Of course you’re talking about the subject matter:
and yet you cannot seperate it from the human even when your end game says that you can. These are human disciplines, they don’t float in space for some brute to mindlessly employ, they all presuppose a human with his value laden manor of encountering the world. They were created by this value laden encounter, and now they are being bastardized beyond recognition.
Read my last reply to matty.
Sitt -
That’s not precisely my point, but it’s actually true.
Which explains people’s desires - their metaphysical lust.
I understand those desires. My sig is all about those desires, written by one of the world’s great philosophers.
I would tell you that I don’t make the news - I only report it.
But truthfully - these are the source and the ramifications of perspectivism. And this relates directly to my last posts to you on the objective knowledge thread. The thing is, it is anything but dreary - it’s a gay science, if you will.
gib -
Well-said.
There are so many questions at issue here, I will address none of them.
ron -
Without who? Philosophers? No, but scientists can get along without epistemologists.
Science is hypothesis/verification. And yeah, a bunch more, but scientists can do science without metaphysics, sure. many scientists don’t even have to know the theoretical underpinnings of their specific tasks. Most scientists aren’t Stephen J. Gould, who is not a particularly good philosopher.
Sitt - then take just one and start a new thread.
If everyone does that, we’ll rock this board.
The question is, can we separate them out, or are they all inter-related. Maybe a super-post is the answer, or maybe I can just start with some anti-naturalism. An impossible task in this philosophic climate, may need to get a little further along with my bloody mary’s first.
I can see you’re up against it, Sitt.
I am sure that whatever you can manage will be thirstily consumed by all.
We await, ever grateful.
The basis for this sentence is all too telling, the unmitigated assumption that the only legitimate methodological inquiry is the scientific one, the only way to understand the universe is through measurement, and ontology and epistemology end and begin at the senses, which is to say that they neither begin nor end. The reaction to 2,000 years of garbage mysticism and awful metaphysics.
The question is, is viewing everything in nature as simple isolated perceptions the most authentic or even the best way to understand reality. Or more fundamentally, if we only rely on the senses, does this lead to the conclusion that science is the only methodology? Is man, the one who is doing the viewing, fundamentally related to the world as a collection of objects with values added on? The answer, he can be related to the world taken as a collection of objects, but he is also related to the world in a more fundamental way. A way in which values aren’t just added on to his relations, but constitute the relations. I am not offering a metaphysics here, atleast not if naturalism isn’t a metaphysics, I am offering an alternative account of how man interacts with the world.
Consider this, a person walks into the messy shop of a slobby craftsman. The tools are strewn all over with narrow pathways that have won their right to exist despite the slobs best efforts. Does this person first encounter the craftsman workshop as a collection of isolated tools, or does the person first consider the workshop in a totality of references, as a world that the craftsman exists in and cares for? To my mind, the person entering the new world does not view it as foreign, but he views it as a referential totality, as the world of the craftsman. The tools run into each other, the pathways are obviously but unconsciously known as walkways - that is to say, the world of the craftsman is first taken as a whole, considered precisely as the world of the craftsman. Only after this referential totality is understood can the person begin to make out the tools as isolated occurrences. A hammer there, a drill here, a wood stove there - the there is always in relation to the world of the craftsman. When they are thematized as objects of nature, they are understood in terms of the usability for the craftsman. The drill is not a drill unless it is considered as something that bores through wood, a hammer is not a hammer unless it is considered as something that pounds in nails. Within the world of the craftsman each object, when taken as an object of nature, is expressly considered in terms of it’s value to both the person and the craftsman.
There is no time in which the hammer is considered as a chunk of wood with a metal devise at the end. At no time is a person related to either the workshop or the hammer as naturalism would have it. The workshop and the tools within it are fundamentally value laden, the workshop is the referential totality initially experienced upon entering the structure, and the hammer is the isolated reference that cannot be isolated from the usability of the tool. There is no room for scientific methodology here, the man’s knowledge is not scientific knowledge, it is value laden knowledge.
After all this shit, the very small point that I want to make is that science is but one way to relate to the world, a way that is foreign to the human in his everyday life. I see no reason to give primacy to it except for a naturalistic bias, I see no reason why meaning and “truth” must be reduced to F=MA. We do not experience in terms of scientific methodology, so how in the hell does it make sense to say that we must investigate the world in terms of it. The senses allow us to experience the referential totality of the craftsman workshop and the hammer as fundamentally a usable tool - these are the ways in which we first experience reality. It is only after them that the hammer can be considered as an object composed of wood and metal. It is a founded relationship for us. It is neither more fundamental nor less true than the purely value laden initial encounter.
The failings of verificationism, science, and contemporary philosophy are preciesly this: They take the fundamental structure of the world and our relation to it to be isolated occurrences of nature-things that we can add value onto. This is simply not the case, we first experience the world as value laden, and we must step back in order to thematize things in terms of science. Scientific methodology is not the only legitimate methodology, it is not even the first methodology, it is a particular methodology that works for a particular point of view(man and nature as nature-things), but other legitimate views endure and other methodologies of investigation must endure also.
This I call phenomenology: Perspectivism devoid of the theory of naturalism.
That’s it?
Scientific methodology is simple induction, formalised.
You really think this is that case? This amounts to a priori knowledge, of course.
You choose a tool familiar to us all.
Have you never seen a tool that you could not identify?
I think you need to get out more.
