I was started thinking along these lines by an article in Spectator magazine last fall, essentially discussing how "moral relativism" has become more a conservative bugaboo than a real thing. Long story short, there are people who claim to be relativists, but no one who can consistently hold to it. You know the drill: Dogma is bad, you can't categorically say that something is wrong, unless it's racism, sexism, homophobia, blah blah blah. It just goes to show how liberalism is a completely contradictory "philosophy," if you can even call it that. In any case, pure relativism is losing ground with the public and even pop culture, as a look at the popularity of principled heroes at the movies will tell you.
No, the real problem, according to Spectator, is a particular kind of morality we modernites are susceptible to: utilitarianism, for lack of a better word. What this simply means is that it is possible, still, to make objective moral statements. BUT, they can only be made if based on statistical or technical data. Want to say something is "good" or "bad" for society? Find study X or survey Y to back you up. Once you have the numbers on your side, then you're getting somewhere; otherwise, you're just fishing in the dark.
There are several reasons why this is bad for conservatives.
First, it makes argument in general a very dicey thing. As the whole healthy/unhealthy food studies prove, there is rarely such a thing as conclusive scientific proof on a social issue, of any kind. Take gay adoption, for example (something closely tied to the larger gay marriage debate); no sooner can I find a study showing that children raised by gay parents tend to do worse than those raised by straight parents than my debate opponent can put out one saying the former turn out just hunky-dory. In cases like this, desirable as such statistical information can be to buttress your argument, relying strictly on a scientific basis for moral points doesn't really do much to advance the debate. The veracity of the science itself just comes under fire.
Furthermore, this kind of approach constrains our battlefields. In arguing on whatever subject, if we restrict ourselves to statistics alone in supporting our position, we make ourselves dependent on what has and hasn't been done on it, not to mention what can and can't be done on it. Illegal immigration and drugs, for example, are subjects inherently somewhat secluded from outside analysis, so we can't argue with fully accurate data at our backs.
But there's a broader way in which this is problematic. Conservatives (and by extension the GOP) have often been branded "the stupid party," people who cling to tradition and prejudice to make decisions. There is truth to this; yet I don't consider that an insult necessarily. As a political philosophy following in the footsteps of Burke and others, conservatism is not, in the main, concerned with purported scientific "laws" of society--even valuable market-based ones such as Smith's and Hayek's--but with proposals about how we should act, individually and collectively; proposals which cannot be proven by social science. The statement that change should not happen for its own sake, for example, is one most conservatives would agree with, but you can't whip out an academic study confirming or denying this. Nor can you produce one showing that the collected wisdom of our ancestors should be considered when making a political or economic decision.
At bottom, conservatism (like other philosophies) asks questions about life, liberty, community, etc. And while the natural and social sciences can inform us about portions of those concepts, they can't tell us why those concepts are good and desirable in themselves. Nor can they tell us everything about how to best pursue and preserve those things. We have to be okay with the fact that reason alone can't answer all this. Or at least, the overvalued pure empiricism we rely on can't.
I don't have a concrete suggestion on how conservatives should proceed with this in mind. Ours is a society extremely wedded to what can be empirically proven, and nothing else. But as we go forward, we need to keep in mind that this is not the only branch of human knowledge, and maybe not even the most important one. We ought to look for a way to demonstrate that what we can't quantify has just as much to say about life and society as what we can.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
41 comments:
some interesting ideas here, Rav. I'm not sure the utilitarianism always cuts against us, or at least can't be equally used by us. For example, liberals have been entranced in the whole theory of climate change which, cannot be proven. As such, they make stuff up about the majority of all scientists to to think it likely, blah, blah, blah.
There is also a lot to be said about common sense, and that can be applied to a heck of a lot of areas. Most of us learn a lot of our view of life from our parents. Things such as don't start a family unless you can afford to care for them, etc. A lot of thaose ideas stick, particularly if one's individual experience seemed to bear it out.
