The point is that this is information which deals with the external world, with how the world works - which is the domain of science. Just because it's easy science, doesn't make it any less scientific. It is the domain of science.
You don't seem to understand that you are forbidden to use the word science that way. The point of all of this is to create the straw man that those who claim that useful knowledge about the world and our experiences of it comes only from the application of reason to empirical experience are saying that all useful knowledge comes from a test tube in a laboratory or a telescope in an observatory in order to then condemn that position, one I've never seen anybody express ever, and then sneer at such scientism.
So, your efforts (and mine) to explain that what we actually believe is that the source of acquired knowledge can be called scientific if science is understood to mean an experiencing and interpreting of reality in order to generalize from that experience and derive useful inductions that can help us predict reality and thus help control outcomes will be ignored, a definition that neither of us uses will be insisted upon, and the straw man flailed.
When I moved to my present location and began exploring the neighborhood, I learned that the pier was five blocks south and three blocks west of my front door empirically, that is, by walking and driving around rather than being told. I gained a useful piece of knowledge that I can use to predict and control outcomes such as successfully walking to the pier from my front door. This is what I (and I believe you) are referring to as easy or informal science, and it surely is just that - deriving useful generalizations from empirical data that allow us to navigate life (literally, in this example) more optimally.
Then we are told that using the word science that way renders it meaningless. Apparently not to you or me. I find this manner of organizing thought and using language extremely useful.
Of course, the real issue is not whether all empirical learning can be called science or just the part done by scientists, but whether there is such a thing as acquired knowledge derived from any other method than reason properly applied to evidence (instinct such as how to nurse should be called knowledge as well, but not learned).
I think that what is being objected to here is the rational skeptic and empiricist's rejection of woo and faith-based thought as a source of knowledge, especially claims of spiritual knowledge or knowledge of gods based on a feeling or a hope. That seems to anger some people. They resent that we are dismissive of their claims.
I think our friend here respects that kind of thinking and resents others rejecting it, which is why he feels the need to tell us repeatedly that we're not as rational as we think and we should trust him when he says there is consensus among experts.
It also seems to be the purpose of trying to impose the definition of science prescriptively, and then make the straw man scientism argument, which is only a distraction from the epistemological question of where useful knowledge comes from and which methods do and do not produce knowledge.
My favorite food is just an expression of my personal preferences. An opinion. Me expressing my personal preferences concerning food, is not a truth claim about the world.
I gave the example of reproducibly having an unpleasant experience when eating Brussels sprouts. Yes, this is a subjective experience, and it is my opinion that Brussels sprouts taste bad, but it is different from opinions such as who I think will win a ball game, which is at best an educated guess.
I'm not guessing that I won't like those Brussels sprouts if I eat them. This is a subjective truth for me (and some but not all others), and a claim about the world as I experience it. So I file it along with all other knowledge induced from experience that allows me to have a better day, which includes avoiding Brussels sprouts. To distinguish between these two types of opinions, one which I can also call fact, I call that one subjective truth, and the other a(n educated) guess.
Science (from the Latin word scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Watch and see if somebody doesn't try to reject that definition, one which includes what I have called informal science. This is what every sentient creature capable of learning does in the process of maturing and learning how best to achieve its goals, including the process of arriving at useful inductions about walking to the pier and eating Brussels sprouts.
By that definition, we're all informal, amateur scientists. All of our lives we have been collecting data (experience), hypothesizing (if I wish real hard, maybe I can move the chair telekinetically), testing our hypotheses for predictive power (nope, still there), modifying our generalizations so that they do have greater predictive power, and accumulating what we think are the ideas that work while modifying or discarding those that don't.
That's a systemic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe, and to the extent that we do that successfully, we are being scientific. It's when we slip and start accumulating untested and untrue ideas that we are being irrational.
