exnihilo

Thanks Methodologyx, andy_d and Jimmie Davies, for you have raised many points that most scientists would much rather ignore. Earlier I was ridiculed for calling logic and scientific method into question in regards to these issues, but there has yet to be a post explaining how the main issues that philosophy seeks to answer can be confronted using these infallible means. Logic and the scientific method are both linguistic creations that can only confirm data already in evidence. The fact that logic can never uncover new ideas illustrates its extreme limitations to the major issues facing philosophy, which i pointed out earlier. I don't deny that both are not useful tools, just that their utility is highly exaggerated far beyond their means of explanation.
The reason is that they clearly cannot. The only thing that logic can do is respond to neat and clean hypotheticals, all the while being unable even to confirm the veracity of its own premises. As methodologyx ppoints out the same goes for the scientific method.
Those inclined to science freely admot that yes, there are always going to be some things that can never be explained--implying that these are largely obscure and insignificant. In reality it seems probable that what cannot be explained by science is much more than they are alluding to. The famous example of the Butterfly effect is just one fairly common occurrence which illustrates just how little these methods can really uncover. Anomaly, far from being exceedingly rare instances, is one of the hallmarks of life on this planet. The sheer numbers of different factors that contribute to any event testifies to the exponential difficulties facing science in trying to answer the questions we all seek. The fact that history has resisted all such efforts of explanation should serve as an example in other areas where such systematic assertions are being made. The history of science itself illustrates this fact, but self-reflection has always been the main problem for those who install themselves as the self-appointed prophets of a new god.
As the great philosopher E. M. Cioran said:
"The source of our actions resides in an unconscious propensity to regard ourselves as the center, the cause, and the conclussion of time. Our reflexes and our pride transform into a planet the parcel of flesh and consciousness we are. If we had the right sense of our position in the world, if to compare were inseperable from to live, the revelation of our infinitesimal presence would crush us. But to live is to blind ourselves to our own dimensions"

exnihilo

One more thing:

As Popper and Feyerabend have made clear, perhaps, the ultimate limitation on science is that the strength and veracity of any scientific theory relies upon correspondance of facts to predict future occurances. Thus everytime a given event results in a specific predicted effect it can be said that the theory was affirmed. However, these events do not possess the function of accumulated imperium, each event is simply the independent affirmation of the theory to which it applies. Methodologically this results in an ever-present tension whereby the manifestation of a single contradiction, of proper relevance to the fundamental working of the theory itself, can thereby falsify the theory itself. At this point the theory must be either revised or rejected altogether. Such an idea takes the form of:

If the theory is true, then the prediction is true.
The prediction is not true.
Therefore, the theory is not true.

Scientists sometimes refer to such falsifiable phenomenon as anomalies, which, as methodologyx pointed out may or may not be correct. For to claim something is an anomaly implies that there is a complete understanding of the processes involved in a given phenomenon. This, in itself contradicts the very nature of scientific inquiry itself, which is precisely where the demeanor of dogmatism begins to seep in as scientists refuse to adhere to their own essential tenets.
Falsification in this manner is precisely what has led to the rejection of the vast majority of all scientific theory previously put forth. Thus, taking a position that the science of today is somehow beyond the possibility of falsification seems unfounded in the extreme and fails to take heed of the history of scientific endeavor itself--precisely the point Kuhn revealed.

Jimmy Davies

Science is power in our modern world. So science must be the new seculaly endorsed God, and gods don't work through faulty processes. Bellyachers like you and me aren't going to change this mindset---the problem with science is human arrogance hides in the reverence we have for science---we simply transfer our love for God to a love for a method, a method rife with mystery humbling power. We think it gives us a bigger better boner than the theists have. We approach the unknown with a weaponized zeal. Science only matters when you love what it HASN'T revealed as much as what it has.

Diabolical Vengeance

Science is at this present point in our evolution, our most reliable form of knowledge and of learning. However, since human beings are imperfect there is a limit to our knowledge. I don't believe we can truly comprehened the universe at it exists, all our theories (be they religious or scientific) of knowledge are based on premises which have their limits and may (or in the case of religion are) be flawed. Essentially, since the human race is imperfect, its logical to assume that our 'knowledge' base is imperfect as well. I put more trust in science because, unlike religion, science is able to admit that it does not have all the answers.

