mfbukowski Posted January 16, 2016 Posted January 16, 2016 7 hours ago, Walden said: Wow, you should look into Humanism, as it embraces these ideals you speak of, without the need for myth. LOL! I agree we are humanists but guess what? I would like you to prove how humanism is "true" The only possible way is defining truth contextually. Humanism works as paradigm for human behavior to produce ideal people, just as Mormonism does And science also produces ideal paradigms which work for the purposes for which they are designed. In other words as section 93 says " 30 All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it" 1
mfbukowski Posted January 16, 2016 Posted January 16, 2016 7 hours ago, volgadon said: Also, if all that Harris is doing is using data from the sciences in order to craft and support his argument, then Hume's divide is not really an obstacle. Thus is pretty much what any reasoning on morals does. However, if he is claiming that you can derive morality objectively from the scientific process, then he runs up against Hume. The problem is that all he is doing is saying that "everyone prefers happiness" or fulfillment or whatever. Utility. It's like saying that everyone prefers green. Nice, but that is, as you say a scientific observation. It says nothing about WHY people prefer green or what is "good" about it or why you should also prefer green When I told my mamma that everyone else was doing something, she would say "What? If everyone was jumping off the bridge would you jump off the bridge?" Clearly anyone who does not understand Hume had a bad childhood. 1
Stargazer Posted January 16, 2016 Posted January 16, 2016 (edited) I am not sure if this is the place for the following, but.... I find it vaguely amusing that the same people who vigorously discount the possibility of the existence of God and the consequent set of ethics that the belief it Him entails will wax rhapsodic about the square root of negative one (the "imaginary number") and use it in the most wildly unbelievable places to reach not only purely mathematical objectives, but also real-world solutions to certain problems. The source of the amusement is the fact that they can define what the imaginary number is, but no-one can point to an object and state that there it is. And they say that God doesn't exist, as if not being able to see Him is decisive. Despite the obvious utility of a belief in God. Humans can be so weird, sometimes. Edited January 16, 2016 by Stargazer 4
bcuzbcuz Posted January 16, 2016 Posted January 16, 2016 17 hours ago, carbon dioxide said: We see what is happening in Europe to see this to be the case. The Europeans have pretty much given up on religious things for worldly things and they have become soft and gullible. They are letting hordes of people from the Middle East in and they think that these people will be so impressed with their liberalism that the migrants will change. But they will not change and if the Europeans do not get their act together, they will be slowly replaced by the foreigners. Atheism simply does not have the ability to inspire large groups of people to be better or gather around a common goal. There is no cause to fight and die for in atheism. Death is to be avoided at all costs as once one dies, their existence has ended. If all I am is some evolved, higher animal, why should I care about the world? No other animal really cares and if mankind goes extinct, what is the big deal? Its all just a part of nature and the history of the world. Our fossils be be dug up by some evolved animal 100 million years from now and they will make claims about us as we make about the dinosaurs and put our bones on display. Religion unites people together far better than non-religion does for good or for bad but there is nothing in atheism to unite over. Your statements are absolute rubbish. You say that "Europeans have given up on religious things......and they are letting hordes of people (refugees from wars, starving people) from the Middle East" into their countries. Don't you see the obvious contradiction in your statement? Who, between atheists or Christians, should be opening up their homes, their hearts, their country to people fleeing for their lives from war ravaged countries? Atheists 1 vs Christians 0. You state "Atheism does not have the ability to inspire......a common goal" CFR You state, "There is no cause to fight and die for in atheism" How I wish that were true. Atheists can be just as stupid as anyone else. You state, "If all I am is some evolved, higher animal, why should I care about the world?" So, why do you care about the world? You imply you only care about the world because you're religious. Are you making the assumption that everyone else who cares, who work with the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, UNCHR, SIDA, International Volunteering, CFHI or any number of other help organizations, are all religious? Do all Mormons work with one or more of the above organizations?
