The Radical Notion of David Hume

The Radical Notion of David Hume

If Hume awakened Kant from his philosophical slumber, perhaps we should take a closer look at Hume’s thoughts.  Hume’s thoughts may be more radical than is commonly thought, and perhaps Kant’s response to Hume was a spectacular failure.

Furthermore, if we take Hume seriously, and if we take science seriously, we must figure out what we are to do.  Hume’s critique attacks and destroys a major assumption of science itself.  If there is no serious answer to Hume, then science has no philosophical foundations, if we assume that Empiricism is true.  Perhaps Empiricism is not true, after all.

Taking notes on Kasser’s lectures a little over a year ago, I wrote the following:

Dave Hume’s conclusions are more radical than Berkeley’s.  Hume takes empiricism to some of its logical conclusions.  Hume wanted to bring experimental methods to philosophy.  Applying this rigorously, Hume discovered that some of our crucial notions have a questionable link to experience.  Experience merely reveals one set of sensations followed by others.  These sequences of sensations do not reveal any causal link among themselves, and thus, our notion of causality (cause and effect) has no grounding in experience.  Our sense impressions are always changing, and thus, we do not experience anything enduring.  Even our sense of self does not endure.  Hume also speculated that we may not be thinking beings, but beings that experience one series of impressions followed by others. 

Can we call anything evidence that we do not experience now?  Can we be sure that our memory of experience and impressions is real, accurate or true?  This reasoning process ends in a deep form of skepticism.

Among Hume’s conclusions was that some of our core notions are meaningless or have no basis in experience, or mean something different from what we would think on first impression.  With this, Hume questioned philosophy’s position with regard to science.  Where does philosophy fit in with regard to scientific empiricism?  Hume also concluded with a notion of what is called “Hume’s Fork.” Hume’s Fork claims that meaningful statements must be in one of two forms:  (1) relations of ideas, or (2) matters of fact.  (1) can be things such as logic or mathematics, while (2) can be the empirical sciences.  Hume, as one would expect, was interested in matters of fact.  He saw his project as discovering the laws of the mind as Newton discovered laws of nature.  

This is a very shocking conclusion drawn from a major philosopher.  Perhaps Kant was justified in thinking for many years upon what Hume was getting at.  Kant, perhaps the greatest thinker of modern times, was fully aware of this devastating conclusion that Hume drew from strictly applying the philosophy of Empiricism.

After the aforementioned notes, I made the following comments:

In contrast to Hume’s conclusions questioning the legitimacy of philosophy, he demonstrates the exact opposite.  If one claims that empiricism justifies science, Hume’s reasoning demonstrates the potential illegitimacy of empiricism, not philosophy.  Philosophy investigates and then subsequently poses questions.  If these investigations reveal the lack of grounding in philosophy for empiricism, the philosophical critique holds.  To conclude that this line of reasoning undermines philosophy is backwards.  When a messenger (philosophy) delivers a message (empiricism has no rational ground), one is not credible in questioning the messenger (dogmatically holding to empiricism and assuming – not proving – that philosophy is the culprit).

This discussion contributes to a widely held notion among defenders of science that lack of evidence to any idea places the idea outside the bounds of knowledge.  Even empirical science has to abstract several stages from experience to reason toward physical laws and principles.  Furthermore, scientists will question the evidence itself when such evidence contradicts an established theory; this common practice is a spectacular contribution to the demonstration of the legitimacy of philosophy.  When one rejects evidence on theoretical grounds, one is doing philosophy.  Finally, the empiricist assertion cannot be taken seriously when one considers the entire realm of mathematics, where one can reason completely within a system of thought without any evidence whatsoever.  It would be foolish to claim that mathematics is not knowledge.

In conclusion, we know from observing scientific work that evidence of the senses – experience - contributes to science, but it is not clear how to connect evidence to theory.  This effort was a spectacular failure of the classical empiricists.  Their promise of a method to connect experience to theory, and thereby setting all other knowledge outside the bounds of knowledge, does not work.

So, does experience reveal one set of sensations followed by others?  It seems that Kant attempted to make the mind active in taking the input from the things in themselves, with the mind actively processing these things, thus accounting for cause and effect within things as they appear.  We can marvel at Kant’s spectacular efforts in his Critique of Pure Reason, but this gets us nowhere further from Hume.  Kant did not escape Hume’s trap that if we are Empiricists, one set of sensations follow another.  Who cares if the mind organizes and processes this information?  It still leaves us at square one. 

Hume’s devastating attack on Empiricism, I think, was a final blow.  The problem is that Kant followed him with a dazzling brilliance and ability for analysis, that, perhaps we forget Hume in the bright light of Kant.  It appears to me that Kant sidestepped this issue with a philosophical sleight-of-hand, as it were.  He does not address the core issue, but attempts to move cause and effect around to sooth us, but not give us an ultimate answer.

Let us make this very clear with an illustration.  You are performing measurements on the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  You have a thermometer.  You are taking a serious of measurements.  Every half hour, you look at the thermometer and record the temperature in your laboratory book.  If you believe in Empiricism, that we must base all our theories on experience, what connects one measurement to another measurement?  Between the first and second measurement, what happened?  You do not know, because you did not observe it.  You can only infer what happened.  Wait – but if you infer what happened, you are not relying on observation to tell you what happened between measurements.  If we cannot infer what happens between measurements, we cannot do science as Empiricists.

We cannot say, under any circumstances, that we rely only on evidence for our knowledge and theories. 

So, what are we to say?

Freddy Martini

Philosophy of Science: Logical Positivism

Philosophy of Science: Logical Positivism

Professor Jeffery Kasser produced a series of 36 lectures through The Great Courses entitled Philosophy of Science.

These are my notes, commentary, and synopsis from Kasser’s lectures.  The author of this blog highly recommends this course as a high quality lecture on the philosophy of science.

One may purchase the entire course here.

