What philosophy buffs have against Science buffs

[paigetheoracle]

Speaking as a philosopher (of sorts - very odd sorts) - why don't we get a couple of teams together, science buffs versus philosophy buffs, and see who comes out on top? ( Dream team stuff: Nietsche/ Socrates/ Hegel etc. versus Einstein/ Bohr/ Newton).

[paigetheoracle]

Before this subject finally disappears into the dust, one final thought.

 

Science deals with physical reality - philosophy with mental (ideas) or spiritual (energy) reality. In the area of mind they have no common language and in the area of energy, also no common language, unfortunately. This makes communication difficult because we mean different things, even when we use the same words or terms.

 

Arguments and misunderstandings are therefore inevitable as much as happens in ordinary life but at least we are not close enough to shoot each other over it!

[TheFaithfulStone]

Speaking as a philosopher (of sorts - very odd sorts) - why don't we get a couple of teams together, science buffs versus philosophy buffs, and see who comes out on top? ( Dream team stuff: Nietsche/ Socrates/ Hegel etc. versus Einstein/ Bohr/ Newton).

 

Maybe we could have Brian Greene mudwrestle John Rawls.

 

TFS

[Qfwfq]

It was quite recently that they came to be regarded as two different and separate things. If you read some texts of even as recently as the 19th century, you are prone to misunderstandings if you don't interpret the terms 'science' and 'philosophy' as they used to be understood. Science means knowledge and meant just that, not what we mean today. It was used to indicate the result of philosophy, which is the quest for knowledge, the process of careful and diligent research; science is what it strives toward perfecting and increasing. Natual philosophy was the branch that we now call science and physics is directly from the Greek word for nature. Lab instruments were called philosophical instruments.

 

The whole point of this thread is somewhat moot, still today the most advanced frontiers of science are topics of philosophy.

[Chacmool]

Interesting info, Q. Great post!

[Kriminal99]

Only for some is there no difference between the two

I disagree that it is a moot point. If someone is a philosopher and a scientist then for them there is little disagreement between the two. For instance such a person would have no problem pursuing psychology by using personal experiences to develop theories as long as they were carefully reasoned.

 

Others do not understand philosophy but like science

But on the other hand some scientists constantly straw man arguments made using personal experience and careful reasoning. Some straw man alternate approaches to the quest for knowledge. True every day experience is uncontrolled, but it costs nothing, and theres a very large amount and variety of it in comparison to tested results. So you can simply remove uncontrolled factors by comparing different experiences. True there can be confusion, but the confusion can be sorted.

 

Scientific method is not fool proof and only careful reasoning can help this

Also some overestimate how solid research is. It is nearly impossible to sample without bias and an experiment could easily be biased without detection if the sampler was so inclined. YOu cannot watch a commercial that says "Scientists say X" and then conclude that X is true and claim this to be philosophically sound reasoning.

 

Scientists who believe they have the right to be right rather than the tools to find the truth

Some scientists even expect or demand that people treat their results this way. Rather than understanding how the scientific method helps remove uncertainty, they simply believe they only have to be designated as a scientist, and then go through certain motions and then everyone has to believe what they say.

 

Recent example from personal experience

 

The best example I can think of was an argument I had with a biologist on the subject of race. I believe the biologist's argument was that because there was less difference in genetic code from person to person than there was difference in genetic code necessary to distinguish races that the concept of race was disproven by science.

 

I made several arguments against this.

 

A) People never have babies with completely different skin color than they are. There may be less difference in code between races than within a race but its the same code that stays different between races. Those consistent differences might be partially responsible for statistical differences between race.

 

B) If race was a meaningless concept then all statistics comparing people of different races should show equalikely chance of a member of each race having any characteristic. He responded to this by saying that culture might be responsible, to which I replied that if people of a different race are more likely to subscribe to or be impacted a certain way to a given culture then my point is proven.

 

The guy responded with lots of insults, straw man arguments, matter of fact statements with no support. An example of an insult includes "armchair psuedointellectual" a common term tossed around by this type of scientist. He repeatedly referred to people who had already endorsed the idea, and linked to a pbs website focused on the idea which tried to teach kids that race was a flawed concept by showing pictures of people that were hard to distinguish as belonging to one race or another.

 

In general he displayed a lack of maturity and advanced reasoning ability. This man might have been a philosopher, but he was no scientist.

[TheFaithfulStone]

I think it's premature to accuse someone of being having "a lack of maturity and advanced reasoning ability" when you don't understand basic anthropology.

 

Race is cultural concept - and it's culturally defined. It isn't real as far as biology is concerned.

 

Can you for instance tell the difference between a Hutu and a Tutsi? (Assuming you can't...) How about a Croat and a Serb? To American's, these seem like really strange divisions, because we base our racial biases on skin color and physical features.

