Socialist Schools: Seattle's Sprouting Scourge [Archive]

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Crazed Rabbit

02-28-2007, 23:11

Seems some Seattle socialists are taking to indoctrinating young school kids in the ideals of communism:

Some Seattle school children are being told to be skeptical of private property rights. This lesson is being taught by banning Legos.

A ban was initiated at the Hilltop Children's Center in Seattle. According to an article in the winter 2006-07 issue of "Rethinking Schools" magazine, the teachers at the private school wanted their students to learn that private property ownership is evil.

According to the article, the students had been building an elaborate "Legotown," but it was accidentally demolished. The teachers decided its destruction was an opportunity to explore "the inequities of private ownership." According to the teachers, "Our intention was to promote a contrasting set of values: collectivity, collaboration, resource-sharing, and full democratic participation."

The children were allegedly incorporating into Legotown "their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys." These assumptions "mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society -- a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive."

They claimed as their role shaping the children's "social and political understandings of ownership and economic equity ... from a perspective of social justice."

So they first explored with the children the issue of ownership. Not all of the students shared the teachers' anathema to private property ownership. "If I buy it, I own it," one child is quoted saying. The teachers then explored with the students concepts of fairness, equity, power, and other issues over a period of several months.

At the end of that time, Legos returned to the classroom after the children agreed to several guiding principles framed by the teachers, including that "All structures are public structures" and "All structures will be standard sizes." The teachers quote the children:

"A house is good because it is a community house."

"We should have equal houses. They should be standard sizes."

"It's important to have the same amount of power as other people over your building."

Given some recent history in Washington state with respect to private property protections, perhaps this should not come as a surprise. Municipal officials in Washington have long known how to condemn one person's private property and sell it to another for the "public use" of private economic development. Even prior to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2005 ruling in Kelo v. City of New London, Connecticut, which sanctioned such a use of eminent domain, Washington state officials acting under their state constitution were already proceeding full speed ahead with such transactions.

Officials in Bremerton, for example, condemned a house where a widow had lived for 55 years so her property could be used for a car lot, according to the Institute for Justice. And Seattle successfully condemned nine properties and turned them over to a private developer for retail shops and hotel parking, IJ reports. Attempts to do the same thing in Vancouver (for mixed use development) and Lakewood (for an amusement park) failed for reasons unrelated to property confiscation issues.

The court's ruling in Kelo, however, whetted municipal condemnation appetites even further. The Institute for Justice reports 272 takings for private use are pending or threatened in the state as of last summer. It's unclear if Legos will be targeted. But given what's being taught in some schools, perhaps it's just a matter of time.

from: http://www.techcentralstation.com/

I love how the idea of forcing people to conform to one norm, and taking away that which they earn, is 'social justice'. I wonder what house sizes the teachers have. Not to mention instilling ignorance in our youth regarding property and capitalism.

Crazed Rabbit

Goofball

02-28-2007, 23:34

Crazed Rabbit

03-01-2007, 00:03

I'm not against this in private schools, for the reasons you stated. I do wonder what the parents thought of this.

CR

Randarkmaan

03-01-2007, 00:23

I find it a bit amusing that children are being taught that private property is bad in a private school.
Anyway the best way (or the best way so as not to "hurt" someone's political views or whatever) to teach children is often to represent a neutral explanation of something then present them with various views on this something and let them make up their mind rather than telling them this is bad and this is good.

ShadeHonestus

03-01-2007, 00:31

and to think they could have gotten this same education for less in 90% of our public schools.

Cowhead418

03-01-2007, 00:58

Like you I am a hardcore capitalist, so I find the ideas they are teaching at this school to be just as repugnant and ridiculous as you do. However, it is a private school, so there is no reason they shouldn't be allowed to teach this garbage.

I also find the many of the ideas taught in religious schools to be silly and repugnant, but as they are also private I have no problem with them teaching whatever they want.I agree with you on both counts. Before I moved five years ago, I attended a Catholic private school. When I look back on it, I found it to be ridiculous. When I moved and attended a public school, I found my experiences to be much better. The school was far more diverse (my old school was mostly White Irish Catholics with a few Philipinos and nothing else), the education was far better (and my old school was considered one of the higher-quality private schools) and the whole atmosphere was far more appealing. I don't see how paying all that extra money is worth it (though this is just my experience with one private school).

However, back on topic, I find socialists/communists to be hilarious. Their idea of fairness is in some ways so twisted that it just reeks of class envy and overall jealousy to me. That is of course only my opinion...:creep:

Hosakawa Tito

03-01-2007, 01:01

I could just imagine some of the brighter little scamps, after further research (for extra credit), declaring a worker/student council, redistributing all school staff wealth and property thereby abolishing private property (of which they have none) and class warfare, enabling them to move to a higher stage of society. Forming the Democratic Popular Front Workers Party of Seattle they form their own unstoppable political socialist movement to rein in the imperialistic autocratic adult oppressors. Ushering in a utopia of long denied freedoms such as late bedtimes, unlimited tv, and chocolate cake for breakfast.:director: What do we want?:director: SOCIALISM :director: When do we want it?:director: NOW:director:

Teach your children (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6pphVs8bF0)

GoreBag

03-01-2007, 01:09

EDIT: Personal attack removed. BG

scotchedpommes

03-01-2007, 01:12

Indeed.

While I wouldn't view this as even remotely as damaging to a developing mind as
the 'evangelical' religious education forced on others, I think that such ideas
should only be put across for consideration at a much later age, of course.

Naturally if the wrong choices are made, action can be taken at that later point
to re-educate. ~;)

Cowhead418

03-01-2007, 01:35

Reenk Roink

03-01-2007, 01:41

In my (public) school days, I was taught that it is rational to accept scientific theories and laws like gravity, conservation of energy, conservation of momentum, etc to hold true always. Now I see the fatal irrationality of such positions and am finding myself agreeing with Feyerabend when he somewhat advocated a separation of science and state as an corollary to separation of church and state.

At my school, a church used to hold Bible study classes in the building during the weekends. Pretty shocking as I was always under the impression that church and state (public school included) should be separate (of course, I never went, but the fact that they offered classes in school is still relevant).

At my school, we were taught that the democratic process is important and were encouraged to vote. Now, I have ardently decided never to vote (and I'm not abstaining courteously either). Recent harassment by voter registration people has only heightened that resolve.

The point is: the stuff that they teach you in school really doesn't matter. At least personally, it didn't affect me. Kids aren't stupid lemmings. They can think for themselves. We shouldn't worry about it...

Slyspy

03-01-2007, 02:32

They took away their Lego? ~:mecry:

AntiochusIII

03-01-2007, 06:37

The point is: the stuff that they teach you in school really doesn't matter. At least personally, it didn't affect me. Kids aren't stupid lemmings. They can think for themselves. We shouldn't worry about it...You're underestimating the power of brainwashing and indoctrination there, my philosophical friend.

Fragony

03-01-2007, 11:31

Private schools huh, no true socialist should be without it. Their money, more worried about the socialist conditioning in our public schools.

BDC

03-01-2007, 12:03

Aren't private schools in the US monitored at all? I think they can be closed here if they aren't good enough or teach particularly stupid stuff. Some Islamic one was recently (although as no one had been stupid enough to send their children there it was empty anyway).

I don't know if turning your pupils into little socialists is that bad an idea. They'll still grow up and become rich and successful, they'll just be guilted into helping some poorer people too.

ShadeHonestus

03-01-2007, 13:05

I don't know if turning your pupils into little socialists is that bad an idea. They'll still grow up and become rich and successful, they'll just be guilted into helping some poorer people too.

lmao, no, they'll be guilted into taking my money to give those who they believe actually believe in their socialist agenda.

[edit] or they'll be educated into apathy awaiting "social responsibility" to keep them afloat

Big King Sanctaphrax

03-01-2007, 13:56

conservation of energy, conservation of momentum, etc to hold true always. Now I see the fatal irrationality of such positions

Fatal irrationality of the conservation of energy? This should be good.

Watchman

03-01-2007, 14:18

Private schools huh, no true socialist should be without it. Their money, more worried about the socialist conditioning in our public schools.Frag, American public schools are pretty much a good argument for socialism by themselves...

Fragony

03-01-2007, 14:22

Frag, American public schools are pretty much a good argument for socialism by themselves...

No such thing exists. And they aren't that bad, at least that's what I heard.

Watchman

03-01-2007, 14:26

You're confusing reformatory socialism with revolutionary communism again, you know.

Fragony

03-01-2007, 14:39

I know, fun as heck, nuance is for sissy's

Watchman

03-01-2007, 15:31

You know why the revolutionaries always hated the reformists, right ? I must've explained it several times in the past...

Fragony

03-01-2007, 15:44

let me guess not radical enough? Let's keep it right there, the past. We have seen nazi germany and communist russia/asia , wasn't fun by anyone's standards. Creepy stuff, socialism inevitably leads to a totalitarian government, the scariest thing there is.

Watchman

03-01-2007, 15:58

Nah. Why the revolutionaries found the reformists such abominable cause traitors was the simple fact that in their (entirely correct) assessement the latter were trying to save the vile bourgeoise capitalist system instead of overthrowing it. After all, the reformists wanted to rein in and tame exactly the factors that were supposed to bring about the proletariat revolution and thus ultimately preserve the existing order - which in hindsight was the case, as where "socialist" reforms were carried out in due time lower-class militancy never really caught root. Where they weren't, well, Russia was one example.

This was incidentally the logic behind the harebrained Comintern policy of the Twenties and early Thirties of if need be supporting the Nazis against the German Social Democrats - the NSDAP were regarded as the ultimate expression of the bourgeois-capitalist principle and hence it logically followed that letting them into power would bring about the Revolution that much faster. Plus the Revolutionary Communists with their Leninist organization scheme and long experience of undercover activity calculated they'd survive the Nazis far better than the Social Democrats, who relied on out-in-the-open things like elections, assemblies etc. for their existence and policy.

When things didn't quite go according to the script the Comintern strategists must've felt mighty stupid. What was left of the German reformists by that point were understandably somewhat cool to the conciliatory moves of what was left of the revolutionaries - that the communiqués were in the order of hastily scrawled letters on prison toilet paper hardly helped.

Fragony

03-01-2007, 16:13

Hehehe so they supported the nazi's because a powerfull enemy would speed things up, it does make sense in a nonsensical kind of way, now that is what I call politics :yes:

Crazed Rabbit

03-01-2007, 16:49

Frag, American public schools are pretty much a good argument for socialism by themselves...

How's that? They seem to be strong arguments against it - a monopoly on education run by the gov't that gets more and more money poured into it whenever the teacher unions whine, and yet grades are not as good as private schools. Here in Washington state, there's about 10,000 dollars per kid per year for schools, and the teacher union is saying education isn't being 'adequately funded' - i.e they want more money.

Indeed, public teachers are strongly against gov't vouchers that would allow parents to decide what school the money supporting their children goes to, because then many people would choose private schools.

Crazed Rabbit

ShadeHonestus

03-01-2007, 16:54

Do they at least have open enrollment in Washington?

Reenk Roink

03-01-2007, 17:13

You're underestimating the power of brainwashing and indoctrination there, my philosophical friend.

Yes, I don't like to put much emphasis on it, because it leads to a deterministic outlook. Still, I use myself as an anecdote, a weak example perhaps, but it is a start.

As long as kids get to see other sides of the story once they are older, they will be able to form their own opinions. Of course, there will always be a great deal of influence based on the society where people live at, but that affects adults just as much and is basically inescapable.

The way I see it, these kids live in a capitalistic society. I will speculate that more likely than not, they will mostly grow up to be capitalists. The lego lesson cannot outdo the greater social factors at work. Now, if they grew up in a protected socialist environment for their entire lives, then maybe they would more than likely be socialists, but again, it is the product of the society as a whole gradually influencing their behavior (like what happens to me and you), and not a lego lesson.

Fatal irrationality of the conservation of energy? This should be good.

I personally think it is quite worrying.

Read the last third or so the the "Regarding Atheism" thread, and if you have the time, pick up a copy of Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

Just a very concise illustration of the irrationality of accepting scientific laws:

Whenever I have in the past, broken into art galleries, I proceeded to drop the fine crystal vases on exhibit (after I raided the vending machines for my Twix).

Everytime in the past, I have seen the crystal vases fall downward and break when I drop them.

Now, I’m planning another hit tomorrow as I heard they got some new Twix (old ones were getting stale) and new vases from Polynesia.

I want to drop and break the vases again.

Now, based (and only based) on the fact that they have fallen down and broken in the past, does it follow that they will fall downward and break if I drop them tomorrow?

The answer is of course, no. There is nothing that necessitates them falling downward and breaking just because they have done so in the past. I have no reason to believe that the vases will fall downward and break tomorrow. If I do believe that, it will be irrational.

Now, you may reply: “Ah, but our belief that the vase will fall downward and break if dropped is not based on the fact that it has happened in the past, it is because of the law of gravity”.

I will respond: “The law of gravity is simply a generalization based on the fact that things have fallen downward in the past when dropped".

Here is the central problem of scientific laws, scientific theories, and scientific predictions.

Inductive reasoning.

Watchman

03-01-2007, 19:05

How's that? They seem to be strong arguments against it - a monopoly on education run by the gov't that gets more and more money poured into it whenever the teacher unions whine, and yet grades are not as good as private schools. Here in Washington state, there's about 10,000 dollars per kid per year for schools, and the teacher union is saying education isn't being 'adequately funded' - i.e they want more money.

Indeed, public teachers are strongly against gov't vouchers that would allow parents to decide what school the money supporting their children goes to, because then many people would choose private schools.Well, our governement-funded public schools work mighty fine (not counting the increasing difficulties budget cuts are giving them); which must mean yours have a buggered organization scheme, funding and/or priorities. Which in turn suggests the priorities of your society are skewed.
:stare:
"The problem, private, is as always between the ears" as they say in our army.

'Sides, where the heck are you seeing a "monopoly on education run by the gov't" anyway ? The US has no shortage of private schools by what I know of it. We have them too; heck, I completed much of my lower primary education in one (and they get some gov't subsidies as well...).
:inquisitive:
...this wouldn't be that "3v1l f3ds" syndrome at work again, would it...?

Crazed Rabbit

03-01-2007, 19:59

Oh I'm sure public schools could be run much better than what we have in America (I erred in labeling them a monopoly, but they are pretty close). But the teacher's unions have a tight stranglehold (read how difficult it is to fire a teacher in New York City, for example) on public education and don't want anything that would improve schools if it would loosen their control.

It's not our society that's skewed, it's our teachers.

Crazed Rabbit

scotchedpommes

03-01-2007, 20:13

As long as kids get to see other sides of the story once they are older, they will be able to form their own opinions. Of course, there will always be a great deal of influence based on the society where people live at, but that affects adults just as much and is basically inescapable.

The way I see it, these kids live in a capitalistic society. I will speculate that more likely than not, they will mostly grow up to be capitalists. The lego lesson cannot outdo the greater social factors at work. Now, if they grew up in a protected socialist environment for their entire lives, then maybe they would more than likely be socialists, but again, it is the product of the society as a whole gradually influencing their behavior (like what happens to me and you), and not a lego lesson.

Obviously an excellent point. In a similar vein, at a young age in school, I
remember having to study [limited] aspects of Christianity, passages in the bible
and what have you - but clearly most of the socialising process that I later
came to experience [i.e. in the company of family or peers] crushed any chance
of these ideas taking hold and forming any significant part of my thought processes
or more generally my outlook on life or politics. Obviously if I had grown up in an
environment which was more geared to acceptance of the religious as anything
other than laughable, then it might have been another story.

Soulforged

03-02-2007, 00:35

I love how the idea of forcing people to conform to one norm, and taking away that which they earn, is 'social justice'. I wonder what house sizes the teachers have. Not to mention instilling ignorance in our youth regarding property and capitalism.
This is not being forced upon the students they're being instructed to accept a different set of basic principles, not those of liberal society but those of a socialist one. I can't see how that's wrong. Now if a kid said "I love my car" and some teacher suspended him for doing so, that's another thing. Besides kids are always learning, and when they do they learn the basic principles of a capitalist society, when they learn other principles is when they grow up, and many of them take this learning process more as an amusement than anything of use.

Let's hope that this doesn't create fanatics though.

EDIT: I think that Marx said something about one way of production creating the weapons for its own destruction. The contradiction of a private school teaching private ownership is evil is just too much Marx (or Hegel)...

Lord Winter

03-02-2007, 01:04

Reenk Roink

03-02-2007, 01:10

:inquisitive:

How does something that is proven true need to have an opposing and thus wrong view point tought with it. Is this not the same debate of why shouldn't creationism be tought in school. Like eveolution all of these laws have stood up to througho test.

This has nothing to do with creationism or evolution at all. This view of Feyerabend comes from a much more broad critique on the scientific method itself.

Watchman

03-02-2007, 01:14

Lord Winter

03-02-2007, 01:26

This has nothing to do with creationism or evolution at all. This view of Feyerabend comes from a much more broad critique on the scientific method itself.
The evolution creastionism phrase was just an example. I agree that scientific laws and theroys should not be immune from testing but the place for that is in the science community not a school room.

Reenk Roink

03-02-2007, 01:26

And I can just imagine how well something that complicated and convoluted could be fed to the largely disinterested kids... Science-philosophical sandbox wars, oh the excitement. *I* wouldn't have been interested for more than half an hour, and I'm the guy who would spend ten minutes debating a minor point with the philosophy teach in junior high. And made a point of reading through every new history textbook the day I got them.