Introductory Note

The efforts, struggles, and spectacular failures of Logical Positivism illustrate that the problems philosophy reveals about certain ideas eventually return to haunt us.  Connecting ideas to experience to find Truth is extremely difficult.  This discussion reveals the stubbornness of the problem, and perhaps the equal - or greater - stubbornness of Positivists.

Synopsis

Logical Positivists influenced the Philosophy of Science for several decades.  They also made the Philosophy of Science a major study.  As was the case with the Classical Empiricists, Einstein and others’ work in Physics impressed them.  19^th and late 20^th century German philosophy was the main impetus driving them; they did not like the direction German philosophers were taking philosophy.  Positivists believed that the philosophy of the day was speculative and an obstacle to scientific progress.  They were not worried about Pseudoscience as was Popper.  They worried that metaphysics and philosophy were getting in the way of science. 

The ‘Positivist’ part of Logical Positivism was derived from the work of August Compte, who had animus against traditional metaphysics.  The ‘Logical” part of Logical Positivism came from the belief in mathematical logic’s ability to provide methods to build a new empiricism favorable to science and unfavorable to metaphysics.  Hume’s Fork heavily influenced this version of empiricism: (1) the philosopher establishes the relations of ideas, not matters of fact, and (2) philosophy clarifies linguistic problems and establishes the relationship between statements and experience.

The principle of Logical Positivism is as follows: every meaningful statement is either (1) analytic or (2) makes a claim about experience.  Thus, there is a class of statements whereby we cannot say that they contain any Truth.  Imperatives and questions have meaning but not in the empirical sense; they are not candidates for Truth.  Poetry and poetic statements also do not aim for literal truth.

Analytic statements are true or false based upon their meaning, but they have no factual content.  Analytic statements are knowable a priori: this means that empirical evidence is not needed to establish their truth.   For example, no empirical evidence is needed to establish the truth of logical or mathematical propositions.  The power and importance of analytic statements is that analytic truths are necessary.  For example, ‘No bachelor is married’ is true by definition.  On the other hand, there can be a problem with analytic statements; we may be certain that every effect has a cause, but this certainty loses some of its importance if this assertion is merely based upon how we use the words ‘cause’ and ‘effect.’ 

Kasser explains that classical metaphysics is based upon facts, which makes them synthetic, but that the metaphysics is supposed to be knowable independent of experience.  Classical metaphysical claims hold no matter what experience shows.  Positivists claim that a factual claim’s meaning is limited to its claims about possible experience.  Positivists claim that metaphysical statements are not just merely true or false, but that they are incapable of bearing truth or falsehood.  Perhaps they are examples of unintentional poetry, they speculate - cynically, perhaps.

Logical Positivists claim that a statement must be true or false to be meaningful.  This statement must also have a correct method by which to determine whether or not it is true.  Analytic statements use mathematical or logical proof, which makes them verifiable.  If analytic statements can be linked correctly to a source, according to linguistic rules, they are meaningful.  The concern within the Philosophy of Science is empirical statements, which are not analytical, but synthetic.  Classical empiricism and operationalism focused upon connecting a term to experience for verification, while the logical positivists focused upon the meaning of a statement to connect it to experience.  This was a liberalization of empiricism, which some advances in logic made possible.  Using this method, a term gets its meaning from making meaningful statements; a term does not need its meaning independently established.  Verifiability of a synthetic statement involves finding possible observations that support its truth.  Actual observations assess the truth of the statement, not its meaningfulness.  The difficulty is the requirement whereby these observations are possible. 

A set of possible observations showing the conclusive truth of a statement is one way to ensure a statement’s verifiability.  This, however, may be impractical.  For example, establishing the truth of “All copper conducts electricity” with a finite number of observations is not possible.  Some Popper-influenced proposals substitute conclusive falsifiability with conclusive verifiability.  Combinations of these two approaches face many counter-examples: unobservable objects are a problem.  “That streak in the cloud chamber was produced by an electron” gets ruled out using these aforementioned rules.  If unobservable things get left out using these rules, we need a more practical, and possibly a weaker rule.  Ayer suggested that using a statement to derive observable statements that cannot be derived within it may work.  However, even this suggestion has problems; it is too weak because it lacks restrictions on auxiliary hypotheses.  For example, “If everything proceeds according to God’s plan, then this litmus paper will turn pink when placed in this solution” is an acceptable statement using Ayer’s suggestion.  A modified suggestion on this approach is to require the auxiliary hypothesis to be independently meaningful.  Kasser claims that this suggestion succumbs to technical objections.

These philosophical difficulties to the Logical Positivist approach strangely did not affect Positivism’s credibility.  The idea to connect meaningful statements to observation remained a powerful idea, but was tediously difficult, if not impossible to adequately defend.

Commentary

The claims of the Logical Positivists may sound good, but upon closer inspection, they do not survive careful philosophical objections.  It seems that their assertions, and the accompanying claims to truth, are presumptuous.  The Problem of Induction has been around for a long time, and the Positivist approach assumes that there is no problem with induction.  Perhaps, they have ignored the problem of induction. 

There is a serious problem with all empirical claims, and this problem goes to the root of science.  Defenders of science cannot ignore these problems as irrelevant and go on in a stubborn fashion taking Positivism for granted.  To state it boldly, there seems to be no way for the philosophical establishment of truth to a claim such as “All copper conducts electricity.”  This objection is not necessarily fatal for science from a practical view.  However, we must accept that this attack is possibly fatal to the scientific claim to philosophical truth.  It appears that many wish to establish scientific truth on the same level as that of mathematics.  This philosophical exercise shows that this is not true – at least not yet.

This attack has implications beyond science.  In our court systems, in legislation, and in the execution of law, we seem increasingly dependent upon scientific experts.  Science has a privileged status in government and within law.  Also, there is the competition for funds from government, companies, and many other organizations for the funding of scientific research.  However, how can we justify this privileged status when this claim to truth is in serious question?  Why should science get more funding than the humanities, literature, art, or even religion?  Why does it seem that science has a powerful privilege over these other important areas of human nature?  Who in their right mind can claim that poetry has no serious meaning?  Who will claim that great literature has no meaning because it does not fit the positivist approach?

