U-96 wrote:So your point is that scientific advancement is separate and distinct from society, like our scientific understanding of Psychology, Philosophy, Evolution, etc, as well as the social sciences, they do not effect societal attitudes at all?

Scientific understanding of philosophy? I think not. I don't think what we refer to as the social sciences have much of a claim to be sciences either.

Do you think these might actually benefit our society through understanding? Take for example our understanding of genes and race for one... and how does it all effect law, education etc?

Scientific knowledge can be used for good or ill, obviously. Understanding genetics can be used to promote more rational attitudes but it could also be used to make health insurance unaffordable to some of the most vulnerable people.

There's no reason to think that scientific advancement couldn't regress in the future also, as in the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

Of course that's true. I said in my last post that things can be forgotten. I'm saying that scientific progress is different because each stage builds on the stages that went before. I'm not persuaded that societal progress works like that.

As for your belief that there's no such thing as social progress, well you know, you just prove it...

Proving a negative... always hard

...but first prove that scientific progress is distinct from societal progress.

As I keep saying, it's about the cumulative, incremental nature of scientific progress.

Interesting distinction between scientific progress, which seems undeniable, and political, moral, social, progress.

You can argue for political progress, in the shape of democracy and so on.

Apart from that, we have to factor in that humans are selfish bastards, and fairly non-rational. Thus in a crisis, they tend to have recourse to primitive solutions, e.g. kill the people in the next village.

Have a look at Syria for an example.

logical bob wrote:Scientific understanding of philosophy? I think not. I don't think what we refer to as the social sciences have much of a claim to be sciences either.

Ok, I'm not sure how that's relevant but anyhoo...

Scientific knowledge can be used for good or ill, obviously. Understanding genetics can be used to promote more rational attitudes but it could also be used to make health insurance unaffordable to some of the most vulnerable people.

Your right, we're not talking here about an overall benefit to society, let's cherry pick one specific instance, one that doesn't even relate to your country or mine (I'm assuming your healthcare system is the same as when I lived there). Please, it's not go on about whether science can be used for good or ill in a specific instance, of course it can, it's whether that knowledge has an overall benefit to society.

Of course that's true. I said in my last post that things can be forgotten. I'm saying that scientific progress is different because each stage builds on the stages that went before. I'm not persuaded that societal progress works like that.

Wait, did you even read that quote you gave, that was not it's point at all. It's point was that "all gains in ethics and politics are real but they are all also reversible and all will be reversed and often reversed very easily." Unlike advances in science which are 'cumulative'. In relation to your previous post where you said "that science develops in the correct direction" so you're saying that the correct direction of scientific development for the western Europeans was 'down' (or towards loss) during that period? This is the 'progress' that you're not sure societal progress works like?

Proving a negative... always hard

No,this is not proving a negative at all, unless you're saying the evidence of societal progress (or not) is, and always will be, absent, like invisible dragons... but then if you strangely are, you can't agree with the quote you originally gave? Are the gains in ethics and politics "real" or are they non existent? See, this is why this 'quote instead of discuss stuff' shits me, cause I'm arguing against two different points of view now.

As I keep saying, it's about the cumulative, incremental nature of scientific progress.

Yes it is, when it's progressing. Oh I understand what you're saying, when scientific knowledge progresses, as it usually does, then it progresses, I just don't see any evidence or reasoning from what you say to show that society doesn't benefit from this knowledge (and other knowledge of the type you seem to poo poo) in a positive way, and you know, mostly progress also, no matter how naive you think that is.

They both progress in the sense that with science we increasingly know more about the natural world and with the humanities/social sciences we increasingly know more about human culture.

They both contibute their different areas of knowledge to whoever wants to use them for whatever purpose.

