> I'm almost to the point where I don't believe knowledge itself exists
And if you want to be such a strong skeptic thats fine. But it is hard for such a strong skeptic to be able to say anything interesting about what ever differences did allow us to go from building huts to airplanes.
> Since 1+1=2 is an unproven axiom, true by definition rather than by proof, it most certainly IS faith. I'm not sure that 1+1=2 is a definition. I don't think it is. Typically, one tries to prove the behavior of numbers using set theory, and I'm not all that familiar with it. But in any case, I suppose definition is a perfectly valid justification in mathematics. Justification is mathematics is still very different than in science. Science is ultimately justified by empirical observation, while most people say mathematics is not.
> The problem comes in when we don't identify that as "just a convenient language construct". > We don't actually know that the electron exists- we suspect it does due to evidence, but nobody's > ever actually seen one. I think that most modern physicists at least are painfully aware that electrons may only be a model. Quantum mechanics is very strange, and almost forces one to consider that possiblity. This is part of the reason Einstien disliked quantum mechanics so much, with his famous quote "God does not play dice with the universe." Whether or not science IS just a language construct- this is something that most scientists let philosophers argue about.
> Science has an equal tradition of personal revelation- that's why theories are named after people. Theories are named after people to recognize thay they first thought of them. However, theories are not inherently personal. I can use experiment to verify Newton's gravity the same as he can. I can never personally verify, eg, Paul's conversion experience.
> Not really- you can never gain the respect of Newton in the field of gravity either. While I agree that I personally won't gain the same repect of Newton:-), Einstein certainly did, and if I were smart enough, I presumably would as will. Anything I say in principle has the same weight that anything Newton or Einstein said. Now, people are less likely to spend time listening to me than they would to Newton or Einstein obviously, but there is nothing inherent to Newton that makes what he says better than what I say; the content of what he says does that. In Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God. What he says is intrinsically worth more than what I say.
> Maybe to another scientist- but to a layman no, science is no different than religion in that way. This is true. As social institutions, the Church and science have many striking similarities. They also have important differences.
> The only reason you say religion doesn't is because you don't understand the religious definitions. There was a whole program by the Catholic theologians to justify Christian thinking using pure reason: the scholastics. It is true that I don't know that much about them. I have read Descartes, who wasn't a scholastic, but certainly was in the tradition of trying to reconcile Christian belief with pure reason. At the beginning of his meditations, he is very careful to note that Christian belief is justified by first by faith and that he wishes to prove the existence of God using pure reason only to be be able to convince non-believers that God existed. So clearly Descartes at least thought that Christian thinking is ultimately justified by faith (whatever faith is, exactly.) My understanding is that this is the view of most Christians. Most modern scientists, on the other hand, would say that scientific belief in a model is justified in empirical observation that does not conflict with the model.
> What makes you think the tribesman cannot? I think the tribesman cannot make an airplane with his tribal beliefs because he did not actually make a plane. One cannot, eg, read the Bible and build a plane
> But pure reason and mathematics leave no room for faith or belief- and therefore can never > lead to knowledge by themselves.
No, pure mathematics leaves no room for faith. Faith is not the same thing as belief. Google defines belief as: "impression: a vague idea in which some confidence is placed" and "any cognitive content held as true". So mathematics leaves plenty of room for belief. For example, I believe that 1+1=2 because this is a cognitive content I hold as true. As to what sense mathematical theorems are "true" - this is a complicated issue. However, mathematical theorems definitely qualify as "knowledge", which is what I said justified belief is necessary for.
> The real problem is that models don't have self-consciousness at all- they're just models, > thought constructs.
Maybe I should not have used the word "self-consciousness". What I meant was that a model explicity make a prediction, and that it acknowledges this is a major element of its purpose. And when one anthropomorphize something, one gives it human characteristics. I don't think anybody is arguing that an electron has a personality, or emotions, or a soul. Sometimes, we use language that an electron "wants to do something", but of course this is just a convenient language construct.
> And yet, by having an ethicless version of utility, how is your worship of models and > justification by utility any different than the primitive tribesman basing the timing of his > planting on some myth of a god?
Again, religion typically has a tradition of personal relevation that science does not. This alone is a major, major difference. Also, there are practical differences. Science is very rigorous in that what it predicts is very explicitly stated. Religion typically does not. This is another major difference. They are major enough such that I can build airplanes and antibiotics and bombs, and all the other wonderful and terrible things scientific inquiry has given us, while the tribesmen cannot.
And I would say that Christianity in general does not make a specific prediction. What would its specific prediction be? Life after death practically cannot be verified, so it does not qualify. The Revelation still has not come, but this doesn't bother most Christians.
> but I find it very interesting that you think Science or any other human belief needs justification, a very > religious concept.
This is a western (I don't know about eastern, etc.) philosophical tradition that justified belief is knowledge. (And don't ask me to say much more on this, I'm not a professional philosopher.) You certainly can't say that you know something to be true of you don't also believe it to be true. You seem to want to lump everything under the notion of "religion" which is fine, except that then of course any sort of belief or knowledge becomes "religious", because belief is a prerequisite for knowledge.
There are very important differences between, say, Christianity and science. I'm not an expert, but consider, for example, the beginning of the Gospel of John. John writes, "In the beginning, there was the Word, and the Word was God." This shows a tradition of learning, of "hearing", truth from others. Individuals have divine relevation in Christianity that by their very nature cannot be shared by others. For example, in the Christian tradition, Jesus' words are the Word of God. My words will never, ever be worth as much as Jesus' as far as Christianity is concerned. Science, on the other hand, is squarely in the tradition of pure reason and mathematics. My math proof is just as good as yours is, and in principle, I can verify any mathematical proof for myself. It is somewhat more complicated in science, since science is empirical, but the idea is the same- anybody should, in principle, be able to reproduce an experiment. While there are similarities- mathematics started out as religion- this is a fundamentally different tradition from that of "the Word."
