"I was there", A simple message accompanied by a visual evidence could suffice

[mfbukowski]

39 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Well useful for what? I think evolutionary theory does give knowledge of what really happened. But of course we have to be careful not to confuse knowledge with certainty.

Dewey would disagree

[clarkgoble]

18 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Dewey would disagree

Not sure he would, but then I'm not sure what part you're objecting to either.

[clarkgoble]

44 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

And as he said, one then takes science on faith

Depends upon what one means by faith. If you have evidence things have been tested multiple ways by disparate people I don't think that's faith - again depending upon what you mean by that. I don't have total confidence in science although I may have a great deal of confidence in particular conclusions within science due to the evidence. But there's a wide range of stuff within the discipline of science. I don't take too seriously mouse studies for instance. They are to my mind indications at best of where we should conduct further research.

Edited May 11, 2017 by clarkgoble

[thesometimesaint]

Here you are using one of the scientifically advanced devices ever invented by man claiming that it takes faith to make it work.

[Meadowchik]

25 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Depends upon what one means by faith. If you have evidence things have been tested multiple ways by disparate people I don't think that's faith - again depending upon what you mean by that. I don't have total confidence in science although I may have a great deal of confidence in particular conclusions within science due to the evidence. But there's a wide range of stuff within the discipline of science. I don't take too seriously mouse studies for instance. They are to my mind indications at best of where we should conduct further research.

I think that points to method in how to filter information. Even if we cannot acquire all knowledge first-hand, we can have more or less rational approaches to second-hand sources, and that rational method can vary in sophistication. 

[SmileyMcGee]

1 hour ago, Meadowchik said:

FWIW, I responded that way as a reciprocation of good will. I still mean it

So, I was trying to retreat to some common ground. Please just take the post on face value, not necessarily as ammunition for any science vs religion argument.

I think it can apply to both science and religion. What do you think?

😊 thanks for the clarification. Internet forums can be incredibly inefficient for communicating, right? If I had a dollar for every time I misinterpreted...

[Meadowchik]

6 minutes ago, thesometimesaint said:

Here you are using one of the scientifically advanced devices ever invented by man claiming that it takes faith to make it work.

Is your quoter not working? (It happens to me sometimes)  Cuz it's a bit clearer if you use it.

[SmileyMcGee]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

Well useful for what? I think evolutionary theory does give knowledge of what really happened. But of course we have to be careful not to confuse knowledge with certainty.

I think usefulness depends on context, or the sphere in which the idea is being assessed. If I'm a doctor wanting to promote health in patients through preventive medicine, genetics, among other things, seems like a useful set of ideas. At a general level, I think an idea is useful because it ties together interpretations that people make of direct sensory experience. God explains sensory experience to some and not others.

But if we're defining knowledge as acquiring beliefs that correspond to reality, or at least approach reality, I don't know how any system of beliefs or ideas could possibly do that (for reasons I've already mentioned). 

Edited May 11, 2017 by SmileyMcGee

[SmileyMcGee]

35 minutes ago, thesometimesaint said:

Here you are using one of the scientifically advanced devices ever invented by man claiming that it takes faith to make it work.

Yes. 

Edited May 11, 2017 by SmileyMcGee

[mfbukowski]

47 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Depends upon what one means by faith. If you have evidence things have been tested multiple ways by disparate people I don't think that's faith - again depending upon what you mean by that. I don't have total confidence in science although I may have a great deal of confidence in particular conclusions within science due to the evidence. But there's a wide range of stuff within the discipline of science. I don't take too seriously mouse studies for instance. They are to my mind indications at best of where we should conduct further research.

 

24 minutes ago, thesometimesaint said:

Here you are using one of the scientifically advanced devices ever invented by man claiming that it takes faith to make it work.

Of course science works- I never said it didn't 

I have as much faith in science as both of you.

