Evolutionist goes CRAZY when Ken Ham says This | Reacteria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcg8u5g9Y4k
@Peppermint Gal It seems to have escaped your notice that I am speaking from the premise that religion, and subsequently philosophy in the Cartesian tradition, have undermined science as an epistemology; a method and body of knowledge.
Your four comments; written without reply - are difficult to get on the same page. They are extremely unpleasant and aggressive, without making any particular point in sufficient depth, or with reference to the argument I'm making. It's just a lot of appeals to authority and other strawmen.
You write: "Also certainty is measured in relative terms. And for a simple reason, one that has been echoed down the ages by philosophers of much greater stature than yours, including Plato, (calling Plato a philosopher of greater stature than you, by the way, is explicitly an insult): that you cannot ever rule out the possibility you are actually a brain in a jar. Call that "subjectivism" if you like, everyone else simply considers it a plain, mundane truth. God, you sound so pretentious. Go back to reddit."
Yes, that's subjectivism - from Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy, written while Galileo was on trial for the heresy of proving earth orbits the sun - using an early formulation of scientific method. I discussed earlier how Descartes method of radical doubt is unsound, because it falls afoul of Occam's Razor - in that assuming a demon is deceiving him is a far greater, and less likely assumption to make than the assumption that objective reality exists - and is known via the senses.
It would not have been available to Descartes; but evolutionary theory requires that the senses are sufficiently accurate to reality to allow for survival. This does not mean they are comprehensive of reality, only that a surviving organism's relation to reality must necessarily be basically valid.
Your write: "Science as a means to prove rather than to falsify has long been known to produce a fallacy called The Black Swan Fallacy. Popper's Criteria settled the issue by showing that science falsifies, it does not prove. This also allowed us to diagnose the exact issue with a number of fields of psychology in particular, (namely Freudian, Jungian, and Evolutionary psychology.) Its been an invaluable meta scientific tool. Metascience has moved beyond you. Sorry. Please tell me this isn't some hairbrained attempt to revive the excesses of materialism. Last I heard someone say this kind of horse ****, they claimed Kant was anti-enlightenment values. Y'know, Immanuel Kant, the poster child of... *The Enlightenment.* "
I contend that science is proven by function i.e. it's true because it works, and it works because it's true. Thus Popper is wrong to argue that there's no such thing as scientific proof; clearly there is, because scientific knowledge can be applied to create technologies that function - and function better the closer the technology approximates the underlying scientific principles.
This seemingly obvious argument is mysteriously absent from philosophy; from Descartes to Popper to John Dupre - they are all, almost without exception dedicated to showing how science doesn't know anything. "But it moves!" The whole of Western philosophy since Descartes batters and belittles science - even as it surrounds us with technological miracles. Does that not seem incongruous to you?
The Problem of Induction, as the Black Swan Fallacy is often referred to - describes the impossibility of proving a statement such as 'all swans are white' against the possibility of falsifying such a statement. While logically valid the argument suffers from the fact that 'all swans are white' is a very poor scientific hypothesis. Scientists don't generally go in for sweeping generalisations; but are rather extremely specific in what they claim the experimental data demonstrates. Nor do scientists begin with a sweeping generalisation, and try to prove it - moving left to right through this process without ever looking back. They will vary the parameters of the hypothesis with regard to the data, and seek further data to explore connotations of the hypothesis - moving backward and forward through this process to zero in on what can be proven.
You write: "Also "subjectivism" isn't a philosophy. Neither is objectivism. Tell Ayn Rand to shove it, she knew jack **** about philosophy."
Subjectivism is a foundational concept of modern philosophy; Descartes is considered the Father of Modern Philosophy. Ayn Rand was controversial because she rejected this tradition. Atlas Shrugged is an interesting book, but I didn't read it until long after I had already started down this road. For me, all this begins with reading Descartes - and realising he was a contemporary of Galileo; who withdrew a work on physics from publication when Galileo was arrested, and wrote Meditations as an act of intellectual cowardice. Galileo spent the rest of his life under house arrest, while Descartes was appointed to the Royal Court of Queen Christina of Sweden. (They disliked eachother and Descartes died of a cold soon after his arrival, but still - the messaging was pretty clear. Blow smoke up the **** of the Church and divinely appointed pan European monarchy, or else!)
You write: "If I sound hostile, it's because I am sick, and also, because I am hostile. **** the world, and **** people who think subjectivist philosophy was ever a proper category and not simply a term used by that hack fraud Ayn Rand to launch an attack on whatever philosophy she felt was anathema to her bizarre, eclectic, elitist political beliefs. Every philosopher ever has acknowledged the importance of both subjectivity and objectivity. The former is that arising from cognition, the latter is that which does not. Simple as that."
Again, this is extremely unpleasant and aggressive, without making any particular point in sufficient depth, or with reference to the argument I'm making. All I'm getting here is that "you know better" - because ....name drop, vague allusion to argument, insult, insult, without any apparent need to explain what you think that argument implies with regard to mine. I make this argument because I believe recognising the truth value of science is necessary to secure the continued existence of the human species; and it is not cruel truth either, but the scientifically and technologically realistic hope of a far more prosperous and sustainable future - blocked by subjectivist and ideological misconception.