You also are misunderstanding my use of the word "utility". A model has utility if it makes a particular prediction that is verified (or, more technically, if it makes a prediction that is not falsified.) So, by this argument, I suppose that if your villagers believed that they were doing their religious practices to make the crops grow better, then in some sense, yes, they had a model that could be acknowledged as "true". However, I would say that typically, models have a degree of rigour to them, which I would guess was lacking from your island tribe. I would say that a model has a degree of self-consciousness to it- it states explicitly that it is trying to make a prediction, and that this is its purpose. A better example, and the one that is usually used, would be Ptolemy's epicircles. Ptolemy of course assume the earth to be the center of the universe, and was able to describe the motion of the planets with a series of circles. We typically think of him as wrong, but his epicycles worked quite well for his purposes, so perhaps he was, in a sense, quite correct.
For this reason, your example of the airplane, while clever, does not invalidate my notion of "utility." My point, which I didn't make clear, was that the models make specific predictions in a way that is so dramatically true that we are able to build the airplane. Whether that airplane is ultimately good for society as a whole or not is quite irrelevant as far as my meaning of "utility" goes. This does not mean, of course, that it is unimportant.
I suppose that it all depends on your notion of "falsifiable", and "macroevolution." In general, if you want to observe macroevolution in process then, no, you cannot set up a protoplanet as you describe. However, I am in physics, and deal with many, many systems that one cannot directly observe in action; one can only observe their effects. However, they are still perfectly falsifiable. In any case, I don't think that evolution typically refers to an origin of life, but rather an origin of species. I gave several concrete examples that would falsify evolution. Which of these do you disagree with? And what field are you in, if I may ask?
> The electron has a factual basis. > > I'm not sure about that- has anybody ever seen one?
Well, I'm not sure what you mean by "seen" but yes, in a sense they have. For example, bubble chambers allow you to see the tracks of individual electrons. But of course no one has seen the "ideal" electron.
> Practically speaking, we may act as if it exists independently of our mathematical model of it. > > Yes, but you can do that with any myth. Not in the sense that I mean. You can't use your belief in Zeus (or whatever) to make an airplane to fly across the Atlantic, but I can use my belief in my Scientific models to do just that. In fact, arguably (and I think you would have to argue) that it is solely that my Scientific models do let me build an airplane to go across the Atlantic that justifies me believing them. Justification for belief in myth tends to be much more complex.
> Oh, it is- but the point is that there are almost as many interpretations available for the > scientific method as there are for Evolution or the Book of Genesis.
This point is absolutely true. It is far from clear what is meant by the "scientific method." However, bypassing this problem is what you get for paying the philosophical price of saying that an electron is just a model, and doesn't really exist. I don't really have to justify my interpretation of the scientific method. All I have to do is show that my scientific models have more utility than those that came before them, and I am justified in believing them.
> That being said, the Bible also purports to tell us many aspects of "how" which conflict with > evolutionary views - 6 literal days of creation, created kinds, man first - then woman, plants > before the sun, etc. The serious question that I have is, "if you don't believe the 'how' in the > Bible, can you justify believing the 'what'?"
I think at least one fundamental problem with asking this problem is that the modern experience with science has taught us that one cannot as "how" without asking "to within what accuracy." When you ask "Is Newton or Einstein right", part of the answer has to be "what do you want to us this for?" If you want to go to the moon, Newton is perfectly right. If you want to build a GPS system, Newton is wrong, and Einstein is right. If you are trying to build a modern, rigorous mathematical theory, then even Newton's Calculus is wrong. So I have to ask you, then, if you say that modern science says that the Bible is wrong, I have to ask you "what accuracy the Bible was going for?" This is the way we know if a more scientific paper disproves another one- do the two disagree within their accuracy. What are the errors on the "7 days"? I know there is a passage in the bible that refers to a circle with a circumference of 3 and a radius of 1. I don't know how much of mathematics you know, but this is mathematically impossible. So clearly, there were errors there.
This brings us back to how to justify they "why" if the "how" is not correct. I'm not a theologian, but I think the "why" HAS to be important outside of the "how" in the same way that moral authority must be justified without temporal power. In God, these two are one, but in humanity, they are often very different, and this is a great truth that Christianity reflects. This truth is in some important way lost if I must justify the moral authority of the Bible with its scientific authority. Imagine if God had included detailed "hows" in the Bible. As an extreme example, if the Bible contained blueprints for nuclear weapons. That would be a "how" you could believe in. Ancient Christians build a nuclear bomb just 100 years after the birth of Christ. They detonate it. That would have gotten a bunch of converts, I bet. Christianity would rule the temporal and spiritual world. But the Christians wouldn't be worshiping the moral authority of God and the sacrifice of His Son, but rather the might of His Bomb. In fact it is only after the Revelation that we learn for sure that temporal and moral authority are one and the same. This still leaves the question of how we justify the moral authority of the Bible. I would argue that the act of following the morals of the Bible is itself self-evident justification of those morals. However, ultimately, religious belief does involve just that, belief.
I think this was the idea of the Catholic "Limbo". According to (my no doubt overly simplified version of) Catholic dogma of original sin, any child who dies before being baptized is vicariously guilty of Adam's sin. I believe Augustine originally concluded that the child went to hell. However, the Church later softened this view by saying the children went to "Limbo", a place where the children only suffer in knowing that they are not in heaven. Now, it wants to de-emphasize Limbo even further. Purgatory,on the other hand, is traditionally conceived as a sort of temporary Hell where you burn to atone for the sins you didn't have a chance to atone for (but were still forgiven for) in life.
> Electrons, viruses, and black holes don't exist. They are mythological models that attempt to explain > phenomena that we CAN directly measure- but that's all they are. Thought models. To claim that a model > IS reality leaves the realm of science behind and enters into the world of religions.