My generation (the boomers) experienced an unprecedented period where America was far and away the greatest nation in terms of the standard of living of the populace, inventiveness, and so on. My parents, "the greatest generation" suffered through the experience of the great depression, and WWII. My generation came to believe the world was our oyster, and we were owed a living. We went from a philosophy where people saved to buy big purchases. We got off track with credit cards where people believed you should deny yourself nothing. It just may be that we are due for a big repeat (history has a way of doing that.) If so, I think common sense thinking will return to vogue. A hard lesson, to be sure.
Jed, it's kind of off-the-wall, I admit. And I want to be very clear--I'm not suggesting logic, reason, and science are bad, or that we should believe something contrary to what those three are telling us. I rely on them very heavily in forming my opinions, and hopefully everyone here does as well.
What I am saying is that they can't tell us everything about our life, and that science isn't as reliable as it appears on the surface--people interpret it about as variously as they do matters of faith. Therefore, it's important to hold on to the "common sense" you mention, and not jettison it just because the latest news report is telling you something different.
Hopefully we will return to a more sensible worldview. I'm not holding my breath.
I have never seen any evidence that liberals actually believe in moral relativism. They just have a different version of morality, and they use the moral relativism claim as a way to break down the traditional view of morality to buy themselves the opening to be heard. Once they are in, they seek to impose their own version of morality as the new morality. At that point, they continue to use the moral relativism claim merely as rhetoric, in the sense of: "you can make any choice you want, but there's only one valid choice."
Let me point out, however, that conservatives actually are applying a relativism argument to science these days. They claim that because there is some bad science out there, we can never know what's true, ergo, you are free to ignore anything science tells you and to continue believing whatever makes you happy.
P.S. I know you're not suggesting science is bad, and I get your point that "there is more to life than science," but a lot of conservatives today have entered the land of conspiracy when it comes to science.
Andrew, I think it depends on which band of liberals you're talking to. The young hipster crowd is much more like what I described above--they don't really believe in pure relativism, either, they just think they do because it seems open-minded and undogmatic. Then there are the hard-core ideologues you're talking about, who are just being Machiavellian about the whole thing; not to mention a lot of folks in-between.
T-Rav, That's true, liberalism comes in different intensity/strands. The young ones are little more than "smuggites" who just get off on feeling like they're morally superior. They're basically brain-dead and are just repeating what they've been told... like parrots, only dumber.
The hard-core ones are the ones who have learned to use fake rhetoric to cover their true agenda.
As for the whole science thing, hence my reply to Jed above. And to maybe be a bit more specific, I should distinguish between natural and social sciences. The natural sciences--chemistry, astronomy, etc.--I think are just fascinating. Some of it goes over my head, but it's amazing stuff, and I absolutely do not want that to be ignored or rejected.
It's the social sciences--sociology, psychology, etc.--I have more trouble with as disciplines. Those aren't "bad" either, of course, but their claims are generally harder to make and more open to personal interpretation or bias. But, because they are associated with the sciences, they get treated as equally authoritative, and they tend to have a more direct and sometimes destructive impact on day-to-day life, especially as their prescriptions for a specific problem seem to get reversed every other week. It's this sort of thing that I think has done as much to encourage such apathy and relativism toward science that you suggest as any popular backlash has.
This is more what I'm talking about--the notion that an academic study holds the answer to solving a social problem, like crime, or family stability, or what have you. It can help, of course, by providing information. But if you look to such an approach as the method of dealing with those problems, you start running into technocracy and the like. That's the gist of what I'm trying to say here.
Wow, that did not come out coherent AT ALL. I think I should knock off until morning and come back at this with a clearer mind. Maybe then I'll make some sense.
Anyway, smug hipsters....yeah.
Actually, that made total sense and I agree with it. :)
There is a huge difference between hard science and social science. And social science is much, much fuzzier and should only be accepted with a lot more care.
