Franz Brentano (1915) posted:
On one occasion, in the presence of Lord Kelvin, someone said how it might be preferable not to speak of such a thing as the ether, since we know virtually nothing about it. To this, he replied, that however much we were in the dark about the nature of ether, we are even more so in the case of the nature of matter. Actually, psychology, insofar as it is descriptive, is far in advance of physics. The thinking thing--the thing that has ideas, the thing that judges, the thing that wills--which we innerly perceive is just what we perceive it to be. But so-called outer-perception presents us with nothing that appears the way it really is. The sensible qualities do not correspond in their structure to external objects, and we are subject to the most serious illusions with respect to rest and motion and to figure and size.
Francis S. Collins (2010) posted:
I was shocked by that revelation—that people would allow their names to be used on articles they did not write, that were written for them, particularly by companies that have something to gain by the way the data is presented….If we want to have the integrity of science preserved, that’s not the way to do it.
What, then, is Science? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled.
Perhaps we can say that Science ensures that all discoveries are not made at a single instant, but this tells us nothing about why some discoveries are made before others. It also tells us nothing about how reliably they can be made or what regulates them. What, then, is Science?
http://bigthink.com/ideas/40965
Discovering how mechanistic processes work - the firing of neurons or the earth revolving around the sun, for example - is considered by some to be an "easy" problem because it involves observation, the description of an event from a third person point of view. "Hard" problems, on the other hand, involve first person experience. They're the questions that persist even after physical processes have been mapped and explained.
It's tempting to see them as universal to humanity, but whether and how they've been framed has varied historically. Historians of philosophy have observed there was no ancient Greek word that corresponds to “consciousness," while the modern Western perspective on consciousness seems to have been developed during the Reformation era - the age of “I think, therefore I am,” and “To be or not to be.” (Hamlet was written around 1600, and Rene Descartes’ Discourse on the Method was published in 1637.)
So there's no reason to assume that consciousness is eternally inexplicable. However, it may never be explained through neurobiology, says David Chalmers, the philosopher who originally made the distinction. "In so many other fields physical explanation has been successful… but there seems to be this big gap in the case of consciousness," he says. "It’s just very hard to see how interactions are going to give you subjective experience."
Much less how subjective experiences are going to give you neurological interactions, right? Science may not ever be able to tell us if I made this post or if it was the neurological interactions of someone else writing it for me. What, then, is Science?
dm posted:
Historians of philosophy have observed there was no ancient Greek word that corresponds to “consciousness," while the modern Western perspective on consciousness seems to have been developed during the Reformation era - the age of “I think, therefore I am,” and “To be or not to be.”
the greeks had no conception of consciousness. i have never taken a philosophy class ever and have not heard of idealism or monism on Jeopardy
Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Science is a pair of perfectly parallel iron railroad tracks leading to a chamber that extinguishes thousands of human souls an hour.
souls arent real
Goethestein posted:Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Science is a pair of perfectly parallel iron railroad tracks leading to a chamber that extinguishes thousands of human souls an hour.souls arent real
Neither is the "page" you are currently reading
Ironicwarcriminal posted:Goethestein posted:Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Science is a pair of perfectly parallel iron railroad tracks leading to a chamber that extinguishes thousands of human souls an hour.souls arent real
Neither is the "page" you are currently reading
2bong
dm posted:
What, then, is Science? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled.
for real tho i always just say its a tool you can use to answer questions about material things which seems to stop further epistemological questions. if they stick around i tell them how the publication system works and then lol when they ask why we need to pay someone money to publish data they've already paid for as a taxpayer
shennong posted:
for real tho i always just say its a tool you can use to answer questions about material things
o.k. I've got one
Why does the universe exist.
Ironicwarcriminal posted:shennong posted:
for real tho i always just say its a tool you can use to answer questions about material thingso.k. I've got one
Why does the universe exist.
looking for meaning in an cold empty doomed void is silly
shennong posted:
for real tho i always just say its a tool you can use to answer questions about material things which seems to stop further epistemological questions. if they stick around i tell them how the publication system works and then lol when they ask why we need to pay someone money to publish data they've already paid for as a taxpayer
that line was ripped straight out of St. Augustine. i replaced "time" with "Science"
i think there is certainly a relationship with tools and technology though. it puts us on much better footing than St. Augustine:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/confessions-bod.asp
But how didst thou make the heaven and the earth, and what was the tool of such a mighty work as thine? For it was not like a human worker fashioning body from body, according to the fancy of his mind, able somehow or other to impose on it a form which the mind perceived in itself by its inner eye (yet how should even he be able to do this, if thou hadst not made that mind?). He imposes the form on something already existing and having some sort of being, such as clay, or stone or wood or gold or such like (and where would these things come from if thou hadst not furnished them?). For thou madest his body for the artisan, and thou madest the mind which directs the limbs; thou madest the matter from which he makes anything; thou didst create the capacity by which he understands his art and sees within his mind what he may do with the things before him; thou gavest him his bodily sense by which, as if he had an interpreter, he may communicate from mind to matter what he proposes to do and report back to his mind what has been done, that the mind may consult with the Truth which presideth over it as to whether what is done is well done.