That an electron has reality only as a tool to make a prediction is a pretty standard positivist position, I think. However, to call the electrion "mythological" is a terrible abuse of the world "mythological." Google defines mythological as: "fabulous: based on or told of in traditional stories; lacking factual basis or historical validity". The electron has a factual basis. Practically speaking, we may act as if it exists independently of our mathematical model of it. I also think your definition of "direct observation" is rather arbitrary. If you want to know more about positivism, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivist
> The problem is, though, specifically speciation has yet to be proven, and no experiment exists > to prove it.
I'm not sure what you mean by "hard science." Nothing is science is ever proven. Instead we create experiments which can disprove theories, but do not. In that sense, the theories are "proven." Now, we have never directly observed speciation. However, we never directly observe Newton's forces. We never directly observe Maxwell's EM fields. If you wish to think of speciation as being only as real as Newton's forces and Maxwell's EM fields, and to believe all of them a tool of theory used to make predictions, fine, but that doesn't mean they should not be taught to younger children. It also doesn't mean that there aren't very important epistemological differences between Biology and religion which are glossed over when Biology is referred to as "just another religion."
> No, I'm saying you must disbelieve that Andromeda exists at all unless you PERSONALLY have > recorded the light coming from it and/or have documented evidence that such light has reached > us within the last 41,000 years or so.
So where do you draw the line? I am not allowed to trust someone else that they have seen Andromeda. Am I allowed to use their telescope images? Or do I need to look through the telescope myself. But what if I don't trust those who built it. But even if I built it myself, perhaps it has somehow warped or broken in a way I don't understand, so I had better use my own eyes. But even eyes are just a kind of biological "telescope", and one I certainly didn't make. And for that matter, my brain may be in some way compromised. I could be on drugs, or being manipulated in a way I don't understand. So we are left with Descartes' "I think therefore I am." Except I don't really know I am doing the thinking. So we are at "There are thoughts. Right now. I mean now. No, now..."
You are certainly welcome to be a skeptic. The fact of the matter is that, skepticism aside, by some miracle science gives us technology that works, and part of science is relying on others. However, unlike in religion, in principle, anyone can repeat an experiment. Religion, of course, has inherently individual divine inspiration.
> I think that evolution should also be kept out, because it is also metaphysical and > non-scientific (neither testable nor observable).
Evolution is of course testable. There are many, many things that could falsify evolution. I'm not a biologist, but here are two examples I thought of off the top of my head: if we had fundamentally different DNA from apes, this would disprove evolution; if we found evidence that the Earth is only 5000 years old, this would falsify evolution. If we found we could not transmit genetic information to our offspring, this would falsify Darwin's natural selection. A scientific theory needs to be disprovably by observation, and evolution clearly is. Just because the main thrust of evolution seems to describe things that happened in the past doesn't mean that it is not falsifiable. How little credit do you give the scientific community that you don't trust it to figure out what is falsifiable and what is not? How do you trust it enough to use its vaccines and antibiotics or fly in its airplanes if you don't think it knows a falsifiable theory from an unfalsifiable one? Scientists have been wrong before, sure, but come on, you are not wondering whether string theory will ever be refined enough to be tested, or whether singularities exist, but whether a well accepted theory is falsifiable.
I suspect the problem is that you have been taught a bastardization of "evolution" that is inherently metaphysical. Darwin has been used to justify everything from atheisim to cutting support from the poor. This doesn't mean this is what evolution and Darwin's natural selection actual mean; for example, as I'm sure you know Christ has been used to justify, well, much worse things that Christianity does not, or should not, stand for.
> Free Trade (sometimes also known as Globalization) just means that if you don't like the laws > somewhere, you can go somewhere else to avoid them.
In princple, free trade is supposed to be about specialization. It's supposed to be about letting regions that are naturally better at producing one thing, produce it, and then trade it with everyone else, so that the world wide production is greater and more efficient. Unfortunately, different political balances in different regions end up having a large effects on how efficient a region is at producing something, so basically it is upsetting the balance of power between Marx's ideal bourgeois and proletariat in more developed countries as well. This is scary. You seem to think that financial success is a product of an element of socialism in government. My personal hope is that this is only half true- that socialism in government (I'm guessing I approve of somewhat less than you do, but that is beside the point) somewhat depends on financial success as well, and that when all this is over, there will be fewer powerless people in the world, or perhaps more accurately, that globalization can be controlled to encourage as few powerless people as possible.
I've heard that Nevada's entire federal political agenda over the last 10 years, or whatever, has been centered around PREVENTING putting all the radioactive material in Yucca Mountain.:-)
Nuclear waste is scary, but it is very possible that the CO2 released by burning oil is more dangerous. Global warming is at a minimum decently probable, and at the very least our CO2 production is significantly affecting our atmosphere in ways that will take a long time to understand. The only difference is that unlike the atmosphere, which is inconceivably large and complex, we can wrap our heads around the idea of nuclear waste, so it seems scarier. Chernobyl is much more dramatic than melting Antarctic icecaps, but he latter is probably more serious.
From the paper referenced in this PRL, Physical Review A 59 (1999), M. Murau, D. Jonathan, M.B. Plenio, V. Vendral:
"In this paper, we investigate the following scenario. Alice holds an unknown one-qubit quantum state |Phi> and wishes to transmit identical copies of it to M associates (Bob, Claire, etc.). OF COURSE, THE QUANTUM NO-CLONING THEOREM IMPLIES THAT THESE COPIES CANNOT BE PERFECT. The best Alice can do is to send optimal quantum clones of her state (the most faithful copies allowed by quantum mechanics), which we assume to be sufficient for her purposes." (Caps are mine.)
Now I admit, the PRL is too dense for me to understand, but based on this, it lookse to me like perfect quantum clones are not allowed. In fact, this quantum no-cloning theorem follows quite directly and naturally from first principles. We won't be cloning Kirk anytime soon, at least not perfectly.
