Philosophy Discussion Forums

Hereandnow wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 9:46 am The disadvantage lies in, first, the plain fact that ontology simply goes deeper than empirical analysis and the point is to try to find what this bottom line really is in ontology, and second, science as a foundational ontology creates, as all such ideas, an interpretative bias toward what science says in all things.

You still haven't shown any sort of disadvantage to giving science a preferred status when the goal is understanding the nature of the universe. I see a lot of hand-waving, but nothing concrete.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 9:46 am
One may say, well, science has this matter of the nature of thought, affectivity, ethics, knowledge well in hand, but within such a claim is a general dimissal of things that are there, in the fabric of the world, metaethical questions,existential questions, religious questions, and the like.

Nobody literally dismisses those issues. Smart folks just realize that discussing them rationally sometimes requires tools that aren't in the scientific toolbox. This is not a a big deal.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 9:46 amIf it were a matter of solving problems science has set for itself, then there is no doubt that science has no competition. Step out of these scientific themes and move into ethics, religion, existential crises, care, anxiety, mystery, (keep in mind that while Wittgenstein would not about foundational mysteries, metavalue, he certainly put these unspeakables in his thesis) structures of experience, and so on, and there is a new sense of revelation.

You could have been less lofty and vague and just written that "Step out of these scientific themes and you need different tools."

Hereandnow wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 9:46 am Because the world is infinitely more interesting than anyone can imagine if all there is is what would call the implicit nihilism of scientific theory in forming a philosophical ontology.

A. So your entire point appears to be subjective and aesthetic. Many of the rest of us just have different aesthetic values.

B. Scientific theory is not nihilistic.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 9:46 am I would turn the question back to you: If you disagree with the above, then you must think that science IS a proper source (not method, for method is not in question here) for the kind of foundational thinking I have been talking about.

I don't think anything is the proper source of the kind of foundational thinking you have been talking about, because the questions you are asking and answers you are seeking seem to be vaguely defined, by design, and therefore utterly beyond hope. Any kind of philosophical discussion that ventures into ill defined, vague territory without any hope of solving genuine, real problems for actual human beings means nothing to me, so science is foundation enough.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 9:46 am I would ask you to tell me how its paradigms address the expanse and depth of being human.

They don't. They aren't supposed to.

pre-scientific view of the universe.
https://minmaxsunt.files.wordpress.com/ ... _small.gif

What science gives us
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/VXoYEq8mSPM/hqdefault.jpg
https://www.space.com/images/i/000/009/ ... 1306819474
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hWiHgj1yhJ4/maxresdefault.jpg

Obviously the world is so much more interesting than science can portray

Sculptor1 wrote

Science only describes the world and in that description explanations emerge.
But what else is there?
There is no explanation for things in general what ever that means.
WHy are "THEY" to whom you refer? Without some sort of evidence you are just trying to caricature "some people", unspecified.
At least science extropolates from evidence. That is maybe something you could take from science?

There used to be such explanations. They were called religions, and everyone assumed there was a metaphysical foundation to all things, even if they couldn't spell the word; it was there, always already there: a meaning to meaning, if you will. We are cut loose now, many or most, but the religious dimension of our existence which made public religions necessary in the first place cannot be dismissed. This cutting loose is a very good thing, no doubt, but what are we cut loose into? If the science that gave rise to the collective disillusionment were to be carried to its explanatory conclusion, then nihilism ensues--- epistemological, ethical, and across the board.

My argument is that this only comes about in the error that comes out of turning science into a foundational ontology.

A lot of your comments would find their responses in the my post to Faustus5 just prior to this one. You mean WHO are they? It is an assumption based on reading what people say and observing the bias in their thoughts, a bias they don't even know they have. And I don't think it is wrong at all to say in this post modern age where religion and tradition is slipping away, there is nothing to fill that space. See Simon Critchley's Very Little..Almost Nothing for a more complete examination of this.

A bold statement, with nothing behind it.

As a rule, it is a good idea to read an entire post before commenting. Questions like this are often answered further on.

You seem to be struggling here.

