Discuss.
You know what penises and sciences have in common?
Feminists make them soft.
Jokes aside, let’s not pretend here boys, this is obvious bullshit and there’s nothing to discuss.
Quantum Feminism?
Not if White Shariah has anything to say about it.
Women get fifty years of freedom and men can’t handle it.
More like 150. We tried “freedom”, it’s been ruining societies, it doesn’t work, time to undo it.
Men get freedom, women slavery, I see.
If men think they’d get to act degenerate under White Shariah they have another thing coming, and that thing is a bullet.
Men never act degenerate, they never use women like a toilet or fuck another man’s property.
Let’s examine the merits. First of all, why should, or how could there be a 'different angle" to physics? Does this even make sense?
Possibly, it does. Value ontology dictates that physics is based on a radically selective criterion, not by “truth as such” - as there is no such thing except a psychological state that finds itself so, and that is irrelevant to physics.
So what we have here is an interpretation of physics as an interpretation - which is correct, and the angle is original. It does not yet offer, that Ive found, concrete structures to work with, but given the archetypical dichotomy she calls into being, we can easily maneuver toward some axioms - such as that there exists never a singular particle, but that all concrete existence, all empirically relevant data, fits in the model of plurality and balance.
Some background to the idea that science is, even though it is sovereign in power, ‘merely’ a perspective. Since there are no things besides perspectives, science has to be one as well. A particularly ruthless perspective.
Only_Humean:This is a very simplified view, I think; even hardline scientists would admit that the direction in which the very great majority of science progresses is fuelled by interests, values, applications and so on. And anyone working in any field of science knows where the money is - behind the values of government and industry. And on a point of procedure, a hypothesis isn’t thrown out with the first incongruity; it’s maintained until a better hypothesis presents itself.
Two points. First: you’re correct in pointing out my reductionism; it was a paper with a specific word-limit. As I was trying to cover some fairly broad fields (I moved from the ontological tyranny to a contemporary replacement of it), I was forced to simplify in some instances. Second: I agree with you that most scientists see their work as inevitably value-laden; however, I’m more concerned with the philosophers of science, some of which continue to maintain the tyranny.
Only_Humean:The question is whether there is an objective knowledge of the reality, one language that is fundamentally tuned to the state of things as they are, or whether we’re looking at contingent models rather than metaphysical truth.
Well said. Refer to my reply to turtle wherein I claimed that knowledge-claims are subject to a socially-determined set of criteria. This criteria often concerns itself primarily with what you identify as Instrumentalism, or how effective a given hypothesis is in helping us navigate the world while accounting for observed phenomena.
Only_Humean:There’s a temptation to argue against such tyranny by taking the reverse view, that all is opinion and prejudice […]
Such a temptation doubtless exists. However, I’m more concerned with displacing the ontological tyranny with a more viable model of how science actually works. In this, I am rather fond of Nelson’s empirical holism.
Only_Humean:The tyranny comes not from discovering/constructing facts from the world around us, but from hidden values and assumptions that we apply to them, when we use their ontological status as a rhetorical weapon rather than a bare descriptor.
This is precisely the importance of rooting out instances of the tyranny wherever it occurs. All inquiry is inevitably value-laden; it’s when we take certain science for granted that we get things like androcentrism worming its way deep into the collective understanding of how the body operates.
Great thread.
The tyranny comes not from discovering/constructing facts from the world around us, but from hidden values and assumptions that we apply to them, when we use their ontological status as a rhetorical weapon rather than a bare descriptor.
Excellent response. Very well said, and I think you get right at the root of the issue–
Can an ontilogical status be anything more than a description? As far as I can see, even our best ‘explanations’ are essentially specialized descriptions. We experience some behavior, or phenomena, and infer causes through observation and description of predictable reactions. That is to say, explanations speak more to predictability than any universal or absolute Truth. Ask “why?” or “how?” enough times and everything becomes an unknown.
TheBerto:Agreed, but instead of Objective truth you probably want Absolute truth. Objective truth isn’t too hard to find, there are a ton of objective truths. Inertia is a good example, Inertia is an objective truth that applies to everything in our universe. We have no idea ow it works, or how it is, why it works the way it does, but we do know it’s there. And it’s there for not just me, or you, not just in our minds, It’s everywhere.
Inertia isn’t a truth. Truth applies to statements. “Inertia describes the resistance of matter to acceleration” is a statement that is true, “inertia applies to everything in the universe” is a statement that as far as we know isn’t false (does it apply to neutrinos? I’m honestly not sure).
