Are the assumptions of science justified?

[The Pixie]

Jim stated that "the assumptions that science rests on can't be empirically verified/falsified", and I thought it might be interesting to see how far that is true. He stated those assumptions here

That the future will be reliably similar to the past, that the world is rational, that our senses and minds match this rational structure in reliable ways and can enable us to discover truths independent of our minds, that there are other minds very similar to our own, that there are norms, especially the norm of truth...

The future will be reliably similar to the past

The scientific methodology is about making predictions and then testing them. We can do that readily enough in this case. A year ago, the future was the following year. If the hypothesis is correct, then a prediction, a necessary consequence of the hypothesis, is that the following year will be similar to the preceding year.

We can test the prediction by looking for any sign of the laws of nature being different last year compared to the year before. There is none. Everything suggests that this prediction has been fulfilled.

Note that we can do the same for many other points in time, and other periods of time too. Again and again the prediction is confirmed.

I think that that is very good empirical evidence that the future will be reliably similar to the past


The world is rational

Again, let us do this scientifically. If the hypothesis is true, what would we expect? What predictions can we make? Well, we would predict that the world would operate predictably. We would predict that nature would consistently follow laws, and would be amenable to being modelled.

And that is just what we find. The motion of astral bodies follow Einstein's laws of relativity. Transfer of energy follows the laws of thermodynamics. Every scientific law is a confirmation of this hypothesis. Technology, built upon those laws, is further confirmation.

I think that that is very good empirical evidence that the world is rational


Our senses and minds match this rational structure in reliable ways and can enable us to discover truths independent of our minds

Independent of our minds? Not sure about that. I cannot do anything independent of my mind. Am I missing something here? Also, science only claims to have a good representation of the truth, not necessarily the truth itself.

So ignoring that part of it, what would we predict? We would expect people to be able to study nature and to derive mathematical models of it. We would expect people to be able to test those models, and to confirm that they were good experimentally, and further we would expect other people to be able to build and use technology based on those models.

And of course that is just what we find.

I think that that is very good empirical evidence that our senses and minds match this rational structure in reliable ways and can enable us to discover good representations of truths.


There are other minds very similar to our own

So we have a hypothesis, what would we predict? If those minds also inhabited similar bodies, then we would predict that they would behave in a similar manner. Look around you. How many people are doing the things you do, talking the same language about the same subjects.

I think that that is good empirical evidence that there are other minds very similar to our own


There are norms, especially the norm of truth

I am not sure what Jim's point is here, as I understand norms to be how people acquire beliefs. Science is a way to acquire belief, so would seem to indicate that there necessarily are, but I suspect I am missing the point here. Hopefully Jim can explain.

[met]

Independent of our minds? Not sure about that. I cannot do anything independent of my mind. Am I missing something here? Also, science only claims to have a good representation of the truth, not necessarily the truth itself.

So ignoring that part of it, what would we predict? We would expect people to be able to study nature and to derive mathematical models of it. We would expect people to be able to test those models, and to confirm that they were good experimentally, and further we would expect other people to be able to build and use technology based on those models.

And of course that is just what we find.

I think that that is very good empirical evidence that our senses and minds match this rational structure in reliable ways and can enable us to discover good representations of truths.

All true. But only to an extent. There are things that it would be nice to know --eg predicting the formation and direction of hurricanes -- that just aren't amenable to our mathematical models due to chaos and its divergences of "round-off errors" -- which is exactly to say that many things in the the world are really "irrational," um, mathematically-speaking. And issues like that (and other similar ones) might even suggest a limit on the usefulness of such tools for further discoveries at some point, I.e. on mathematical or scientific modeling not being the "magic bullet" that will unfold reality after all & on "the law of diminishing returns" applying to scientific models as much as that has proven to be true in every other field of human endeavor (an issue which we've discussed before).

Then, what might we expect? Might we expect scientific knowledge to become more and more expensive to produce, as well as more dubious and less reliable over the years, as scientific /mathematical approaches to reality exhaust their actual possibilities and scientific practitioners find themselves more and more having to "sell the sizzle not the steak"?

But could that be the case already?

http://www.sciencealert.com/study-warns ... unreliable

[The Pixie]

All true. But only to an extent. There are things that it would be nice to know --eg predicting the formation and direction of hurricanes -- that just aren't amenable to our mathematical models due to chaos and its divergences of "round-off errors" -- which is exactly to say that many things in the the world are really "irrational," um, mathematically-speaking.