Goethestein posted:Ironicwarcriminal posted:shennong posted:
for real tho i always just say its a tool you can use to answer questions about material thingso.k. I've got one
Why does the universe exist.looking for meaning in an cold empty doomed void is silly
So are nuclear weapons but science can (suppoesedly) explain them.
i think things just get too hard for poor widdle science when it has to answer questions apart from "how can i kill more people, faster"
Goethestein posted:
its actually because you're asking a meaningless question. we know why the universe exists. "why does the universe exist" in terms of purpose or meaning is like asking what is the square root of blue
yea ppl should read their qurans
Goethestein posted:
the square root of blue
____________/
Goethestein posted:
2bong
not sure why you responded otherwise to any other post here
Goethestein posted:
ya you could ask "why does the universe exist" and go with the honest answer which is "we dont really know what caused the conditions of the big bang but we're looking into it" or you could go with the baseless lies of illiterate bronze age herders. whichever makes you feel more comfortable imo
sometimes i wonder whether the illiterate (but numerate) herders might be having the last laugh on us some respects: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/science/to-keep-or-kill-lowly-leap-second-focus-of-world-debate.htm
On Thursday, the world will go to battle over a second.
In Geneva, 700 delegates from about 70 nations attending a meeting of a United Nations telecommunications agency will decide whether to abolish the leap second.
Unlike the better-known leap year, which adds a day to February in a familiar four-year cycle, the leap second is tacked on once every few years to synchronize atomic clocks — the world’s scientific timekeepers — with Earth’s rotational cycle, which, sadly, does not run quite like clockwork. The next one is scheduled for June 30 (do not bother to adjust your watch).
The United States is the primary proponent for doing away with the leap second, arguing that the sporadic adjustments, if botched or overlooked, could lead to major foul-ups if electronic systems that depend on the precise time — including computer and cellphone networks, air traffic control and financial trading markets — do not agree on the time.
Abolishing the leap second “removes one potential source of catastrophic failure for the world’s computer networks,” said Geoff Chester, a spokesman for the United States Naval Observatory, the nation’s primary timekeeper. “That one second becomes a problem if you don’t take it into account.”
But Britain, along with Canada and China, would like to keep the current keeping system, arguing that, in the 40 years that leap seconds have been gracefully inserted in our midst — most recently in 2008 — there have been no problems to speak of, and the worriers have greatly exaggerated the potential for havoc. Remember Y2K?
“It’s the devil we know,” said Robert Seaman, a software engineer at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. While he is an American, he is also a member of another group leery of the change: astronomers. If a software-guided telescope is not pointed in the right direction, it may not capture the right image, and updating software could be a sizable task.
Defenders of the leap second would like to retain the quaint notion that the definition of a day has something to do with the rising and setting of the sun.
nobody ever asks why a circle is divided into 360 degrees
ultimately it's based on abstraction and if having faith in abstraction is your thing, consider looking into it but recognize its limitations in describing reality.
Ironicwarcriminal posted:Goethestein posted:Ironicwarcriminal posted:shennong posted:for real tho i always just say its a tool you can use to answer questions about material things
o.k. I've got one
Why does the universe exist.looking for meaning in an cold empty doomed void is silly
So are nuclear weapons but science can (suppoesedly) explain them.
i think things just get too hard for poor widdle science when it has to answer questions apart from "how can i kill more people, faster"
nuclear devices can have tremendous applications besides the inevitable extermination of man. the most efficient methods of in-space propulsion and planetary defense (blowing up evil comets or asteroids a la the movie Armageddon, but seriously) are with nuclear-weapon derived devices.
to the extent that this application of the fundamental physics can be the salvation or end-all of man should really make one pause for moral judgment. in very physical terms you can consider it no different than power or authority in human institutions. the unprecedented power or energy density (comparable to 'legal authority units'/people?) in a device may be no different that a single person's ability to mobilize and command a people. if we put boundaries on it, it's acknowledging its power while reflecting on the ultimate willingness of man to use that power for its own betterment.
take it away, kanye:
clikthru for the other parts.
guidoanselmi posted:
science is really drab and boring empiricism. it gives you some insight into the observable and loosely the "unobservable world".
ultimately it's based on abstraction and if having faith in abstraction is your thing, consider looking into it but recognize its limitations in describing reality.