Jimmy Davies

I put my trust in people, and the quality of a given thought or mind. Lables like "science" and "religion" are not meant to vindicate one type of thinking and discredit another. Where science reveals what I consider truth, I embrace science. Where philosophy reveals what I consider truth, I embrace philosophy. I refuse to serve any regimented thought master.

freeth1nker

Hey Ex Nihilo, this was originally a reply to the PM you sent me, but there was apparently a character limit to PMs, so I just decided to post this publicly because it most of it deals specifically with this topic. (I hope you don't mind.)

----------------
Re: professions of atheists
Hi exnihilo, (btw, I love your moniker, it's also the username for one of my own email accounts)

I was away from the boards for quite awhile and I rarely check my PM, so sorry it took me this long to reply. First off, I'd like to thank you for your kind words and encouragement. But I will honestly tell you that I am a philosophy *student*, which means I still struggle to understand a great of portion of philosophical opuses, like Derrida's Grammatology. However, I did have a good read of your thread; you and several others well-versed in postmodernist literature clarified quite a few points for me. I had only heard about postmodernism fairly recently from my philosophy teacher (who also has a degree in philosophy and english lit).

The funny thing was that I was exactly the prototypical logical positivist that society has spurred before taking philosophy. In fact, when I first started philosophy, I was extremely scientific-minded, and I debated endlessly with my teacher whenever a smidgeon of his lecture didn't fit nicely into a logical category (much like that guy Clutch was doing in your thread). Of course, this was due by and large to the age that we live in, where science and scientism, constitutes the overall intellecutal zeitgeist. It also doesn't help that both my parents are scientists... I think their socks literally flew off when I told them that I wanted to dedicate my life to philosophy.

Back when I was an advocate of science, I'd confidently announced the theory of gravity as an unshakable universal "law" and in reply, my philosophy teacher asked, "How do we determine this scientific law?" He held up a piece of chalk and said, "If I drop this piece of chalk a million, zillion, septillion times, and each time it falls, does that guarantee that the chalk will always certainly fall under these given conditions?" I said no, obviously, there was no certainty in science, only high degrees of probability. Of course, I brushed it off as any good scientist would... 99.99% was good enough for me, and in the vernacular sense, that *is* certainty (according to Stephen Jay Gould at least), because there is nothing else in the physical universe that we can be more certain about than what science gives us.

Then I read Hume's billard ball example that illustrated the faith we put in notions such as cause and effect, and that's when I really started thinking. I can pinpoint the birth of my awe for philosophy at that specific moment. Of course, the same argument of high probablity also applied for this scenario but it goaded me to be a more cautious of science, since cause and effect was one of its fundamental presuppositions, and it seems to have a metaphysical foundation. Why believe in cause and effect at all? It is just a conceptual model that allows us to get our mind around the workings of the natural phenomena that surrounds us. In fact there is no reason to believe in cause and effect aside from being a mere provisional perspective. Prior to this relevation, I was like any other scientist, in believing that metaphysics was just the pseudo-intelligent speculations and philosophy was a waste of time.

I used love the certainty and feeling of the absolute that mathematics allowed. In my heart, it served well as a replacement of God, although it was not something I liked to admit. Despite the enormous disparities between logic and theism, what happened, in effect, was that science/logical thinking has replaced the position that theism/religious thinking had occupied in the psyche. This was however something that the academically objective scientists admantly refuse to accept. I used to think that my philosphy teacher was gravely mistaken when he said, "Science is the religion of the 20th century." Now, that phrase has taken on a new meaning for me. Science was not *literally* a religion, but it was the metaphorical meaning that I missed. It's interesting how I never had the taste for figurative language until I began to appreciate Continental philosophy.

