Science doesn't deal in proof, it deals in the weight of evidence. All scientific conclusions are provisional. A scientific conclusion is one that can be tested and is potentially falsifiable by experiment. Science rests on arguments from evidence, not arguments from authority.
“The Metaphysics of Quality subscribes to what is called empiricism. It claims that all legitimate human knowledge arises from the senses or by thinking about what the senses provide. Most empiricists deny the validity of any knowledge gained through imagination, authority, tradition, or purely theoretical reasoning. They regard fields such as art, morality, religion, and metaphysics as unverifiable. The Metaphysics of Quality varies from this by saying that the values of art and morality and even religious mysticism are verifiable, and that in the past they have been excluded for metaphysical reasons, not empirical reasons. They have been excluded because of the metaphysical assumption that all the universe is composed of subjects and objects and anything that can’t be classified as a subject or an object isn’t real. There is no empirical evidence for this assumption at all. It is just an assumption.”
- Robert Pirsig
Pirsig has a lot more to say about this issue. See his book, Lila (excerpted above). It offers one very persuasive solution to this riddle.
I'm a great admirer of Pirsig. I used to teach a course on Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. What I found out later, however, was that many of its best ideas can be found in the writings of John Dewey, including the one you are quoting here. Check out "experience and nature" for more on this point.
Indeed, Pirsig is a descendant, I think, of the great American philosophers. He says as much in Lila, noting the similarity of the Metaphysics of Quality with William James. A course on Zen and the Art, good on ya. Only one PhD thesis I know about so far on the Metaphysics of Quality, not that we need any more degrees to explicate it.
Of course religion and science are and always have been in direct conflict. They are mutually exclusive, diametrically opposed ways of viewing the world and determining what to believe. Just to take one very clear, simple example, evolution by natural selection from its very beginnings met with overwhelming opposition from religious thought. That continues to this day. The idea that it hasn't is utterly absurd.
I think this largely misses the point. Science does not claim to “prove” anything fundamental about the nature of existence or our place in the universe. What it does do, however, is provide a means to predict with a high degree of certainty future outcomes based on specific inputs. This is how we have learned to treat complex human diseases, unlock the power of the atom, and so forth. And because those inputs can predict specific events, the process can be reversed to discover events in the distant past up to and including the big bang.
This knowledge is not absolute, however. It is tentative and also subject to change based on new facts or processes we learn about as we go on. For example, the Ptolemaic earth centered universe was very accurate in predicting the paths of the planets from a fixed vantage point, but useless to actually travel to them.
The inherent tentative nature of scientific truth cannot, by design, give our lives purpose or fixed meaning. This causes a lot of discomfort in many. Some turn to traditional religion, though religious belief in the 21st Century tends to be more performative than substantive. (Unlike the archaic Greeks we do not sacrifice virgins to ensure a safe space flight. We use science to figure out what went wrong and try to fix it for next time.) There are modern equivalents though: QAnon and the like seek to provide simple fixed answers in a maddeningly complex and indifferent world.
Nietzsche foresaw this and much of his philosophy is about how the world does not have fixed meanings - they change over time and between cultures. In other words, understanding the world requires going “Beyond Good and Evil.”
For him, a major part of what determines a so called “thinking” person is how much uncertainty one can tolerate. Some, like Polish resistance hero Witold Pilecki, an almost inhuman amount. Others, perhaps on the precipice of hunger and homelessness, not so much. Part of it is circumstantial, but part of it is also the ability to see the world without undue preconceptions.
Simply put, there are no simple or fixed answers. Only the struggle to make the meaning our limited perspectives allow.
I can understand the frustration. Recently some AI “tech bros” have made literally incredible claims that AI possesses consciousness and so forth. These are simply ignorant statements. Whether the bros actually believe this rot or simply mouth it for marketing purposes, or both, doesn’t make it in any way correct.
Unfortunately I have found both with the general public and in humanities departments at major universities critiques of science that simply don’t understand what science is, sometimes laughably so.
It does bear mentioning through science we have learned the we are not the center of the universe - far from it. We live on a small spec of matter that orbits an ordinary star that is one of trillions in the universe. It turns out that man is not the measure of all things, just a small and seemingly inconsequential part of it.