 

To a biologist THOSE seems like strange divisions, because the genetics aren't any different. To you, dividing people based on their haploid DNA sequences seems odd. To a linguist, dividing people based on anything other than the linguistic family tree seems odd.

 

Scientifically speaking, race is a meaningless concept. Sociologically speaking, it isn't.

 

You seems to be talking at cross-purposes.

 

TFS

[InfiniteNow]

Scientifically speaking, race is a meaningless concept. Sociologically speaking, it isn't.

Not that I disagree with the tone of your post TFS, but sociology is a science. Perhaps you could put some parameters on which branches of science to which you intended to refer when you typed "scientifically speaking?"

 

 

Many cheers. :beer: :)

[TheFaithfulStone]

Good point. From a biological standpoint, race is a meaningless concept.

 

From a sociological standpoint it isn't.

 

TFS

[Kriminal99]

I think it's premature to accuse someone of being having "a lack of maturity and advanced reasoning ability" when you don't understand basic anthropology.

 

Race is cultural concept - and it's culturally defined. It isn't real as far as biology is concerned.

 

Can you for instance tell the difference between a Hutu and a Tutsi? (Assuming you can't...) How about a Croat and a Serb? To American's, these seem like really strange divisions, because we base our racial biases on skin color and physical features.

 

To a biologist THOSE seems like strange divisions, because the genetics aren't any different. To you, dividing people based on their haploid DNA sequences seems odd. To a linguist, dividing people based on anything other than the linguistic family tree seems odd.

 

Scientifically speaking, race is a meaningless concept. Sociologically speaking, it isn't.

 

You seems to be talking at cross-purposes.

 

TFS

 

A) He was trying to claim that science had disproven the concept of race in a social context.

 

:) The statement that race is meaningless to science is itself meaningless. Science is not a consious entity to which anything has meaning.

[Qfwfq]

Uhm, I don't think he had said "meaningless to science" and he did revise what he said to "from a biological standpoint". He made sense.

 

Although I have understood that biologists consider it more appropriate to talk about ethincs than about race, for homo sapiens, I disagree with Faith about it being a purely cultural matter. It simply doesn't reduce to colour of skin and perhaps this misconception is due to the resonance of troubles between black and white people and the slave trade. AFAIK the Tutsi have very distinctive physical features and so do many other ethnic groups. It is very much like the fact that family and relatives are more or less recognizeable as such. The same occurs in some geographical areas when migration hasn't been prevalent for a while.

[Kriminal99]

The statement is still to abstract IMO to be used in a debate. HOW exactly is the concept of race not meaningful in the context of biology?

 

Since when do categories based at least initially on perceivable differences not been signifigant in a biological context? I thought that's how larger categories of life were differentiated?

 

If you differentiate 2 races by skin color, then you have the fact that the same medium that allows us to differentiate them so gives them signfigant differences in the way they handle light and nearby frequencies of em waves.

 

But then races are also defined partially by any attributes that are correlated with the other attributes the race is defined by. Which gives more things that could have signifigance in terms of survivability and ability to do different tasks.

 

You have biologists that study the brain for purposes of trying to understand how the mind works and concepts like intelligence. If they discovered a particular attribute that determined how capable a person was of spatial reasoning, but this particular attribute constituted a very small percent difference in dna, would you call it meaningless to biology? What would that mean exactly?

[TheFaithfulStone]

Yes, "race" as Americans understand it is meaningless to biology. Not anthropology, not sociology.

 

Let's break it down:

 

1) Western Society is (or should be) empirical and rational.

2) Phenotypic racial classification is not empirical (not based on clear measurement measured the same by everyone, everywhere, everywhen, and always repeatable) or rational (doesn't help you draw conclusions. Cannot be used as a rationale with any reliability.)

3) Therefore, phenotypic racial classification should not be used in Western Society.

 

That is the simple syllogism. Assumption 2 may give you pause - as it would seem obvious to anyone looking. Or would it? If you have ever met someone who is difficult to racially classify on a phenotypic basis, then the argument that it's meaningful quickly breaks down.

 

Anyway, this is pretty quickly going to turn into an argument about typologies. Typologies are a useful analytical tool, but they don't tell you anything "real." For instance, if I have five buttons, I can divide them in a number of ways, by size, by number of holes, by materials. These are all valid divisions. They are "differences" in the buttons - but they may or may not tell me anything particularly useful about the buttons. For instance, if I am researching the appears of prime numbers in fashion, and I find that buttons more often have three or five holes than four or six, I could conclude that prime numbers are more prevalent. But dividing the buttons into type by material or indentation depth wouldn't be meaningful data to my question.

 

Typologies are an analytical tool used to expose commonalities and correlations - they do not, in of themselves mean anything. They tell you a great deal about the question, but the division is not intrinsic.