It is unfamiliar to you, I know. This kind of thinking has a massive background, granted, BUT: If you follow the ideas as they are stated and give them their "due diligence" if you will, you will find they make sense. If you make an observation in the world, what IS an observation as such? I mean, a scientist does not ask such a question, yet there the question is. This is an ontological question, for it asks one to look closely at the structure of experience itself, an apriori investigation.
Religion, theology have taken a serious back seat to human understanding in our "age (or post age)of reason" and science is a bit like a deer in headlights staring into the abyss. All it can do (and should do) is turn its back to foundational matters, and the job is left to philosophy (the one true religion). If philosophy is conceived as still grounded in science, it spectacularly misses the point. The point is to recover the ground left open by religion an a way of sound logical thinking. Unfortunately, soundness depends on premises being true, and this kind of truth gets unclear, problematic in existential matters. But so what? A positivist's clarity is simply a residuum of science's need for precision. This is one part of my complaint, and a big one: our world gets very interesting, even revelatory, beneath the skin of science's assumptions.

It's amusing to me that you think you know "the only true foundation", but have failed to demonstrate what that is, and why it might be better than verifiablity and falsification.

No problem, keep in mind that the very brief ideas put forth here so far are in themselves compelling, but it does take some interpretative reach. Here is my painfully concise response to Gertie. There are flaws, one or two. E.g., the irreducibility of ANY notion is really another issue, and veyr hard to talk about.

Regarding the serious request:

To establish a truly foundational ontology, one has to look where things that assume a foundation have there implicit assumptions. All science is a construct of language and logic before it is ever even gets to constructing tests tubes and telescopes, so the question then is, what is language and logic? the OP says these belong to experience, and experience has a structure, and this structure is one of time. Past, present future. Thought and its "method" has a temporal structure, the anticipating of results when specified conditions are in place (hence, the success in repeatedly tying my shoes properly). Science is, technically speaking, all about what-will-happen if there is this, or that in place, or if one does this or that. Science doesn't have a problem; we ARE the scientific method in a very real way, in every anticipation of our lives there is a history of a learned associations between what we do and what will happen. This is what cognition is.

Time is the foundation of Being, but it is not Einstein's time (an empirical concept based on observation) but structural time, the structure of Being itself in the experience that produces existence, OUR existence, that is, which is a temporal one. time that structures our experience is not beyond experience and Einstein conceived of relativity in the temporally structured world of experience. Outside of this structure this time does not exist (unless it is in some other such experientially structured time, as with God, but this is an arbitrary idea).

Science's failure to be sufficient for philosophical thinking is not in the method, but in the content. I mean, even if I went full subjective into the deep recesses of my interiority and actually found God and the soul, this would be IN time, in an ability to anticipate the next moment, bring up memories, see that the usual is not the case here in order to have a contextual setting that I can recognize God as God. The rub lies with science's paradigms that are exclusively specialized and empirical and ignore the phenomenon of experience as it is. It takes parts of experience and reifies them into being-foundations. To me this is akin to taking knitting, a specialized "part" as well, and defining the existence in terms of the yarn and needle.

Philosophy is supposed to take the most basic and inclusive perspective in which one has pulled away from the "parts" and attempts to be about the whole, and the whole is experience structured in time, and then the matter turns to WHAT is there. Everything. Nothing excluded: love affairs, hatreds, our anxieties, our ethics, tragedies, and so on: all conceived structurally in time and as the WHAT of existence. All is, to use a strange term, equiprimorlial, meaning no one is reducible to any other. Our affairs are not reducible to physical realities, but physical realities belong to a specialized language scientists use, or we all use in a casual way. Evolution is not in any way held suspect, to give an example. It is a very compelling theory. But other actualities are not reducible to this, do not have their explanatory basis in this.

It is science's hegemony that leads us to a position that denies the world's "parts" their rightful ontological status. And if any hegemony should rise, it should be based on what it IS, its "presence" as an irreducible actuality. Of course, this is the presence of affectivity (affect), the very essence of meaning itself.

Faustus5 wrote
Nobody literally dismisses those issues. Smart folks just realize that discussing them rationally sometimes requires tools that aren't in the scientific toolbox. This is not a a big deal.

Then I am glad i ran into a smart folk like you. Tell me, how do smart folks deal with such things? Not a tough question for you since it is, after all, not a big deal.

You could have been less lofty and vague and just written that "Step out of these scientific themes and you need different tools."

I had to look back at what I wrote. THAT is lofty and vague??? Look, it's not. I write the way I write.

A. So your entire point appears to be subjective and aesthetic. Many of the rest of us just have different aesthetic values.

