(Atheism = no belief in god) -Vs- (Atheism = naturalist outlook)

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

If a "ghost" is a set of environmental cues that the human mind tends to interpret as a figure or presence (and given our track record, that's pretty likely), then they are certainly immaterial (have no material existence, in that they are not separable from the mind that perceives them).

Then they are not only immaterial, they are an optical illusion, they don't exist, they are not real. It is a trick of the mind. "Ghost" becomes a just a term we use to incorrectly describe a visual or physical sensation that we are not aware of the actual origin off.

I mean what is the difference between your definition of "ghost" and something like the magic eye cards that trick the brain into seeing a 3D shape that doesn't exist.

Seeing the shape of Jesus in a cream cracker isn't a ghost, unless something put the shape of Jesus into the cream cracker in the first place. And what ever that something was is the ghost, not the shape of jesus itself.

Something that "exist" only in the human imagination doesn't exist

Scofflaw wrote:

This gives a "ghost", which is repeatably observable as an occurrence, to the "sensitive", but which will take different forms (and may be no more than a 'creepy feeling').

If it is an repeatable observable occurrence then it doesn't exist only in the mind of the observer. This seems to contradict what you are saying in the first part.

I'm sorry but I'm really not following your point. On the one hand you seem to be saying that a "ghost" can be something that manipulates the world around it in order to leave visual or physical "clues" to observers that would not be present if the ghost did not exist. If that is the case, the question is what is that something that is manipulating the environment. And why do you call it a "ghost" instead of any number of other phenonma.

On the other hand you also seem to be saying that a ghost is just a manipulation of the human brain, or the brain of those "sensitive" to manipulation. Then the question would be, what is causing the manipulation, and why is this any different from something like the Magic Eye cards that manipulate the human brain in very natural fashion. Why are you calling it a "ghost" in the first place when it could be anything

The term "ghost" implies a specific entity or phenomona, related to the spirit of a dead person. If there is no reason to believe that is what is being observed then why call it a "ghost"

Scofflaw wrote:

We do not have any tools to study the 'supernatural', but that is also irrelevant.

But the term supernatural doesn't really mean anything with in the context of science. Everything, ghosts included if they are real, are part of the natural world.

We study the one universe, if something is real it is part of the natural world, even if it is a ghost or some other term commonly found used when talking about supernatural events.

Also we do have "tools" to study the supernatural, otherwise we wouldn't be aware of it in the first place. Seeing or hearing a "ghost" means that at some point the ghost must have some form of interaction with-in the natural world, even if that interaction is simply to manipulate the human brain.

Scofflaw

Something that "exist" only in the human imagination doesn't exist

If it is an repeatable observable occurrence then it doesn't exist only in the mind of the observer. This seems to contradict what you are saying in the first part.

OK - you're really not getting this, so I must be putting it pretty badly.

Assume that a particular place (called 'haunted') has some pattern of environmental cues (not clues), such as fluctuating magnetic fields, noise levels, shapes and shadows. This pattern of cues act on some human minds in such a way as to cause them to "feel a presence". In some cases, they will "fill in" that feeling by seeing something. The "something" they see may be suggested by some of the features of the environment.

The "haunting" is therefore based on a repeatable set of features of the environment, so that multiple observers can agree that the place feels "haunted".

On the other hand, what appears to be there may be largely up to the particular observer (or it may not, if the pattern of cues strongly suggests a particular "manifestation").

It should be clear at this point that we are dealing with something that is both imaginary and real, or consists of a real situation or pattern that causes us to imagine something. Repeatable, but immaterial.

Why are you calling it a "ghost" in the first place when it could be anything

Now strictly speaking, all of that is irrelevant to my argument. However, the fact that we cannot agree what a ghost is, is relevant.

If we cannot agree what a ghost is, or how it might be produced, we certainly cannot dismiss them in any scientific way - we don't know what we're dismissing. Certainly we can dismiss what you think of as being ghosts - by which I intend no offence!


cordially,
Scofflaw

Dades

EDIT: Just read Scoffs post.

A "ghost" to me is more than an explained sound or sighting. Those are just unexplained sounds or signtings.

Like "GOD" I use the word "GHOST" in the meaning that most everyone would. Saying God is Everything, just muddies the water in any theological debate. So to my mind does suggesting that a series of naturally occurring events that cause a human mind to create an illusion, can be called a ghost...