The Nehor Posted January 16, 2016 Posted January 16, 2016 4 hours ago, mfbukowski said: When I told my mamma that everyone else was doing something, she would say "What? If everyone was jumping off the bridge would you jump off the bridge?" 3
Meadowchik Posted January 16, 2016 Posted January 16, 2016 21 hours ago, Analytics said: It was about 2,000 years ago that Seneca said, "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful." Richard Dawkins is a pleasant and normally very optimistic person. He freely admits that religion offers some psychological consolations things that atheism doesn't. He's doesn't hesitate to acknowledge that different religious interpretations are better than others. The question that remains, then, is whether the advantages of religion outweigh the disadvantages. That depends, of course, upon the specific characteristics of the individual, society, and religion we are talking about. In general, Dawkins is very optimistic and thinks that we can handle the truth and that humanity would be much better off if everybody took a scientific approach to the basic questions of life and embraced reality. Sometimes I wonder about the concepts of humanism and modern morality (the best kinds) and whether they are made possible and imaginable because of religion, Christianity specifically. I don't know that is provable one way or another, but I do think that Christianity has acted as a bridge between rationalism and high morality. If so, it appears that some would say, "Okay then, now that we have high morality, we are free to dispose of religion." Perhaps for some individuals this might work relatively well over a lifetime, but I doubt that it works for everyone, every type of thinker and feeler, nor that it can work in an environment absent of already-established moralities and legal frameworks, nor that it can survive the generational cycles that inevitably question and re-question all aspects of high morality. For instance, sometimes fear of after-life punishment deters, sometimes believing an overall cosmic purpose and meaning affects our decisions, sometimes the act of faith to do good and to love more changes lives. Collectively, over all the many variables of people and circumstances and cultures, the product is considerable and possibly non-repeatable without religion.
Ahab Posted January 16, 2016 Posted January 16, 2016 17 hours ago, Walden said: Wow, you should look into Humanism, as it embraces these ideals you speak of, without the need for myth. I don't see a need for myth in any religion, and Mormonism properly understood is the best kind of Humanism there is. It's all about becoming the best kind of person we can be. The best rather than the worst kind. A truly good person with as much intelligence and love as any person can have. The word "God" can be disposed of as far as I am concerned, unless maybe we define it as not only any person but also the best kind of person we can be. Otherwise it's just a little 3 letter word with no useful purpose. I still haven't met anybody who could tell me the entymology of the word "God" or why those words were chosen to represent what people think of when using that word. If all it's supposed to refer to is the "supreme" being or kind of being in all of existence then Mormonism and I as a Mormon am using that word properly to refer to the best kind of being we are or ever could be.
thesometimesaint Posted January 16, 2016 Posted January 16, 2016 20 hours ago, Analytics said: I disagree. Have you read The Moral Framework by Sam Harris? If not, I highly recommend you do. At the very least, please consider listening to his TED talk, "Science Can Answer Moral Questions." https://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right?language=en Tell me how you really feel, lol. I find it interesting that you don't hesitate to throw all sorts of insults at Sam Harris, but think a perfectly valid question posed to a Christian was a cheap shot. You come across as being very insecure about the basis of your morality. Sam Harris isn't someone I'd turn to from morality. SEE https://evolution-institute.org/article/why-sam-harris-is-unlikely-to-change-his-mind10/?gclid=CjwKEAiA8ee0BRD1l7vV6JHe0zISJADxYItmGNT9Fs-JDFM-QruiNwPdnzOrL6eYOeEMvFP0Nuaq3RoCPUrw_wcB
Analytics Posted January 17, 2016 Posted January 17, 2016 On 1/15/2016 at 5:26 PM, Robert F. Smith said: You should let Dawkins speak for himself on that score. So far as I know, Dawkins is completely unaware of the humanistic and naturalistic Mormon god. Since he has already spoken explicitly of the "godlike" advanced beings which most astrophysicists agree exist on exoplanets elsewhere in the universe, it is no stretch to imagine him accepting (in principle) the Mormon anthropology of God as finite and the equivalent of such an advanced being (LDS theology posits that we are of the genus and species of God). It is largely irrelevant what form such beings may take, but the great humanist Isaac Asimov once wrote a very insightful science piece on why beings on other planets would likely be humanoid. Asimov was a tenured professor of biochemistry at the Boston Univ School of Medicine. I think you should give the influence of Mormonism (and the width of knowledge of Dawkins) a bit more credit. A conversation with Dawkins about the Mormon God might go something like this. M: We believe God is the father of the human race. H: You believe God is an African that lived some 200,000 years ago? M: No, we believe God is an advanced being from another planet, (fill in the details) H: Given our robust knowledge of biology and astrophysics, the likelihood that this God exists couldn't be lower. I'd like to give you a copy of my book, The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True.
