I agree. Fortunately, enough humans can usually agree on the basics to form complex societies and sit around debating this stuff and doing science, etc. Is that subjective? Yup. But we generally agree (enough) on many things that are subjective or matters of taste, this is no different.
Yes, ergo the better method for defining moral good is social, not scientific. What you're doing here is reification -- the swapping of one thing for the other and then pretending their the same. Science done on social definitions of moral good aren't actually addressing objective moral good -- you've swapped in a subjective understanding and then pretended that since you've invoked Science! that it's actually science. You've forgotten that the basis of your effort isn't observation of reality, is subjective definition of it.
"Prevents" a wild hypothesis? Sure nothing prevents someone from proposing one. But the scientific method is about finding out which ones are false and rejecting them. I mean, hypothesis testing is how science comes closer to objective "truth".
Yes.
As far as the rest goes...Reasoning + evidence approximates science. Remove the evidence part...well philosophy and reason in a vacuum have never proven themselves good at coming up with "truths" about reality, AFAICT. "Consensus Building" by itself? I don't see how that can determine anything non-trivially objective about reality at all (beyond "we all agree X"). That is, until you add the evidence and science part back in.
No. Science is the method. Period. Reasoning + evidence (I'll assume you mean observations) isn't the method, ergo not science. This kind of thing is exactly what I'm talking about -- so long as the title Science! is applied, the actual means and subjective bases are ignored. You do yourself a disservice as you're allowing yourself to believe that the outcome is much more certain than it should be.
Whoa, okay. A lot going on here. And I think you've poorly-defined some things here, as well as mashed some things together.
This is claiming there's a problem on my side without actually stating the problem. You're dismissing, not discussing. If you're confused as to what I meant, point out where and I can elucidate. Claiming I've made an error without stating the error, though, is handwaving.
...first off, science can be done by observation, not necessarily experiment. To grossly oversimplify: you need to make predictions that can be falsified by further observation and then go see if you can falsify them. If you don't accept that, then you're throwing out astronomy, paleontology, and I'm sure a few other fields as well.
What is it you're observing, then, if not an experiment?
Question -- are all ants red?
Research -- I've seen ants in my backyard and they appear red
Hypothesis -- all ants are read
Experiment Design -- collect many ants and observe their color
Conduct Experiment -- I collect 100 ants from my backyard and observe them
Analysis -- all the ants I observe are red.
Conclusion -- hypothesis not disproven
Refine -- collect ants form more locations
Observation is part of experimentation -- so long as design is done prior to observation. You can't observe a bunch of things and go back to see what fits -- you cannot be sure you collected the necessary data or noticed possible confounders.
"Science is the best tool to discover all truth?" includes the unwarranted assumption that all truth is discoverable. So, at the very least, I would reduce the statement to "Science is the best tool to discover truth." I would also go one step further, given my druthers, and substitute "the nature of reality" for "truth". "Truth" tends to be rather fuzzy in modern English, where we can use it to cover
"valid" for an argument as well as "true" for a statement. An argument can be valid without being true. But I digress...I would toss in "objective" as well for "Science is the best tool to discover the nature of objective reality." "Science" is also a bit fuzzy, but I'm content to let it ride on the understanding that we mean "people practicing some form of the scientific method."
This would be, I think rather obviously, a question to approach observationally, rather than experimentally. Unless I'm misreading you, it would appear that we both accept that science can discover at least some objective truths about reality. So we don't have to prove that.
So, what characteristics can we look for in a human endeavor that we can hypothesize come from its ability to discover objective reality? (Assuming such a reality exists, for you philosophy types.)
First off, I submit that, like multiple moths to a single flame, such an endeavor would necessarily be what I call convergent (others might use the term consilient). That is to say, wherever you start, valid methods of determining any objective reality will necessarily tend to converge on a singular description of that reality. Furthermore, endeavors that are better at it will do so faster than those which are worse at it. Science has this property. History didn't have it until science weighed in (and may still not have it, to hear some of my friends in the field talk). Religion?...nope. Philosophy? A little tougher, but I think generally no. The arts?...heavens no, and also "angry orange subtraction" for you Dadaists out there. Politics....no. If anything, most of these endeavors demonstrate divergence in that two groups/traditions starting from the same place end up trying to kill each other over later disagreements. Mathematics...I tend to say, No-ish. Not so much because mathematicians would disagree on the field, but they aren't really trying to create such a model (to my understanding, anyway). To some extent, that describes most of these fields.
Now, does that prove that there is no better human endeavor for discovering objective truth? Only to the extent that you accept that I've exhausted all human endeavors and agree with my assessments of them.
I do not agree. I don't agree that science converges on objective truth -- that's a belief of yours and absent proof. There's some good evidence that science self-corrects error given enough time, but it's equally possible that some objective truths are unknowable to us. The result of moral good, for instance.