The problem I'm seeing is that too many conservatives have taken the position that because there are bad studies sometimes, all studies are suspect and thus can be ignored. That's simply wrong.
But a lot of conservatives have latched onto this as a way to dismiss anything they don't like -- and they don't even stick with social sciences, they extend it far into hard studies too.
In effect, they've politicized science as a whole by finding an argument that lets them declare their own beliefs to be superior to science. Not only is that wrong, but it's horrible for our side.
I harken back to my earlier comments about increasing corruption in science.
When you are surrounded by a culture which posits no objective reality and backs it up with a political litmus test for scientific funding,then you get more of what you are subsidizing, namely corrupt science. Also, the notion of no objective reality encompasses moral relativism.
It isn't utilitarianism, it's Lysenkoism masquerading as utilitarianism.
I should also point out that a culture which does posit no objective reality and lets that notion invade it's philosophy and science, is on the road to rapid entropy death. Real science stops due to untrustworthy results and therefore technology stagnates.
K, I'm not worried about that because there are clearly multiple version of science going on in the country. Most of it is very straight forward. Someone asks for a better phone, scientists are hired to produce it. They do. There's no corruption there.
The corruption tends to come in the social sciences or a handful of politicized sciences -- like global warming. And they aren't really relevant to the advance of technology.
One of the good things about this country is that no matter how stupid our ideologues are (left and right) business is about results, so they keep right on marching along.
Andrew: Someone asks for a better phone, scientists are hired to produce it. They do. There's no corruption there.
Why do you suppose, then that Soviet phones/cars/consumer electronics were all crap? They spent lavishly on research and development. They had brilliant people. Certainly the same algorithm held for them?
Yes, the corruption tends to start in the social "sciences". But it spreads rather quickly through the educational system which is directed almost entirely by same.
T-Rav said:
You know the drill: Dogma is bad, you can't categorically say that something is wrong, unless it's racism, sexism, homophobia, blah blah blah. It just goes to show how liberalism is a completely contradictory "philosophy,"
-----
Big movements tend to be incoherent and contradictory. Conservatism boasts a lot of deeply religious people and a lot of Ayn Rand disciples and confusingly, people who claim to be both.
The fact that conservatism and liberalism are engendered in two parties muddies the waters even more. Both parties make a lot of decisions based not on their philosophies, but the interests of the larger party and their individual members. The stance of parties towards the ever expanding power of the Presidency changes based on whether or not they hold the Presidency.
As Andrew often points out, the Democratic party was a loud critic of the War on Terror when a Republican was charged with fighting it, but now that a Democrat is fighting it, the unacceptable has become acceptable.
T-Rav said:
In any case, pure relativism is losing ground with the public and even pop culture, as a look at the popularity of principled heroes at the movies will tell you.
------
I don't think it makes sense to assume that people are endoring a philosophy when they see a movie. I'm sure a lot of the people that saw the big budget spectacle The Dark Knight also saw the big budget spectacle Avatar. Likewise, I'm sure people that took their kids to see The Incredibles also took their kids to see The Lorax.
There are people in the world that take pop culture very, very seriously and judge, support and oppose movies based on how compatible they are with their idealogy, but most moviegoers just seem to ask themselves 'Is it entertaining?'.
Andrew, okay, glad it made more sense to you than to me. :-)
But yeah, I don't see a reason to reject the field of natural sciences at all. Like I said, I find them fascinating, and more importantly, why should we attack them? If astronomers or biologists are trying to apply their information to a topic completely outside their field, that's one thing; if they're increasing our understanding of the phenomena they study, though, that's a clear good.
The two things I think cause prolems with conservatives are evolution and global warming. The latter isn't a reason to be anti-science, because in that case it's a matter of the studies being done badly, rather than science per se being wrong. As for evolution, it's a bit more problematic because of the claims it's making, but it doesn't have to exclude faith. (Anyway, my problems with it have more to do with some logical shortcomings and contradictions in Darwinian theory as I understand it.)