Richard Carrier, a person of some note around certain precincts here, has this to say in the comment section posted after a polemic by Alex Rosenberg, a philosopher of science:

As a historian myself, I find Alex’s view of history simply bizarre. It’s self-contradictory. He purports to defend the view that history is fiction, by referring to historical facts as demonstration, thus covertly assuming history is not fiction in the very effort to prove that it is, a nice bit of circular logic that has the rest of us scratching our heads. And it’s self-defeating. He elevates science as the source of all true facts, and reduces history to mere fiction, yet doesn’t seem to realize that doing science is doing history: all data is historical. All past proofs and observations and experiments confirming all past theories, are matters of history. So you have to take history seriously to be a scientist–you have to not only believe that Einstein’s theory of relativity was proved long ago by certain specific historical observations, but your belief in that fact has to be correct. There is no place for fiction here. If history is fiction, then so is science. Alex seems to err in assuming that the human innate tendency to make stories of everything (an entirely apt and correct observation) means there are no actual stories, just the ones we make up. That’s certainly untrue. We have evolved the drive to find the story in everything precisely because there often is a story, and it benefits us to know what it is. The only question is: how much can we know, and how?

I had hoped for more substance (and more understanding of science) from such a noted internet personality as Carrier. No, on second thought, why would I hope for that? Each polemic follows upon a prior polemic, which is my theory of history.

I almost, but not quite, decided that Carrier's remarks deserve a thread of their own. I think that thread should be started by someone other than myself, who has such a dim view of history to begin with.

logical bob wrote:I said in my last post that things can be forgotten.

Even the paleontologic record has gaps in it. I think the best we can hope for is an archaeological horizon that will take awhile to erode. There are still intact large sedimentary horizons from the Precambrian. What I fear is that extinction is too good for us. It keeps me awake nights.

U-96 wrote:unless you're saying the evidence of societal progress (or not) is, and always will be, absent, like invisible dragons... but then if you strangely are, you can't agree with the quote you originally gave? Are the gains in ethics and politics "real" or are they non existent?

When the speaker refers to 'social progress', it is being considered relative to what the speaker prefers. All arguments about what 'most people prefer' can be recast as 'fifty billion flies cannot possibly be wrong'.

Jeffersonian-marxist wrote:What's a disinterested party?

A dead one?

Cito di Pense wrote:The speaker refers to 'social progress', it is being considered relative to what the speaker prefers. All arguments about what 'most people prefer' can be recast as 'fifty billion flies cannot possibly be wrong'.

I don't understand, the fallacy of argumentum ad populum comes from the word 'most' in your second sentence, where does the 'most' in 'most people prefer' come from in this sense?

Only if we're listening.

And not all history is written entirely by the "victors." Primary source material can be had from the oppressed, the downtrodden, the obscure, the "losers." You just have to know where to look. And be willing to do the looking.

Cito di Pense wrote:I had hoped for more substance (and more understanding of science) from such a noted internet personality as Carrier. No, on second thought, why would I hope for that? Each polemic follows upon a prior polemic, which is my theory of history.

Knowing scientific practice and knowing why we practice science are both based on polemics in history, and without history, we would not have science.

U-96 wrote:without history, we would not have science

Now that's a theory. Or I might better call it a polemic, or an apologetic. Since you don't have a situation without history, you can't really say what the situation without history would be. What's a human being without a history? Just another ground ape, right?

Record-keeping is one thing; history is quite another. One might venture to say that without record-keeping there would not be history, either, but surely you won't argue that history is simply a 'record' of 'what happened'. Science isn't either, but science makes predictions, and history does not.

Cito di Pense wrote:
One might venture to say that without record-keeping there would not be history, either, but surely you won't argue that history is simply a 'record' of 'what happened'. Science isn't either, but science makes predictions, and history does not.

I'm not sure that's true. Why do you think that the Cold War happened, for instance? Politicians, informed by history, trying to avoid the inevitability of defeat... or even strive for victory!

Our plans and actions are designed to fulfil goals and/or thwart disasters. These derive from experience - and not only our own. Hence, history makes predictions.

I have read one history book by choice. The History Handbook of Western Civilization (Columbia Press). The biggest lesson it taught me was how corrupt religion is and always has been.

Grimstad wrote:I have read one history book by choice. The History Handbook of Western Civilization (Columbia Press). The biggest lesson it taught me was how corrupt religion is and always has been.