Robert F. Smith Posted January 18, 2016 Posted January 18, 2016 (edited) 10 hours ago, Analytics said: Quote Robert F. Smith said: You should let Dawkins speak for himself on that score. So far as I know, Dawkins is completely unaware of the humanistic and naturalistic Mormon god. Since he has already spoken explicitly of the "godlike" advanced beings which most astrophysicists agree exist on exoplanets elsewhere in the universe, it is no stretch to imagine him accepting (in principle) the Mormon anthropology of God as finite and the equivalent of such an advanced being (LDS theology posits that we are of the genus and species of God). It is largely irrelevant what form such beings may take, but the great humanist Isaac Asimov once wrote a very insightful science piece on why beings on other planets would likely be humanoid. Asimov was a tenured professor of biochemistry at the Boston Univ School of Medicine. I think you should give the influence of Mormonism (and the width of knowledge of Dawkins) a bit more credit. A conversation with Dawkins about the Mormon God might go something like this. M: We believe God is the father of the human race. H: You believe God is an African that lived some 200,000 years ago? M: No, we believe God is an advanced being from another planet, (fill in the details) H: Given our robust knowledge of biology and astrophysics, the likelihood that this God exists couldn't be lower. I'd like to give you a copy of my book, The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True. This response lacks both substance and analytic value, thus belying your pseudonym. You would do better to quote Dawkins and cite his actual comments on advanced, sentient beings in the universe, instead of inventing such a silly scenario. Pretending to speak on behalf of Dawkins is presumptuous at best. Quote Tom Bethell, “Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the Search for God.” American Spectator, Nov 2011, online at http://spectator.org/archives/2011/11/08/extraterrestrial-intelligence , excerpt: Richard Dawkins shows similar tendencies. He was quoted in the New York Times the other day as saying, "It's highly plausible that in the universe there are Godlike creatures." But he was careful to add that "these Gods came into being by an explicable scientific progression of incremental evolution." (He would not have wanted to see "Gods" capitalized, however.) Quote Steven Spielberg, Taken, TV series, episode 8, “Dropping the Dishes,” at 1:07, online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psGJcjPe1ds , “They’re not gods, Charlie.” “No, but they’ve got us outclassed enough so they can act like gods.” Edited January 18, 2016 by Robert F. Smith 1
mfbukowski Posted January 18, 2016 Posted January 18, 2016 (edited) 18 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said: This response lacks both substance and analytic value, thus belying your pseudonym. You would do better to quote Dawkins and cite his actual comments on advanced, sentient beings in the universe, instead of inventing such a silly scenario. Pretending to speak on behalf of Dawkins is presumptuous at best. Yes indeed I am not speaking for Dawkins, but the view being stated here is logical positivism, the view that proposition must be empirically observable to be "justified" or "true". Logical positivism is about 80 years behind the times. Wikipedia in this case gets it pretty well. Quote Logical positivism and logical empiricism, which together formed neopositivism, was a movement in Western philosophy that embraced verificationism, an approach that sought to legitimize philosophical discourse on a basis shared with the best examples of empirical sciences. In this theory of knowledge, only statements verifiable either logically or empirically would be cognitively meaningful. Efforts to convert philosophy to this new scientific philosophy were intended to prevent confusion rooted in unclear language and unverifiable claims.[1] The Berlin Circle and the Vienna Circle propounded logical positivism starting in the late 1920s. Interpreting Ludwig Wittgenstein's early philosophy of language, logical positivists identified a verifiability principle or criterion of cognitive meaningfulness. From Bertrand Russell's logicism they sought reduction of mathematics to logic as well as Russell's logical atomism, Ernst Mach's phenomenalism—whereby the mind knows only actual or potential sensory experience, which is the content of all sciences, whether physics or psychology—and Percy Bridgman's musings that others proclaimed as operationalism. Thereby, only the verifiable was scientific and cognitively meaningful, whereas the unverifiable was unscientific, cognitively meaningless "pseudostatements"—metaphysic, emotive, or such—not candidate to further review by philosophers, newly tasked to organize knowledge, not develop new knowledge. Logical positivism is commonly portrayed as taking the extreme position that scientific language should never refer to anything unobservable--even the seemingly core notions of causality, mechanism, and principles--but that is an exaggeration. Talk of such unobservables would be metaphorical—direct observations viewed in the abstract—or at worst metaphysical or emotional. Theoretical laws would be reduced to empirical laws, while theoretical terms would garner meaning from observational terms via correspondence rules. Mathematics of physics would reduce to symbolic logic via logicism, while rational reconstruction would convert ordinary language into standardized equivalents, all networked and united by a logical syntax. A scientific theory would be stated with its method of verification, whereby a logical calculus or empirical operation could verify its falsity or truth. .................The logical positivists' initial stance was that a statement is "cognitively meaningful" only if some finite procedure conclusively determines its truth.