Even my dogs do this to some extent. They hear keys or a refrigerator door and come running, because they have learned to generalize about the possible meaning of those sounds. I give my black lab a heart medication twice a day wrapped in smoked deli meat. She understands that when she hears the bag being opened, that a treat will follow. Sensory experience/evidence, induction, hypothesis, predictive power. Science.
But when people are simply incorporating basic experiential knowledge into their decisions (such as the trolly case) this does not meet the criteria for it to be considered science that is informing their decision.
Whose criteria? It meets the criteria of at least three people disagreeing with you on this thread.
Speaking of citing anonymous so-called experts as a reason to believe or behave in a particular way, I was recently in a discussion on RF with an American conservative Christian arguing that I should accept that a historical Jesus actually existed for reasons similar to yours - his unevidenced claim that the overwhelming majority of experts agree that one did live, which is irrelevant even if correct.
Why irrelevant? For starters, what is a historical Jesus? What are we saying either did or did not exist? Presumably, these people aren't including the supernatural aspects of Jesus. If by historical Jesus they mean according to what is offered as history in the Gospels including virgin birth, walking on water, raising the dead, and being resurrected three days after death, then no. I don't care how many people claim that such a person lived, I reject their claim.
So, apparently, we get to strip away parts of the story and call what's left a historical Jesus. But here's where the so-called experts all fail. How much of this story can be myth before we say that no such person existed? What if he only had nine or no apostles, but the rest was more or less accurate? Is that a historical Jesus?
How little of this story needs to be true to say that a historical Jesus walked the earth? The question begins to not make sense if you think about it. Certainly there were peripetetic people preaching Judaism in the Levant 20 centuries ago, possibly one or more named Jesus or something similar. But how can we call any of them the historical Jesus rather than just an historical Jesus without good evidence that a single man very closely resembling the man depicted in the Gospels once lived, evidence we don't have?
I understand that there was no census in Bethlehem the year Jesus was said to be born. If that's correct, then did a historical Jesus live? Can we remove this from the story and call the rest, if true, a description of a historical Jesus? From Wiki:
"
The Census of Quirinius was a census of Judea taken by Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, Roman governor of Syria, upon the imposition of direct Roman rule in 6 CE.[1] The Gospel of Luke uses it as the narrative means to establish the birth of Jesus (Luke 2:1–5), but places it within the reign of Herod the Great, who died 9 years earlier.[2][3][4] No satisfactory explanation of the contradiction seems possible,[5] and most scholars think that the author of the gospel made an error.[6]"
So right there, we can reject these so-called expert's opinions that a historical Jesus existed if no clear idea of what that would be exists. There may be consensus that a historical Jesus lived, but so what if these people have different standards for what that means?
Also, why would we care what so-called experts believe about this matter or any matter in which we can evaluate the evidence that they base their opinions on ourselves? I can't disagree with experts in fields like subatomic physics or advanced mathematics because I'm not qualified to understand their evidence or follow their arguments (have you seen the proof of Fermat's last theorem? I think only six people in the world were qualified to referee the paper).
But in the matter of a historical Jesus, I am qualified to make my own judgment, and so can disagree with their conclusions if I read the evidence otherwise. Don't just tell me that experts believe or don't believe that the Shroud of Turin is genuine, because it won't influence what I believe to be the truth. Show me what those that say it is are basing that conclusion on, and I'll tell them if I agree or not - even if they claim to be an expert and should be deferred to.
Here's what I think of so-called experts in soft areas like the humanities. Consider this quote from C. S. Lewis. According to this self-proclaimed expert, anybody who disagrees with Lewis about whether a magical story is factual is by virtue of that fact incompetent as a literary critic. :
“
All I am in private life is a literary critic and historian, that’s my job. And I’m prepared to say on that basis if anyone thinks the Gospels are either legends or novels, then that person is simply showing his incompetence as a literary critic."
Dismissed. Your fallacy, Mr. Lewis : argumentum ad verecundiam (authority). Lewis is displaying his incompetence as a rational thinker.
So what value should others place on the opinions of those telling us how me must think about science? None.