Roman paganism declined because it no longer gave meaning to a continent spanning empire made up of hundreds of languages and sub cultures. Eastern mystery cults emerged from this spiritual void with Christianity emerging as a new source of meaning and belief. After 1,700 years the old religion now struggles to give meaning to our lives. God, as a driving force in Western culture, is, as Neitszche stated, dead. What will replace it is as yet unknown.
There are no fixed answers, true. But scientific dogma claims to know the nature of the universe as fundamentally physical and to have sufficient information about it in its pocket to sideline consciousness as merely an epiphenomena of the physical world (Mike calls this Physicalism, I’d call it Philosophical Materialism). This is a metaphysical claim concealed by a denial that there is any metaphysics in the house. I don’t think Mike missed the point at all.
That’s simply a tautology: Science can only be concerned with understanding relationships between our sensory inputs, expanded as they are by instruments of our own devising. It makes no claims to anything else. Science is an extremely powerful tool for understanding physical phenomena, but as I said previously for you and Mike and many others that’s simply not enough to give meaning to our lives.
There may be extra sensory forces at play in the universe, but we can never know for certain. That is simply, as Kierkegaard famously stated, a “leap of faith.”
Many critics of science impute to science claims that science as a discipline does not make. I believe Mike is one of them.
ok, I disagree. I think what you're describing is what science was supposed to be, and is when it is minding its own business. But it is not just that in practice. It is also an ideology which enforces a worldview that is beyond its pay grade.
Galileo was not prosecuted for contradicting scripture. He was prosecuted because he was claiming that his theory was literally true, rather than merely a useful assumption for predicting the behavior of the heavens. The church did not want him to claim his theory was true until it was more solidly proven, because it did not want to go through the arduous process of reconciling scripture with his theory until the scientific community was certain that his theory was true. (It wasn't actually true in many of its details, as you pointed out). Galileo refused to describe his theory with the cautious terms the church preferred, and so they prosecuted him for that.
The fact that the church had this much power over scientific expression is a very bad thing, and we should all be grateful that it no longer has this kind of power. But unlike many Protestant denominations, the Catholic Church has always believed that whenever scripture is contradicted by science, the scripture must be reinterpreted so that it is compatible with science. That is why the work of Thomas Aquinas was so important, because it was reconciling church teachings with the best science of its time i.e. Aristotle.
September 5, 1774: The First Continental Congress convened.
(a weak government)
April 19, 1775: The start of the American Revolutionary War
(We are losing the war)
May 10, 1775: The Second Continental Congress
(unable to finance the war)
July 4, 1776: The Declaration of Independence was adopted.
(All states agree to leave England)
September 17, 1787: The Constitution was signed
On December 15, 1791, the Bill of Rights was ratified.
(The first 10 amendments to the Constitution)
(Thank you, AI)
My impression was that the northern states wanted the southern states to sign the new government agreement, and the southern states were not concerned whether the northern states signed. The northern states made concessions to the southern states to secure the southern states' ratification of the Constitution. The northern states made three ridiculous compromises to get the southern states to agree to sign the Constitution.
First, the Senate was established with each state having two senators, and it is called the upper house. This was a ridiculous compromise, an idea that still haunts us today. Two senators from a state with fewer than 500,000 voters can veto the interests of millions of voters in states that have millions of voters. In Congress, the Senate can control and nullify the actions of the House of Representatives, which has 435 members and better represents the voters. The Senate can veto the House's decisions, with small states having equal power to large states.
Why a Senate? Because the southern states knew that the northern states' population was greater than theirs, and that if decisions in this new government were made by population, they would have less power, the northern states agreed to the formation of the Senate, with each state having two senators. The Senate's control and power are evident in Mitch McConnell's blocking of Obama's request to fill a Supreme Court vacancy and in his waiting until Trump became president, allowing him to vote on a new Supreme Court justice. McConnell worked to delay and obstruct health care reform and banking reform, two of the most notable pieces of legislation that Democrats navigated through Congress early in Obama's tenure.
