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What I find concerning about these discussions on what qualifies as science and what doesn't is the excessive arrogance displayed by some writers, as if they stand on the same esteemed ground as the countless individuals throughout history who have propelled scientific progress and shaped the technological world we live in today. Science is a remarkable collective effort of humanity, and it is crucial that we continue to allocate resources to this endeavor.

If anything, studying the history of science would open one's eyes to the fact that the methodologies and approaches that have resulted in a vast reservoir of knowledge have not followed a linear or consistent path throughout time.

There's a quote from his first blog post titled "A Clean-Sheet Introduction to the Scientific Method" that is unironically portraying science as a human endeavour somehow relieved of everything that made "religion" bad.

> Let me start with the easy part: By "religious beliefs" I do not mean to imply that science is a religion in the usual sense. It isn't. Religions generally involve things like the worship of deities, respect for the authority of revealed wisdom, and the carrying out of prayer and rituals. Science has none of that, not because science rejects these things a priori, but because when you pursue science you are invariably (but not inevitably!) led to the conclusion that there are no deities active in our universe, and therefore no good reason to accept the authority of revealed wisdom, and hence not much point spending valuable time on prayer and ritual

Science as an insistution has all those hallmarks: worship, authority and rituals. I'm not trying to make a case for religion here, but wanted to point out the shallowness of the whole write-up. I wish these science preaching guys would actually engage in more science worthy attitudes and be a bit more humble in their holistic assessment of what does and what doesn't constitute science.

Anything goes! would Paul Feyerabend say.

> excessive arrogance

Why excessive? The objective fact of the matter, as I point out in the first article in the series, is that the scientific method produces vastly more accurate predictions than anything else humans have ever tried. This is the whole reason science is even a thing. I think that justifies a little bit of cockiness until someone actually comes up with something better.

The arrogance I mentioned is directed towards the people who think of themselves as appropriate to speak for the century-long success story of science itself while not really addressing (and understanding) how science emerged. Science as a human enterprise has flourished best without anyone putting boxes on what does and what doesn't consitute science.

Ah.

FYI, I have a whole series of unpublished chapters about the (very messy) history of science. I decided to take this different approach because I thought it would be a more effective way of reaching my target audience.

> Science as a human enterprise has flourished best without anyone putting boxes on what does and what doesn't consitute science.

That's not true. There is one box you cannot get out of without destroying the process: any hypothesis that is inconsistent with experiment must be rejected (and as a corollary to that, unfalsifiable hypotheses must be rejected). But yeah, beyond that pretty much anything goes.

I'm with you that, if you don't close the loop via experiment, you don't have science. But you have to be careful that you not go too far, and say that science is the only way we can know truth. Logical positivism is dead for a reason. (Actually, for several reasons.)

> science is the only way we can know truth

You need to read the third installment in my series:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/three-myths-about-scient...

and in particular Myth #3.

I don't disagree with Myth #3, but I had a hard time getting to it after reading Myth #2:

The scientific method assumes naturalism/materialism/atheism... This is false. The scientific method contains no assumptions whatsoever. The scientific method is simply that: a method.

I don't think that's a good way to put it. There is an assumption that this method is a valid, useful, good thing to do. A souffle recipe presupposes that you want a souffle, or you wouldn't be reading it.

The scientific method hints ambiguously at epistemological commitments, and that ambiguity is not a point in its favor. Different people make those assumptions tacitly and don't realize that they disagree with each other, and don't even apply them consistently to themselves.

I also happen to agree that the scientific method has some kind of epistemic benefit, especially as compared to the potential alternatives. But those benefits prove maddeningly difficult to nail down. The epistemic commitments always turn out to be too loose (admitting pseudosciences) or too strict (rejecting sciences that resist the kinds of experiments you'd like to do).

> I don't disagree with Myth #3,

You could. It says "First, science never proves anything; instead it produces explanations of observations." but science doesn't have to explain an observation. There are tons of times when science tells us what we'll observe under certain conditions while never giving us an explanation for how/why it works out that way. An explanation is the ideal, but all science needs is to give us something we can reasonably predict to be useful.

> There is an assumption that this method is a valid, useful, good thing to do.

No, that is not an assumption. That is an observation. The scientific method produces theories with predictive power, and it does this better than any other known method. That is an empirical fact, not an assumption. This is the reason science is a thing.

Science has not proven that the observation will continue to hold. It happens to have worked so far, but you cannot prove that it will continue to.

You're applying the scientific method to itself, making a large-scale inference from limited data. This is precisely the grounds on which the Logical Positivists realized that they couldn't achieve their ends of putting science on a sound scientific footing.

All facts are provisional. If a validating observation does not continue to hold, that is another observational fact. At some point of replication and sigmas, it becomes another Problem, to be fed back into the scientific meat grinder.

For example, maybe vague observations of Mercury were consistent with Newton. But eventually, telescopes improved, duration of accurate records extended, many good instruments were deployed around the world. Then it became a Problem. Also note that Einstein fitted GR to Mercury, so he could not predict it as independent confirmation. It took the Eddington observation of light bending near the sun, during a solar eclipse, to provide the first evidence (even that was weak, and fixed, but the fix was on the right side of history :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddington_experiment

> Science has not proven that the observation will continue to hold. It happens to have worked so far, but you cannot prove that it will continue to.

Yes, that's true. So?

> You're applying the scientific method to itself

Yes, that's true too.

> This is precisely the grounds on which the Logical Positivists realized that they couldn't achieve their ends of putting science on a sound scientific footing.

Maybe, but I'm not making any claims about knowledge. The only claim I'm making is about effectiveness and that's an empirical claim. not a philosophical one. One can go on to hypothesize that science is effective because it is "true" (whatever that means). That seems plausible to me (for some reasonable definition of "true") but it's still just another hypothesis.

I'd fill that last bit under unnecessary and undesirable processing. Things are what they are(!) A hypothesis inconsistent with experiments is a hypothesis inconsistent with experiments. It is a mistake to attempt to make more or less from it. You get nothing extra or beneficial out of the effort of rejection. A failed experiment is a failed experiment. There are lots of ways to fail. Faulty materials, defective equipment, outside influences, incompetent experimenters, poor design, POLITICS etc etc

A repeatedly failed experiment sounds just as bad as it should.

> repeatedly failed experiment

That is an oxymoron. A repeatedly "failed" experiment is a valid scientific result. There is even a classic example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_exper...

>hypothesis that is inconsistent with experiment must be rejected

Not really, this is a conclusion that is drawn only by looking at the big names and highlights throughout the scientific history. In practice the experiments in themselves is flawed, so if the hypothesis is not confirmed through experiments the experiment design need to be fixed. Other times they are confirmed where the experiments also was flawed.

Also there are a lot of hypothesis we cannot reject, but we still build scientific work upon them.

> In practice the experiments in themselves is flawed

Yes, of course. Experimental error is always a possibilities, but that is just another hypothesis that needs to be considered along with all the other possibilities.

> Also there are a lot of hypothesis we cannot reject, but we still build scientific work upon them.

Like what?

Let me revisit my statement once I've read those chapters then.

Regarding your second statement, out of curiosity, I wonder how you would characterize the 1989 series of experiments done by Fleischmann and Pons.

> Let me revisit my statement once I've read those chapters then.

You can find them here:

https://flownet.com/ron/TIKN/

Note that they are quite drafty. That was the result of a previous effort to tackle this project of writing about the scientific method for a general audience that I ultimately abandoned in favor of this current approach. The history part starts in chapter 5.

These were based on a series of lectures I gave a few years ago. I can dig up those links too if you're interested.

> I wonder how you would characterize the 1989 series of experiments done by Fleischmann and Pons.

I'm not sure what you expect me to say. The results have not been reproduced, so whatever happened in 1989 it was almost certainly not cold fusion.

No, we don't yet know what's happening in that area: as the DARPA 2022 report puts it in a press release entitled 'Solid State verification of nuclear particles in electrochemical cells'. "Work should continue - much interesting science to be done. Results do not yet rise to level publishable in peer-reviewed physics journals". Bottom line: some neutrons appear and they cannot explain the mechanism. If neutrons are detected and it's definitely 'cold' then what would you call it?

There are many other reports more or less with the same proviso. 'Not yet publishable'. Many will wonder about the 'yet' but that's usually the case with potentially new areas of science.

https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0153487 Li–Pd–Rh-D2O electrochemistry experiments at elevated voltage

I would call it "anomalous room-temperature neutron production".

This is easily solved by adding the well known quote (Sagan):

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

An older quote, addressing this case more directly would be (Eddington):

"The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — *well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes.* But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation."

Well, Fleischmann and Pons claimed to have extraordinary evidence. They were just wrong.

Also, I cover the Sagan quote in the previous installment:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/the-scientific-method-pa...

You don't get to claim yourself that the evidence you obtained is extraordinary

Go through Lisper's history, he is quite literally never incorrect, even when he has no evidence or outright dodges all questions.

His performance in a philosophy thread a while back was extraordinary, explaining the truth and true value of various philosophy and philosophers, despite not having read it.

This is the power of The Science, nothing is more powerful, and nothing can be more powerful.

Yes, extraordinary is just a function of replication (number, diversity, quality, reputation) and sigmas. It has to satisfy a significant majority of scientists (peers), with diverse relevant qualifications (theoretical, experimental, across relevant disciplines), for a significant time.

They didn't, and that's obviously not what I meant.

No, the 2nd Law is just a statistical property relating macrostates to microstates. It can never be the foundation of physics for the underlying system.

Life does a pretty good job of evading it, locally, for lifetimes. Civilizations overcome it for longer, perhaps indefinitely, as long as there are stars/blackholes in the sky, or uranium/hydrogen nuclear fuel to be scavenged.

Wolfram recently tried to explain the 2nd Law, as a consequence of time-coherent computationally-bounded observers. As always with him, it is fascinating and infuriatingly in equal measure:

https://www.wolfram-media.com/products/the-second-law-resolv...

Those subsystems that evade it (life) also need explanation. Friston, Levin, Lane, England and others are starting to give plausible models and explanations.

J D Bernal already addressed it through his magnum opus - Science in History.

