Subjectivity, Objectivity, and One True Wayism in RPGs

[ggroy]

That's one theory, but it is not the only theory consistent with the philosophy of knowledge. The scientific method is a good tool; that doesn't necessarily make it the only tool.

What would be other ones?

The impossibility of empirical verification is an even bigger bane.

"Verification" probably isn't the best word to use in this context.

Empirical observations at best can show whether a theory's predictions are inconsistent with it. It can never show that a theory is absolutely true.

Anecdotes have no evidenciary value, and no matter how many anecdotes you have, Z x 0 is still 0.

What exactly do you mean by this statement?

"Empirical" observation is mythological, like unicorns and virgins.

For anybody who truly believes this is always the case, they can test out Newton's Law of Gravitation by jumping off the balcony of my apartment. (I live on the 10th floor of an apartment complex). If empirical observation is truly mythological like unicorns and virgins, then one has absolutely nothing to lose by jumping off a 10th storey balcony.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Anecdotal evidence is not evidence. The source of the anecdote does not matter in this context. If 1 person, 100 people, or 1,000 people claim to see a ufo, there is still no evidence that a ufo was there.

My statements about "empirical evidence", though, are in error. I was thinking and meant "objective". I am chagrined.



RC

 

[ggroy]

Anecdotal evidence is not evidence. The source of the anecdote does not matter in this context. If 1 person, 100 people, or 1,000 people claim to see a ufo, there is still no evidence that a ufo was there.

Empirical evidence being used to check physical theories, also have the requirement that the results can be independently reproduced in similar controlled experiments.

If empirical results cannot be independently reproduced, then science doesn't have much to say about it.

 

[Lanefan]

If empirical results cannot be independently reproduced, then science doesn't have much to say about it.

In that case, I think you just threw out the whole science of meteorology.

Weather cannot be independently reproduced. Virtual models of it can be, and they never behave exactly the same way twice. Yet meteorology is still an accepted scientific field...

Lan-"but they still can't make it snow here this winter"-efan

 

[ggroy]

In that case, I think you just threw out the whole science of meteorology.

Weather cannot be independently reproduced. Virtual models of it can be, and they never behave exactly the same way twice. Yet meteorology is still an accepted scientific field...

Note taken. Perhaps my statement was a bit too strong.

What I was thinking of was stuff like ufos, ESP, cold fusion, etc ...

 

[Raven Crowking]

Empirical evidence being used to check physical theories, also have the requirement that the results can be independently reproduced in similar controlled experiments.

If empirical results cannot be independently reproduced, then science doesn't have much to say about it.

It needs to be noted, however, that empirical (sensory) observation can occur (to the limits of instrumentation and to which sensory data can be trusted), no conclusion can be empirical. As was noted upthread, even the empirical observation itself is coloured per force by expectation and cultural conditioning, and sometimes in quite dramatic ways (ex. anatomical science over the last several hundred years has included observations that, in light of modern knowledge, are simply bizarre....by this, I mean anatomical drawings where organs are misplaced, or unrecognizable without the notes of the scientist making the observation, the womb in particular).

Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact has an excellent discussion of this; again, far better than I can do.

Overall, though, I would tend to agree with you here, and I would go so far as to say that some accepted scientific fields should, in fact, be considered para-sciences or mytho-sciences. In this event, a para-science would be a field where the scientific method is used to the extent possible, but there are acknowledged gaps in that extent possible (such as meteorology), and a mytho-science would be a field where the scientific method is at best tangential but allows for a working explaination whose truth value is far more questionable (such as non-pharm psychology).

I would still insist, however, that empirical data cannot actually create a working map. The map is always the product of self-selected empirical data and pre-existing, subjective, expectations. And that empirical data is always anecdotal as a result. No matter how careful you think you are, you are not careful enough.


RC

 

[Neonchameleon]

Since we're being largely academic, let's first be clear that nobody actually says "since all our observations are subjective, we can never know objective truth." At least, nobody involved in the actual debate (the so-called "science wars") says this. On internet forums? Maybe. But not in the real world.

At least they haven't done so since The Sokal Affair.

Or possibly even that didn't stop them.

Anyone who claims to have objective knowledge about anything is trying to control and dominate the rest of us ... There are no objective facts. All supposed 'facts' are contaminated with theories and all theories are infested with moral and political doctrines

(Source for quote: Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow p20).

 

[Raven Crowking]

There is, IMHO, a very real difference between (A) stating that nothing can be objective, and (B) stating that nothing can be known to be objective. (A) allows for no growth, whereas (B) allows for growth, but also demands that the nature of subjective observation also be explored.

(A), for instance, suggests that ethics, as a branch of knowledge, can allow for no improvement. We cannot become "more ethical" over time, because the term "ethical" itself is meaningless, except in an arbitrary subjective sense.

(B), OTOH, allows that we may be able to grow ethically, because we do not know with any certainty whether or not values are in any sense "objective" (or what I earlier called "axiomatic", because they do not presumably directly correspond to a real "object", but may have real meaning.

Both are opposed by (C), the dogma that objective fact can be known, and can be sharply delineated from subjectivism, so that (again) ethics becomes a subjective area, and therefore not capable of real improvement.


RC

 

[Wayside]

At least they haven't done so since The Sokal Affair.

If you weren't aware, the quote from Stanley Fish is a response to Sokal and to Sokal's misunderstanding of what he was attempting to criticize. It's also worth noting that Sokal chose an unrefereed journal for his hoax, and that the paper was only accepted on account of its author's academic credentials. In comparison, a number of sham papers have made it into the pages of actual refereed scientific journals. The Bogdanov Affair is one example. And of course, shams aside, scientific journals are no less fallible than any other kind, as the recent drama surrounding The Lancet shows.

Or possibly even that didn't stop them.

(Source for quote: Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow p20).

In case you didn't catch it: this is not a claim Matt Cartmill is making. It's him characterizing the claims he believes sociologists of science to be making. But his characterization of those claims is mistaken, just like Sokal's was. I encourage you to read the first chapter of Bruno Latour's Pandora's Hope, which is available for free at his website. The title of the chapter is "Do You Believe in Reality?," and it addresses, at greater length than Stanley Fish did, this common misunderstanding of what science studies is on about.

 

[Neonchameleon]

If you weren't aware, the quote from Stanley Fish is a response to Sokal and to Sokal's misunderstanding of what he was attempting to criticize. It's also worth noting that Sokal chose an unrefereed journal for his hoax, and that the paper was only accepted on account of its author's academic credentials. In comparison, a number of sham papers have made it into the pages of actual refereed scientific journals. The Bogdanov Affair is one example. And of course, shams aside, scientific journals are no less fallible than any other kind, as the recent drama surrounding The Lancet shows.

Both of which are invalid comparisons for two reasons. The first is that the Sokal paper is even superficially utterly ridiculous. It was not a subtle hoax in the slightest. The second is that the damning part of the Sokal Affair wasn't the paper getting published (it's relatively easy). It was the response - that Sokal had first believed the paper and then changed his mind. Even after having had pointed out that that ridiculous paper was a hoax, the post-modernist camp claimed it to be real.