I haven't read the PRL, but the linked article says: "Quantum cryptographic protocols are so secure that they can not only discover tapping but also where and how much information is leaking out. Now, using telecloning, the identity and location of the eavesdropper can be concealed." So as far as I can tell, the parties sending and receiving the message still know that their is an eavesdropper, just not "their identity and location." I am sure that heisenberg is still fine, a quantum state still cannot be cloned, and information cannot be sent faster than the speed of light. If this was the case, this would be the headline, and I'm guessing it would be on cnn headline news. (Maybe the world isn't that nerdy though...;-))
This is actually a business oportunity. Its like when Lex Luthor bought property in Superman I, except that we don't need a nuclear warhead to turn it into valuable beach front poperty.
> If I have enough energy, I can grow my own food, make my own air, purify my own water.
Yes, and this is what we do. We grow our own food, using solar energy, and oil. Solar energy powers trees and plankton, which purifies air for us. Now, I'm not expert on this, but despite how much of the correct environment is already set up for us to do this, untold millions still starve, we have fought 2 wars in the last 15 years intimately related to oil, and in my experience, a little bit of chill or a small drought locally can have a terrible effect on food prices. And yet you seem to think that even if still-hypothetical drastice climate changes become not-so-hypothetical, you are just going to crank up the AC? While I envy your optimism, to me this seems like the kind of thinking that always seems to compel warring European countries to invade Russia with winter approaching.
I think you are too hard on what you call "pop science", which is sometimes more accurately described as "science education", or at least "adult science education." I personally think that learning scientific knowledge has intrinsic value. We benefit from scientific discovery not just because it gives us useful technology to fend off the elements and disease, but because it gives us a greater appretiation of the fantastic world we live in. For example, Einstein's theories of relativity are important because they allow us to build our GPS satellite system, but they are also important because it has infiltrated the popular culture, and while the average person may not understand it as rigorously as the physicist, he (or she) does understand that time is not so simple as his senses and common sense may tell him; I like to think this has a tendency to make him more open minded in general. I think, then, that trying to integrate science with popular culture is as important a part of science as any other. Of course, it has to be done well, and even if it is done well, it is certainly going to be twisted into pseudoscience. Social Darwinism is a good example of this. However, superstition and prejudice have existed since prehistory, and I can only think popular science reduces it more than it contributes to it.
There are incredibly important epistemological differences between science and religion. However, I think as social institutions in particular, science and religion have many striking similarities. (This is why the creationist argument that "evolution is like a religion" has so much resonance.) I worry you would have science modeled after the Catholic Church of the middle ages, where uber-elite theologians argued among themselves about the nature of God while the common man could not even read the Bible or understand Church service because it was in Latin. Without popular science, I think this is what we would have- elite scientists doing research the average person doesn't hear or care about, while technology is passed down, Eucharist-like, as a reward for monetary contributions to scientific progress. Just as I prefer the Bible translated into native languages, I prefer we at least make an effort to translate scientific knowledge into a format the common person can relate to.
Of course, the other question it seems to me is whether this was an actual perception, or just the experience of perception. For example, would the patient actually remember, if asked, the exact words his mother had used? Or did he simply have the experience that he knew. There are pretty weird studies of, eg, people are blind but don't know it, and who swear they are blind but have reflex actions based on sight.
Can we even scientifically study consciousness? A large component of what most of us mean by consciousness is probably metaphysical. Certainly it is inherently subjective. While I think that neurobiology and neuropsychology are worthy enterprises, it seems like they should invent a new term for what they mean by consciousness.
This is a huge undertaking though. It took physics a long time (what, ~170 years after Newton) to be able to understand how microscopic physics related to the behavior of a simple macroscopic gas. They really even didn't really get it right until after Planck. The brain is, of course, much more complicated than a simple gas, and the chemistry controlling the action of individual neurons is much more complicated than Newton's physics. Maybe the standards for "understanding" are lower, but all the same, this is going to be extremely difficult, I imagine, if it is even possible. (As I understand it, there are certain philosophers who think it is not, but I am not in a position to have an opinion.
> How does it not? In my very first point, the freedom some enjoy for fast free porn definitely impedes upon... Again, I think freedom is a complicated subject. I think, thought, that at least historically it is intrinsically linked to the idea that an individual should be able to pursue whatever destiny God intends for him. Of course this statement is terribly vague (especially for atheists and agnostics) which is part of the reason freedom is so complicated, but I think it is also why nobody thinks that I have the "freedom" to murder somebody. Similarly, I think that your hypothetical person who wants his quick porn would have difficulty arguing that seeing free porn is needed for him to have a fulfilled life, or however you want to say it. The same goes for those who want to stay on the coastline when a tsunami will hit. However, I think those wanting political change can argue quite easily that this qualifies as a freedom.
As for your question of not using the internet at all- if I thought the only way to protect my children (if I had any) from predators was to not use the internet, or have laws that filtered out porn content as well as other material for other means, I would have no difficulty in deciding not to use the internet.
> It's really not that different... We here in the west, who are unduly obsessed with the silly idea of the innocence > of childhood, protect one kind of citizen. They try to protect another kind.
Yes, I suppose there is not much difference in as much as there is not that much difference between a child and an adult. I for one think there is a great deal of difference. If I were to get on an airplane being flown by a six-year-old, I would get right back off. If my surgeon was a 4-year-old, I would find another doctor. If my tax-attorney (if I had one) were 10, I would do my taxes myself. When I have kids, would you like me to send them over to manage your family budget?:-) Because when we are ready for all these things, maybe we as a country (U.S.) SHOULD have a discussion as to how to guarantee our children access to uncensored political and idealogical discourse so that they might be guaranteed the right to self-government, and as much as possible to pursue their particular destinies as they see fit. Until then, they will have to wait until they are adults. China seems to never want to give its citizens the chance.