Perhaps the spectacular successes of Newton, Einstein, and Maxwell provide a model of prestige that contemporary supporters of science research wish to emulate.  This prestige gives an air of authority and supposed truth to all claims of being “scientific.”  Perhaps this helps in raising funds for projects that otherwise would go unfunded.  However, we astute observers of science (and technology) must seriously question when this power over our institutions is detrimental to other important areas of human inquiry.  

Philosophy of Science: Classical Empiricism

Professor Jeffery Kasser produced a series of 36 lectures through The Great Courses entitled Philosophy of Science.

These are my notes, commentary, and synopsis from Kasser’s lectures.  The author of this blog highly recommends this course as a high quality lecture on the philosophy of science.

One may purchase the entire course here.

Friday, June 29, 2012

The argument that concepts should be connected to experience has a long history, even apart from science.  Before the logical positivists and the logical empiricists began their arguments at the beginning of the 20^th century, philosophy had been considering these issues a few centuries before.  Empiricism asserts - roughly - that the source of knowledge is through experience, or, more precisely, through experience from the senses.

Locke is regarded as the first empiricist.  His project was to find and determine the limits of knowledge.  He also wished to investigate the sources of knowledge, and to place a scope on knowledge.

Locke claimed that experience was the source of thought.  Everything inside the mind came from the senses.  Ideas are inside the mind but are composed of attributes taken only through the senses.  The mind perceives sights, sounds and other sensations, but cannot directly sense the physical object.  The mind has two basic powers: combination and abstraction.  Abstraction focuses on parts of an idea.  Combination allows the mind to take these parts of ideas and then rearrange them into new ideas; in some cases these ideas are not found in the world of experience– unicorns, for example. 

This philosophical point of view places limits on what we can know.  The inner nature of things is unavailable to us since our ideas are limited only to the perceptions provided by our senses.  There is no practical way to understand how these external objects interact with our senses to create the ideas within our minds. 

Empiricism helps to clarify ideas.  However, it does not give confidence that we can assume things about reality before we understand the limitations that the perceptual process places upon our access to knowledge of external objects. 

George Berkeley, another empiricist, claimed that reliance upon experience implies more radical conclusions than Locke proposed.  He claimed that we have no direct experience of matter, and we cannot get a complete idea of matter through abstraction.  He asserts that we cannot imagine anything without its properties.  The process by which material objects produce sensations within our minds is mysterious.  He claimed that God puts these ideas into our minds directly, and does not use matter as a medium to transmit these ideas into our minds.  He wanted us to abandon the effort to go beyond our experience and sense organs to access the matter (or things) behind these sense impressions. 

What we experience through our senses is the world itself; there are no objects imprinting themselves upon our sense organs.  We can discover the patterns created within our experiences, and learn to predict subsequent patterns; Newton’s Laws are an example of the discovery of these patterns.  Science develops rules on the experiences we will have.

Berkeley wanted to purge skepticism and atheism from philosophy.  He saw his work contributing to these ends.

Dave Hume’s conclusions are more radical than Berkeley’s.  Hume takes empiricism to some of its logical conclusions.  Hume wanted to bring experimental methods to philosophy.  Applying this rigorously, Hume discovered that some of our crucial notions have a questionable link to experience.  Experience merely reveals one set of sensations followed by others.  These sequences of sensations do not reveal any causal link among themselves, and thus, our notion of causality (cause and effect) has no grounding in experience.  Our sense impressions are always changing, and thus, we do not experience anything enduring.  Even our sense of self does not endure.  Hume also speculated that we may not be thinking beings, but beings that experience one series of impressions followed by others. 

Can we call anything evidence that we do not experience now?  Can we be sure that our memory of experience and impressions is real, accurate or true?  This reasoning process ends in a deep form of skepticism.

Among Hume’s conclusions was that some of our core notions are meaningless or have no basis in experience, or mean something different from what we would think on first impression.  With this, Hume questioned philosophy’s position with regard to science.  Where does philosophy fit in with regard to scientific empiricism?  Hume also concluded with a notion of what is called “Hume’s Fork.” Hume’s Fork claims that meaningful statements must be in one of two forms:  (1) relations of ideas, or (2) matters of fact.  (1) can be things such as logic or mathematics, while (2) can be the empirical sciences.  Hume, as one would expect, was interested in matters of fact.  He saw his project as discovering the laws of the mind as Newton discovered laws of nature. 

Many wonder if Hume’s project is psychology.  Many also wonder if the Philosophy of Science and Philosophy in general is psychology without the experiments.

Toward the end of the lecture, we observe several issues that the empiricists of the 17^th and 18^th centuries had to deal with:

• How to reconcile experience with reasoning in order to do serious science and philosophy?
• Can philosophy connect experience to reasoning processes to demonstrate its legitimacy?
• Is philosophy merely science without evidence?

Commentary

In contrast to Hume’s conclusions questioning the legitimacy of philosophy, he demonstrates the exact opposite.  If one claims that empiricism justifies science, Hume’s reasoning demonstrates the potential illegitimacy of empiricism, not philosophy.  Philosophy investigates and then subsequently poses questions.  If these investigations reveal the lack of grounding in philosophy for empiricism, the philosophical critique holds.  To conclude that this line of reasoning undermines philosophy is backwards.  When a messenger (philosophy) delivers a message (empiricism has no rational ground), one is not credible in questioning the messenger (dogmatically holding to empiricism and assuming – not proving – that philosophy is the culprit).

This discussion contributes to a widely held notion among defenders of science that lack of evidence to any idea places the idea outside the bounds of knowledge.  Even empirical science has to abstract several stages from experience to reason toward physical laws and principles.  Furthermore, scientists will question the evidence itself when such evidence contradicts an established theory; this common practice is a spectacular contribution to the demonstration of the legitimacy of philosophy.  When one rejects evidence on theoretical grounds, one is doing philosophy.  Finally, the empiricist assertion cannot be taken seriously when one considers the entire realm of mathematics, where one can reason completely within a system of thought without any evidence whatsoever.  It would be foolish to claim that mathematics is not knowledge.