[16] By this verifiability principle, only statements verifiable either by their analyticity or by empiricism were cognitively meaningful. Metaphysics, ontology, as well as much of ethics failed this criterion, and so were found cognitively meaningless. Moritz Schlick, however, did not view ethical or aesthetic statements as cognitively meaningless.[17]Cognitive meaningfulness was variously defined: having a truth value; corresponding to a possible state of affairs; naming a proposition; intelligible or understandable as are scientific statements.[18] Ethics and aesthetics were subjective preferences, while theology and other metaphysics contained "pseudostatements", neither true nor false. This meaningfulness was cognitive, although other types of meaningfulness—for instance, emotive, expressive, or figurative—occurred in metaphysical discourse, dismissed from further review. Thus, logical positivism indirectly asserted Hume's law, the principle that is statements cannot justify ought statements, but are separated by an unbridgeable gap. A J Ayer's 1936 book asserted an extreme variant—the boo/hooray doctrine—whereby all evaluative judgments are but emotional reactions .............................................. After the Second World War's close in 1945, key tenets of logical positivism, including its atomistic philosophy of science, the verifiability principle, and the fact/value gap, drew escalated criticism. It was clear that empirical claims cannot be verified to be universally true.[12] Thus, as initially stated, the verifiability criterion made universal statements meaningless, and even made statements beyond empiricism for technological but not conceptual reasons meaningless, which would pose significant problems for science.[20][33][34] These problems were recognized within the movement, which hosted attempted solutions—Carnap's move to confirmation, Ayer's acceptance of weak verification—but the program drew sustained criticism from a number of directions by the 1950s. Even philosophers disagreeing among themselves on which direction general epistemology ought to take, as well as on philosophy of science, agreed that the logical empiricist program was untenable, and it became viewed as self-contradictory.[35] The verifiability criterion of meaning was itself unverified.[35] Notable critics were Nelson Goodman, Willard Van Orman Quine, Norwood Hanson, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, J L Austin, Peter Strawson, Hilary Putnam, Ludwig von Mises, and Richard Rorty. Quine Although quite empiricist, American logician Willard Van Orman Quine published the 1951 paper Two Dogmas of Empiricism,[36] which challenged conventional empiricist presumptions. Quine attacked the analytic/synthetic division, which the verificationist program had been hinged upon in order to entail, by consequence of Hume's fork, both necessity and apriocity. Quine's ontological relativity explained that every term in any statement has its meaning contingent on a vast network of knowledge and belief, the speaker's conception of the entire world. Quine later proposed naturalized epistemology. Hanson In 1958, Norwood Hanson's Patterns of Discovery undermined the division of observation versus theory,[37] as one can predict, collect, prioritize, and assess data only via some horizon of expectation set by a theory. Thus, any dataset—the direct observations, the scientific facts—is laden with theory. Popper An early, tenacious critic was Karl Popper whose 1934 book Logik der Forschung, arriving in English in 1959 as The Logic of Scientific Discovery, directly answered verificationism. Popper heeded the problem of induction as rendering empirical verification logically impossible.[38] And the deductive fallacy of affirming the consequent reveals any phenomenon's capacity to host over one logically possible explanation. Accepting scientific method as hypotheticodeduction, whose inference form is denying the consequent, Popper finds scientific method unable to proceed without falsifiable predictions. Popper thus identifies falsifiability to demarcate not meaningful from meaningless but simply scientific from unscientific—a label not in itself unfavorable. Popper finds virtue in metaphysics, required to develop new scientific theories. And an unfalsifiable—thus unscientific, perhaps metaphysical—concept in one era can later, through evolving knowledge or technology, become falsifiable, thus scientific. Popper also found science's quest for truth to rest on values. Popper disparages the pseudoscientific, which occurs when an unscientific theory is proclaimed true and coupled with seemingly scientific method by "testing" the unfalsifiable theory—whose predictions are confirmed by necessity—or when a scientific theory's falsifiable predictions are strongly falsified but the theory is persistently protected by "immunizing stratagems", such as the appendage of ad hoc clauses saving the theory or the recourse to increasingly speculative hypotheses shielding the theory. Popper's scientific epistemology is falsificationism, which finds that no number, degree, and variety of empirical successes can either verify or confirm scientific theory. Falsificationism finds science's aim as corroboration of scientific theory, which strives for scientific realism but accepts the maximal status of strongly corroborated verisimilitude ("truthlikeness"). Explicitly denying the positivist view that all knowledge is scientific, Popper developed the general epistemology critical rationalism, which finds human knowledge to evolve by conjectures and refutations. Popper thus acknowledged the value of the positivist movement, driving evolution of human understanding, but claimed that he had "killed positivism". Kuhn With his landmark, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn critically destabilized the verificationist program, which was presumed to call for foundationalism. (Actually, even in the 1930s, Otto Neurath had argued for nonfoundationalism via coherentism by likening science to a boat that scientists must rebuild at sea[citation needed].) Although Kuhn's thesis itself was attacked even by opponents of neopositivism, in the 1970 postscript to Structure, Kuhn asserted, at least, that there was no algorithm to science—and, on that, even most of Kuhn's critics agreed. Powerful and persuasive, Kuhn's book, unlike the vocabulary and symbols of logic's formal language, was written in natural language open to the layperson.[39] Ironically, Kuhn's book was first published in a volume of Encyclopedia of Unified Science—a project begun by logical positivists—and some sense unified science, indeed, but by bringing it into the realm of historical and social assessment, rather than fitting it to the model of physics.[39] Kuhn's ideas were rapidly adopted by scholars in disciplines well outside natural sciences,[39] and, as logical empiricists were extremely influential in the social sciences,[22] ushered academia into postpositivism or postempiricism.[39] Putnam The "received view" operates on the correspondence rule that states, "The observational terms are taken as referring to specified phenomena or phenomenal properties, and the only interpretation given to the theoretical terms is their explicit definition provided by the correspondence rules".[11] According to Hilary Putnam, a former student of Reichenbach and of Carnap, the dichotomy of observational terms versus theoretical terms introduced a problem within scientific discussion that was nonexistent until this dichotomy was stated by logical positivists.[40] Putnam's four objections: Something is referred to as "observational" if it is observable directly with our senses. Then an observation term cannot be applied to something unobservable. If this is the case, there are no observation terms. With Carnap's classification, some unobservable terms are not even theoretical and belong to neither observation terms nor theoretical terms. Some theoretical terms refer primarily to observation terms. Reports of observation terms frequently contain theoretical terms. A scientific theory may not contain any theoretical terms (an example of this is Darwin's original theory of evolution). Putnam also alleged that positivism was actually a form of metaphysical idealism by its rejecting scientific theory's ability to garner knowledge about nature's unobservable aspects. With his "no miracles" argument, posed in 1974, Putnam asserted scientific realism, the stance that science achieves true—or approximately true—knowledge of the world as it exists independently of humans' sensory experience. In this, Putnam opposed not only the positivism but other instrumentalism—whereby scientific theory as but a human tool to predict human observations—filling the void left by positivism's decline. Retrospect By the late 1960s, logical positivism had clearly run its course.[41] Interviewed in the late 1970s, A J Ayer supposed that "the most important" defect "was that nearly all of it was false".[42][43] Although logical positivism tends to be recalled as a pillar of scientism,[44]Carl Hempel was key in establishing the philosophy subdiscipline philosophy of science[13] where Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper brought in the era postpositivism.[39]John Passmore found logical positivism to be "dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes".[42] Logical positivism's fall reopened debate over the metaphysical merit of scientific theory, whether it can offer knowledge of the world beyond human experience (scientific realism) versus whether it is but a human tool to predict human experience (instrumentalism).[45][46] Meanwhile, it became popular among philosophers to rehash the faults and failures of logical positivism without investigation of it.[47] Thereby, logical positivism has been generally misrepresented, sometimes severely.[48] Arguing for their own views, often framed versus logical positivism, many philosophers have reduced logical positivism to simplisms and stereotypes, especially the notion of logical positivism as a type of foundationalism.[48] In any event, the movement helped anchor analytic philosophy in the Anglosphere, and returned Britain to empiricism. Without the logical positivists, who have been tremendously influential outside philosophy, especially in psychology and social sciences, intellectual life of the 20th century would be unrecognizable.[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism The point is that this view is dead and buried. But the bottom line point of the OP is that even Dawkins has a bit of Pragmatism in his soul. Even he understands that some beliefs which cannot be verified by observation are better than others. It is inescapable in my opinion. We can only know what we can know. It is a tautology. Our minds/souls/ brains restrict what we know about the world to what our mind/souls/brains are capable of. I cannot see how anyone disputes that, but every single day I see people speaking about "what really happened" or "things as they are" referring to something outside of what we are capable of knowing. To me it is a contradiction. It is saying that we can know what cannot be known. I see no way out of it. Edited January 18, 2016 by mfbukowski Left out citation link 2