And, on the topic of other means of inquiry converging, they most certainly can. The golden rule, for instance, seems a strong point of convergence for many areas of study: religion, politics, philosophy. Most of the world seems to have converged on the idea that slavery is evil. There's convergence in other means of inquiry as well -- this is not a unique feature to science, if science even has such a feature.
If science (or math), can't then I don't know what will. At which point, I call into question the "truth" of things that science can't address.
Are you presenting that some things, like morality, do not actually exist because you can't science them? There's some nice philosophy on that, you may enjoy it.
The burden here is on the...what? How do you think...? Hunh? I honestly have no idea what this could mean.
That if you claim that a thing can be done, it is your burden to show it can be done, not mine to show it can't. Similarly, if I claim a thing cannot be done, the burden is on others to do it and prove me wrong. This is entirely because it's impossible to prove a negative.
You are reversing my argument/intention. I was merely objecting to your claim: "Science is useless for moral, social, ethical, and political issues -- there's nothing to measure, there." If science is totally irrelevant to moral, social, ethical issues, there is never a need for a church to arrest Galileo, there is no reason to object to teaching evolution in schools.
No, you making a reification mistake. Spending on science isn't a science issue, it's a political one. Science cannot speak to which questions should be addressed, as that's a policy issue, not a scientific one. Choices of where money is spent to achieve policy goals has absolutely nothing to do with science as a tool or means of inquiry. It does, however, affect people that employ science as a means of inquiry.
As to your question, "are you trying to claim political parties are using science to determine which science research areas to defund?" the cynic in me would bet money that a lot of social science research goes into formulating the opinions and policies of national parties and politicians. We certainly know it goes into electioneering and redistricting efforts.
Given that science cannot speak to proper policy, as that's a political question, I disagree. Some social research may provide inputs, but, really, most of it should be strongly distrusted as it isn't science. Issues of bias, improper collection, and p-hacking have resulted in less than 1/4 of all social science experiments being able to be repeated successfully. And the ones that are usually successfully repeated are the ones that mostly confirm well known phenomenon. The vast majority of the new stuff just fails in replication.
Largely, I think this is because social scientists are taught cookbook stats and think that all statistical methods are valid regardless of data input and don't understand the fundamental errors they're causes. Most statistics are only valid in very narrow conditions, and, even then, the dangers of reification and overconfidence abound.
Computers (dependent upon scientific understanding) have permitted many rather famous "brute force" proofs within my lifetime that would have been unthinkable undertakings just a few decades ago. I would include the increased ability to communicate between mathematicians as well. So, yes, science has improved mathematics as a human endeavor.
You're confusing cause and effect, here. Brute force methods are not new or dependent on science. Computers, a product of science experiment and hard-working, heroic engineers making science actually useful, just allowed faster use of existing brute force methods. Science (mostly engineers) provided a new means of doing an old problem.
I think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] addressed this nicely.
I'm already disagreeing with him in other posts.
There are many ongoing observations and experiments with primates to examine the origins and nature of human moral sense. I'm also not sure what makes you think the golden rule isn't subjective, or that science couldn't "weigh in on it." Here are a list of questions about the Golden Rule that I think science could take a crack at answering:
Of course the golden rule is subjective. How I want to be treated is solely my subjective belief.*
Why do so many human societies express some approximation of the Golden Rule?
Is the Golden Rule (or some approximation) instinctive to humans?
If so, to what extent?
How did that evolve?
What other social species seem to follow a "Golden Rule" similar to humans and what ones don't?
- why and how?
Those are just questions. That science can answer them is your belief, not fact. You've decided to believe Science! is the tool to answer all questions, and so look at any question like a nail to be hit by Science! I'm saying you shouldn't do that, you're limiting yourself to a narrow belief structure unsupported by reality and forming dogma around it.
And yet, so many scientists write philosophy books wherein they disparage philosophy....
Sigh. Scientists are people, not science. When a scientist is writing philosophy books, he's not doing science, he's done philosophy. People are complex and capable organism -- they're not restricted to only one role or passion in society.
*Interestingly, I can use the scientific method to refine my subjective preferences. I can ask if I like kicking puppies, for instance, design and run a puppy-kicking experiment, observe that I actually don't like it and that I also don't like the social fallout for doing it, falsify my hypothesis that I like kicking puppies, and then move on to refine my question to finding out if I like cuddling with puppies. Spoiler alert -- I love it.
The point here, though, is that science cannot tell me what I like. It can be a tool to discover what I like, but at all times that discovery is limited to only me. And, really, this experiment is very limited to falsifying the specific claim. If I ran another experiment on whether I like drinking sweet tea (yes) I couldn't compare these results at all. Even if I added a scale of 1 to 10 on each separately and rated cuddling puppies at a 8 and drinking sweet tea at a 6 (respectively), I can't say I'd rather cuddle a puppy than drink sweet tea or that I'd enjoy doing both at the same time even more (nope, messy). It's very important that you don't extrapolate results past the experiment and the specific question asked. This is, however, done all the time and the recent trend of science by press release is very disheartening.