In conclusion, we know from observing scientific work that evidence of the senses – experience - contributes to science, but it is not clear how to connect evidence to theory.  This effort was a spectacular failure of the classical empiricists.  Their promise of a method to connect experience to theory, and thereby setting all other knowledge outside the bounds of knowledge, does not work.

Philosophy of Science: Operationalism

Philosophy of Science: Operationalism

Professor Jeffery Kasser produced a series of 36 lectures through The Great Courses entitled Philosophy of Science.

These are my notes, commentary, and synopsis from Kasser’s lectures.  The author of this blog highly recommends this course as a high quality lecture on the philosophy of science.

One may purchase the entire course here.

Operationalism was part of a spectacular attempt, followed by failure, of logical positivism (or logical empiricism).  To understand operationalism, we must first discuss the effect of Einstein on the thinking about science at that time.

The principle of relativity pre-dated Einstein.  If two people are floating in empty space, they are moving with respect to one another without regard to any other objects – any other objects are not needed to define their motion with respect to each other.  A similar principle applies when one is on a ship at sea on smooth waters within a room inside the ship with no windows.  Objects move within that room as if they were in a room on land.  If I were running away from a guy named Jim at 10 miles per hour, and Jim threw a baseball past me at 30 miles per hour, then relative to me, the ball would be moving 20 miles per hour.  This idea worked out fine for all known objects at the time except for one: light.  No matter how fast an object moved, light always appeared to move away from that same object at the same speed in all directions.  The core problem for science at that time was the relativity of all other objects, and the non-relativity of the speed of light. 

Einstein proposed a radical solution to this problem.  He did not ignore the results; he accepted the measurements.  He instructed his peers that they needed to reevaluate core assumptions about space and time.  The mistake was to assume that we had clear ideas about time and length.  Einstein’s solution accepted the data by allowing time and length to expand and contract.  Our mistaken assumptions could be fixed if we focused upon the experience and measurements of the investigation.  This idea of focus upon the measurements and the data had a profound influence upon the scientists of that time.

P. W. Bridgman attempted a solution to this problem in light of Einstein’s proposals.  His solution is called Operationalism.  Operationalism insists that one’s concepts and ideas should never supersede looking directly at nature – looking directly at the measurements and the experiences of the scientific investigation.  We must always ensure that something in nature – something in the experience of the investigation – clearly corresponds to our concepts. 

Operationalism defines scientific concepts in terms of operations we must perform to measure or observe things corresponding to the concept.  Length, for example, is not a property inherent in an object, as one may suppose; but a series of operations or procedures one uses with a device such as a meter stick.  For operationalism, this is all length is – similarly for any other property.  One must also ponder that this also means that all different procedures from measuring the same property are, strictly speaking, different operations; using a meter stick versus using radar are two different definitions of length.  Bridgman proposed that some phenomena are directly observable and need no operational procedure. 

Operationalism has some problems which seem to defy solution.  How does one specify that during the performance of an operational procedure one does not have any additional factors affecting the measurement?  For example, how does one design an operation that eliminates forces of magnetism and radiation pressure for the measurement of an object’s weight upon a balance scale?  There is a strange and open question as to how one can claim that a mercury thermometer and an alcohol thermometer measure the same characteristic of temperature when the operational procedures are not the same.  Another example Kasser points out is the measurement of temperature on the Sun.  We have no measurement device to perform this operation (we are told).  Thus, what we call temperature on the surface of the sun is not an operational definition, but assumes temperature as a concept apart from a measurement device, which is against the point of operationalism.

Brief Commentary

It seems that we cannot get away from abstract concepts.  Many in science claim that it is strictly empirical and focused upon observation and data.  However, even a basic, observable idea such as length is an abstract concept.  One must use abstract reasoning to understand that length measurements of a radar and length measurements of a meter stick have in common the exact same concept of ‘length.’ 

The old Problem of Universals in philosophy has been around for thousands of years, and nobody can get around it, as far as we can tell.  For example, nobody can point in space to a physical object corresponding to the idea of ‘the square root of two.’  One must use non-physical abstract reasoning to understand the square root of two.  And, nobody can provide empirical evidence of the existence of the square root of two.  However, only a strange person would deny the reality of the square root of two.  The same problem seems to apply to science: all its units are abstract ideas.  Empirical claims do not rely strictly on observation.  Science cannot ignore these metaphysical problems.

Philosophy of Science: The Problem of Demarcation

Philosophy of Science: The Problem of Demarcation

Professor Jeffery Kasser produced a series of 36 lectures through The Great Courses entitled Philosophy of Science.

These are my notes, commentary, and synopsis from Kasser’s lectures.  The author of this blog highly recommends this course as a high quality lecture on the philosophy of science.

One may purchase the entire course here.

What makes science so special?  It seems to be special.  It makes extraordinary claims.  It usually speaks with authority in our courts and in all sections of government policy.  What is the basis of its power or prestige?  Does it deserve this prestige and power?

It seems that since science is so powerful and prestigious that we should have some criteria by which to define something as scientific.  There should be a procedure by which we can determine whether or not something is called science: we should be able to clearly determine what is included in science and what is excluded from science.  This is called the Problem of Demarcation.  Thus, we should define what is considered science and what we can call pseudo-science.

One may claim that a scientific claim is true, and that a pseudo-scientific claim is false.  One should be very careful with this claim, because upon close examination, it does not stand.  Science often makes claims that are false.  If the criterion for being scientific is falsifiability, then if one is to do science, some false predictions will happen, and are expected.  On the other hand, many pseudo-sciences often make true claims.  Astrology occasionally makes true claims with regard to your horoscope; some claims are false, but so are many scientific claims.  Thus, the truth or falsity of a claim cannot be the sole criteria of whether or not something is scientific.  If false claims are excluded from science, then we cannot get started with science by testing whether or not some claims are false in the first place.