Faust: What about metaphysics/ontology? Can scientists do good science without metaphysics/ontology is a very interesting question in my opinion? Or what is space time nothing infinity a vacuum a singularity etc.
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Is it apriori knowledge? A farmer who is ploughing his field chips his instrument on a stone-axe -The ignorant farmer picks up the rock and shatters it, the informed farmer instantly has a positive value relationship to it based on it’s historical connotations. They employ the same senses, but experience the stone-axe in fundamentally different ways. However, neither modes of experience is the scientific mode, even the first farmer has a value relationship to the rock, it just happens that the rock has no value for him. No one experiences reality in a originally naturalistic way, it requires a stepping back from, a disengaging from the world. It is a particular theory that isn’t even grounded in our primary mode of experience - The theory that humans and everything else in the world are isolated incidences, everything is simply a nature-thing. Since it is not a primary mode of experience it is founded.
I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. I don’t see how any of this directly refutes anything we’ve been talking about vis-a-vis science, epistemology, and metaphysics. The theme of this threads seems to be, according to my interpretation, that epistemology is metaphysics, and it has seemed to evolve into a discussion about the implications this has for science (whether or not it is metaphysics as well). You can have your Heideggerian phenomenology with all my blessings; What are you saying about this in regards to the question of whether epistemology and/or science are metaphysics?
I think, to be fair to Sitt, that Faust is sort of suggesting that metaphysics is unecessary and that science can carry on regardless without worrying about it, in naive sublimity (yes, I may have made that word up). Like Sitt, I am intensely sceptical about that possibility given the degree of involvement that is required to do anything; while we could ignore the metaphysical aspects of existence we’d lose out on a great deal as a consequence.
This is precisely the problem, naturalism is so entrenched in the discipline that it is seen as the only option available. Look at what I’m doing in that post, I am simply claiming that the theory of science(verificationism or whatever you want to call it) takes everything as fundamentally isolated nature-things. The claim is not that it’s wrong to take things as fundamentally isolated nature-things, but that it is wrong to make this theory of reality the only theory of reality we can get from the senses. The implications are extremely far reaching. For example, it makes the OP both a metaphysics and epistemology because it reduces existence and the manner in which we access it to one methodology - a methodology that isn’t even really the primary way we experience or relate to things -It is a theory of existence. What I am proposing encompasses naturalism, but does not view naturalism as primary or secondary - only founded. Founded upon a more originary mode of experience that says humans relate to the world first and foremost in a value laden way. From this follows a disgusting amount of philosophy, the implications of which I am only starting to begin to understand.
This misses the mark for you because the mode of access humans have to the world is probably irrelevant to the ins and outs of naturalism. However, the critical point is that the mode of access is irrelevant because of naturalism rather than it being irrelevant therefore naturalism. I am attempting to lay bare what I see as unquestioned assumptions of Faust’s position.
matty - I think the best way for me to respond to you is to say that scientists are humans, and may well be interested in epistemology. And that some foundational theorists probably are. But science is about predictaility - about the results, and not really about the Big Whys. Science informs philosophy, and vice-versa, but religion can inform an atheist morality. That doesn’t mean atheist morality is itself religious.
Sitt - I don’t posit that science is the only way to experience the world - in fact, I stated, I believe, that science is (in a vast oversimplification) formalised induction. But the modifier “formalised” counts here.
But you also talk about an informed farmer. He gets his information from his experience. That’s my point. meaning is dependent upon experience.
Humans have named constellations. As if the pattern of stars we see are two-dimensional. We still see these patterns, even though we know the stars exist in three dimensions. We see those patterns whether we think we are looking through holes in a great dome, with fire behind the dome, or if we think these light are incandescent gas, zillions of miles away.
We are born to discern, and even invent patterns. It’s how our minds work. But we must always be on our guard against confounding form and content. Our brains are constructed a certain way. But we probably do experience the world in a naturalistic way - but this is modified from the time we are born - from that very moment - the moment we begin to learn, and to discern, create and remember patterns.
Science is not as naive as this, because it depends upon data being collected and preserved.
I am not claiming that there is only one theory we can call sense-based. I am only claiming that there is one that is best - that makes the most sense and answers the most questions.
My reason for this OP manifold - but one is to establish the assumptions that this perspectivist accepts, and the ones that he doesn’t.
But that doesn’t mean I support that notion. I don’t think Faust does either.
No one’s saying it is.
Science is a methodology - other than that, I’m not sure your accusations of the OP are entirely accurate. I gathered nothing from the OP about the exclusivity of science as the authority of reality or knowledge.
Well, I’ll leave it up to Faust to make the call on that - and it looks like he already did in the last post.
Yeah, gib - I think we’re on the same page. At birth, we take the world as isolated nature-things (if I understand that term). We get a bit more systematic (with our ingrained talent for pattern recognition) as we go along. And science is a truly formailsed instance of this ability.
As for the authoeity science may be for knowledge - it depends what you call knowledge. I am claiming that scientific knowledge, however imperfect and no matter how little supported by truly epistemic considerations, is the most useful kind of knowledge.
I think Sitt’s problem here is that he doesn’t see the distinction I make between naturalism and science.
My assumptions are not unquestioned - but I do not attempt to justify them on theoretical grounds, but but the results they yield.
By their very nature scientists have to have some interest in Epistemology. What’s the point in empiricism if you don’t know just what knowledge is?
That said I’m becoming a bit bored with epistemology. Camus said the most important question we can ask is “Is life worth living?” That’s pretty much where I’m at in my philosophical trajectory.