More than Science?

...science is science, it has its own methods and is amazingly sucessful in its own domain, but it does not provide means to control our emotions.

Nicolas,

Are you saying that there is something outside science that is more successful at describing parts of the world? Specifically, that you believe that there is knowledge outside of mathematics and science?

You would not be alone in this belief. This belief dominates theology, philosophy and is probably accepted by more than 95% of the world's population. It is often said that science has its domain, and the supernatural has another.

Of course, the number of people subscribing to an idea is not a measure of its correctness.

What must one sacrifice to say that there is something more than science and mathematics? One must sacrifice either logic or the assumption that the universe is governed by physical laws.

Some people are happy to make these sacrifices. I am not one of those people. I have given a lot of thought to this. Suppose there are two domains, one that follows physical laws and one that does not. I can't see a way to bridge the two domains with human experience without destroying causality in the scientific domain. Thus, I have not been able to escape the conclusion that either the world is totally causal and accessible to science, or it is not at all causal.

As axiologist points out, emotion is perfectly within the realm of science. We each have statistical models of behavior that we have learned from our relationships with ourselves and with others. We can predict with better-than-even accuracy what the effects of various events will be on the average person. The more we know about someone, the better we can predict their behavior. At a physiological level we can look at blood pressure, blood chemistry, facial expressions, EEG's, brain scans and probably many other observables.

So, propositions about emotion are meaningful to logical positivists. Similarly, propositions about many other things are equally meaningful to the degree that they fall under the domain of science:

• synthetic ethics


• game theory and trust


• language


• human delusion

Logical positivism is not the bogeyman!

You also say that "science is honest because it is coherent with its own ethos." What you mean to say is that science is okay as long as we don't use it to actually make any decisions about personal or social matters.

But now we need science more than ever. The world is wracked by war and ignorance. Political powers use the irrationality and emotion of the people to gain support for their foolish plans. The people are suckered into supporting policies that are clearly going to hurt them in the future. The people will always be cheated this way as long as they are convinced that there is some supernatural power that will ensure everlasting life and final justice.

Perhaps philosophy was never going to have much impact on the average person. However, if it was to have any effect, philosophy would need to have come to some reasonable consensus. The philosophers' war on positivism has robbed philosophy of any beneficial effect it might have rendered to popular culture. Instead, philosophy's message to the common man is that it's okay to have faith instead of reason.

doctor(logic)