Dewey:

(I wish I could include the whole essay which can be found here:)

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/dewey.htm

Quote

 

But for over two thousand years the weight of the most influential and authoritatively orthodox tradition of thought has been thrown into the opposite scale. It has been devoted to the problem of a purely cognitive certification (perhaps by revelation, perhaps by intuition, perhaps by reason) of the antecedent immutable reality of truth, beauty and goodness. As against such a doctrine, the conclusions of natural science constitute the materials of a serious problem. The appeal has been made to the Court of Knowledge and the verdict has been adverse. There are two rival systems that must have their respective claims adjusted. The crisis in contemporary culture, the confusions and conflicts in it, arise from a division of authority. Scientific inquiry seems to tell one thing, and traditional beliefs about ends and ideals that have authority over conduct tell us something quite different. The problem of reconciliation arises and persists for one reason only. As long as the notions persist that knowledge is a disclosure of reality, of reality prior to and independent of knowing, and that knowing is independent of a purpose to control the quality of experienced objects, the failure of natural science to disclose significant values in its objects will come as a shock. Those seriously concerned with the validity and authority of value will have a problem on their hands. As long as the notion persists that values are authentic and valid only on condition that they are properties of Being independent of human action, as long as it is supposed that their right to regulate action is dependent upon their being independent of action, so long there will be needed schemes to prove that values are, in spite of the findings of science, genuine and known qualifications of reality in itself. For men will not easily surrender all regulative guidance in action. If they are forbidden to find standards in the course of experience they will seek them somewhere else, if not in revelation, then in the deliverance of a reason that is above experience.

This then is the fundamental issue for present philosophy. Is the doctrine justified that knowledge is valid in the degree in which it is a revelation of antecedent existences or Being? Is the doctrine justified that regulative ends and purposes have validity only when they can be shown to be properties belonging to things, whether as existences or as essences, apart from human action? It is proposed to make another start. Desires, affections, preferences, needs and interests at least exist in human experience; they are characteristics of it. Knowledge about nature also exists. What does this knowledge imply and entail with respect to the guidance of our emotional and volitional life? How shall the latter lay hold of what is known in order to make it of service?

These latter questions do not seem to many thinkers to have the dignity that is attached to the traditional problems of philosophy. They are proximate questions, not ultimate. They do not concern Being and Knowledge "in themselves' and at large, but the state of existence at specified times and places and the state of affection, plans and purposes under concrete circumstances. They are not concerned with framing a general theory of reality, knowledge and value once for all, but with finding how authentic beliefs about existence as they currently exist can operate fruitfully and efficaciously in connection with the practical problems that are urgent in actual life.

In restricted and technical fields, men now proceed unhesitatingly along these lines. In technology and the arts of engineering and medicine, men do not think of operating in any other way. Increased knowledge of nature and its conditions does not raise the problem of validity of the value of health or of communication in general, although it may well make dubious the validity of certain conceptions men in the past have entertained about the nature of health and communication and the best ways of attaining these goods in fact.

In such matters, science has placed in our hands the means by which we can better judge our wants, and has aided in forming the instruments and operations by which to satisfy them. That the same sort of thing has not happened in the moral and distinctly humane arts is evident. Here is a problem which might well trouble philosophers.

Why have not the arts which deal with the wider, more generous, more distinctly humane values enjoyed the release and expansion which have accrued to the technical arts? Can it be seriously urged that it is because natural science has disclosed to us the kind of world which it has disclosed? It is easy to see that these disclosures are hostile to some beliefs about values which have been widely accepted, which have prestige, which have become deeply impregnated with sentiment, and which authoritative institutions as well as the emotion and inertia of men are slow to surrender. But this admission, which practically enforces itself, is far from excluding the formation of new beliefs about things to be honoured and prized by men in their supreme loyalties of action. The difficulty in the road is a practical one, a social one, connected with institutions and the methods and aims of education, not with science nor with value. Under such circumstances the first problem for philosophy would seem to be to clear itself of further responsibility for the doctrine that the supreme issue is whether values have antecedent Being, while its further office is to make clear the revisions and reconstructions that have to be made in traditional judgments about values. Having done this, it would be in a position to undertake the more positive task of projecting ideas about values which might be the basis of a new integration of human conduct.

We come back to the fact that the genuine issue is not whether certain values, associated with traditions and institutions, have Being already (whether that of existence or of essence), but what concrete judgments we are to form about ends and means in the regulation of practical behaviour. The emphasis which has been put upon the former question, the creation of dogmas about the way in which values are already real independently of what we do, dogmas which have appealed not in vain to philosophy for support, have naturally bred, in the face of the changed character of science, confusion, irresolution and numbness of will. If the men had been educated to think about broader humane values as they have now learned to think about matters which fall within the scope of technical arts, our whole present situation would be very different. The attention which has gone to achieving a purely theoretical certainty with respect to them would have been devoted to perfecting the arts by which they are to be judged and striven for.

