atightropewalker wrote:
Don't get me wrong - I love science, I love knowing. So in that way it helps my life. But science is just the observation of real-world items (the word science comes from the latin for knowledge). Now knowledge can inform your decisions but it does, but on its own knowledge doesn't build us houses, cars etc. When someone has made a house, car we can have knowledge of it but we can't have knowledge of something that doesn't exist or that we are unaware of having any experience of. Engineering is this action - making something new, simplistically speaking (I obviously don't mean the applied scientist degree). But science is too oft used in the wrong way. Science says that drinking alcohol is bad is rubbish, for example. Science tells us that drinking x amount of alcohol causes y problem but it can't take the next step and say alcohol is bad - only human thought can decide that. Science doesn't tell me to drink less - my opinion and others allow me to make a decision for myself. Just like my knowledge of nuclear reactions can enable me to make nuclear reactors but it is not science making them.

Now all I'm saying is that knowledge can only tell us what is and that doesn't improve life unless you want more knowledge. Now obviously if we know more we can create more complex things but knowledge doesn't create these things - it just enables them. So a good scientist is very likely a good engineer, and someone who knows nothing isn't going to make anything new but you can easily use religion to engineer something (and yes, if Hubbard had put some of his obvious vigour into something I deem useful such as curing cancer it would have been of far greater benefit for me - and I'm hoping many people have a similar opinion). Science can only tell me what is though - an items utility is entirely down to me.

And were I to be dumped in the desert merely observing whats going on won't help me unless I do something (engineer a solution). I cannot have scientific knowledge of the unknown. But I have to decide how to use the science. Science can tell me say that 9 times out of 10 a tree means an oasis but that's it. Armed with that I have to decide how to proceed. Science can tell me that going to a tree is better - its entirely an ethical question. If someone wanted to commit suicide and wandered out into the desert they would have the same observational knowledge but would steer clear of the oasis. Science can not tell us which one to do, it just informs that decision

Now I am a scientist but it annoys me the arrogance of some people to think that science makes the world a better place - science just tells us what is. We have to put in the effort to make the world a better place - for every cure of cancer we get a nuclear bomb. Science can only inform us, it cannot tell us how to proceed. Proceeding is the engineering and we can do that without this scientific system (as they used to in the ancient days). Now I know the interchageability of engineer and applied scientist makes the demarcation seem fuzzy, not least beacuse the best scientists are potentially the best engineers. But just because you work as a scientist, or as an engineer, it doesn't mean you only partake in scientific observation or inventing things, respectively. Both jobs involve both science and enigneering (both processes) with the scientist doing more science and the engineer more inventing. But it is fallacious to think that an engineer only carrys out the act of engineering without some informed knowledge and its ridiculous to think that a scientist cn't arm himself with knowledge and not see a potential utility for it (if he sees that A kills cancer he would obviously assume it would make a good drug but that's not science, it uses science) and act upon it. The demarcation between the actions 'science' and 'engineering' is clear (applied science is not science, the science is presupposed) but I'll admit it is not at all clear between the careers.

thewatcher wrote:
Sure I did. The earlier explanations did not have less explanatory power.

thewatcher wrote:
As for the cleaver, context is the sole barometer by which functionality can be determined. Functionality implies directedness towards a purpose, which in turn implies contingent and contextually formed notions of what things ought to do, what things can do and so on.

thewatcher wrote:
You misunderstand. What I was saying was that your reference to some sort of base reality in reference to which science has some sort of superior explanatory power is misguided. Furthermore, there is more than mere philosophy at stake here. Intellectual possibility writ large is the product of contingent contexts, not merely philosophy as a discipline.

thewatcher wrote:

Absurdist joke? Now I think I apprehend the depths of your misunderstanding.

:eyebrowisguised political rant? Rorty's point is quite explicitly that philosophy is reducible to politics.

thewatcher wrote:

I see no reason to believe that the totalizing scientific reductionist worldview should necessarily be more productive of technological advancement than any other. The fact of the matter is, technology has always advanced even in contexts you would regard as antithetical to scientific advacement. You fail, in a word, to explain how technology develops at all in contexts other than the one you advocate. I, on the other hand, have provided an account of how technology can develop in virtually any intellectual context.

thewatcher wrote:

Again you repeat your mistake of reducing worldview to the theoretical. Are you suggesting that only theorists are possessed of worldviews?

thewatcher wrote:

Empirical fact? Again with these references to base reality, yet another in a long string of examples in your totalizing view of the world. Likewise, you slip in your little jabs which suggest my moral culpability for not sharing your view (the mention that I do not live in a cave, implying that I am not "appropriately thankful" for all I supposedly "owe" to your worldview). The people colonized and slaughtered by the great powers were similarly called ungrateful by their oppressors. After all, had the great powers not brought the light of Reason, Science, and Civilization to these people?

