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this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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I'm pleased to see this.
In recent decades, science has been trying to move into areas, like consciousness, that are really philosophy, and all that does is fuck things up for everyone.
Yes - of course it's pseudoscience - it can't help but be, since it's all untestable.
The problem is that, by labeling it "science," whatever it is that someone proposes is immediately treated by devotees of scientism as certain fact, when in reality it's philosophy, and thus "fact" is a quality it can't even possess. And that's doubly a problem because not only is it not and can't ever be legitimately treated as fact but, not to put too fine a point on it, when it comes to philosophy, all too many scientists don't know what the hell they're talking about. In ways, many of them are even more ignorant than laypeople, since they tend to disdain and thus ignore the philosophy that's gone before them.
But... there also has to be room for us to change our understanding of reality. An overly dogmatic approach to science keeps us in the dark. The germ theory of disease was dismissed as pseudoscience for a long time, in favor of the widely accepted miasma theory.
Obviously, science requires a rigorous approach to examining reality. If an idea cannot be tested, it is not scientific and therefore exists only as speculation. But we can't just assume that our current models of reality are fundamentally correct and unassailable - we know that they're not, we know that the standard model is limited and fundamentally incomplete.
Check out this lecture: Consciousness and the Physics of the Brain. This idea is absolutely not science yet because we don't really have the tools to test it. But consciousness as we experience it must be the product of physical processes at some level, and therefore it should be possible to study it scientifically.
Conveniently enough, I just wrote another response to the thread, since there was more I wanted to say on the topic, and it addresses this.
It's not a matter of not having the tools to test theories of consciousness - it's more fundamental than that. We are consciousness. When we theorize on consciousness, we are engaging in consciousness. It's inescapable - it's the very thing that makes it possible to theorize. And it's entirely experiential - you necessarily experience your own consciousness and cannot possibly observe anyone else's. We are each and all, and necessarily, behind a veil of perception. It's literally impossible for it to be otherwise - to somehow step outside of consciousness and observe it, since the only thing that can meaningfully observe it is that same consciousness.
Yes - we can concevably at least make some good guesses regarding the physical processes that correspond with our experiences of consciousness, but that's necessarily the extent of it. Again, it's not simply that we don't have the tools to do more than that, but that it's inherently impossible for it to be otherwise.
I think this puts consciousness on too high of a mystic pedestal. It may be impossible for an individual to experience reality outside of their own consciousness, but that does not preclude studying how it works. What makes you think that it is impossible to observe someone else's consciousness? and more importantly, what evidence do you have to substantiate that claim?
After all, we research many aspects of reality obliquely. Our understanding of subatomic particles comes mostly from smashing larger particles into each other and seeing what pops out - not by observing subatomic interactions directly. We can do effective research by inference.
Personally I don't believe that there is anything in our existence that is beyond our understanding, given enough time and study.
I think that one of the most common ways by which the devotees of reductive physicalism try to make it appear to be a valid position is by positing a false dichotomy by which they then sneeringly characterize anything that's not simply physical as "mystic."
The fact that it's an emergent phenomenon with no physical manifestation.
I think we'll be able to (and in fact we already can to some notable degree) track neuronal activity in a brain and map it and interpret it, so we can make reasonably solid guesses regarding its nature - general type, intensity, efficiency and so on - but we can never actually observe its content, since its content is a gestalt formed within and only accessible to the mind that's experiencing it.
There's nothing at all "mystic" about that - it's simple logic and reason.
And, by the bye, it's also much of why actual philosophers rejected reductive physicalism almost a century ago.
Personally, I do think, philosophy should not exist without a scientific basis. So, science should research questions that arise from philosophy.
However, the concept of consciousness underpinning most of modern philosophy, morals, laws etc. is entirely unscientific.
And in that respect, yeah, I do also think that science should not bend over backwards to accomodate that. It's society that needs to catch up.
Philosophy can't have "a scientific basis.
If an idea has a legitimate scientific basis, then it's not philosophy - it's science. Philosophy explicitly addresses ideas for which there is not, and in most cases there can't be, a legitimate scientific basis.
Right, that wording wasn't necessarily the best. I meant "basis" there, as in it not having been fully explored by science.
To take a recent example, the EU allowed the use of glyphosat for the next ten years. As a pesticide, there's considerations to be made:
Well, and for those topics, science provides a basis discussion frame:
Science doesn't have oppressive evidence to make one and only one strategy the logically correct approach, so we need philosophy. But philosophy shouldn't be blathing nonsense either. It needs to be as close to reality as possible, which is where we need science.