Second, the election of the president by the electoral college. Basically, a stupid idea. This idea germinated from the belief at the time that only the elite, educated, successful men should select the president, so each state should select men of that caliber to vote for the next president. What about us, voting adults living in America? Do we have any say in who our president should be? Why not a public election of the president? Again, shades of the future justification for the upper class of citizens, the wealthy, the billionaires, and the business owners' justification for taking all the profit from the business.
Third, not addressing the gorilla in the room, which is the question of slavery. Why is there no resolution about the issue of slavery? Why? Because the southern states would have left the convention, this was another concession to them.
Three concessions to the southern states that haunt us to this day.
Now, consider the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, adopted on July 4, 1776. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that their Creator endows them with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Thomas Jefferson primarily authored these ideas and drew heavily from John Locke. Still, they were never the belief of the Southern states, which held that black slaves were the “mudsill” necessary for the upper-level society to survive. This declaration is a nice statement, but not applicable to black slaves, women in society, the American Indian, and future immigrants of various colors, only to the white successful man.
Recently, at the Senate Judiciary meeting, Todd Blanche, Trump's personal lawyer, exemplified true Trumpism by lying, falsifying facts, and insulting the very nature of the Senate. Yet 50 Republicans from 25 states will approve his nomination as the next attorney general. These Republican states are not going away; they have been adversarial to the Democratic states and will be in the future. Do you think we can undo the Senate or stop the use of the electoral college with these Republican states still alive and active? I know the answer is no; we will never be free from their intervention.
An author I admire is Chris Armitage, who has a link titled "Existential Republic" and advocates implementing a soft secession to save our country from becoming an oligarchy. I respect his opinion, but I do not see how this would address the existence of the Senate, the Electoral College, and the interference of the southern Republicans; they are not going away, as was seen in the Todd Blanche hearing, where even after witnessing his insulting behavior, they still will confirm him as attorney general.
Science doesn't deal in proof, it deals in the weight of evidence. All scientific conclusions are provisional. A scientific conclusion is one that can be tested and is potentially falsifiable by experiment. Science rests on arguments from evidence, not arguments from authority.
The (proposed) inevitable success of AI achieving consciousness rests on arguments from wishful thinking.
“The Metaphysics of Quality subscribes to what is called empiricism. It claims that all legitimate human knowledge arises from the senses or by thinking about what the senses provide. Most empiricists deny the validity of any knowledge gained through imagination, authority, tradition, or purely theoretical reasoning. They regard fields such as art, morality, religion, and metaphysics as unverifiable. The Metaphysics of Quality varies from this by saying that the values of art and morality and even religious mysticism are verifiable, and that in the past they have been excluded for metaphysical reasons, not empirical reasons. They have been excluded because of the metaphysical assumption that all the universe is composed of subjects and objects and anything that can’t be classified as a subject or an object isn’t real. There is no empirical evidence for this assumption at all. It is just an assumption.”
- Robert Pirsig
Pirsig has a lot more to say about this issue. See his book, Lila (excerpted above). It offers one very persuasive solution to this riddle.
I'm a great admirer of Pirsig. I used to teach a course on Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. What I found out later, however, was that many of its best ideas can be found in the writings of John Dewey, including the one you are quoting here. Check out "experience and nature" for more on this point.
Indeed, Pirsig is a descendant, I think, of the great American philosophers. He says as much in Lila, noting the similarity of the Metaphysics of Quality with William James. A course on Zen and the Art, good on ya. Only one PhD thesis I know about so far on the Metaphysics of Quality, not that we need any more degrees to explicate it.
This is a fantastic piece!! It has definitely given me a lot to think about. Thank you :)
Of course religion and science are and always have been in direct conflict. They are mutually exclusive, diametrically opposed ways of viewing the world and determining what to believe. Just to take one very clear, simple example, evolution by natural selection from its very beginnings met with overwhelming opposition from religious thought. That continues to this day. The idea that it hasn't is utterly absurd.
I think this largely misses the point. Science does not claim to “prove” anything fundamental about the nature of existence or our place in the universe. What it does do, however, is provide a means to predict with a high degree of certainty future outcomes based on specific inputs. This is how we have learned to treat complex human diseases, unlock the power of the atom, and so forth. And because those inputs can predict specific events, the process can be reversed to discover events in the distant past up to and including the big bang.
