Limits of Science, and Moral Choices

[optimomojo]

000

[tooblue]

Interesting arguments -- your links aren't showing up though and I'm interested in following them.

Have you had a chance to read much Kierkegaard -- are his writings available in the libraries of Outer Darkness Your tone is similar.

[tooblue]

Sorry, I'm having problems with the links.

Yes, I took a course on Kierkegaard. Generally I'm not a fan of Continental Philosophy, but I did enjoy Kierkegaard.

We read:
Fear and Trembling
Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philsophical Fragments
Works of Love

As a Christian, Kierkegaard had some pointed criticisms of many so-called Christians and Christian institutions.

The course was taught by David L. Paulsen, whom I highly admire as well as many of the professors in BYU's Department of Philosophy.

I've read a lot of Kierkegaard these past several months. Your tone reminded me of his tone, though it's really hard to say what his tone truly is as I can only read translations of his writings.

My research mentor has got me reading Boris Groys these days. In some ways it's just not as fun.

As per your post I feel very much the same about self-deception and science. As an artist I think a lot about narratives in the same way. I feel we are part of a grand narrative and that it is our responsibility to extricate ourselves from it and write our own narrative. However, are the narratives we write for ourselves too agenda driven? Is it all by design, thereby rendering the extrication a function or stage in a process and not in fact a type of emancipation?

[Jeff Lebowski]

yawn.

[tooblue]

Re: Kierkegaard. Thanks for the observation. Perhaps, I've been influenced by Kierkegaard more than I realize.

I'm not familiar with Groys.

Re: extricating ourselves from the grand narative. In a similar way as cleansing ourselves from the blood and sins of this generation?

Re: Groys thinks and writes a lot about art and it's influence in society.

I was referring to eternal rounds more so than making a connection to the blood and sins of this generation. It could be argued that those sins are my sins and that an essential aspect of writing your own narrative is to frame them in a different context. After all we are given a remission of our sins and they are remembered no more, but of course they are still ours and always will be.

[tooblue]

yawn.

I know I know -- where's rambam to liven things up with his 'passion'

[wuapinmon]

One of the emphases in my college course of study was the Philosophy of Science and Epistemology. It had a profound impact on my world-view. In particular, when it comes to science, I tend to be an Instrumentalist and an Underdeterminationist in contrast to Scientific Realism. I have been influenced by W.V.O. Quine’s works on the subject and Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific RevolutionsAmazon.com: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (9780226458083): Thomas S. Kuhn: Books.

Other works include:
Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle
Greek Science After Aristotle
The Fabric of the Heavens: The Development of Astronomy and Dynamics
Origins of Modern Science 1300-1800
Edge of Objectivity
Einstein's Universe
Beyond Einstein
Men Who Made a New Physics: Physicists and the Quantum Theory
Empirical Knowledge: Readings in Contemporary Epistemology

By Instrumentalism I mean that scientific theories are useful to explain and predict phenomena, but they do not necessarily accurately describe reality.

By Underdeterminationism I mean that phenomena, data, evidence or observation can be explained by a multiplicity of hypotheses or thesis, and that the limited phenomena available to people is never sufficient to “prove a theory”. (It is based on the epistemological Problem of the Indeterminacy of Data to Theory. David Hume’s Problem of Induction preceded the modern view of this epistemological problem. It’s sometimes referenced by the Duhem-Quine Problem.)






Some principles that I took from that education were:

• Science is excellent in developing technology and a good theory can be useful in making predictions, but it doesn’t necessarily tell us much about the nature of reality. The nature of matter, gravity, and energy, for example, are all still very mysterious. In part because they are all “unobservables”. Immanuel Kant used the distinction of noumena (the thing-in-itself; an actual, independent object; reality) and phenomena (how we experience noumena or reality). You can’t observe an atom, graviton, or photon, for example, but we reference these “unobservables” through the phenomena we experience. Descartes’ Meditations gives rise to doubting every phenomena which human perception presents as reality. In this regard, Quine goes so far as to say: “Physical objects [like atomic particles] are...comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer...the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits.”
• Given the Problem of Underdetermination, due in part to the limitation of human observation, broad or macro-theories (like evolution or global climate change) are never conclusively proven. And as the history and philosophy of science has shown since the ancient Greeks, the hallmark of a fallible theory are unexplained anomalies, as such exist with evolution and global climate change.

As a believer, I accept that the limitation on human knowledge is by design. As children of God, we are intended to live life by faith. We have to make choices—in particular moral choices—based on insufficient information or knowledge. The choices we make in that vacuum of knowledge are a reflection of our core character because our choices are based on assumptions we have to make about God(s), humanity, life and so on.

However, even if you are not a believer, or not an orthodox believer, it is my opinion that it is a self-deception that science—true science, not agenda-driven science—provides answers or even much guidance about how to make moral choices. That goes to whether the choice is about sex outside of marriage, interpreting scripture as literal or not, whether I should recycle, or self-restrict my consumption of beef, or oil and gas products, and so on. In short, if you, for example, believe that evolution (or any other theory or “law”) is scientifically proven once and for all, I’d suggest that you are gravely mistaken about the nature and limits of science, and I’d advise you to familiarize yourself as to what experts in that field have commented on about the subject. I’d also suggest that it is a lapse of judgment to base moral choices primarily on whichever scientific wind blows or suits his fancy (or “god” of his choosing).

