scientific method and truth ...

by soft+gentle 66 Replies latest jw friends

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  slimboyfat

  Those are value judgements not descriptions of the physical world that science tends to concern itself with.

  In general I agree with the statement that eating excrement is bad, but I also recognise it has a social context. It assumes that excrement can be harmful and that humans should avoid harm, as well as that excrement dirty and that we should avoid impurity.

  However it is funny you should bring up this example because I am actually considering undergoing a relatively new medical treatment known as a fecal transplant for a medical condition that I have. This essentially involves eating excrement. It is not ingested through the mouth but rather through a tube down the nose directly into the stomach. This method of insertion, as I understand it, is to avoid queasyness rather than hygiene, as it is ending up in the stomach anyway after all.

  So for some people, in certain circumstances, it may be good to eat excrement.

  But as I say, these are not the sort of statements that science generally concerns itself with anyway.
• 

  bohm

  Those are value judgements not descriptions of the physical world that science tends to concern itself with.

  no, that shit is bad to eat is not a value judgement, it is a known fact of medicine and something which can be readily checked. So which is it? Is the statement "shit is good[unhealthy] to eat" as true saying it is bad which you claimed before?

  In general I agree with the statement that eating excrement is bad, but I also recognise it has a social context. It assumes that excrement can be harmful and that humans should avoid harm, as well as that excrement dirty and that we should avoid impurity.

  It dosnt assume anything, it says directly eating shit is harmfull. You can claim that you enjoy eating shit and having diarea, it does not change the fact (which you clearly agree on by your argument!) that saying "eating shit is bad" (or harmfull, if you want to be obtuse) has a clear implication and is in fact true; how you feel about it afterwards is entirely unrelated. Are you really going to maintain all (scientific) statements are as close to truth as all others?

  For your example about eating shit, lets just say you are in fact eating escrements and not just certain bacteria in escrements, it is easily avoidable by making the statemts into a more specific form such as: "Eating shit from humans in larger quantities will often be unhealthy", again a purely scientific fact of how human stomacs work which can (and has!) been checked many times over.

  But as I say, these are not the sort of statements that science generally concerns itself with anyway.

  I think these are exactly the type of statements science concern itself with, do you now claim some statements are in fact closer to truth than others, just not scientific ones? What features distinguish the two classes of statements? Can you give examples?
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  slimboyfat

  The statements you provided are normative statements because they involve a value judgements. Science concerns itself with empirical statements of how things are, not how good or bad things are. Any sentence that calls something "good" or "bad" is not an empirical statement. It doesn't matter if everyone in the world agrees with the sentiment, that's not the point. It's about the kind of statement it is.

  Are you really going to maintain all (scientific) statements are as close to truth as all others?

  That is not exactly what I said. What I said is that we have no way of defining how close a statement is to the reality of the world, so that we can say one statement is closer to the truth than another. In order to measure how close a statement is to reality in an absolute sense we would need to step outside of language. That is not possible.

  Talking about the spatial proximity of an utterance to the truth is clearly metaphorical language anyway. What does it really mean to say that one statement is closer to reality than another? In metres or yards or inches or what? And how are you measuring it? Were we a mile from the truth of the universe in the days of Galileo and since Einstein we are now just a few metres away from the truth? How will we know when we have arrived at the exact location of the truth and are no longer merely travelling toward it? It is just a conventional way of talking that is useful in some circumstances. It has no bearing on the world as it exists in itself.
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  bohm

  SBF: I feel you are delibrately trying to misunderstand what i have written even though i think most children will understand clearly what is meant by "it is bad to eat shit". Anyway, to avoid this needless confusion, let me reask: Are you maintaining that (your quote) " I don't see how you can say one scientific statement is closer to the truth or closer to reality than another" applies to the two statements:

  (1) Eating shit from humans in larger quantities is likely to make you sick

  (2) Eating shit from humans in larger quantities is unlikely to make you sick

  If yes, do you think both statements are of equal value in order to determine what is good to eat or not? how come?
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  bohm

  I think you are comitting the fallacy of thinking a philosophical argument which is hard to argue against is true when it clearly conflict with what is obviously true, ex. Zenons "paradox" or arguments that "proove" we do not exist.
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  slimboyfat

  These are now empirical statements.

  I think it's certainly advisable to believe one statement rather than the other in most situations. This backs up my view that science has a practical function rather than an abstract epistomological one.
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  bohm

  SBF: why is it wiser to believe one over the other when they are both equally true and both equally close to reality?
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  EntirelyPossible

  There is a scat lovers forum if you folks are interested...
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  slimboyfat

  You have yet to explain what "close to reality" really means. When is a statement close to reality and when is it identical with reality and how can you tell the difference?

  It is advisable to believe one statement rather than another because of the consequences of doing so, not because of its supposed proximity to the world as it is in itself.
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  EntirelyPossible

  bohm, give it up, brother. Seriously, you have done all you can, what's the pointing in continuing with someone who is, apparently, purposefully refusing to understand?