Science denial and post-truth (on our new Dark Age)
https://www.3-16am.co.uk/articles/scienc...mes-series
INTRO: Lee McIntyre is interested in the philosophy of the social sciences, as well as attempts to undermine science and the appropriate response to these attempts to undermine scientists. here he discusses science denial, its dangers, what to do about it, why shouldn't it be tolerated, the demarcation question, whether social sciences are really sciences, why we should focus on the failures of science, post-truth, why philosophy of science is useful, do scientific laws exist, falling short of certainty, anti-realism, induction and Bayes, whether he's a mad dog naturalist, and finally why we're in the dark ages of human behaviour... (MORE - the interview)
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(their) SAMPLE EXCERPTS: 'I offer the idea that what is really special about science is not its logic or method, but its attitude toward evidence. The scientific attitude is the idea that (1) scientists care about evidence and (2) they are willing to change their mind on the basis of new evidence. And that's it.'
'Seventy years of awesome success by those who wished to deny the truth about evolution, climate change, etc., did not go unnoticed by political operatives. One day they said "hey, if you can lie about scientific facts, you can lie about anything." Like maybe the outcome of an election? And yes, I think that one of the other roots is post-modernism, which is largely left-wing. Now they didn't intend it. They were playing around with the idea that there was no such thing as objective truth, and that perhaps this meant that anyone making an assertion of truth was merely making a power grab. That all sounds fine when you're in the university doing literary criticism, but at a certain point these ideas began to create the "science wars," where humanists began to attack the idea of scientific truth.'
'What I believe in is the doctrine of underdetermination. I believe that reality is consistent with many different descriptions of it, some of which offer good theories and some of which do not. But even among the ones that fit, there are many that might work. So how can we non-arbitrarily choose one and call that reality? That seems to me what the realists want to do. They are privileging the theories we now have over the ones we might have had, or might have in the future.'
'In the past, I've often referred to myself as a methodological naturalist, because I believe that the methods of natural and social science should be identical. But I think you're asking about a more stringent version of naturalism: the idea that all phenomena at the secondary level can be explained by phenomena at the primary level. Some people take that all the way through physicalism, which is an epistemological commitment that comes out of a very sparse ontology. And there are other proud reductionists out there. But I'm not one of them.'
'I am against any kind of ideological interference in scientific reasoning. To me, "dark age" thinking is emblematic of the type of mind that wants an answer -- that wants certainty at all costs -- and damn when the evidence tells you you're wrong. To me, that's the mark of an incurious mind.'
https://www.3-16am.co.uk/articles/scienc...mes-series
INTRO: Lee McIntyre is interested in the philosophy of the social sciences, as well as attempts to undermine science and the appropriate response to these attempts to undermine scientists. here he discusses science denial, its dangers, what to do about it, why shouldn't it be tolerated, the demarcation question, whether social sciences are really sciences, why we should focus on the failures of science, post-truth, why philosophy of science is useful, do scientific laws exist, falling short of certainty, anti-realism, induction and Bayes, whether he's a mad dog naturalist, and finally why we're in the dark ages of human behaviour... (MORE - the interview)
- - - - - -
(their) SAMPLE EXCERPTS: 'I offer the idea that what is really special about science is not its logic or method, but its attitude toward evidence. The scientific attitude is the idea that (1) scientists care about evidence and (2) they are willing to change their mind on the basis of new evidence. And that's it.'
'Seventy years of awesome success by those who wished to deny the truth about evolution, climate change, etc., did not go unnoticed by political operatives. One day they said "hey, if you can lie about scientific facts, you can lie about anything." Like maybe the outcome of an election? And yes, I think that one of the other roots is post-modernism, which is largely left-wing. Now they didn't intend it. They were playing around with the idea that there was no such thing as objective truth, and that perhaps this meant that anyone making an assertion of truth was merely making a power grab. That all sounds fine when you're in the university doing literary criticism, but at a certain point these ideas began to create the "science wars," where humanists began to attack the idea of scientific truth.'
'What I believe in is the doctrine of underdetermination. I believe that reality is consistent with many different descriptions of it, some of which offer good theories and some of which do not. But even among the ones that fit, there are many that might work. So how can we non-arbitrarily choose one and call that reality? That seems to me what the realists want to do. They are privileging the theories we now have over the ones we might have had, or might have in the future.'
'In the past, I've often referred to myself as a methodological naturalist, because I believe that the methods of natural and social science should be identical. But I think you're asking about a more stringent version of naturalism: the idea that all phenomena at the secondary level can be explained by phenomena at the primary level. Some people take that all the way through physicalism, which is an epistemological commitment that comes out of a very sparse ontology. And there are other proud reductionists out there. But I'm not one of them.'
'I am against any kind of ideological interference in scientific reasoning. To me, "dark age" thinking is emblematic of the type of mind that wants an answer -- that wants certainty at all costs -- and damn when the evidence tells you you're wrong. To me, that's the mark of an incurious mind.'