxist economics, which he considered non-scientific. No matter what actually happens to people or societies, Popper claimed, theories like these will always be able to tell a story in which the data are compatible with the theoretical framework. He contrasted this with Einstein's relativity, which made specific quantitative predictions ahead of time. (One prediction of general relativity was that the universe should be expanding or contracting, leading Einstein to modify the theory because he thought the universe was actually static. So even in this example the falsifiability criterion is not as unambiguous as it seems.)

Modern physics stretches into realms far removed from everyday experience, and sometimes the connection to experiment becomes tenuous at best. String theory and other approaches to quantum gravity involve phenomena that are likely to manifest themselves only at energies enormously higher than anything we have access to here on Earth. The cosmological multiverse and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics posit other realms that are impossible for us to access directly. Some scientists, leaning on Popper, have suggested that these theories are non-scientific because they are not falsifiable.

The truth is the opposite. Whether or not we can observe them directly, the entities involved in these theories are either real or they are not. Refusing to contemplate their possible existence on the grounds of some a priori principle, even though they might play a crucial role in how the world works, is as non-scientific as it gets.

Edge.org

Nonsense.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

But it isn't, as I pointed out and listed the reasons for already.

Let us take gravity and now don't nitpick universal. I am not certain, I am confident as a conditional statement that gravity is universal for all humans. Gravity is objective in that it is the same for all humans.
But what you say is not objective and universal for all humans, because what you claim is subjective and so is what I do now.
If science as a methodology is something else, science is objectivity done by humans, but (remember confident and conditional) if objectivity is a human behavior, then you can't with objectivity do subjectivity, because that amounts to a contradiction.
And if morality is a form of subjectivity and science is form of objectivity, then for the following claim of knowledge it seems to be the case, that it is so: It is unknown as a universal for all humans, how to do objectivity subjectively.
In other words: Nobody apparently knows, how to do objectivity subjectively. So if science is a form of knowledge, then there is something science as methodology doesn't know. It doesn't know how to do objectivity subjectively.

That is where it ends. Science can objectively describe subjectivity, but science can't do subjectivity. So there is something, it doesn't know, because it doesn't know, how to do it.

Regards
Mikkel

 

[Augustus]

Nonsense.

i.e. You have no idea what you are talking about and would prefer to remain wilfully ignorant than make the effort to understand what contemporary scientists and philosophers of science think about the issue.

It's strange that quite a few people on RF who are purportedly proponents of rationality and scholarship suddenly become completely anti-intellectual on certain subjects when the experts don't support their preconceived notions. The response is always a completely out of hand dismissal too, rather than a reasoned, evidence based argument.

They will then criticise religious folk for doing exactly the same thing that they do: "Even though I've put in little effort to understand the issue, I'm absolutely certain I'm right and the actual experts are all wrong"

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Nonsense.

Here are 2 scientists:
For a start, how is the existence of the other universes to be tested? To be sure, all cosmologists accept that there are some regions of the universe that lie beyond the reach of our telescopes, but somewhere on the slippery slope between that and the idea that there is an infinite number of universes, credibility reaches a limit. As one slips down that slope, more and more must be accepted on faith, and less and less is open to scientific verification. Extreme multiverse explanations are therefore reminiscent of theological discussions. Indeed, invoking an infinity of unseen universes to explain the unusual features of the one we do see is just as ad hoc as invoking an unseen Creator. The multiverse theory may be dressed up in scientific language, but in essence it requires the same leap of faith.

— Paul Davies, The New York Times, "A Brief History of the Multiverse"

As skeptical as I am, I think the contemplation of the multiverse is an excellent opportunity to reflect on the nature of science and on the ultimate nature of existence: why we are here.... In looking at this concept, we need an open mind, though not too open. It is a delicate path to tread. Parallel universes may or may not exist; the case is unproved. We are going to have to live with that uncertainty. Nothing is wrong with scientifically based philosophical speculation, which is what multiverse proposals are. But we should name it for what it is.

— George Ellis, Scientific American, "Does the Multiverse Really Exist?"

So what are they talking about? Well, theoretical physics. But they are also talking about something else. Even some scientists can talk about something, which is not science, but claim, it is science.

So when human including you claims science, I check if it is science or philosophy?

So is this science or philosophy?
"But that's not really what science means. Science is all of our knowledge and the reliable ways of getting to it, testing it, and verifying it. It's a living thing that expands and changes as we learn."

Can I know something in that, I know it is so and know how to do it, but I don't know how to do it with science? The difference between knowing that and knowing how.
I don't know how to do morality using science, but I know how to do morality.

You are doing philosophy, because you claim all knowledge is scientific. But that can be tested using philosophy:
Is it true, that I know something as how to do it, that I can't do as how to do it using science?
Yes, I can.

I can ask myself, if I think/feel as me, that it is wrong to kill another human? The answer is yes in my case; I am a pacifist. How do I know this: Subjectively, I didn't use objective empirical evidence. I used a first person subjective feeling.
So I know that and I know how. For the know how to do it, I didn't use science, yet I know!!!

Stop doing philosophy and claim all knowledge is scientific. It is not. I know that, because I know, that is so and I know how to do it. I have just done so.

Regards
Mikkel

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I am not hitting a person with a trolley. I am either letting 5 humans be hit by not pulling the lever or letting them not be hit, by letting one human be hit.

Way to miss the point made. AGAIN.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Way to miss the point made. AGAIN.

Is there something I know that I know and that I know how to do without using science: Yes, and I just did it. I am subjective, when I say yes. I know that and I know how to test subjectivity. I test if I can do something subjectively.

Since science as a human method is to do something as a human: Use objectivity, I just check, if I can do something subjectively using subjectivity and then I know, that is not science, I am doing. So again: I know how to test science for its limits in the everyday world, we all are a part of. I test, if I can do something else than do science. That is the test. And I have just done so. I use philosophy, I know that and I know how to do that.

Regards
Mikkel

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Is there something I know that I know and that I know how to do without using science: Yes, and I just did it. I am subjective, when I say yes. I know that and I know how to test subjectivity. I test if I can do something subjectively.

Since science as a human method is to do something as a human: Use objectivity, I just check, if I can do something subjectively using subjectivity and then I know, that is not science, I am doing. So again: I know how to test science for its limits in the everyday world, we all are a part of. I test, if I can do something else than do science. That is the test. And I have just done so. I use philosophy, I know that and I know how to do that.

Regards
Mikkel

Unnecessarily overcomplicating things with vague and ambiguous statements, AGAIN.

The ONLY thing I said, is that science informs us on the consequences of actions and events.
The ONLY reason that the trolley problem is a thing, is because we understand what the consequence is of being run over by a trolley.

If you don't have the knowledge / understanding of what the consequence is of being run over by a trolley, then there is no recognized ethical trolley problem.

That is ALL I said.
Please learn to respond to what I actually say.