This knowledge is not absolute, however. It is tentative and also subject to change based on new facts or processes we learn about as we go on. For example, the Ptolemaic earth centered universe was very accurate in predicting the paths of the planets from a fixed vantage point, but useless to actually travel to them.
The inherent tentative nature of scientific truth cannot, by design, give our lives purpose or fixed meaning. This causes a lot of discomfort in many. Some turn to traditional religion, though religious belief in the 21st Century tends to be more performative than substantive. (Unlike the archaic Greeks we do not sacrifice virgins to ensure a safe space flight. We use science to figure out what went wrong and try to fix it for next time.) There are modern equivalents though: QAnon and the like seek to provide simple fixed answers in a maddeningly complex and indifferent world.
Nietzsche foresaw this and much of his philosophy is about how the world does not have fixed meanings - they change over time and between cultures. In other words, understanding the world requires going “Beyond Good and Evil.”
For him, a major part of what determines a so called “thinking” person is how much uncertainty one can tolerate. Some, like Polish resistance hero Witold Pilecki, an almost inhuman amount. Others, perhaps on the precipice of hunger and homelessness, not so much. Part of it is circumstantial, but part of it is also the ability to see the world without undue preconceptions.
Simply put, there are no simple or fixed answers. Only the struggle to make the meaning our limited perspectives allow.
I can understand the frustration. Recently some AI “tech bros” have made literally incredible claims that AI possesses consciousness and so forth. These are simply ignorant statements. Whether the bros actually believe this rot or simply mouth it for marketing purposes, or both, doesn’t make it in any way correct.
Unfortunately I have found both with the general public and in humanities departments at major universities critiques of science that simply don’t understand what science is, sometimes laughably so.
It does bear mentioning through science we have learned the we are not the center of the universe - far from it. We live on a small spec of matter that orbits an ordinary star that is one of trillions in the universe. It turns out that man is not the measure of all things, just a small and seemingly inconsequential part of it.
Roman paganism declined because it no longer gave meaning to a continent spanning empire made up of hundreds of languages and sub cultures. Eastern mystery cults emerged from this spiritual void with Christianity emerging as a new source of meaning and belief. After 1,700 years the old religion now struggles to give meaning to our lives. God, as a driving force in Western culture, is, as Neitszche stated, dead. What will replace it is as yet unknown.
There are no fixed answers, true. But scientific dogma claims to know the nature of the universe as fundamentally physical and to have sufficient information about it in its pocket to sideline consciousness as merely an epiphenomena of the physical world (Mike calls this Physicalism, I’d call it Philosophical Materialism). This is a metaphysical claim concealed by a denial that there is any metaphysics in the house. I don’t think Mike missed the point at all.
That’s simply a tautology: Science can only be concerned with understanding relationships between our sensory inputs, expanded as they are by instruments of our own devising. It makes no claims to anything else. Science is an extremely powerful tool for understanding physical phenomena, but as I said previously for you and Mike and many others that’s simply not enough to give meaning to our lives.
There may be extra sensory forces at play in the universe, but we can never know for certain. That is simply, as Kierkegaard famously stated, a “leap of faith.”
Many critics of science impute to science claims that science as a discipline does not make. I believe Mike is one of them.
ok, I disagree. I think what you're describing is what science was supposed to be, and is when it is minding its own business. But it is not just that in practice. It is also an ideology which enforces a worldview that is beyond its pay grade.
https://www.sheldrake.org/books-by-rupert-sheldrake/the-science-delusion-science-set-free
329526
No one has been to the moon, John Hamer: "The Falsification of History"
Galileo was not prosecuted for contradicting scripture. He was prosecuted because he was claiming that his theory was literally true, rather than merely a useful assumption for predicting the behavior of the heavens. The church did not want him to claim his theory was true until it was more solidly proven, because it did not want to go through the arduous process of reconciling scripture with his theory until the scientific community was certain that his theory was true. (It wasn't actually true in many of its details, as you pointed out). Galileo refused to describe his theory with the cautious terms the church preferred, and so they prosecuted him for that.