And so Derrida set out to Deconstruct the Aristotlean laws of logic... as an amateur philosopher, I still have difficulty fathoming the full profundity of postmodernist language games. But it is something to the effect that he creates neologisms like "pharma-con," which means both poison and antidote, and in doing so, he undermines the Law of Identity. It's an excellent example of Western egocentrism when I think about it. Due to the Westerner's obssession with logical binaries, the idea that something can both be the poison and the cure was logically inconceivable. But I know that such a notion existed in Eastern culture, that a "pharma-con" was indeed an acceptable form of medicine mentioned in traditional Chinese folklore (I know this because I'd spent a considerable amount of my childhood in China). But having lived in the West for long enough to be indocrinated by its faith in logic, my initial reaction to the idea of the "pharma-con" was identical to that of an Analytic philosopher. It was logically contradictory and therefore absurd, thus it should be discarded as nonsense, and not to be taken seriously as no "right-minded" person would believe in such gibberish. Had I been born and raised in the West I may very well have come to that conclusion. But when the memory of my Eastern upbringing was triggered, I realized that even logic was not absolute, but instead, conditioned by society and its paradigms.

Because reading Hume had had such a profound affect on me, I thought it would be the same for others who had a similar faith in science. So when my teacher began his lecture on Hume, I thought I would get the same reaction from those logical positivists in the room. And boy, was I mistaken! Apparently the idea that causal chains was not absolute was so repugnant and unsettling that they had resorted to ad hominems like "Hume was an idiot!" Likewise, I heard similar attacks towards Nietzsche and Derrida. As a result, I was more than a little shocked by how close-minded these "knights of science" can get.

I spent a lot of time trying to explain Nietzsche to a few scientific thinkers, and it appears that they just don't get it. One of them keeps feeding off the assumption that Nietzsche was a Nazi and we shouldn't take seriously the ideas of anyone with psychological problems (this included Kierkegaard as well). It has come to my attention it will be uphill battle for the intellectual critics of science, as they will be knocked from every side by this ever popular prejudice.

Anyway, I had not intended for this to be a lengthy autobiography, but parts of it seems to have turned out that way. I hope to hear to more from you in the future.

- freeth1nker

"[W]e must await the arrival of a new breed of philosophers...philosophers of the dangerous Perhaps in every sense. - And in all seriousness: I see these new philosophers approaching." -- Beyond Good and Evil

exnihilo

Freethinker1,

Yes, yes, yes. You seem to have hit the nail on the head with your comments, especially those relating to a positive critique of postmodernism. If you are familar with the so-called "Cambridge Affair" in which a group of analytical philosophers tried to block teh presentation of an honorary degree to J. Derrida, you see the utter ridiculousness of their position. In fact their public pronouncements were the epitome of anti-logical thinking. Instead of citing even one example from Derrida's work--which it is obvious that they had never even read (like so many of the highminded critics that cruise these boards)-- these public pronouncements were filled with ad hominems and strawman arguments.
The real problem with Derrida, at leats in this case, resultedfrom a rather public exchange between Derrida and John Searle---the self-appointed interprtor of JL Austin and the idea of performative language. By using neologism and ideas of iterability and differance Derrida preceded to take apart each of Searle's flimsy points via a simple reductio de adsurdum in the work Limited Inc. Of course, instead of responding with counter arguments and they started a campaign of disinformation and attempted supression.
It is funny that you bring up the example of Nietzsche as such behavior simply illustrates the ongoing lack of commitment to scientific methodology so recently illustrated by the above case. Obviously such double-standards are a built-in facet of science itself, which is only applied piecemeal and only when it meshes with the mythological history of science that Kuhn exposed.
The fact that anyone would argue such a belief reveals their ignorance of Nietzsche and lack of faith/belief in the efficacy of scientific methods. And I might remind them that it is precisely the scientists that armed Nazi germany, participated in human testing of concentration camp prisoners, invented the atomic bomb and everyother tool of horror created in the 20th century, so if they want to insist on using such flimsy arguments they should be aware of their inherent hypocrisy on such issues.
That fact is 99.99 percent is not certainty, just as 3.14.....cannot produce certainty. The real problem is that logic and method are only used when convienent and in agreemant to scientific theory, bring philosophy into the discussion and watch these same "knight of science" abandon their worshipped tool and resort to arguments with all the vigor of Pliny the Elder. If anything many of the responses does nothing more than illustrate this point precisely.
"What are these churches now, but the tombs and sepulchers of god"--Nietzsche

exnihilo

Posted by Cloche:
A common theme, it appears. Do you happen to know what inference is?