yeah all i ask is that be recognized, but people get really sensitive about it
guidoanselmi posted:
to the extent that this application of the fundamental physics can be the salvation or end-all of man should really make one pause for moral judgment. in very physical terms you can consider it no different than power or authority in human institutions. the unprecedented power or energy density (comparable to 'legal authority units'/people?) in a device may be no different that a single person's ability to mobilize and command a people. if we put boundaries on it, it's acknowledging its power while reflecting on the ultimate willingness of man to use that power for its own betterment.
this is actually pretty interesting: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/2012/01/18/the-wrong-time-for-this/
Accuracy, of course, is good. Everybody knows the story of the Harrison’s chronometer, but increasing accuracy in timekeeping has been a hallmark of advancing science since forever. Nowadays we use atomic clocks, which keep time by counting … well, let the U.S. Naval observatory explain it: “cycles of radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of cesium 133.” As you well know, 9,192,631,770 of those equal one second, and there you are. A nice approximation of the old-school second, which has existed since the Babylonians took to making base-60 calculations and divided hours into minutes and seconds, 60 of each, making the second equal 1/86,400 of a mean solar day. The Babylonians something more thatn 2000 years ago began using base 60 because it simplified calculation, being divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 10 (according to this non-Wiki site). The Egyptians, by the way, had divided the day into 24 hours as early as 1300 B.C.E., just because it sort of felt best to them that way.
But the real news in all that time calculation, of course, is the “mean solar day,” which is just what it sounds like. If you go to any good time site you will learn about sidereal time and rotational time and barycentric coordinate time and on and on, but the point is that if you think about the passage of time, on this planet you’re going to be thinking about day and night and seasons and years, because on a rotating planet with a tilting axis orbiting a star, those cycles form the foundation of any meaningful discussion of time. However nice it is that we can measure cesium 133 radiation cycles and use them for extreme accuracy, removing the connection between those radiation cycles and the cycles of the planets and satellites and tides and seasons is profoundly dangerous.
Yes, the leap second comes up every couple years and is a pain for people managing the GPS and computer systems that manage our entire world. But if you decide to leave the leap seconds out, the atomic clocks and the universe itself begin sailing on different paths. In a year or two your atomic wall clock and your radio station will disagree, and in a few thousand years they’ll be completely catywampus. It sounds like nothing, but in a world where we’re constantly encouraged to interact through screens and speakers, where we exist in climate controlled environments whose very existece is systematically dismantling the actual climate, anything that reminds us there’s a real world out there is a positive. Have you ever flipped on your computer to check a weather forecast rather then sticking your head out the door to check the sky? You’re already in danger, my friend.
So it’s refreshing that at the exact same moment the knuckleheads are considering severing the connection between accurate timekeeping and the planet for which it keeps time, I ran across this ecological calendar, the perfect antidote to that kind of thinking. This calendar comes in four banners, one per season. It notes solar and lunar cycles and a million other things. It’s entire job is to remind you that you live somewhere – on a particular planet. That it’s today, not yesterday – that the moon is in a particular phase, that there’s an eclipse coming up, that it’s spring or fall or whatever. And hopefully to encourage you to think about why. The fact that the creators call this calendar that urges you to look around yourself and experience your surroundings the way a Neanderthal might have “a new way to experience time” shows you how far gone we already are.
there was a dude that had some interesting research on that last sentence and he ended up getting harassed quite a bit: http://fightthegooglejugend.com/marshacknatgeoart.pdf
for more on the measurement of time, see In Contradiction: A Study of the Transconsistent, 2nd edition by Graham Priest at your local library.nu
Genealogy posted:
The truthful person, in that daring and ultimate sense which the belief in science presupposes in him, thus affirms a world different from the world of life, of nature, and of history, and to the extent that he affirms this “other world,” well? Must he not in the process deny its opposite, this world, our world? . . . Our faith in science rests on something which is still a metaphysical belief—even we knowledgeable people of today, we godless and anti-metaphysical people—we, too, still take our fire from that blaze kindled by a thousand years of old belief, that faith in Christianity, which was also Plato’s belief, that God is the truth, that the truth is divine. . . .
No! This “modern science”—keep your eyes open for this—is for the time being the best ally of the ascetic ideal, and precisely for this reason: because it is the most unconscious, the most involuntary, the most secret and most subterranean ally!
Modern science is basically the perfection of religion for the modern man. Once you realize this it seems obvious, just go read the sci-fi nerds on SA and the worship they have for science they don't understand, the new-atheist movement replacing the old, outdated God with the tolerant, liberal, and capitalist version in science, the way modern science is thrown around to justify imperialism, the white man's burden, and the degenerate liberal society we find ourselves in as the highest aesthetic ideal. The science laboratory, with it's lab coats, protective goggles, and "controlled" experiments are the higher evolution of the monastery filled with ascetic monks, or the buddhist who removes himself from life and sees nature as a mere lab to be observed.