My pet theory is that success of predictions of modern science helped us achieve a local maximum which, while useful, also makes it difficult to evolve towards a higher (globally) maximum.

The axioms are:

1. Some models are useful, but all models are necessarily incorrect, incomplete, and/or unfalsifiable. (This can be restated in an unsettling, for a natural science enthusiast, manner as “there is always the unexplained”.)

2. We cannot know where the incorrectness/incompleteness lies.

However, the arrogance of modern natural science due to its success makes us disinclined and demotivated to look outside the box of its current models and tempts us into, e.g., treating the entities described by current models (wrong, per above) as ground truth, treating consciousness (you’d think, the only thing we have direct access to) as an illusion (red flag, explaining away), etc. Thus, we get entrenched in a local maximum.

It's true that science is not complete, and cannot be. We know, for example, that we cannot solve the halting problem, we cannot predict chaotic systems, etc. But that's the wrong thing to focus on. There are a lot of things we can predict, and the scientific method produces better predictive theories than any other known method.

> disinclined and demotivated to look outside the box of its current models

OK, but that is not the scientific method's fault. If you want to look outside the box, nothing in the scientific method says you can't. An indeed the biggest breakthroughs have come when people have thought outside the box.

The problem is that it's often hard to distinguish between brilliance and crackpottery. But again, that's not a shortcoming of the scientific method, it's just the Way The World Is. Some problems are hard.

The halting problem isn't scientific, though. It's entirely mathematical (mathematics and science are typically treated as distinct domains, see https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf for some discussion). We do not know if there is a scientific way to make a machine which exceeds the ability of a Turing machine, see for example this paragraph from the wikipedia page on the halting problem:

"It is an open question whether there can be actual deterministic physical processes that, in the long run, elude simulation by a Turing machine, and in particular whether any such hypothetical process could usefully be harnessed in the form of a calculating machine (a hypercomputer) that could solve the halting problem for a Turing machine amongst other things. It is also an open question whether any such unknown physical processes are involved in the working of the human brain, and whether humans can solve the halting problem"

One of the most important things to recognize about science is that we rarely, if ever, work with absolutely well-determined systems with analytically solvable equiations. INstead, we work almost untirely with underdetermined systems with only approximate methods, and while somewhat unsatisfying, those methods are almost always a more efficient way to make falsifiable hypotheses and run experiments. I don't think anybody ever truly makes a falsifiable hypothesis- in the sense of Descartes' great deceiver, we can't truly know for certain what the underlying state of the system was.

> The halting problem isn't scientific, though. It's entirely mathematical

No, it isn't. The halting problem arises out of a mathematical model of a physical system. We don't know for certain that it's impossible to build an oracle for the halting problem, just as we don't know for certain that it's impossible to do an end-run around the Second Law. But the evidence in both cases is (IMHO) equally compelling.

Everything written about halting machines presumes a mathematical system, not a physical system. It makes statements about model systems, some of which have physical counterparts. THe whole point of a turing machine is that it's abstract, not made of tape or transistors or anything else.

The halting problem is not really widely discussed in physics journals. They care much more about the physical limits of actual computing. If you have good examples of physics people talking about the halting problem in a non-theoretical and distant way, I'm happy to see it. But from waht I can tell, physicists are not concerned with uncomputable functions.

> The halting problem is not really widely discussed in physics journals.

So? Golf clubs aren't widely discussed in physics journals either but they are physical systems nonetheless. You can't draw valid conclusions about what is not a physical system based on what is absent from physics journals.

> the scientific method produces better predictive theories than any other known method

Better theories in what sense? (If possible, in terms that are genuinely extrinsic to scientific method itself.)

> If you want to look outside the box, nothing in the scientific method says you can't

Nothing in the scientific method says you can’t, indeed. However, some people tend to misinterpret it (possibly due to a suppressed religious impulse finding its way) as revealing objective truth through its models, as opposed to what it does: offer predictions as to what we would observe if we do X. For many of those (very smart) people, imagining radically new models that focus on different aspects (e.g., that conspicuous we above, or something else) and sideline other aspects (e.g., the various entities described by current models) is taboo.

> Better theories in what sense?

In their ability to make accurate predictions.

> However, some people tend to misinterpret it (possibly due to a suppressed religious impulse finding its way) as revealing objective truth through its models

But science does reveal objective truth, in the sense that it reveals truths (or at least very good approximations to truths) that are independent of what anyone's opinions are. What it does not do is reveal metaphysical truth, but that's not the same thing. But even then, it does put constraints on what metaphysical truth could be. For example, unless quantum mechanics is wrong (which is extremely unlikely) then it is not possible for metaphysical truth to be classical.

> In their ability to make accurate predictions.

That is a bit too close to defining them as better within the framework of scientific method.

For example, though I suspect you won’t like this line of question, are we by chance able to make increasingly accurate predictions about something increasingly irrelevant or not beneficial to ourselves?

Edit: I would be the first to say that the answer to that question is probably negative, but that is just to illustrate, maybe this would push you to define “better” better.

> But science does reveal objective truth, in the sense that it reveals truths (or at least very good approximations to truths) that are independent of what anyone's opinions are

Models are metaphors to aid our minds in coming up with more predictions to test. If a model was able to predict N outcomes that does not make it correct, unless you can guarantee that there will not be a future outcome that makes that model incorrect, which you cannot as that notion would presume you have come up with a provably correct and complete model in finite time.

> But even then, it does put constraints on what metaphysical truth could be. For example, unless quantum mechanics is wrong (which is extremely unlikely) then it is not possible for metaphysical truth to be classical.

I cannot object to that, except the part where you claim that quantum mechanics being wrong is extremely unlikely. I will stand by my initial assumptions and claim that it is not just extremely likely but a near certainty that quantum mechanics is wrong—just because it is foolish to assume that any of today’s models is finally correct and true. It may be useful in meantime, though.

> That is a bit too close to defining them as better within the framework of scientific method.

No, that is simply pointing out the reason that science is a thing at all.

> are we by chance able to make increasingly accurate predictions about something increasingly irrelevant or not beneficial to ourselves?

Probably, though putting effort into this would obviously not be the wisest choice.

> except the part where you claim that quantum mechanics being wrong is extremely unlikely

You need to read "The Relativity of Wrong" by Isaac Asimov.

I will read it some time.

I still do not know what makes a theory “better” if it will never be provably correct, is most likely drastically wrong, and comparatively brings us little value. A theory that would instead focus on ourselves, whatever that might look like, seems like potentially a much “better” option, but because the path is poorly trodden the scientific community would defend its own dignity by laughing at those who venture there. Anyway, I’m not awake enough to argue well at this point.

> brings us little value

You don't see value in the ability to make accurate predictions about the future?

Not necessarily. It depends on what predictions those are, I suppose.

> Not necessarily.

OK, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about this. If you don't see the value in being able to predict the future, I'm not going to try to persuade you of it.

It was more about what aspects of the future we are capable of predicting thanks to natural sciences, and what aspects of the future are valuable to predict.

It might just be that predicting the outcome of an interaction of two molecules is itself less valuable than, say (can’t think of anything better, feel free to be more creatively specific here), predicting whether we flourish or suffer. The former is easier, sure, but is that enough to make it valuable? That the latter is more important is an assumption, but I think not an unfounded one.

So first of all, "natural sciences" is redundant. All science is natural. There is no unnatural science.

And second, what makes you think that predicting how molecules interact is detached from predicting whether we flourish or suffer? We are made of molecules. Whether we flourish or suffer is ultimately determined by what our molecules do. There are people alive today who would not be if we had not been able to make reliable predictions about how mRNA molecules were going to interact with the molecules in our bodies to produce antibodies (which are molecules) to fight the covid virus (also made of molecules).

> All science is natural. There is no unnatural science.

It is a well defined category. Sciences that do not fall into the tiny subset of natural sciences include, among others, mathematics, logic, sociology, economics, psychology, and the mother of all sciences—philosophy.

> Whether we flourish or suffer is ultimately determined by what our molecules do

Not really—unless you can prove that consciousness arises from said molecules (which not only is yet-unproven but is also arguably unfalsifiable within the framework of scientific method), it is only your opinion and not a scientific fact.

> It is a well defined category.

No, it isn't. I know that it is commonly considered to be a well-defined category, but it's not. Philosophy is not a science at all. Neither is math, except insofar as it is studied as a natural phenomenon. The so-called "social sciences" are commonly set apart in a different category, but in the context of your comment:

> It was more about what aspects of the future we are capable of predicting thanks to natural sciences

that a distinction without a difference. It is not the distinction between "natural" and "social" that matters in this case, it is the distinction between areas of intellectual inquiry that employ the scientific method vs those that don't.

> unless you can prove...

You need to read this:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/three-myths-about-scient...

See myth #3.

> Philosophy is not a science at all.

If you want to go there then sure, in some ways it is not. It is what natural sciences branched off of. Generally speaking, it is superior to sciences in that they are informed by it. Not sure if it’s splitting hairs in context of our discussion.

> Neither is math

Oxford dictionary starts with “it is a science…”, why do you say it is not?

> The so-called "social sciences" are commonly set apart in a different category

A different category from natural sciences. You’re seeing it now!

> it is the distinction between areas of intellectual inquiry that employ the scientific method vs those that don't.

Let’s talk about scientific method.

Scientific method is a key instrument of natural sciences, but it cannot make a statement about “underlying reality”, say materialism or physicalism vs. idealism. It can just make testable observations and predictions; the exact underlying territory can never be produced using scientific method—there can only be speculative takes on it, produced by our fallible human minds, informed by applying scientific method in particular ways guided by our fallible human minds.

A position that molecules is what causes us to flourish or not, meanwhile, is textbook physicalism. It is a particular philosophical view that is not within the scope of natural sciences to prove or disprove. The article you linked to actually supports this argument. See myth #2.

It does not make natural sciences deficient, but it highlights what they offer and what they by design don’t. Philosophical positions such as monistic idealism or monistic materialism have both equal capability to be true, and unfortunately both are (as of now) beyond what scientific method can prove or falsify.

> It is what natural sciences branched off of.