The real lesson is that people in general are foolish and scared, and religion's power is acquired from them. Nowadays, I think, power is vested in religion, corporations and crime syndicates, and civil governments are instrumental in assisting them. It helps to think of organised religion as a loose confederation of corporations.

U-96 wrote:

logical bob wrote:Scientific knowledge can be used for good or ill, obviously. Understanding genetics can be used to promote more rational attitudes but it could also be used to make health insurance unaffordable to some of the most vulnerable people.

Your right, we're not talking here about an overall benefit to society, let's cherry pick one specific instance, one that doesn't even relate to your country or mine (I'm assuming your healthcare system is the same as when I lived there). Please, it's not go on about whether science can be used for good or ill in a specific instance, of course it can, it's whether that knowledge has an overall benefit to society.

I'm struggling to see what you mean by knowledge being of benefit to society if whether the knowledge is used for good or ill is irrelevant to the benefit. Knowledge on its own is ethically neutral. It makes life more comfortable - comfort and safety certainly trump any ethical concerns as reasons why, for the fortunate, it's better to live now that in the 14th century - but that doesn't constitute social progress in the way this thread has meant the term.

Wait, did you even read that quote you gave, that was not it's point at all. It's point was that "all gains in ethics and politics are real but they are all also reversible and all will be reversed and often reversed very easily." Unlike advances in science which are 'cumulative'. In relation to your previous post where you said "that science develops in the correct direction" so you're saying that the correct direction of scientific development for the western Europeans was 'down' (or towards loss) during that period? This is the 'progress' that you're not sure societal progress works like?

Don't be obtuse. Science is constrained by reality to progress in particular directions if it progresses at all. If you can't tell the difference between an ethical reversal because we built Guantanamo Bay or decided our trainers would be much cheaper if we got them made by child slaves in the Third World and a technical reversal because barbarian hordes have burnt down the workshop then we're really not getting anywhere.

Oh I understand what you're saying, when scientific knowledge progresses, as it usually does, then it progresses, I just don't see any evidence or reasoning from what you say to show that society doesn't benefit from this knowledge (and other knowledge of the type you seem to poo poo) in a positive way, and you know, mostly progress also, no matter how naive you think that is.

Obviously we benefit from knowledge in a positive way. The fact that, in the developed world, you're now very unlikely to die from septicemia following a minor cut is undoubtedly positive. I'm curious about what you mean when you say society progresses. Does that mean more than that life is better for people? If so, what does it mean?

logical bob wrote:

U-96 wrote:

logical bob wrote:Scientific knowledge can be used for good or ill, obviously. Understanding genetics can be used to promote more rational attitudes but it could also be used to make health insurance unaffordable to some of the most vulnerable people.

Your right, we're not talking here about an overall benefit to society, let's cherry pick one specific instance, one that doesn't even relate to your country or mine (I'm assuming your healthcare system is the same as when I lived there). Please, it's not go on about whether science can be used for good or ill in a specific instance, of course it can, it's whether that knowledge has an overall benefit to society.

I'm struggling to see what you mean by knowledge being of benefit to society if whether the knowledge is used for good or ill is irrelevant to the benefit. Knowledge on its own is ethically neutral. It makes life more comfortable - comfort and safety certainly trump any ethical concerns as reasons why, for the fortunate, it's better to live now that in the 14th century - but that doesn't constitute social progress in the way this thread has meant the term.

Wait, did you even read that quote you gave, that was not it's point at all. It's point was that "all gains in ethics and politics are real but they are all also reversible and all will be reversed and often reversed very easily." Unlike advances in science which are 'cumulative'. In relation to your previous post where you said "that science develops in the correct direction" so you're saying that the correct direction of scientific development for the western Europeans was 'down' (or towards loss) during that period? This is the 'progress' that you're not sure societal progress works like?

Don't be obtuse. Science is constrained by reality to progress in particular directions if it progresses at all. If you can't tell the difference between an ethical reversal because we built Guantanamo Bay or decided our trainers would be much cheaper if we got them made by child slaves in the Third World and a technical reversal because barbarian hordes have burnt down the workshop then we're really not getting anywhere.

