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RadicalWhiggery:
We accept, as an axiom, that our collective senses are windows on reality. If you don't share that axiom, then you are a nihilist. If you are a nihilist, then there is no point in carrying on a discussion with you!
RadicalWhiggery:
It gives us a functional understanding of our surroundings, and very likely brings us closer to the truth about our universe.
Young man invites us to skype while debating on the internet and argues thst science needs to be justified. Electrons are working for us now. No philosopher ever put an electron to work.
Philosophers aren't meant to put electrons to work. That is a job for scientists. The job for the philosopher is creating and justifying the inductive method. Bacon created it. But now we need to justify it.
Go for it. Meanwhile scientists are making progress.
Scientists are making progress? How do you know that? Justify that belief? How do you even know scientists exist? I thought you all were all about evidence. And yet when I question you, all I get is pragmatic dogma. What are scientists making progress in? A shared reality? How do you know that exists? How do you know your senses are valid? You have to answer these questions before you can just start claiming you're making progress.
First, I am not a scientist. I said science is making progress.
If you do not know what science is making progress in I can not help you.
I , for one, do not have to answer your medeival questions to assert science has made progress.
If you call common sense pragmatic dogma I am guilty.
I have already stated tbat your skyping and internet debating is the result of scientists discovering and putting electrons to work. Progress.
I do know is making progress in. You don't because you don't even have any epistemology. And yes "common sense" is pragmatic dogma. Common sense is subjective nonsense. I agree that my Skype debating is a result of scientific achievement. You're not understanding. I have a justification for the inductive whereas you have "well it works".
@RW "How do you know your senses are valid?"
You don't. You can't even rely on cogito ergo sum. So what now? You can meditate fruitlessly on the essence of existence until you get hungry, and you can debate with yourself about whether your hunger is real until you drop dead. You can turn to sky fairies for confirmation of reality, which their earthly representatives will provide for a small fee. Or you can accept the real world as revealed by your senses and start to deal with it pragmatically and empirically. The search for a priori leads to madness.
RadicalWhiggery:
Are you arguing for nihilism? How do you justify your concept of reality if not via inductive reasoning?
We accept, as an axiom, that our collective senses are windows on reality. If you don't share that axiom, then you are a nihilist. If you are a nihilist, then there is no point in carrying on a discussion with you!
RadicalWhiggery:
Perhaps your entire understanding of physical reality is an illusion! Maybe you are in some kind of matrix where the vast spaces of our universe don't actually exist, where you only think you are humanoid. Are you going to seek, with no hope of finding, some air-tight justification for what you believe is a real universe? In a sense, your illusion becomes your reality.
Funny how you want to justify science and the scientific method (which in no way shape or form is philosophical), but you don't apply that standard to a god. There is NO justification for a god, only mumbo jumbo smoke, and mirrors. Science gets results and advances. Belief in gods gets retardation and a slew of crimes against humanity.
Agreeing with your own post doesn't make you seem smarter dude. And yes, the scientific method came from philosophy. That's it's literal origin. Also you're committing multiple fallacies in this post. This thread is not about justifying God. It's about justifying Science. And even if belief in gods did give you "retardation and a slew of crimes against humanity" it wouldn't justify science
Ladies and gentlemen, it appears we have a psychic armchair philosopher; who clearly has access to who clicked what links!
It was in more than just this thread.
Oh, so you've had this psychic power for a while then!
Oh, BULLSHIT Sauron. The OP demands that science be justified. And why...huh? Because religion is at war with science. The only justification that science needs and has achieved is and are facts.
This points out the glaring hypocrisy of the OP. He WILL NOT apply the same standard to his own belief system. It is the hypocrisy of religion in general. Religion cannot stand up to any realistic form justification or scrutiny. Belief in a god or gods isn't based on facts or truth. It's based on faith, which is just a cop out for the lack of facts or truth. In every single line of reasoning regarding belief in a god, to come to a conclusion that a god exists, you have to have "faith." A leap of faith devoid of facts, truth, or connection to reality. There is no peer review, no independent verification, no real examination....just a leap of faith.
