The argument of ontological Tyranny being a cause of an individual attempting to explain the universe in it’s entirety is not true. This is based off of an idea that absolute truth is impossible. What reductionist are trying to do isn’t necessarily impossible. It is impossible to know absolute truth, but that is not their attempt. So a reductionist will try and ‘describe’ the universe in it’s entirety, not explain it. And any attempt to stop these or any other people is tyranny itself.
I need to rephrase then…
Absolute Truth is claiming to know what reality ‘is’, why it works. Objective truth is a statement that is true regardless of the subjective mind. So when I say. '“That apple looks purplish-red.” I’m referring to the specific experience in my mind that is a quality that represent a specific hue, tint, of the apple. And, when I say, “That apple is red.” I’m referring the light frequency which bounces off red apples. Which would still be, even if there where no humans to witness it.
I do support it. The ‘tyranny’ is that it is perfect and unachievable in the real world. That’s frustrating.
I disagree a good deal with Nelson. I agree with one thing, which is that science is a community activity - a community of scientists working towards a goal of discovering objective truth. The important aspect of that community is that the members hold a wide range of values. In the past, women and minorities have been excluded from participation and therefore we got a lot of white man’s science. By making the community large and diverse, neutrality becomes more attainable. The scientists keep each other honest instead of supporting each others common narrow views.
The knowledge we have already agreed on is unchanging and fixed - basic chemical reactions, Newtonian mechanics, etc. The areas of knowledge being actively explored are in flux. We don’t know and we don’t understand yet.
I think this runs counter to what science is about. At any point in time it may not be possible to determine which of two equally effective theories is correct. None the less, we want to know which one is correct. Work progresses with this goal in mind.
Both Nelson and Quine assume that there is some pure unadulterated data to which everyone has access. In fact, the data is collected by these biased groups as part of their experiments. It’s easy to dismiss data which does not conform to your values as experimental error. This is a major reason to eliminate bias - so that you collect real data. Two or more groups, each having their own data, produce theories which are ‘empirically’ supported. In the past, this has been how racial theories were supported. Totally counterproductive.
To summarize my thoughts:
The search for objective truth is the goal of scientific work.
Scientific work is a community activity.
Value-laden research is a hindrance to discovering objective truth.
To reduce the negative impact of human bias, scientists with a wide range of values need to cooperate on research.
I think this seems to head too far the other way, for me. Yes, we take cultural baggage with us, and certainly the daily practice of science takes place embedded in a culture and society. But… science also requires new theories. Quantum physics, for example, went against almost everything the scientific community thought and in very many cases wanted to think. It still does; it’s shocking, absurd, to almost anyone introduced to it. The only way it satisfied cultural values was in its instrumental value; it has had far more effect on its mother culture than the culture had in framing its origins.
I wouldn’t want to swing the pendulum too far the other way and have culture as a tyrannical monolith determining everything either. It raises the barriers, inhibits some ideas from cropping up straight away and pushes others to the fore, but it’s a guide rather than a custodian.
Yes, it certainly is an extreme account. I think my primary concern is with a replacement for the tyranny of ontology, and so I’d rather not turn this into an argument over the viability of Nelson’s naturalized epistemology; though such an argument would be productive – perhaps another time.
If it’s unachievable, why strive for it? Why not alter our understanding of the way we do science to accommodate for the reality of inquiry?
Here, I disagree. We are constantly revising, modifying, and undermining ourselves. This, I take it, is the strong-point of the scientific practice: it can admit of its own mistakes and so constantly overcome them, and itself; it need never be static.
However, that we want to know which one is correct does not mean that one need be correct. This is her point. Of course, we want to know as much as we can, yet the realization that we don’t know it all doesn’t render what we do know irrelevant.
Here, again, is where our understandings diverge. I hold that bias cannot be eliminated. I understand you to hold the same position: you’ve claimed more than once now that the tyranny of ontological science is an unattainable ideal. Why, then, do you continue to insist on upholding its tenants?
The question is not: “are scientific laws objectively consistent with reality?” but: “with which reality are scientific laws consistent?”
As pointed out by Moreno, there are realities which rely on and support very different laws, such as the consciousness of plants. That such consciousness is not an absurd fiction but rather a necessity becomes clear when one understands all acts of life as acts of valuing, which axiom to a science independent from what we call “natural science”.
Any science can point us in a direction that is valid given a certain assumption of how things can be known (the type of things we want to know are “hard facts”), but is not thereby the only valid direction in which working, “true” science may be gathered. From this follows that the claim to “the real truth” held by scientists ultimately holds no more validity than the psychotic holding to the truth of his hallucination, using it as a basis for further identification of relations between experiences.
Scientific truth is thoroughly subjective, culturally determined, and highlight only certain aspects of reality, which it then labels as “the true world”. A logical non-sequitur, but no matter, it results in power, even if this power turns out to be of a deeply problematic nature.