Ok, haters, flail away.

While I see what you're trying to do with your post, I think you've left a gaping hole in your argument by not addressing the whole notion of morality. You sound like you'll ignore the hypothetical moral imperatives of life situations that science might address for a Kantian categorical imperative that just doesn't exist, man. Like most human constructs, if we all tried to live Kant's three maxims, we're always going to wuss out and be more lenient to/with ourselves, especially when it comes to Kant's Third Maxim.

So, I'm not sure if you're a Kant disciple, but I tend to side with Schopenhauer. So, even though you seem to want to assert your autonomy of morality by choosing to ignore science, I say that you are just falling into the heteronomous system that has been put on you, and that science MIGHT be a key to unlocking the very autonomy of morality that you seem to crave, as I understand your writings. Either submit to the heteronomy of Salt Lake, or embrace the receptions of your senses and act upon the world via your autonomous free will, keeping in mind that there's a lot of really good morality coming out of the Mormon Vatican.

[woot]

While I see what you're trying to do with your post, I think you've left a gaping hole in your argument by not addressing the whole notion of morality. You sound like you'll ignore the hypothetical moral imperatives of life situations that science might address for a Kantian categorical imperative that just doesn't exist, man. Like most human constructs, if we all tried to live Kant's three maxims, we're always going to wuss out and be more lenient to/with ourselves, especially when it comes to Kant's Third Maxim.

So, I'm not sure if you're a Kant disciple, but I tend to side with Schopenhauer. So, even though you seem to want to assert your autonomy of morality by choosing to ignore science, I say that you are just falling into the heteronomous system that has been put on you, and that science MIGHT be a key to unlocking the very autonomy of morality that you seem to crave, as I understand your writings. Either submit to the heteronomy of Salt Lake, or embrace the receptions of your senses and act upon the world via your autonomous free will, keeping in mind that there's a lot of really good morality coming out of the Mormon Vatican.

Yeah!

(I don't know what just happened. You're smart.)

[UtahDan]

yawn.

They are somewhat interesting abstractions. I would like to see SOP apply them to something concrete.

[tooblue]

While I see what you're trying to do with your post, I think you've left a gaping hole in your argument by not addressing the whole notion of morality. You sound like you'll ignore the hypothetical moral imperatives of life situations that science might address for a Kantian categorical imperative that just doesn't exist, man. Like most human constructs, if we all tried to live Kant's three maxims, we're always going to wuss out and be more lenient to/with ourselves, especially when it comes to Kant's Third Maxim.

So, I'm not sure if you're a Kant disciple, but I tend to side with Schopenhauer. So, even though you seem to want to assert your autonomy of morality by choosing to ignore science, I say that you are just falling into the heteronomous system that has been put on you, and that science MIGHT be a key to unlocking the very autonomy of morality that you seem to crave, as I understand your writings. Either submit to the heteronomy of Salt Lake, or embrace the receptions of your senses and act upon the world via your autonomous free will, keeping in mind that there's a lot of really good morality coming out of the Mormon Vatican.

He didn't say he was ignoring science but in fact he is differentiating between true science and agenda driven science. That's a very important distinction. Can one autonomously embrace the reception of the senses, especially in this day and age where at our very birth we are assaulted by a myriad of man made sights, sounds and smells -- not to mention what sensual manipulation one may be subject to in the womb?

I like the simplicity of your call to submit to one faction or the other but why exactly must it be a turn to one side or the other? You seem to like the metaphor of two sides to one coin -- can't we continually flip the coin, or once flipped do we become inert? What's more isn't your call to embrace the coin, regardless of the side or faction chosen?

The game's back on ... go cougs!

[UtahDan]

While I see what you're trying to do with your post, I think you've left a gaping hole in your argument by not addressing the whole notion of morality. You sound like you'll ignore the hypothetical moral imperatives of life situations that science might address for a Kantian categorical imperative that just doesn't exist, man. Like most human constructs, if we all tried to live Kant's three maxims, we're always going to wuss out and be more lenient to/with ourselves, especially when it comes to Kant's Third Maxim.

So, I'm not sure if you're a Kant disciple, but I tend to side with Schopenhauer. So, even though you seem to want to assert your autonomy of morality by choosing to ignore science, I say that you are just falling into the heteronomous system that has been put on you, and that science MIGHT be a key to unlocking the very autonomy of morality that you seem to crave, as I understand your writings. Either submit to the heteronomy of Salt Lake, or embrace the receptions of your senses and act upon the world via your autonomous free will, keeping in mind that there's a lot of really good morality coming out of the Mormon Vatican.

[Babs]

btw, you might want to pay those fines at the library. Those late fees add up, you know.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I know I know -- where's rambam to liven things up with his 'passion'

[tooblue]

just razz'n ya jeff.

[tooblue]

btw, you might want to pay those fines at the library. Those late fees add up, you know.

I don't think the Aflec character read many books he's just spoiling for a fight