B. Scientific theory is not nihilistic.

Again, I am glad you brought this forward. How is scientific theory not nihilistic? That is, what is there in the empirical examination of the world that generates a metaethics? For nihilism IS a metaphysical thesis. It goes to the meaning of meaning, the value of value. At the more mundane level of thinking, there is meaning and knowledge and free wielding engagement. but the matters being raised here have to with taking such affairs AS ontologically foundational.

No, it's not about irreconcilable differences, as when someone likes one thing while another does not, at all. It is a claim that goes to what it is to be culturally led astray. This philosophy forum reeks of positivism. It is an error that needs correcting.
I don't think anything is the proper source of the kind of foundational thinking you have been talking about, because the questions you are asking and answers you are seeking seem to be vaguely defined, by design, and therefore utterly beyond hope. Any kind of philosophical discussion that ventures into ill defined, vague territory without any hope of solving genuine, real problems for actual human beings means nothing to me, so science is foundation enough.


No, no, no. There is a LOT out there. You are just dismissive because your education is philosophically, ontologically rudderless, and this is because you don't read beyond science into science's and experience's underpinnings. Read Kant, Kierkegaard, Hegel (of whom I know less than others), Husserl, Fink, Levinas, Blanchot, Henry, Nancy (the French are extraordinary) Heidegger, Husserl, even Derrida, and others. THIS is where philosophy gets interesting.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 1:19 am This kind of thinking doesn't even provide the proper starting place for a true explanatory basis of the world. One has to ignore what science says, that is, suspend this (epoche) and look to what science presupposes in order to get to a foundation.

plain fact that ontology simply goes deeper than empirical analysis and the point is to try to find what this bottom line really is in ontology

But ontology has no bottom line, there is no foundation. We just wish there was one. All human explanation is deep down inherently circular and descriptive.

We can merely come up with more and more accurate circular descriptions of the known existence. And the scientific process, though pretty one-sided and instrumentalist, has helped tremendously to see more clearly.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 12:38 pm
Then I am glad i ran into a smart folk like you. Tell me, how do smart folks deal with such things? Not a tough question for you since it is, after all, not a big deal.

You already know the answer, don't play coy. On this we both agree--science has, at best, a very limited contribution to make when the issues being discussed involve ethical, political, or aesthetic values.

Just about everyone knows this, so you are wasting time and space pretending there is a huge problem here.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 12:38 pm Again, I am glad you brought this forward. How is scientific theory not nihilistic?

Nihilism is a specific conclusion that can only be drawn within non-scientific kinds of discourse. I don't know what kinds of points you think you are scoring by playing these kinds of games.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 12:38 pm That is, what is there in the empirical examination of the world that generates a metaethics?

Nothing. Time to move on.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 12:38 pm This philosophy forum reeks of positivism. It is an error that needs correcting.

If you were actually talking about positivism, that would be something, but you aren't.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 12:38 pm
You are just dismissive because your education is philosophically, ontologically rudderless. . .

No, I just have very different rudders than you.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 12:38 pm THIS is where philosophy gets interesting.

I have no interest at all in any of those folks. None whatsoever.

Gertie wrote
I struggled a bit forming a (to me) coherent clear idea of your basic claim and supporting arguments. Rather than pick over the whole thing, it's perhaps simplest to focus on this part which is where you seem to end up -

All I can say beyond this is, why not do what I did several years back? Get a nice readable copy of Heidegger's Being and Time (Macquarrie's translation the one I know), set a side significant time, and just decide you are going to read this and understand what he is saying. The internet is a wealth of helpful commentary. If you like, I can send you many pdf papers, books. Once you are IN IT, and you start to understand Heidegger's phenomenology, you will see what these ideas are really about. You will have to read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, too, though. Then Husserl, then so many.

I am by no means a scholar on this. I read, I write with pretty good understanding, and this is all I want. See Lev Shestov's All Things Are Possible: philosophy should be a real engagement that begins with a wonder and bewilderment and anxiety about what it means to be here at all, thrown into a world. See Kierkegaard's poor sap in Repetition. One of my favorites:

I stick my finger into the world—it has no
smell. Where am I? What does it mean to say: the world?
What is the meaning of that word? Who tricked me into this
whole thing and leaves me standing here? Who am I? How
did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it, why
was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust
into the ranks as if I had been bought from a peddling
shanghaier21 of human beings? How did I get involved in
this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to
be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say
about this.