It is in the belief that technologically-verified science fully accounts for what there is to know about the world, that the helplessly lethargic retardation of our world is rooted. People think that the scientific commitment to not value is itself value-neutral. But this is not the case - it is the imposition of a specific value-system on life, and the subsequent approach of life as if it could not exist without being understood in terms of that system. “Naturally there are no true values, our values tell us this”.
without-music: Can you explain more about what exactly is tyrranical here, and why? Is it tyrranical to be a realist? Is it tyrranical merely to be a scientist? It seems to me that word is being bandied about without much specificity.
Why “ontological” tyrrany, then? Why not “methodological” tyrrany? Surely a scientist can believe in an objective reality and that certain methods are better suited than others to discovering/describing that reality. And I think such a scientist, while likely raising his eyebrows at more unconventional methodologies, would be unlikely to claim that scientific results produced with unconventional methods are, therefore, invalid. In fact, I don’t think he could make such a claim and continue to be as respected in the scientific community.
But rejecting a particular ontological view from participation in the scientific enterprise is itself tyrranical, no? Science depends on verifiable results. Fundamentalist Christians can be (and are!) scientists. Their values are presumably part and parcel of how they do science, but the science they produce remains independent of their (idiosyncratic) values - it is common property, which transcends particular belief systems. What they produce does not remain dependent on how they got there.
well we are down to base rock…i agree with anon and disagree with music…i now know what the music position is…there is objective truth(99.9%) that can be handled neutrally…
It’s a desirable ideal.
A karate master practices his entire life fully aware that perfection of form is impossible.
We work to gain knowledge more even though we can never know everything.
There are certain aspects of science on which we have agreement. The topics listed in an elementary physics book are not changing. Currently active fields of research are changing. The results may overturn theories which are decades or centuries old but they won’t overturn everything. There is a solid foundation of knowledge on which we are building.
Philosophically speaking we do need to be correct. If we are only interested in making calculations and predictions, then any theory which produces good results is useful. That is an engineering approach - the application of science to solve a problem. Science, itself, is seeking the really real.
The bias cannot be eliminated but it can be reduced. Reducing the bias produces better results - better science.
Encouraging a value-laden bias will distort the results in the direction of those values. If you hold those values, then you may consider it beneficial. In reality, it is not beneficial. Your agricultural studies example showed an initially male bias study being ‘overturned’ by a female bias study. I would say that if both studies attempted to take a neutral position, the results would have been closer to the truth.
Considering how sympathetic I am to your views here, I’m surprised you “completely disagree”.
In attacking “objectivity”, be careful not to throw out intersubjectivity with it. True or not, theories that work are theories that work. They work whether or not I want them to, and whether or not they conflict with my religious beliefs. Feminist values, alternative methodologies… these are not problems (and might be quite beneficial) assuming they produce results that are relevant to the scientific community.
I was as careful to include the word “idiosyncratic” as Nelson was to use the word “necessarily” (both words bolded in this post).
Scientists study the “real”. I’m not sure what the “really real” even is, other than a metaphysical belief of some kind. But a scientist who believes in the “really real” is just as capable of studying the “real” as an instrumentalist is. The validity of a scientific theory does not rest on methodology or belief. Science is a discipline. As such, there are scientific values, scientific rules. Those rules are what make science science, and not something else.
I can think of some reasons for ‘the helplessly lethargic retardation of our world’ but I don’t think that applying a neutral scientific approach is one of them.
I’d be interested in hearing your reasoning for such a conclusion.
anon: I think my main problem lies with your statement that “what [scientists] produce does not remain dependent on how they got there.” I think knowledge is always contextual, for reasons enumerated throughout the thread.
The scientific discourse works under its own rules of legitimation. These rules are grounded in the tyranny of ontology, and so science done outside of such an ontology, subject to the rules of the discourse, isn’t permitted entry, isn’t qualified as science. These rules can change, and they must change as far as I’m concerned. Insofar as these rules are derived from the tyranny of ontology, the validity of a scientific theory does rest on methodology, and insofar as such an ontology is a belief, validity does rest on belief.
I think the issue is that philosophers of science aren’t aware that objectivity is impossible. This is the meaning of the tyranny. We can still admit values into science while striving for neutrality, for those values are going to worm their way in regardless. My intention is not for science to embrace as much value-ladenness as it can manage, my intention is that science accepts its inevitable bias, and embraces that bias that is ineradicable.
I disagree. That we have agreement does not mean that we have reached certainty. We have previously agreed on knowledge that has since undergone serious revision and reconsideration. Further, I believe that the topics listed in an elementary physics book are changing, and will continue to change in the foreseeable future.
They did attempt neutrality: the traditionalists believed they were being objective. The feminists, contrarily, sought neutrality while embracing the values that they couldn’t leave at the door.
This is where you lose me on the subtle distinctions.
How do you ‘embrace that bias that is ineradicable’? What does it mean in the context of gathering data and analyzing the data? How does ‘the embrace’ change the theory?
How did the feminists seek neutrality? Presumably they went into the study trying to show the influence of women. Didn’t they pick data that substantiated this theory? Did they reject data just as the male traditionalists had done? How do we know which data they rejected?
How neutral was the study?
Do you admit that neutrality is desirable? Nelson doesn’t think so.