Scofflaw

A "ghost" to me is more than an explained sound or sighting. Those are just unexplained sounds or signtings.

Like "GOD" I use the word "GHOST" in the meaning that most everyone would. Saying God is Everything, just muddies the water in any theological debate. So to my mind does suggesting that a series of naturally occurring events that cause a human mind to create an illusion, can be called a ghost...

I'm not claiming they are ghosts. I'm saying that what I've put forward is an entirely naturalistic, and, I think, plausible explanation for what are generally described as ghosts. The explanation is illustrative of the fact that the same apparent phenomenon is explicable in a variety of ways, none of which have been empirically tested.

In the absence of such an explanation, which is able to account for the majority of "ghost sightings", and has been empirically tested, I cannot see where people get the idea that science has 'disproved' ghosts. Science has largely dismissed ghosts as unfitting to serious study, but that doesn't prove anything about ghosts, only about scientists.


cordially,
Scofflaw

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

If we cannot agree what a ghost is, or how it might be produced, we certainly cannot dismiss them in any scientific way - we don't know what we're dismissing.

You are correct that we cannot dismiss the phenomona itself, but we can dismiss that the phenomona is being caused by a "ghost"

I think the problem here is that you are using the term "ghost" to describe the phenomona, where as I am using the term "ghost" to explain the phenomona

So your meaning of "ghost" is more like the term "u.f.o" which simply means an unidentified flying object, which is any object that is flying and unidentified.

Where as I'm using the term "ghost" the way someone would use "ufo" to mean an alien. In other words when I talk about a "ghost" I mean the spirit of a dead person interacting with the universe, which causes certain phenomona to happen. That is what I mean by ghost. I use the term as a explination rather than simply a discription.

So you are correct, science has not proved or disproved that these "ghosts" (as you mean it) actually happen. But what science can say pretty well is that the cause of these phenomona is not a ghost as I mean it (ie a dead spirit interacting with the physical world)

That is the same as saying that science cannot prove or disprove a lot of UFO sightings didn't happen, but it can be pretty sure that a lot of them were not caused by extra-terresterial life forms (albeit to a much lesser degree than saying ghosts aren't real)

Scofflaw

Wicknight, all we've got is probabilities. If science had disproven the afterlife, or God, or any of the above, all scientists would have to be atheists in order to accept science. Science hasn't, and they aren't. They are marked "not proven", "not investigated", "not reputable", or "no plausible scientific theory", and they are on the shelf.

Science is not a belief, but a process. Until that process has been applied to a phenomenon, it cannot be said to have disproved it. You may have a theory for the origin of ghosts that clashes with accepted science (where you are "using the term "ghost" to explain the phenomona"), but all that proves is that your theory doesn't work.

While I am perfectly happy with dismissing "the spirit of a dead person interacting with the universe" on the basis that I don't believe in an afterlife, that's because I'm an atheist, not because I'm a scientist. Plenty of scientists do believe in an afterlife - if you ask them how they square that with their scientific knowledge, a lot of them will say that one thing science has taught them is how little we know about how the world really works.

I think that some atheists are using the "certainty" of science to substitute for the "certainty" of religion. It won't wash - that's not how science works. All it offers are temporary, and conditional, probable solutions.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

It won't wash - that's not how science works. All it offers are temporary, and conditional, probable solutions.

But Scofflaw you are starting from the wrong point. You are assuming there is some validity to the concept of a ghost in the first place, just because some people believe in it or claim to have experienced it.

You are saying science cannot disprove an after-life or a ghost. But it doesn't work like that. Science works on the basis that something doesn't actually happen unless you have some form of evidence or logical reason to believe it does. Science does not work on the basis that everything happens until you show, through evidence or logic, that it doesn't

Science can look at what happens to an animal life form when it is created. It can look at what happens to an animal life form when it is alive. And it can look at what happens when an animal life form dies. At no point does it find a detectable process or method to allow for the creation of a ghost or spirit entity. Couple that with the logic of something like evolution and it is hard to find a evolutionary reason or process that creates a spirit.

Therefore it is unlikely such a process exists, and more importantly there is no real reason to believe such a process exists, no scientific logical reason at least.