Indulge for a moment in an imaginative flight. Suppose that men had been systematically educated in the belief that the existence of values can cease to be accidental, narrow and precarious only by human activity directed by the best available knowledge. Suppose also men had been systematically educated to believe that the important thing is not to get themselves personally "right" in relation to the antecedent author and guarantor of these values, but to form their judgments and carry on their activity on the basis of public, objective and shared consequences. Imagine these things and then imagine what the present situation might be.

The suppositions are speculative- But they serve to indicate the significance of the one point to which this chapter is devoted. The method and conclusions of science have without doubt invaded many cherished beliefs about the things held most dear. The resulting clash constitutes a genuine cultural crisis. But it is a crisis in culture, a social crisis, historical and temporal in character. It is not a problem in the adjustment of properties of reality to one another. And yet modern philosophy has chosen for the most part to treat it as a question of how the realities assumed to be the object of science can have the mathematical and mechanistic properties assigned to them in natural science, while nevertheless the realm of ultimate reality can be characterised by qualities termed ideal and spiritual. The cultural problem is one of definite criticisms to be made and of readjustments to be accomplished. Philosophy which is willing to abandon its supposed task of knowing ultimate reality and to devote itself to a proximate human office might be of great help in such a task. It may be doubted whether it can indefinitely pursue the task of trying to show that the results of science, when they are properly interpreted, do not mean what they seem to say, or of proving, by means of an examination of possibilities and limits of knowledge, that after all they rest upon a foundation congruous with traditional beliefs about values.

Since the root of the traditional conception of philosophy is the separation that has been made between knowledge and action, between theory and practice, it is to the problem of this separation that we are to give attention. Our main attempt will be to show how the actual procedures of knowledge interpreted after the pattern formed by experimental inquiry, cancel the isolation of knowledge from overt action. Before engaging in this attempt, we shall in the next chapter show the extent to which modern philosophy has been dominated by effort to adjust to each other two systems of belief, one relating to the objects of knowledge and the other to objects ideal value.

 

 

[clarkgoble]

3 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Of course science works- I never said it didn't 

I have as much faith in science as both of you.

Dewey:

(I wish I could include the whole essay which can be found here:)

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/dewey.htm

I'm still not sure what you were objecting to about claims about the past with evolution. There's nothing in that essay I really disagree with. But I'm not sure how you are relating it to something I said problematically. From what I'm familiar with in Dewey's thought he accepted the broad idea of evolution and the history to a large degree. (Recognizing the details are changing somewhat -- we've learned a lot since Dewey who I think lived before the detailed analysis of DNA let alone sequencing) But that was my point in distinguishing between knowledge and certainty.

About the only place I'd probably quibble with Dewey is in the first paragraph where he sees the quest for certainty as a way to transcend belief. I'd probably say the quest for certainty is the drive to fix belief. (Fix in the sense of permanence)

Edited May 11, 2017 by clarkgoble

[mfbukowski]

USU

Glad someone read that.

Faith is a principle of action. Sound familiar?

[USU78]

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

USU

Glad someone read that.

Faith is a principle of action. Sound familiar?

I'm actually waiting for someone to bring up concepts like spieltrieb and le neant and how one approaches knowing and faith from such. This is an exciting thread, as is your other one. Thanks for letting me audit

[mfbukowski]

7 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I'm still not sure what you were objecting to about claims about the past with evolution. There's nothing in that essay I really disagree with. But I'm not sure how you are relating it to something I said problematically. From what I'm familiar with in Dewey's thought he accepted the broad idea of evolution and the history to a large degree. (Recognizing the details are changing somewhat -- we've learned a lot since Dewey who I think lived before the detailed analysis of DNA let alone sequencing) But that was my point in distinguishing between knowledge and certainty.