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> I'm almost to the point where I don't believe knowledge itself exists
:-), Einstein certainly did, and if I were smart enough, I presumably would as will. Anything I say in principle has the same weight that anything Newton or Einstein said. Now, people are less likely to spend time listening to me than they would to Newton or Einstein obviously, but there is nothing inherent to Newton that makes what he says better than what I say; the content of what he says does that. In Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God. What he says is intrinsically worth more than what I say.
And if you want to be such a strong skeptic thats fine. But it is hard for such a strong skeptic to be able to say anything interesting about what ever differences did allow us to go from building huts to airplanes.
> Since 1+1=2 is an unproven axiom, true by definition rather than by proof, it most certainly IS faith.
I'm not sure that 1+1=2 is a definition. I don't think it is. Typically, one tries to prove the behavior of numbers using set theory, and I'm not all that familiar with it. But in any case, I suppose definition is a perfectly valid justification in mathematics. Justification is mathematics is still very different than in science. Science is ultimately justified by empirical observation, while most people say mathematics is not.
> The problem comes in when we don't identify that as "just a convenient language construct".
> We don't actually know that the electron exists- we suspect it does due to evidence, but nobody's
> ever actually seen one.
I think that most modern physicists at least are painfully aware that electrons may only be a model. Quantum mechanics is very strange, and almost forces one to consider that possiblity. This is part of the reason Einstien disliked quantum mechanics so much, with his famous quote "God does not play dice with the universe." Whether or not science IS just a language construct- this is something that most scientists let philosophers argue about.
> Science has an equal tradition of personal revelation- that's why theories are named after people.
Theories are named after people to recognize thay they first thought of them. However, theories are not inherently personal. I can use experiment to verify Newton's gravity the same as he can. I can never personally verify, eg, Paul's conversion experience.
> Not really- you can never gain the respect of Newton in the field of gravity either.
While I agree that I personally won't gain the same repect of Newton
> Maybe to another scientist- but to a layman no, science is no different than religion in that way.
This is true. As social institutions, the Church and science have many striking similarities. They also have important differences.
> The only reason you say religion doesn't is because you don't understand the religious definitions.
There was a whole program by the Catholic theologians to justify Christian thinking using pure reason: the scholastics. It is true that I don't know that much about them. I have read Descartes, who wasn't a scholastic, but certainly was in the tradition of trying to reconcile Christian belief with pure reason. At the beginning of his meditations, he is very careful to note that Christian belief is justified by first by faith and that he wishes to prove the existence of God using pure reason only to be be able to convince non-believers that God existed. So clearly Descartes at least thought that Christian thinking is ultimately justified by faith (whatever faith is, exactly.) My understanding is that this is the view of most Christians. Most modern scientists, on the other hand, would say that scientific belief in a model is justified in empirical observation that does not conflict with the model.
> What makes you think the tribesman cannot?
I think the tribesman cannot make an airplane with his tribal beliefs because he did not actually make a plane. One cannot, eg, read the Bible and build a plane
> But pure reason and mathematics leave no room for faith or belief- and therefore can never
> lead to knowledge by themselves.
No, pure mathematics leaves no room for faith. Faith is not the same thing as belief. Google defines belief as: "impression: a vague idea in which some confidence is placed" and "any cognitive content held as true". So mathematics leaves plenty of room for belief. For example, I believe that 1+1=2 because this is a cognitive content I hold as true. As to what sense mathematical theorems are "true" - this is a complicated issue. However, mathematical theorems definitely qualify as "knowledge", which is what I said justified belief is necessary for.
> The real problem is that models don't have self-consciousness at all- they're just models,
> thought constructs.
Maybe I should not have used the word "self-consciousness". What I meant was that a model explicity make a prediction, and that it acknowledges this is a major element of its purpose. And when one anthropomorphize something, one gives it human characteristics. I don't think anybody is arguing that an electron has a personality, or emotions, or a soul. Sometimes, we use language that an electron "wants to do something", but of course this is just a convenient language construct.
> And yet, by having an ethicless version of utility, how is your worship of models and
> justification by utility any different than the primitive tribesman basing the timing of his
> planting on some myth of a god?
Again, religion typically has a tradition of personal relevation that science does not. This alone is a major, major difference. Also, there are practical differences. Science is very rigorous in that what it predicts is very explicitly stated. Religion typically does not. This is another major difference. They are major enough such that I can build airplanes and antibiotics and bombs, and all the other wonderful and terrible things scientific inquiry has given us, while the tribesmen cannot.
And I would say that Christianity in general does not make a specific prediction. What would its specific prediction be? Life after death practically cannot be verified, so it does not qualify. The Revelation still has not come, but this doesn't bother most Christians.
> but I find it very interesting that you think Science or any other human belief needs justification, a very
> religious concept.
This is a western (I don't know about eastern, etc.) philosophical tradition that justified belief is knowledge. (And don't ask me to say much more on this, I'm not a professional philosopher.) You certainly can't say that you know something to be true of you don't also believe it to be true. You seem to want to lump everything under the notion of "religion" which is fine, except that then of course any sort of belief or knowledge becomes "religious", because belief is a prerequisite for knowledge.
There are very important differences between, say, Christianity and science. I'm not an expert, but consider, for example, the beginning of the Gospel of John. John writes, "In the beginning, there was the Word, and the Word was God." This shows a tradition of learning, of "hearing", truth from others. Individuals have divine relevation in Christianity that by their very nature cannot be shared by others. For example, in the Christian tradition, Jesus' words are the Word of God. My words will never, ever be worth as much as Jesus' as far as Christianity is concerned. Science, on the other hand, is squarely in the tradition of pure reason and mathematics. My math proof is just as good as yours is, and in principle, I can verify any mathematical proof for myself. It is somewhat more complicated in science, since science is empirical, but the idea is the same- anybody should, in principle, be able to reproduce an experiment. While there are similarities- mathematics started out as religion- this is a fundamentally different tradition from that of "the Word."
