Was Paul Feyerabend Really Science's "Worst Enemy"? (2016)
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I have only read the beginning, but chapter one gives a very good overview of the history of critique that got us to this place. Oreskes suggests that it is possible to hold a critical, social constructivist position while also demanding a good scientific practice that will produce trustworthy knowledge.
How does science create knowledge? Epistemic cultures, shaped by affinity, necessity and historical coincidence, determine how people know and what they know. This text compares two epistemic cultures, those in high energy physics and molecular biology.
(Anyway, my main point is that there was nothing problematic about advancing supersymmetry as a hypothesis, whether or not it turns out to be true.)
This is such a paranoid fantasy.
The meme of "Science is no better then religion or magic" is why schools mandated equal time into teaching evolution, and particular flavours of evangelical creationism.
As a young objectivist at university, I had the idealistic idea that if two people could use logic and science to determine certain facts, they could settle any disagreement, even moral ones.
However, science is built upon certain assumed first principles, like causation and other minds sharing your reality. Plantinga argued that one could start with additional first principles (he called "basic beliefs"), in particular, belief in God.
In this way, two people might disagree without having any way to resolve disagreements, because they don't share the same first principles.
Science does not have primacy here. It is just one of several ways to arrive at knowledge.
Consensus is possible, provided that the interlocutor have a shared goal and maximize for information exchange.
Otherwise, the whole notion of discussing one’s “beliefs“ is philosophical (non-empirical) nonsense. If I shut my mouth there is no way to empirically determine whether “I believe in God or not”.
I don’t have beliefs - I have methods of various degrees of effectiveness that get me what I want. To those ends knowledge is only instrumental. Which makes me an unapologetic opportunist/pragmatist/instrumentalist.
To you it may be “knowledge” - that Earth is round, to me it is inconsequential and immaterial even if I “believed“ (whatever that means) Earth was triangular.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem
It is a self-contradictory claim. You believe in your methods. You believe that your vision works by means of your methods, but how do you know this? Take a look at a your hand, all your mind get from it is a bunch of "pixels" from your retina, and by some means your mind construct a mental representation named "hand". How your mind had learnt to do it? Did it use bayesian learning or maybe it used some other mistaken method and your vision fools you? Maybe in the basis of your bayesianism lays totally non-bayesian vision? Maybe information about reality you have is not facts?
You fool yourself believing that you use bayesian reasoning. Mostly your mind thinks for yourself by itself, all you can do is to get into your consiousness some small part of reasoning and to check it with bayes. No one proved that it is possible to build mind based on the bayesianism. Our computational resources are weak for this. You cannot be a bayesian mind while you have no ability to reflect all the reasoning of your mind, starting with individual "pixels" from your retina as informational input and ending with claims like "there is no God".
So you are believing that you are bayesian mind, and therefore Aumann's theorem is applicable to you.
You claim that I've contradicted myself and then you go onto re-describe my argument in your vocabulary. Ex falso sequitur quodlibet...
You are imposing your language/vocabulary onto me, rather than adopting mine, while failing to realise that language itself is just another instrument. I use it for communication.
Not only are you imposing your language onto me, you are trying to impose your logic onto me also - failing to realise that logic is also just an instrument.
And in so far as you seem to care about contradictions - your dogma/religion is the 'Law' of non-contradiction. It's a false God, a man-made authority. Trivially side-stepped with either Dialetheism or Paraconsistent logic.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large -- I contain multitudes. --Walt Whitman
The rest of the time my mind does whatever it does all by itself - I can't tell you what the autopilot 'believes'.
And I am not here to be persuaded (by you or anybody) that your way is better than my way - I can change my mind all by myself if you give me the relevant information. That's how I use introspection/reflection.
You mentioned Aumann's theorem, so it seemed for me that you are bayesian thinker.
> Bayesianism, Intuitioinism, counter-factualism, methodism, particularism (obviously the list is incomlete) are just some of the tools in my toolbox. How and when I might use any particular instrument is up to me.
No, there comes another question: how you might claim that Aumann's theorem is applicable to you, if you are not a strictly bayesian? Maybe logic is also just a one tool of many, and can be rejected when you feel like that? Have you formal rules to judge when some or other tool might be used or rejected? If so, do you believe in this rules to work?
All I want to show, that you cannot reason without some beliefs you take as granted. So your claim that you have no beliefs is false.
As with all things in Logic/Formal languages - the conclusions are true IF you accept the axioms. The CHOICE to accept (or reject) the axioms (read: play the game according its set of normative rules) is up to you. It's cooperative game theory.
Aumann's theorem applies to me in as much as my goal in any conversation/interaction is to optimise for consensus-building - to this end, I will happily abandon my language and adopt my interlocutors' (if they are not comfortable doing so). If my interlocutors understand how 'the game' works and are themselves comfortable using language effectively/metaphorically/constructively/adaptively in real-time then there's no need for compromise on my part.