Feyerabend is not interested with philosophy in the sense you portray it. He is interested in the rationality of the sciences and the strength of its method. Is there anything wrong with seeing if your beliefs are rational and your methods are correct? In fact, these things take an epistemic priority to the actual theories or methods themselves, and pique the curiosity (at least for me) more. I really don't know much about gravity except that things fall downward, and I really don't want to know anymore (I am clueless about conservation of energy or momentum except what their names imply as I never took high school physics). I do want to examine whether the reasoning processes that give us our scientific laws and theories have any predictative applicability.

Watchman

03-02-2007, 01:58

Hosakawa Tito

03-02-2007, 02:03

A class divided (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/friday.html)

I remember watching this program a long time ago. I believe the teachers in that Seattle private school are attempting something similar. Learning about a different belief system or experiencing something like discrimination is important in developing well rounded adults. Nothing wrong with that.

Reenk Roink

03-02-2007, 02:14

Huh. I'm mainly interested in whether they work, and if they do, why and if you can develop the idea further. I'm pragmatic that way. "Experiment repeatable under controlled conditions" is one of the cornerstones of that very vague Scientific Method thingy far as I know, and I don't really see where you can argue against that one (although of course, there are matters where experiments are impossible or impractical...).

The issue that the problem of induction poses is that of predictative applicability, i.e., whether any of these scientific laws/theories will hold up in the future. So far, our scientific laws only have observations of the past and present to show (big whoop). Feyerabend attacks the method for being "limited" and gives examples of scientists who have had to break with the method (Einstein ignoring dogmatic falsification to push through his theory of general relativity) to advance science. It's a far more broad reaching and radical critique than above, but the former is the one that poses the greater threat to science, and why I hold beliefs that gravity will work tomorrow like it has today to be wholly irrational.

Watchman

03-02-2007, 02:28

Reenk Roink

03-02-2007, 02:34

*shrug* Yet we have to rely on induction no matter how irrational it strictly speaking might be. Of course I have no quarantee that by the next time I take a sip from the cup of cocoa in front of me it hasn't changed to coffee; but worrying about if the sun really will rise tomorrow too like it has thus far isn't really a very rational approach to life.

So necessity having to rely on something makes it OK and exempt from the standards of rationality we demand from other avenues? I could have told you a long time ago that it is by psychological custom or habit that we reason this way (Hume pointed out the fact in his critique). It doesn't solve the conundrum at all though... :shrug:

I can see the point (it indeed appears rather self-evident) of the critique, but outside some very theoretical "pure science" fields of study cannot really understand why it's supposed to be important.

It's supposed to be important because we want our beliefs to be rational.

Honestly, I just sometimes shake my head at the sheer hypocrisy or ignorance of some posters on this board criticizing another for his irrational (there's that word again) faith, be it in a religion, flat earth, or UFO's, while similarly touting science and it's laws as a paragon of reason.

I guess that's why I care...

Watchman

03-02-2007, 02:52

Bah. There are limits to what can be reasonably expected. Rationality is the ideal that should be aspired to, and that's it. Ideals like that don't actually mesh with reality too well, methinks.

So necessity having to rely on something makes it OK and exempt from the standards of rationality we demand from other avenues?And what do you propose I, or anyone, do about the matter ? :blank:

It doesn't solve the conundrum at all though...I'd be very surprised if it did. Far as I know that's one of those archived under Insoluble.

Honestly, I just sometimes shake my head at the sheer hypocrisy or ignorance of some posters on this board criticizing another for his irrational (there's that word again) faith, be it in a religion, flat earth, or UFO's, while similarly touting science and it's laws as a paragon of reason.That's people for you. And, yes, they are missing a few major points there.
But, well, what're we supposed to do about it ? People are people, and there's only so much they can be reasonably expected to improve.

Reenk Roink

03-02-2007, 03:12

Bah. There are limits to what can be reasonably expected. Rationality is the ideal that should be aspired to, and that's it. Ideals like that don't actually mesh with reality too well, methinks.

So people who believe in a flat earth can simply point this out when reason or evidence is not in their favor?

And what do you propose I, or anyone, do about the matter ? :blank:

1) Not form our beliefs on the basis of induction
2) Find a solution to the problem of induction
3) Form our beliefs on induction but hold no pretensions of them being rational

I'd be very surprised if it did. Far as I know that's one of those archived under Insoluble.

I actually believe there can be glimmers of hope to solving it. After all there have been attempts, and while they have all fell short, it gives hope. There is of course, pragmatic justification (the Pascal's Wager of scientific laws). Then there is the postulational approach of holding the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature, but then again, one could just make up a postulate that Leprechauns exist as easily. Also, people like to cut the many Cosmological Arguments that all rely on the Principle of Sufficient Reason. If you won't even accept PSR as a postulate, then I don't see how any postulate can be held. There is also Sir Karl Popper's attempt to beat the problem of induction by claiming that we reasoned deductively in science. A bold move, but Popper has to defend the pretty convincing rebuttals that he has just superficially swept our inductive reasoning under the cover of deductive reasoning. If he (his supporters) can do that (which they haven't), then he faces the problem that using modus tollens only allows theories to be labelled as false, and never can get us the truth, and also that under deductive reasoning, science is still stripped of any predictative applicability.

That's people for you. And, yes, they are missing a few major points there.
But, well, what're we supposed to do about it ? People are people, and there's only so much they can be reasonably expected to improve.

OK, so ignoring the people issue, my main point was that I personally would like my beliefs to be rational. That is very important to me. :smiley:

Watchman

03-02-2007, 03:44

So people who believe in a flat earth can simply point this out when reason or evidence is not in their favor?I don't really see where they enter the equation, since their problem is not one concerning induction but a manifest lack any sort of credible proof to back up their idea isn't it ?

1) Not form our beliefs on the basis of induction
2) Find a solution to the problem of induction
3) Form our beliefs on induction but hold no pretensions of them being rationalSeems a little excessive to me. Isn't just keeping the matter - in essence, the fundamental uncertainty of all human knowledge - in mind enough so as to avoid possible excessive hubris and attacks of dogmatism ?

I actually believe there can be glimmers of hope to solving it. After all there have been attempts, and while they have all fell short, it gives hope. There is of course, pragmatic justification (the Pascal's Wager of scientific laws). Then there is the postulational approach of holding the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature, but then again, one could just make up a postulate that Leprechauns exist as easily. Also, people like to cut the many Cosmological Arguments that all rely on the Principle of Sufficient Reason. If you won't even accept PSR as a postulate, then I don't see how any postulate can be held. There is also Sir Karl Popper's attempt to beat the problem of induction by claiming that we reasoned deductively in science. A bold move, but Popper has to defend the pretty convincing rebuttals that he has just superficially swept our inductive reasoning under the cover of deductive reasoning. If he (his supporters) can do that (which they haven't), then he faces the problem that using modus tollens only allows theories to be labelled as false, and never can get us the truth, and also that under deductive reasoning, science is still stripped of any predictative applicability.*shrug* None of my beeswax really. I always found these debates to be tedious tailchasers that obsess far too much over semantics.

OK, so ignoring the people issue, my main point was that I personally would like my beliefs to be rational. That is very important to me. :smiley:I guess it's always nice to have a dream and something to aspire to. ~;p "Boys be ambitious", or however that now went - but I'll tell you right now that if you ever come to tell me your beliefs are entirely rational, I promise I'll smack some sense and perspective back into you. :smash:

Reenk Roink

03-02-2007, 18:59

I don't really see where they enter the equation, since their problem is not one concerning induction but a manifest lack any sort of credible proof to back up their idea isn't it ?

I brought up the flat earth people because what you said was dismissive of rationality. If you are going to dismiss rationality as an ideal and say that we should just go by what is "reasonably expected", then this standard should be applied everywhere.

The problem of induction pretty well shows that there is no evidence or reason we should accept scientific laws or theories to hold true in the future. I'd say that's a "manifest lack any sort of credible proof to back up [the] idea" that gravity will work tomorrow.

Thus, people who believe in a flat earth are just like people who hold the law of the conservation of momentum to hold in the future, in that both groups suffer from a complete lack of reason or evidence to support their assertions. However, if the latter get off because there are limits on what can be "reasonably expected" than the former can too.

Seems a little excessive to me. Isn't just keeping the matter - in essence, the fundamental uncertainty of all human knowledge - in mind enough so as to avoid possible excessive hubris and attacks of dogmatism ?

The problem of induction does not merely state that scientific laws could be wrong in the future, and that we don't have 100% certainty. It makes the claim that we have absolutely no reason whatsoever to hold that scientific laws will remain the same in the future. That is why I said in my initial post that the scientific laws I learned in school suffer from fatal irrationality when it comes to the predictative applicability.

*shrug* None of my beeswax really. I always found these debates to be tedious tailchasers that obsess far too much over semantics.

I don't see at all how they deal with semantics as they are about reasoning processes, but OK, we'll leave that.

I guess it's always nice to have a dream and something to aspire to. ~;p "Boys be ambitious", or however that now went - but I'll tell you right now that if you ever come to tell me your beliefs are entirely rational, I promise I'll smack some sense and perspective back into you. :smash:

I don't claim that my beliefs are rational. In fact, I have come close to embracing some parts of my human irrationality.

Still, I would think it nice to have more of a reason to trust in scientific predictions than in crystal ball predictions... :wink:

Big King Sanctaphrax

03-02-2007, 19:00

Reenk Roink

03-02-2007, 19:06

I think I'll start worrying about that sort of thing once gravity actually stops working. I mean, hell, the whole universe could be a computer programme that could get wiped tomorrow. I can't predict the future.

Whether or not it can tell us how things will work, science is pretty good at helping us understand how things work now

I already noted that scientific laws are very nice for observing generalizations and correlations. I also thought "big whoop". I'm concerned about the future. Using induction's previous success to justify induction is clear circular reasoning.

Sasaki Kojiro

03-02-2007, 19:08

Counting on "probably" is not irrational.

Reenk Roink

03-02-2007, 19:09

Counting on "probably" is not irrational.

Can you tell me how observing some phenomena in the past at all makes it at all more probable to occur in the future? What axioms allow you to follow through with that reasoning?

We went over this in the "Regarding Atheism" thread. Probability doesn't even begin to factor in...

Big King Sanctaphrax

03-02-2007, 19:20

So can you suggest a beter way of predicting things that are likely to happen in the future, then?

Reenk Roink

03-02-2007, 19:26

So can you suggest a beter way of predicting things that are likely to happen in the future, then?

No. Crystal ball gazing, scientific predictions, tarot cards, they are all equal in predictative applicability. They all have none. Why do you think I thought this problem particularly worrying?

Sasaki Kojiro

03-02-2007, 20:00

Can you tell me how observing some phenomena in the past at all makes it at all more probable to occur in the future? What axioms allow you to follow through with that reasoning?

So if you jump off a cliff you are equally likely to fall as to fly away, is this what you are saying?

Adrian II

03-02-2007, 20:41

So if you jump off a cliff you are equally likely to fall as to fly away, is this what you are saying?That is the problem with these half-baked theories: they are never put to the test. The reductio ad absurdum of Feyerabend's own view is quite simple: nothing guarantees that 'anything will go' tomorrow as it does today.

Reenk Roink

03-02-2007, 20:49

So if you jump off a cliff you are equally likely to fall as to fly away, is this what you are saying?

What a strawman. :rolleyes: Sasaki Kojiro, you were posting in the "Regarding Atheism" thread when I went on about the problem of induction.

To answer your question: If I jump off a cliff, I have no reason to believe that I will fall, I have no reason to believe that I will fly away, I have no reason to believe that I will hover there, etc. That is what the problem of induction says.

That is the problem with these half-baked theories: they are never put to the test. The reductio ad absurdum of Feyerabend's own view is quite simple: nothing guarantees that 'anything will go' tomorrow as it does today.

Perhaps you should consider the fact that we are speaking of the problem of induction, as brought up by David Hume, and rehashed by modern philosophers of science like Sir Karl Popper and Dr. Wesley Salmon.

If you had considered this, you would not have made the mistake to confuse Paul Feyerabend's epistemological anarchism with the problem of induction. They are two very separate things. Heck, if you had actually read Feyerabend, you wouldn't have made this mistake.

Sasaki Kojiro

03-02-2007, 21:05

Explain how you could just hover there please. There is an explanation for why you would fall, therefore it is a superior assumption.

Reenk Roink

03-02-2007, 21:09

Explain how you could just hover there please. There is an explanation for why you would fall, therefore it is a superior assumption.

The "hover" there is an example, Sasaki Kojiro. It is just as unsupported by rationality as falling down...

What's the explanation that I would fall? That it's happened in the past? Is that what makes it "superior". If you say that, then I'll just go ahead and give you this question (which you failed to answer the first time):

Can you tell me how observing some phenomena in the past at all makes it at all more probable to occur in the future? What axioms allow you to follow through with that reasoning?

There is no reason or evidence to support a belief that I will fall down if I jump off. Thus such a belief is irrational.

Adrian II

03-02-2007, 21:18

Seems some Seattle socialists are taking to indoctrinating young school kids in the ideals of communism: (..) Not to mention instilling ignorance in our youth regarding property and capitalism.Man, I'm laughing my arse off at this whole thing. A bunch of otherworldly sandal-wearing liberal teachers have become the butt of a bunch of vulgar and illiterate Republican bloggers. It's hard to say who are the bigger idiots.

Here is the original piece (http://www.bizzyblog.com/WhyWeBannedLego_RethinkingSchools_Wtr2006.html), judge for yourself.

It seems that the issue in that classroom was that some kids were monopolizing the legos, which are school property intended for use by all kids. The teachers substituted this by a fairer system, which sounds perfectly okay to me.

What triggered the Republican blogohysteria is probably their use of the following phrase '(..) the children were building their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys — assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive'. Which sounds a little outdated and naive to me, although I think the notion that private property is not sacrocanct is a healthy one and I agree that social privilege has no place in a classroom. And compared to the nonsense some kids are taught in American religious schools, this is peanuts.

What made me cry with laughter is the thought of those spoilt up-town critters turning from insufferable, greedy little capitalists into equally insufferable, jealous little egalitarians. A kick up the butt and a day's hard work is what they need. And so do their teachers.

Adrian II

03-02-2007, 21:21

I knew I could get a rude dismissal without any rational argument from this guy. He is so classy... :rolleyes:If you could refrain from your habitual personal attacks for a moment, you would see that I presented a succinct and very effective reductio ad absurdum of Feyerabend's own argument, thank you very much.

Sasaki Kojiro

03-02-2007, 21:26

The "hover" there is an example, Sasaki Kojiro. It is just as unsupported by rationality as falling down...

What's the explanation that I would fall? That it's happened in the past? Is that what makes it "superior". If you say that, then I'll just go ahead and give you this question (which you failed to answer the first time):

Can you tell me how observing some phenomena in the past at all makes it at all more probable to occur in the future? What axioms allow you to follow through with that reasoning?

There is no reason or evidence to support a belief that I will fall down if I jump off. Thus such a belief is irrational.

Ok, so there are many possibilities you say. The only one that we know can happen is falling. No one has ever jumped off a cliff and hovered. For all you know hovering could be impossible. But falling is possible.

Reenk Roink

03-02-2007, 21:30

If you could refrain from your habitual personal attacks for a moment,

Ah the hypocrisy... :beam:

That is the problem with these half-baked theories

Man, I'm laughing my arse off at this whole thing. A bunch of otherworldly sandal-wearing liberal teachers have become the butt of a bunch of vulgar and illiterate Republican bloggers. It's hard to say who are the bigger idiots.

What made me cry with laughter is the thought of those spoilt up-town critters turning from insufferable, greedy little capitalists into equally insufferable, jealous little egalitarians. A kick up the butt and a day's hard work is what they need. And so do their teachers.

And compared to the nonsense some kids are taught in American religious schools, this is peanuts.

Of course, there is the time you went ahead and called my conception of justice primitive and ran away without engaging in any rational discourse.

you would see that I presented a succinct and very effective reductio ad absurdum of Feyerabend's own argument, thank you very much.

Tell me, Adrian II, what is Feyerabend's thesis in Against Method?

Tell me, Adrian II, what does the phrase "anything goes" mean in the context of Feyerabend's idea?

Tell me, Adrian II, where did you get the idea that Feyerabend was at all talking about the problem of induction?

In fact, had you actually read these lines instead of just quoting the first one, you would have seen that I had already pointed out you confusion...

Perhaps you should consider the fact that we are speaking of the problem of induction, as brought up by David Hume, and rehashed by modern philosophers of science like Sir Karl Popper and Dr. Wesley Salmon.

If you had considered this, you would not have made the mistake to confuse Paul Feyerabend's epistemological anarchism with the problem of induction. They are two very separate things. Heck, if you had actually read Feyerabend, you wouldn't have made this mistake.

Reenk Roink

03-02-2007, 21:32

Ok, so there are many possibilities you say. The only one that we know can happen is falling. No one has ever jumped off a cliff and hovered. For all you know hovering could be impossible. But falling is possible.

Very interesting point Sasaki Kojiro, but you would have to prove that hovering is logically impossible. As it stands, hovering after jumping of a bridge is perfectly logical possible.

Sasaki Kojiro

03-02-2007, 21:36

Reenk Roink

03-02-2007, 21:41

Why assume something is possible instead of assuming it's impossible?

Anyway, the point is if it hasn't happened than you can neither assume it's impossible or that it's possible. We know falling is possible.

No, no, no, no. You gotta look up the definition of logical possibility. As it is, hovering after jumping off a bridge is logically possible, as it entails no formal contradiction.

Besides, I think I have got another avenue of attack against your objection. You are again assuming, that what has been possible in the past, will be possible in the future, begging the question.

Sasaki Kojiro

03-02-2007, 21:52

No, no, no, no. You gotta look up the definition of logical possibility. As it is, hovering after jumping off a bridge is logically possible, as it entails no formal contradiction.