In short, I agree that there's no good reason for conservatives to reject science. But again, I think the conflation of natural and social sciences is causing a lot of the problem.
K, I don't think many people suppose the total lack of an objective reality. The scientific community, for example, has to at least agree that two plus two is always four if it wants to get anything done. Probably everyone accepts the existence of scientific laws.
What I'm talking about here is more the belief that objective reality begins and ends with math and science, and that beyond that (in religion, metaphysics, etc.), there's nothing objective. I called it utilitarianism, because that's what the Spectator article called it, but in fact it's not so much that as positivism, which is a very leftist idea.
Andrew and K, a couple points to make.
As far as the Soviet Union goes, it's true that science was genuinely hampered by Lysenkoism and other policies which legally subordinated the discipline to the ideological needs of the state. And yes, this did become pernicious and damaging across philosophy and the sciences. And it's not out of the realm of the possibility that a softer version of this could become prevalent here. Look at how hard it is for any scientist to publicly disagree with global warming. Or there was that study (which I think Andrew did an article on) talking about the hormonal differences between white women and black women, which got slammed for being "racist."
But there was a lot more going on in the U.S.S.R. In particular, their technology was crap not because the science was so bad--they did figure out how to shoot things up into space, after all--but because of the failures of a command economy, which naturally caused inefficiency and low-quality products.
As for us, I have hopes that for the reasons Andrew points out, our science and technology will remain fairly advanced and independent.
Anthony, I'm not saying that there aren't some differences and contradictions within conservatism as well. But liberalism as currently constituted is much worse in this regard, as its stated aims (relativism and toleration for all, unless your ideas are bad) are an inherent contradiction.
Obviously, for an ideology to tie itself to a political party is going to cause problems, as that party's organization will want to compromise for expediency. I wish it wasn't like that, but that's politics for you.
Anthony, as far as the movie comparison goes, keep in mind that this isn't originally my argument, it's the argument by the magazine article I'm beginning with.
But no, you're right--most people go to a movie thinking more about whether they'll be entertained than about what kind of moral/political message they'll be receiving. That's all true; the point, however, is that they've shown they find more entertainment and enjoyment in movies which stand for a fixed set of values and heroes who uphold those than in ones which are basically nihilistic.
And liberal movies like Avatar and The Lorax don't really disprove this: Those movies stand for certain values as well, even if the values are liberal, and they feature "heroes" as they conceive them. All relativists may be liberals, but that doesn't mean all liberals are relativists.
Argue for the free exchange of ideas. Ideas should be exchanged openly, even ones we find repulsive. I go with the "bad ideas are like vampires when exposed to light".
Its like the old story about a libary book getting challenged and pretty soon the book was getting a wait-list.
What about inheritability of IQ. I don't necessarily agree* with it but it should be debated openly.
Global Warming, Evolution/Intelligent Design, debate each openly.
If you are running and express doubts about climate change and some reporter brings up the "scientific consensus" point out the fact that papers criticizing the idea have often been suppressed and then point to the scandal where you had major climate change "scientists" conspiring to suppress papers that conflicted their aims.
(You could also bring up the fact that global warming advocates never talk about building more levees, dykes, pumps, etc. to deal with the predicted flooding.)
*And even if it is true I do not believe we should craft legal policy around it since it would likely involve too many variables for a government bureaucracy to account for.
T-Rav, Global warming is definitely a problem. That's politicized guess work masquerading as science. Evolution, I understand the complaint religious people have, though I don't share it.
The problem, as I see it, is more one of the suddenly BROAD application of anti-science thinking on the right... almost across the board.
On the one hand, you have religious conservatives who pretty much fight anything in the social science arena, who push Creationism as it if were science, and who come up with phony biology like Akin and friends.
Then you have the lunatic fringe who see vaccines as a government conspiracy to injure people. In some places, these same losers are still fighting fluoride.
