Then don’t pretend to be neutral, strive to be neutral. Study your biases and figure out ways to overcome them in the context of your scientific research. Lay out what is left of your values but do not embrace them as being somehow essential for your results. Perhaps your values gave you a critical insight, or a unique point of view. Great. But can your work stand up to scrutiny in a neutral way? If not then maybe it is just a self-indulgent study driven by politics and ego.
If scientists don’t strive for neutrality then we will have feminist science, Afro-American science, Asian science, white science. We won’t have ‘really real’ science.
If you run out of answers then you probably have to evaluate the question. Maybe the question is inappropriate. Maybe the answer is too hard at this time. Try approaching the problem from another direction.
Scientists don’t have all the answers but I think that scientists believe that answers (and dare I say objective answers) exist.
But that’s exactly the point: ‘really real’ science is a false ideal. Neutrality is not the goal; values need not be overcome. I believe empirical predictability and phenomenal accountability are the more proper objects of our aim. Refer to my tabbed post wherein I briefly discuss Nelson’s empirical holism and its account of the scientific practice – nowhere does neutrality come into play. I think you are indirectly supporting the tyranny of ontology in science, or else supporting it rather directly. If the latter: this discussion would significantly benefit from a clear exposition of your position. If the former: consider the problems you have with the tyranny, and how your insistence on neutrality and absence of bias works in light of those problems.
it seems to me that objective truth implies neutrality…also it would be good if you would define really real…i have been assuming you were talking about objective truth…
Turtle, you’ve already asked this question, and I’ve already responded to it here.
Phyllo: in light of this “definition” of mine, my position --to reiterate-- is that there can be no “really real” science.
i know you answered before but i still dont understand…is really real=objective truth…
can there be really real objective truth…i hope this not off topic…
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.
Thanks for the info!
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”.
Jakob: You speak well on the topic; I think you’ve summarized the issues lurking beneath the surface of this thread.
Hence, the importance of Nelson.
Hence, the importance of Foucault.
Hence, the importance of negating the tyranny of ontology in science; or at least striving toward overcoming it.
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.
That science, insofar as it is good science, must follow such a methodology is what I am referring to as tyrannical.
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.
Well, first: the term is not mine, it’s Elizabeth Potter’s. Second: the methodology is derived from, and grounds itself in, the ontology.
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.
I completely disagree. Refer to my tabbed post, here, for what is more or less my understanding of the scientific practice.