It is not a world of science we are thrown into, but a world of nightmares, loves, powerful with meaning. Philosophy is the pursuit of meaning, not propositional knowledge.

OK this I think I understand, and hopefully is the gist of your position. I'm taking this to be your claim re the actual ontological state of affairs.

But I would call this monist idealism. Only experience (structured in time) exists. The universe does not independently exist as a thing in itself, only as an experiential state. It's not just a claim that we experiencing beings can only KNOW about the universe in the form of experience, the claim is that only experience exists. Yes?


If so, how do you escape solipsism - or don't you?

If not, if your ontology includes what we call bodies an brains and trees and rocks, then further justification is required. If that is the case, can you clearly and concisely spell that justification out?

It is very clear that experience is put together with an in and an out. There is that over there, and I am here. Heidegger, I remember, says, in effect: what is space? It is under the couch, over the mountain, round the house, just beyond that hill, next the car, and so on. Our language is, at the level of ontology, interpretative, meaning is what language does, and beyond this, there is only an openness, the ability of language to create further disclosure possibilities. To speak of things that are not qualified in any way by what words, history, culture can say is impossible. This is whywe have terms like ineffability or transcendence. when you look at an object, it is always, already laden with interpretation; that's what it means to be an object. But there is this openness, this frontier where language seeks, makes metaphors and poeticizes the world. Heidegger thought that through history, metaphysics has undone this primordial intimacy with our being here. He is all about this alienation from something the Greeks perhaps in part had. Others after Heidegger, take up this extraordinary ability we have to encounter the world ontologically, a stepping OUT of the normal range of meaning making, and beholding the world in wonder and anxiety.

I don't have all of this perfectly right, but so what? A lot of it is, and is you take up reading existentialism, we can talk about it. I am reading Being and Time for the second time right now.

As to solipsism, the world is hermeneutically conceived. All terms are to be understood as part of a work in progress of human dasein. There are no absolutes, but in our system of thought and judgment and meaning, there is that which is not me, there are others, other people, other things; we are surrounded by others. What is otherness? the meaning lies the language about others, which is interpretative in nature. I say you,over there, where is the other one you were with? We have massive language orientation for talking about others, but the foundational ontology is interpretative, not subjective. All of this otherness around us is there as otherness, and this is contained in the interpretative possibilities.

The old fashioned way to think about the world, the dualisms, the competing ontologies, all yield to a phenomenological, hermeneutical, ontology. In themselves, things all around us are unspeakable. BUT, and this is the BIG and fascinating thing about how works, and it is not Heidegger, but Levinas and other post Heideggerians: In this interpretative field before us, what is intimated non linguisitically (though we do understand that linguistics is, as all terms, an interpretative affair) is, to use Kiekegaard's term, actuality, and while we cannot say what this really is (which would be a like looking into the rational mind of God) we experience it qualitatively, and these qualities are affective in nature, the caring, loving, valuing and so on. this is a dimension of Being that looks beyond. to see how this goes, see Levinas' totality and Infinity. A tough read by any standard, but totally worth it.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑August 19th, 2020, 9:06 am ...
All this means that when science makes its moves to "say" what the world is, it is only right within the scope of its field. But philosophy, which is the most open field, has no business yielding to this any more than to knitting "science" or masonry. Philosophy is all inclusive theory, and the attempt to fit such a thing into a scientific paradigm is simply perverse.

Science: know your place! It is not philosophy.

This has been an outstanding thread in every respect: topic, theme, thesis, discussion. Kudos to all involved.
Philosophical laurels to Hereandnow not only for his formidable defense of philosophy but also for his maintenance of the high level of discussion.

I believe the following paper is on point.
I post it for the enjoyment of my fellow members.

Natural philosophy redux
The great split between science and philosophy must be repaired. Only then can we answer the urgent, fundamental problems

There are decisive grounds for holding that we need to bring about a revolution in philosophy, a revolution in science, and then put the two together again to create a modern version of natural philosophy.

Once upon a time, it was not just that philosophy was a part of science; rather, science was a branch of philosophy. We need to remember that modern science began as natural philosophy – a development of philosophy, an admixture of philosophy and science. Today, we think of Galileo, Johannes Kepler, William Harvey, Robert Boyle, Christiaan Huygens, Robert Hooke, Edmond Halley and, of course, Isaac Newton as trailblazing scientists, while we think of Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz as philosophers. That division is, however, something we impose on the past. It is profoundly anachronistic.