 

The map is not the territory. Your mental tree which represents "race" divided by skin color is not the ACTUAL division among people - it is your mental model. It may help you to answer a question - by correlation between factors which may or may not be intrinsically related. Is this person black or white? Is this person rich or poor? Is this person educated or not?

 

But the mere construction of such a typology does not mean that the relationships revealed in it are intrinsic.

 

The person you were talking to understood that phenotypic racial classification wasn't going to help him answer his question. He would argue that it wouldn't help you to answer effectively ANY question.

 

So what you mean when you say "race" (which is likely to be skin color if you are an American) turns out to not be correlated at a very high r-value for much of anything. The typology doesn't answer questions.

 

The "racist" (which I attempt to use non-perjoratively) argument has the structure.

1) Skin color is correlated with other traits. (For instance, black people are stronger, smarter, more violent, richer, have better rhythm, etc.)

2) Therefore person with trait A (skin color) also has trait B (whatever)

 

Since this can be proven to be false in almost every circumstance (besides maybe "tans slower") they syllogism must be false.

 

If you accept (as I would assume you logically must) that an assumption which leads to bad conclusions must be flawed, the the concept of phenotypic racial division is flawed.

 

Just because it is possible to make a division does not mean that it is meaningful to actually do so. Mere observation that human skin varies in color within certain parameters is just data - not answers.

 

TFS

[Kriminal99]

Oh no, here we go. Let me guess.... Every statisitic that differentiates different races is inherently flawed some how by the fact that it doesn't show that all races are equal in all ways possible right? I'm no racist but thats because I believe in diversity not because I refuse to acknoledge statistical differences between races.

 

I reject ALL of your assumptions.

 

If, and thats IF whoever is reading wants to be rational and empyrical (not that it has anything to do with biology as now you are introducing outside motivations) then the way to do would not be to refuse to look at statistical differences between races.

 

Repeated every day by everyone

The fact that the concept of race continues to be used by people on a day to day basis IMO PROVES that it is both empyrical and rational. Every person sees for themselves consistant differences between races (Especially the blatantly obvious A=A primary race defining characteristics, but others as well) and uses these to differentiate races. I also think that it is entirely capable of being used for all kinds of rational thought. For example to conclude that a caucasian might be more likely to get sunburt than a latin or african american person.

 

I feel like your aim is to try to pigeon hole any disagreement with your view point into racism. Unfortunately that is simply not the case.

 

Button metaphor...

The button example has only one question being answered as opposed to a situation where you are gathering general information to answer many questions. However it is STILL easy to come up with a counter example that disproves your claim in the button example. The material could tell you perhaps how many holes the button could have and still maintain enough strength.

 

Mystery of correlations

Correlations are correlations. It is easy to designate a particular correlation meaningless only to realize later that they are in fact connected. Whether you understand the correlation or not is does not mean that there is no explanation for it and it is completely random against all probability.

 

A metaphor of my own

The person I was arguing with believed nothing resembling your claim. He was arguing for the abolishment of race as a social concept. He was saying for example, that if you saw something red resembling a stove and your experience tells you not to touch it you should touch it because making something red is a small issue in the world of molecules and atoms. He is ignoring for example that your subconsious is recognizing minute differences between stove red and paint red. In truth your fear of the stove involves many more such minute attributes than just what is easily describable of the top of your head, and even if it is a small percent difference on a molecular level it makes a big freaking difference to your hand should you touch it.

 

Race in a social context not as simple as it seems

Although race for americans is easily designated as being a color issue, it is composed of much more subconsiously. Differences in behavior, in bone structure, etc are all things that are recognized subconsiously by a person in addition to the most obvious trait of having different skin color. Some of those can be attributed to cultural differences, but which perhaps could be correlated with physical differences all over again.

 

Flawed Studies

And when race is a topic which is bound to inspire bias on all sides, it is in fact a person's own experience that is the ONLY thing anyone can trust. Anyone can make a biased study look legit. Anyone can make their opponents experiments sound faulty.

 

The person I argued with before made some similar arguments that had obvious flaws with them. For example he pointed to studies that showed low correlations between race and various attributes. But any close observation of the specific studies left you thinking "NO #$@# SHERLOCK". The experiments were not designed to reproduce the same categories people use in day to day life. For example, it is infrequent that african americans and caucasians have kids together. Therefore these groups remain distinct in the United states. However most other groups do not. The studies would refuse to focus on comparing african americans and caucasians and would instead compare caucasians to other caucasians. People who could have easily been wrong about their heritage or been mixed in many different ways and almost certainly had been much more recently than african americans and caucasians.

 

Tans slower and...