Then you have the real problem: the libertarians/industry. It is impossible to point out that something may be harmful without conservatives jumping down your throat these days. The moment you do, industry will jump up and say "that's not proven!" Conservatives will run with this and argue how science is always wrong and how this is just about destroying jobs, as the arm-chair-hero libertarians pound their chests and boldly announce that they are rugged individualists who wouldn't want to be protected from dangers and that anyone who does doesn't understand the Constitution! Even after the danger is conclusively proven, conservatives argue in the alternative (something they roundly criticize lawyers for doing) and they say simultaneously: "it's not really harmful" and "it's your own fault, you should have known the risks."
All of this presents a party at war with all of science, and it makes it hard to attract voters who don't want to dirty air, exploding products, pills that destroy your lungs, plague carriers roaming the street, or religious indoctrination.
That's really the problem as I see it.
How do we combat Global Warming?
I know there are some sketpics putting forth excellent arguments against it.
I agree about your caveat about "Scientific research" - especially social sciences!
Also, the modern concept of "tolerance" that has been taught so forcefully - a lot of people seem to be afraid of making a judgment call.
By the way, on your point about utilitarianism, I suspect that utilitarianism actually underpins most philosophy whether people believe it or not. As I understand it, utilitarianism basically says that the object of philosophy (i.e. the guiding principle of lawmaking in this case) is the maximize "good." I think most philosophies instinctively do this when they set up their initial beliefs in what is right and wrong.
Kit, I'm all for the free exchange of ideas.
As far as the global-warming thing is concerned, I think the variables issue you point out is an effective line of attack. Ask whether scientists really believe that given all the balances and redundancies in the Earth's biosphere--not to mention all the things we still don't understand about it--they can say for certain what changing one variable (CO2) will do to everything else? That's a tall order, and I think if pressed, most scientists would throw up their hands and say no. If they're being honest, that is.
Andrew, true enough. But the problem we're facing is only partly that. The other side of it is a populace which tends to view science as the sole/ultimate authority on these matters. Has the science said this product harms the environment? Yes? Uh-oh, it's terrible. We have to destroy it. That's as far as the reasoning goes.
And you don't even have to bring religion into this--just bring up the subject of trade-offs. Yes, if used excessively, product X might have a negative impact on the environment; but at the same time, it's improving millions of people's lives. So which is more important?
That's where we get into value judgments, an area where science can't tell us everything we need to know.
rla, "Social sciences" are something that really gets under my skin, not gonna lie. :-/
Not being trained in the sciences, I have no idea how the pressure for "tolerance" is inhibiting research there, if at all. But it definitely crops up in the history field, especially when race or gender issues arise, and you do think twice about fully speaking your mind.
T-Rav, Again, let me point out that conservatives have a very skewed view of the public. Conservatives are looking at liberal activists and assuming they represent the rest of the public. They don't. If they did, you would see stuff banned all the time. But you don't.
By and large, the public just wants warnings and doesn't want to pay for other people's choices. The only two exceptions that come to mind are cigarettes, where the public hasn't banned them but has restricted where they can be smoked -- and that's after decades of effort. And the other example is Bloomberg and his pandering stupidity on the size of drinks, which hasn't really been tested to see if the public supports it or not.
The conservative view that the public is this brain-dead creature that does what liberals (or liberal scientists) tell them is just false.
I think you are basically talking about ethics, which often doesn't liked to be discussed because it forces you to examine what you believe is right or wrong. Moral relativism is a way to ignore basic ethical questions, which can be hard.
Is believing global warming and wanting to do something about it unethical? No. But is forcing people to pay more and use less due to a hypothesis ethical? No.
You see liberals try this often. For example, they will justify welfare and unemployment because it is the right thing for people to take care of others but ignore the ethics behind forcing me at gunpoint to give them the money to pay for these things.