Karl Popper made a useful contribution to the philosophy of science by attempting to define a core feature of a scientific claim, which was widely influential in his time and even today.  Popper wanted to distinguish what science was doing as opposed to that Freud, Marx, and Adler were doing; he considered the work they did as outside of the boundaries of science.  In their time, however, their work was widely considered scientific. 

One of Popper’s shocking assertions is that science is not special because of its conformance to observational evidence.  Pseudo-science uses plenty of evidence.  Astrology is a good example.  Observation is cheap: one can use observations to prove virtually anything.  Freud and Marx could make just about any evidence fit their theories.  This was a bad characteristic of their theories, according to Popper.  Evidence does not falsify pseudo-scientific claims.  Fitting data well is not is not the mark of a scientific theory. 

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was a genuine scientific theory according to Popper.  Einstein’s theory made predictions.  These predictions were testable.  More importantly, these theories were falsifiable.  Einstein claimed that the sun’s gravitational field would bend light.  The theory survived a severe test after experiments observed this bold claim.

Popper claims that a scientific theory is falsifiable.  Science should make bold claims and then seek to falsify them.  Popper claimed that this is what scientists actually do and what they should do: this was an “is” and an “ought” proposition from Popper.  This, however, is not to be interpreted as a necessary condition; it is only a sufficient condition.  Not all falsifiable claims are scientific, but all scientific claims are falsifiable. 

Popper was not saying that people like Freud, Marx, and Adler did not say important things.  He was merely asserting that we cannot call their work scientific.  Popper even originally claimed that Darwin’s theory was pseudo-scientific, until later on when he changed his mind after a closer inspection of the theory.

Such a nice, straight-forward criteria for at least entry into the category of science sounds about right to many, but there are some problems with Popper’s approach.  Kasser’s example is a good illustration, “There is at least one gold sphere at least one mile in diameter in the universe.”  Such a claim does not appear to be falsifiable, but it does not appear to be unscientific either.  Statistical claims also appear unfalsifiable.  Kasser’s example is that a run of 50 sixes in a row does not falsify a claim that the die is fair.  Another problem is that if a theory is treated scientifically, is it science, or does the theory have to be stated scientifically?  It is also not clear if theories should be rejected simply because the theory does not conform to some observed results; the measuring instruments could have been defective, or the data may have been subject to fluctuations within the tolerance of the aforementioned statistical error. 

The virtue of Newton’s theory was that it explained a lot, not that it was falsifiable.  Thus, is it not clear that a theory is not scientific if it provides good explanations.  Perhaps if the data fits perfectly to the theory, the theory should be taken seriously in some cases.  Thus, Popper’s claim, while somewhat useful, is not air-tight, and in some cases, it appears not to offer any help in defining the necessary conditions of a scientific theory. 

Kasser claims that it is difficult to interpret falsifiability whereby physics passes the test and Freud does not.  Perhaps this is because in the process of doing physics, many ideas are falsified, and then reworked until they fit, as they would in Freud’s work and approach.  Kasser is not claiming that there is no difference between, say, Astrology and Physics; he is claiming that it is very difficult to see how Physics meets the falsifiability criteria while Astrology does not. 

In doing science, one cannot merely reject theories that have failed confirmation by evidence; if this were the case, science would stop.  A major task of science is reconciling the theory and the data: refining, regrouping, rearranging, and correcting failures of fit.  One must always be reminded that one cannot merely reject false theories as unscientific while asserting falsifiability criteria.  Popper stresses that science should make bold assertions and then seek to falsify them.  Thus, even false theories can be scientific, if they can be formatted according to the falsification criteria, according to Popper.  Such fields such as medicine tolerate a lot of false claims and theories due to its extreme complexity, but one can hardly claim that medical research is not scientific.

Other criteria have been proposed as solutions to the scientific Problem of Demarcation.  None look as hopeful as Popper’s criteria.  One proposal is that progress is a mark of science.  However, fields such as Chemistry have not progressed much in the last 50 years, while one may argue that Astrology has made progress with more data available on the position of the planets and the stars to aid in predictions for horoscopes.  Another proposal is that pseudo-science has no explanatory mechanism, while science does.  On the contrary, one must be reminded that one of the most successful scientific theories in history, Newton’s laws, posit the attraction of planets toward each other with some mysterious force called gravity that “reaches out” and “pulls” these large bodies together.  Newton does not attempt to explain the mechanism of gravity, but merely describes what happens with predictions that are more or less accurate.  Another proposal is that science is whatever a community of scientists says it is.  One must be reminded, however, that in the Soviet Union, there was a state-sponsored consensus on the truth of the biological theories of Lysenko, which is considered pseudo-science today.  There are proposals that pseudo-science is of dubious origin.  This does not work because almost all of science emerged from mythology or speculation; Alchemy preceded Chemistry.  A final illustrative proposal is that pseudo-science uses defective forms of reasoning in their theorizing.  If this is true, what of scientific theories that use reasoning by analogy, such as the gas laws which assume that gas molecules are little round balls?  Pseudo-science uses plenty of argument by analogy, and so does what is considered as real science. 

Kasser discusses an important debate in the court system which bears on the scientific Problem of Demarcation.  Forms of Creationism have not fared well within the US court system, where is has generally been declared to be pseudo-scientific.  However, as we have discussed above, there is no sure way of Demarcation in science, and all the arguments claiming that Creationism is pseudo-science can be applied to other legitimate branches of science.  It seems that the Problem of Demarcation has not been solved, and thus, calling something pseudo-science is problematic without this solution.

Kasser concludes with the claims that most philosophers do not think that the scientific Problem of Demarcation has received enough attention.  We cannot develop sure criteria for distinguishing between poor scientific theories and non-scientific theories.  If we do not address the Problem of Demarcation, we have no basis to declare that Astrology or Creationism as unscientific.  Furthermore, if we do not develop an adequate basis for scientific Demarcation, then declaring something as scientific is not much of an accomplishment.  For clarification, Kasser explains just because there are no criteria for scientific Demarcation does not mean that none can be formed. 