At the time, they would all have thought of themselves as natural philosophers.

Read more here:
https://aeon.co/essays/bring-back-scien ... philosophy

Consul wrote:Ornithology is useful to birds because ornithological knowledge is useful to bird conservation.

Fair point. By the way, I don't personally agree with Feynman on that.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 1:49 pm

Gertie wrote
I struggled a bit forming a (to me) coherent clear idea of your basic claim and supporting arguments. Rather than pick over the whole thing, it's perhaps simplest to focus on this part which is where you seem to end up -

All I can say beyond this is, why not do what I did several years back? Get a nice readable copy of Heidegger's Being and Time (Macquarrie's translation the one I know), set a side significant time, and just decide you are going to read this and understand what he is saying. The internet is a wealth of helpful commentary. If you like, I can send you many pdf papers, books. Once you are IN IT, and you start to understand Heidegger's phenomenology, you will see what these ideas are really about. You will have to read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, too, though. Then Husserl, then so many.

I am by no means a scholar on this. I read, I write with pretty good understanding, and this is all I want. See Lev Shestov's All Things Are Possible: philosophy should be a real engagement that begins with a wonder and bewilderment and anxiety about what it means to be here at all, thrown into a world. See Kierkegaard's poor sap in Repetition. One of my favorites:

I stick my finger into the world—it has no
smell. Where am I? What does it mean to say: the world?
What is the meaning of that word? Who tricked me into this
whole thing and leaves me standing here? Who am I? How
did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it, why
was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust
into the ranks as if I had been bought from a peddling
shanghaier21 of human beings? How did I get involved in
this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to
be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say
about this.

It is not a world of science we are thrown into, but a world of nightmares, loves, powerful with meaning. Philosophy is the pursuit of meaning, not propositional knowledge.

OK this I think I understand, and hopefully is the gist of your position. I'm taking this to be your claim re the actual ontological state of affairs.

But I would call this monist idealism. Only experience (structured in time) exists. The universe does not independently exist as a thing in itself, only as an experiential state. It's not just a claim that we experiencing beings can only KNOW about the universe in the form of experience, the claim is that only experience exists. Yes?


If so, how do you escape solipsism - or don't you?

If not, if your ontology includes what we call bodies an brains and trees and rocks, then further justification is required. If that is the case, can you clearly and concisely spell that justification out?

It is very clear that experience is put together with an in and an out. There is that over there, and I am here. Heidegger, I remember, says, in effect: what is space? It is under the couch, over the mountain, round the house, just beyond that hill, next the car, and so on. Our language is, at the level of ontology, interpretative, meaning is what language does, and beyond this, there is only an openness, the ability of language to create further disclosure possibilities. To speak of things that are not qualified in any way by what words, history, culture can say is impossible. This is whywe have terms like ineffability or transcendence. when you look at an object, it is always, already laden with interpretation; that's what it means to be an object. But there is this openness, this frontier where language seeks, makes metaphors and poeticizes the world. Heidegger thought that through history, metaphysics has undone this primordial intimacy with our being here. He is all about this alienation from something the Greeks perhaps in part had. Others after Heidegger, take up this extraordinary ability we have to encounter the world ontologically, a stepping OUT of the normal range of meaning making, and beholding the world in wonder and anxiety.

I don't have all of this perfectly right, but so what? A lot of it is, and is you take up reading existentialism, we can talk about it. I am reading Being and Time for the second time right now.

As to solipsism, the world is hermeneutically conceived. All terms are to be understood as part of a work in progress of human dasein. There are no absolutes, but in our system of thought and judgment and meaning, there is that which is not me, there are others, other people, other things; we are surrounded by others. What is otherness? the meaning lies the language about others, which is interpretative in nature. I say you,over there, where is the other one you were with? We have massive language orientation for talking about others, but the foundational ontology is interpretative, not subjective. All of this otherness around us is there as otherness, and this is contained in the interpretative possibilities.