People still believe in them, but that belief is not grounded in rational discovery, it is either an act of imagination or an act of faith. Nothing wrong with imagination or faith, but it doesn't lend any validity to a concept.

Just because the human can believe in something doesn't mean it is a valid concept until science proves it doesn't happen.

Scofflaw

Wicknight wrote:

But Scofflaw you are starting from the wrong point. You are assuming there is some validity to the concept of a ghost in the first place, just because some people believe in it or claim to have experienced it.

You are saying science cannot disprove an after-life or a ghost. But it doesn't work like that. Science works on the basis that something doesn't actually happen unless you have some form of evidence or logical reason to believe it does. Science does not work on the basis that everything happens until you show, through evidence or logic, that it doesn't

Science can look at what happens to an animal life form when it is created. It can look at what happens to an animal life form when it is alive. And it can look at what happens when an animal life form dies. At no point does it find a detectable process or method to allow for the creation of a ghost or spirit entity. Couple that with the logic of something like evolution and it is hard to find a evolutionary reason or process that creates a spirit.

Therefore it is unlikely such a process exists, and more importantly there is no real reason to believe such a process exists, no scientific logical reason at least.

People still believe in them, but that belief is not grounded in rational discovery, it is either an act of imagination or an act of faith. Nothing wrong with imagination or faith, but it doesn't lend any validity to a concept.

Just because the human can believe in something doesn't mean it is a valid concept until science proves it doesn't happen.

No, science deals with what is observed, or with what is postulated. Reports of ghosts are an observation. The existence of ghosts is a postulate. No rigorous explanation has been advanced of either - instead, the area is considered a silly one, which does not attract funding. Where research is carried out, it is semi-amateur, and certainly not rigorous.

"Science works on the basis that something doesn't actually happen unless you have some form of evidence or logical reason to believe it does."

The evidence being the reports. Which is more than we have for, say, black holes, or brown dwarf stars, or dark matter, or a million other things which are undoubtedly part of science.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Son Goku

Scofflaw wrote:

Which is more than we have for, say, black holes, or brown dwarf stars, or dark matter, or a million other things which are undoubtedly part of science.

I know this is totally tangential and only satisfying the pedant in me, but the evidence for Black Holes is pretty solid, even more so for Brown Dwarfs.
Black Holes have been confirmed since the late 80s and are being used to test General Relativity since 2004.

robindch

> Where research is carried out, it is semi-amateur, and certainly not rigorous.

I disagree. Certainly, there a bagful of no-doubt well-meaning, if ineffectual, folks out there taking pics of passing planes or cars or their cameras' internal reflections, dust on the lens or a fellow-researchers' frosty exhaust, and getting their just rewards. But there were, and perhaps still are, a few people who made a genuine effort to find some guiding principle behind it all, some tiny, tiny unexplained effect, while still using the intelligences with which nature endowed us. Susan Blackmore was one and she chucked it in six years ago and her gloomy reflections on thirty years of prodding the void can be found at:

http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/journalism/NS2000.html, or in more detail at:
http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Chapters/Kurtz.htm

But will her lifetime's failure to detect so much as a paranormal squeak deter anybody else from hoping that just one more search might bring the rational world down to its inflexible ankles?

Naahh, not a bit of it.

Scofflaw

Susan Blackmore, is of course, both professional and rigorous - in fact, when I made my categorical statement I should probably have mentioned her by name! However, the size of the research effort, and the kind of funding behind it, still effectively classifies it as semi-amateur (although I'll back down on rigorous).

On the other hand:

Susan Blackmore wrote:

Yet if we are going to study psychic claims at all, we must always consider the possibility that they are true. Unlikely as it is, ESP and PK might exist. There could be new forces as yet undiscovered. We should accept the best explanation we can find - not the one that we like the most.

But:

Susan Blackmore wrote:

But what if they don’t exist? Then each of us is a biological creature, designed by natural selection for the survival of our genes and memes; here for no reason at all other than the dictates of chance and necessity, and unable to contact or influence anyone else except through the normal senses and physical processes. Our consciousness, and the perceived world around us, emerge from the complex interactions between brains and their environment, and when those brains decay then our awareness stops.

Living in a world like this is truly scary. There is nothing to hang onto.

Which is what I believe myself. Oddly enough, it makes me happy!