Besides, I think I have got another avenue of attack against your objection. You are again assuming, that what has been possible in the past, will be possible in the future, begging the question.

We know that it is not absolutely impossible. Which you can't say of hovering.

Eh, whatever. This reminds me a lot of the "how do you know anything is real" argument. I didn't respond to your statements in the philosophy thread because it doesn't sound ridiculous as a philosophy (more than is inherent) but I think you have more trouble defending the "not teaching science in schools" bit.

If you were in a situation where you had to make decision about jumping off a cliff what you do?

Reenk Roink

03-02-2007, 22:02

We know that it is not absolutely impossible. Which you can't say of hovering.

I take it you mean "absolutely impossible" to mean it has occurred before? OK, but still, it still does not follow that falling will be "absolutely impossible" in the future. The whole crux of the argument is that of induction.

Eh, whatever. This reminds me a lot of the "how do you know anything is real" argument. I didn't respond to your statements in the philosophy thread because it doesn't sound ridiculous as a philosophy (more than is inherent) but I think you have more trouble defending the "not teaching science in schools" bit.

All right, I simply brought the problem of induction up in the Atheism thread, because there was critiques against the rationality of a belief in God or following a religion.

You know as well as I do, that religion gets called out for being irrational, superstitious, whatever. I am merely examining the rationality of science. The way some like to dismiss the arguments (not you) against it, is akin to a religious fundamentalist.

In this thread, I merely made a point of being taught something in school which I don't believe now. I also brought up the bible studies on the weekend. It was not my intention to get into a debate of science, rather to show that one lego lesson is not going to make kids socialist.

The fact is, most people will continue to believe that gravity will hold true tomorrow, despite the strong rational objections against it. Same with many other things people believe.

If you were in a situation where you had to make decision about jumping off a cliff what you do?

I would jump the cliff and hope that gravity would hold. I would however, know, that I have no rational reason to believe it would.

***

Just a side note: There has been confusion about Feyerabend and the problem of induction in this thread. Let it be known that the problem of induction has been tackled by some of the greatest thinkers of science like Popper and Salmon, and was raised by David Hume. Certainly not what I would call a "half baked theory" on the grounds that:

1) It is a very ingenious conundrum that does a good job examining our reasoning processes.
2) The great minds that tackled it certainly make it seem above insult from a poster on a gaming forum.

Feyerabend on the other hand goes on a different tangent. He is an eccentric, and I don't fully understand him, but let it be known that his epistemological anarchism or "anything goes" deals with the scientific method and not the problem of induction.

If someone thinks that "anything goes" means anything will go in the future, they have severely misread Feyerabend...

Adrian II

03-02-2007, 22:04

Ah the hypocrisy... :beam:Just for the record. I am perfectly within my rights if I call a theory 'half-baked'. You are not within your rights if you attack me personally. We can't all be friends, not do we want to be, but we should be able to engage in debate without stooping to personal attacks.

And I have read the darn Feyerabend book, mate. You are not among sophomores here. Better answer my point about Feyerabend's self-defeating 'refutation' of induction, which is itself based on induction. And a faulty induction it was, too, as in his slanted representation of Galileo which has long been exposed.

Reenk Roink

03-02-2007, 22:16

Just for the record. I am perfectly within my rights if I call a theory 'half-baked'. You are not within your rights if you attack me personally. We can't all be friends, not do we want to be, but we should be able to engage in debate without stooping to personal attacks.

Sorry, I'm just very "primitive" in my conception of justice... :rolleyes:

I've edited them out though, I did go too far.

And I have read the darn Feyerabend book, mate. You are not among sophomores here. Better answer my point about Feyerabend's self-defeating 'refutation' of induction, which is itself based on induction. And a faulty induction it was, too, as in his slanted representation of Galileo which has long been exposed.

I still have a very hard time believing that someone who read Feyerabend's book would have thought his "anything goes" to imply induction, rather than epistemological anarchism.

Your attempted refutation against Feyerabend makes no sense, because you confuse the meaning of "anything goes".

By the way, I would love to see your response against this "half baked" problem of induction, as well as the "exposed" representation of Galileo.

Fisherking

03-02-2007, 22:20

Uhuh, one classic definition of insanity is repeating a process time and again but expecting a different result…

Of course going off a cliff may be a little different…depending on how high it is it may not be repeatable.

Reenk Roink

03-02-2007, 22:23

Uhuh, one classic definition of insanity is repeating a process time and again but expecting a different result…

Um, OK. Do you have an argument against the problem of induction? I find it hard to believe that Karl Popper would waste his time trying to get around this classic definition of insanity.

Adrian II

03-02-2007, 22:35

Sorry, I'm just very "primitive" in my conception of justice... :rolleyes:

I've edited them out though, I did go too far.Thank you. :bow:
I still have a very hard time believing that someone who read Feyerabend's book would have thought his "anything goes" to imply induction, rather than epistemological anarchism.My point is that Feyerabend induced his theory from concrete historical examples. Whereas 'counter-induction', in his view, should have been the preferred method to construct his theory...

As for the Galileo issue, finding the exact texts would take me back twenty years. But I found the name of the author: Machamer. I believe Feyerabend answered Machamare's criticism in a later addendum to his AM. Of course he ridiculed him, as he did with so many opponents...

Instead of to science, the 'anything goes' would apply mostly to Feyerabend's personal life. Which should have no bearing on his theoretical work, were it not for the fact that he never quite drew that line himself.

Reenk Roink

03-02-2007, 22:50

My point is that Feyerabend induced his theory from concrete historical examples. Whereas 'counter-induction', in his view, should have been the preferred method to construct his theory...

OK, I'm not really following here. Yes, Feyerabend used examples from scientists throughout history. I don't know how you can say that "counter-induction" should have been his method, as he was extremely wary of all methods. I'm still confused because of this statement:

"The reductio ad absurdum of Feyerabend's own view is quite simple: nothing guarantees that 'anything will go' tomorrow as it does today."

As "anything goes" is not a slogan for the problem of induction, I don't understand your objection.

As for the Galileo issue, finding the exact texts would take me back twenty years. But I found the name of the author: Machamer. I believe Feyerabend answered Machamare's criticism in a later addendum to his AM. Of course he ridiculed him, as he did with so many opponents...

Feyerabend was an ass, that's a fact. However, I don't see how that has bearing on his arguments...

Instead of to science, the 'anything goes' would apply mostly to Feyerabend's personal life. Which should have no bearing on his theoretical work, were it not for the fact that he never quite drew that line himself.

Here is the conclusion of Against Method reproduced:

***very long***

The idea that science can, and should, be run according to fixed and universal rules, is both unrealistic and pernicious. It is unrealistic, for it takes too simple a view of the talents of man and of the circumstances which encourage, or cause, their development. And it is pernicious, for the attempt to enforce the rules is bound to increase our professional qualifications at the expense of our humanity. In addition, the idea is detrimental to science, for it neglects the complex physical and historical conditions which influence scientific change. It makes our science less adaptable and more dogmatic: every methodological rule is associated with cosmological assumptions, so that using the rule we take it for granted that the assumptions are correct. Naive falsificationism takes it for granted that the laws of nature are manifest and not hidden beneath disturbances of considerable magnitude. Empiricism takes it for granted that sense experience is a better mirror of the world than pure thought. Praise of argument takes it for granted that the artifices of Reason give better results than the unchecked play of our emotions. Such assumptions may be perfectly plausible and even true. Still, one should occasionally put them to a test. Putting them to a test means that we stop using the methodology associated with them, start doing science in a different way and see what happens. Case studies such as those reported in the preceding chapters show that such tests occur all the time, and that they speak against the universal validity of any rule. All methodologies have their limitations and the only 'rule' that survives is 'anything goes'.

The change of perspective brought about by these discoveries leads once more to the long-forgotten problem of the excellence of science. It leads to it for the first time in modern history, for modern science overpowered its opponents, it did not convincethem. Science took over by force, not by argument (this is especially true of the former colonies where science and the religion of brotherly love were introduced as a matter of course, and without consulting, or arguing with, the inhabitants). Today we realise that rationalism, being bound to science, cannot give us any assistance in the issue between science and myth and we also know, from inquiries of an entirely different kind, that myths are vastly better than rationalists have dared to admit.' Thus we are now forced to raise the question of the excellence of science. An examination then reveals that science and myth overlap in many ways, that the differences we think we perceive are often local phenomena which may turn into similarities elsewhere and that fundamental discrepancies are results of different aims rather than of different methods trying to reach one and the same 'rational' end (such as, for example, 'progress', or increase of content, or 'growth').

To show the surprising similarities of myth and science, I shall briefly discuss an interesting paper by Robin Horton, entitled 'African Traditional Thought and Western Science'.' Horton examines African mythology and discovers the following features: the quest for theory is a quest for unity underlying apparent complexity. The theory places things in a causal context that is wider than the causal context provided by common sense: both science and myth cap common sense with a theoretical superstructure. There are theories of different degrees of abstraction and they are used in accordance with the different requirements of explanation that arise. Theory construction consists in breaking up objects of common sense and in reuniting the elements in a different way. Theoretical models start from analogy but they gradually move away from the pattern on which the analogy was based. And so on.

These features, which emerge from case studies no less careful and detailed than those of Lakatos, refute the assumption that science and myth obey different principles of formation (Cassirer), that myth proceeds without reflection (Dardel), or speculation (Frankfort, occasionally). Nor can we accept the idea, found in Malinowski but also in classical scholars such as Harrison and Cornford, that myth has an essentially pragmatic function or is based on ritual. Myth is much closer to science than one would expect from a philosophical discussion. It is closer to science than even Horton himself is prepared to admit.

To see this, consider some of the differences Horton emphasises. According to Horton, the central ideas of a myth are regarded as sacred. There is anxiety about threats to them. One 'almost never finds a confession of ignorance and events 'which seriously defy the established lines of classification in the culture where they occur' evoke a 'taboo reaction' .4 Basic beliefs are protected by this reaction as well as by the device of 'secondary elaborations" which, in our terms, arc series of ad hoc hypotheses. Science, on the other hand, is characterised by an essential scepticism; 'when failures start to come thick and fast, defence of the theory switches inexorably to attack on it'.'This is possible because of the 'openness' of the scientific enterprise, because of the pluralism of ideas it contains and also because whatever defies or fails to fit into the established category system is not something horrifying, to be isolated or expelled. On the contrary, it is an intriguing 'phenomenon' - a starting-point and a challenge for the invention of new classifications and new theories. We can see that Horton has read his Popper well. A field study of science itself shows a very different picture.

Such a study reveals that, while some scientists may proceed as described, the great majority follow a different path. Scepticism is at a minimum; it is directed against the view of the opposition and against minor ramifications of one's own basic ideas, never against the basic ideas themselves. Attacking the basic ideas evokes taboo reactions which are no weaker than are the taboo reactions in so-called "primitive societies." Basic beliefs are protected by this reaction as well as by secondary elaborations, as we have seen, and whatever fails to fit into the established category system or is said to be incompatible with this system is either viewed as something quite horrifying or, more frequently, it is simply declared to be non-existent. Nor is science prepared to make 'a theoretical pluralism the foundation of research. Newton reigned for more than 150 years, Einstein briefly introduced a more liberal point of view only to be succeeded by the Copenhagen Interpretation. The similarities between science and myth are indeed astonishing.

But the fields are even more closely related. The massive dogmatism I have described is not just a fact, it has also a most important function. Science would be impossible without it." 'Primitive' thinkers showed greater insight into the nature of knowledge than their 'enlightened' philosophical rivals. It is, therefore, necessary to re-examine our attitude towards myth, religion, magic, witchcraft and towards all those ideas which rationalists would like to see forever removed from the surface of the earth (without having so much as looked at them - a typical taboo reaction).

There is another reason why such a re-examination is urgently required. The rise of modern science coincides with the suppression of non-Western tribes by Western invaders. The tribes are not only physically suppressed, they also lose their intellectual independence and are forced to adopt the bloodthirsty religion of brotherly love - Christianity. The most intelligent members get an extra bonus: they are introduced into the mysteries of Western Rationalism and its peak - Western Science. Occasionally this leads to an almost unbearable tension with tradition (Haiti). In most cases the tradition disappears without the trace of an argument, one sim ply becomes a slave both in body and in mind. Today this development is gradually reversed - with great reluctance, to be sure, but it is reversed. Freedom is regained, old traditions are rediscovered, both among the minorities in Western countries and among large populations in non-Western continents. But science still reigns supreme. It reigns supreme because its practitioners are unable to understand, and unwilling to condone, different ideologies, because they have the power to enforce their wishes, and because they use this power ' just as their ancestors used their power to force Christianity on the peoples they encountered during their conquests. Thus, while an American can now choose the religion he likes, he is still not permitted to demand that his children learn magic rather than science at school. There is a separation between state and church, there is no separation between state and science.

And yet science has no greater authority than any other form of life. Its aims are certainly not more important than are the aims that guide the lives in a religious community or in a tribe that is united by a myth. At any rate, they have no business restricting the lives, the thoughts, the education of the members of a free society where everyone should have a chance to make up his own mind and to live in accordance with the social beliefs he finds most acceptable. The separation between state and church must therefore be complemented by the separation between state and science.

We need not fear that such a separation will lead to a breakdown of technology. There will always be people who prefer being scientists to being the masters of their fate and who gladly submit to the meanest kind of (intellectual and institutional) slavery provided they are paid well and provided also there are some people around who examine their work and sing their praise. Greece developed and progressed because it could rely on the services of unwilling slaves. We shall develop and progress with the help of the numerous willing slaves in universities and laboratories who provide us with pills, gas, electricity, atom bombs, frozen dinners and, occasionally, with a few interesting fairy-tales. We shall treat these slaves well, we shall even listen to them, for they have occasionally some interesting stories to tell, but we shall not permit them to impose their ideology on our children in the guise of 'progressive' theories of education. We shall not permit them to teach the fancies of science as if they were the only factual statements in existence. This separation of science and state may be our only chance to overcome the hectic barbarism of our scientific-technical age and to achieve a humanity we are capable of, but have never fully realised. Let us, therefore, in conclusion review the arguments that can be adduced for such a procedure.

The image of 20th-century science in the minds of scientists and laymen is determined by technological miracles such as colour television, the moon shots, the infra-red oven, as well as by a somewhat vague but still quite influential rumour, or fairy-tale, concerning the manner in which these miracles are produced.

According to the fairy-tale the success of science is the result of a subtle, but carefully balanced combination of inventiveness and control. Scientists have ideas. And they have special methods for improving ideas. The theories of science have passed the test of method. They give a better account of the world than ideas which have not passed the test.

The fairy-tale explains why modern society treats science in a special way and why it grants it privileges not enjoyed by other institutions.

Ideally, the modern state is ideologically neutral. Religion, myth, prejudices do have an influence, but only in a roundabout way, through the medium of politically influential parties. Ideological principles may enter the governmental structure, but only via a majority vote, and after a lengthy discussion of possible consequences. In our schools the main religions are taught as historical phenomena. They are taught as parts of the truth only if the parents insist on a more direct mode of instruction. It is up to them to decide about the religious education of their children. The financial support of ideologies does not exceed the financial support granted to parties and to private groups. State and ideology, state and church, state and myth, are carefully separated.

State and science, however, work closely together. Immense sums are spent on the improvement of scientific ideas. Bastard subjects such as the philosophy of science which have not a single discovery to their credit profit from the boom of the sciences. Even human relations are dealt with in a scientific manner, as is shown by education programmes, proposals for prison reform, army training, and so on. Almost all scientific subjects are compulsory subjects in our schools. While the parents of a six-year-old child can decide to have him instructed in the rudiments of Protestantism, or in the rudiments of the Jewish faith, or to omit religious instruction altogether, they do not have a similar freedom in the case of the sciences. Physics, astronomy, history must be learned. They cannot be replaced by magic, astrology, or by a study of legends.

Nor is one content with a merely historical presentation of physical (astronomical, historical, etc.) facts and principles. One does not say: some people believe that the earth moves round the sun while others regard the earth as a hollow sphere that contains the sun, the planets, the fixed stars. One says: the earth moves round the sun - everything else is sheer idiocy.

Finally, the manner in which we accept or reject scientific ideas is radically different from democratic decision procedures. We accept scientific laws and scientific facts, we teach them in our schools, we make them the basis of important political decisions, but without ever having subjected them to a vote. Scientists do not subject them to a vote - or at least this is what they say - and laymen certainly do not subject them to a vote. Concrete proposals are occasionally discussed, and a vote is suggested. But the procedure is not extended to general theories and scientific facts. Modern society is 'Copernican' not because Copernicanism has been put on a ballot, subjected to a democratic debate and then voted in with a simple majority; it is 'Copernican' because the scientists are Copernicans and because one accepts their cosmology as uncritically as one once accepted the cosmology of bishops and cardinals.

Even bold and revolutionary thinkers bow to the judgement of science. Kropotkin wants to break up all existing institutions - but he does not touch science. Ibsen goes very far in unmasking the conditions of contemporary humanity - but he still retains science as a measure of the truth. Evans-Pritchard, L�vi-Strauss and others have recognised that 'Western Thought', far from being a lonely peak of human development, is troubled by problems not found in other ideologies - but they exclude science from their relativisation of all forms of thought. Even for them science is a neutral structure containing positive knowledge that is independent of culture, ideology, prejudice.

The reason for this special treatment of science is, of course, our little fairy-tale: if science has found a method that turns ideologically contaminated ideas into true and useful theories, then it is indeed not mere ideology, but an objective measure of all ideologies. It is then not subjected to the demand for a separation between state and ideology.