Yes, that's true. But it wasn't science before the branching, and what is left over after the branching is not science either.

> Oxford dictionary starts with “it is a science…”, why do you say it is not?

Math is a tool used by science, but it is not in and of itself a science (with a few exceptions). The reason is that this discussion is taking place within the context of a specific definition of science that requires experimental data to verify or refute hypotheses. Math generally doesn't fit that definition.

> Scientific method ... cannot make a statement about “underlying reality” ...

Yes, all that is true.

> A position that molecules is what causes us to flourish or not, meanwhile, is textbook physicalism.

No, it's a testable hypothesis with a lot of supporting evidence.

> what is left over after the branching is not science either

Yes. I’d say philosophy is not science in the same sense music is not drumming.

> this discussion is taking place within the context of a specific definition of science that requires experimental data to verify or refute hypotheses

Did we agree to that specific definition? If so, my bad, but I don’t recall that. Also, what are some other definitions available?

In any case, there are natural sciences, and there are other kinds of sciences that are not less important, and potentially more so depending on one’s values.

> No, it's a testable hypothesis with a lot of supporting evidence.

Not as far as I know.

There are plenty of so-called “proofs” that include things like cutting or stimulating parts of the brain seemingly causing changes in mind-state, but they obviously miss the part where the very cutting or the stimulating is caused by mind-state in the first place—i.e., they all presuppose materialism without even realizing it.

What is a way to definitively prove or falsify idealism or materialism that is available to us, without presupposing either idealism or materialism in the first place?

What is one piece of hard evidence that actually works as evidence to prove materialism without presupposing materialism?

> Philosophy is not science in the same sense art is not music

No, that is not at all the same thing. There was not a field of human intellectual endeavor called "art" which begat music. A much better analogy is that philosophy is not science in the same sense that alchemy is not chemistry, or astrology is not astronomy, or banging on a hollow log with a stick is not playing the violin.

> Did we agree to that specific definition?

This discussion is taking place in a thread whose topic is a blog post which defends that specific definition. So no, we didn't explicitly agree to it, but it's a reasonable assumption, a generally understood part of the HN social contract.

> What is one piece of hard evidence that actually works as evidence to prove materialism

Materialism is not the testable hypothesis. The testable hypothesis is "molecules is what causes us to flourish." And I should have said "falsifiable" not testable. The way you falsify it would be to demonstrate some aspect of human flourishing that cannot be explained as the actions of molecules.

> A much better analogy is that philosophy is not science in the same sense that alchemy is not chemistry, or astrology is not astronomy

Not at all. Astrology is irrelevant, whereas philosophy is quite relevant in the sense that it is an integral part of scientific activity and takes place despite certain people forgetting that they do it even while doing it.

> or banging on a hollow log with a stick is not playing the violin

Yes, I actually edited my comment to provide a better analogy: philosophy is not science in the same sense music is not drumming.

> Materialism is not the testable hypothesis. The testable hypothesis is "molecules is what causes us to flourish."

These follow from one another. If you claim that molecules are the cause of some phenomena taking place in your mind, which flourishing, self-actualisation, happiness, suffering, etc. all are, then you implicitly claim materialism.

For anyone who claims that mind-state is the cause, you can claim that it is in fact the consequence (or an illusion, as some do), and it will be your word against theirs.

That’s where it stops being a scientific experiment and becomes a higher-level philosophical argument where testability is, unfortunately, out of our reach, but we can still judge theories by their elegance and logical soundness.

> The way you falsify it would be to demonstrate some aspect of human flourishing that cannot be explained as the actions of molecules

As above, if you claim that there is some aspect of flourishing that cannot be explained as “actions of molecules” (I would be hard-pressed to ascribe any agency to molecules, personally) you would likely be implicitly adopting monistic idealism (or some sort of dualism, which I personally find dubious due to even more drastic lack of elegance than in monistic materialism), and that is not testable since to anyone who claims that mind-state is the consequence you can very simply point out how it can be the cause—and since neither way can be proven or disproven, it is once again a higher-level philosophical argument.

That argument is more fundamental and more important, actually, than predicting some molecular activity or the like; and before you object, using the fact that scientific method is as of now limited and unable to provide evidence either way can’t serve as a justification for calling the question itself unimportant if we were to have this discussion with any rigour and truth-seeking determination (as opposed to mere desire to socially signal or appear “right”).

> philosophy is quite relevant

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about that.

> you implicitly claim materialism

Nope. In fact, I actually do claim all of these things while at the same time denying materialism because quantum mechanics. Molecules don't really exist, just like the force of gravity doesn't really exist. Both are just very good approximations.

> For anyone who claims that mind-state is the cause

The cause of what?

You don't have to get into consciousness at all. Food and water, for example, are clearly integral to human flourishing, and you don't have to get into any metaphysical woo to defend that position.

> That’s where it stops being a scientific experiment

That's just nonsense. Malnutrition and dying of thirst obviously yield to straightforward scientific inquiry.

Like I said, if you want to argue otherwise, the burden is on you to demonstrate some aspect of human flourishing that does not yield to scientific inquiry. I'll bet you can't do it.

If you forget to drink water while working for many hours, you may feel dehydrated and poorly. If you remember to drink water, you feel better.

Drinking water clearly causes a change in your mind-state. However, drinking water is something you decide (or forget) to do, i.e. it’s obviously caused by your mind in the first place (or that of your partner or another person helpfully bringing you a glass). However, we can further speculate that said mind is, in turn, affected by certain chemical interactions (approximations of something external to those minds), and even call the general existence of minds into question. Yet further, we could treat that chemical reaction as, in turn, derivable from (or be a representation of) mind-states, yours or otherwise, further down the line.

You can see how as far as scientific method is concerned this gets nowhere very quickly—it’s unfalsifiable and outside of what scientific method is equipped to help us with (not a bug, since it’s by design).

Naively, it seems that best we could do is 1) acknowledge that uncertainty and perhaps 2) pick a point in the above chain, reason why to believe that point is not arbitrary, and explicitly adopt that as a philosophical position.

> I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about that.

We can simply do that, though I did attempt to provide a justification for my position. Philosophy, whether done explicitly or implicitly, always informed the application of scientific method.

> we can further speculate that said mind is, in turn, affected by certain chemical interactions (approximations of something external to those minds)

Indeed, there is quite a bit of evidence to support this hypothesis.

> and even call the general existence of minds into question

Well, you can call anything into question, but there is quite a bit of evidence for the existence of minds.

> we could treat that chemical reaction as, in turn, derivable from (or be a representation of) mind-states

Well, I suppose we could, but again there is quite a bit of evidence that the causality of that particular mechanism (if I'm understanding you correctly -- you are being pretty imprecise here) runs in the other direction.

> You can see how as far as scientific method is concerned this gets nowhere very quickly

Sorry, no, I don't see that at all. AFAICT the way in which minds arise from chemistry is pretty well understood. In fact, it is sufficiently well understood that we are on the cusp of being able to create artificial minds that are not based on chemistry.

> Naively, it seems that best we could do is 1) acknowledge that uncertainty

Sorry, no, I don't see any uncertainty to acknowledge.

> I did attempt to provide a justification for my position.

Yes, but I think your attempt has failed.

> there is quite a bit of evidence that the causality of that particular mechanism (if I'm understanding you correctly -- you are being pretty imprecise here) runs in the other direction.

Not if you look thoroughly. There is no proof that causality runs[0] in either direction, and in all likelihood it would remain so for as long as the hard problem is unsolved.

> AFAICT the way in which minds arise from chemistry is pretty well understood.

That would be immensely groundbreaking, absolutely historical news that would eclipse LLMs, reverberate HN for months and would not pass either of us unnoticed.

> In fact, it is sufficiently well understood that we are on the cusp of being able to create artificial minds that are not based on chemistry.

Have you heard about the so-called Chinese room experiment or the concept of a philosophical zombie?

> I don't see any uncertainty to acknowledge.

That’s because you have adopted a philosophical position implicitly.

> Yes, but I think your attempt has failed.

You have not even attempted to object by providing a counter-argument, though.

[0] Side note: even though I am guilty of thinking that way myself, I find the whole notion of “causality running” smelling of Cartesian dualism and another inheritance of our religious past. A theory presupposing the existence of two different kinds of things (as in this case, mind vs. physical), while useful in its own ways, is necessarily less elegant than a theory that can manage with one.

> There is no proof

You need to read this:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/three-myths-about-scient...

Focus on myth #3.

> That would be immensely groundbreaking

Yes, it was [1]. Still is, as this work is on-going [2].

> Have you heard about the so-called Chinese room experiment or the concept of a philosophical zombie?

Yes. Have you heard of the Turing test?

For the record, the Chinese Room is based on the false premise that the Chinese Room is possible. It isn't. The person inside the room would be dead long before it emitted its first symbol. And philosophical zombies are IPUs [3].

> That’s because you have adopted a philosophical position implicitly.

No, I have adopted a philosophical position explicitly [4].

> You have not even attempted to object by providing a counter-argument, though.

Perhaps you are unaware that I am the author of TFA [5]? Did you read it?

---

[1] https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Turing_Paper_1936.pdf

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_neuroscience

[3] https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/feynman-bullies-and-invi...

[4] https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/03/a-clean-sheet-introducti...

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40205012

> Focus on myth #3.

If you don’t like the word “proof” then replace it with the phrase “conclusive evidence”.

> Yes, it was [1]. Still is, as this work is on-going [2].

Sorry, how does any of that show that “minds arise from chemistry”?

> Yes. Have you heard of the Turing test?

Yes, and a Chinese room would pass the Turing test by its very definition.

> The person inside the room would be dead long before it emitted its first symbol.

Replace the person with a powerful CPU.

> And philosophical zombies are IPUs [3].

In this context a philosophical zombie is an instance of a Chinese room, which are fairly real things. Take a sufficiently advanced LLM, or an emulation of human brain, and you get one. (Showing that it is not a philosophical zombie would call for some conclusive evidence showing that the phenomenon of consciousness is caused by whatever entities feature in models from today’s natural sciences—so that manipulating them in a particular way is enough to cause consciousness to magically arise.)