Posted by Cloche:


Who cares what you have read, this is merely (and there is nothing mere about it) a statement concerning your individual knowledge, which obviously has no bearing on the nature of philosophy whatsoever.

Posted by Cloche:
You have yet to explain how this isn't vacuous. Perhaps, there is some deeper meaning to it, but not being versed in the inscutable methods of logic, its sophisticated meaning escapes me. To me it merely looks like mindless cheerleading, I could be wrong though.

The Helmetmaker

Nothing like coming late to the party.

Of course there is an unknowably vast area of unknowability. I haven't read Kuhn and co., but there are a few simple and obvious ways to show that all the answers will never be provided. Methodologyx has provided one; here are a couple of others. Don't laugh, I deal mainly in the simple and obvious.

All discussion of the merits of scientific knowledge aside, this is an epistemological question. For the sake of argument, we will assume the sciences and/or other methodologies are capable of answering questions and providing true knowledge; and we can even also assume that all things are knowable regardless of human capabilites. If so, we are now more ignorant than we were yesterday. This is to say that with each new point of knowledge we gain, we are capable of forming an entire new array of questions. As more and more knowledge is accumulated, these new arrays become larger and larger. Even allowing for the facts that out of each new array of questions some will be false and some will be invalid, enough new true questions will be created that knowledge will never have a chance to keep up, so to speak.

Another point has to do with theories. Theories are theoretically capable of encompassing a large number of knowable things in a compact metaphor, thus indirectly providing knowledge of whatever falls under its rubric. The ideal theory provides a one-to-one correspondence between the theory and the reality it describes. It is essentially a map. It is never possible to establish a one-to-one correspondence between the map and the territory. -- I know; that's a sweeping statement. But the whole point of a map is compactness. It necessarily sacrifices accuracy for compactness and makes single points in the map correspond to multiple points in the territory. Thus, theories (maps) serve two masters: compactness and accuracy. If one wins out, the other suffers, and knowledge forever remains incomplete. Theories provide all three: knowledge, prediction, and hypotheticals, but never complete knowledge alone.

Combine these two points with the observations that all events are unique, that all events have not happened yet, and that some events are past and unobservable by any means, then the certainty of uncertain knowledge is confirmed. On top of that, even science seems to say that it cannot make all things knowable: it fully acknowledges the measurement problem.

I hope this exegesis has not been too simplistic -- helmetmaking is almost a lost art, don't ya know.


The Helmetmaker

Clutch

Right. As I mentioned earlier, But this is a philosophically quite modest sense of unknowability, since it does not entail that any particular thing cannot be known -- only that, whatever we focus our studies on, we're always going to miss (a whole lot of) something.

The difference between not being able to count all the numbers, and there being some particular number to which one simply could not count, is probably useful here. Of course one couldn't count all the natural numbers. But we still call them countable, since there's none to which one could not count.
Is the only way to know something through a theory? We could torture the notion of a theory in order to make this come out true, but intuitively there's not much theoretical about knowledge like, If I fall down, it usually hurts, and so forth.
An excellent point, and very important in this context, since it emphasizes the problem of the missing interlocutor in this thread. What caricature of scientists attributes to them the belief that it is possible to be in the position of knowing everything? (Ie, including all subatomic positions and momentums!)

We've been told that
After twice asking for even a single quote from a scientist who defends this idea -- "the actual words of someone who has defended that view" -- I was told that merely asking for such evidence made me an example!
In short, a great deal of this thread seems devoted to attacking a convenient stereotype, without the foggiest idea of whether it applies to a non-trivial number of scientists.

The issues surrounding knowability are philosophically very interesting, to be sure, and have been much discussed in metaphysics, epistemology and philosophical logic. A locus classicus, for all its recency, is the chapter on structural unknowability in Timothy Williamson's Knowledge and its Limits (OUP 2000), which also contains an extensive bibliography.