The problem with science II

The problem:
I think the point to this whole "The Two Cultures Russian style 1875 or so" (I'm assuming that this is in reference to Snow's "Two Cultures") thread was to address that students of science can't effectively communicate with students of the humanities. And my recent discussions with Faith have shown me just how frustratingly valid their point is, so I've taken some time to analyze the situation. I realized that the problem is that scientifically minded people have the tendency to make technical and logically precise arguments, whereas humanistically minded people enjoy more aesthetic and artistically subjective arguments.Example:
I think if you look at the following argument, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. Remember not to examine the validity of either statement, but their style of speech: You might have noticed that rather than addressing the point that Faith was trying to make, crashfrog attacked the pillar of logic necessary to support it.Solution:
Pretend that the other group is speaking another language. If you translated a novel in Spanish directly, as in word for word into English, there would be several consequences. Not only would the meaning not be preserved, but it probably wouldn't even make much sense. Instead you must understand then translate its meaning. Many times if the argument doesn't make sense, it's because you translated it word for word rather than made an effort to understand the meaning behind it.That said, you should try to understand why Faith would say that science shouldn't "poke" into some areas of the universe. Her reasoning was that science tends to "make a reductionistic falsified trivialized mess of it," but since this seems completely unfounded and controversial, you should realize that there probably was a "lost in translation" scenario that took place. In order to avoid pointless rambling, an attempt should be made to better understand her point by asking why one might make such a claim. Taking my own advice, I came up with the following possibilities:(1) Science is a human endeavor, and therefore imperfect and unable to explain the many complexities of the universe.
(2) Science is a cold and objective approach that takes away from the beauty and aesthetic value of the universe.
(3) Science is but a small patch of grass in the great savanna of approaches to understanding our universe, and therefore probably not the best approach for everything.Unfortunately, even though these seem like more rational and less controversial thoughts to me, I'm unable to place which one most closely resembles "science makes a reductionistic falsified trivialized mess of some areas of the universe." I wish that this example would better explain why my approach should be used, but I think that it shows a limit in my ability to understand than the potential for the approach. At any rate, I would ask at this point if she would agree with any of my attempted translations, and if not to better support such a controversial claim.Also, if anyone thinks that they have a better solution to this problem, I'm all ears.Sidenote: This wouldn't be flip-flopping unless Faith asserted that men are attracted to women because it is their purpose to reproduce with them. Though from an evolutionary standpoint this might make sense, somehow I doubt that Faith would argue from that standpoint.

You make it sound like I've done something wrong. And how is that not addressing the point? It seems to me that I've done both those things - I've addressed the point by attacking the logic behind it. Isn't that how points are addressed? I think that's mistaken reasoning. Believe me when I tell you that as a student of both the humanities and the sciences, and as a person who moves in and has interactions with both circles, the thought processes aren't "two different languages.". There's certainly two different cultures, but people making arguments in the sciences and people making arguments in the humanities are doing the exact same thing - taking facts that everybody can agree on, and applying tools of reasoning that everybody agrees are valid in principle, to defend a position.It's the same in both cultures. The tools may be different, and the different communities may have different standards about what constitutes a "fact." But the basic reasoning is the same. People who advance scientific propositions are asked to support them with evidence from observation or expermint. People who advance propositions about the meaning of a novel, or a movie, are asked to support them with evidence from the text. I think the mistake you make is assuming that everybody arrives at positions in a reasonable way, or that everybody's position would be reasonable if only it could be expressed in the "right" way.This is not true. Plenty of people arrive at positions not by any rigorous, reasonable process. Most people jump to the conclusion that "feels" right, or confirms what they already believe, or is most consistent with the beliefs of the group that they want to be a part of.Without realizing that people hold positions for these reasons as well, you're going to consistently see these arguments as mutual miscommunication; when really, it's more often a function of one participant being more right and more reasonable than the other, who lacks the training and practice in reason needed to see that. She has. She's consistently used this reasoning to rebut the "natural"-ness of homosexual relationships and gay marriage, in a myriad of threads. It's her position that the opposite sexes are "made" to be with each other, and that the reason for this arrangement is, in part, reproduction.

If you are using "scientism" to stand for this kind of thinking, I agree, and I like to use it myself. And yes treating the mind as equal to {that is, identical with or the same as} or an epiphenomenon of brain is certainly one category I have in mind.I'm not even sure that the drugs that control schizophrenia are correcting any "imbalances" in the brain. Maybe they just shock the person into some semblance of sanity or something like that.On the other hand I don't deny that there must be such a thing as a brain malfunction that affects personality. The mind is certainly dependent on the brain in many ways as long as we are in our physical bodies.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

So what you are calling "scientism" is a habit of mind and also a philosophy. It's not a science; however, certain scientific ideas suggest it. Here are two symptoms of "scientism":1. explaining human behavior in evolutionary terms
2. equating mind with brain.Correct?We as humans have a feeling of incorporeality as regards our "minds."
I feel like I am incorporeal. Scientism wishes to do away with that feeling.

Yes, overall you have put your finger on something central to the problem here, the utter lack of any attempt on the part of the science side even to begin to grasp what the other side is saying before they start forcing the conversation into their own terminology, thereby misrepresenting and making a shambles of the whole effort.
Good show. That is correct, I never have said such a thing and I'm now ridiculing that very idea, as I already explained.

