People don’t seem to appreciate the value of a scientifically valid understanding of reality. Even those who claim to value science - do not see the madness of human affairs conducted in relation to religious, political and economic ideologies that are not true. It’s been a difficult journey - for I was born in ignorance and naturally adopted the ideas of those around me, and only later came to realize the falsity and insanity of those ideas. It’s difficult sometimes to justify recommending humankind accept a scientific understanding of reality in common - for while I believe it’s the right course of action, I know first hand the cruelty of disenchantment. With the life of the species at stake, how can I do otherwise? I do not think the following can be faulted:
Human beings evolved from animal ignorance into human knowledge over time.
Human beings formed societies long before they came into scientific knowledge.
Science was first supressed - and later employed in the service of ideological power.
Acting upon ideological falsity within a causal reality is the cause of extinction threats bearing down upon humankind.
Therefore, humankind must accept a scientific understanding of reality in common in order to survive.
Mercury, I agree completely with what you said, but can you go into detail into your scientific understanding of reality? And don’t mind Faust, he’s apparently unaware of the concept of a nuclear winter.
When it comes to terminal values, there’s no objective fact-of-the-matter about whether one set of terminal values is ‘better’ than another, if that’s what you mean.
I don’t think he was claiming otherwise, though, and I don’t see how it affects anything he said.
Not exactly, as it’s not about whether some terminal values are “better” than others—the absurdity of which rightly made you put “better” within quotation marks—, but about whether some are correct whereas others are not—i.e., whether there are intrinsic values.
In any case, because it goes for terminal values, it ultimately goes for any value.
It affects the very first thing he said: “People don’t seem to appreciate the value of a scientifically valid understanding of reality.” This implies that a scientifically valid understanding of reality is valuable regardless of whether one appreciates its value or not (compare “We hold these truths to be self-evident”: this implies that these “truths” are truths regardless of whether they are self-evident or not). But his implicit argument goes like this:
The survival of humankind is valuable.
“[H]umankind must accept a scientific understanding of reality in common in order to survive.”
∴ Humankind’s accepting a scientific understanding of reality in common is valuable.
The retort is well, you guys simply are doing a song and dance. And hence the dance is like they had in the middle of the Great Depression, marathon dances lasting days and days. There were some casualities. A backward recurrance of Hunger Games. Whhhhhhhaaaat? I agree, course to disagree. Signed: Janus aka ashamed chess player
The first 3 are fine. Then 4 goes all wrong in order to try and link unsuccessfully to 5.
Once you start getting into Existentialism, you’ll hopefully become more acquainted with the concept of “a lie as the truth, because it has value”.
Ideology has led humanity into all kinds of power battles, each more powerful than the last regardless of its flaws. More accurately, 4 should describe how ideological falsity is the cause of human advancement. I know you’re trying to make a point about physical laws and the idealist retreat from them in the name of something unrealistically “better”, but that only applies to an extremely young or aged ideology, such as Capitalism. It started out great, but now twilight has arrived and a new false ideology needs to replace it.
MOST people hold the survival of their species as a near-terminal value. Mercury seems to be arguing that, GIVEN that as a terminal value, science is a very important instrumental value. Not because any values here are objectively ‘true’ and others are objectively ‘false’, but because people have a certain terminal value, and it will be well-served by this instrumental value (which can be an objective fact – objectively, some instrumental values fulfil certain terminal values better than other ones).
Btw I’m not saying that his argument is necessarily a good one (I really don’t like #4), but your objection is misunderstanding the argument deeply. It just seems like a failed nitpick to me.
With no provocation intended I think #4 is too close to call. If I can remeber this forum, I will analyze and corraborate this. I think #4 is pivotal. As is #7.
Ps: disregard please until or if, an edification may be forthcoming.
Well, if objectively the survival of the species has no value, isn’t acting on the valuation of it an example of “the madness of human affairs conducted in relation to religious, political and economic ideologies that are not true”?
By the way, even if most people hold the survival of their species as a (near-)terminal value, there may still be things they value higher than it. For instinctive reasons, for example, one may well value the possible survival of one’s near blood-relatives higher than the certain survival of other members of one’s species, just as one may for those same reasons value the possible survival of those other members higher than the certain survival of members of a near-related species, etc.
The thesis shows a noble spirit but I find myself disagreeing with most individual pieces of the argument.
Perhaps my objections will help you refine your idea so that it will become clearer what exactly must change about the relation of science and ideology.
Note that the dangers arose with science, not with false ideologies.
You have no compelling argument to sustain that false ideologies are the result of the damage that is being done using scientific discoveries.
Disagree. No species that is ignorant of what is of value to it will survive a single cycle.
Depends on what you mean by scientific knowledge. The discovery of weapons and fire were instrumental in what we know as society.
If you see the Greeks as the origin of science then 2. clearly stands.
Disagree. Archimedes built war machines. He suspended his own scientific efforts only to exploit his earlier effort at the behalf of the state which was heavily ideological.
Disagree for now. You have presented no evidence that the harm science does is not due to far more down to earth causes, such as ambition and shortsightedness.
Rather, he must adjust his ideological views to properly steer his scientific power to his own benefit.
In other words, he must learn what is really of value to him and why. He must learn what it means to value. Why he values himself and how his values follow from his self-valuing. That is a scientific understanding of himself, of his morality as well as his physical being. So far, these two have been regarded as separate concerns, and as you have divined this is the cause of the problem we are experiencing.
I think you’re getting mixed up here. ‘Objectively has no value’ and ‘Objectively has value’ are both category errors, nonsensical statements.
You can act on your own values, and it’s not mad. I don’t see anything mad about acting on your own values, AND simultaneously accepting that they’re not ‘objectively true’. What’s mad about that?
Terminal values cannot be ‘true’ or ‘false’. Instrumental values can, in a way. That’s sort of the end of it. The OP may have made an error, somewhere, in his reasoning, but this is not it.
I don’t know, doesn’t sound like a relevant question to this thread. Sure, there are probably things most people value above the survival of the species. Not in the scope of this thread, this conversation, etc. Might be an interesting question to think about, though, so I encourage you to start a thread and gather your thoughts.
There is no plausible scenario that I know of that would lead us to believe that a nuclear winter capable of wiping out the species is possible. Please feel free to start a thread expounding your novel theory.
I don’t get 4 at all. Nuclear bombs, overpopulation, and just about any other threat to mankind that people talk about these days other than asteroids and Godzilla* are actually products of scientific advancement, so couldn’t somebody made a parallel argument that we should all be dirt-worshipping heathens with no scientific knowledge at all for our own good? It just seems like a toss-up between nuclear annihilation and influenza.
Nevermind, Godzilla is a product of nuclear testing, so there you go.