I am not at all confident that the world has derived much, if anything, to be thankful for from the ideology you advocate. By contrast, however, I am quite confident that a most horrific list of wrongs may be laid firmly at its doorstep.

thewatcher wrote:

And there it is again. An obsession with function that entails and indeed requires your complete abandonment of responsibility for the consequences of your ideas. What I am advocating is the restoration of the awareness of the relationship our ideas have to each other and the consequences that our ideas have for physical, social, political and material realities.

"Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same thing as blockades and the reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs."- Martin Heidegger

The great horror of machination, of the blind, function, obsessed viewpoint that you expose, is that it robs us of our ability to see how these things are connected to one another. Thus we lurch forward, concerned only with the proximate business of "making things work" and heedless of the horrific consequences of our efforts.

atightropewalker wrote:
There is no doubt science is currently the most effective model for knowledge (I believe it always will be because it acknowledges its fallibility). But I'd argure he benefits because whether or not he benefits is down to him - science just tells him more ways to kill himself. As for which is best I guess he'll never know - he'll only get one attempt (or maybe two if their is an afterlife - maybe theres an after-afterlife?) and I think this is what scares people (myself included) about death: you'll never know.

atightropewalker wrote:
Science postulates theories about what exists whereas engineering actions theories that could be (you could argue it postulates theories that don't exist i.e. a cure for cancer). Whereas Science is considered true if it is carried out properly, an engineered method is considered true if it is verified by science (or religion etc.). In science you see that mass appears to effect gravitational force so you try to figure out how (this will of course involve postulates). In engineering you know mass affects gravitational force and so you use that information to create something that exploits that (the science is presupposed). In science it appears platinum kills cancerous cells so you test ideas. In engineering you know platinum kills cancerous cells so you set about exploiting this fact (engineering a drug using platinum)

atightropewalker wrote:
I'll maintain that none of these models make the world a better place, particularly engineering. They are all abused to be self-serving and so whereas I can use them to be of benefit to me (and I kind of intend to) it also means anyone can (ab)use them for their own benefit. Now it wasn't science that gave us the nuclear bomb it was the person who thought it was a good idea. Now the fact that people can engineer for their own ends immediately means I'm going to disagree some of the time, if not most, so ergo I'm not going to always like it. Science in theory should be immune to such circumstances but people seem to oft to consider science the end of the matter (particularly on ethical issues) where itsdomain does not reach. Maybe I'm just too cynical about the world but I can see problems with science, religion, engineering et al. and so am convinced the best way forward is to decide for myself..

180 Proof wrote:


To make it clearer what gibberish this statement (and it's like) amounts to, just substitute instances of "technology" for the term "technology" such as "opposable thumbs" "language" "stereoscopic vision" "a neocortex" "kinship structure" "numbers" etc. Old Marty posits "technology" as a problem but in fact it is the use/misuse/abuse of it, like any other extension, or augmentation, of agency, that is problematic (i.e. risk-bearing, or dangerous). So what? We're enabled by that which can possibly immiserate or destroy us. Well, what's the alternative? Sitting around the bonfire singing 'Hitler Youth Camp" songs about "das Geviert"?!

180 Proof wrote:

To make it clearer what gibberish this statement (and it's like) amounts to, just substitute instances of "technology" for the term "technology" such as "opposable thumbs" "language" "stereoscopic vision" "a neocortex" "kinship structure" "numbers" etc. Old Marty posits "technology" as a problem but in fact it is the use/misuse/abuse of it, like any other extension, or augmentation, of agency, that is problematic (i.e. risk-bearing, or dangerous). So what? We're enabled by that which can possibly immiserate or destroy us. Well, what's the alternative? Sitting around the bonfire singing 'Hitler Youth Camp" songs about "das Geviert"?!