Inertia also isn’t a Thing. It’s a description of how things move relative to each other: it’s a relation. It can be described in other ways, depending on the fundamental units we choose and the way we formulate our models. It may not be valid for all regions of the reality it attempts to describe.
Take Newtonian mechanics: it’s excellent for life on our scale. All our modern machines and structures are designed based on its principles, from the Brooklyn Bridge to the shock-resistance of an iPhone to the cars we drive and the planes we fly. But it’s not objective truth, only a very good approximation for some regions and states of things.
phyllo:Why not affirm value-ladenness, why not embrace it! Instead of thinking science to be infected and demeaned by values, why not think it strengthened by them!
How would that work? The gender of scientists plays a role in evaluating experimental results? The racial views of an author are used to determine whether a paper is published? Could you provide some examples of how embracing value-ladedness would be beneficial.
In what is now an infamous agricultural case study, Watson and Kennedy concerned themselves with the traditional understanding of plant domestication. I don’t have the study with me, but the traditional hypothesis was that either: 1) Shamans helped domesticate plants by selecting those that were useful in rituals and planting them near their homes; or, 2) plants domesticated themselves. Of course, I’m being somewhat simplistic for the sake of brevity. Anyway, the traditional hypothesis was absent women, working off an androcentric understanding of evolution that held men to be the purveyors of change, the actors and agents of evolution and progress, while women were merely passive bearers of offspring. On this theory, it seems absurd to posit women as the active role-players in the significant development of plant domestication. For Watson and Kennedy, the traditional hypothesis is blinded by its androcentrism, and so refuses out of hand the most empirically viable conclusion: that women were involved in foraging before domestication, and cultivating afterward, and so might very well have been involved during the domestication. The original hypothesis claimed objectivity, but was rather value-inclusive. The background theory at work is that women are passive and cannot affect change: this background theory both informs the hypothesis – that shamans domesticated plants – while also determining what counts as evidence, since if we think that women cannot affect change, then we are blind to evidence suggesting otherwise. Thus, the background theory ladens the hypothesis and the hypothesis determines what gets picked up as evidence.
In short, by consciously including their feminist values --instead of feigning scientific objectivity – Watson and Kennedy were able to develop the more empirically viable hypothesis, that women played an active role in the domestication of plants. In both hypotheses (the traditional and feminist), values are at work. However, by embracing their values and consciously including them, the feminist researchers were led to a better empiricism.
I’d also like to say, phyllo, that we ought to be more proud of the perspectives we occupy. Many perspectives are earned, not merely given. For Watson and Kennedy, feminist valuation is the product of a life-long struggle and should be embraced with pride!
“This is my way; where is yours? - Thus I answered those who asked me “the way.” For the way - that does not exist.”
[Nietzsche, TSZ, Book III].
Only_Humean:I couldn’t find a summary of this online - do you think you could give a precis?
To save myself from re-typing, I’ll quote another excerpt from the same paper:
[tab]Instead of reasoning in a detached manner based solely on empirical evidence in order to arrive at the truth, knowledge, for Nelson, is grounded in an epistemic community and situated within a web of the beliefs and theories of that community. Such knowledge is always thus contextual with respect to its community. With Nelson, there is a shift from the kind of prescriptive epistemology of the traditional account to a descriptive naturalized epistemology understood as a kind of sociology of science. The traditional account tells us how we ought to attain knowledge, while Nelson’s concern is with how we actually do come to make knowledge claims. The actuality, Nelson claims, is far from the traditional picture of independent and disinterested reasoning up to metaphysically real truths. Instead, she holds that knowledge is attained communally, and that knowers come to know things based on a socially determined set of criteria. The resultant knowledge claims are inextricable from their respective epistemic communities.
By situating knowledge within a community of beliefs and theories, Nelson is displacing the idea that knowledge is unchanging and fixed across knowers, which is central to the ontological tyranny. In essence, Nelson is replacing the objectivity of the ontological tyranny with a kind of social subjectivity, wherein knowledge claims are products of scientific communities, many of which are at odds with each other. She holds that scientific knowledge is “generated within social experiences, relations, traditions, and historically and culturally specific ways of organizing social life” (40). Consequently, knowledge cannot be produced by an individual. It is, on the contrary, necessarily social. Nelson maintains that knowledge is a product of perspective, and perspective relies upon a “host of categories, social relations, practices, experiences, and assumptions” (40). All of which, for Nelson, are social concepts. Thus, Nelson is also removing the idea of truth – as it is understood by the traditional account – from the scientific enterprise. Indeed, as Potter declares, Nelson is “denying the general picture according to which autonomous individuals can produce knowledge” (49).