But the fairy-tale is false, as we have seen. There is no special method that guarantees success or makes it probable. Scientists do not solve problems because they possess a magic wand - methodology, or a theory of rationality - but because they have studied a problem for a long time, because they know the situation fairly well, because they are not too dumb (though that is rather doubtful nowadays when almost anyone can become a scientist), and because the excesses of one scientific school are almost always balanced by the excesses of some other school. (Besides, scientists only rarely solve their problems, they make lots of mistakes, and many of their solutions are quite useless.) Basically there. is hardly any difference between the process that leads to the announcement of a new scientific law and the process preceding passage of a new law in society: one informs either all citizens or those immediately concerned, one collects 'facts' and prejudices, one discusses the matter, and one finally votes. But while a democracy makes some effort to explain the process so that everyone can understand it, scientists either conceal it, or bend it, to make it fit their sectarian interests.

No scientist will admit that voting plays a role in his subject. Facts, logic, and methodology alone decide - this is what the fairy-tale tells us. But how do facts decide? What is their function in the advancement of knowledge? We cannot derive our theories from them. We cannot give a negative criterion by saying, for example, that good theories are theories which can be refuted, but which are not yet contradicted by any fact. A principle of falsification that removes theories because they do not fit the facts would have to remove the whole of science (or it would have to admit that large parts of science are irrefutable). The hint that a good theory explains more than its rivals is not very realistic either. True: new theories often predict new things - but almost always at the expense of things already known. Turning to logic we realise that even the simplest demands are not satisfied in scientific practice, and could not be satisfied, because of the complexity of the material. The ideas which scientists use to present the known and to advance into the unknown are only rarely in agreement with the strict injunctions of logic or pure mathematics and the attempt to make them conform would rob science of the elasticity without which progress cannot be achieved. We see: facts alone are not strong enough for making us accept, or reject, scientific theories, the range they leave to thought is too wide; logic and methodology eliminate too much, they are too narrow. In between these two extremes lies the ever-changing domain of human ideas and wishes. And a more detailed analysis of successful moves in the game of science ('successful' from the point of view of the scientists themselves) shows indeed that there is a wide range of freedom that demands a multiplicity of ideas and permits the application of democratic procedures (ballot-discussion-vote) but that is actually closed by power politics and propaganda. This is where the fairy-tale of a special method assumes its decisive function. It conceals the freedom of decision which creative scientists and the general public have even inside the most rigid and the most advanced parts of science by a recitation of 'objective' criteria and it thus protects the big-shots (Nobel Prize winners; heads of laboratories, of organisations such as the AMA, of special schools; 'educators'; etc.) from the masses (laymen; experts in non-scientific fields; experts in other fields of science): only those citizens count who were subjected to the pressures of scientific institutions (they have undergone a long process of education), who succumbed to these pressures (they have passed their examinations), and who are now firmly convinced of the truth of the fairy-tale. This is how scientists have deceived themselves and everyone else about their business, but without any real disadvantage: they have more money, more authority, more sex appeal than they deserve, and the most stupid procedures and the most laughable results in their domain are surrounded with an aura of excellence. It is time to cut them down in size, and to give them a more modest position in society.

This advice, which only few of our well-conditioned contemporaries are prepared to accept, seems to clash with certain simple and widely-known facts.

Is it not a fact that a learned physician is better equipped to diagnose and to cure an illness than a layman or the medicine-man of a primitive society? Is it not a fact that epidemics and dangerous individual diseases have disappeared only with the beginning of modern medicine? Must we not admit that technology has made tremendous advances since the rise of modern science? And are not the moon-shots a most impressive and undeniable proof of its excellence? These are some of the questions which are thrown at the impudent wretch who dares to criticise the special position of the sciences.

The questions reach their polemical aim only if one assumes that the results of science which no one will deny have arisen without any help from non-scientific elements, and that they cannot be improved by an admixture of such elements either. 'Unscientific' procedures such as the herbal lore of witches and cunning men, the astronomy of mystics, the treatment of the ill in primitive societies are totally without merit. Science alone gives us a useful astronomy, an effective medicine, a trustworthy technology. One must also ' assume that science owes its success to the correct method and not merely to a lucky accident. It was not a fortunate cosmological guess that led to progress, but the correct and cosmologically neutral handling of data. These are the assumptions we must make to give the questions the polemical force they are supposed to have. Not a single one of them stands up to closer examination.

Modern astronomy started with the attempt of Copernicus to adapt the old ideas of Philolaos to the needs of astronomical predictions. Philolaos was not a precise scientist, he was a muddle-headed Pythagorean, as we have seen, and the consequences of his doctrine were called 'incredibly ridiculous' by a professional astronomer such as Ptolemy. Even Galileo, who had the much improved Copernican version of Philolaos before him, says: 'There is no limit to my astonishment when I reflect that Aristarchus and Copernicus were able to make reason to conquer sense that, in defiance of the latter, the former became mistress of their belief' (Dialogue, 328). 'Sense' here refers to the experiences which Aristotle and others had used to show that the earth must be at rest. The 'reason' which Copernicus opposes to their arguments is the very mystical reason of Philolaos combined with an equally mystical faith ('mystical' from the point of view of today's rationalists) in the fundamental character of circular motion. I have shown that modern astronomy and modern dynamics could not have advanced without this unscientific use of antediluvian ideas.

While astronomy profited from Pythagoreanism and from the Platonic love for circles, medicine profited from herbalism, from the psychology, the metaphysics, the physiology of witches, midwives, cunning men, wandering druggists. It is well known that 16th- and 17th-century medicine while theoretically hypertrophic was quite helpless in the face of disease (and stayed that way for a long time after the 'scientific revolution'). Innovators such as Paracelsus fell back on the earlier ideas and improved medicine. Everywhere science is enriched by unscientific methods and unscientific results, while procedures which have often been regarded as essential parts of science are quietly suspended or circumvented.

The process is not restricted to the early history of modern science. It is not merely a consequence of the primitive state of the sciences of the 16th and 17th centuries. Even today science can and does profit from an admixture of unscientific ingredients. An example which was discussed above, in Chapter 4, is the revival of traditional medicine in Communist China. When the Communists in the fifties forced hospitals and medical schools to teach the ideas and the methods contained in the Yellow Emperor's Textbook of Internal Medicine and to use them in the treatment of patients, many Western experts (among them Eccles, one of the 'Popperian Knights') were aghast and predicted the downfall of Chinese medicine. What happened was the exact opposite. Acupuncture, moxibustion, pulse diagnosis have led to new insights, new methods of treatment, new problems both for the Western and for the Chinese physician.

And those who do not like to see the state meddling in scientific matters should remember the sizeable chauvinism of science: for most scientists the slogan 'freedom for science' means the freedom to indoctrinate not only those who have joined them, but the rest of society as well. Of course - not every mixture of scientific and non-scientific elements is successful (example: Lysenko). But science is not always successful either. If mixtures are to be avoided because they occasionally misfire, then pure science (if there is such a thing) must be avoided as well. (It is not the interference of the state that is objectionable in the Lysenko case, but the totalitarian interference that kills the opponent instead of letting him go his own way.)

Combining this observation with the insight that science has no special method, we arrive at the result that the separation of science and non-science is not only artificial but also detrimental to the advancement of knowledge. If we want to understand nature, if we want to master our physical surroundings, then we must use all ideas, all methods, and not just a small selection of them. The assertion, however, that there is no knowledge outside science - extra scientiam nulla salus - is nothing but another and most convenient fairy-tale. Primitive tribes have more detailed classifications of animals and plants than contemporary scientific zoology and botany, they know remedies whose effectiveness astounds physicians (while the pharmaceutical industry already smells here a new source of income), they have means of influencing their fellow men which science for a long time regarded as non-existent (Voodoo), they solve difficult problems in ways which are still not quite understood (building of the pyramids; Polynesian travels), there existed a highly developed and internationally known astronomy in the old Stone Age, this astronomy was factually adequate as well as emotionally satisfying, it solved both physical and social problems (one cannot say the same about modern astronomy) and it was tested in very simple and ingenious ways (stone observatories in England and in the South Pacific; astronomical schools in Polynesia - for a more detailed treatment and references concerning all these assertions c.f. my Einf�hrung in die Naturphilosophie). There was the domestication of animals, the invention of rotating agriculture, new types of plants were bred and kept pure by careful avoidance of cross fertilisation, we have chemical inventions, we have a most amazing art that can compare with the best achievements of the present. True, there were no collective excursions to the moon, but single individuals, disregarding great dangers to their soul and their sanity, rose from sphere to sphere to sphere until they finally faced God himself in all His splendour while others changed into animals and back into humans again. At all times man approached his surroundings with wide open senses and a fertile intelligence, at all times he made incredible discoveries, at all times we can learn from his ideas.

Modern science, on the other hand, is not at all as difficult and as perfect as scientific propaganda wants us to believe. A subject such as medicine, or physics, or biology appears difficult only because it is taught badly, because the standard instructions are full of redundant material, and because they start too late in life. During the war, when the American Army needed physicians within a very short time, it was suddenly possible to reduce medical instruction to half a year (the corresponding instruction manuals have disappeared long ago, however. Science may be simplified during the war. In peacetime the prestige of science demands greater complication.) And how often does it not happen that the proud and conceited judgement of an expert is put in its proper place by a layman! Numerous inventors built 'impossible' machines. Lawyers show again and again that an expert does not know what he is talking about. Scientists, especially physicians, frequently come to different results so that it is up to the relatives of the sick person (or the inhabitants of a certain area) to decide by vote about the procedure to be adopted. How often is science improved, and turned into new directions by non-scientific influences! it is up to us, it is up to the citizens of a free society to either accept the chauvinism of science without contradiction or to overcome it by the counterforce of public action. Public action was used against science by the Communists in China in the fifties, and it was again used,, under very different circumstances, by some opponents of evolution in California in the seventies. Let us follow their example and let us free society from the strangling hold of an ideologically petrified science just as our ancestors freed us from the strangling hold of the One True Religion!

The way towards this aim is clear. A science that insists on possessing the only correct method and the only acceptable results is ideology and must be separated from the state, and especially from the process of education. One may teach it, but only to those who have decided to make this particular superstition their own. On the other hand, a science that has dropped such totalitarian pretensions is no longer independent and self-contained, and it can be taught in many different combinations (myth and modern cosmology might be one such combination). Of course, every business has the right to demand that its practitioners be prepared in a special way, and it may even demand acceptance of a certain ideology (I for one am against the thinning out of subjects so that they become more and more similar to each other; whoever does not like present-day Catholicism should leave it and become a Protestant, or an Atheist, instead of ruining it by such inane changes as mass in the vernacular). That is true of physics, just as it is true of religion, or of prostitution. But such special ideologies, such special skills have no room in the process of general education that prepares a citizen for his role in society. A mature citizen is not a man who has been instructed in a special ideology, such as Puritanism, or critical rationalism, and who now carries this ideology with him like a mental tumour, a mature citizen is a person who has learned how to make up his mind and who has then decided in favour of what he thinks suits him best. He is a person who has a certain mental toughness (he does not fall for the first ideological street singer he happens to meet) and who is therefore able consciously to choose the business that seems to be most attractive to him rather than being swallowed by it. To prepare himself for his choice he will study the major ideologies as historical phenomena, he will study science as a historical phenomenon and not as the one and only sensible way of approaching a problem. He will study it together with other fairy-tales such as the myths of 'primitive' societies so that he has the information needed for arriving at a free decision. An essential part of a general education of this kind is acquaintance with the most outstanding propagandists in all fields, so that the pupil can build up his resistance against all propaganda, including the propaganda called 'argument'. It is only after such a hardening procedure that he will be called upon to make up his mind on the issue rationalism-irrationalism, science-myth, science-religion, and so on. His decision in favour of science - assuming he chooses science - will then be much more 'rational' than any decision in favour of science is today. At any rate - science and the schools will be just as carefully separated as religion and the schools are separated today. Scientists will of course participate in governmental decisions, for everyone participates in such decisions. But they will not be given overriding authority. It is the vote of everyone concerned that decides fundamental issues such as the teaching methods used, or the truth of basic beliefs such as the theory of evolution, or the quantum theory, and not the authority of big-shots hiding behind a non-existing methodology. There is no need to fear that such a way of arranging society will lead to undesirable results.

Now, that basically sums up my understanding of Feyerabend.

I find his position interesting, if a bit radical. Certainly not in my eyes a half-baked theory.

However, the problem of induction, which I have spent the most attention on, is to me, much more pressing than Feyerabend's attacks. Given it's content, and the minds that have struggled with it, there is no way that it could be a half baked theory.

Adrian II

03-03-2007, 00:12

OK, I'm not really following here. Yes, Feyerabend used examples from scientists throughout history. I don't know how you can say that "counter-induction" should have been his method, as he was extremely wary of all methods.Counter-induction is the only concrete example of an alternative 'method' ever suggested by Feyerabend. It boils down to this: find a theory that goes against all (previous) observations and elaborate on it until you find observations that fit into it.

As for the reductio: I fully understand that Feyerabend's claim of 'anything goes' does not specifically refer to induction, but the claim itself was reached though a process of induction. Since induction was one of the established methods of science that were anathema to Feyerabend, this is inconsistent.

As shown in the lengthy quote you gave us, he was inconsistent in other ways as well. His main mistake there is that he confuses the theory and the practice of science. Science as a man-made social endeavour often does not conform to the rules that it sets itself, but that fact does not disqualify the rules or the knowledge it produces. Similarly, the fact that professional sportsmen do not always play according to the rules does not disqualify all sportsmen, all goals and all match results.

Feyerabend rightly criticises certain aspects of the scientific machinery of universities, laboratories, expert panels etcetera. For instance the unnecessary jargon, or the unjustifiable status and power of certain categories of scientists. But these weaknesses do not detract from the validity of scientific methods, not do they support the use of alternative methods as advocated by Feyerabend. Suppose he was right and any kind of voodo might be a proper scientific approach, how could we know that it was unless we have an objective measure to judge it by? Or to help us decide decide between voodoo, juju, gris-gris and santeria as the best approach to a scientific problem?

No, I am not joking, Feyerabend was - or I hope he was.

Half-baked? A prime exampe of a half-baked view is his view of Medicine. He claims (in the quote) that this is a fairly simple subject that could be taught in a very short curriculum. The truth is that the field of Medicine is so large and complex that no one could ever master it in his lifetime, and every curriculum is by necessity a selection of the entire field of medical knowledge. The fact that certain basics of Medicine were taught in shortened curricula during the war only proves that war sets different requirements than peace. The notion that these shortened wartime curricula would somehow reflect on the entire body of knowledge that we call medicine, is truly half-baked.

EDIT
Of course I do owe you an answer on the Hume/induction problem, Feyerabend or no Feyerabend. Put simply, I look at it this way: induction is our best bet in the face of epistemological chaos. It's a bit like democracy which, in Churchill's famous words, is 'the worst of all systems, apart from all the others that have been tried from time to time'. He also said that the best argument against democracy is a five-minute talk with an average voter. The same would apply, mutatis mutandis, to science and scientists. In the end, I opt for science like Churchill opted for democracy.

P.S. Um, Reenk, how the [insert voodoo curse] do we get this thread back on track to kids, legos and communism? ~;)

Watchman

03-03-2007, 00:35

I brought up the flat earth people because what you said was dismissive of rationality. If you are going to dismiss rationality as an ideal and say that we should just go by what is "reasonably expected", then this standard should be applied everywhere.

The problem of induction pretty well shows that there is no evidence or reason we should accept scientific laws or theories to hold true in the future. I'd say that's a "manifest lack any sort of credible proof to back up [the] idea" that gravity will work tomorrow.

Thus, people who believe in a flat earth are just like people who hold the law of the conservation of momentum to hold in the future, in that both groups suffer from a complete lack of reason or evidence to support their assertions. However, if the latter get off because there are limits on what can be "reasonably expected" than the former can too.I would still say the flat-earthers have nothing to do with the issue. Because with gravity and conservation of momentum you can conduct an experiment that shows that they work at least for now and until further notice; the flat-earthers have the rather different problem of trying to prove a round thing square (well, flat), which sort of fails at that first hurdle hands down.

Their stubbornness on the matter nonwithstanding. A refusal to admit a failure to prove a claim does not equal the claim being correct, after all.

Reenk Roink

03-03-2007, 20:54

On Feyerabend:

My understanding of Feyerabend, as gleamed by me in my readings and bolstered by secondary sources (Online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and The Oxford Companion to Philosophy):

Feyerabend’s “anything goes” (very misunderstood term) is more of a examination of how scientists themselves have “practiced” science than a context of justification of how it ought to be.

Feyerabend’s main theme: the history of science and scientists themselves argue against a method and methods only lead to scientism. He is anti-scientism and not anti-science.

I cannot agree at all with you holding Feyerabend to espouse a ‘counter-induction’ view that goes like how you described.

On the point of his inconsistency by reaching his claim by induction, Feyerabend uses historical anecdotes to support his thesis. I suppose if you look at induction very broadly as going from the specific to general, then you may be right. However, Feyerabend deals very little with inductive reasoning generally or the problem of induction. He deals with naive inductionism in science.

In Against Method and later writings, Feyerabend does advocate a more open attitude for different paradigms to counter the trend of the state of science as being a dogmatic institution (scientism). He points out examples of how things that are dismissed and sneered at as “unscientific” have done much to aid science. A prime example of this is astrology. Feyerabend in “The Strange Case of Astrology” shows how much astronomy is indebted to this “pseudoscience”. But later on, in classic Feyerabend style, he critiques the methodology of astrology itself, calling it “a reservoir of naive rules and phrases suited to impress the ignorant”. Obviously people who say that Feyerabend considers astrology and astronomy as equal are missing it.

Likewise, Feyerabend does not say that folk healing and modern medicine do the same thing. What he says is that they are incommensurable, and “healing” means something else in each paradigm. Feyerabend was obviously influenced in this by being cured by a healer which got him more against the notion of the superiority of modern medicine. He says that there is no culture-independent way of preferring either meaning of "healing", and to insist on modern medicine to the exclusion of folk healing is just as irrational as the reverse.