Considering how complicated the world is and how every little thing affects every other little thing I find it difficult to conclude that the only meaningful consequence of racial differences is to say they tan slower. That means they might live longer in some enviornments. Perhaps their body chemistry is affected by this difference. For all you know the fact that their skin is dark is very closely related with some commonly believed attributes of their race. And again you can claim we only define race by skin color but in reality that might not be the case. We might recognize other consistent differences within a race (both physical and otherwise) that might be there because of a lack of mixing between the most distinct races. A self fulfilling prophecy perhaps (because the differences are so obvious, they are less likely to mate) but never the less... also is this not the way some groups within a species eventually split off into different species? Maybe most splits are created by physical seperatation but are therenot some for which there is a period where members of a species CAN reproduce together but do so infrequently because they are so different and choose not to?

 

The face of a real racist

There is only one way I define racist that I believe can be differentiated from anyone who does not touch a red stove for fear of being burned. That is people who evaluate based on less specific categories because it gives them the result they most want. For example if you are a hiring manager and don't like african americans, but you come across one that is a rhodes scholar from a well known university (which you know to be highly correlated with success in your company) and you choose to evaluate the person based on the more general category of race then you are racist.

 

Why I think this is not off topic

I carefully chose this subject because it is on subjects involving strong bias on different sides that scientific approaches most easliy break down.

 

A) You can't believe anything anyone says and you have to check everything rather than just taking people's word for certain things.

 

:naughty: Many people have heard arguments regarding how sampling bias was used in the past to produce desired results regarding this topic.

 

C) Arguments are frequently made which consist of mostly (flawed?)reasoning (the domain of the philosopher and the average person) are smuggled in under the banner of science and claimed to be solid undeniable "scientific fact"

[TheFaithfulStone]

It seems to me you have misunderstood my post with a fervor.

 

Ahh: An extensive edit make it clearer.

 

TFS

[TheFaithfulStone]

I reject ALL of your assumptions.

 

That kind of ends the discussion don't you think? :naughty:

 

The fact that the concept of race continues to be used by people on a day to day basis IMO PROVES that it is both empyrical and rational.

 

That would be an argumentum ad populum. It proves it's a data point, not that it's relevant data.

 

However it is STILL easy to come up with a counter example that disproves your claim in the button example. The material could tell you perhaps how many holes the button could have and still maintain enough strength.

 

EXACTLY. What is the perspective you bring to the question which makes you look at this dimension? A typology reflects the biases of it's creator.

 

Let's stay with buttons, and get off the racial issue for now.

 

We have five buttons. When I organize it, I will begin my typology with the dimension of button-ness which I believe is most likely to answer whatever question I have about buttons. (Is there a relationship between number of holes and material?) First I divide it into shell buttons and plastic buttons. I now have three shell and two plastic buttons. I notice that each of the plastic buttons have four holes, while the shell buttons have two.

 

I draw the conclusion that the material strength of plastic is greater than shell, and therefore allows more holes. (I don't know if this is true without a test)

 

We go back to five buttons now. First I divide the buttons by color. The red buttons from the white buttons. I notice that the red buttons have four holes and the white buttons have two.

 

I conclude that the red blouse had four hole buttons and the white blouse had two hole buttons. (I don't know if this is true without a test.)

 

Back to five buttons. This time we divide by the number of holes. I have three with four holes and two with two holes. I conclude that it is harder to paint buttons with two holes. (I don't know if this is true without a test.)

 

Okay, we've now established how when using typologies to draw conclusions my own ideas influence the conclusions I will draw. The same holds true with race based typologies.

 

I am not arguing that statistical racial differences do not exist, or that there is no measurable difference between "black people" and "white people" (Although, it's a debatable point - I doubt you could draw that as accurately as you imagine.)

 

When you BEGIN with the division of race, your typology will necessarily be correlated to race.

 

If you BEGIN with the division of neighborhood, your typology will necessarily be correlated to neighborhood. The typology with which you begin informs the results.

 

In all cases, your typology must be tested from the outside. In all cases, a four hole shell button, or a red button with two holes, or a white plastic button pokes a hole in the typology.

 

To reiterate - the construction of a correlating typology does not mean the differences are intrinsic.

 

TFS

[Qfwfq]

Rather prolix, for something which isn't quite the topic of the thread. I also find it based on a loose point or two.

 

Krim, a phenotypical difference may be of biological significance, but this doesn't necessarily make it a difference in race.

 

As we are talking about differences within a same species, thus cross breeding is by no means impossible, it's obvious that individuals may result that are hard to recognize as one or the other category. This does not mean the categories don't exist, they come about when communities reproduce separately from each other with little intermarriage, but may blend into each other.

 

It would really be a matter of agreeing upon a definition of "race" that makes sense. Are a poodle and a German shepherd different races of dog?