Sometimes, one of our commenters raises a significant matter that is worth headlining and further analysing. In a recent thread, Seversky dismissies Christian concerns about anti-Christian bigotry, bias, lockouts and the like, with: Sev, 14: ” This doesn’t sound like a crusade against Christianity so much as the faith playing the victim because they are Read More…
Science, worldview issues/foundations and society
The relevance of ethical and worldview issues pivoting on scientific schools of thought
800 Russian journal papers retracted: The most interesting question is undiscussed
To the extent that science is global, tolerated fraud in one milieu taints an entire discipline. Recall the smug people who think that science is an infinitely superior way of knowing, Won’t that be an increasingly harder sell as more people become aware of these tip-of-the-iceberg “bombshell” revelations?
Sean Carroll: “Nowadays, when a more scientific worldview has triumphed and everyone knows that God doesn’t exist . . . ” — really?
Carroll, here, was responding to a Weekly Standard cover article on the reactions to philosopher Nagel’s publication of Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False : What I find particularly interesting in the captioned clip is the laudatory reference to “a more Scientific WORLDVIEW” which is immediately problematic, Read More…
BBC swings and misses: “Why is there something instead of nothing?”, pt. 2 ( –> Being, Logic and First Principles, 24b)
The exploration in-the-wild on Heidegger’s pivotal question is turning out to be quite fruitful. Here, we see BBC swing and miss, leading to dancing stumps. Dancing stumps: Video, with one of the greats at bat: First, context, we are discussing here popularised forms of the idea that “nothing” has been defined by physicists to denote Read More…
“Why is there something, instead of nothing?” (–> being Logic & First Principles, 24)
Heidegger famously posed this question, giving it redoubled force as a first question on critical analysis of worldviews: To philosophize is to ask “Why are there essents rather than nothing?” Really to ask this question signifies: a daring attempt to fathom this unfathomable question by disclosing what it summons us to ask, to push our Read More…
Logic & First Principles, 19: Are we part of a Boltzmann brain grand delusion world (or the like)?
In looking at time (no. 18) we saw how a suggested form of multiverse is one in which sub-cosmi are speculated — there is no observational base, this is philosophy dressed up in a lab coat — to pop up as fluctuations, exhibiting their own “big bang” events and timelines: However, it was not as Read More…
Logic & First Principles, 16: The problem of playing God (when we don’t — cannot — know how)
In discussing the attempted brain hacking of monkeys, I made a comment about refraining from playing God. This sparked a sharp reaction, then led to an onward exchange. This puts on the table the captioned issue . . . which it seems to me is properly part of our ongoing logic and first principles reflections. Read More…
At the Guardian: The “widespread notion that academia is morally superior is ridiculous”
A former biochemist and now medical writer, he has tried both the academy and industry: For the last 18 months or so I’ve been working very closely with people with different roles (medical affairs, marketing, access, etc.) of one particular company. We’ve been preparing for the launch of a new indication for their product, following a Read More…
Revealing in-thread exchanges on the imposition of evo mat scientism/ naturalism (and on the tactics to deflect attention from that)
The imposition of evolutionary materialistic scientism (aka naturalism) is one of the key issues driving the march of folly in our civilisation. It is also very difficult to discuss as there are some very powerful rhetorical deflectors at work. Sometimes, then, the best thing we can do is to clip from one of UD’s exchanges Read More…
The propagandist’s paradise . . .
is our ruinous nightmare. This can be seen through a game, from the conspiracism thread: KF, 86: >> . . . there is a silly little mental game we can consider. [The Crooked Yardstick Effect:] Step one, define that a certain crooked yardstick, S, is the standard of straight, accurate and upright. Once that is Read More…
What about the broader view of naturalism? (And how does this tie in with methods of science?)
A handy source on the broader view of naturalism (as a bit more elaborate than a dictionary and a tad more credible than Wikipedia) is Encyclopedia Britannica: >>Naturalism, in philosophy, a theory that relates scientific method to philosophy by affirming that all beings and events in the universe (whatever their inherent character may be) are Read More…
On the absurdity of “naturalism” (and the equal absurdity of its censorship of science and education)
A little while ago, UD’s News noted on the tenth anniversary of Louisiana’s science education law, and an exchange has developed on the significance of “methodological” and “philosophical” “naturalism” in science, education — and by implication society. A crucial issue is the July 2000 statement of the US National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) on science Read More…
A note on eugenics, social darwinism and evolutionary theory
Notoriously, the Second International Congress on Eugenics [1921] defined Eugenics as the self-direction of human evolution and saw eugenics as applied evolutionary science with intellectual, logical and factual roots in several linked branches of science, medicine and scholarship. If you doubt this, simply examine the logo to the right. Perhaps the best summary of the Read More…
Sev’s IOU on how conscious mind will be explained on materialistic premises
In the Eugene Wigner thread, frequent objector Sev argues to BA77: Sev, 23: >>Yes, the hard problem of consciousness is explaining what it is and how it arises from the physical brain and we don’t have such an explanation as yet. The evidence for consciousness arising from the brain lies in the strong correlation between Read More…
BO’H asks: “aren’t the axioms that mathematicians assume subjective? (they may be rational, but they’re not the only possible axioms that could be used)”
This is yet another significant issue that emerges from the ongoing exchanges on subjectivity, objectivity, possibility of objective moral truth, etc. And, the deep interconnectedness of what we are discussing is proving quite fruitful. So, I think it is useful to now headline Bob’s remark in the rebooting ethics education thread, which ties in Mathematics. Read More…