It seems to me that you are playing a non-cooperative game. You are trying to 'be right. That signals to me that you aren't even playing by the same rules as me.
So if you dislike the word 'methods' and you would much prefer me to use the word 'beliefs' when talking to you - I will happily do that (after I've made my point).
>All I want to show, that you cannot reason without some beliefs you take as granted. So your claim that you have no beliefs is false.
Then it's false. So what? You seem like you belong to the Church of Truth also...
All models are wrong, but some are useful --George Box
But Aumann's theorem is true for rationalists only. I checked wikipedia artice, and seems that it is not just about bayesian rationality as I thought, it is about any rationality. Why do you think, that you are rational agent? All the psychology shows that people are irrational beings.
> It seems to me that you are playing a non-cooperative game. > That signals to me that you aren't even playing by the same rules as me.
Maybe I am. Why should I? What could I gain from being cooperative in this particular case? What could I gain from following your rules?
> You are trying to 'be right.
No, I'm trying to make a point. I'm not interested in the search for consensus. I need no consensus. I made a point. You have a choice to understand it or to not understand. You have a choice to agree or to disagree. I'm interested in your understanding, but I'm not interested in your agreement. Your disagreement is much more fun, it could be much more educational for me. It is more educational for you also, though it is more about your gain, then mine. An agreement is boring and useless.
> So if you dislike the word 'methods'
No, it is misunderstanding. I'm trying to say, that methods are also beliefs, or they based on beliefs.
> Then it's false. So what? You seem like you belong to the Church of Truth also... > All models are wrong, but some are useful --George Box
Of course all models are wrong, but some are useful. Moreover, our mind can work only with models. Logic is one of such a models, it can simplify a lot of cases by reducing them into true/false statements. Either you have beliefs or you have not. Isn't it? Or your point that it is not so simple and dichotomy cannot capture all relevant properties of the problem? Could you propose some other model which we can use to speak about your beliefs that you take as granted and do not question?
> Since you are the one making positive claims about 'my beliefs', then (by the rules I am guessing you subscribe to, but I don't) the burden of proof is on you?
I cannot prove that, because to prove I need to find an example of your belief. It is a hard work by itself and it is more so, because English is not my native language. But I can give you tools to find your beliefs which you had not questioned yet. Dig your methods, they are themselves based on assumptions.
You might recognise the above as a manifestation of the Liar's paradox.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar_paradox
Depending on your predisposition, that's either a contradiction or infinite regress.
Either way - you can't decide the truth (or falsity) value of the sentence.
That's where the Religion of Logic/Truth usually leads to - undecidability.
> You might recognise the above as a manifestation of the Liar's paradox.
Yes, fine point. Much shorter then mine version and much clearer.
also even if there is no authority one still has to explain what we are doing here. Philosophy may not just be of philosopher. We are not Plato and Aristotle... and in fact I doubt many practitioner even listen to this speculation. but still they need to say something.
For example One may say we are trying to devise experiments to refute ... or is it really so? that is not we observe but to a certain extent per Kuhn I say not. And this popper Way and the anarchist way is just was to take about things.
It's a different story how knowledge is passed on or accepted by society.
We know that the proof of authority is the weakest and most unreliable type of evidence. But still the proof of authority dominates in practical everyday life. We believe things because our parents or teachers tell us, even if we had the possibility to check them ourselves from a scientific point of view. But parents and teachers are not the source of knowledge, they are only transmitters.
In the humanities ("Geisteswissenschaften", and similar disciplines) the situation is different. Knowledge is rather believable and not falsifiable, but only accepted on the authority of the person who uttered the sentence.
I'm curious if you have any evidence that this is a general trend. Your original comment is also wrong; the "Frankfurt School", one of your examples, does not ascribe particular authority to its members by virtue of being part of the "school"[1] - rather, it denotes a particular tradition, very similar to the way we use the term "school" in music. A school of thought[0] specifically denotes a commitment to a particular method or set of principles, not a commitment to certain personages. Although a school may take after one person, it's not because of the person but because of the content of their thought.
Besides, the Frankfurt School never claimed to be carrying out science. Other schools were, for instance, committed to certain ideas of science. These philosophical schools are ontologically prior to science.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_thought
[1] Habermas is a "member" of the Frankfurt School of thought, yet he is criticized by those inside and outside the school. This, at least, shows that a school of thought is not a dogmatic adherence to a person or their ideas.
From this perspective, there's nothing "wrong" with Newtonian physics as long as you understand the domain in which it is useful (essentially: larger than molecules, smaller than planets).
Newtonian physics, QM and relativity are all just stories we tell in our attempt to understand how the universe came to be as it is, and predict how it will change (with or without our own actions). They are all "wrong" in the sense that none of them are the way the universe actually is, but they are all "right" in the sense that they provide us with immense explanatory and predictive power when used in the appropriate domain(s).
Is Minkowski space wrong because it's not called space?