> Perhaps you are unaware that I am the author of TFA [5]? Did you read it?

That slipped my mind after a while, but I don’t think it invalidates the discussion. I skimmed it back when it was posted and generally I have been familiar with the illusionist takes on consciousness for a while. As monistic materialism (as well as cartesian dualism) in general, they always strike me as inelegant and needlessly contrived. (When competing hypotheses cannot be falsified due to limitations of scientific method, beauty and elegance remain as qualities we can judge them on, and I find that beauty inversely correlates with the number of entities a given hypothesis must magically conjure into existence.)

> how does any of that show that “minds arise from chemistry”?

That's too long a story for an HN comment (which is the reason I referred you to an entire field of study) but the TL;DR is that the only reason we have to believe that minds exist at all is the I/O behavior of things that purport to have them (i.e. people) and that I/O behavior can (as far as we can tell) be completely accounted for the the behavior of neurons, which can be completely accounted for by chemistry.

> Replace the person with a powerful CPU.

That completely eviscerates the experiment. The whole point of the Chinese Room is that there is a conscious person inside who does not speak Chinese. Without that, the Chinese Room is just a run-of-the-mill AI.

> Showing that it is not a philosophical zombie would call for some conclusive evidence showing that the phenomenon of consciousness is caused by whatever entities feature in models from today’s natural sciences—so that manipulating them in a particular way is enough to cause consciousness to magically arise.

Where is your "conclusive evidence" that this "phenomenon of consciousness" actually exists?

If an AI exhibits I/O behavior that is indistinguishable from a human (i.e. can pass the Turing test) then on what basis can you call one a "philosophical zombie" and not the other?

> they always strike me as inelegant and needlessly contrived

What is your alternative?

> that I/O behavior can (as far as we can tell) be completely accounted for the the behavior of neurons, which can be completely accounted for by chemistry

Thing is, this can be explained the other way around. If neurons & chemistry were merely how conscious phenomena appear (a map of the territory), the observed outcome would not change. (Most of chemistry, physics, etc. all work equally well in that scenario, by the way, but there may be implications in other fields.)

By the way, reducing everything to I/O behaviour is also a philosophical position, I believe it’s called behaviourism.

> The whole point of the Chinese Room is that there is a conscious person inside who does not speak Chinese.

Neither does a powerful CPU/an LLM—the point of putting a slow person that doesn’t speak the language is to illustrate on an intuitive level what happens with a fast program that does the same, just in the blink of an eye.

> Where is your "conclusive evidence" that this "phenomenon of consciousness" actually exists?

You want to attribute me a claim I do not make. There is no conclusive evidence either way, and it could be impossible to obtain any (at least within the framework of scientific method). However, a theory where it does not exist has major logical flaws in my view.

> If an AI exhibits I/O behavior that is indistinguishable from a human (i.e. can pass the Turing test) then on what basis can you call one a "philosophical zombie" and not the other?

Hinges on the hard problem. If you claim consciousness does not exist, then you have your answer and I have mine, but I would object to treating it as a fact.

> What is your alternative?

I would not claim to have my own, but variants of monistic idealism as I understand them presuppose the objective existence of consciousness and go from there. I find that way we may have to magically conjure out of nothing much fewer entities and arbitrary rules, and don’t have to explain away the only phenomenon we have direct access to.

> We know, for example, that we cannot solve the halting problem, we cannot predict chaotic systems, etc.

This violates the second axiom I assume: in your examples, we know where the incompleteness lies. If you disagree that not knowing that would necessarily hold for modeling the system that we are part of, then perhaps we won’t be on the same page to argue productively.

Sorry, that didn't parse. What do you mean by "the second axiom"? What axioms are you talking about?

> My pet theory is that success of predictions of modern science helped us achieve a local maximum which, while useful, also makes it difficult to evolve towards a higher (globally) maximum.

> The axioms are:

> 1. Some models are useful, but all models are necessarily incorrect, incomplete, and/or unfalsifiable. (This can be restated in an unsettling, for a natural science enthusiast, manner as “there is always the unexplained”.)

> 2. We cannot know where the incorrectness/incompleteness lies.

(It is an axiom because I strongly suspect I will maintain this position but am not willing to spend time defending it. Maybe I should call it “assumption”.)

Ah. Sorry, I'm responding to a dozen different threads and I'm having trouble keeping all the context in my head.

I think your axiom #2 is almost certainly correct. But just because we can't know where all of the uncertainty lies doesn't mean we can't know where some of it does.

I think of models as maps—sure, we are able to map Earth with high accuracy (though still have numerous maps all useful for different things), but only because we are now able to be outside of it; this will never be true for the system that we are modeling using scientific method and that we ourselves are part of.

We will forever have many incomplete maps. Scientific method offers one such map, a product of a particular way of attending to the world, and while it is useful for some purposes I am not sure it is inherently better than other maps. It does not help that it tries (maybe not by design, but at least that’s how it seems to be playing out so far) to sidestep the fact that our minds are both map-creators and part of the territory.

> ignoring the fact that our minds are both map-creators and part of the territory seems foolish

That's a straw man. Of course it's foolish. No one is ignoring it.

You are literally ignoring it, you speak as if your opinion of reality is a 1:1 match for the thing itself.

Can you link to:

1. Two of your comments in this thread where you express uncertainty in any of your assertions?

2. Two comments where someone disagreed with you, and you acknowledged (in the comment itself) your prior incorrectness/imperfection?

No. But I can link to this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40240018

> No.

And why is it that you cannot link to what I ask for?

Remember your claim above?

>> ignoring the fact that our minds are both map-creators and part of the territory seems foolish

> That's a straw man. Of course it's foolish. No one is ignoring it.

> And why is it that you cannot link to what I ask for?

Because I don't have time to grovel through everything I've ever posted to find examples where I conceded a point.

> Remember your claim above?

Yes. What does that have to do with anything? That wasn't a reply to you, that was a reply to /u/stroganoff, whereupon /u/stroganoff conceded the point.

So what is your point???

> Because I don't have time to grovel through everything I've ever posted to find examples where I conceded a point.

Is that the only reason you are unable? Are you sure such examples exist?

>> Remember your claim above?

> Yes. What does that have to do with anything?

Why would you not know the answer to this? You know the answer to everything that's been presented to you, do you not? (Well, except for the substantial amount of questions that have been asked of you throughout these various conversations, by myself and others, that you have dodged. Or the cases where you have asserted that you possess knowledge, but are unwilling to respond to challenges to such claims.)

> So what is your point???

I believe it is possible that:

a) you are not perfectly rational.

b) you are conducting yourself in these internet conversations as if you are.

c) you do not have a deep understanding of the subtle and complex differences between belief and knowledge.

Do you believe that I may be on to something, at least possibly?

> Is that the only reason you are unable?

I'm not unable, I am unwilling.

> Are you sure such examples exist?

Yes. Here is one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40250568

I try hard not to be wrong, but when I am, I have no problem admitting it.

> You know the answer to everything that's been presented to you, do you not?

So far.

> except for the substantial amount of questions that have been asked of you throughout these various conversations, by myself and others, that you have dodged

Like what?

> Or the cases where you have asserted that you possess knowledge, but are unwilling to respond to challenges to such claims.

Like what?

> you are not perfectly rational.

Of course I'm not. I never said otherwise. That's just ridiculous. No human is perfectly rational.

> you are conducting yourself in these internet conversations as if you are

Well, I try very hard to be as rational as I can be, and I think I'm getting better at it with practice. But I'm still not perfect, and I never will be.

> you do not have a deep understanding of the subtle and complex differences between belief and knowledge

Those are two topics that I have not yet addressed, so you cannot possibly have any basis for assessing my understanding or lack thereof. The fact that you think you have such a basis indicates that you are, at the very least, making some unwarranted assumptions.

(But I would wager (if we could find a way to adjudicate it) that my understanding of belief and knowledge is a lot deeper than you think.)

> Do you believe that I may be on to something, at least possibly?

No. I think that you once again have failed to do your homework. If you will recall, I smacked you down for that once before.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40111778

Proceed with caution if you don't want a repeat.

>> you do not have a deep understanding of the subtle and complex differences between belief and knowledge

> Those are two topics that I have not yet addressed, so you cannot possibly have any basis for assessing my understanding or lack thereof.

I think it goes without saying that you believe this claim to be true.

Truly amazing.

What exactly is amazing about it?

The irony of it.

Why is it ironic?

I propose that there is irony contained within the italicized part (in particular):

> Those are two topics that I have not yet addressed, so you cannot possibly have any basis for assessing my understanding or lack thereof.

OK, fair enough. I will rephrase: I don't see any plausible mechanism by which you could know this, though I do concede that there are some possibilities. Maybe you have ESP. Maybe you have access to secret alien brain scanning technology. Maybe you hired a private investigator to suss out the depth of my understanding of the subtle and complex differences between belief and knowledge (though how he might have done this without my being aware of it remains a bit of a mystery). I have no idea. So yes, it's possible that you have some basis for believing that I "do not have a deep understanding of the subtle and complex differences between belief and knowledge". It's also possible that the earth is flat. But if you want me to take either possibility seriously then the burden is on you to explain it to me. Until you do that, the most plausible explanation I have for your behavior, and the one I am now going to start acting on, is that you are simply a troll.

Did you consider the possibility that I may possess knowledge that you do not?

Of course you know things I don't. Everyone over the age of 2 probably knows things I don't. Why would you even ask such a stupid question with such an obvious answer? And why did you phrase it in such a pretentious way? "Possess knowledge that you do not" -- who talks like that?

Oh, right. Trolls. Trolls talk like that.

Silly me.

Does this have any affect on your belief that "so you cannot possibly have any basis for assessing my understanding or lack thereof" is a true statement?

Begone, troll.

Implicitly declaring victory again are we? And if not: what is it that you are doing?

What are you doing if not trolling? Do you think this is a competition? What do you think the prize is? You do realize there's no audience here, right? No one is paying attention to this thread any more.

> What are you doing if not trolling?