The fact that the church had this much power over scientific expression is a very bad thing, and we should all be grateful that it no longer has this kind of power. But unlike many Protestant denominations, the Catholic Church has always believed that whenever scripture is contradicted by science, the scripture must be reinterpreted so that it is compatible with science. That is why the work of Thomas Aquinas was so important, because it was reconciling church teachings with the best science of its time i.e. Aristotle.
OUR FOUNDING FATHERS DID US DIRTY
Let’s remember our history.
September 5, 1774: The First Continental Congress convened.
(a weak government)
April 19, 1775: The start of the American Revolutionary War
(We are losing the war)
May 10, 1775: The Second Continental Congress
(unable to finance the war)
July 4, 1776: The Declaration of Independence was adopted.
(All states agree to leave England)
September 17, 1787: The Constitution was signed
On December 15, 1791, the Bill of Rights was ratified.
(The first 10 amendments to the Constitution)
(Thank you, AI)
My impression was that the northern states wanted the southern states to sign the new government agreement, and the southern states were not concerned whether the northern states signed. The northern states made concessions to the southern states to secure the southern states' ratification of the Constitution. The northern states made three ridiculous compromises to get the southern states to agree to sign the Constitution.
First, the Senate was established with each state having two senators, and it is called the upper house. This was a ridiculous compromise, an idea that still haunts us today. Two senators from a state with fewer than 500,000 voters can veto the interests of millions of voters in states that have millions of voters. In Congress, the Senate can control and nullify the actions of the House of Representatives, which has 435 members and better represents the voters. The Senate can veto the House's decisions, with small states having equal power to large states.
Why a Senate? Because the southern states knew that the northern states' population was greater than theirs, and that if decisions in this new government were made by population, they would have less power, the northern states agreed to the formation of the Senate, with each state having two senators. The Senate's control and power are evident in Mitch McConnell's blocking of Obama's request to fill a Supreme Court vacancy and in his waiting until Trump became president, allowing him to vote on a new Supreme Court justice. McConnell worked to delay and obstruct health care reform and banking reform, two of the most notable pieces of legislation that Democrats navigated through Congress early in Obama's tenure.
Second, the election of the president by the electoral college. Basically, a stupid idea. This idea germinated from the belief at the time that only the elite, educated, successful men should select the president, so each state should select men of that caliber to vote for the next president. What about us, voting adults living in America? Do we have any say in who our president should be? Why not a public election of the president? Again, shades of the future justification for the upper class of citizens, the wealthy, the billionaires, and the business owners' justification for taking all the profit from the business.
Third, not addressing the gorilla in the room, which is the question of slavery. Why is there no resolution about the issue of slavery? Why? Because the southern states would have left the convention, this was another concession to them.
Three concessions to the southern states that haunt us to this day.
Now, consider the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, adopted on July 4, 1776. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that their Creator endows them with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Thomas Jefferson primarily authored these ideas and drew heavily from John Locke. Still, they were never the belief of the Southern states, which held that black slaves were the “mudsill” necessary for the upper-level society to survive. This declaration is a nice statement, but not applicable to black slaves, women in society, the American Indian, and future immigrants of various colors, only to the white successful man.
Recently, at the Senate Judiciary meeting, Todd Blanche, Trump's personal lawyer, exemplified true Trumpism by lying, falsifying facts, and insulting the very nature of the Senate. Yet 50 Republicans from 25 states will approve his nomination as the next attorney general. These Republican states are not going away; they have been adversarial to the Democratic states and will be in the future. Do you think we can undo the Senate or stop the use of the electoral college with these Republican states still alive and active? I know the answer is no; we will never be free from their intervention.
An author I admire is Chris Armitage, who has a link titled "Existential Republic" and advocates implementing a soft secession to save our country from becoming an oligarchy. I respect his opinion, but I do not see how this would address the existence of the Senate, the Electoral College, and the interference of the southern Republicans; they are not going away, as was seen in the Todd Blanche hearing, where even after witnessing his insulting behavior, they still will confirm him as attorney general.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/subjective
The mind is but a suppression valve.