We are not incapable. It takes effort. Serious, conscious effort. The questions is: What is true? What do "I" know by "my" experience in Life to be True?

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Originally posted by Capitalizt Science does need a foundation of logic. Logic presupposes a the knowledge that A is A..that reality exists, has a specific nature, and we are capable of understanding it.

This sounds like Objectivist (Randian) silliness. Am I on the right track?

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To hold one of the "reality exists outside our capacity of understanding" philosophies would make the whole idea of science meaningless.

Not really, all you need for science is the ability to measure and predict the stuff you perceive. It does not matter whether you think that stuff is "ultimately real," maybe a meaningless phrase anyway.

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles This sounds like Objectivist (Randian) silliness. Am I on the right track?

Actually it is based on Aristotelian "silliness".

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Not really, all you need for science is the ability to measure and predict the stuff you perceive. It does not matter whether you think that stuff is "ultimately real," maybe a meaningless phrase anyway.

You must accept that things are "real" before you engage in any scientific pursuit. Otherwise, what would be the point? I don't think you will find many scientists today who believe what they are observing or studying might be all in their head..something that can disappear at any moment, or be perceived differently by another person. To hold a belief that reality is non-objective is to destroy the foundation of the scientific method.

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Originally posted by Capitalizt Actually it is based on Aristotelian "silliness". You must accept that things are "real" before you engage in any scientific pursuit. Otherwise, what would be the point? I don't think you will find many scientists today who believe what they are observing or studying might be all in their head..something that can disappear at any moment, or be perceived differently by another person. To hold a belief that reality is non-objective is to destroy the foundation of the scientific method.

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Originally posted by Lomeli "The search for Reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings, for it destroys the world in which you live." Throw out everything you know and see what's left.

No use in talking. I'm done.

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles I'm not even sure any of this stuff makes sense.

I agree with you here, though I think its mystical pretensions are primarily to blame for making it borderline unintelligible.

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles The idea that science has to have a philosophical foundation before proceeding with its work is rubbish dreamed up by philosophers trying to make themselves look important.

I think you forgot the fact that I'm not a philosopher

In linguistics, at least, most revolutions that happened since the 20^th century had clear philosophical influences: Saussure's opposition system (the core of his sctructuralism) was inspired by J.S. Mill, for example, and Chomskian thought harks back to both Descartes' and Plato' rationalism (even if it's in a rather unorthodox fashion).

As a matter of fact, I've never read a book in my own field (Linguistic Typology) that didn't cite Peirce as a foundational figure, and I'm deeply indebted to John Searle and J.L. Austin for making my current work on speech acts possible.

As for all other fields, it's not easy to dismiss the Renaissance and its ideas of progress as a direct influence on Darwin (though, unlike the humanists from the Renaissance, he didn't think there was a goal in evolution); Isaac Newton was outstandingly moved by Christian philosophy, as physics seems to account by just 20% of all his work; and, lest we forget, psychology has just branched out of philosophy a hundred years ago (Freud was an avid reader of Nietzsche, William James became a philosopher himself, and even Wundt wrote a bit about philosophy).

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Originally posted by Capitalizt To hold a belief that reality is non-objective is to destroy the foundation of the scientific method.

The scientific method!? Wait, are you telling me it really exists? Whoa, what is it, people have been looking for it for ages!

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I'm not sure you understood what I wrote.

I didn't say that science is not influenced by philosophy, or that philosophers cannot do science and vice versa. I wrote against the specific idea that philosophy is in some sense prior to or necessary for science.

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Originally posted by we_R_DNA 1 + (-1) = 0 (1/2)+(1/2) + (-1) = 0 Two opposite combine to give zero which can be understood mathematically in infinitely many ways.

0101010001101000011000010111010000100111011100110010000001110111011010000111100100100000011110010110
1111011101010010000001100100011011110110111000100111011101000010000001101101011010010111100000100000
0111100101101111011101010111001000100000011011010110010101110100011000010111000001101000011011110111
00100111001100101110

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles I'm not sure you understood what I wrote. I didn't say that science is not influenced by philosophy, or that philosophers cannot do science and vice versa. I wrote against the specific idea that philosophy is in some sense prior to or necessary for science.

But it is to some extent.

If you're saying philosophy isn't some sort of queen of the sciences, as the Logical Positivists wanted it to be, then yes, I agree. But, we can't do much without it either. We need to start from a set of assumptions, even if they're a naïve realism of some sort. If philosophers didn't do any philosophy, scientists would have to do it themselves, because philosophy is to science what physics is to baseball.

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Originally posted by Lira The scientific method!? Wait, are you telling me it really exists?

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Originally posted by Lomeli No use in talking. I'm done.

Whats the problem Lomeli? You've granted that reality is absolute. But you believe our perceptions of it somehow don't count because they are subjective? This may be true to some extent but the fact remains that humans ARE capable of perceiving reality objectively. Doing so simply requires conscious attention and a logical thought process. A scientist in America and a scientist in Japan will both come to the same conclusion in the same experiment provided they interpret the same data correctly. The reality of the experiment is absolute and the data received is an absolute. If their conclusions differ depending on how they interpret the data, this does not change the facts of reality or make the experiment meaningless. If they reach different verdicts, one is necessarily true and one is false. Reality (being the only absolute) is the final arbiter and the correct conclusion can be proven by means of logic.

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Originally posted by Capitalizt

*sits and waits for explanation of what the one and only scientific method must be like*

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