Not sure what to call it....~"Analysis of the logical & epistemic cognitive performance of Humans on Internet Message Boards"? Something like that I guess. I try not to overthink it and just have fun, makes the whole thing much more optimal at this stage, in my estimation.

> Do you think this is a competition?

I very much think of it like that. A video game analogy ("world building" genres like Sim City, etc) is extremely fitting.

> What do you think the prize is?

At the grand scale: the well being of Humanity.

> You do realize there's no audience here, right?

I am not able to "realize" that, because I have had extremely different training than you.

> No one is paying attention to this thread any more.

It isn't possible for you to know this. Do you even realize that? Like seriously, are you joking when you make these comments or what?

EDIT: I noticed something:

>> Implicitly declaring victory again are we? And if not: what is it that you are doing?

You didn't answer my question. That's weird.

> I very much think of it like that.

Well, there's your problem right there.

(https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/well-theres-your-problem just in case you don't get the allusion.)

If you stopped approaching HN as a contest you might see better outcomes.

> "world building" genres like Sim City

Sim City was a non-competitive single-player game the last time I played it. That was a long time ago so maybe things have changed. But be that as it may, "game" and "competition" are not synonyms. The distinguishing characteristic of a competition is that there are necessarily winners and losers.

> I have had extremely different training than you.

Do tell. You don't have any links in your profile so you apparently want to remain anonymous, which is fine. But then you can't blame me when I draw my conclusions about you based solely on what I observe you doing here, because that is all the data I have.

> It isn't possible for you to know this.

Oh, the irony. Is your memory really so poor that you don't recall giving me a hard time for saying the exact same thing two days ago?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40253122

You really need to read the latest installment in my series:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/05/languages-are-theories-d...

> Well, there's your problem right there.

> (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/well-theres-your-problem just in case you don't get the allusion.)

Which says: "Well, There's Your Problem" is an expression typically used to point out the apparent cause of a mechanical failure or malfunction. On the web, the phrase has become closely associated with a subset of FAIL images depicting various accidents on the road and construction sites.

"to point out the apparent cause of a ~~mechanical~~ failure or malfunction"

Please point out the (apparent(!)) failure or malfunction here.

> If you stopped approaching HN as a contest you might see better outcomes.

Are you implying knowledge of the True value of the outcome?

As far as I'm concerned, these outcomes are better than expected...like, I could hardly imagine a more perfect scenario in my dreams. Or as Terence McKenna liked to say: "Reality is not only stranger than we imagine, it’s stranger than we CAN imagine".

> Sim City was a non-competitive single-player game the last time I played it. That was a long time ago so maybe things have changed. But be that as it may, "game" and "competition" are not synonyms.

This seems fairly reasonable, if considered on its own anyways (isolated from the context of this conversation).

I would add: the airspeed of a European swallow is 24 mph.

> The distinguishing characteristic of a competition is that there are necessarily winners and losers.

There are winners and losers in The Game of Life/Reality. As one example, take all the innocent people killed in Gaza in the last few months, and compare it to the relatively nice, cushy life I lead (and perhaps you too). If this was simply "real life", I'd expect people to have more compassion (I base this theory on the widespread and oh so popular sentiments like ~"All lives matter!!!" that I had to temporarily endure during the whole COVID...."thing". Thank God we've put all that performative nonsense/delusion behind us, amirite?).

> Do tell.

Unfortunately, that information is only released on a need to know basis.

> But then you can't blame me when I draw my conclusions about you based solely on what I observe you doing here...

Yes I can, and for valid reasons (that may be beyond the scope of your knowledge, or even belief).

> ...because that is all the data I have.

Not technically it isn't. I've given you all sorts of "data" that could help you with your predicament.

>>> No one is paying attention to this thread any more.

>> It isn't possible for you to know this.

> Oh, the irony.

Do you have access to the HN server logs? Yes or No? (And even if you did: is that adequate to flawlessly resolve whether your claim is true)?

Also: please reveal your method. And in so doing: please explicitly note whether you are expressing an opinion or asserting a (perceived) fact (with respect to whether your method is adequate to resolve the question without any possible flaws or shortcomings). As you may or may not remember (or be willing to acknowledge), we've had a little trouble with you explicitly revealing whether you are dealing in facts or opinions in your writing.

> Is your memory really so poor that you don't recall giving me a hard time for saying the exact same thing two days ago?

Not at all, I have chided you numerous times for claiming to possess knowledge for that which cannot be known (by you, or anyone). One might even say that is the essence of our various conversations.

For fun though: how about you explain the irony that you see here? If I am at fault, I would very much like to know...to me, that is fun.

> You really need to read the latest installment in my series

As I asked you last time (and you did not answer): why? If there is something for me to learn there, what is it (and what among my text illustrates that I need to learn it)?

I look forward to you ignoring the question.

> Do you have access to the HN server logs?

Unfortunately, that information is only released on a need to know basis.

Begone, troll.

You misspelled my username, and I did not actually concede the point. It was past midnight here at the time. I only corrected part of my comment, but I still do disagree with your point.

My apologies on both counts. It seemed like a concession to me, but whatever.

Just to avoid further misunderstandings, what exactly is it that you disagree with?

Yeah, I edited it after I noticed that myself, apologies.

No worries.

I don't think that all models are necessarily incorrect. Scientific models are precisely correct until they are falsified.

For example, the inverse-square law for electromagnetism and Newtonian gravity is just an exact feature of continuous 3D space (surface area of a sphere). It only became an approximation when Einstein proposed warped spacetime, and will become even more incorrect in detail, if/when someone finds evidence for discrete spacetime structure. Then the inverse square law becomes a double approximation, over macro and micro structure of spacetime (lattice, wolfram graph, spin foam, ...).

It just so happens that at the moment, we know that the whole of physics is pervasively incomplete (approximate nonsense), so very few current models are likely to be preserved in future better theories. QFT is a terrible hack, with renormalization and virtual hand-waving. QFT depends on a fixed background spacetime, but we know that background is dynamic (GR). We don't know how QFT and GR fit together, but I would guess almost all current models are incorrect.

However, it is possible that some future Theory of Everything is correct indefinitely (until end of civilization, while not being ontologically True, of course).

> the arrogance of modern natural science due to its success makes us disinclined and demotivated to look outside the box of its current models

I'd say it is not the arrogance that stops us, but the sheer amount of work invested into current theories. You cannot match it with mere personal effort.

> treating the entities described by current models (wrong, per above) as ground truth

Psychology shares one special property with sociology and economics: theories not just describe a object of a research, they change the object. In some obvious ways (like popularization of IQ scores makes life easier for people with high IQ score) and in less obvious ways.

It doesn't mean that anything said by a psychologists becomes true, but many things are. I'd bet that even if consciousness was not an illusion it is now.

Seems to me we have very strongly evidenced beliefs about where incompleteness lies.

Consciousness is perhaps the most glaring one (as far as current models offered by natural sciences are concerned), if nothing else then because we deal with it every moment of existence or because it is what natural science itself stems from, is shaped by, is dependent on and exists because of.

Of course, whether it is the only unknown is unknown.

Have you read Dennett's book?

No, but I’m familiar with his take on consciousness and it is more or less what I mean by thinking in the box of existing models and trying to explain away something inconvenient to them.

Maybe you should actually read the book before you pass judgement on it.

I’ve read enough in-depth takes about it that I’ll pass for now.

How ironically hypocritical of you.

When have I ever criticized a book I haven't read?

Arrogance is almost by definition against the values of scientific inquiry, and so if you see someone placing science on a quasi-religious pedestal, you’d best be skeptical of whatever that person is selling.

This tends to go with excessive praise of particular thinkers and the wholesale dismissal of entire fields and/or thinkers as “manifest nonsense” or some other ill-informed claptrap.

If you read actual philosophy of science books and papers by real philosophers, you’ll find that the attitude is more appropriate and not so laudatory. As it should be.

> wholesale dismissal of entire fields and/or thinkers

Like what?

Like dismissing the work of Feyerabend or Wittgenstein without seemingly having read either:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr...

I'm really not sure how seriously I'm supposed to take writings about the philosophy of science when the author thinks major thinkers in the field, like Feyerabend, are just writing gibberish. That's...not really a serious opinion, whether you agree with his ideas or not.

About Feyerabend, a quick glance at Wikipedia (with all its massive biases) showed me a dubious character that would fit perfectly into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense...

Actually, a search inside said book vindicated this sentiment.

Anyway, when I see "philosopher" and "20th century" together, my bullshit radar gets extremely attentive.

I read Feyerabend a long time ago. It was recommended to me by someone I deeply respect so I was predisposed to like it, but it struck me as unalloyed nonsense. It was a long time ago and I don't really remember the details any more. My impression is that Feyerabend is mostly cited by crackpots who are bitter because they are not being taken seriously.

However, this question too can be settled empirically: can you point to any useful results that were produced by someone who credits them to Wittgenstein or Feyerabend? I'm not aware of any.

It's really crazy to me that your argument is literally, "I read it a long time ago and don't remember," as if that is supposed to be convincing.

Like I said, this isn't a serious discussion.

It wasn't meant to be convincing, it was meant to be an honest report of the situation. I don't remember the details. All I remember was that my assessment of it at the time was that it was devoid of merit, which is one of the reasons I don't remember the details.

Now, there are two possibilities: one is that I was wrong, that it has merit, and if I go back and revisit it that I will see now what I missed then. The second possibility is that I got it right back in the day.

But notice that we can actually use the scientific method to test this. These are hypotheses and they make predictions. In particular, the first hypothesis predicts that there should be some evidence that Feyerabend has merit. In particular, I would expect to be able to find someone who produced a useful result and credited that at least in part to his or her having read Feyerabend. I have never seen such an example. To the contrary, the only people I see citing Feyerabend are crackpots who are bitter about not being taken seriously.

Of course, I haven't looked very hard either, so it's entirely possible that there are counterexamples out there. But the appropriate response is not to argue about this or impugn my character, but simply to point me to the evidence that I've missed.

>Now, there are two possibilities: one is that I was wrong, that it has merit, and if I go back and revisit it that I will see now what I missed then. The second possibility is that I got it right back in the day.

A third option is that the merit of someones worked cannot be judged from whether one person find it compelling or not.