I feel compelled to state for the record that my preferred explanation of 'ghosts' is the naturalistic one. On the other hand, I suspect that I have a different view of "reality" from most atheists. While I believe that there is a real, solid, naturalistic, material, and scientifically knowable world, I don't think we quite live in it. I think we live in our interpretation of it, which is not the same thing.

regards,
Scofflaw

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

Reports of ghosts are an observation.

Reports of strange phenomona are an observation. There is no evidence they are ghosts, unless you use to the term ghost to simply describe any unexplained phenomona, just like when someone sees an UFO there is no little evidence it is an alien.

Scofflaw wrote:

The existence of ghosts is a postulate.

But that was my inital point. The existence of ghosts is not a postulate under any know scientific theory or method. And it contradicts a large number of established scientific theories.

Again that is assuming ghost means some kind of supernatural spirity entity, not just an unexplained phenomona.

Scofflaw wrote:

No rigorous explanation has been advanced of either - instead, the area is considered a silly one, which does not attract funding. Where research is carried out, it is semi-amateur, and certainly not rigorous.

That would be because their is very little logical reason to throw millions at studying something like a hunted house when there is so little real evidence that anything is actually happening.

Scofflaw wrote:

The evidence being the reports. Which is more than we have for, say, black holes, or brown dwarf stars, or dark matter, or a million other things which are undoubtedly part of science.

Not really. Black holes etc have proper theories behind them, that follow know scientific models.

I've never seen a report on a ghost that was actually evidence for a ghost, only evidence that something might have been seen or felt.

Someone saying they saw a strange shape in a room or wood or celler or something, and felt a strange chill down their spine is not presenting any actual evidence for anything, bar a strange shape and a cold chill.

We assume that something supernatural happened to them based on a set of matching circumstances that has grown up around the idea of ghosts. But there is no more reason to believe it was a ghost more than a cust of wind, and science would be reluctant to spend millions proving it was not a ghost only a cust of wind when the later is far more likely.

People who say we need to accept the possibility of ghost or the paranormal before we can properly study if they are real are presenting the arrgument the wrong way round.

You need to forget about the paranormal explinations for the evidence, forget about ghosts, spirits aliens etc, and start at the beginning and look at what is actually happening. Someone gets a cold chill in a old house. Why? Don't assume it was anything like a ghost, and work from "I don't know, lets look at what happened"

In science you don't assume something until you have evidence for it.

Dades

When you hear hooves, don't think of zebras.

Scoff, I don't think you believe in ghosts in the accepted sense of the word, but that you've expanded the definition just to fit your open-mindedness to belief in certain things supernatural.

Supernatural is not something that cannot be proven by science, as some notions just cannot be disproven. Supernatural for me is something that science can not even offer a reasonable explanation for it's occurance.

Scofflaw

wicknight wrote:

Reports of strange phenomona are an observation. There is no evidence they are ghosts, unless you use to the term ghost to simply describe any unexplained phenomona, just like when someone sees an UFO there is no little evidence it is an alien.

I think I have made it fairly clear that I am using "ghost" to describe a particular type of unexplained phenomenon. You, on the other hand, wish to use it exclusively to describe a specific postulate.

If we use your definition of "ghost", then the statement "explanation for ghosts" is superfluous, since a ghost has been defined in terms of its explanation.

I see no reason to accept that, particularly since you yourself state that your postulated ghosts can't exist. To counter the claim that you are "using ghost in the sense anyone would", I suggest that you try asking people what their explanation of ghosts is. If you're right, they should say "that's a silly question, because there's only one meaning of ghosts, which is spirits of the deceased". Actually, you'll find that people have all kinds of explanations for ghosts, which means that the term describes a phenomenon (as I use it) and not a postulate (as you're using it).

We remain with an class of observations that has a historically valid name, which is ghosts, and a number of plausible explanations ranging from the natural to the supernatural.


regards,
Scofflaw

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

Actually, you'll find that people have all kinds of explanations for ghosts, which means that the term describes a phenomenon (as I use it) and not a postulate (as you're using it).

Not to be that argumentative, but I don't think so.

"Ghost" is a common explination for something.

People don't have explanination for ghosts, "ghosts" is the explination for something. And that something can be pretty much anything, from a strange light to a gust of wind to a strange sound to a weird felling etc etc

Some might have different explinations for the same phenonoma (the same "something") that some people might attribute to ghosts.