You also are misunderstanding my use of the word "utility". A model has utility if it makes a particular prediction that is verified (or, more technically, if it makes a prediction that is not falsified.) So, by this argument, I suppose that if your villagers believed that they were doing their religious practices to make the crops grow better, then in some sense, yes, they had a model that could be acknowledged as "true". However, I would say that typically, models have a degree of rigour to them, which I would guess was lacking from your island tribe. I would say that a model has a degree of self-consciousness to it- it states explicitly that it is trying to make a prediction, and that this is its purpose. A better example, and the one that is usually used, would be Ptolemy's epicircles. Ptolemy of course assume the earth to be the center of the universe, and was able to describe the motion of the planets with a series of circles. We typically think of him as wrong, but his epicycles worked quite well for his purposes, so perhaps he was, in a sense, quite correct.
For this reason, your example of the airplane, while clever, does not invalidate my notion of "utility." My point, which I didn't make clear, was that the models make specific predictions in a way that is so dramatically true that we are able to build the airplane. Whether that airplane is ultimately good for society as a whole or not is quite irrelevant as far as my meaning of "utility" goes. This does not mean, of course, that it is unimportant.
I suppose that it all depends on your notion of "falsifiable", and "macroevolution." In general, if you want to observe macroevolution in process then, no, you cannot set up a protoplanet as you describe. However, I am in physics, and deal with many, many systems that one cannot directly observe in action; one can only observe their effects. However, they are still perfectly falsifiable. In any case, I don't think that evolution typically refers to an origin of life, but rather an origin of species. I gave several concrete examples that would falsify evolution. Which of these do you disagree with? And what field are you in, if I may ask?
> The electron has a factual basis.
>
> I'm not sure about that- has anybody ever seen one?
Well, I'm not sure what you mean by "seen" but yes, in a sense they have. For example, bubble chambers allow you to see the tracks of individual electrons. But of course no one has seen the "ideal" electron.
> Practically speaking, we may act as if it exists independently of our mathematical model of it.
>
> Yes, but you can do that with any myth.
Not in the sense that I mean. You can't use your belief in Zeus (or whatever) to make an airplane to fly across the Atlantic, but I can use my belief in my Scientific models to do just that. In fact, arguably (and I think you would have to argue) that it is solely that my Scientific models do let me build an airplane to go across the Atlantic that justifies me believing them. Justification for belief in myth tends to be much more complex.
> Oh, it is- but the point is that there are almost as many interpretations available for the
> scientific method as there are for Evolution or the Book of Genesis.
This point is absolutely true. It is far from clear what is meant by the "scientific method." However, bypassing this problem is what you get for paying the philosophical price of saying that an electron is just a model, and doesn't really exist. I don't really have to justify my interpretation of the scientific method. All I have to do is show that my scientific models have more utility than those that came before them, and I am justified in believing them.
> That being said, the Bible also purports to tell us many aspects of "how" which conflict with
> evolutionary views - 6 literal days of creation, created kinds, man first - then woman, plants
> before the sun, etc. The serious question that I have is, "if you don't believe the 'how' in the
> Bible, can you justify believing the 'what'?"
I think at least one fundamental problem with asking this problem is that the modern experience with science has taught us that one cannot as "how" without asking "to within what accuracy." When you ask "Is Newton or Einstein right", part of the answer has to be "what do you want to us this for?" If you want to go to the moon, Newton is perfectly right. If you want to build a GPS system, Newton is wrong, and Einstein is right. If you are trying to build a modern, rigorous mathematical theory, then even Newton's Calculus is wrong. So I have to ask you, then, if you say that modern science says that the Bible is wrong, I have to ask you "what accuracy the Bible was going for?" This is the way we know if a more scientific paper disproves another one- do the two disagree within their accuracy. What are the errors on the "7 days"? I know there is a passage in the bible that refers to a circle with a circumference of 3 and a radius of 1. I don't know how much of mathematics you know, but this is mathematically impossible. So clearly, there were errors there.
This brings us back to how to justify they "why" if the "how" is not correct. I'm not a theologian, but I think the "why" HAS to be important outside of the "how" in the same way that moral authority must be justified without temporal power. In God, these two are one, but in humanity, they are often very different, and this is a great truth that Christianity reflects. This truth is in some important way lost if I must justify the moral authority of the Bible with its scientific authority. Imagine if God had included detailed "hows" in the Bible. As an extreme example, if the Bible contained blueprints for nuclear weapons. That would be a "how" you could believe in. Ancient Christians build a nuclear bomb just 100 years after the birth of Christ. They detonate it. That would have gotten a bunch of converts, I bet. Christianity would rule the temporal and spiritual world. But the Christians wouldn't be worshiping the moral authority of God and the sacrifice of His Son, but rather the might of His Bomb. In fact it is only after the Revelation that we learn for sure that temporal and moral authority are one and the same. This still leaves the question of how we justify the moral authority of the Bible. I would argue that the act of following the morals of the Bible is itself self-evident justification of those morals. However, ultimately, religious belief does involve just that, belief.
I think this was the idea of the Catholic "Limbo". According to (my no doubt overly simplified version of) Catholic dogma of original sin, any child who dies before being baptized is vicariously guilty of Adam's sin. I believe Augustine originally concluded that the child went to hell. However, the Church later softened this view by saying the children went to "Limbo", a place where the children only suffer in knowing that they are not in heaven. Now, it wants to de-emphasize Limbo even further. Purgatory ,on the other hand, is traditionally conceived as a sort of temporary Hell where you burn to atone for the sins you didn't have a chance to atone for (but were still forgiven for) in life.
> Electrons, viruses, and black holes don't exist. They are mythological models that attempt to explain
> phenomena that we CAN directly measure- but that's all they are. Thought models. To claim that a model
> IS reality leaves the realm of science behind and enters into the world of religions.