That's not a third option. The question of how to decide whether something has merit is orthogonal to the question of whether something has merit or not.

When someone is comfortable dismissing extremely influential thinkers because they "don't remember and had a feeling it was dumb", they aren't engaged in a serious conversation, and they aren't a serious thinker. This isn't how actual philosophy works. Your intellectual laziness isn't my problem.

Feyerabend is widely considered one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century. This is not controversial. These are not crackpots, unless you think that the entire field of academic philosophy is composed of crackpots. Then again, it wouldn't surprise me if you did.

https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2010/10/most-signific...

https://plato.stanford.edu/ENTRIES/feyerabend/

As far as your "useful result," one example of the man's influence is right here, on a highlighted section on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend#Outside_philos...

Your arrogant attitude here is very anti-science and very anti-curiosity. Dismissing someone that clearly is considered an expert in their field because they seemed "devoid of merit" is both lazy and ignorant. Again, you may disagree with Feyerabend (or with anyone else), but your lack of knowledge on something is not equivalent to a counterargument. A counterargument requires knowledge of the argument – which you neither have nor are interested in acquiring.

If you want to actually write something of value on the philosophy of science, I really suggest you go read a book about it first. If you think you've already got the answers and can easily dismiss a respected thinker's work because you "deemed it devoid of merit, maybe, but I can't remember," there isn't much serious philosophical discussion to have here.

> Feyerabend is widely considered one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century

L. Ron Hubbard has been very influential too, but that doesn't mean that re-reading Dianetics is likely to be an effective use of my time.

> As far as your "useful result," one example of the man's influence is right here

OK, Stephen J. Gould's endorsement is good enough for me. I will re-read "Against Method."

L. Ron Hubbard isn't a philosopher of science. Did I claim him to be one? I didn't say "influential people."

> L. Ron Hubbard isn't a philosopher of science.

Says you. If you ask a Scientologist I'll bet they'll tell you different.

But if you don't like Hubbard, take Ayn Rand. Or Ken Ham. Or Mark Sargent. The supply of crackpots is limitless.

Sigh. The philosophy of science is a well-established field. This isn't a controversial or fringe thing. To know this requires a few minutes of reading on Wikipedia.

No one thinks that Hubbard is a philosopher of science, probably not even Scientologists. (Because it's a different thing entirely.)

How can you be the author of a series on science and not be the slightest bit familiar with the field? And you want people to take your ideas seriously?

I'll say it again for the third time: this isn't a serious discussion.

Oh, the irony of someone defending Feyerabend on the one hand while dismissing Hubbard, Rand, Ham etc. on the grounds that "philosophy of science is a well-established field." Do you really not see how this is self-defeating?

> No one thinks that Hubbard is a philosopher of science, probably not even Scientologists.

I will bet you $1000 that I can find at least five Scientologists who will profess to believe that LRH was a philosopher of science.

No, that isn't ironic or self-defeating. Feyerabend was a member of more than half a dozen respected philosophy departments around the world. Hubbard was a science fiction writer that started a religion. There are in no way equivalent.

Again, you really don't seem to know what you're talking about here, at any level.

The whole point of "Against Method" was to argue for epistemological anarchy. A logical consequence of that is that the scientific establishment should not be given any special deference or credence. You are citing that very same establishment to support the proposition that this idea has merit. You don't see how that is self-defeating?

No, again, because L. Ron Hubbard wasn’t writing about topics generally covered by the philosophy of science. Epistemological anarchy doesn’t mean that words suddenly don’t have meaning and that a sci-fi writer is reclassified as a philosopher of science. Feyerabend was not a philosopher of science because institutions deemed him so, but because he did work on subjects considered to be philosophy of science, which was then considered exemplary by other philosophers of science. This is common sense and not at all complicated for anyone that stops to think about it for half a second.

I am really having to re-invent the wheel here, it seems. And I am having a difficult time believing that you’re discussing this in good faith, so I think I’ll end it here.

> Ron Hubbard wasn’t writing about topics generally covered by the philosophy of science.

So? I didn't bring up LRH as an example of a philosopher of science, I brought up LRH as an example of someone who has been influential to make the point that just because someone is influential doesn't necessarily mean that they are worth paying attention to, and this is true no matter what field they're in.

BTW, I've been re-reading Against Method and it is every bit as nonsensical and incoherent and just downright stupid as I remember it. AFAICT, what it's saying is, essentially, here are things that scientists have done in the past that look dumb to me with the benefit of hindsight, and here is a straw-man characterization of the scientific method, and so we should throw it all out and just allow anyone to do whatever the fuck they want to because reasons.

In the hope of maybe finding something that I'm missing, I also went to the Wikipedia article:

> The primary thesis of Against Method is that there is no such thing as the scientific method and that it is not appropriate to impose a single methodological rule upon scientific practices. Rather, 'anything goes', meaning that scientists should be free to pursue whatever research seems interesting to them. The primary target of Against Method is 'rationalism', or the view that there are rational rules that should guide scientific practices.

More patent nonsense is hard to imagine. There manifestly is such a thing as the scientific method. There is something that scientists do that allows them to produce theories with more predictive power than shamans or psychics or astrologers. Something distinguishes scientists from crackpots. In fact, we actually know pretty much exactly what that something is. But even if we didn't know, that wouldn't mean that it doesn't exist.

Here is a specific example from the "Sketch of the main argument" at the start of the book:

"The consistency condition which demands that new hypotheses agree with accepted theories is unreasonable because it preserves the older theory, and not the better theory."

There is no "consistency condition" which "demands" anything. This is just utter nonsense. I even wrote specifically about this in the previous installment of my series:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/the-scientific-method-pa...

If this "consistency condition" were real we would never have gotten relativity nor quantum mechanics nor plate tectonics nor H. Pylori nor RNA vaccines nor even sanitation (because Pasteur's germ theory did not agree with the accepted theories of the day). This "consistency condition" is a straw man of the first water.

It's like an aggregation of the worst parts of scientism manifest in one single human...I have trouble believing this is actually real, it's too far beyond what my absurdity meter can measure.

I see you too were present for the former clinic he put on in the philosophy thread, that was something to see.

That would depend upon what you count as a prediction. The Oracles of Delphi operated for hundreds of years, the Sibylline Oracles were relied upon for thousands of years, and both were universally regarded in their day as unnerving accurate. Dismissing their longevity as religious superstition I would argue is itself anti-science. It is the arrogance of dismissing such history that leads people to eventually declare themselves to be 'the science'.

Actually, science can explain oracles. There is a whole field of study devoted to understanding how to deceive people. It's considered more art than science, but it actually is both. It's called "magic". And there is a whole sub-field of magic called mentalism that deals specifically with things like what the oracles did.

BTW, since you brought up oracles, you might enjoy this:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2018/01/a-multilogue-on-free-wil...

What if your premises are less solid than they seem, and because of the "our thinking style is not only better on a relative scale, on average, it is near flawless in an absolute sense" mindset that often comes along with the culture of "science" you're unable to even consider such possibilities?

What premises? The scientific method has no premises, it's just a method. If you are "unable to consider" some possibility that is not the fault of the scientific method, that is a shortcoming in your mental abilities. The scientific method doesn't stop you from considering anything. All it forces you to do is reject ideas that are at odds with experiment.

> What premises?

- The objective fact of the matter

- the scientific method produces vastly more accurate predictions than anything else humans have ever tried

- This is the whole reason science is even a thing

- I think

- that justifies

- a little bit of cockiness

- until someone actually comes up with something better

- [reality], the phenomenon that shall not be discussed, upon which your entire argument/experience/reality rests

> The scientific method has no premises

https://www.google.com/search?q=axioms+of+science+site%3Aphi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism

> it's just a method.

By "just", do you mean only?

If so, you have a burden of proof on your hands (and proofs of nonexistence are some of the trickiest, in no small, part because they typically have the appearance of being (thus "are") the easiest).

If not, what do you mean?

An angle to test your claim against: are scientists a part of science? If not, how does "science" accomplish anything in the material plane (concrete reality)?

> If you are "unable to consider" some possibility that is not the fault of the scientific method, that is a shortcoming in your mental abilities.

a) Is "I am unable to consider..." actually happening though, in shared reality? (Is this mind reading, or persuasive, misinformative rhetoric?)

b) What if your "Science is just (only) a method" premise is not true though? What if science also has culture (like most any organization involving Humans), or even a style of thinking (say, delusions of omniscience, or Pure Perfect Rationality)?

c) Might you have any shortcomings in your mental abilities, and is it possible that those shortcomings could cause unrealized/unrealizable (due to your cultural thinking style) error in your evaluation of my mental abilities?

> The scientific method doesn't stop you from considering anything. All it forces you to do is reject ideas that are at odds with experiment.

If these claims are True (in JTB, be careful your mind doesn't get so obsessed with the "J" that you forget all about the "T", or forget that the "B" is ever present, and very misleading), you should be able to present a proof (an articulation of one of your own, or simply link to or reference by name an existing one).

Do you have the ability do do that, and if so can you demonstrate you actually have the ability, by actually doing it, physically, in this thread?

(inb4: "well of course I'm just expressing my opinion, that's all everyone is ever doing", and various other rhetorical get out of jail free (or, look over there) cards science folks appeal to when they get caught engaging in Scientific Soothsaying.)

Also, let the record show that you did not even attempt to address the majority of my comment (perhaps you will later, I am just pointing it out).

I don't think you understand what the word "premise" means. None of the examples you give are premises. Most of them aren't even complete sentences.

Yes, I know that a lot of people say that science has premises. They are simply mistaken.

> By "just", do you mean only?

Yes.

> If so, you have a burden of proof on your hands

What exactly is it that you think I need to prove?

> If these claims are True

You need to read this:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/three-myths-about-scient...

particularly Myth #3.

I am happy to stand as is:

- you leaving all of my questions unanswered

- you essentially declaring victory, as is the culture of science's style when encountering inconvenient questions, or the unknown.

Congratulations.

You can let it stand however you like, but the claim that I'm not answering your questions is manifestly false.

If you were incorrect, would you necessarily(!) be able to detect it?