I can’t agree at all with your interpretation with Feyerabend’s statement on medicine. He claims that it is not as difficult as it is portrayed due to many redundancies in the teaching. Here is the quote again:

Modern science, on the other hand, is not at all as difficult and as perfect as scientific propaganda wants us to believe. A subject such as medicine, or physics, or biology appears difficult only because it is taught badly, because the standard instructions are full of redundant material, and because they start too late in life. During the war, when the American Army needed physicians within a very short time, it was suddenly possible to reduce medical instruction to half a year (the corresponding instruction manuals have disappeared long ago, however. Science may be simplified during the war. In peacetime the prestige of science demands greater complication.) And how often does it not happen that the proud and conceited judgement of an expert is put in its proper place by a layman! Numerous inventors built 'impossible' machines. Lawyers show again and again that an expert does not know what he is talking about. Scientists, especially physicians, frequently come to different results so that it is up to the relatives of the sick person (or the inhabitants of a certain area) to decide by vote about the procedure to be adopted. How often is science improved, and turned into new directions by non-scientific influences! it is up to us, it is up to the citizens of a free society to either accept the chauvinism of science without contradiction or to overcome it by the counterforce of public action. Public action was used against science by the Communists in China in the fifties, and it was again used,, under very different circumstances, by some opponents of evolution in California in the seventies. Let us follow their example and let us free society from the strangling hold of an ideologically petrified science just as our ancestors freed us from the strangling hold of the One True Religion!

Looking at Feyerabend’s responses to the caustic reply to his earlier works in his “Conversations with Illiterates”, one not only gets a good rebuttal of the many charges against him, but also two important trends.

1) Most of the criticisms leveled against Feyerabend are against the conclusions he draws. As Feyerabend was quite well trained in physics and astronomy, along with the history of them, he certainly knows what the heck he is talking about. Very little criticism actually is directed at his actual exposition and discussion of his anecdotes. This is why I was skeptical of your claim that his portrait of Galileo was wrong.

2) Feyerabend commonly responds to his interlocutors that they have misread him, whether unintentionally or to set up strawmen.

This quote directly from Feyerabend sums it up:

Everywhere science is enriched by unscientific methods and unscientific results, while procedures which have often been regarded as essential parts of science are quietly suspended or circumvented.

Lastly, this link gives a very nice expose to a discourse between Feyerabend’s critics and supporters. There is much to disagree with the man above setting up strawmen.

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/ssfb4/CMV/Lectures/Feyerabend/PKFTrial.htm

On the Problem of Induction:

I can’t say that induction is our best bet at all. Induction has already been shown to be essentially worthless and posses absolutely no efficacy in any predictative application. Remember that the problem of induction (in the context of application to the future) does not merely state that induction cannot lead to predictions certainty. It is not that we cannot be absolutely certain that the sun will rise tomorrow, it is that we have no reason at all to believe that it will. This is why the(failed) attempts to solve the riddle of induction generally break away from induction altogether. The postulational approach advocated by Kant and others makes us simply assume the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature and then change our reasoning to deduction. Popper does the same, accepting that Hume was correct about induction and trying to take a deductive approach.

This is where it diverges from your democracy analogy. Whether we base our beliefs on induction or accept that we cannot base our beliefs on induction the result remains the same...

P.S. Um, Reenk, how the [insert voodoo curse] do we get this thread back on track to kids, legos and communism? ~;)

I don’t really see the need. People who think that there is a serious risk that kids will become socialists because of one lego lesson are not only ignoring the fact that this is only one incident of influence easily outweighed by the many other instances in the capitalistic society in which they live, but they also grossly overestimate the amount of attention kids pay in class.

Tuuvi

03-04-2007, 05:18

But talking about socialism is funner...(at least for me):wizard: (new smilies woohoo)

Ironside

03-04-2007, 10:02

The fact is, most people will continue to believe that gravity will hold true tomorrow, despite the strong rational objections against it. Same with many other things people believe.

Huh? You'll call abandoning the use of experience as a method of detemine things rational? You know the basis of what (atleast the part with momory) all life use and what we have based our entire civilsation on?

I would put your argument into to the category of general thesises that is useless because it's too general. You know like "Things happens or not." While for certain being always 100% correct, it has no use, because it says nothing useful.

The use of induction has been producing practical results for certain, atleast until I posted this post. ~;)

HoreTore

03-04-2007, 12:49

doc_bean

03-04-2007, 13:08

Man, I missed a great thread here !

Quick response to the thread: just because you are teaching children certain values doesn't mean they'll blindly follow them later in live. Most of us were raised christian, some of the basic ideas of christianity we were thought (over here at least) were about sharing the wealth and taking care of the poor. Jesus was called the beggar king for a reason.

How much do these values differ from the ideas of equality of socialism. I know, a lot when it comes to how equality is realised, but the basic idea, that all people are deserving of love, forgiveness and a bit of the money you don't really need is pretty much the same.

Still, rasing people christian has given us fine young people who believe the homeless brought it on themselves, they're entitled to a uni degree because daddy is rich and that drving a humvee is more important than feeding a starving child. I'm not claiming anyone here is like that, or a specific group of society is like that, but we can all agree that those people exist, and a lot of people who occasionally think like that exist, and most of them were raised with values just like the rest of us. Look at how much influence those values have had.

I fear for what will happen if we wouldn't raise our children with a bit of an idealistic view on the world. After all, the goal in everyone's life should be to make this world a better place. It's part of socialism (working for the whole of society) and it's part of christianity (building towards the kingdom of heaven). I don't believe we should raise our kids to 'succeed' in the world based on some ridicoulous standards we have. Who cares if they're millionairs or not as long as they're happy and can take care if their loved ones ?
We might as well be just animals if we only care about our place on society's ladder.

That was not quite as quick as I expected it to be.

Quite fun to see what happens when a society on the extreme right is exposed to a little bit of socialism....

BTW, for all of you claiming that "socialism never works" and such nonsense... Have a look at the UN chart for highest living standards in the world... First place is Norway, which is completely and utterly socialist. We've been primarily socialists since the 1920's. Socialism leads to dictators and such? Nope, marxist-leninism leads to that... Lenin was the one forming the idea of oppressing the ruling classes, it does not account for most socialist thought.

Most of us today are reformers, not revolutionaries..

And we believe in justice, and the idea that everyone is worth the same, not that they should have the exact same wealth. That's a myth, you won't even find that idea in the soviet union.

And for apathy...well, one of lenins first laws when he took power, was imposing the death penalty for ditching work.

One word: Oil. What was norway like before you discovered you had it again ? (No need to actually answer).

Fisherking

03-04-2007, 13:55

Quite fun to see what happens when a society on the extreme right is exposed to a little bit of socialism....

BTW, for all of you claiming that "socialism never works" and such nonsense... Have a look at the UN chart for highest living standards in the world... First place is Norway, which is completely and utterly socialist. We've been primarily socialists since the 1920's. Socialism leads to dictators and such? Nope, marxist-leninism leads to that... Lenin was the one forming the idea of oppressing the ruling classes, it does not account for most socialist thought.

Most of us today are reformers, not revolutionaries..

And we believe in justice, and the idea that everyone is worth the same, not that they should have the exact same wealth. That's a myth, you won't even find that idea in the soviet union.

And for apathy...well, one of lenins first laws when he took power, was imposing the death penalty for ditching work.

Socialism refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements that envisage a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to social control. This control may be either direct—exercised through popular collectives such as workers' councils—or indirect—exercised on behalf of the people by the state. As an economic system, socialism is often characterized by state or community ownership of the means of production.

In contrast most western nations tend to grant liberties to individuals rather than make the individual subserviant to sociaty.

I didn't know that you couldn't own property in Norway.

doc_bean

03-04-2007, 14:07

Socialism refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements that envisage a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to social control. This control may be either direct—exercised through popular collectives such as workers' councils—or indirect—exercised on behalf of the people by the state. As an economic system, socialism is often characterized by state or community ownership of the means of production.

In contrast most western nations tend to grant liberties to individuals rather than make the individual subserviant to sociaty.

I didn't know that you couldn't own property in Norway.

I believe you are referring to communism...

Fisherking

03-04-2007, 14:21

I believe you are referring to communism...

Not exactly…Communism is just one aspect of Socialism.

Some Western Governments, or maybe most have some Socialist programs but none are completely socialist.

However, Washington State, where the story came from has been referred to as the Soviet of Washington since FDR's time…one of his cabinets gave them the name….

Adrian II

03-04-2007, 15:01

Socialism refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements that envisage a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to social control.That's the Wiki definition, copied from the 2006 Britannica entry. It is redundant in that all societies control property and the distribution of wealth in certain ways. If you want to know how far market manipulation goes in so-called free market societies, just look into the history of the U.S. Savings and Loan business.

My preferred, modern definition of socialism would be entirely different: a socio-economic system that hasnesses market forces in the interest of society.

I think man should control markets in his own interest. This does not imply that market forces are to be restricted or manipulated at all times. It can also mean that market forces are set free and stimulated in the general interest. Inversely, certain areas of life should be protected from certain market forces at all times. Simple example: you don't want your police force to work according to the local supply and demand situation. Organised crime would have a field day.

In other cases, communities may decide to ban (certain) market intrusions. A nice example would be the National Council for the Protection of Antigua in Guatemala, established in 1972 to restore the old city and rid the town of the billboards, neon signs and related commercial crap that were spoling the view and atmosphere. Nowadays the local McDonalds for instance has only a minute sign on its premises, a copper plate with an 'M'. The atmosphere inside this McDonalds says 'Antigua', not 'anywhere-and-everywhere'. Of course they hire several women to walk around in Mayan dress to attract tourists to the restaurant, but hey, at least they won't wear clown suits. That's a harnessed market for you.

Adrian II

03-04-2007, 15:26

It is not that we cannot be absolutely certain that the sun will rise tomorrow, it is that we have no reason at all to believe that it will.I agree that induction itself does not suffice as a method to reach any kind of theory. I believe it was Karl Popper who gave his students a piece of paper and a pencil and told them: 'Observe! And then draw a conclusion from your observations.' Quod non, of course: random observation is no observation at all. Observation requires a thesis (tentative theory), i.e. literally a viewpoint. And despite all the imaginable empirical tests of this viewpoint the outcome will always be provisional, always tentative, never definitive.

[Intrat Popper]

In all our polite exchanges this must be the one point on which Pindar and I ever agreed in this forum: the fact that science has not yet delivered us from Plato's cave. We see shadows of truth, without ever grasping their nature or even their precise contours.

Reenk Roink

03-04-2007, 16:12

Huh? You'll call abandoning the use of experience as a method of detemine things rational? You know the basis of what (atleast the part with momory) all life use and what we have based our entire civilsation on?

Technically, I don't say that abandoning induction is rational. I say basing our beliefs on induction is irrational.

Again, the fact that humans do reason this way is quite irrelevant to its rationality. Hume himself pointed out that psychological habit and custom will trump reason. That being said, you have not actually offered any argument against the problem of induction, merely pointed out that we do reason inductively. That was known.

I would put your argument into to the category of general thesises that is useless because it's too general. You know like "Things happens or not." While for certain being always 100% correct, it has no use, because it says nothing useful.

Well, this is not my thesis at all, I am too stupid to think of something like this.

This is David Hume's (at least he is the first one who wrote it down) thesis. Hume was among the greatest philosophers to write in the English language, and is known for his pushing his skepticism.

You may of course, dismiss the problem of induction without argument, but the fact that many notable minds of science have tried to grapple with this problem as a serious threat to scientific research makes it more than useless to me. I find the problem quite worrying, like Sir Karl Popper and Dr. Wesley Salmon.

The use of induction has been producing practical results for certain, atleast until I posted this post. ~;)

Using inductions past success to prove inductions future success is viciously circular. You already assume the very thing called into question.

Sasaki Kojiro

03-04-2007, 19:36

What have your alternative methods accomplished?

Adrian II

03-04-2007, 20:56

During the war, when the American Army needed physicians within a very short time, it was suddenly possible to reduce medical instruction to half a year (the corresponding instruction manuals have disappeared long ago, however. Science may be simplified during the war. In peacetime the prestige of science demands greater complication.)I have looked into this a bit more. I don't believe a word of it.

The extensive website of the Surgeon General's Office of Medical History contains a wealth of detailed information about the development of military medical services and training in WWII. Yet there is nothing to be found on a six-month medical instruction for doctors -- or for any other (para)medical staff for that matter.

If you look into the history of major U.S. medical schools you will see that they shortened their curricula somewhat to meet wartime medical personnel needs, but they did this mainly by scrapping the holidays.

Here is what Harvard Medical School did, in the words of its Dean's Report for 1941-42 (italics are mine):

"Therefore, a new school year began on July 1, 1942, and will end on February 28, 1943. The next school year will begin on March 8, 1943, and end on December 11, 1943. Thus, a new class of 125 men is admitted every nine months, and a class of 140 will be graduated every nine months...By reducing the length of the summer holiday, it is possible, without altering the actual weeks of instruction, to complete the present curriculum in three calendar years... This action increases the number of men graduating from the Harvard Medical School by an average of about 45 per year. Similar action has been taken by other medical schools. The result of this combined action will be the production of about 5,000 extra physicians by 1945."Another instance of counter-induction, I suppose... :dozey:

Reenk Roink

03-04-2007, 21:40

I have looked into this a bit more. I don't believe a word of it.

The extensive website of the Surgeon General's Office of Medical History contains a wealth of detailed information about the development of military medical services and training in WWII. Yet there is nothing to be found on a six-month medical instruction for doctors -- or for any other (para)medical staff for that matter.

If you look into the history of major U.S. medical schools you will see that they shortened their curricula somewhat to meet wartime medical personnel needs, but they did this mainly by scrapping the holidays.

Here is what Harvard Medical School did, in the words of its Dean's Report for 1941-42 (italics are mine):

"Therefore, a new school year began on July 1, 1942, and will end on February 28, 1943. The next school year will begin on March 8, 1943, and end on December 11, 1943. Thus, a new class of 125 men is admitted every nine months, and a class of 140 will be graduated every nine months...By reducing the length of the summer holiday, it is possible, without altering the actual weeks of instruction, to complete the present curriculum in three calendar years... This action increases the number of men graduating from the Harvard Medical School by an average of about 45 per year. Similar action has been taken by other medical schools. The result of this combined action will be the production of about 5,000 extra physicians by 1945."Another instance of counter-induction, I suppose... :dozey:

OK, there's one possible factual error (which I Mr. Feyerabend was still alive, he might again respond to like many other critics who tried to nitpick him) which still remains an extremely small matter (and still odd that you are going on this counter induction thingy which I could not gleam in my readings of Feyerabend, nor did anything that remotely resembles your contention show up in the secondary sources or reviews of his work, but... :no:).

Of course, Feyerabend might have had access to material and information that you do not. He does make the claim that the instruction manuals disappeared. In fact, your little quote goes on and supports his contention that medicine is made to appear difficult (it takes such a long time) as people start so late. His book is quite factually impeccable.

So even if you don't believe his claim, it really doesn't bother me. Now even if the factual error should it be true, it would have no bearing on his main point. It is as a typo in a sublime work.

Also, clearly this:

He claims (in the quote) that this is a fairly simple subject that could be taught in a very short curriculum. The truth is that the field of Medicine is so large and complex that no one could ever master it in his lifetime, and every curriculum is by necessity a selection of the entire field of medical knowledge. The fact that certain basics of Medicine were taught in shortened curricula during the war only proves that war sets different requirements than peace. The notion that these shortened wartime curricula would somehow reflect on the entire body of knowledge that we call medicine, is truly half-baked.

is a misread or strawman of this passage:

Modern science, on the other hand, is not at all as difficult and as perfect as scientific propaganda wants us to believe. A subject such as medicine, or physics, or biology appears difficult only because it is taught badly, because the standard instructions are full of redundant material, and because they start too late in life. During the war, when the American Army needed physicians within a very short time, it was suddenly possible to reduce medical instruction to half a year (the corresponding instruction manuals have disappeared long ago, however. Science may be simplified during the war. In peacetime the prestige of science demands greater complication.) And how often does it not happen that the proud and conceited judgement of an expert is put in its proper place by a layman! Numerous inventors built 'impossible' machines. Lawyers show again and again that an expert does not know what he is talking about. Scientists, especially physicians, frequently come to different results so that it is up to the relatives of the sick person (or the inhabitants of a certain area) to decide by vote about the procedure to be adopted. How often is science improved, and turned into new directions by non-scientific influences! it is up to us, it is up to the citizens of a free society to either accept the chauvinism of science without contradiction or to overcome it by the counterforce of public action. Public action was used against science by the Communists in China in the fifties, and it was again used,, under very different circumstances, by some opponents of evolution in California in the seventies. Let us follow their example and let us free society from the strangling hold of an ideologically petrified science just as our ancestors freed us from the strangling hold of the One True Religion!

Also, what of everything else I've posted Adrian II?

What have your alternative methods accomplished?

Seeing as I've actually not put forward "alternative methods" to induction (are there even any :huh:) and the problem is concerning the future, this is kinda a pointless question.

The point that induction cannot be relied on at all in the future to accomplish anything the way of rational beliefs has been hammered home many times.

Sasaki Kojiro

03-04-2007, 21:55

"His book is quite factually impeccable. "

Wait, how do you know this? Do you have proof of all of his points? Even if they were true when you read them how do you know they are still true?

Reenk Roink

03-04-2007, 22:29

"His book is quite factually impeccable. "

Wait, how do you know this? Do you have proof of all of his points? Even if they were true when you read them how do you know they are still true?