That an electron has reality only as a tool to make a prediction is a pretty standard positivist position, I think. However, to call the electrion "mythological" is a terrible abuse of the world "mythological." Google defines mythological as: "fabulous: based on or told of in traditional stories; lacking factual basis or historical validity". The electron has a factual basis. Practically speaking, we may act as if it exists independently of our mathematical model of it. I also think your definition of "direct observation" is rather arbitrary. If you want to know more about positivism, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivist
> The problem is, though, specifically speciation has yet to be proven, and no experiment exists
> to prove it.
I'm not sure what you mean by "hard science." Nothing is science is ever proven. Instead we create experiments which can disprove theories, but do not. In that sense, the theories are "proven." Now, we have never directly observed speciation. However, we never directly observe Newton's forces. We never directly observe Maxwell's EM fields. If you wish to think of speciation as being only as real as Newton's forces and Maxwell's EM fields, and to believe all of them a tool of theory used to make predictions, fine, but that doesn't mean they should not be taught to younger children. It also doesn't mean that there aren't very important epistemological differences between Biology and religion which are glossed over when Biology is referred to as "just another religion."
> No, I'm saying you must disbelieve that Andromeda exists at all unless you PERSONALLY have
> recorded the light coming from it and/or have documented evidence that such light has reached
> us within the last 41,000 years or so.
So where do you draw the line? I am not allowed to trust someone else that they have seen Andromeda. Am I allowed to use their telescope images? Or do I need to look through the telescope myself. But what if I don't trust those who built it. But even if I built it myself, perhaps it has somehow warped or broken in a way I don't understand, so I had better use my own eyes. But even eyes are just a kind of biological "telescope", and one I certainly didn't make. And for that matter, my brain may be in some way compromised. I could be on drugs, or being manipulated in a way I don't understand. So we are left with Descartes' "I think therefore I am." Except I don't really know I am doing the thinking. So we are at "There are thoughts. Right now. I mean now. No, now..."
You are certainly welcome to be a skeptic. The fact of the matter is that, skepticism aside, by some miracle science gives us technology that works, and part of science is relying on others. However, unlike in religion, in principle, anyone can repeat an experiment. Religion, of course, has inherently individual divine inspiration.
> I think that evolution should also be kept out, because it is also metaphysical and
> non-scientific (neither testable nor observable).
Evolution is of course testable. There are many, many things that could falsify evolution. I'm not a biologist, but here are two examples I thought of off the top of my head: if we had fundamentally different DNA from apes, this would disprove evolution; if we found evidence that the Earth is only 5000 years old, this would falsify evolution. If we found we could not transmit genetic information to our offspring, this would falsify Darwin's natural selection. A scientific theory needs to be disprovably by observation, and evolution clearly is. Just because the main thrust of evolution seems to describe things that happened in the past doesn't mean that it is not falsifiable. How little credit do you give the scientific community that you don't trust it to figure out what is falsifiable and what is not? How do you trust it enough to use its vaccines and antibiotics or fly in its airplanes if you don't think it knows a falsifiable theory from an unfalsifiable one? Scientists have been wrong before, sure, but come on, you are not wondering whether string theory will ever be refined enough to be tested, or whether singularities exist, but whether a well accepted theory is falsifiable.
I suspect the problem is that you have been taught a bastardization of "evolution" that is inherently metaphysical. Darwin has been used to justify everything from atheisim to cutting support from the poor. This doesn't mean this is what evolution and Darwin's natural selection actual mean; for example, as I'm sure you know Christ has been used to justify, well, much worse things that Christianity does not, or should not, stand for.
> Free Trade (sometimes also known as Globalization) just means that if you don't like the laws
> somewhere, you can go somewhere else to avoid them.
In princple, free trade is supposed to be about specialization. It's supposed to be about letting regions that are naturally better at producing one thing, produce it, and then trade it with everyone else, so that the world wide production is greater and more efficient. Unfortunately, different political balances in different regions end up having a large effects on how efficient a region is at producing something, so basically it is upsetting the balance of power between Marx's ideal bourgeois and proletariat in more developed countries as well. This is scary. You seem to think that financial success is a product of an element of socialism in government. My personal hope is that this is only half true- that socialism in government (I'm guessing I approve of somewhat less than you do, but that is beside the point) somewhat depends on financial success as well, and that when all this is over, there will be fewer powerless people in the world, or perhaps more accurately, that globalization can be controlled to encourage as few powerless people as possible.
I've heard that Nevada's entire federal political agenda over the last 10 years, or whatever, has been centered around PREVENTING putting all the radioactive material in Yucca Mountain. :-)
Nuclear waste is scary, but it is very possible that the CO2 released by burning oil is more dangerous. Global warming is at a minimum decently probable, and at the very least our CO2 production is significantly affecting our atmosphere in ways that will take a long time to understand. The only difference is that unlike the atmosphere, which is inconceivably large and complex, we can wrap our heads around the idea of nuclear waste, so it seems scarier. Chernobyl is much more dramatic than melting Antarctic icecaps, but he latter is probably more serious.
When you write "under the impression", do you really mean "of the personal opinion"...?
From the paper referenced in this PRL, Physical Review A 59 (1999), M. Murau, D. Jonathan, M.B. Plenio, V. Vendral:
"In this paper, we investigate the following scenario. Alice holds an unknown one-qubit quantum state |Phi> and wishes to transmit identical copies of it to M associates (Bob, Claire, etc.). OF COURSE, THE QUANTUM NO-CLONING THEOREM IMPLIES THAT THESE COPIES CANNOT BE PERFECT. The best Alice can do is to send optimal quantum clones of her state (the most faithful copies allowed by quantum mechanics), which we assume to be sufficient for her purposes." (Caps are mine.)
Now I admit, the PRL is too dense for me to understand, but based on this, it lookse to me like perfect quantum clones are not allowed. In fact, this quantum no-cloning theorem follows quite directly and naturally from first principles. We won't be cloning Kirk anytime soon, at least not perfectly.