Analytics Posted January 18, 2016 Posted January 18, 2016 13 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said: This response lacks both substance and analytic value, thus belying your pseudonym. You would do better to quote Dawkins and cite his actual comments on advanced, sentient beings in the universe, instead of inventing such a silly scenario. Pretending to speak on behalf of Dawkins is presumptuous at best. The problem isn't about the likelihood of "advanced, sentient beings in the universe." The problem is the likelihood that such a being is the God of Mormonism. The kind of "advanced, sentient beings" that Dawkins sees as being highly plausible and the God of Mormonism are mutually exclusive sets. I might be overstating my case there, but its hard to come up with a space-traveling-literal-father-of-Jesus God that Dawkins would classify as being plausible science fiction rather than supernaturalism. Dawkins says: I am aware that critics of religion can be attacked for failing to credit the fertile diversity of traditions and world-views that have been called religious. Anthropologically informed works, from Sir James Frazer’s Golden Bough to Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained or Scott Atran’s In Gods We Trust, fascinatingly document the bizarre phenomenology of superstition and ritual. Read such books and marvel at the richness of human gullibility. But that is not the way of this book. I decry supernaturalism in all its forms, and the most effective way to proceed will be to concentrate on the form most likely to be familiar to my readers— the form that impinges most threateningly on all our societies. Most of my readers will have been reared in one or another of today’s three ‘great’ monotheistic religions (four if you count Mormonism), all of which trace themselves back to the mythological patriarch Abraham, and it will be convenient to keep this family of traditions in mind throughout the rest of the book. This is as good a moment as any to forestall an inevitable retort to the book, one that would otherwise— as sure as night follows day— turn up in a review: ‘The God that Dawkins doesn’t believe in is a God that I don’t believe in either. I don’t believe in an old man in the sky with a long white beard.’ That old man is an irrelevant distraction and his beard is as tedious as it is long. Indeed, the distraction is worse than irrelevant. Its very silliness is calculated to distract attention from the fact that what the speaker really believes is not a whole lot less silly. I know you don’t believe in an old bearded man sitting on a cloud, so let’s not waste any more time on that. I am not attacking any particular version of God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented. Dawkins, Richard (2008-01-16). The God Delusion (p. 57). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.
Analytics Posted January 18, 2016 Posted January 18, 2016 8 hours ago, mfbukowski said: Yes indeed I am not speaking for Dawkins, but the view being stated here is logical positivism, the view that proposition must be empirically observable to be "justified" or "true". Logical positivism is about 80 years behind the times. Wikipedia in this case gets it pretty well.... The point is that this view is dead and buried.... Just as a reality check, Richard Dawkins is in fact a preeminent modern scientist. He shouldn't be dismissed as being 80 years behind the times with views that are dead and buried. His philosophical thoughts are probably best categorized as scientific skepticism.
volgadon Posted January 18, 2016 Posted January 18, 2016 2 hours ago, Analytics said: Just as a reality check, Richard Dawkins is in fact a preeminent modern scientist. He shouldn't be dismissed as being 80 years behind the times with views that are dead and buried. His philosophical thoughts are probably best categorized as scientific skepticism. He is a preeminent modern scientist, not a preeminent modern philosopher. he can definitely be behind the times outside of his narrow specialty. 2
mfbukowski Posted January 18, 2016 Posted January 18, 2016 3 hours ago, Analytics said: Just as a reality check, Richard Dawkins is in fact a preeminent modern scientist. He shouldn't be dismissed as being 80 years behind the times with views that are dead and buried. His philosophical thoughts are probably best categorized as scientific skepticism. He publishes voluminous drivel in an area in which he is unqualified to do so, and is more of a showman than anything. 2
mfbukowski Posted January 18, 2016 Posted January 18, 2016 3 hours ago, Analytics said: The kind of "advanced, sentient beings" that Dawkins sees as being highly plausible and the God of Mormonism are mutually exclusive sets. You are wrong. That is the essence and brilliance of Mormonism and is why I join the church. In fact is is simple the IDEA that such beings COULD exist that gives purpose to my life. That is called "faith" 1
Analytics Posted January 18, 2016 Posted January 18, 2016 3 hours ago, volgadon said: He is a preeminent modern scientist, not a preeminent modern philosopher. he can definitely be behind the times outside of his narrow specialty. His current job is "the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science" at Oxford. The suggestion that he is behind the times with regards to the philosophy of science is absurd.