To clarify her approach, Nelson entertains the common criticism that if knowledge is produced communally, then we have no objective standards by which to declare one community right and another wrong. This challenge is an accusation of relativism, which Nelson refutes with the observation that regardless of the disagreement between two epistemic communities, they are not incommensurably different. This is to say that scientific communities agree and overlap on many grounds, such as which epistemic principles are important and necessary for good science. Quine, however, is more concerned with relativism not between epistemic communities, but rather between the theories they produce. Quine observes that Nelson allows for two incommensurable theories, born of two separate epistemic communities. These theories can both provide coherent accounts of empirical data, but since they rely upon different background knowledge and assumptions and are shaped by different values, they do not agree with each other. We are therefore underdetermined, for Quine, in which to accept and which to reject. To this challenge, Nelson argues that the purpose of science is instrumental; we practice science to help us explain and predict our experiences in the world, to negotiate our way through the world and be better prepared to face its obstacles. Thus, for Nelson, if two differing theories are both adequate in explaining observable phenomenon and predicting experience, then we need not concern ourselves with the question of which theory is false. Indeed, a given theory is valid not because of its truth, but because it is able “to make sense of what we experience and to predict our experience” (37). If the value of science is instrumental, and both theories satisfy our needs equally, then the idea that they can both exist is not necessarily a problem.
In summary, Nelson’s challenge to the ontological tyranny and her alternative holistic account brings with it considerable implications for objectivity and knowledge. First, that knowledge is produced not by individual scientists, but instead by communities consisting of a web of theories, background beliefs and assumptions that all colour and shape the resultant production of knowledge. Second, that knowledge is therefore not separable from knower, that knowledge claims are inextricably bound to the communities from which they emerge. Thus, knowledge is not objective, but rather socially subjective. Third, that truth does not play as big a role in the scientific enterprise as the traditional account purports. Rather, science aims at explanatory power; it seeks the most efficient way to account for observable data. Indeed, Nelson’s holistic account problematizes the notion of scientific truth. Last, Nelson’s approach replaces the traditional conception of science as the best way to access the objective truths of nature, with the view that science derives its value from its instrumental usefulness. That good science is empirically adequate and useful in helping us navigate our way through the world, and that two incommensurable theories can both be valid if they are both adequate in accounting for observable data and their ability to aid us significantly in our experiences.[/tab]
Only_Humean:Do you feel a moral duty to disarm the weapon, rather than to appropriate it?
I fully concede to you here. In some instances, it may be beneficial to appropriate “the weapon”; I think you’re right in point out that an out-of-hand rejection betrays the moral will-to-truth at all costs.
phyllo:It led to a different empiricism but not necessarily a better one. The results were distorted in another politically correct direction. We don’t know how much distortion there is. We might be able to take a guess by having a psychological profile of the investigators provided along with the study results. I don’t consider that progress. The only positive is that Watson and Kennedy admit their bias while others pretend that there is no bias. One would expect the tide to turn once again and for the androcentric perspective to become the politically correct one which will produce results distorted in that direction.
The best results would come by trying to adapt a neutral position as much as possible. In the case of this agricultural study, male and female contributions would be equally plausible. It’s difficult to take that neutral position but I think it’s better than embracing a value-laden position.Ah, but neutrality belongs to that very same tyranny we are trying to overcome! Values will work their way into any inquiry, whether we admit to it or not. When we feign objectivity and neutrality, these values are rendered invisible and become dangerously subversive. This is precisely the case with contemporary androcentrism. Invisible values require some effort to uncover and evaluate; contrarily, openly included values offer themselves up as objects of inquiry. It isn’t about political correctness, this case was merely an example. The point of the case study is that Watson and Kennedy developed the more empirically viable theory by consciously including values – by embracing the inevitable value-ladenness of science! This is exactly what you asked me to demonstrate.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110520/jsp/nation/story_14006111.jsp
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”.
Jakob:Scientific truth is thoroughly subjective, culturally determined, and highlight only certain aspects of reality, which it then labels as “the true world”.
Hence, the importance of Nelson.
Jakob:A logical non-sequitur, but no matter, it results in power, even if this power turns out to be of a deeply problematic nature.
Hence, the importance of Foucault.
Jakob: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”.
Hence, the importance of negating the tyranny of ontology in science; or at least striving toward overcoming it.
anon: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.
without-music:The ontological tyranny grounds itself in the “strong claim that the objective reality – the reality converged upon through the application of objective methods – equals all of the Really Real”. Implicit are the assumptions that the Really Real exists independently of human knowers, objective knowledge of this independent reality requires a detached and disinterested reasoning, and that perspective or a non-disinterested point of view will get in the way of our access to independent reality. Last, that this reality is knowable to everyone. Thus, knowledge of the Really Real exists independently of who acquires it, as long as it is acquired through the proper methods. By accepting the ontological tyranny in any of its incarnations, a philosophy is thus committed to the view that good scientific knowledge is mandatorily neutral, non-value-laden and independent of individual knowers.