About the only place I'd probably quibble with Dewey is in the first paragraph where he sees the quest for certainty as a way to transcend belief. I'd probably say the quest for certainty is the drive to fix belief. (Fix in the sense of permanence)

I wasn't objecting to anything about evolution. I was objecting to the idea that science doesn't require faith, and I quoted the Dewey piece to illustrate that science always is based on human action and what is useful and not on the quest for immutable truth about things as they are. Science is about trusting that we will get consistent results over time, and trust is essentially faith. I have total trust that the sun will come up tomorrow morning but there is always the possibility that someone will launch nukes or that an asteroid will come out of nowhere and the sun won't come up tomorrow morning, or even that I won't make it through the night so the sun won't come up for me in the morning. Certainty about anything is relative unless it's tautological and then it is uninteresting

Edited May 12, 2017 by mfbukowski

[clarkgoble]

9 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

I wasn't objecting to anything about evolution. I was objecting to the idea that science doesn't require faith, and I quoted the Dewey piece to illustrate that science always is based on human action and what is useful and not on the quest for immutable truth about things as they are. Science is about trusting that we will get consistent results over time, and trust is essentially faith. I have total trust that the sun will come up tomorrow morning but there is always the possibility that someone will launch nukes or that an asteroid will come out of nowhere and the sun won't come up tomorrow morning, or even that I won't make it through the night so the sun won't come up for me in the morning. Certainty about anything is relative unless it's tautological and then it is uninteresting

I don't have any problem with that. I think the word faith through me a little as I didn't quite grasp what you meant by that. Of course given the other thread I'll avoid an other semantic debate. I understand you now though.

[thesometimesaint]

20 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

 

Of course science works- I never said it didn't 

I have as much faith in science as both of you.

Dewey:

(I wish I could include the whole essay which can be found here:)

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/dewey.htm

 

I have no faith in science. It works whether I believe it or not. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen".  Science OTOH is the substance of things seen.

[SmileyMcGee]

2 hours ago, thesometimesaint said:

I have no faith in science. It works whether I believe it or not. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen".  Science OTOH is the substance of things seen.

😊 This comment took me back to the MTC. We were learning how to bear our testimony in a foreign language and a discussion arose in our district as to whether it was more proper to say "I know" or "I believe." Our teacher said, "a principle of the gospel is true whether you believe it or not; just say you know." 

Edited May 12, 2017 by SmileyMcGee

[clarkgoble]

2 hours ago, thesometimesaint said:

I have no faith in science. It works whether I believe it or not. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen".  Science OTOH is the substance of things seen.

Most hypothesis in science are significantly underdetermined. If you act on them without the evidence being overwhelming then you're acting in faith. The very role of abduction in science is more or less the notion of faith. That is you form a hypothesis which you don't have much evidence for but is more an educated guess. Yet you trust it enough that you're willing to spend the time and expense to test it. That's the substance of things not seen.

The idea that science is just about the parts that are strongly established is wrong. That's a very tiny part of science and arguably the least interesting part. Much like Alma 32 the theories of science have different degrees of confidence. But, as with Alma 32, when we reach a certain degree of confidence we usually talk about it being true and knowing it.

Edited May 12, 2017 by clarkgoble

[mfbukowski]

15 hours ago, USU78 said:

I'm actually waiting for someone to bring up concepts like spieltrieb and le neant and how one approaches knowing and faith from such. This is an exciting thread, as is your other one. Thanks for letting me audit

Yeah that's a great question but I am not an expert on Romanticism or existentialism other than the general mood and Weltanschauung 

But I am convinced that Spieltrieb comes out of that just plain German idea (Jewish?- that would make sense- that is more your department) of the drive to create - what we LDS would call organizing matter unorganized.

That is exactly why I joined the church if the truth be told.  I saw that in Kant even in the synthetic a priori and I saw it in Pragmatism and I even saw it in Marxism.  The idea that man creates god in his own image because man IS god, and that man creates reality through idealism is exactly backwards- it is WE who are created in God's image.

I always felt that it was backwards but the idea that God is himself is an exalted man was the concept that intellectually clicked for me.  The first serious conversation I had about Mormonism was about King Follette- and eternal progression it just kind of clicked right there.   The Germans were right but they had it backwards!  Human intelligence DID create the universe as we know it BUT it was done by an Ubermensch beyond Ubermensch-dom!!  AND THEN this spieltrieb comes from that for each of us personally as Ubermenschen in embryo.  So at some point it doesn't matter if any of this is "outside" in "reality" or "inside"- because the kingdom of heaven is within us.   UBER-THUD.    The universe rumbles and the ground shakes

The gears of heaven shifted into place

That idea of God as the super duper Ubermensch just blew me away.