To most people the most common definition of a "ghost" is the spirit of a dead person or animal interacting with the world. That is the explination, not the description. The description would be "a strange light" or "a funny feeling" or "my toes are going yellow"

www.dictionary.com

ghost Pronunciation Key (gst)
n.
1. The spirit of a dead person, especially one believed to appear in bodily likeness to living persons or to haunt former habitats.
2. The center of spiritual life; the soul.
3. A demon or spirit.

www.dict.org

Ghost \Ghost\ (g[=o]st), n. [OE. gast, gost, soul, spirit, AS.
g[=a]st breath, spirit, soul; akin to OS. g[=e]st spirit,
soul, D. geest, G. geist, and prob. to E. gaze, ghastly.]
[1913 Webster]
1. The spirit; the soul of man. [Obs.]
[1913 Webster]

Then gives her grieved ghost thus to lament.
--Spenser.
[1913 Webster]

2. The disembodied soul; the soul or spirit of a deceased
person; a spirit appearing after death; an apparition; a
specter.

To be honest it makes little sense to me to apply the term "ghost" in such a general fashion as you are doing.

Really I think we shouldn't use the term "ghost" simply as a description of something because we have no common definition of what that "something" is and in what context.

Or put another way, I have no idea what you are actually talking about when you say "ghost".

You could mean anything, from a flicker of light in a "haunted" house, to an orb on a photograph, to a strange feeling on your neck when you walk into a room, to a weird dream you had last night etc etc.

Using a universal term "ghost" to describe all these phenomona is confusing and implies a general connection between these events that might not exist in any meaningful way, except in the most general paranormal "thats weird" fashion. There is no connection between a strange light or shadow in a old house and a the weird sounds coming from my attic unless they are being caused by ghosts. If the cause is not the same then they are not the same and as such a common description would be nonsensical.

At least when people say UFO they have to at least be talking about an object that is unidentified and actually flying. But you wouldn't call a non-flying unidentified object a UFO unless you were talking about the object in context of aliens.

Playboy

Son Goku wrote:

I know this is totally tangential and only satisfying the pedant in me, but the evidence for Black Holes is pretty solid, even more so for Brown Dwarfs.
Black Holes have been confirmed since the late 80s and are being used to test General Relativity since 2004.

But there is no observational evidence - only observation of effects of something we think to be a black hole. Afaik this doesnt equal proof. There is room for a rival competing theory. Black holes are only one way of explaining the data. With any reference to an unobserved phenomena there is a multitude of possible explanations but scientists use Occams Razor to settle on one - the simplest one. I'm not aware of any competing theories for black holes but I think we should refrain from saying the are definite or confirmed.

Son Goku

Playboy wrote:

But there is no observational evidence - only observation of effects of something we think to be a black hole. Afaik this doesnt equal proof. There is room for a rival competing theory. Black holes are only one way of explaining the data. With any reference to an unobserved phenomena there is a multitude of possible explanations but scientists use Occams Razor to settle on one - the simplest one. I'm not aware of any competing theories for black holes but I think we should refrain from saying the are definite or confirmed.

I really don't want to drag this of topic, but there is observational evidence.
Black Holes aren't solely defined by their gravity, but also by orbital periods and their spectra of emission.
For instance the object X-1 cygni is a black hole to within a 99.995% confidence interval. They're nearly as confirmed as pulsars.
What you are saying was true back around 1992, most of the results before up until that era been published in a book called "Black Holes and Time Warps". However since then studies of these systems has advanced a lot. We're now starting to predict where black holes should be based on the galactic rotations.

I'd be happy to take this to the physics forum if you're not satisfied.

Playboy

I'm not a physicist but are you saying that black holes have been empirically verified? If not they are still an unobservable entity. Unobservable entities = theory. Theory doesnt = proof. We have a theory of gravity - we dont have proof that gravity exists. We infer that an unobservable entity called gravity exists through observed effects. Anyways sorry for going off topic.

Maybe better to reply in pm . thx

pH

Theory doesnt = proof. We have a theory of gravity - we dont have proof that gravity exists.

That is nonsense -that there is a downward force between us and the planet (and indeed an observable force between any 2 objects) is a fact. Even if our 'theory' of gravity (which attempts to explain this force) is completely wrong, gravity still exists, we don't all float away!