Careful, your paranoia is showing! No one is trying to trip you up. I'm trying to take things one small step at a time in order to try to understand what you say everyone is missing. If this isn't the proper thread for communicating the point that you say everyone is missing, then this also isn't the thread for complaining about it. If misapplication of methods and questionable use of terms is key to your point that science is improperly applied in some fields, then you have to actually spend some time making your point. For example, explain how scientific methods are misapplied in biology.--Percy

I'd say so, yes. I'm hesitant to make too broad a generalization -- but I'll go with it. OK, that's one thing that scientism does. But I doubt they'd say they care about "doing away with" the feeling as long as they make sure it's understood that's all it is, a feeling and therefore an illusion that has nothing to do with reality.

I'm sorry Percy, the way you are going about this just doesn't ... interest me. I don't want to even think about "how scientific methods are applied in biology." Sorry. I'm trying to do something else, and in fact at the point of abandoning communicating anything at all about it.

No, of course not. But this idea turns one into a thing.And if one is a thing, then of course "free will" is meaningless. Our thoughts are merely like water running downhill. Therefore, "sin" is meaningless. Virtue is meaningless.Nihilism makes perfect sense.

I think I have a problem with the way you derive this, because when I was an atheist I would have thought that nihilism did make sense as you define it (without using the word), but I resented the thinking that made human beings into things, always hated the physicalistic reduction of mind to brain and thought and feeling to epiphenomena and human being to animal. All that even though I was an atheist and believed in evolution. But maybe I was being stubbornly irrational about it -- I trusted my subjective introspective "knowledge" that human beings were way more than that.I would have agreed, however, based on my atheism I suppose, and general nihilism in the sense of believing we have no "formal purpose" as you defined it, all thanks to Darwin really, that morality makes no sense, or sin or virtue. But I would have denied, just on the basis of subjective experience, or on the basis of human history, or even literature, what you say about how ""free will" is meaningless" or that "Our thoughts are merely like water running downhill."Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Well, there's the whole shabang there, as you have very well expressed it.It all depends on whether one is a being or a thing.

Note your wording, because this is exactly what I'm talking about:
I said: You're not addressing the point that Faith was trying to make
You said: I am addressing the point.The whole concept central to my argument was the very part you left out of your statement. There's a difference between what a person says and what they mean, and it is the job of the scientifically minded person to try to understand the meaning if they want to avoid trivialized arguments that run on tangents to the path of the conversation.Yes, you did address the point by attacking the logic behind it, and that is precisely how scientifically minded people should argue with each other. However, if you want to have a meaningful discussion with someone outside this field, then you must understand that what we see as the most important base to an argument is the very thing that other people will find to be completely trivial. It is your job to understand what she means so that you can derive the logic behind it yourself. Only then can you offer your rebuttal. I know it sounds meticulous, but it's the price you pay for speaking a different language. You've just argued the very point I wanted to make! If people can have different tools and different standards about what constitutes a fact, even if everybody agrees that it's a fact, there will be consequences, particularly the observation that different logical outcomes branch from the same fact. Using the expression "student of the humanities" was a mistake because anyone who graduated Elementary School has studied both. I'll admit this, and add that I was aware of it at the time but couldn't come up with a better way to describe it. I guess I was hoping that you could forgive this little triviality if I explained the point well enough.The use of the word "languages," however, was supposed to be a metaphor that described the tendency for people to have miscommunications. You don't even need to cultures for this, you just need two people. Every person has their own unique understanding and interpretation of our language based on their experiences. I would say that describing our thoughts using words is analogous to describing numbers using integers. Given enough of them you can forgive a little round-off error, however, they are not precise. If you meticulously break down each one, there will almost always be negative consequences. That's a fair assumption; however it's not the case. My assumption is more of a grey area in thinking that many people have reasonable thoughts that they can't articulate well. This can happen when they're not precisely sure why they believe it, so when they argue points they aren't sure of and are refuted, they still retain the belief and continue trying. I believe that this combined with the fact that people have different opinions of what it means to articulate a point well contributes to a great amount of miscommunication.

Now I'm having trouble following you. I thought I'd disagreed with some part of what you were saying.But I think this subject has got out of my hand. It got going before I'd thought it through and all the strange and aggressively argued misunderstandings by others have made me lose interest.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Al modern fields of science derive from a desire to question and as such they are all related. It's unrealistic not to expect science to branch into new areas.Now as for the computer point, yes I stand by it. If a church (or some other dogmatic authority) had continually repressed scientific enquiry during our recent history then we would have had no means of accumulating the necessary knowledge to build computers.In any case, I now understand your views about the "sacred soul" of the human mind. I don't agree, as you might expect.I, for my part, dislike the idea of pleading a special case for humans. We are animals formed by nature. I see no reason why we should consider ourselves outside nature, as God's "special" creation with an "eternal soul".Cheers-Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.

OK I'll try to say it again. The idea that any church has any interest in suppressing ordinary science, the kind that builds computers, is completely wrong. You might as well be from some other planet for all you get anything I'm saying.And again, BEFORE I was a believer in God I KNEW human beings were far above animals and even nature in some sense. Stop trying to attribute this to religion. The term "sacred" never came up. You are making up the whole thing to suit yourself. There are many people who aren't believers who see it the same way, or always used to be.I don't know how much you really understand, as you claim, since you keep religifying it.