mfbukowski Posted January 18, 2016 Posted January 18, 2016 23 minutes ago, Analytics said: His current job is "the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science" at Oxford. The suggestion that he is behind the times with regards to the philosophy of science is absurd. Please reference some scholarly articles about the philosophy of science he has written in philosophy journals and how he explains his position to other philosophers and opposes the main trends of the philosophy of science. Where are his arguments against the mob of philosophers of science who oppose him? Quote He returned to the University of Oxford in 1970 as a lecturer. In 1990, he became a reader in zoology. In 1995, he was appointed Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position that had been endowed by Charles Simonyi with the express intention that the holder "be expected to make important contributions to the public understanding of some scientific field",[30] and that its first holder should be Richard Dawkins.[31] In other words, a contributor gave money to set up a chair for him. Quote Dawkins's advocacy of atheism has been controversial, amongst atheists and theists alike. While some, such as writer Christopher Hitchens, Nobel laureates Sir Harold Kroto andJames D. Watson and psychologist Steven Pinker have defended the perceived stridency of Dawkins's stance towards religion and praised his work,[111][112] others, includingNobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist Peter Higgs, astrophysicist Martin Rees, philosopher of science Michael Ruse, literary critic Terry Eagleton, and theologian Alister McGrath,[113][114][115] have criticised Dawkins on various grounds, including the assertion that his work simply serves as an atheist counterpart to religious fundamentalism rather than productive critique of it, and that he has fundamentally misapprehended the foundations of the theological positions he claims to refute. Rees and Higgs, in particular, have both rejected Dawkins's confrontational stance towards religion as narrow and "embarrassing," with Higgs going as far as to equate Dawkins with the religious fundamentalists he criticises.[116][117][118][119] Atheist philosopher John Gray has denounced Dawkins as an "anti-religious missionary" whose assertions are "in no sense novel or original," suggesting that, "transfixed in wonderment at the workings of his own mind, Dawkins misses much that is of importance in human beings." Gray has also criticised Dawkins's perceived allegiance to Darwin, stating that if "science, for Darwin, was a method of inquiry that enabled him to edge tentatively and humbly toward the truth, for Dawkins, science is an unquestioned view of the world."[120] In response to his critics, Dawkins maintains that theologians are no better than scientists in addressing deep cosmological questions and that he himself is not a fundamentalist as he is willing to change his mind in the face of new evidence.[11]:55–56[121][122] In May 2014, at the Hay Festival in Wales, Dawkins was quoted as saying, "I would describe myself as a secular Christian in the same sense as secular Jews have a feeling for nostalgia and ceremonies."[123] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins 1
volgadon Posted January 18, 2016 Posted January 18, 2016 It is bad when alternet crossposts a piece on Dawkins being a simplistic, fundamentalist, atheist bully. http://www.alternet.org/story/45388/an_atheist_bullies_the_faithful
Analytics Posted January 18, 2016 Posted January 18, 2016 (edited) 1 hour ago, mfbukowski said: Please reference some scholarly articles about the philosophy of science he has written in philosophy journals Dawkins, R. (June 2004). "Extended phenotype - But not too extended. A reply to Laland, Turner and Jablonka". Biology & Philosophy Dawkins, R. (2004). "Viruses of the mind". In Warburton, N. Philosophy: Basic Readings. New York: Routledge Dawkins, Richard (1981). "In defence of selfish genes". Philosophy Blakemore C, Dawkins R, Noble D, Yudkin M (2003). "Is a scientific boycott ever justified?". Nature Dawkins, R. (1998). "Postmodernism Disrobed". Nature (Granted, those last two references weren't written in a philosophy journal, but I hope you consider giving the guy half-credit for getting the most prestigious scientific journal on the planet to publish his voluminous drivel on philosophical topics he doesn't understand) Edited January 18, 2016 by Analytics