Suddenly Nietzsche was right- half way.  The god of the scholastics and sectarians WAS dead but long live the Super Ubermensch!

It was Niezsche raised to the power of infinity and all he had to say applied perfectly to what Christianity of his day had become- and it needed a Restoration to what it was and could be.  And these weird Utah pioneers with the funny underware figured this out???  What the heck???  Not possible- it had to be from God.

I got baptized as quick as I could after that- 6 weeks.  THEN I read stuff like Moroni 10 and Alma 32 and was just blown away at how it all cohered.

Le neant?

Meh.  Too phenomenological for me- It ain't Amurican and comes from them Frenchy furriners.  Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.  I like that song.   Tell me about it.

[thesometimesaint]

4 minutes ago, SmileyMcGee said:

😊 This comment took me back to the MTC. We were learning how to bear our testimony in a foreign language and a discussion arose in our district as to whether it was more proper to say "I know" or "I believe." Our teacher said, "a principle of the gospel is true whether you believe it or not; just say you know." 

I never served a formal Mission for the Church. I think it is possible to know for oneself if something is true or not. Transferring that knowledge to someone else is fraught with problems. IE; I know I love my family. Proving that I have that emotion to someone else is difficult at best. Sometimes we just have to accept peoples words at face value.

[thesometimesaint]

20 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Most hypothesis in science are significantly underdetermined. If you act on them without the evidence being overwhelming then you're acting in faith. The very role of abduction in science is more or less the notion of faith. That is you form a hypothesis which you don't have much evidence for but is more an educated guess. Yet you trust it enough that you're willing to spend the time and expense to test it. That's the substance of things not seen.

The idea that science is just about the parts that are strongly established is wrong. That's a very tiny part of science and arguably the least interesting part. Much like Alma 32 the theories of science have different degrees of confidence. But, as with Alma 32, when we reach a certain degree of confidence we usually talk about it being true and knowing it.

Science is based on the seen(An observation). A hypothesis may or may not have enough empirical evidence to explain it.The best explanation we have so far of that observation is a theory. IE; No one has ever seen an individual electron(Electron Theory). We do see their effects. I don't have to have faith in electrons to make them work. We both are using them right now.

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, thesometimesaint said:

I have no faith in science. It works whether I believe it or not. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen".  Science OTOH is the substance of things seen.

If you do not have faith in science, cancel your next doctor's appointment.

Oh yeah and don't drive any more and definitely get off the internet.

I think your logic is a tad off, there.

[RevTestament]

40 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

It was Niezsche raised to the power of infinity and all he had to say applied perfectly to what Christianity of his day had become- and it needed a Restoration to what it was and could be.  And these weird Utah pioneers with the funny underware figured this out???  What the heck???  Not possible- it had to be from God.

I got baptized as quick as I could after that- 6 weeks.  THEN I read stuff like Moroni 10 and Alma 32 and was just blown away at how it all cohered.

Le neant?

Meh.  Too phenomenological for me- It ain't Amurican and comes from them Frenchy furriners.  Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.  I like that song.   Tell me about it.

First it was the Rolling Stones and now it's Billy Preston. What did you growd all up in the 70's or something? I can't tell you about nothing from nothing, but I can chat a little bout the stairway to heaven  

[SmileyMcGee]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

The idea that science is just about the parts that are strongly established is wrong. That's a very tiny part of science and arguably the least interesting part. Much like Alma 32 the theories of science have different degrees of confidence. But, as with Alma 32, when we reach a certain degree of confidence we usually talk about it being true and knowing it.

Great point. I think assertions of knowledge are best interpreted as the confidence one is expressing of an idea. But I guess if I assumed that all of the time I wouldn't find incentive to join in on these fun discussions...

[thesometimesaint]

24 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

If you do not have faith in science, cancel your next doctor's appointment.

Oh yeah and don't drive any more and definitely get off the internet.

I think your logic is a tad off, there.

Science works whether I believe it or not. Was the earth flat a few millennia ago? Is man in space, did we not go to the moon? There was an Apostle of God that claimed we would never do it.

I don't drive anymore and that has nothing to do with my beliefs about cars. The internet works whether I believe it or not. I accept the reality of it and use this very useful tool.

My logic is often off, but not in this case. If science didn't work it would have been thrown out as good for nothing centuries ago.