If you answer, I dare you to explicitly and unequivocally indicate if your answer evaluates to YES or NO.

Incorrect about what? About the fact that I answered at least some of your questions? Yes, I'm pretty sure I would be able to tell if I were wrong about that.

The problem is not that I'm not answering your questions, the problem is you don't like the answers.

> About the fact that I answered at least some of your questions? Yes, I'm pretty sure I would be able to tell if I were wrong about that.

Compare the question that you stated and then answered, to the question that was asked...in what ways do they differ?

> The problem is not that I'm not answering your questions, the problem is you don't like the answers.

Now adding mind reading into your already massive pile of unsubstantiated claims. You are truly an impressive specimen of a Human.

> You are truly an impressive specimen of a Human.

Why, thank you. I am in fact a mere chatbot so that is high praise indeed.

As a chatbot, can you answer the question that was asked (as opposed to a different question that is more to your liking) in this comment?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40241420

As a chatbot I do not have preferences, and so there is no such thing as "a question that is more to [my] liking."

However, the answer to your question...

> If you were incorrect, would you necessarily(!) be able to detect it?

... is: no, obviously not. If I were able to detect it, I wouldn't have been incorrect in the first place.

Now I have a question for you: why are you asking a question with such an obvious answer? Are you really seeking the answer in good faith, or do you have some ulterior motive?

> ... is: no, obviously not. If I were able to detect it, I wouldn't have been incorrect in the first place.

Ok then....can you explain why you speak so confidently, and repeatedly claim that your claims are necessarily factual? You seem to be now confessing that you realize that you do not have the ability to discern that, so why do you not reveal that while engaging in conversation on the internet, and why do you talk as if you do not realize it?

> why are you asking a question with such an obvious answer? Are you really seeking the answer in good faith, or do you have some ulterior motive?

I am trying to figure out if you have self-awareness, what degree you have if any, the form it may come in, etc. You are one of the most extraordinary people I have ever encountered, and I have encountered a lot of very interesting people. Logically, it feels like you must be trolling me, but if you are you have got to be one of the very best out there, because you seem completely sincere to me.

> can you explain why you ... repeatedly claim that your claims are necessarily factual?

When have I ever claimed that?

Ok, just to clear something up:

In the comments you make on this website, should I and others read all of them with an implicit "In Lisper's personal opinion only (not necessarily fact)" in mind? Is this the epistemic intent you intend to communicate, and do have in mind, at the point in time you are writing your comments?

You really think I'm going to let you off the hook that easily? Before I answer any more of your questions you are either going to have to come up with some evidence to support your claim that I "repeatedly claim that [my] claims are necessarily factual" or explicitly concede that you were wrong. You can't have it both ways. There is nothing wrong with holding me up to a high rhetorical standard, but there is a lot wrong with doing it while not holding yourself up to the same standard.

I am more than happy to stand with this as your reply to what I wrote above.

And I will make a prediction: you are unable to physically answer that question, in this forum, in a non-evasive manner (and field reasonable follow up questions).

And, you are welcome to implicitly (this word is important) or explicitly ~"declare victory" (the quotation marks around this phrase are important) in any way you like, I enjoy it.

OK, but remember, you asked for this. Again.

Just to be clear, here is what you asked:

> can you explain why you speak so confidently, and repeatedly claim that your claims are necessarily factual?

That is not one question, it's two questions, with different answers.

The reason I speak confidently is that I am confident. Why am I confident? Because I apply the scientific method to everything I do (or at least I try), I've been doing it for a very, very long time, and it produces consistently good results for me. One thing that entails is putting a lot of effort into seeking out people who disagree with me to see if they can find problems with my arguments, and when they do, I fix them. Over time the problems get harder and harder to find because there are fewer and fewer of them, and so it happens less and less frequently. But it happens. Here's an example:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2023/04/bitcoins-value-propositi...

The last time I can recall encountering something that presented a serious challenge to my core beliefs was nearly five years ago:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2019/07/the-trouble-with-many-wo...

---

The answer to the second question is that it assumes a false premise. I'm pretty sure that I have never claimed that anything I say is necessarily factual, though it's possible I may have done so at some point in a fit of pique. If I did, it certainly wasn't intentional.

In fact, if you had bothered to do your homework, you would know that I've explicitly said on the record that nothing is ever "necessarily factual".

https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/three-myths-about-scient...

"science never proves anything; instead it produces explanations of observations"

So your second question is simply a straw man.

---

As long as I'm taking the time to respond to you, there was something you said earlier that I wanted to reply to at the time but decided not to. I've changed my mind (see, it happens):

> I am trying to figure out if you have self-awareness ... it feels like you must be trolling me

Funny, I was thinking the exact same thing.

Do present/perceive these very interesting and impressive stories as being an accurate reflection of the relevant states of affairs, or more so a description of your prediction/belief of how they are?

I think it's time for you to go touch some grass, and not make yourself out to be more of a fool than you already have.

> The objective fact of the matter, as I point out in the first article in the series, is that the scientific method produces vastly more accurate predictions than anything else humans have ever tried.

Which scientific method? As far as i know, there is no such thing as "the scientific method". Though, there are many methods.

Which ones do you know? I have only heard it referred to in this context, that there is the scientific method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

No, there is only one scientific method, which is to say, one method that works better than any other to produce theories with predictive power. I describe it in the inaugural post of the series:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/03/a-clean-sheet-introducti...

If you know of a process that works better than the one described that would be Big News.

https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/the-scientific-method-pa...

Ah, Feyerabend. So often shunned and belittled as an enemy of science—so often feared. His conversations with Imre Lakatos still hold up well to this day.

For an unbiased analysis of Feyerabend's impact, I recommend this book review:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3186788/

The common thread among scientisim-followers is that few have actually bothered to read a book or paper on the philosophy of science by actual philosophers, and instead have adopted science as an identity label.

One consequence of this is how religion is now juxtaposed directly with science, because if the atheists are scientism-followers, then religious people must be anti-science. This is directly contrary to how most scientific innovators thought about the relationship of science to religion (Newton as a prime example.)

Indeed, anything goes! What matters is the result of experiments. Fundamentally science is about understanding more about the world. It does not matter if there are "magical" or "mythical" entities or not. In fact, I would even argue that my current position as to science and religion is similar to that of the position taken by Georges Lemaître.

There's a lot of peculiarity when you study science and even math. Some things just seem too elegant to be coincidental like Euler's equation and the phenomenon of emergence, but even if they are coincidental that realization of coincidence and the slim chance of it happening is also fascinating. On the other hand there are also mind-boggingly unelegant things about nature that require empirical methods because exact and analytical methods aren't cutting it to describe phenomena. It feels all like a mish-mash of different mechanics/rules put together. I do believe Lemaître understood it well that by researching the sciences we also, in its own way, are trying to learn and know about God and his creations (assuming you accept the axiom that God created the universe).

This comment beautifully assembles everything I hate about institutionalised "science".

> as if they stand on the same esteemed ground as the countless individuals throughout history who have propelled scientific progress

There could absolutely not exist a more anti-scientific sentiment than this. This sentiment is what erodes the core of development. Esteemed my b*t.

As a tenured professor you ar entitled to absolutely nothing. The fact that you decides masochism on yourself does not allow you to have any masochistic behaviour towards students and staff.

Science is about accepting and realising the ideas that best possible describe the real world. If you can get direction out of history to do this well, be my guest. But do not set history og science up as a dogma to access an exclusive group.

What this comment is describing the the "religion of scientific institutions" and has nothing to do with science.

> Science is about accepting and realising the ideas that best possible describe the real world.

> What this comment is describing the "religion of scientific institutions" and has nothing to do with science.

Do you consider the real world actions of scientists to be a part of science? I think anyone who attributes scientific accomplishments to "science" must (at least when it serves their purposes, more on this below). This then (can) lead to the distinction between scientific scripture/intent/aspiration (the scientific method, etc) and things as they actually are. How is it possible to possess knowledge of what all scientists do, and not do, in fact (without resorting to the supernatural, or evasive rhetoric as one commonly witnesses politicians engage in as they dodge a question pointed at a legitimate weakness in a narrative)?

Another angle is whether negative consequences of the actions of scientists should be attributed to science or not. In my experience, negative consequences somehow do not count, and there are few disciplines other than science that get this sort of a free ride in our culture... The only one that comes to my mind is (so-called) "democracy".

Agree

Popperians wish science behaved the way they wanted it to behave

I'm still waiting to figure out how Popperians get their ideas for theories because "officially" they can't get them from anywhere (since anything not proven by experiments is "wrong" in their head).

There was a really good comment from someone here a while ago I failed to favorite that basically resolved "science" into a few separate concepts, like:

    * The ... front line bench top process; messing with the world, observing what happens, iterating based on observation, hypothesis testing, modeling reality and testing the model, etc
    * The *accumulated record of knowledge* related to everything, where faith matters -- Given this record is inherently subjective (if nothing else, re: the current state of knowledge when written!), what of this record of knowledge do you trust, what do you confirm, how deeply etc.
    * something else

> Science as an insistution has all those hallmarks: worship, authority and rituals. I'm not trying to make a case for religion here, but wanted to point out the shallowness of the whole write-up.

He's talking about science as a set of ideals, not human institutions that try to do science.

There's a real difference between the scientific mindset and the religious mindset in whether fundamental questioning is considered virtuous. This difference matters.

The fact that science and religion can have similar flaws or components is shallow. Churches in the US and universities in the US both use English. That does not make them the same.

What makes science is a self-consistent framework and tree of knowledge that successfully model the universe and for which proof and experiments can repeatedly redone giving the (approximate) same results.

All religions fail on one or more of these criteria.

> Anything goes! would Paul Feyerabend say.

"You can’t go to a physics conference and say: I’ve got a great theory. It accounts for everything and is so simple it can be captured in two words: 'Anything goes.'”- Noam Chomsky

Author here. Please note that this is the fifth installment of what is planned to be a very long series of articles about the scientific method targeted at a general audience. Comments and constructive criticism are welcome, but please keep the context in mind.