mfbukowski Posted January 19, 2016 Posted January 19, 2016 (edited) 3 hours ago, Analytics said: Dawkins, R. (June 2004). "Extended phenotype - But not too extended. A reply to Laland, Turner and Jablonka". Biology & Philosophy Dawkins, R. (2004). "Viruses of the mind". In Warburton, N. Philosophy: Basic Readings. New York: Routledge Dawkins, Richard (1981). "In defence of selfish genes". Philosophy Blakemore C, Dawkins R, Noble D, Yudkin M (2003). "Is a scientific boycott ever justified?". Nature Dawkins, R. (1998). "Postmodernism Disrobed". Nature (Granted, those last two references weren't written in a philosophy journal, but I hope you consider giving the guy half-credit for getting the most prestigious scientific journal on the planet to publish his voluminous drivel on philosophical topics he doesn't understand) Did you bother to even look any of these up? Dawkins, R. (June 2004). "Extended phenotype - But not too extended. A reply to Laland, Turner and Jablonka". Biology & Philosophy Discussion about Dawkins' theory of memes. Not relevant, not a philosophy journal, not about the philosophy of science, not a discussion with a critic about the philosophy of science. Warburton, N. Philosophy: Basic Readings. New York: Routledge This is a textbook introduction to philosophy for sub philosophy 101 undergraduates to present provocative position for class discussion. Quoted because Dawkins provokes discussion. Does not fill the requirements "In defence of selfish genes". Philosophy At last, a real philosophy journal. Unfortunately it appears to be mostly a discussion of Hobbes and the notion of selfishness. Not relevant to the discussion at hand. And the last two as you admit are not in philosophy journals. Quote (Granted, those last two references weren't written in a philosophy journal, but I hope you consider giving the guy half-credit for getting the most prestigious scientific journal on the planet to publish his voluminous drivel on philosophical topics he doesn't understand) Well no I don't. You make my point for me. No articles on the philosophy of science which take on his critics. None. If anyone finds any, I am very interested. I looked before I posted my earlier remarks OK Thanks for the discussion. I am about done though. There is nothing left and the weekend is over. Edited January 19, 2016 by mfbukowski
Analytics Posted January 19, 2016 Posted January 19, 2016 1 hour ago, mfbukowski said: You make my point for me. No articles on the philosophy of science which take on his critics. None. If anyone finds any, I am very interested. I looked before I posted my earlier remarks OK Thanks for the discussion. I am about done though. There is nothing left and the weekend is over. You asked for "some scholarly articles about the philosophy of science." He has in fact written such articles, as I have shown. What I gave you proves my point: it's highly unlikely that Nature would publish his paper about postmodernism if he wasn't current on the philosophy of science. If you want to read articles that "take on his critics" in those journals, first show me where those critics criticized him in such journals, and I'll see what I can find.
mfbukowski Posted January 19, 2016 Posted January 19, 2016 3 hours ago, Analytics said: You asked for "some scholarly articles about the philosophy of science." He has in fact written such articles, as I have shown. What I gave you proves my point: it's highly unlikely that Nature would publish his paper about postmodernism if he wasn't current on the philosophy of science. If you want to read articles that "take on his critics" in those journals, first show me where those critics criticized him in such journals, and I'll see what I can find. Read it. It is not a serious paper http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/dawkins.html His critics are critics of postitivism. Read the footnotes in the wikipedia article above. No one would make a serious reply to Dawkins. He is a clown. Read the article.
mfbukowski Posted January 19, 2016 Posted January 19, 2016 26 minutes ago, mfbukowski said: Read it. It is not a serious paper http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/dawkins.html His critics are critics of postitivism. Read the footnotes in the wikipedia article above. No one would make a serious reply to Dawkins. He is a clown. Read the article. In fact since Dawkins did not understand Lacan's formulas, he should have used the Idiot's Guide to Philosophy https://books.google.com/books?id=isfA6PRMne4C&pg=PA251&lpg=PA251&dq=lacan+signifier+formula&source=bl&ots=LDOHM1caZr&sig=P19duP5_Rq2ib5WQrGPHwE3uIr8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjUivbTp7XKAhUC12MKHXXYBDIQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=lacan%20signifier%20formula&f=false The man is a fool. 1
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