True relativism looks at two separate choices and decides which one is more right (or less wrong). For example, killing people is wrong. Killing someone threatening to kill you or your family is less wrong than letting them kill you or your family.
One of the biggest problems some conservatives have is they love to try to legislate morality. It works for the big things like murder and stealing but falls apart with those less important issues like gay marriage.
Koshcat, I think that's right -- science and ethics are two different things. Science is about what we can do, ethics is about whether or not we should do it. I think too many people are blurring the line for political reasons and are trying to either use science to create ethics or use ethics to deny science.
Andrew, I'm not saying that the public is liberal. Having this completely science-oriented worldview isn't necessarily liberal--it's just not conservative.
At the same time, no, I'm not looking for any nuggets of wisdom from the man on the street any time soon.
T-Rav....Interesting subject! I think we, as the general public, lib and conserv alike, tend to muddle the term "science" anyway. We call the the "social sciences" when in fact, the only "science" that is used is mathemagic!
For example, a social scientist does a study with the usual suspects: Test group, control group, accepted number of test subjects, etc. This is done to prove/disprove a hypothesis that the scientist, or in many cases, the FUNDER of the study wants to know. A conclusion is reached, regression studies are done, and voila! we have a statistically proven answer (scientifically!) that either proves or disproves our original hypothesis.
That my friends IS NOT science! It is sociology masquerading as science. So, we get global studies on climate change and some scientists abuses the data to draw a "scientific" conclusion. AHA! See, science proves that there is global warming! And if you disagree (conservative/repub haters) then you are "anti-science" and deniers in the proven scientific facts.
Of course, EVERYONE knows that scientists are next to God and to even question one is tantamount to blasphemy! Start lumping "social" scientists in that group, as the left has, and now, mirabel dictu, you have a question-proof theory proven by science.
I think the right, for the most part, looks at science as the hard sciences, not the soft sciences. Just because someone uses statistics does not mean their results and hypotheses are inviolate like the left would like us to believe.
That's my Man on the street nugget T!
Is it possible to wade in this late and still offer something intelligible?
The problem with the utilitarian/scientific approach is that in order for it to be practicable, it must be omissive on the data-collection side. It's very Heisenbergian.
At base, I don't see much distinction between "relativism" and "utilitarianism" because utility is relative--like a gold brick in a starving wasteland. Nor do I find anything pernicious about the concept(s). What is harmful is clash between disparate notions of what is "good."
I think probably most people desire what is "most good" but nobody has the foggiest notion of what that might be. It's the singularity of the social sciences, as it were.
"The problem with the utilitarian/scientific approach is that in order for it to be practicable, it must be omissive on the data-collection side. It's very Heisenbergian."
tryanmax, I'm not sure what you mean by that. Could you run that by me again?
The disagreement over what is "most good" does indeed cause a lot of the problems, especially when two sides' views of what that is are mutually exclusive. As I said in my reply to Andrew above, probably a better word for what the magazine calls "utilitarianism" would be "positivism"--the belief that only math and science can tell you about objective reality.
Kosh, liberals and conservatives do indeed have a similar problem. And one thing I find amusing about liberals is they don't realize they believe just as strongly in legislating morality--saying I shouldn't make an obscene amount of money compared to others is a moral judgment, after all. Liberals don't want government in the bedroom; they do want it everywhere else in the house.
Thanks Patriot!
Actually, it's not the method you describe that's the real problem: that's the scientific method, used reliably by everyone since Socrates. The problem is that matters of human society don't lend themselves to laboratory experimentation the way chemicals or equations do, so these social science studies often reach contradictory or nonsensical conclusions.
As for conservatives, I think they have more respect, in general, for the "hard" sciences than the "soft" ones; but the way so many Ph.D.'s have jumped on the global-warming bandwagon has caused a lot of them to be skeptical of or reject the "hard" stuff as well. And that really is unfortunate.
As to the question of whether "gayh" adoption is good opr bad based on any study one might cite pro or con I'd have to state that the wrong question is being asked. It is not about whether the parent is gay or not gay. It is about what they teach the child.