You seem to be comparing apples with oranges here. Plenty of politicians and non-scientists still hold antiquated beliefs (usually medical and biological) that were shown to be false in science long ago. Likewise, they often don't take into account recent ethical and philosophical thought despite the fact that these advances are present within the academy.

For instance, anyone with any relevant knowledge of politics, philosophy, or history of philosophy will be able to lay out how our way of thinking about the world has progressed since the invention of the written word. Metaphysics (which created the scientific method) and ethics can definitely be seen to be a cumulative development, though the time taken for that knowledge to filter into everyday society is considerably longer than it takes for the academy to accept it.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that 'science' isn't some special thing separate from all other human thought - it's an offshoot of philosophy which deals solely with the physical world. As such, it is subject to the exact same societal pressures as all other academic subjects and can be considered of equal value to the humanities and social sciences when discussing its influence on wider, 'mainstream', human behaviour and thought.

Also, in either case 'progress' is not synonymous with 'good for you' - it just means we know more than we previously did.

I very much reject the idea that developments in metaphysics and ethics are cumulative. I think metaphysics has more in common with art and literature than they do with science in that each generation reacts against the thought of the one before as well as building on it. Ethics has largely consisted of providing justification after the fact for the views we happen to hold anyway.

I don't for a moment believe that metaphysics created the scientific method either.

logical bob wrote:I very much reject the idea that developments in metaphysics and ethics are cumulative. I think metaphysics has more in common with art and literature than they do with science in that each generation reacts against the thought of the one before as well as building on it. Ethics has largely consisted of providing justification after the fact for the views we happen to hold anyway.

I don't for a moment believe that metaphysics created the scientific method either.

Where on earth did the scientific method come from then? Do you think it somehow became a fully formed philosophy within the brain of someone who had never thought about metaphysics before?
It was clearly developed during the Renaissance by people like Francis Bacon, who were heavily influenced by the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle and worked to improve it. If this isn't cumulative, then what is it?

Two thoughts.

1. The Renaissance developments in science were pretty much an explicit rejection of Aristotle. I don't see how you're able to call that cumulative.

2. Bacon wrote about what we would now call the philosophy of science. He didn't seem to do very much actual science. That puts him in the company of Kuhn, Popper etc - people whose ideas may be interesting but don't have that much bearing on the practice of science.

logical bob wrote:Two thoughts.

1. The Renaissance developments in science were pretty much an explicit rejection of Aristotle. I don't see how you're able to call that cumulative.

2. Bacon wrote about what we would now call the philosophy of science. He didn't seem to do very much actual science. That puts him in the company of Kuhn, Popper etc - people whose ideas may be interesting but don't have that much bearing on the practice of science.

The investigation and rejection of faulty, commonly held ideas is part of how we increase our knowledge. What we know to be false is just as important as what we know to be true.
Bacon improved Aristotle's philosophy on empiricism by introducing inductive reasoning, or doesn't that feature in your view of the scientific method?
Without these philosophers and the many others after them, how would you know that experimentation and other key features of science are a requirement when determining the reality of the physical world?

AndreD wrote:The investigation and rejection of faulty, commonly held ideas is part of how we increase our knowledge. What we know to be false is just as important as what we know to be true.

If we're going to extend our definition of "building on" to include rejecting then I may have to concede what now becomes a fairly trivial point.

Without these philosophers and the many others after them, how would you know that experimentation and other key features of science are a requirement when determining the reality of the physical world?

As Cito said somewhere, success or failure in rocket science is fairly obvious without recourse to philosophy.

logical bob wrote:

AndreD wrote:The investigation and rejection of faulty, commonly held ideas is part of how we increase our knowledge. What we know to be false is just as important as what we know to be true.

If we're going to extend our definition of "building on" to include rejecting then I may have to concede what now becomes a fairly trivial point.

Without these philosophers and the many others after them, how would you know that experimentation and other key features of science are a requirement when determining the reality of the physical world?

As Cito said somewhere, success or failure in rocket science is fairly obvious without recourse to philosophy.

So science is now limited to engineering? Great.