And yet the OP denigrates the scientific method which is always independently verified, peer reviewed, scrutinized based on facts. His tact is to utilize philosophy as if it actually pertains to science...it doesn't.
Your post is entirely pointless. Even if all religion is fake and there is no God, this still does not justify science. This question has nothing to do with religion or God. Why can't you stay on topic? And yes, philosophy can be applied to Science. It's an entire branch of philosophy.
No one is denigrating the scientific method. The question is, is science justified? It's pointing out there is a problem in the form of reason science uses. Which is induction. Can you justify the scientific method? Being "Independently verified, peer reviewed, and scrutinized based on facts", these claims are all based the assertion that science is justified in the first place.
Also no one is even saying science is unjustified. It's a question to ponder and reason about. It may be that it IS justified. But it might be that it isn't. All everyone has been doing is making strawman arguments against the OP and admitting that science doesn't deal in truth. All I'm gathering is people say "It seems to be reliable" which is just a fallacy of pragmatism. This doesn't mean it isn't reliable. But it's not a very strong answer.
Oh for christ sake Sauron. What a childish rant. It is clear that the OP is fighting the "christian war" on science. Science never declared war on christianity, but christianity FEARS knowledge. Because knowledge renders belief in a god as stupid!
I'm going to say this again so you can understand. This argument has nothing to do with God or religion. If God and religion were all fake. This post is about SCIENCE being reliable. Please stay on topic or I'll have to assume you're trolling.
Sauron:
Given that science is based on inductive reasoning, which is based on probability and statistics, what is it that you ask for? Perhaps you should carefully define "justified." Can a justified methodology lead to an erroneous conclusion?
You're misunderstanding. The final paragraph sums it up well in the OP "So what justifies or grounds our ability to reason inductively? How do you know every electron behaves like the ones we've observed? How do you know that the electrons you've observed behave the same way when you're not observing them? How do you know gravity exists on other planets? What allows us to generalize from our observations here to the events on other planets millions of years ago?"
The first and last question is in my opinion the best phrased ones. The question is not if it can make mistakes. It's if we can trust it's results in the first place. From your answers, you seem to think Science can give us what is probably true. But I don't think that's justification. If you were buying a used tv from me and my description is "It probably works" would you buy it or shop elsewhere? While this is not a perfect analogy for the whole discussion I'm mostly pointing out the problem of accepting something just because "it's probably true"
@Sauron: "Agreeing with your own post doesn't make you seem smarter dude."
I thought the agree/disagree links only worked on other people's posts. Anyway, I don't believe that of Mykcob4.
Apart from anything else, what's the point? You can't trade agrees for frequent flyer points, can you?
First of all, your argument is an appeal to hypocrisy which is a logical fallacy. Second, I did justify a god. So I really don't know what you're talking about.
Not in your wildest dream Radical. Not even close!
Nope it is pointing out YOUR hypocrisy, not an appeal to hypocrisy.
What do you think an appeal to hypocrisy is?
RadicalWhiggery:
Are you talking about the two "proofs" you gave on two different threads? Perhaps you need to define your term "justify." Your proof from motion stank, but I gather that you really didn't put a lot of confidence in it so that one is neither here nor there. The other proof about a first cause has plenty of problems in its premises. If you still want to discuss it, I could do a better job in outlining my concerns.
Consider this...
You are a doctor and you have a patient. Now, through inductive reasoning applied on currently available data, he has a 99% chance of having disease X. You know that disease X is a medical emergency, and unless treated immediately, patients usually die within 7 days. You could:
1) Start treatment immediately, and in the meantime, send biopsy and culture tests for further confirmation. There is a +99% chance the patient would live this way...
2) Wait until you have a deductive means for concluding X or else wise in the patient. There is a 1% chance patient would survive this way...
Inductive Reasoning definitely has problems, in that it's not absolute like deductive reasoning, but UNLESS we have something better, and we have to make a choice, I don't think there's much of a problem if we use it as carefully as we can...
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