In conclusion, the scientific Problem of Demarcation is extremely difficult to formulate, and no criteria are satisfactory to date.  This presents problems because institutions must choose some criteria for scientific funding.  If there are no criteria for defining what is and is not science, how can we formulate acceptable criteria as to what is good science worthy of funding?  There are also legal and political consequences for this Demarcation problem since courts often decide what is good, bad or pseudo-science with regard to public policy on issues of public school curricula (creationism), environmental policy (pollution), regulations (smoking), medical funding, and health care, among other things.  Often, governments institute laws and regulations from the basis of scientific studies and scientific authority.  However, this study has illustrated that we cannot easily define what science is, much less why it is special and deserves such authority and recognition.

We often feel that science is special and deserves some authority and respect, but we have not gotten past its definition any further than, “I know it when I see it.”

Philosophy Essay: Existentialism, Part Two

This paper is a book review and a synopsis of, “Existentialism for Dummies,” written by Christopher Panza and Gregory Gale.  It is also a partial essay on Existentialism.  The author strongly recommends the aforementioned book.

The book is available at Amazon here.

This is Part Two of a Series.

Part One can be found here.

Part Two

Our unique way of existing in the world

What is the meaning of human existence?  What makes human existence unique?  What is the meaning of existence?  There are things that we may call beings, such as common objects: pencil, stove, sink, car, road, rock, book, etc.  These are objects or beings existing in the world around us.  When we move to the question of existence, the mode of language shifts slightly from “a being” to “being” or “existence.”  It is one thing to be.  It is another thing to question everything – i.e., everything in the universe and in our minds – and ask as Heidegger asked, “Why does all this exist rather than there just being nothing?”  Not only are we asking why do we exist as humans, but why does anything exist at all.  It seems that Heidegger was the first to investigate this aspect of philosophy with seriousness. 

How do we investigate existence?  Science is not the answer, since science only looks at things as objects – from the outside.  A human being is not an object that can be observed from the outside after which one can write a coherent theory on this sample or multiple samples of humans.  Again, man has interiority, or, intentionality, that is unavailable for access by any scientific instrumentation.  Technologists may invent amazing machines to perform brain scans, but they will never be able to understand how you experience a red apple.  This experience is not available to anyone or anything exterior from a person.

Engagement

The human method of existence according to some existentialists, such as Martin Heidegger, involves being engaged with the world.  Humans must exist within a social context and must live life through engagement with projects and goals.  Animals may have goals of survival, but it is not likely they have projects.  The social world and the physical world provide humans with tools and equipment to engage in the world.  Our lives are oriented socially and toward activity through projects, goals, tools, and equipment.

Space

Another aspect of existence is Space.  As expected, this concept is not the scientific sense of the term involving meters, centimeters and square kilometers.  It is the space of engaging with the world within your existential situation.  Where or how are we situated?  How are we acting with reference to our social situation, our goals, or our equipment?  Some concerns are closer to you.  Other concerns are foreign to you.  How far are you away from West Indian cooking recipes?  How close are you to the politics of your local library’s elections for Director of Procurement?  How close are you to your work and your goals?  How close are you to the concerns of your family and friends?   So, the space of our existential situation is a way of describing the connection and intensity with regard to the particulars existing within our situation.

Meaning

Existentialists claim that humans can live without many things; however, humans cannot live without meaning.  Men will give their lives in charging a military position, if they know that their mission or cause has meaning to them.  However, our lives, as we are given, have no inherent meaning; we must create our own.  Creating meaning in our lives is not an easy task since the old systems are no longer able to give us confidence in their efficacy; we must start almost from scratch.  Perhaps we can use pieces of the old systems, but we must create meaning ourselves for ourselves. 

Since we are engaged in goals and projects, we need tools.  The essence of the pursuit of something implies that we will use things available to us as tools or instruments to pursue our values.  Sometimes tools are readily available to us.  At other times, we must search for them. 

Heidegger explains that, in living in this world, it is necessary to come into contact with other beings like ourselves.  We are using tools to pursue our projects.  Some of these tools we create, and other tools are created by others.  In the first years of our lives we are completely dependent upon others for our survival.  As we become more competent, we develop the ability to create our own tools, make more choices, and interact with others in trading one value for another.

However, in our interaction with others, we risk becoming inauthentic if we simply accept the social values and social trends around us.  To go along to get along puts us at risk to pursuing the values of others, possibly to the detriment of our own.  To be authentic, we pursue our values, and we must be honest with ourselves in what we are doing, and not passively accept the values of the social situation we find ourselves in.  Sometimes this is not easy; but, being authentic is always a struggle.  It is especially a struggle if our values are much different from those within our social situation. 

Passion in our lives

Existentialists suggest that we need passion in our lives.  In the pursuit of our values, we must increase our risk, accept the struggles and fights accompanying such pursuits, and engage in life with a large dose of zeal.  We are to be engaged with the people and the things around us.  Our tools to pursue our projects, the people with which we interact in life and our work are all potential objects of our passions.  It is not exactly what you do that concerns existentialists; it is how you do it.  Life is to be worked with, fought with, wrestled with, and engaged.  It is to take your life seriously and to seriously live your life.  This passion is focused and intense.  It is focused upon being a Subject that chooses how it interacts, instead of a passive object to be acted upon.  

Finding Something Worth Dying For

We should find a cause in our lives that expresses our values, and expresses our lives.  We should find a cause such that it is worth dying for; one must find a reason to live such that one stakes one’s life upon it.  Living otherwise is undignified.  Choosing this cause will undoubtedly include some measure of mystery and risk, since we are not guaranteed success or failure.  We cannot predict how things will turn out after we make certain decisions.  Since life has a large element of absurdity, some of the consequences may be strange and senseless, thus mysterious. 

