The limitations of science (The limitations of science)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Wednesday, February 17, 2010, 00:14 (5182 days ago) @ dhw

GEORGE: My main problem with dhw's approach is that I don't recognize his distinctions between materialism and immaterialism and between science and philosophy. All phenomena are part of nature and therefore open to study by natural philosophers applying reason. It is all one wholistic project.
 
dhw: You switch from philosophy to natural philosophy here, and I'm not sure what you mean by the latter. -natural philosphy is just a part of philosophy.-dhw maintains philosophy is "the study of such basic concepts as truth, good and evil, semantics, the nature of knowledge etc."-that's part of philosophy.-dhw maintains that "science and philosophy may overlap in certain areas"-I would place science entirely within the broader realm of philosophy.-dhw says that I "certainly wouldn't argue that the natural sciences are concerned with, say, ethics or epistemology"-On the contrary. I would argue that epistemology, the study of how we know what we know, is a fundamental part of science, since it is the basis for scientific method. No point in pursuing science if we can't be confident in the truth of what we find out. I would also argue that ethics cannot be separated from scientific knowledge about the human beings with whose behaviour ethics is concerned.-Yet we do "agree, though, that it's all one project in the sense that what we're investigating is life and the world around us"-dhw maintains that "The difference between us is what we accept not as valid evidence but as possible evidence. /// The two main ones are the origin of life, and experiences that appear to defy rational explanation." -I would prefer to say that the difference between us is the degree of reliability that we place on different forms of evidence.-dhw claims that I an "not prepared even to contemplate" the concept of an intelligent designer. On the contrary, I am prepared to contemplate such a hypothesis, but I conclude from the many arguments we have already gone over, that the probability of such a being is negligible.-dhw claims further that I "have faith that the physical components of life could assemble themselves without guidance". On the contrary I have no such "faith" in the sense of "belief without evidence", it is simply that I conclude from the evidence that this is by far the most probable explanation, the likelihood of the alternative being negligible. -dhw claims our differences are "purely a matter of our personal limits of credulity." This is not the way I would put it. I would be inclined to say that dhw's degree of agnosticism, as between the two opposing propositions, shows a willingness to place excessive value on evidence I would consider worthless. This is a disagreement on epistemology.

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GPJ