Is just that we haven’t invented the ‘right’ language to describe the process with.
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do. —Donald Knuth
In as much as software development is theory-building and iterative development is about hypothesis testing/experiment validation/reproduction - it is scientific/empirical.
Beyond that ... We are forever stuck with theory, which is never a good enough substitute for practice.
> First of all the perceptual system cuts down this abundance or you couldn't survive." Religion, science, politics and philosophy represent our attempts to compress reality still further.
Very interesting to think about in the context of artificial intelligence.
The real question - is philosophy of science helped science or human. I am not sure.
I have also personally had a couple of discussions with philosophers who worked on understanding scientific simulation and trying to approach an abstract, but accurate definition of its nature. Even just the attempt to do that forced a lot of introspection onto the scientists they talked to about their work. My takeaway was that these discussions uncovered a lot of implicit assumptions that were unknowingly made. So even if the results the philosophers wanted - a generic definition of what a scientific simulation is - might not be very useful in themselves, the mere process of getting there helped everybody develop a better understanding.
By modern social convention this is "trolling".
> If he was not anti-science, I asked, what did he mean by his statement in Who's Who that intellectuals are criminals? "I thought so for a long time," Feyerabend said, "but last year I crossed it out, because there are lots of good intellectuals."
This was more or less the justification used in the Cultural Revolution or "Year Zero" for murdering "intellectuals".
In the end he has a bunch of valid criticisms, but I suspect his overall outlook is, like that of a lot of people, rooted in the trauma of his time. In this case WW2, which was an extremely "scientific" war, containing both the "race science" of the Nazis plus the development of weapons of mass destruction and the use of scientific methods to maximise lethality.
> By modern social convention this is "trolling".
Can you expand on this? That hardly sounds like trolling and more like "Strong opinions loosely held" which is an admirable intellectual stance to take in my opinion.
The alternative is a method of teaching or learning, where unpopular opinions are as something between a counterfactual for exploration and the best way of getting a question answered on the internet: by asserting a wrong answer.
"Strong opinions loosely held" requires the opinions to actually be loosely held. You have to admit there are other options and you have to let go when yours are shown to be silly.
On the other hand, keep in mind that intent is impossible to judge from the outside.
I would much rather have everything laid out, examined, and shown not to be what it is not, than to suffer under political rhetoric. It is possible to be intellectually curious and also not a tankie.
If you want a less risible formulation of this sort of mindset, rewatch "Dogma" and listen to Rufus' outlook on life.
> His only real beef with mankind is the shit that gets carried out in His name. Wars. Bigotry. Televangelism. The big one though, is the factioning of the religions. He said, "Mankind got it all wrong by takin' a good idea and building a belief structure out of it."
If you're not telling people that this is your purpose, then you are not arguing in good faith. If you're playing devil's advocate, you should say so.
There's a big difference between, for example, arguing with someone that the earth is flat, and saying something like: "I'm going to pretend I think the world is flat, and I'd like you to try and convince me that it is not." That gives someone the opportunity to either play your game or not play your game. Otherwise, you're in danger of convincing people you're an idiot, rather than someone who simply likes to argue unusual positions.
The idea of good faith is old and important in law; without good faith, it would be hard to enter into contracts. The underlying emotional content that we are reaching for when we try to embrace good faith is the emotion of authenticity.
However, I don't think that people are capable of being authentic. In order to be authentic, people must intend what they are saying and doing, and I am not sure that people can have internal worlds which are rich enough to enable authenticity. I certainly believe that people believe that they are acting in good faith, when they claim it, but I cannot verify that people are indeed good-faith actors.
In the olden days, good faith was achieved with a token, a bonafides of some sort. This is because, even in the olden days, it was well-understood that one cannot simply take people at their word when people say that they are arguing in good faith. This suggests that people have known and understood for a long time that good faith doesn't really exist.
Further, I think that when the rules say, "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith," they mean that we must construct steelmen before commenting. After all, giving good-faith assumptions to bad-faith arguments would be a waste of effort.
For your edification, you should know that I don't like to argue my positions.
Less importantly (but still a matter of social grace) you need to know whether your interlocutor gets this all the time. Failing to do basic research will get your question closed on stackoverflow; engaging in dialectic to go over "settled" questions again and again is frustrating, and many of the people on the other side have got fed up with insincere timewasters.
> It is possible to be intellectually curious and also not a tankie.
To me those are mutually exclusive - "tankies" (and many other ideological factions) are people who've become tidally locked to a position and are no longer intellectually curious, but only interested in shooting down other ideological positions.
The internet habit of reducing everything to its most sensational detail, and cleansing it of all context, for damning purposes, is a bad one. It's what that HN guideline is intended to cover.
"Against Method" is a fun book, and I enjoyed it when I read it back when the stakes didn't seem so high. But he chose to write a fun book rather than a serious one, and he can't complain when people take him seriously.