Engagement to Live in Truth

Existentialists make the bold claim that when a person engages with life in a passionate way as we have heretofore described, this person exists in the Truth.  Typically, when we loosely speak of truth, we mean objective truth.  However, existentialists are more interested in subjective truth.  Instead of something externally discovered, it is something that we appropriate and make our own.  This does not mean that we ignore objective truth.  It just means that when determining how to live our lives, we must know it subjectively.  Subjective truth implies how we are involved and engaged with the world.  When we speak of objective truth, we know about the properties of an external object.  When we speak of subjective truth, we speak of how we subjectively know something, how we are connected to something with meaning – what does this mean to me?  The objective truth says that this table is made of wood.  The subjective truth may claim that this table is a symbol of the strength of my family when I can remember them gathered around the table each night for dinner.  One can be put to a scientific test with instrumentation; the other is inaccessible to the scientific method from a physical perspective.

One paradox that Kierkegaard notices is that the more one pursues the objective truth of the object of our passions, the less passionate we become about it.  Thus, the passionate pursuit of our truth value involves some uncertainty about its objectivity.  This is another aspect of Existentialism that illustrates that risk and uncertainty are important aspects of the pursuit of our goals with passion.    

In shifting to a subjective view of the Truth, one can find a Truth that is yours and yours alone.  An objective Truth belongs to all, a subjective Truth may or may not. 

In uncovering Truth that is yours and yours alone, it is important to understand that crowds of people do not find this type of Truth.  Since subjective Truth is yours and yours alone, you must look for it apart from the crowds.  You must find this Truth within yourself.  This can be scary for those accustomed to seeking consensus from others, but living according to one’s values requires us to make the effort.

Modern Temptation Toward the Easy Life

Modern life is dull.  It drains us of passion. We are encouraged to pursue the easy life.  We look for ways to distract ourselves from facing existential questions and engaging existence around us.  This is the age of mediocrity where we are encouraged to pursue the average, or pursue a bourgeois life of well-being with a minimization of risk.  Simulation of engagement is another aspect of this: how many people play video games to simulate passionate and dangerous situations?  We want the feeling of danger without the real danger.  People want to attend protests, but they do not want to risk arrest, jail or death; feeling like one makes a difference instead of actually making a difference.  Often people get together and write up revolutionary documents, publish them, and then go home feeling as though they made a difference.  Often, playing it safe in our modern age seems like the smart move.

Media as an Instrument of Untruth

Kierkegaard attacked the media.  He saw the crowd as a threat to subjective Truth.  However, with printing, one gets wide distribution of the voice of the crowd or the “public.”  Media tempts us to get involved on issues and subjects about which we know very little, and about which we would care little otherwise.  Often media issues are very far removed from issues that are concrete to us and “close to home” to the point where we neglect many things “at hand” in our lives for things far away and often irrelevant to us.  The media also gives the crowd an appearance of strength, and even Truth, which makes it extremely dangerous.  It is easy to deal with others’ issues since it does not involve any risk; it illustrates another case of moderns not confronting the issues in front of their own lives.  The press invites us to spend time and effort on fake issues, and in the meantime, the minutes of our lives slip away on unimportant things at the expense of our values.  Also we are spread so thin among a variety of issues to the point where we cannot focus a sufficient amount of time on a single issue so that we know the issue competently; this produces superficiality about subjects about which we know little, and upon which we are tempted to pontificate. 

Philosophy Essay: Existentialism, Part One

This paper is a book review and a synopsis of, “Existentialism for Dummies,” written by Christopher Panza and Gregory Gale.  It is also a partial essay on Existentialism.  The author strongly recommends the aforementioned book.

The book is available at Amazon here.

This is Part One of a Series.

Part Two can be found here.

Part One

Introduction and Summary

The word “Existentialism” implies something about existence.  This is true.  It is about the unique way humans exist.  It also implies another aspect of humans: non-existence.  All humans will eventually stop existing; this non-existence is another aspect of engaging in the unique way of human existence. 

Some think Existentialism began with Nietzsche.  He is certainly one of the Fountainheads of the movement.  Others include Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Soren Kierkegaard, among others.    

Existentialism has many common themes often misunderstood by dilettantes.  “God is dead” is perhaps the most provocative theme, although, if taken literally, this statement is mistaken.  Absurdity is another theme as the writers deal with the infinite capacity of people to make sense of the world, with spectacular failure.  Authenticity and freedom, along with avoiding being swept away in the notions of the crowd, are some of the other themes. 

The philosophy encourages us to take a closer look at what it means to live in modernity without the guides to life that former generations had.  We are thrown into this volatile age, and then we have to deal with it with passion, meaning, and authenticity.

“God is dead,” and what this really means (It's not to be taken at face value)

We hear about the Existentialists phrase, “God is dead.”  However this is not meant literally in many cases, because there are Christian Existentialists.  This is also not a cause for celebration; those who read or hear the phrase may take the meaning the wrong way.  This is rather an observation about the state of things.  This is reality as we experience it in this age.  More precisely, universal systems of thought are no longer functional or useful to humans.  The time when there was a broad consensus on the systems of religion, philosophy and thought is gone.  Society is fragmented on these systems.  Contrary to some, the God of reason is no substitute for the church, because men are inherently irrational, even when one claims reason as his primary tool of living.  Science is sometimes seen as a replacement for religion.  However, science does not deal with questions of value; it only deals with questions of physical fact.  Science cannot attach meaning to life, nor can it issue any useful guides to living one’s life. 

In losing universal systems of thought, such as religion, reason, or science, we must depend upon ourselves to determine what we will use as a replacement.  We are virtually free to choose any system of thought we wish.  We can determine our values and choose a system in congruence with those values.  Also, we are thrown into a world with no value system, and, thus, we are without compass.  We are no longer broadly instructed on the correct systems of thought.   Whatever we choose could turn out successfully, or it could turn out to be a serious mistake.   