Sasaki Kojiro, this past week, my schedule was fairly relaxed, and so I could put up with your one line objections that when responded to, would be met with one line objections on a totally different tangent. Now, things are going back to normal, and I ask you to spare me for awhile, as many people are objecting to me and I don't think I have the patience or desire (not to mention the time) to respond.

As to your first point: "Wait, how do you know this?"

I call his book "quite factually impeccable" because of the fact that Feyerabend cited quite nicely, responded to critiques against his factual accuracy in his "Conversations with Illiterates", and the fact that very few criticisms were leveled against Feyerabend's exposition or anecdotes (those that were were responded to).

As to your second point: "Do you have proof of all of his points?"

No, I have not cross-referenced every point of Feyerabend if that is what you are asking.

As to your third point: "Even if they were true when you read them how do you know they are still true?"

This shows a misunderstanding or is a misapplication of the problem of induction.

Also, I am not even remotely saying that "because some of Feyerabend's facts were correct, it follows simply from that premise that other facts are correct". (inductive reasoning)

Adrian II

03-05-2007, 00:22

OK, there's one possible factual error (which I Mr. Feyerabend was still alive, he might again respond to like many other critics who tried to nitpick him) which still remains an extremely small matter (and still odd that you are going on this counter induction thingy which I could not gleam in my readings of Feyerabend, nor did anything that remotely resembles your contention show up in the secondary sources or reviews of his work, but... :no:).From Feyerabend's book:

We must invent [or seek out and engage] a new
conceptual system that suspends, or clashes with the most carefully
established observational results, confounds the most plausible theoretical
principles, and introduces perceptions that cannot form part
of the existing perceptual world. This step is . . . counterinductive.
(1975, p. 32)Since counter-induction is the only alternative methodology suggested by Feyerabend and since he goes on to present his central Galileo-example to stress the uses of counter-induction, I doubt that you and I have read the same book. Good luck with your busy schedule.

Papewaio

03-05-2007, 00:24

Modern science, on the other hand, is not at all as difficult and as perfect as scientific propaganda wants us to believe. A subject such as medicine, or physics, or biology appears difficult only because it is taught badly, because the standard instructions are full of redundant material, and because they start too late in life.

Actually most scientists I have met do their best to make it understandable. Nor do I think there is any scientific propaganda. Scientists gleefully disprove each other for joy and monetary gain.

During the war, when the American Army needed physicians within a very short time, it was suddenly possible to reduce medical instruction to half a year (the corresponding instruction manuals have disappeared long ago, however. Science may be simplified during the war. In peacetime the prestige of science demands greater complication.)

Disproved.

And how often does it not happen that the proud and conceited judgement of an expert is put in its proper place by a layman! Numerous inventors built 'impossible' machines.

And are any of these perpetual motion machines?

Lawyers show again and again that an expert does not know what he is talking about.

Yes a court of law is the best way to judge someones expertise on all things.

Scientists, especially physicians, frequently come to different results so that it is up to the relatives of the sick person (or the inhabitants of a certain area) to decide by vote about the procedure to be adopted. How often is science improved, and turned into new directions by non-scientific influences!

Confusing application of technology with science. Also confusing the idea tha there is absolute answers in all things technological. Different people will have different responses to different procedures, drugs, doses etc Nor will the same person react the same 100% of the time.

it is up to us, it is up to the citizens of a free society to either accept the chauvinism of science without contradiction or to overcome it by the counterforce of public action.

Funny so the same field that can be disproved by layman is chauvinistic... hasn't he just contradicted himself?

Public action was used against science by the Communists in China in the fifties, and it was again used,,

Yeah, that was a great time for society! It wasn't society fighting science, it was an elite enclave removing all weapons from the peasants.

under very different circumstances, by some opponents of evolution in California in the seventies.

Yes, great thinkers these are too.

Let us follow their example and let us free society from the strangling hold of an ideologically petrified science just as our ancestors freed us from the strangling hold of the One True Religion!

Look I'm all for people disproving theories in science. Just I don't buy what this guy is selling nor his followers. If they lived their lives like they state their beliefs it would make interesting fodder for the Darwin awards.

Reenk Roink

03-05-2007, 00:36

From Feyerabend's book:

We must invent [or seek out and engage] a new
conceptual system that suspends, or clashes with the most carefully
established observational results, confounds the most plausible theoretical
principles, and introduces perceptions that cannot form part
of the existing perceptual world. This step is . . . counterinductive.
(1975, p. 32)Since counter-induction is the only alternative methodology suggested by Feyerabend and since he goes on to present his central Galileo-example to stress the uses of counter-induction, I doubt that you and I have read the same book. Good luck with your busy schedule.

Against Method? Perhaps you are right on that little "wrong book" comment, as you got his "anything goes" slogan a bit confused.

In all seriousness thanks for finally referencing the page, I now understand what you were going on about. I'll reread it with context and get back to you with my thoughts.

Back again on the big picture:

In Against Method and later writings, Feyerabend does advocate a more open attitude for different paradigms to counter the trend of the state of science as being a dogmatic institution (scientism). He points out examples of how things that are dismissed and sneered at as “unscientific” have done much to aid science. A prime example of this is astrology. Feyerabend in “The Strange Case of Astrology” shows how much astronomy is indebted to this “pseudoscience”. But later on, in classic Feyerabend style, he critiques the methodology of astrology itself, calling it “a reservoir of naive rules and phrases suited to impress the ignorant”. Obviously people who say that Feyerabend considers astrology and astronomy as equal are missing it.

Likewise, Feyerabend does not say that folk healing and modern medicine do the same thing. What he says is that they are incommensurable, and “healing” means something else in each paradigm. Feyerabend was obviously influenced in this by being cured by a healer which got him more against the notion of the superiority of modern medicine. He says that there is no culture-independent way of preferring either meaning of "healing", and to insist on modern medicine to the exclusion of folk healing is just as irrational as the reverse.

Now, what exactly is half baked about all of this?

If they lived their lives like they state their beliefs it would make interesting fodder for the Darwin awards.

Do you actually understand his beliefs? Do you understand his thesis?

Also, I really can't join you with a beer to laugh about how dead people went...

Adrian II

03-05-2007, 00:52

Now, what exactly is half baked about all of this?Like I said before: some of his criticism makes sense. I specifically mentioned the unnecessary use of jargon and the unjustifiable status of science and scientists. Some of these shortcomings have been largely overcome, such as the prima facie refusal to consider alternative angles in medicine.

It is his alternative that makes no sense.

And that makes Feyerabend half-baked: neither raw nor well-done.

Papewaio

03-05-2007, 00:53

Scientists regularly die trying to get data to dis/prove an idea. But for some reason there is this gap, an inability for these philosophers to test these ideas with any real conviction.

Strangely enough you don't see Mr F and his students actually going out of their way to actively live a life in conflict with science. After all as much as they tout the memes, they want to spread their genes. A simple case of talking the talk but unable to walk the walk. But hey some use ability, others talk it up to get in an undergrads pants, alls fair in love and war. And as much as they say it, they do something totally different, they are after all circumscribed by which that they deny.

Reenk Roink

03-05-2007, 01:20

It is his alternative that makes no sense.

And that makes Feyerabend half-baked: neither raw nor well-done.

He shows the problem with holding the "scientific method" as a determinate process that leads directly to truth.

Say we have this method, that discerns between theories, and if there is a conflict between theories, the application of this method will tell us which theory to accept and which to discard.

If we do hold it to be such, we have theoretical monism. Other theories will be deemed lacking on methodological ground and dismissed.

Such a situation is counter-productive. Feyerabend uses many examples from the history of science when a theory was considered lacking by the method but turned out to be actually more useful and productive than the others.

We can't know which theories will be productive in advance, but we are obliged to discard theories due to the application of the method.

It is thus, not desirable to adopt one method alone.

Papewaio:

We went through this in the "Regarding Atheism" thread? What's your point? Philosophers are hypocrites? Cool, I agree. Now, does that answer the problem of induction (I think you confuse Feyerabend and induction again)?

edit: (I kinda rushed that last post)

Adrian II:

Reading through a bit of the book and the thread, now I finally see why you say that counter induction is Feyerabend's espoused view. I was confused from the start as you brought up "anything goes" and the problem of induction together.

Yes, Feyerabend brings up a counter-intuitive method. However, it is a misread to say as you do, that this is his espoused position. It is not, just as it is not the case that he holds astrology and astronomy as equals (as is again mistakenly believed). Feyerabend is being ironic, he is grabbing attention. It is what makes him fun to read.

Feyerabend's main thesis is what I posted above in this post. Science has not followed a method through its history, and indeed, a method is restrictive to progress.

Papewaio:

I must again point out the error of saying Feyerabend was anti-science. I really don't think you understand Feyerabend's position at all, and I think you are equating it with the problem of induction.

Now, you may be correct that those who hold scientific laws based on induction to be hypocritical in that they reason by induction themselves. As Hume put it, it is psychological habit. But consider this: someone who holds that we have no reason to believe that the law of gravity will hold in the future is not going to "test" his conclusion by jumping off a bridge, simply because it is as irrational to think that he will float or fly away as it is to think he will fall. The person who puts forward the problem of induction is putting forward a skeptical position, not claiming either side. And if that is not enough, remember, hypocrisy of philosophers does not in any way rationally undermine their ideas.

HoreTore

03-05-2007, 02:58

One word: Oil. What was norway like before you discovered you had it again ? (No need to actually answer).[/QUOTE]

Argentina had gold coming out the back of them. Now they have nothing. Nigeria has as much oil as we do, yet they are a third world country. If what you say is to held any credibility, then Nigeria and Argentina would have to be as rich as Norway. Which they are not. In those two countries, market forces are running the show. In Norway, the goverment controls the oil.

And about the "norway isn't socialist" thingy... Well, there are many different kinds of socialism. Norway is Social-democratic. A socialist country isn't a country where private property is abolished. That would be a utopian communist collective, the "end state" of socialism. And it woul not be forced, society would abolish it by itself. Norway is social-democratic, and a socialdemocrazy is a socialist state. It's not a marxist state, it's not a lenininst state, it's not a maoist state. But it's a socialist state.

What is meant by "completely socialist state"? If you mean the utopian society where private property is abolished, people give according to their ability and recieve according to their needs and so forth, then no, no state is or has ever been socialist. But a lot of them are on their way there, including Norway and most other european countries. I'll do what I can to make that dream a reality...

rory_20_uk

03-05-2007, 03:07

Argentina had gold coming out the back of them. Now they have nothing. Nigeria has as much oil as we do, yet they are a third world country. If what you say is to held any credibility, then Nigeria and Argentina would have to be as rich as Norway. Which they are not. In those two countries, market forces are running the show. In Norway, the goverment controls the oil.

You seem to manage to aviod the entire issue of corruption in Nigeria (to use your example). That is where billions of dollars are going, along with smuggling.

In Norway there are still Private companies who extact the oil, no? So it is down to the strength of the government more than anything else. Russia is gaining great wealth from Oil / Gas and is clearly following a non-socialist path.

~:smoking:

Papewaio

03-05-2007, 05:06

Such a situation is counter-productive. Feyerabend uses many examples from the history of science when a theory was considered lacking by the method but turned out to be actually more useful and productive than the others.

I don't think any of his examples hold much water once tested. Mr G for instance had to fight the current paradigm holding sway in the community, so yes sometimes ideas have to wait till the current holders die out. It was through evidence that he made headway and why his ideas kept hold. That later Mr N's theory of gravity helped explain these indeed helped. Further on Mr E shows were Mr N's theory was correct and more importantly incorrect and introduced a more accurate model.

Papewaio:

We went through this in the "Regarding Atheism" thread? What's your point? Philosophers are hypocrites? Cool, I agree. Now, does that answer the problem of induction (I think you confuse Feyerabend and induction again)?
...
Papewaio:

I must again point out the error of saying Feyerabend was anti-science. I really don't think you understand Feyerabend's position at all, and I think you are equating it with the problem of induction.

When I find a better method and I will use it. Like democracy being the best of a lame bunch. The scientific method will with relish be replaced by anything that actually works better for the physical world.

introduced a more accurate model.

Now, you may be correct that those who hold scientific laws based on induction to be hypocritical in that they reason by induction themselves. As Hume put it, it is psychological habit. But consider this: someone who holds that we have no reason to believe that the law of gravity will hold in the future is not going to "test" his conclusion by jumping off a bridge, simply because it is as irrational to think that he will float or fly away as it is to think he will fall. The person who puts forward the problem of induction is putting forward a skeptical position, not claiming either side. And if that is not enough, remember, hypocrisy of philosophers does not in any way rationally undermine their ideas.

Why pray tell do scientists do dangerous things, that they will test their ideas and bypass that membrane of psychological habitat that cocoons so safely philosophers? Being a hypocrite would be indeed a bad thing for a minister of the faith. For a scientist to be wrong is to learn more about what we don't know. But for a philosopher what could be worse then being wrong?

Induction will be wrong when the universe changes. That is because the old data will no longer match the new reality. There is nothing to show that the universe will change. But if it does, one of the best ways to figure that out will be the very system that measured the old one best. You see science is great at figuring out what this universe is... so it will be very quick at showing up if the rules have changed when its predictions go from 99% to 0%. Other areas that are hit and miss may not even know that the place has changed as they continue to give out the same dodgy outcomes.

So my best bet for the current universe is to use the scientific method.
My best bet for figuring out if the universe has changed will be to have used the scientific method and seeing the differences.
And once the universe has changed, if it stays static, then in all likely hood the scientific method will be good till the next universe change.

So the best current bet is to go SM. :whip:

Adrian II

03-05-2007, 11:32

Yes, Feyerabend brings up a counter-intuitive method.Hallelujah.
However, it is a misread to say as you do, that this is his espoused position.He has always been ambiguous about that, hasn't he? I know Against Method was meant to be a pamphlet in a series, with the understanding that Imre Lakatos would defend opposite views in another volume. Because Lakatos died before he could finish his manuscript, Feyerabend's book acquired a stand-alone quality that it wasn't meant to have. Feyerabend knew this and admitted as much when he was confronted with scientific criticism of some of his wilder notions, but whenever he faced representatives (or rather: students) of the humanities, he would defend these wilder notions with a vengeance because they increased his charisma.

There is a direct link between the success of Feyerabend and the success of Sokal's hoax.

Or of Luce Irigaray's contention that Einstein's formula E=mc2 is contemptible because it privileges (male) matter over (female) speed!...

In today's pomo faculties, anything goes indeed. Feyerabend helped to open the floodgates, after which reason was submerged for decades to come.

HoreTore

03-05-2007, 12:51

You seem to manage to aviod the entire issue of corruption in Nigeria (to use your example). That is where billions of dollars are going, along with smuggling.

In Norway there are still Private companies who extact the oil, no? So it is down to the strength of the government more than anything else. Russia is gaining great wealth from Oil / Gas and is clearly following a non-socialist path.

~:smoking:

The two companies primarily pumping up our oil, is Norsk Hydro and Statoil. Both are state owned, though statoil sold down some percantage(I think in the area of 30%) of their stock a few years back. So the market is strictly goverment controlled. And you can look at Mexico, they've got a lot of oil, why are they so poor? Answer: their goverment, pressured by USA, is forced to let international oil companies pump it up, instead of doing it themselves..

As for Russia....well, it's not fair to make any conclusions in that country for at least another 10 years or so, in my opinion.

Reenk Roink

03-05-2007, 18:29

Adrian II:

Here you go from the man himself in the ending paragraph of TWO:

One might therefore get the impression that I recommend a new methodology which replaces induction by counterinduction and uses a multiplicity of theories, metaphysical views, fairy-tales instead of the customary pair theory/observation. This impression would certainly be mistaken My intention is not to replace one set of general rules by another such set: my intention is, rather, to convince the reader than all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits…Always remember that the demonstrations and the rhetorics used do not express any ‘deep convictions’ of mine.

Feyerabend's own emphasis.

To say he espoused counterinduction is a clear misread.

His "half-baked alternative" was given by me in my last post to you. I can't agree with the label you attached to it.

Papewaio:

On Feyerabend:

I ask you to actually read his examples, and then point out the expositional flaws and factual inaccuracies to me. Citing pages like Adrian II did would be helpful (although obviously we have slightly different versions of the book as his pg. 32 was my pg. 20).

On the little hypocrisy tangent:

First you say this: "Why pray tell do scientists do dangerous things, that they will test their ideas and bypass that membrane of psychological habitat that cocoons so safely philosophers? Being a hypocrite would be indeed a bad thing for a minister of the faith. For a scientist to be wrong is to learn more about what we don't know. But for a philosopher what could be worse then being wrong?"

Again you are bringing up hypocrisy of philosophers and I have already repeatedly given you two responses:

1) Philosophers actually are not hypocrites for holding that it is an irrational belief to hold the law of gravity for the future and then not jumping off a cliff to "test" there conclusion. Like pointed out before, the problem of induction espouses a skeptical position. It claims that we have no reason to believe that the law of gravity will hold in the future just because it held in the past. To Hume, or any other philosopher who puts forward this view, it is as irrational to believe that he will do something other than fall downward when he jumps off a cliff as it is to believe that he will fall downward when he jumps.

2) Hypocrisy on a philosopher's part (if there is actually any) does not rationally undermine his conclusion in any way.

On Induction (not to be confused with the scientific method):

I do not think you understand the problem of induction completely.

Perhaps reading that and Hume's own Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding will help you get the point that the Salmon I refered to you in the "Regarding Atheism" thread was trying to make.

Also, you might want to read Popper's attempt to solve it, as gave a brief exposition of the problem, and agreed with Hume that it was both illogical and irrational to base beliefs on it, clarifying why this was.