That science, insofar as it is good science, must follow such a methodology is what I am referring to as tyrannical.
without-music: anon: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.
I completely disagree. Refer to my tabbed post, here, for what is more or less my understanding of the scientific practice.
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.
Thus, for Nelson, if two differing theories are both adequate in explaining observable phenomenon and predicting experience, then we need not concern ourselves with the question of which theory is false. Indeed, a given theory is valid not because of its truth, but because it is able “to make sense of what we experience and to predict our experience” (37). If the value of science is instrumental, and both theories satisfy our needs equally, then the idea that they can both exist is not necessarily a problem.
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.
turtle: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…
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.
anon: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.
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.
phyllo:A karate master practices his entire life fully aware that perfection of form is impossible.
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.
phyllo:There are certain aspects of science on which we have agreement. The topics listed in an elementary physics book are not changing.
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.
phyllo:I would say that if both studies attempted to take a neutral position, the results would have been closer to the truth.
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.
phyllo:his 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?That’s a really exacting question; I’ll be sure to look over my notes before giving you a response.
phyllo: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?
The feminists went into the study trying to develop a theory that did a better job in accounting for observed phenomena. If we can agree that their resultant conclusion was the better of the two, then we needn’t occupy ourselves with the last three of your questions.
phyllo:Do you admit that neutrality is desirable? Nelson doesn’t think so.
I think neutrality is unattainable. Nelson goes slightly further than I, though I believe we’re “on the same page”, so to speak.
anon:I think knowledge is always contextual as well. But the context of scientific knowledge is bigger than you might be suggesting it is.
Duly noted.
anon:And we can’t just choose, even collectively, what kind of knowledge scientific research will provide.
I agree in that we can’t just “choose”; the issue is far subtler: the scientific discourse operates within certain boundaries, and under certain restrictions. These restrictions work to legitimate that kind of knowledge scientific research produces, while negating or “refusing entry” to the rest. These restrictions are intrinsic to the discourse: they consist of the “rules” of science, as you’ve said: who can produce knowledge, under what conditions, through what process, after how much verification, in what context, for what purpose, etc.
anon:Sure. But which rules are essential to scientific inquiry? It’s not a rule that you must have (or not) a particular religious outlook. It’s not a rule that you can’t have personal prejudices.
I think, generally speaking, rules rooted in the ontological tyranny are currently considered essential to proper inquiry. These can be changed, and I think they must be changed, as I’ve said. In short: the discourse needs to be allowed to grow and change.
anon:Are you suggesting that science doesn’t investigate (even if in a limited way) our common reality?
I know I’m being vague, but that’s not what I’m suggesting: this is a topic that currently interests me, one that I’m currently working through an understanding and conceptualization of. My stance isn’t concrete. However, I am suggesting that science understands itself, and so allows itself to be reproduced, in a certain way: this understanding seems to me to be rooted in the tyranny of ontology. It is this understanding of itself that provides a framework for the scientific discourse as well as, in turn, the restrictions that constitute such a discourse. To overcome this understanding is to alter the discourse and so change the rules of legitimation: it is to change the way science is allowed to be done, the way knowledge is allowed to be produced.
without-music:I think it would be rather productive to engage the topic, the tyranny of ontology in science. Philosophers like Nelson and Anderson propose alternative ways to understand the scientific enterprise: Lynn Nelson and her holistic account of naturalized epistemology counted among my favourites. However, there are still many thinkers taking the light for their science from Plato’s fire, to speak with Nietzsche. To begin, then: is it possible to today defend the ontological tyranny, or must it be thrown away out of hand?
This is a question that passionates philosophers, most scientists would tend to dismiss it as irrelevant.
Ultimately Realism rests on the principle of economy in science, I guess that many scientists don’t really believe in the (divine) Really Real - as Only_Humean said.
Working on competing metaphysics (because that is what it is) could be valued by scientists only in terms of how much power that could wield to new theories - although they might have more personal leanings for one metaphysics or the other.
Anyway I guess I am with you on this, philosophically ontological tyranny is over. But with one remark: it is rejected for the same platonic reasons and/or for the same principle of economy that led to it. There are over-assumptions in Realism, and they might be not “true” (and not necessary). And this is the same attitude discussed in GS 344 - that I guess you know very well.