The old fashioned way to think about the world, the dualisms, the competing ontologies, all yield to a phenomenological, hermeneutical, ontology. In themselves, things all around us are unspeakable. BUT, and this is the BIG and fascinating thing about how works, and it is not Heidegger, but Levinas and other post Heideggerians: In this interpretative field before us, what is intimated non linguisitically (though we do understand that linguistics is, as all terms, an interpretative affair) is, to use Kiekegaard's term, actuality, and while we cannot say what this really is (which would be a like looking into the rational mind of God) we experience it qualitatively, and these qualities are affective in nature, the caring, loving, valuing and so on. this is a dimension of Being that looks beyond. to see how this goes, see Levinas' totality and Infinity. A tough read by any standard, but totally worth it.

I like the notion of stripping away assumptions and trying to approach the nature of experience afresh, and I agree that this is all that is directly known, the experience itself. The nature of of what the experience is 'about', the 'external other', can not be known in that first person way.

So science has to rely on different criteria to create working models of what our experience is about, what the contents of experience refer to, where meaning and mattering fit in. And the place where it gets stuck - how phenomenal experience it might arise. Which leaves open the possibility that experience is fundamental . (Tho physicalists - not physics which has no place for experience in its model - have a preference for material stuff as fundamental and experience as reducible, being somehow an emergent or other property of material stuff).

I don't think this is, or need be, difficult to understand, or particularly controversial. Even the scientific findings themselves suggest our methods of attributing qualities (like material stuff, gravity or whatever) come from a way of experiencing those things which is rooted in evolutionary utility from a limited first person pov, not an all knowing god's eye point of view.

But a phenomenological methodology only reliant on internal introspection about the nature of experience has problems too. It is open to solipsism (any talk of 'we experience...' is an unfounded assumption), the problem of blurring knowledge with the actual state of affairs, and the blindingly obvious problem of bias. So a methodology which assumes experience is a perfect god's eye access to all that is actual/real/exists is also unwarranted.

So while each methodology, internal reflection and external modelling based on the contents of our perceptions, reasoning, etc, can potentially each 'contain' the other, neither has clear justification to do so or claim primacy. Which is a bit whacky. But to me, that's not necessarily beyond explanation. But it certainly requires an ontological explanation. That's the ontological dilemma I think we're in.

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 8:19 am Science only describes the world and in that description explanations emerge.

Science describes the physical world, yes.

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 8:19 am But what else is there?

To us, there is a mental world, which is perhaps most clearly seen as our social world. The world of news, politics, fashion, drama, entertainment and the internet; the world in which we all seem to live our lives. The physical world is almost a mute backdrop to the world of Justin Bieber, #BlackLivesMatter and JK Rowling. This may not be accurate from many perspectives, but it is the reality of life for most of us (those who are not too poor to be part of it). That's 'what else there is'.

As regards the general hegemony of science, here are links to a couple of articles that illustrate, in the particular case of CoViD-19, how there is a lot more to it than just science. A claim to be 'following the science' is absurd. Medical science has much to contribute, agreed, but so has economics, politics, media-pressure, and the immense difficulty of putting plans into practice in the real world. Here are the links.

scientists-criticise-uk-government-over-following-the-science

following-the-science-in-the-covid-19-pandemic

This is just one example of science not being the whole answer to a particular problem. There are many more. Because of the spectacular success of science, I assume, science is regularly applied in situations where it is neither relevant or helpful. This detracts unfairly from science, and impacts unfairly on all of us. The hegemony of science is perhaps most obvious in philosophy forums, where it is touted by objectivists/sciencists as the only acceptable tool for the investigation of life, the universe and everything. There is nothing at all wrong with science, but it is not the one and only universal means of learning. I believe that's what this thread is trying to illustrate. But I've been wrong before....

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑August 25th, 2020, 10:20 am

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 8:19 am Science only describes the world and in that description explanations emerge.

Science describes the physical world, yes.

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑August 24th, 2020, 8:19 am But what else is there?

To us, there is a mental world, which is perhaps most clearly seen as our social world. The world of news, politics, fashion, drama, entertainment and the internet; the world in which we all seem to live our lives. The physical world is almost a mute backdrop to the world of Justin Bieber, #BlackLivesMatter and JK Rowling. This may not be accurate from many perspectives, but it is the reality of life for most of us (those who are not too poor to be part of it). That's 'what else there is'.

That's your internal world which is not examinable except by your persistence to keep on about it. Science if it has hegemony or not does not stop you nor does it interfere with you doing that.
So nothing else to examine the actual world.

We might do better discussion the absurd hegemony of Social media and fake news that plagues the world