So again, in your statement of:

"Induction will be wrong when the universe changes. That is because the old data will no longer match the new reality. There is nothing to show that the universe will change. But if it does, one of the best ways to figure that out will be the very system that measured the old one best. You see science is great at figuring out what this universe is... so it will be very quick at showing up if the rules have changed when its predictions go from 99% to 0%. Other areas that are hit and miss may not even know that the place has changed as they continue to give out the same dodgy outcomes."

...you commit the fallacyof assuming nature to be be uniform in the future, when that is exactly the question at hand. You commit the fallacy of circularly supporting induction using induction.

Now, I saw glimpses of you espousing Pragmatic Justification to get around the problem of induction. Aside from my personal qualms of wanting actual epistemic justification, I want to ask, if you will base your beliefs on induction using Pragmatic Justification, why not as well accept Pascal's Wager.

Adrian II

03-05-2007, 19:42

To say he espoused counterinduction is a clear misread.It is not, for two reasons: (1) he factually embraced counter-induction in his own work (cf. his treatment of Galileo) and (2) he advocated counter-induction at various stages in Against Method (as well as in later publications and lectures).

I already gave you a relevant quote from Against Method:

We must invent [or seek out and engage] a new conceptual system that suspends, or clashes with the most carefully established observational results (..)Therefore I think I am justified in calling his attitude 'ambiguous'.

Reenk Roink

03-05-2007, 20:05

It is not, for two reasons: (1) he factually embraced counter-induction in his own work (cf. his treatment of Galileo) and (2) he advocated counter-induction at various stages in Against Method (as well as in later publications and lectures).

I already gave you a relevant quote from Against Method:

We must invent [or seek out and engage] a new conceptual system that suspends, or clashes with the most carefully established observational results (..)Therefore I think I am justified in calling his attitude 'ambiguous'.

Now you are saying two different things...

You may be justified in calling his attitude ambiguous (though the ambiguity has been since cleared), but saying his espoused view is counterinduction (as you did earlier) is a misread.

Again, I point to the quote I gave that Feyerabend concluded TWO with, and I add in some sentences that I omitted last time. It is clear that Feyerabend's references to counterinduction are demonstration and rhetoric, and not an espoused position:

One might therefore get the impression that I recommend a new methodology which replaces induction by counterinduction and uses a multiplicity of theories, metaphysical views, fairy-tales instead of the customary pair theory/observation. This impression would certainly be mistaken My intention is not to replace one set of general rules by another such set: my intention is, rather, to convince the reader that all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits The best way to show this is to demonstrate the limits and even the irrationality of some of the rules which she, or he, is likely to regard as basic. In the case of induction (including induction by falsification) this means demonstrating how well the counter inductive procedure can be supported by the argument. Always remember that the demonstrations and the rhetorics used do not express any ‘deep convictions’ of mine.

Bolded emphasis Feyerabend
Underlined emphasis mine

With this in mind, it does not matter how many isolated out of context quotes one throws (like in the case of misquoting "The Strange Case of Astrology" where Feyerabend is claimed to support astrology (with out of context, misread quotes) even though he critiques astrologies methodology later on), the issue is made clear.

Abokasee

03-05-2007, 20:57

At the end of that time, Legos returned to the classroom after the children agreed to several guiding principles framed by the teachers, including that "All structures are public structures" and "All structures will be standard sizes." The teachers quote the children:

"A house is good because it is a community house."

"We should have equal houses. They should be standard sizes."

"It's important to have the same amount of power as other people over your building."

Thats the problem, with communism and lego, you have to knock down old places, I my self would mind a fair bit of communism in a Captailist run goverment, as in I Get rid of the bad stuff, keep the good.

Also Another problem with having standardized houses, is that they'll have to be the same colour and then the lego bucket would run out of brick peices. :sad2:

Papewaio

03-06-2007, 00:51

"Induction will be wrong when the universe changes. That is because the old data will no longer match the new reality. There is nothing to show that the universe will change. But if it does, one of the best ways to figure that out will be the very system that measured the old one best. You see science is great at figuring out what this universe is... so it will be very quick at showing up if the rules have changed when its predictions go from 99% to 0%. Other areas that are hit and miss may not even know that the place has changed as they continue to give out the same dodgy outcomes."

...you commit the fallacyof assuming nature to be be uniform in the future, when that is exactly the question at hand. You commit the fallacy of circularly supporting induction using induction.

No, I actually state that when the universe changes induction will not work. This is most definitely not saying that the universe will be uniform in the future. What I do state is that one of the most reliable ways of measuring change is to have an accurate ruler to start with.

Now, I saw glimpses of you espousing Pragmatic Justification to get around the problem of induction. Aside from my personal qualms of wanting actual epistemic justification, I want to ask, if you will base your beliefs on induction using Pragmatic Justification, why not as well accept Pascal's Wager.

My Pragmatic Justification of philosophy is that it is a means to get laid. My point of view is that reality is a hard rock and it is not the place of reality to conform to our views, but our views to match reality. Induction might be a wonky tool, but until a better one comes along then that is what I will use. If camping I will use a lighter to light a fire, if I do not have access to a lighter I will use sticks. Now if Induction is wonky, then I need a better tool. As far as I can see it is up to the philosophers to supply this tool. So really the main issue is the poor customer service by philosophers in not developing such a tool in a timely manner, and instead of being apologetic about the situation they blame the customer for having to use out of date technology. Terrible, absolutely terrible. :laugh4:

As for Pascal's Wager, Gambling is a tax on idiocy so you can see what I think of that wager. Now Pascal's Wager has a fundamental problem, you see although the payoff is infinite iff you select the correct God, you may however quite easily select the incorrect one. After all, all the faiths in the world can't be correct, and who is to say that those that still exist, or existed or may exist in the future also correctly select the correct God. In fact if there is a God of the Universe, then there will be many planets in the universe with many beings with many faiths. Only one of which might just get it right. So while the payoff might be infinite the chance of actually being of the right faith is infinitly small to the point it could plausibly be zero. Infinite payoff times a chance of getting it so small that it is a probability of 1/infinity... gives a vanishing small if not zero payoff. So might as well lead life as you want as that does give a payoff far larger then zero. :clown:

Reenk Roink

03-06-2007, 01:15

The problem of induction states that we cannot know if nature will remain uniform in the future. That's the point. It's not a matter of "when it will change".

Obviously by some of you comments, you are content to flippantly dismiss the problem of induction, going as far to equate all philosophers/philosophy with it. :huh: Karl Popper must have just wanted to get laid when he dismissed induction as illogical and irrational, huh?

Wonderful, I'm sure you made yourself laugh. :rolleyes:

Very well, then, continue on on your irrationality; you have not once advanced rational argument against the problem of induction. As I said to Watchman, the problem of induction is not a matter of "philosophy", it is a matter of rationality. It is a matter of examining how we reason. To be rational very generally means to base your beliefs on reason and evidence.

:logic: = nice smiley :2thumbsup:

Just a little P.S: You make a good point on Pascal's Wager. That's another reason to avoid it. :wink: Too bad the same applies to a pragmatic justification of induction. :oops:

You see, there are an infinite number of logical possibilities as to how nature will be in the future. Betting that it will remain the same is just well...irrational.

I would like to end with this: Do you believe that the law of gravity will hold true for the future? If so, why? What reasoning do you have to support such a belief?

rory_20_uk

03-06-2007, 01:45

The two companies primarily pumping up our oil, is Norsk Hydro and Statoil. Both are state owned, though statoil sold down some percantage(I think in the area of 30%) of their stock a few years back. So the market is strictly goverment controlled. And you can look at Mexico, they've got a lot of oil, why are they so poor? Answer: their goverment, pressured by USA, is forced to let international oil companies pump it up, instead of doing it themselves..

As for Russia....well, it's not fair to make any conclusions in that country for at least another 10 years or so, in my opinion.

Many countries don't have the technology to pump oil. And let's look at some other countries: the UK, the USA, Kuwait. All have private companies and seem to survive.

Russia has been pumping oil for over 100 years. Why no conclusions?

~:smoking:

Papewaio

03-06-2007, 02:14

The problem of induction states that we cannot know if nature will remain uniform in the future. That's the point. It's not a matter of "when it will change"

Just a little P.S: You make a good point on Pascal's Wager. That's another reason to avoid it. :wink: Too bad the same applies to a pragmatic justification of induction. :oops:

You see, there are an infinite number of logical possibilities as to how nature will be in the future. Betting that it will remain the same is just well...irrational.

I would like to end with this: Do you believe that the law of gravity will hold true for the future? If so, why? What reasoning do you have to support such a belief?

Mighty big if. It is more IFF nature changes then induction will at that point (and not before) will no longer work. However there is nothing to say it won't work after the change, it will also be one of the best tools to figure out that the change has happened.

Now until nature changes induction is the best current tool to use, until we get induction version 2, or counter-induction or the synthesis of the two or something totally different.

I think the irrational position is to assume that something that works in this universe will not work based on the idea that it might (and it still is a might) not work if nature changes, despite that nature hasn't as yet changed in such a manner.

As for the law of gravity... are you talking about nature or our understanding of it changing?

Reenk Roink

03-06-2007, 02:29

You don't understand. Induction does not work now. Even if we could be sure that the universe would remain the same tomorrow, it would not be because of induction at all. I have shown the fallacy in the reasoning over and over again. It is not our best method now at all. It cannot give us even a "probably".

Whenever I have in the past, broken into art galleries, I proceeded to drop the fine crystal vases on exhibit (after I raided the vending machines for my Twix).

Everytime in the past, I have seen the crystal vases fall downward and break when I drop them.

Now, I’m planning another hit tomorrow as I heard they got some new Twix (old ones were getting stale) and new vases from Polynesia.

I want to drop and break the vases again.

Now, based (and only based) on the fact that they have fallen down and broken in the past, does it follow that they will fall downward and break if I drop them tomorrow?

The answer is of course, no. There is nothing that necessitates them falling downward and breaking just because they have done so in the past. I have no reason to believe that the vases will fall downward and break tomorrow. If I do believe that, it will be irrational.

Now, you may reply: “Ah, but our belief that the vase will fall downward and break if dropped is not based on the fact that it has happened in the past, it is because of the law of gravity”.

I will respond: “The law of gravity is simply a generalization based on the fact that things have fallen downward in the past when dropped".

Here is the central problem of scientific laws, scientific theories, and scientific predictions.

The very nature of inductive reasoning is called into question. This is why Popper (after banging some undergrads) attempted to distance it from scientific reasoning and claimed that scientific reasoning follows deduction (he failed, but that's another point).

You may hold whatever opinion you want on what you "think the irrational position" is, but the fact is, it has been rationally demonstrated that holding things like the law of gravity to hold true in the future is irrational.

Papewaio

03-06-2007, 03:24

Fine, show me the money er better method.

Until then I will continue to use science and its outcomes. At the point that it is no longer productive I will move on to another schema. If astrology suddenly starts yielding consistent results at 99% predictability, I will use that. The title of what it is, how it does it, or how many buzzwords it does or doesn't use is not the issue for me.

In the end of the day I'm an ORC.

Only
Results
Count.

Sure it would be nice to know what method will help me discern what works. Science has a good past success rate, so I will continue to use it. If I lived in the future and my timeline was going backwards, I would be using future information to make decisions about what I should do in the past. So unless I was a being that lived along the entire time continuum simultaneously, I can only ever live my live based on information that I have already received... its like driving forwards by using a rear view mirror, sure I think there is a better method out there and I look forward to embracing it. Until then I will use what I have got.

HoreTore

03-06-2007, 03:25

Many countries don't have the technology to pump oil. And let's look at some other countries: the UK, the USA, Kuwait. All have private companies and seem to survive.

Russia has been pumping oil for over 100 years. Why no conclusions?

~:smoking:

Norway didn't have that technology either, but it forced the brits and US to share that technology. And the economies of USA and UK were among the strongest in the world way before they started with oil.

Kuwait's economy relies on their stateowned oil company.
As for Russia, they've been pumping oil for a long time, first with a feudal economy, then communist, and now? The problem is, noone's really sure what they're up to now...

Reenk Roink

03-06-2007, 03:34

I, like Hume, like Russell, like Salmon, (when they were not nailing chicks) think this problem particularly worrying. It basically states that I have as good a reason to believe that scientific laws will predict what happens in the future as tarot, astrology, etc. None. The fact that gravity has held fine in the past is no consolation as it doesn't mean anything for the future. :sad:

As for induction itself, I continually find myself reasoning that way, despite its irrationality. As I cannot find any solution to the problem, and it is still very difficult to stop reasoning this way, I have only one way of coping:

Continue to believe (some) things based on inductive reasoning (like the sun will rise tomorrow), yet hold no pretensions of their rationality...

Papewaio

03-06-2007, 04:14

Whoa, hold you horses.

Science cannot predict the future IFF the universe changes. That is the basic assumption. That induction using past data cannot make a reliable prediction about the future if and only if the universe changes and makes that data/models/predictions void. It is correct that science based solely on induction cannot predict with its models what will happen if the universe changes.

Lets assume that it can change:
However what is the chance that it will change? 100%, 50%, 0% All of these chances at first glance have an equal chance, so lets settle on 50%.

When will it change? Based on past experience it changes once every 15 billion years (if you include its inception as a change, and that inception has a selection of physical laws to 'choose' from). So we have about a 50% chance in the next 15 billion years... as a first guess.

When it does actually change, how will you tell? What is the ruler you shall measure it against?

Now lets assume that every 15 billion years there is a 50% chance of a change occurring. What are the consequences to us and our use of science?

None, unless the change occurs during our lifetime. Now taking out lifetimes as 100 years. We have a slightly better then 1 in a billion chance of living through one of these changes. Take the lifetime of the human race as existing a million years and as a collective entity we have a one in a thousand chance of living through one of these changes. Essentially using the given odds we are more likely to be all wiped out a thousand times over by mass death or evolve to something else then actually encountering a change in how the universe works.

What happens when the universe changes?
( given our model that it changes with a 50% once every 15 billion years again)

Then we can happily use induction for the next 15 billion years until it changes again. We can't use the old laws as they were for the old universe, we can however make new ones assuming that time is still the same as in the previous universe and a few other assumptions.

One of these main assumptions is that a change is so small that it is measurable but not fatal. A tiny change in the way the universe works would most likely be fatal. So there is a big assumption that if the universe changes that we actually survive the event to be able to even give a damn. For instance, if electric charge suddenly attracted like rather then repelled we would collapse into wannabe neutron stars.

Should we worry about a change in our universe that we cannot control or predict that we will probably cease to exist in the moment it happens?

Until the change occurs induction is all good, afterwards it might work. Of course we have to be around as a species to see it happen, and we have to survive the event to see what happens. So we have a tiny chance of an unlikely event happening that we probably won't survive.

Personally I think at the point of mass extinction of life as we know it, makes the possible problems of induction for that future universe a mute point.

Ironside

03-06-2007, 15:18

the problem of induction is not a matter of "philosophy", it is a matter of rationality. It is a matter of examining how we reason. To be rational very generally means to base your beliefs on reason and evidence.

Define evidence, without using indutional reasoning. :smug:

BDC

03-06-2007, 15:52

Actually, seeing as light travels at a finite speed, you can actually just look at things and go, "oh look, no change".

Reenk Roink

03-06-2007, 16:18

Papewaio:

You are again missing the point of the problem. It is not a matter of if or when the universe will change. Science cannot predict the future at all as of now, because induction is not a reliable method.

(Also, I don't know how you can say that there is a 50/50 chance that the universe could change, given that there are near infinite logical possibilities of how it could be different)

I really don't know what more to say that will make you understand... :shrug:

Ironside:

I was making a general point of rationality, and evidence in it's most general meaning is anything that is used to determine the truth of an assertion. I think I have met your challenge. However, I would like to point out, that even if we could not have "evidence" without inductive reasoning, it would in no way affirm inductive reasoning rationally, or defeat the problem of induction.

edit:

Try this Papewaio. Short, sweet, to the point. (http://www.hku.hk/philodep/courses/ac/phil2130/inductionproblem.ppt.)

If the powerpoint doesn't work, try the HTML (http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:5AWp8fgmxIgJ:www.hku.hk/philodep/courses/ac/phil2130/inductionproblem.ppt+problem+of+induction&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=14&gl=us) (you may have to select the text to read it, the guy put it in bright yellow font...)

Ironside

03-06-2007, 19:09

I was making a general point of rationality, and evidence in it's most general meaning is anything that is used to determine the truth of an assertion. I think I have met your challenge. However, I would like to point out, that even if we could not have "evidence" without inductive reasoning, it would in no way affirm inductive reasoning rationally, or defeat the problem of induction.

Ah, but without evidence, you cannot declare it rational and if lack of induction is also irrational, it's more rational to use a method that can be rational, compared to the one that cannot be rational by definition. :logic:

Reenk Roink

03-06-2007, 20:58

Ah, but without evidence, you cannot declare it rational and if lack of induction is also irrational, it's more rational to use a method that can be rational, compared to the one that cannot be rational by definition. :logic:

No, sorry, you misunderstand one two fronts.

1) You state that a "lack of induction" is irrational. How so?

2) You state that induction can be rational. The problem of induction states that no beliefs or conclusions based on inductive reasoning can ever be justified (i.e, not rational).

I like that smiley though. :yes:

Ironside

03-06-2007, 21:28

No, sorry, you misunderstand one two fronts.

1) You state that a "lack of induction" is irrational. How so?

Because it cannot be rational. If you need evidence to make a rational decision and you cannot ever get evidence by using this method, the method cannot be rational.

It can be a bit too much focus on it as thesis and not as an anti-thesis, but the conclution stays in either case:
If you need evidence to prove that something is rational or not, then the only thing that even can be rational is something that gives evidence.