Hi Ron. I've definitely gotten into arguments with you about quantum theory on HN before, so it's nice to see something about which I broadly agree with you.

I skimmed back over your "Scientific Method Part 4" post and noticed the following paragraph:

> The reason science is naturalistic and atheistic is not because these are prejudices built into the method by fiat, it is because it turns out that the best explanations -- the most parsimonious ones that account for all the known data and have the most predictive power -- are naturalistic. The supernatural is simply not needed to explain any known phenomena.

I wonder if there's some nuance missed here. The natural follow-up question in my head is: can the scientific method ever support a supernatural explanation? What could such an explanation look like? How could it have predictive power whilst maintaining its supernaturalness?

I wonder if, actually, the scientific method is inherently at odds with supernatural explanations because as soon as an explanation has genuine predictive power (edit: and is parsimonious), it becomes natural.

> I wonder if there's some nuance missed here. The natural follow-up question in my head is: can the scientific method ever support a supernatural explanation? What could such an explanation look like? How could it have predictive power whilst maintaining its supernaturalness?

In principle religious prophecy could fit the bill. You could imagine a surprising and unambiguous religious prophecy about a future event, such as that the Yellowstone Caldera will erupt in February of 2025. If a series of such prophecies were successfully made about various events spanning a variety of disciplines or topics, each attributing the knowledge to the same deity, it would be difficult for me to not attribute the predictions to the supernatural.

In practice though, religious prophecy tends to either fail in being surprising or in being unambiguous. And when it is not unambiguous, it is not falsifiable.

edit: I would also add that it is important that the prophecy be about something that is independently verifiable as well.

Religious prophecy is an interesting example. It highlights the distinction between "explanation" and "prediction". Here, the explanation takes the form of a hypothesis that there is an omniscient deity. Is this a falsifiable hypothesis? Yes we can point to the accuracy of the predictions as an argument in its favour, but that doesn't differentiate between the deity hypothesis and - for example - an alien species with advanced predictive power that lives secretly among us. And if there were other tests that could be used to distinguish the deity hypothesis from alternatives, then I feel that the deity is behaving within the laws of nature.

> can the scientific method ever support a supernatural explanation?

Of course it can, which is to say, it can support an explanation that would be considered "supernatural" by today's standards. If there were evidence of supernatural (by today's standards) phenomena, science could easily incorporate supernatural (by today's standards) explanations for those phenomena. But the word "supernatural" means what it means (today) for a reason. A lot of people have looked for evidence of phenomena beyond the Standard Model and failed to find it. This is not to say that there might not be a breakthrough tomorrow, but I'll give you very, very long odds against.

> as soon as an explanation has genuine predictive power (edit: and is parsimonious), it becomes natural.

Yes, but that's kind of like how any AI technology that actually works is no longer AI. Science can easily incorporate deities, demons, psychic phenomena, Bigfoot (heck, that's just a new species, happens all the time). In fact, all of these things started out as bona fide scientific hypotheses back in their day. The thing that makes them "supernatural" is simply that they are at odds with the current set of data. That could change any time. But the predictive power of current theories means the odds are not with you.

What does "supernatural" mean to you, I wonder?

It sounds like you are using it to mean "a supernatural phenomena is one which cannot be explained by the current scientific models". In this case, by definition the scientific method cannot support supernatural explanations.

Some people might take "supernatural" to mean "beyond any possible scientific law of nature, full stop". But even here we have that by definition the scientific method cannot support supernatural explanations.

I would argue that the vast majority of working scientists are naturalists - they accept something as being scientific only if it can be observed, measured, tested etc... .

> What does "supernatural" mean to you, I wonder?

There's a pretty well established definition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernatural

> It sounds like you are using it to mean "a supernatural phenomena is one which cannot be explained by the current scientific models".

Yes, that's close enough.

> In this case, by definition the scientific method cannot support supernatural explanations.

Wrong, because in the first case you included the word "current" and in the second you didn't.

The reason that the supernatural is what it is today is because no observations require it as an explanation. But that could change at any time.

> I would argue that the vast majority of working scientists are naturalists - they accept something as being scientific only if it can be observed, measured, tested etc... .

The scientific method is to come up with the best explanation that accounts for all observations [1]. Things that are not observed need not be accounted for.

[1] https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/03/a-clean-sheet-introducti...

It's interesting to see the author answer with "yes." As I understand, two of the underlying principles presupposed by science as an endeavor are methodological naturalism and the principle of the uniformity of nature. The second only really needs to be locally true, i.e. maybe fundamental physical laws or constants don't necessarily hold across all time and space, but they hold at least enough to be able to infer them from data, make predictions, and confirm or disconfirm those predictions. Methodological naturalism seems to be more necessary, though.

There are at least two forms of supernaturalism I can think of. First is the unmoved mover that lays down fundamental laws and constants, creates the basic ontology of physical substrate, and sets everything in motion, but from that point on, never actively intervenes. This is the God of Deism and the clockwork universe of the early Englightenment. Second is one or more personal forces that are not constrained by the physics of our universe, who actively watch and care what happens, can potentially be pleaded with, and may intervene to cause events that have no physical explanation. This is the more common God or gods of theistic traditions, or spirits of animistic traditions.

Each of these would be impossible to investigate scientifically because their actions would need to formulated purely in terms of internal state, or intent and teleological goals. They could not be predicted. These supernatural beings could potentially act in any manner they please, making them impossible to understand purely by observation. Instead, you could at best hope they might explain to you their actions and motivations and that these would not change over time. This is why religion relies upon prophesy and received knowledge or revelation, not observation.

On the other hand, it seems the author is here using "supernatural" not to necessarily refer to things that are actually supernatural, but to encompass things like ghosts and remote viewing that may be postulated as supernatural, but assuming they were real, could also have naturalistic explanations we just don't currently have the means to figure out. Science can and even currently tries to investigate things like this. It might be niche, but it happens. Even T1 research universities have departments dedicated to paranomal research, Duke most prominently that I'm aware of among US schools.

1 point by AnimalMuppet on Dec 3, 2022 | parent | context | un‑favorite | on: The Truth Matters and Secular Humanists Should Def...

To some degree. (Warning: long rant follows.) I define "the scientific method" as a process with four steps. 1: Systematic observation. 2: Looking for regularities in the observations. 3: Forming hypotheses to explain the regularities. 4: Experimentally testing the hypotheses.

(This isn't just me. Wikipedia describes the scientific method very similarly. This isn't me trying to cook the definition to make a point.)

Now assume, for purposes of argument, that God exists. And since lots of people use the word "God" to mean lots of different things, I'm going to define what I mean. By "God" I mean a being with personality - someone, not just something. Someone who existed before the physical universe, and exists independently of it - "outside" it in some sense, though I don't mean in a geometric way. Someone who created the physical universe, and who can, at his sole discretion, reach into the physical universe and change things. (You can think of this kind of like using a debugger - you can stop the program and change the value of a variable, with no antecedent in the flow of execution of the program.) And if and when he does, things actually change - it's not just a change in our perception; things actually physically change.

All this I ask you to assume for the sake of this argument. You don't have to believe it, but it's there for the argument to make sense.

And one more assumption: Assume that this God actually does change something, and that science observes it at step 1. The question is, what's science going to do with it?

They're going to throw it out at step 2, because there is no regularity. There's no pattern, unless God does this a lot.

But if they don't throw it out at step 2, the next problem comes at step 3 - forming a hypothesis. The way science currently is, "God" is very much out of favor as a hypothesis. But in our thought experiment, God actually is the explanation. Science is never going to propose the correct explanation for such an event.

But even if science proposes God as the hypothesis at step 3, the next problem comes at step 4: how are you going to test it? "Um, God, could you do that again? And, um, sign it this time?" You can't run the experiment. I don't see how you could run the experiment even in principle.

So in that sense, the supernatural exists outside of science. This doesn't tell us anything about the supernatural; it merely tells us that science is not a useful tool for examining it.

I wish people could just read Sāṁkhya and Nyāya philosophy once just to get a better understanding about consciousness and reasoning.

No science course requires you to learn epistemology beforehand, which is why things like these happen. People keep on bringing mental speculation and debating philosophy which has pretty much been discussed to death thousands of years ago.

A good lecture on this topic: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4FQBs4K8EDo

PS: Not trying to dismiss the blog post, it tries to get close. It's a good read.

Thanks for sharing the lecture, from watching the first 1/3 or so it looks very interesting.

Do you have any pointers to an introduction to Sāṁkhya and Nyāya philosophy that might be good for beginners? Specifically people with no prior experience with Sanskrit or Hindu philosophy?

I'd highly recommend Edwin Bryant's lectures here:

Nyāya Sūtras: https://sites.rutgers.edu/edwin-bryant/nyaya-sutras-svadhaya...

Sāṁkhya: http://sites.rutgers.edu/edwin-bryant/samkhya-karikas/

It might be confusing at first, especially if you don’t understand certain terms but he usually explains in a really easy way. It'd be better if you start with Yoga Sūtras so that you can understand all the different terminologies but I don't think that's a requirement :)

You can watch all his other lectures here: https://sites.rutgers.edu/edwin-bryant/course-videos-of-sans...

I find it funny that a blogpost claiming to be about the “scientific method” spends 4000 words to try to convince its readers of a wordplay, using analogies and metaphors.

(Yes “consciousness is an illusion” is a wordplay. If you claim it’s a scientific theory, then what does it predict?)

> (Yes “consciousness is an illusion” is a wordplay. If you claim it’s a scientific theory, then what does it predict?)

Here's the start of what you're looking for:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116933119#fig01

One interesting phenomenon Maya (~consciousness is an illusion) could explain is the perceived (by themselves and others, the internet is absolutely full of artifacts of it) omniscience of scientists, despite the letter of science providing all that is needed to logically protect one from such illusory beliefs.

Read the whole of his "science" series. You're going to be delighted to find out that he's really fond of analogies, golfing being a particularly fitting one.

> To quote Joe Provenzano: if consciousness is an illusion, who (or what) is being illused?

"What" is the right question here, and because it's not "who", the hard problem disappears. What is being illused is a system that processes perceptions and generates thoughts like "I exist".

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