Anyway there is plenty of observational evidence to support black holes, I don't think you'd find an astronomer or physicist alive today who doubts their existance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hole

Playboy

pH wrote:

That is nonsense -that there is a downward force between us and the planet (and indeed an observable force between any 2 objects) is a fact. Even if our 'theory' of gravity (which attempts to explain this force) is completely wrong, gravity still exists, we don't all float away!

You are missing the point. There could be any number of explanations for what we term gravity - the theory could be underdetermined - that is for any scientific theory there could be another explanation that fits the data equally well. When we cant physically observe a phenomenen then we are always going to be making assumptions about what it is. We observe effects that we think are caused by an invisible force which we term gravity.

pH wrote:

Anyway there is plenty of observational evidence to support black holes, I don't think you'd find an astronomer or physicist alive today who doubts their existance.

Again we observe effects and we infer the existence of black holes from these effects. Unless we physically observe a black hole we cannot say for sure it exists. Just because data matches our theory doesnt mean that our theory is correct. The history of Science is littered with examples of theories which we thought correct and then we were proven wrong. Maxwellian electromagnetism for example.

pH

It's you who is missing the point here. Electromagnetism exists, gravity exists, whether we understand how and why (our theories) is irrelevant.

In the same way blackholes exist (a clump of matter so dense the escape velocity is > c). Our theories as to why and how they exist are not pertinent to the issue at hand.

Let's take a simple example - the Sun - it exists!
It existed when man thought it was a God, it existed when man thought it was a ball of fire and now when man thinks it is a large fusion reactor in space.
- It still exists (and did exist) if we're totally wrong and it's really something else.

Are you really saying - "They[black holes] may not exist because our our understanding of how/what causes them is wrong!"?

Again we observe effects and we infer the existence of black holes from these effects. Unless we physically observe a black hole we cannot say for sure it exists.

And on and on you go - black holes have been observed physically, via the effects they have on light and other stellar objects. And I have no wish to play silly word games that end up defining the words 'observe' and 'physically'. Science is does by scientists, following the scientific method, philosophers have as I have said many times before - have absolutely nothing at all to add.

Playboy

Look pH .. you are entitled to your opinion about philosophy and philosophers. I'm not going to waste large amounts of energy explaining something to you which you obviously have no interest in and do not think has any value. There is a wealth of material out there on this topic which supports my position. If you ever find yourself interested then you can find it yourself.

Scofflaw

There seems to be a certain amount of confusion here as to what constitutes evidence.

1. Black holes are a postulate. There is a theoretical thing called a black hole, and the the theory predicts certain characteristics.
2. Phenomena have been observed that match the predicted characteristics of black holes.

Does this mean black holes have been directly observed? No, it doesn't. There is a suggestion, for example, that what are currently believed to be black holes may be thin collapse shells around neutron stars. This theory predicts the same observed characteristics as black hole theory - that is, it explains the same phenomena.

If two theories explain all the observed characteristics of a phenomenon, and both are plausible, then neither is known to be right. To determine which one is correct, you need to look at where the predicted characteristics differ, and observe those.

regards,
Scofflaw

Son Goku

Scofflaw wrote:

1. Black holes are a postulate. There is a theoretical thing called a black hole, and the the theory predicts certain characteristics.
2. Phenomena have been observed that match the predicted characteristics of black holes.

Well I meant observed to nearly the same degree of accuracy as a Neutron Star. A black hole is only a certain collection of characteristics, in fact it is defined in terms of its orbits.

Does this mean black holes have been directly observed? No, it doesn't.

I also only meant observed in the same way an electron has been observed, by the effects it leaves. We've also narrowed down other possible explanations, so that the normal General Relativistic one is the only one still standing.
(I also know that one day a better explanation could come along.)
In this sense it has been proven, just as much as most Standard Model particles. It's not as much at a "human level" direct proof as most things in the other sciences, but it falls within what is called proven in Cosmology.

I think this is an effect of the subtleties of the word observed as it is used in physics which, because I'm used to thinking in those terms, I'll just say without expanding on.
This will naturally seem like I'm saying things are more definitive than I intend to.

It's a language problem. For instance to a geologist, black holes don't sound confirmed because they aren't anywhere near as concretely observed as geological phenomena.
However they have gained the level of proof standard for the kind of object they are in physics.