I haven't read the PRL, but the linked article says: ;-))
"Quantum cryptographic protocols are so secure that they can not only discover tapping but also where and how much information is leaking out. Now, using telecloning, the identity and location of the eavesdropper can be concealed."
So as far as I can tell, the parties sending and receiving the message still know that their is an eavesdropper, just not
"their identity and location." I am sure that heisenberg is still fine, a quantum state still cannot be cloned, and information cannot be sent faster than the speed of light. If this was the case, this would be the headline, and I'm guessing it would be on cnn headline news. (Maybe the world isn't that nerdy though...
This is actually a business oportunity. Its like when Lex Luthor bought property in Superman I, except that we don't need a nuclear warhead to turn it into valuable beach front poperty.
> If I have enough energy, I can grow my own food, make my own air, purify my own water.
Yes, and this is what we do. We grow our own food, using solar energy, and oil. Solar energy powers trees and plankton, which purifies air for us. Now, I'm not expert on this, but despite how much of the correct environment is already set up for us to do this, untold millions still starve, we have fought 2 wars in the last 15 years intimately related to oil, and in my experience, a little bit of chill or a small drought locally can have a terrible effect on food prices. And yet you seem to think that even if still-hypothetical drastice climate changes become not-so-hypothetical, you are just going to crank up the AC? While I envy your optimism, to me this seems like the kind of thinking that always seems to compel warring European countries to invade Russia with winter approaching.
I think you are too hard on what you call "pop science", which is sometimes more accurately described as "science education", or at least "adult science education." I personally think that learning scientific knowledge has intrinsic value. We benefit from scientific discovery not just because it gives us useful technology to fend off the elements and disease, but because it gives us a greater appretiation of the fantastic world we live in. For example, Einstein's theories of relativity are important because they allow us to build our GPS satellite system, but they are also important because it has infiltrated the popular culture, and while the average person may not understand it as rigorously as the physicist, he (or she) does understand that time is not so simple as his senses and common sense may tell him; I like to think this has a tendency to make him more open minded in general. I think, then, that trying to integrate science with popular culture is as important a part of science as any other. Of course, it has to be done well, and even if it is done well, it is certainly going to be twisted into pseudoscience. Social Darwinism is a good example of this. However, superstition and prejudice have existed since prehistory, and I can only think popular science reduces it more than it contributes to it.
There are incredibly important epistemological differences between science and religion. However, I think as social institutions in particular, science and religion have many striking similarities. (This is why the creationist argument that "evolution is like a religion" has so much resonance.) I worry you would have science modeled after the Catholic Church of the middle ages, where uber-elite theologians argued among themselves about the nature of God while the common man could not even read the Bible or understand Church service because it was in Latin. Without popular science, I think this is what we would have- elite scientists doing research the average person doesn't hear or care about, while technology is passed down, Eucharist-like, as a reward for monetary contributions to scientific progress. Just as I prefer the Bible translated into native languages, I prefer we at least make an effort to translate scientific knowledge into a format the common person can relate to.
I think you mean "rogue" countries ;-) "Rouge" is the red makeup women put on their cheeks. ("Whores use rouge. Ladies pinch...")
Of course, the other question it seems to me is whether this was an actual perception, or just the experience of perception. For example, would the patient actually remember, if asked, the exact words his mother had used? Or did he simply have the experience that he knew. There are pretty weird studies of, eg, people are blind but don't know it, and who swear they are blind but have reflex actions based on sight.
Can we even scientifically study consciousness? A large component of what most of us mean by consciousness is probably metaphysical. Certainly it is inherently subjective. While I think that neurobiology and neuropsychology are worthy enterprises, it seems like they should invent a new term for what they mean by consciousness.
This is a huge undertaking though. It took physics a long time (what, ~170 years after Newton) to be able to understand how microscopic physics related to the behavior of a simple macroscopic gas. They really even didn't really get it right until after Planck. The brain is, of course, much more complicated than a simple gas, and the chemistry controlling the action of individual neurons is much more complicated than Newton's physics. Maybe the standards for "understanding" are lower, but all the same, this is going to be extremely difficult, I imagine, if it is even possible. (As I understand it, there are certain philosophers who think it is not, but I am not in a position to have an opinion.
> How does it not? In my very first point, the freedom some enjoy for fast free porn definitely impedes upon...
Again, I think freedom is a complicated subject. I think, thought, that at least historically it is intrinsically linked to the idea that an individual should be able to pursue whatever destiny God intends for him. Of course this statement is terribly vague (especially for atheists and agnostics) which is part of the reason freedom is so complicated, but I think it is also why nobody thinks that I have the "freedom" to murder somebody. Similarly, I think that your hypothetical person who wants his quick porn would have difficulty arguing that seeing free porn is needed for him to have a fulfilled life, or however you want to say it. The same goes for those who want to stay on the coastline when a tsunami will hit. However, I think those wanting political change can argue quite easily that this qualifies as a freedom.
As for your question of not using the internet at all- if I thought the only way to protect my children (if I had any) from predators was to not use the internet, or have laws that filtered out porn content as well as other material for other means, I would have no difficulty in deciding not to use the internet.
> It's really not that different... We here in the west, who are unduly obsessed with the silly idea of the innocence
:-) Because when we are ready for all these things, maybe we as a country (U.S.) SHOULD have a discussion as to how to guarantee our children access to uncensored political and idealogical discourse so that they might be guaranteed the right to self-government, and as much as possible to pursue their particular destinies as they see fit. Until then, they will have to wait until they are adults. China seems to never want to give its citizens the chance.
> of childhood, protect one kind of citizen. They try to protect another kind.
Yes, I suppose there is not much difference in as much as there is not that much difference between a child and an adult. I for one think there is a great deal of difference. If I were to get on an airplane being flown by a six-year-old, I would get right back off. If my surgeon was a 4-year-old, I would find another doctor. If my tax-attorney (if I had one) were 10, I would do my taxes myself. When I have kids, would you like me to send them over to manage your family budget?