Moods in an empty world

One way to determine how we interact with the world is through our moods.  Our moods reveal to us how we are engaging with the world at a particular moment, and also in general.  As we strive and thrust our way into the world, we experience anxiety.  We do not know if our decisions will be successful or not.  We can choose something at one point, and the consequences may not be what we expect.  We also face tough decisions in life, and these moments induce dread often because any choice has consequences that we would rather not deal with.  Angst is another mood flavor accompanying the general feeling that we do not have an overarching compass given to us at birth with which we can navigate our lives.  The idea that we are free, and that we have thousands of options and choices, can make us feel dizzy.  A life path predetermined with all the correct choices laid out neatly is comforting.  However, with free choice and no systems other than those of our own making to help us choose wisely, we can feel like we are not standing on solid ground; vertigo or dizziness is usually a consequence. 

Challenge: Absurdity and Authenticity

We are thrown into a world of choices and consequences.  Often, this world does not make sense to us.  The world is fundamentally irrational with regard to our engagement with the world.  Yes, there is logic, and something called a scientific method, but there is no encompassing rationality as to how we should live, what we are to choose as our values, and which values are more valuable than others.  Accidents are everywhere: innocent children die in senseless car accidents, people fall and become disabled for life, and people develop misunderstandings between one another on seemingly accidental events or actions.  We are inclined and often feel compelled to make sense of the world.  We are an order-imposing species.  When something senseless happens, such as the death of a child, we will often make up narratives like “it was meant to be” in order not to face the fact that it was completely senseless, and has no other meaning other than that which we give to it. 

How can we be genuine?  How can we live life as we choose to live and how do we determine how to live it?  How do we become authentic when there are so many things out there fighting us from being who we wish to be and preventing us or slowing us down from making the choices that we wish to make?  Authentic people are in control of themselves.  They are in control of their value system, and make choices in congruence with their values.  These are genuine people.  Worldly authenticity involves surveying the fashions of the day, and then conforming one’s choices to the herd or the crowd, or perhaps confirming to the group one just happens to be a part of.  To allow a group or a crowd to determine one’s values is not living life authentically. 

What kind of being are we?  We are different from inanimate physical objects because we have life; however, a dog has life, and we are also different from dogs.  We have the ability to think about the past and the future, and to create new objects and ideas with our imagination; it is unlikely that dogs or any other animals have this ability.  We have an interior world.  We are not just an object, but we are a subject.  Our interior life is what is most important to us.  It is where our values are, and it is the point of view whereby we interact with the exterior world. 

Being a subject also implies that science cannot help us figure out the meaning of life.  The scientific method always deals with objects.  Even when psychologists make claims about people, they are still observing the person as an object.  The interior subject is not accessible through the scientific method.  Only the subject may access his interior, and perhaps choose to communicate the contents of this interior only as he is able and as he wishes.  The interior is not an object for observation from anyone except the subject – the person.  

There is much absurdity to humanity.  Humans have the capacity for reason, but in practice, this is not always the case.  Perhaps it is rare for humans to be reasonable or rational.  Every state has a need for a criminal justice system to punish the wicked.  Wars break out between civilized nations with unbelievable carnage.  Women cheat on their husbands, and then get killed by a jealous man.  Bar fights break out after too much drinking.  Teenagers have to test their mettle by getting into trouble.  People get bored, and begin to make trouble in various ways.  Even though humans have the capability of reason, it seems that nature also hardwires our behavior toward destruction, crime, and violence.  We go to work with the purpose of producing a product or service with the cooperation of our fellow employees.  However, inevitably, disagreements break out, misunderstandings happen, people get angry and people get fired, only to be replaced by another set of people who begin the cycle again.  Even seemingly good people have no choice but to get involved in these skirmishes and fights.  Strife is everywhere, and rationality is rarely the rule. 

To choose the path of least resistance is to pander to the crowd, avoid fights and conflicts, and to please everyone as much as possible.  However, if we do this, we lose a lot.  We lose our authenticity by following the crowd, and pleasing others at the expense of our values.  The path of least resistance is easy.  Being an authentic individual is hard.  Engaging in the world to create and obtain our values is not easy, and one cannot obtain their values using the path of least resistance.  Following the crowd is not living life authentically.  Seeking the approval of others is not the path to authenticity. 

Perhaps the easiest path that avoids all the strife required to obtain our values is suicide.  Then again, this is not the path to pursuing our values, because suicide destroys all our values.  Perhaps the cowardly suicide is the path of least resistance par excellence. 

If life is continuous strife and striving in the process of the pursuit of our values, how can we make sense of this?  What is the point?  There is the legend of Sisyphus.  King Sisyphus was condemned to roll a bolder up a hill, and just before this bolder went over the hill, it would roll back down the hill, forcing the King to push the rock up again and again.  This was punishment for the King for thinking that he was cleverer than Zeus.  Sisyphus is a symbol for pointless work and effort.  Existentialist writers use this symbology and often speculate that Sisyphus has a smirk on his face.  The smirk implies that the King embraces the absurdity of his situation.  Camus speculates that there is no fate that cannot be overcome by scorn, and he even recommends an attitude of revolt toward the world.  Perhaps if we face the absurdity of life with a smirk and scorn, we can be free to accept the situation as it is, and continue to press on as we can toward our values, even if we do not obtain them, and even if we face absurd situations in the process.  

The Adults are Coming to fix the Mess in Science

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/what-happened-before-the-big-bang-the-new-philosophy-of-cosmology/251608/

Good news for a change. Some really smart people are digging in and trying to straighten out the mess in modern science that can usually be traced back to Heisenberg and similar types. Philosophy takes back its proper role having full authority OVER science, and indeed authority over every other field of study. The adults are coming!

Knowing the Story

You think you know the story?  Well, there is the public story, and then there is the inside story.  So, once you know the inside story, you can relax, right?  Well, then there is the Inner Circle story.  Even further, there is the Elite Inner Circle story.  Finally, there is the story straight from the source.  But, then, wait – the source probably does not even know its own motivations and unconscious motives – so there is another story.  That was 6 layers of The Story.  So, do you still believe what you hear?