Scofflaw

Son Goku wrote:

It's a language problem. For instance to a geologist, black holes don't sound confirmed because they aren't anywhere near as concretely observed as geological phenomena.
However they have gained the level of proof standard for the kind of object they are in physics.

Oh alright, I admit it, I'm a geologist, although non-practicing these days.

Actually, geologists probably are more disputatious about this kind of thing, because we deal with very concrete phenomena that could have been produced in very large numbers of ways, and there's money in getting it right. Granites, for example, are undeniably real, but we're still arguing about how they get emplaced. Our most recent massive paradigm shift is only about 40 years back (plate tectonics). Most geology now uses observational classifications rather than genetic classifications, because the genetic classifications rely on theories, which get revised or struck down - hence my differences with Wicknight over the term "ghosts".

Nevertheless, the objects considered to be black holes are still not directly observed (and given their expected properties, may never be), but the probability that they are something radically different is now very low (it walks like a black hole, it quacks like a black hole, etc). That's what I meant when I said that all we had are probabilities - science does not provide eternal and absolute verities, merely a very high probability that something is true, at the current state of knowledge.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Son Goku

Scofflaw wrote:

Nevertheless, the objects considered to be black holes are still not directly observed (and given their expected properties, may never be), but the probability that they are something radically different is now very low (it walks like a black hole, it quacks like a black hole, etc). That's what I meant when I said that all we had are probabilities - science does not provide eternal and absolute verities, merely a very high probability that something is true, at the current state of knowledge.

Yeah, thats pretty much the kind of thing I meant.

pH wrote:

Science is does by scientists, following the scientific method, philosophers have as I have said many times before - have absolutely nothing at all to add.

Don't you feel that science would be a lot more "loose" and prone to over-confidence if it were not for the philosophy of science?

pH

Son Guko wrote:

Don't you feel that science would be a lot more "loose" and prone to over-confidence if it were not for the philosophy of science?

Absolutely not, the whole "philosophy of science" can be summed up as pointless postulating by men who believe they're much cleverer than they actually are.

It's a clear case of the emperor's clothes, no one dares to speak this truth because they fear that they are missing something and looking stupid, and of being out of step with the current fashion of post-modermism in 'intellectual' circles.

It offers no insight or help for anyone engaged in science, nor is it useful in any way for the so called 'man on the street'.

Scofflaw

Absolutely not, the whole "philosophy of science" can be summed up as pointless postulating by men who believe they're much cleverer than they actually are.

It's a clear case of the emperor's clothes, no one dares to speak this truth because they fear that they are missing something and looking stupid, and of being out of step with the current fashion of post-modermism in 'intellectual' circles.

It offers no insight or help for anyone engaged in science, nor is it useful in any way for the so called 'man on the street'.

A couple of questions, then:

1. are you a scientist?
2. do you know anything about the philosophy of science?
3. are you sure you're not just referring to the post-modernist "oh, science is just a culturally determined way of....blah blah my arts thesis" stuff?
4. you're aware that science has, and requires, theoretical underpinnings?

regards,
Scofflaw

Morbert

pH wrote:

Absolutely not, the whole "philosophy of science" can be summed up as pointless postulating by men who believe they're much cleverer than they actually are.

It's a clear case of the emperor's clothes, no one dares to speak this truth because they fear that they are missing something and looking stupid, and of being out of step with the current fashion of post-modermism in 'intellectual' circles.

It offers no insight or help for anyone engaged in science, nor is it useful in any way for the so called 'man on the street'.

I have to disagree. Though remember that, although the philosophy of science is important and valuable, it does not mean science is just a philosophy/worldview.

The philosophy of science is the reasoning which carves out concepts such as laws, theories, models, testabilitly, reputability, instrumentalism, predictions etc. which are all important when conducting scientific investigations.

Science is a method applied to the natural world. But a sound understanding of the philosophy of science is necessary to make sure the method is implemented correctly.

P.S. I agree that intellectuals/arts students who try to trivialise science are idiots.

Dades

pH wrote:

Absolutely not, the whole "philosophy of science" can be summed up as pointless postulating by men who believe they're much cleverer than they actually are.

pH, perhaps your feelings are more to do with the "science of philosophy" than the "philosophy of science"?