This is the ideal of western science, what we currently have is much worse since our science has massive holes (economics, history, sociology, politics) because these things would challenge the status quo if properly understood. But we're talking about the philosophy of science, which at it's very core is a negation (the scientific method) instead of an affirmation.
Edited by babyhueypnewton ()
babyhueypnewton posted:
Modern science is basically the perfection of religion for the modern man. Once you realize this it seems obvious, just go read the sci-fi nerds on SA and the worship they have for science they don't understand, the new-atheist movement replacing the old, outdated God with the tolerant, liberal, and capitalist version in science, the way modern science is thrown around to justify imperialism, the white man's burden, and the degenerate liberal society we find ourselves in as the highest aesthetic ideal. The science laboratory, with it's lab coats, protective goggles, and "controlled" experiments are the higher evolution of the monastery filled with ascetic monks, or the buddhist who removes himself from life and sees nature as a mere lab to be observed.
there was once a d&d thread about what the world would look like if religion never existed and it was basically thissery / people citing gene roddenberry
guidoanselmi posted:
ultimately it's based on abstraction and if having faith in abstraction is your thing, consider looking into it but recognize its limitations in describing reality.
Herbert Marcuse posted:
From this stage on, all thinking that does not testify to an awareness of the radical falsity of the established forms of life is a faulty thinking. Abstraction from this all-pervasive condition is not merely immoral; it is false. For reality has become technological reality, and the subject is now joined with the object so closely that the notion of object necessarily includes the subject. Abstraction from their interrelation no longer leads to a more genuine reality but to deception, because even in this sphere the subject itself is apparently a constitutive part of the object as scientifically determined. The observing, measuring, calculating subject of scientific method, and the subject of the daily business of life - both are expressions of the same subjectivity: man. One did not have to wait for Hiroshima in order to have one's eyes opened to this identity. And as always before, the subject that has conquered matter suffers under the dead weight of this conquest. Those who enforce and direct this conquest have used it to create a world in which the increasing comforts of life and the ubiquitous power of the productive apparatus keep man enslaved to the prevailing state of affairs. Those social groups which dialectical theory identified as the forces of negation are either defeated or reconciled with the established system. Before the power of the given facts, the power of negative thinking stands condemned.
The power of facts is an oppressive power; it is the power of man over man, appearing as objective and rational condition. Against this appearance, thought continues to protest in the name of truth. And in the name of fact: for it is the supreme and universal fact that the status quo perpetuates itself through the constant threat of atomic destruction, through the unprecedented waste of resources, through mental impoverishment, and - last but not least - through brute force. These are the unresolved contradictions. They define every single fact and every single event; they permeate the entire universe of discourse and action. Thus they define also the logic of things: that is, the mode of thought capable of piercing the ideology and of comprehending reality whole. No method can claim a monopoly of cognition, but no method seems authentic which does not recognize that these two propositions are meaningful descriptions of our situation: 'The whole is the truth,' and the whole is false.
also greeks talked about being conscious and unconscious, off the top of my head I would say go read apology again because socrates says death might be like going to sleep, an eternal nothingness of no sensation or awareness. I would bet my bottom dollar there's some interesting discussion of it in aristotle's on the soul, although I haven't read it in a couple of years
Edited by Lykourgos ()
thirdplace posted:
i've always figured the important and unique characteristics of "science" are the institutions that reward researchers for publishing and distributing their knowledge. people figured out a lot of interesting ideas and technologies in classical and other pre-modern eras, but tended to treat them as trade secrets more than something to be shouted out to the world. to support this preposition i cite My Butt
it depends, if you're working on something that has any commercial value at all it's going to get bought, patented, and sequestered by some private corporation before you can finish saying "yes" to the pittance they offered you for it (which is still ten times your yearly income) and of course the public who paid for the research doesnt get a say in it at all
I don't have to quote Nietzsche to DM though, he knows way more than me about everything
What I've been thinking about is how I feel about dialectical materialism, which is far more vital than liberal science as it interacts with society, history, and the world as it is instead of how God intends it. Even so, I return to Nietzsche and Foucault and I'm very skeptical of any science which claims human progress or ultimate truth, especially as it's misused as a more radical version of western science by the liberal trots who make up the first world left. Guess I don't know where I stand which is the point of discussion.
Ironicwarcriminal posted:shennong posted:
for real tho i always just say its a tool you can use to answer questions about material thingso.k. I've got one
Why does the universe exist.
i dont know, but if you give me a grant i can produce a long document for you saying "i don't know" in a really convoluted way