This is kind of a tricky issue. On the one hand homosexuality was classified as a mental illness, epithets are used that are hurtful and it is wrong although in my view not the e3nd of the world. IF you catch a 14 year saying the faggot you should probably scold him or her and maybe give them detention. You should not expel them from school. So we should teach people to not denigrate homosexuals.
On the flip side however this does not mean that homosexuality has no issues. There are many issues some are just the fact that they are a small minority who are different and that always brings with it challenges no matter how fair everyone tries to be. But there is one central concept that people miss out on.
Biologically it is a defect. It does not make them bad, mentally ill or less than anyone else but they have a proclivity not to mate. I say proclivity because from what I have read in scinetific magazines I pick up in the airport about gay animals there is a gene reauired to express homosexuality. If an individual does not have this gene they are always heterosexual. With it however any one individual may exporess their sexuality ad homosecxual or heterosexual. This means that while homosexuality may be the norm it does not preclude the biological function that allows for propigation. (I am assuming).
I think that when raising a child care should be taken to raise the child with an expectation they will be heterosexual and only ackowledge homosexuality if the child expresses it on their own. Especially since if the gene is there an envirponmental element may by involved.
In the end while it is OK to be gay a chikd that is heterosexual will more likely mate and bring children forth and that is important. When I read the writings of gay activists they are so strident to try to equalize homosexuality with hetero sexuality in every way that they are willing to ignore the biology of it. I think we can still understand that being gay is difficult and not the most desired thing and still be accepting of people who are homosexuals.
In that regard monogamy, respect and other conservative values of sexuality should still be the accepted norm.
Indi, we can talk about gay adoption (about which I am NOT an expert) if you want, but that wasn't really my point. I was just using it as an example of how purportedly scientific studies keep contradicting and undermining each other on social topics like this, because every couple months you get a new one saying something different. You could use the studies about whether or not coffee is good for you as another good example.
T-Rav, been busy, so I'm late getting back to you. You can substitute "positivism" for "utilitarian/scientific" in my earlier comment and it still means the same. I actually don't have any issue with the positivist approach, so long as one is patient enough to collect and interpret all the data before taking any action. However, I mean "all" in the grandest sense, and until that occurs, practical positivism is more or less a contradiction in terms.
That doesn't mean I necessarily disagree with you that there is more in life than can be learned through science. There are absolutely things which are both real and which science can tell us nothing about. The only difference in my thinking is that I believe that science can't inform us of those sort of things yet.
Every field has its point of singularity whether they call it that or not. In simplest lay terms, the point of singularity merely means the point at which the method of examination breaks down. I believe it is perfectly possible, if not yet conceivable, to have a unified theory of everything. I guess that belief drives much of modern science. But even that unified theory will likely find a point of singularity. And when it does, is there anything wrong with calling it "God"?
T rav - no worries. I got the point of your article. I tend to get lost in my own thought processes. The issue I was bringing up though is key. In many cases there are studies made to point to one thing or another and the thing is declared good or bad based on the empirical study.
Take another issue that has come up lately. Violence in video games. There is a lot hoopla by the administration that video game violence causes Sandy Hook like event. I am sure they cart oout all kinds of studies stating x% are more violent this and y% more of certain kinds of crimes were committed now than before video games.
The problem is an empirical study is not really science. For Dictionary.com
2. depending upon experience or observation alone, without using scientific method or theory, especially as in medicine.
This is the ultimate problem with the study. If you do mot understand the why the statistics are meaningless. Video games may lead to psychotic episodes because of the content but they could just as well lead to the things because the parent spends less time with the child, the child spends less time socializing and they become anti-social.
If the latter is the cause then Super Mario Brothers or Mickey's Fun House are as bad for kids as Mohaa and Grand Theft auto.
I found this interesting and pertinent to this article: LINK
Post a Comment