2) You state that induction can be rational. The problem of induction states that no beliefs or conclusions based on inductive reasoning can ever be justified (i.e, not rational).

Rationality isn't to always be correct, it's also be to optimise your results. And as it's more rational to think that gravity will work tomorrow as it did yesterday, than to abandon it for something that can't be rational, the use of the inductive method is more rational than to not use it.

But, if someone does came up with something that lacks the problem of induction, while still being able to give evidence and doesn't have a bigger problem, then it's more rational to use that method. :holmes:

I like that smiley though. :yes: There was some funny new ones. :hijacked:

Reenk Roink

03-06-2007, 21:55

Because it cannot be rational. If you need evidence to make a rational decision and you cannot ever get evidence by using this method, the method cannot be rational.

It can be a bit too much focus on it as thesis and not as an anti-thesis, but the conclution stays in either case:
If you need evidence to prove that something is rational or not, then the only thing that even can be rational is something that gives evidence.

This does not follow I'm afraid. A "lack of induction" is neither rational or irrational.

Now, I suppose one could push the case that it is rational to stop basing one's beliefs on induction, which leads only to unjustified and irrational conclusions, but on it's own, not basing your beliefs on induction is certainly not irrational.

Rationality isn't to always be correct, it's also be to optimise your results. And as it's more rational to think that gravity will work tomorrow as it did yesterday, than to abandon it for something that can't be rational, the use of the inductive method is more rational than to not use it.

But, if someone does came up with something that lacks the problem of induction, while still being able to give evidence and doesn't have a bigger problem, then it's more rational to use that method. :holmes:

Ironside, one really must take out personal opinions on what it means to be rational or not.

The fact is, induction will lead to unjustified conclusions, and it will be irrational to hold those conclusions.

Again, it is not rational at all to believe that gravity will work tomorrow like it did today. That has been shown many times to be an irrational belief.

You could argue the case that using the inductive method is more pragmatic than not (where then we will get into the problems with such pragmatic justifications instead of epistemic justifications) but you cannot argue that is more rational.

Papewaio

03-06-2007, 21:57

You are again missing the point of the problem. It is not a matter of if or when the universe will change. Science cannot predict the future at all as of now, because induction is not a reliable method.

Induction is not a reliable method iff the universe changes ie becomes not uniform. As it has never happened in the past (unless one counts its inception) what are the chances of the universe changing in the future? So I was using ultra-conservative odds.

(Also, I don't know how you can say that there is a 50/50 chance that the universe could change, given that there are near infinite logical possibilities of how it could be different)

It could be any chance, so total all the options and divide by them... 0, 1, 2, 3.. 99,100. On average it would be 50% as we don't know what it is (in this exercise)... it is just a good arbitrary number to start the thought exercise on.

I really don't know what more to say that will make you understand... :shrug:

I think you need to understand the chances of something happening. This is why science is not just induction and does not rely purely on Logic as some would wish. It uses probabilities and does not claim to have absolute answers. Science understanding, its laws are open to change. So far we haven't actually seen the universe change, only our perception and understanding and hence our models of it have. So given no change so far, one uses probability to assess the future chances.

So far since its inception about 15 billion years ago the universe has not changed its character such that science cannot predict what will happen based on past events. Now if the character of the universe changes, induction fails, science stops working. However 15 billion years and no change means the chance of it changing tomorrow is tiny. If tomorrow the universe acts like it did today and it did yesterday then science will work, we can make predictions right up to the point the universe changes.

So you are standing at the roulette wheel of life and told that there is a one in trillion chance (approx 365* 15 billion) that tomorrow the universe changes and science doesn't work so you might as well use astrology or any method. The rest of the time 999,999,999,999 out of 1,000,000,000,000 it will continue on as before.

Where do you place your bets? That tomorrow the universe changes or that it continues on as it has for 15 billion years?

Now even if it does change, the chances are that we will be dead. So even if you select right once out of the trillion times you won't get time to cash in your chips. As a change in the universe significant enough that we can notice, will more then likely result in our immediate deaths. After we are dead we don't need physics, we need metaphysics.

So we have something that will be reliable up and to the point we are dead.

Its not hypocrisy or psychology that holds back the philosophers. It is a gut feeling of understanding the odds of the universe changing and the consequences of that change. A bit more mathematics and understanding of probabilities may ease their minds.

Note: Science doesn't give an absolute answer, it gives a probable one.

* Premise: Observed cases of the application of the scientific method have yielded successful predictions.
* Conclusion: Unobserved cases of the application of the scientific method will yield successful predictions.
* The argument is clearly another inductive, ampliative inference: precisely the sort whose justification is in question.

Science would say:
Conclusion: Unobserved cases of the application of the scientific method have a high probability of yielding success.

* A typical induction
* Swan 1 is white
* Swan 2 is white.
* ...
* Swan 2,340 is white
* Therefore, (All) swans are white.
* What justifies the conclusion?

This is an incorrect application of induction as used by science. It is hence a strawman argument.
Look up sample population statistics and applying it to a larger population.

Science would go like this:
* Swan 1 is white.
* Swan 2 is white.
* ...
* Swan 2,340
* Probability of all swans being white is xyz,

It is not an absolute answer.

BDC

03-06-2007, 22:37

Note: Science doesn't give an absolute answer, it gives a probable one.

That's very important. That's practically the whole point of science.

Reenk Roink

03-06-2007, 23:28

Induction is not a reliable method iff the universe changes ie becomes not uniform. As it has never happened in the past (unless one counts its inception) what are the chances of the universe changing in the future? So I was using ultra-conservative odds.

You are now holding a false premise, and this is perhaps why it has been extremely difficult to talk with you about this.

Let me ask you this: Why do you think that induction is not a reliable method if and only if the universe changes? What leads you to that assumption? What justifies that assumption?

Salmon has already shown in a very general term why inductive reasoning fails to be a reliable method.

Your reasoning in this paragraph may hold the answer to why you hold this false premise.

You basically say, the universe has not changed in the past, so it has low odds of changing in the future. If you cannot grasp the elementary logical fallacy in this, then I am at a loss for how to explain it do you.

It could be any chance, so total all the options and divide by them... 0, 1, 2, 3.. 99,100. On average it would be 50% as we don't know what it is (in this exercise)... it is just a good arbitrary number to start the thought exercise on.

Pascal's Wager is criticized (rightly so) for not taking into account the other religions and even sectarian differences. It states that there is a choice between Christianity and non-Christianity, and assigns 50/50 odds, when in fact, factoring all the possibilities makes the odds very bad.

With all the logical possibilities (near infinite) of the types of changes the universe could see, it makes little sense to bet on it staying the same.

I think you need to understand the chances of something happening. This is why science is not just induction and does not rely purely on Logic as some would wish. It uses probabilities and does not claim to have absolute answers. Science understanding, its laws are open to change. So far we haven't actually seen the universe change, only our perception and understanding and hence our models of it have. So given no change so far, one uses probability to assess the future chances.

I think David Hume, and especially Karl Popper and Wesley Salmon understand (remember, I am simply referencing their arguments) the nuances of science, how it relates to induction, etc.

So far since its inception about 15 billion years ago the universe has not changed its character such that science cannot predict what will happen based on past events. Now if the character of the universe changes, induction fails, science stops working. However 15 billion years and no change means the chance of it changing tomorrow is tiny. If tomorrow the universe acts like it did today and it did yesterday then science will work, we can make predictions right up to the point the universe changes.

So you are standing at the roulette wheel of life and told that there is a one in trillion chance (approx 365* 15 billion) that tomorrow the universe changes and science doesn't work so you might as well use astrology or any method. The rest of the time 999,999,999,999 out of 1,000,000,000,000 it will continue on as before.

Where do you place your bets? That tomorrow the universe changes or that it continues on as it has for 15 billion years?

Now even if it does change, the chances are that we will be dead. So even if you select right once out of the trillion times you won't get time to cash in your chips. As a change in the universe significant enough that we can notice, will more then likely result in our immediate deaths. After we are dead we don't need physics, we need metaphysics.

So we have something that will be reliable up and to the point we are dead.

Incorrect reasoning. Read on to see why.

Its not hypocrisy or psychology that holds back the philosophers. It is a gut feeling of understanding the odds of the universe changing and the consequences of that change. A bit more mathematics and understanding of probabilities may ease their minds.

Papewaio, not to sound like a jerk or anything, but I'm quite sure Karl Popper and Wesley Salmon, have a better understanding of the nuances of science, the probability involved, the logic, etc, than you and me.

Science would say:
Conclusion: Unobserved cases of the application of the scientific method have a high probability of yielding success.

A note: The thing I gave you was a cliffs note version of a much larger Salmon work. It is well known to Salmon that inductive arguments (claim) to make their conclusions probable. That is the exact point of the problem of induction. It argues that conclusions of inductive arguments cannot be justified at all. They cannot be said to be probable at all. The wording on the cliffs note was bad, but you have changed that. Still, I will show that the same skeptical argument applies.

OK, now here is where I show the bad reasoning. Why do you say "unobserved cases of the application of the scientific method have a high probability of yielding success"?

What justifies your altered conclusion (just like what justifies the original conclusion)? How can you support the conclusion?

The problem of induction argues that you cannot support this conclusion. It does not follow deductively at all, and using induction is circular. Just because many observed cases of the application of the scientific method have yielded successful predictions in the past, it simply does not follow at all that any observed cases of the application will be successful in the future. It does not even add anything to the probability of such a case.

Again, see Hume's dilemma:

Horn 1: There can be no inductive justification of induction (e.g. via (PUN)) because such justifications presuppose that some inductions are justified.

Horn 2: There can be no deductive justification of induction because deductive inferences are non-ampliative, but inductive inferences are ampliative.

Without any justification for induction, how can one claim that something is probable or not based on past instances?

This is an incorrect application of induction as used by science. It is hence a strawman argument.

Look up sample population statistics and applying it to a larger population.

Science would go like this:
* Swan 1 is white.
* Swan 2 is white.
* ...
* Swan 2,340
* Probability of all swans being white is xyz,

It is not an absolute answer.

See the note and rebuttal earlier.

Science may claim to give a probable answer, but it does not actually do so, as it is using induction.

Papewaio

03-07-2007, 00:51

You are now holding a false premise, and this is perhaps why it has been extremely difficult to talk with you about this.

Let me ask you this: Why do you think that induction is not a reliable method if and only if the universe changes? What leads you to that assumption? What justifies that assumption?

Salmon has already shown in a very general term why inductive reasoning fails to be a reliable method.

Your reasoning in this paragraph may hold the answer to why you hold this false premise.

You basically say, the universe has not changed in the past, so it has low odds of changing in the future. If you cannot grasp the elementary logical fallacy in this, then I am at a loss for how to explain it do you.

Has the universe ever changed in its lifespan? No.

So why assume that there is a 100% chance of it happening in the next instant? That is irrational by probability calculations.

Salmon only proves that induction fails in a changing universe, not in a static one.

There is no proof that this universe has changed and therefore no reason to assume it can change. I was being generous in assigning 50% chance that it can change, when I would give it much less then a 0.0001% chance.

Induction will work as long as past inferences work in the future. They will work in the future as long as the nature of the universe stays the same. Even then, with science we assume that our models, our understanding is not 100% correct that we have a chance of being incorrect with out assumptions and having to go back to the drawing board.

Pascal's Wager is criticized (rightly so) for not taking into account the other religions and even sectarian differences. It states that there is a choice between Christianity and non-Christianity, and assigns 50/50 odds, when in fact, factoring all the possibilities makes the odds very bad.

With all the logical possibilities (near infinite) of the types of changes the universe could see, it makes little sense to bet on it staying the same.

As I said, I was being generous about giving it as high a chance as 50%. Even then it leaves a very small chance of a change happening in our lifetimes, and even smaller that we could survive the event.

The way some scientists see the big bang of the universe is the time when the possibilities of the universe were set. The big bang is the rolling of the infinite dice and the static result is this universe. To get another possibility you have to travel to another universe within the multiverse.

As observed so far from nanoseconds of the big bang to 15 odd billion years later, the universe hasn't changed itself to the point that the laws we derive for them have to be changed. We can look over a 15 billion year time span and use the same laws. It gives a confidence that they will work tomorrow. But again I reiterate that it is a high probability that we use not an absolute answer.

The problem of induction argues that you cannot support this conclusion. It does not follow deductively at all, and using induction is circular. Just because many observed cases of the application of the scientific method have yielded successful predictions in the past, it simply does not follow at all that any observed cases of the application will be successful in the future. It does not even add anything to the probability of such a case.

Any care for a wager on gravity working tomorrow? I'll give you $1000 Australian (about 3 pounds UK :clown: ) if tomorrow gravity no longer works. If it does work, you can just give me your acceptance that maybe the philosophers have a Euclidian point. Do you think that is a fair bet?

Reenk Roink

03-07-2007, 02:58

*sigh*

I'm about give up Papewaio. :surrender2:

Now, don't for one second think that I have changed my position on things. As much as I would like to switch paradigms, the skeptical arguments against induction are just too good. I'm just tired of explaining to no avail. You either just don't get it or don't want to get it.

You are making arguments on probability now, so I think you don't realize that the problem of induction makes those arguments moot beforehand...

Quoting Hume himself:

Nay, I will go further and assert that [you] could not so much as prove by any probable arguments that the future must be conformable to the past. All probable arguments are built on the supposition that there is this conformity betwixt the future and the past, and therefore [you] can never prove it.

probability = owned :duel:

So it doesn't matter that the universe hasn't changed in it's lifespan (if that is even true). We simply do not have a method that will show us that it will remain the same. We even don't have a method that will tell us if it is probable that it will remain the same.

You say there is no reason to assume that it can change. Correct. It is a logical possibility, but logical possibility alone doesn't mean much. However, there is no reason to assume it will stay the same either. That's the flipping point!

I know you will simply respond that "well, it has stayed the same in the past", and I have tried every stratagem to show you the circularity of your argument but to no avail.

You were not generous in giving it 50%. You grossly overestimated, by a margin of...almost 50%. Your appeal to probability is useless; the problem of induction has already dealt it a fatal blow...

Your last point simply plays on human psychology, and I remind you again, that you have not advanced any rational argument against the problem of induction OR in support of induction.

So I don't know if I will post much more on this, but just watch out when you or anyone claim that scientific predictions are rational... :wink:

Papewaio

03-07-2007, 04:00

So I don't know if I will post much more on this, but just watch out when you or anyone claim that scientific predictions are rational...

Not rational, just lucky and based on irrational probability.

So you don't want to take up the wager? :laugh4:

Hume would have to have shown first that there is no link between past and future. Much like showing that one end of a ruler is not connected to the other. Time isn't what philosophers used to think it was, it is just another physical dimension.

Without showing prior change in the universe to say that it will change is like stating that little green leprachauns exist without ever having seen one.

The burden of proof for this is on Hume and his followers. Till then old sport, science kicks ass, takes men to the moon, creates medical technology and explains nature all through sheer persistent luck. After all although we have the same chance of getting things right as astrology but we seem to keep rolling 6's all the way through our oppositions superior forces.

Rimmer, Rimmer, Rimmer!

Reenk Roink

03-07-2007, 05:19

Two ending things:

1) The burden of proof to show that nature will resemble the past in the future is on the person who is trying to push forward such a postulate. Notice that Hume never claims that the universe will change in the future. He simply claims that we have no reason to believe that it will stay the same. It is a skeptical claim, concerning lack of knowledge. It is not up to Hume, who says we don't know either way. It is up to the person supporting induction, who claims one way, or to the opposite man, who claims the other, to provide proof.

2) No I'm not going to make your wager. I already have stated that I believe that gravity will hold tomorrow, just that I can offer no argument or reason for the belief. It is a matter of purely irrational faith. I'm like that conditioned dog. Whenever bells ring, I start to salivate, thinking that food will come, though I have nothing but a few correlations in the past to go on...

Papewaio

03-07-2007, 05:31

2) No I'm not going to make your wager. I already have stated that I believe that gravity will hold tomorrow, just that I can offer no argument or reason for the belief. It is a matter of purely irrational faith. I'm like that conditioned dog. Whenever bells ring, I start to salivate, thinking that food will come, though I have nothing but a few correlations in the past to go on...

Do you think then, that science gets it right by just being more lucky then another method?

It seems more irrational to hold to an argument that is wrong every day then holding onto an argument that may one day fail.

Del Arroyo

03-07-2007, 08:45

Leggo my.... lego.

Reenk Roink

03-07-2007, 21:13

Do you think then, that science gets it right by just being more lucky then another method?

It seems more irrational to hold to an argument that is wrong every day then holding onto an argument that may one day fail.

A couple of more things

If someone was arguing this point:

In the future, nature and the universe would change.

...then he would have to supply his reasoning for such a claim. Of course, he would be hard pressed to do so.

However, the argument I referenced of Hume as stated by Salmon is most certainly not arguing that point.

What it is arguing is: do we have any reason to believe that nature and the universe will continue to remain the same? After showing that all rational attempts to justify this belief fail (deductive justification is impossible of ampliative things and inductive justification is not allowed, because it begs the question [the thing being called into question is induction itself]), the argument comes to the conclusion that (so far) we have no good reason to believe that the universe and nature will remain the same tomorrow.

So technically these two positions are equally irrational:

1) I believe that the universe and nature will remain the same tomorrow.
2) I believe that the universe and nature will change tomorrow.

As we have no good reason to believe either way.

It may seem (you use the word "irrational", but that is not a good word) absurd that they are equally irrational beliefs, but that is again a psychological reaction. Again, one must rationally demonstrate why one is more rational (or irrational) then the other. The justification you have given is that the universe has stayed the same in the past. Well, like said a great many deal of times before, that won't cut it, as it is a circular argument that begs the question.

It does absolutely nothing to justify or even make probable the belief that the universe will remain the same in the future.