I would guess that they are complicated, not irrational.

And issues like that (and other similar ones) might even suggest a limit on the usefulness of such tools for further discoveries at some point, I.e. on mathematical or scientific modeling not being the "magic bullet" that will unfold reality after all & on "the law of diminishing returns" applying to scientific models as much as that has proven to be true in every other field of human endeavor (an issue which we've discussed before).

That is certainly possible.

Then, what might we expect? Might we expect scientific knowledge to become more and more expensive to produce, as well as more dubious and less reliable over the years, as scientific /mathematical approaches to reality exhaust their actual possibilities and scientific practitioners find themselves more and more having to "sell the sizzle not the steak"?

But could that be the case already?

http://www.sciencealert.com/study-warns ... unreliable

There are issues in science, but this seems more concerned with how researchers get funding, rather than running out of things to research. I appreciate that that could happen, but it will happen in difference areas at different times (perhaps boron chemistry one year, and herpetology a few years after that, and so on).

[met]

Px, I'm not sure what you mean here by 'complicated but not irrational'?

Here's the Wiki article on mathematical chaos, anyway, for something to keep talking about...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

[Jim B.]

The scientific methodology is about making predictions and then testing them. We can do that readily enough in this case. A year ago, the future was the following year. If the hypothesis is correct, then a prediction, a necessary consequence of the hypothesis, is that the following year will be similar to the preceding year.

We can test the prediction by looking for any sign of the laws of nature being different last year compared to the year before. There is none. Everything suggests that this prediction has been fulfilled.

Note that we can do the same for many other points in time, and other periods of time too. Again and again the prediction is confirmed.

I think that that is very good empirical evidence that the future will be reliably similar to the past

I just wrote a very long response to this that disappeared. I'll try to reconstruct the major points. This is the "Problem of Induction" that Hume talked about. It can be confirmed retrospectively but can't be confirmed prospectively without circularity. It's an assumption, not an empirical finding.

Again, let us do this scientifically. If the hypothesis is true, what would we expect? What predictions can we make? Well, we would predict that the world would operate predictably. We would predict that nature would consistently follow laws, and would be amenable to being modelled.

And that is just what we find. The motion of astral bodies follow Einstein's laws of relativity. Transfer of energy follows the laws of thermodynamics. Every scientific law is a confirmation of this hypothesis. Technology, built upon those laws, is further confirmation.

I think that that is very good empirical evidence that the world is rational

This is an assumption we bring to experience. It is part of what makes "experience" possible, so that whatever we experience will be, to some extent, rational. This is closely related to the induction assumption, that the world is uniformly like the way our field of experience suggests. Since humans have experienced a mind-bogglingly tiny fraction of reality, this assumption cannot possibly be empirically confirmed.

Independent of our minds? Not sure about that. I cannot do anything independent of my mind. Am I missing something here? Also, science only claims to have a good representation of the truth, not necessarily the truth itself.

So ignoring that part of it, what would we predict? We would expect people to be able to study nature and to derive mathematical models of it. We would expect people to be able to test those models, and to confirm that they were good experimentally, and further we would expect other people to be able to build and use technology based on those models.

What I meant was that we assume there are truths independent of our minds that our minds are able to discover and understand. We cannot step outside of our minds to independently confirm this assumption. If all of what we experience is an 'illusion' such as the matrix, then everything we experience will be part of that illusion.

So we have a hypothesis, what would we predict? If those minds also inhabited similar bodies, then we would predict that they would behave in a similar manner. Look around you. How many people are doing the things you do, talking the same language about the same subjects.

I think that that is good empirical evidence that there are other minds very similar to our own

This is a theory in the philosophy of mind, namely that there's an essential link between mental events and behavior. This theory is not empirically confirmed but assumed. We instinctively attribute minds like our own to other creatures. One theory is that we evolved a theory of mind module that was adaptive but not necessarily true. Why would we need a module if this idea were empirically transparent?

I am not sure what Jim's point is here, as I understand norms to be how people acquire beliefs. Science is a way to acquire belief, so would seem to indicate that there necessarily are, but I suspect I am missing the point here. Hopefully Jim can explain.

That there's this thing called truth that we aim at in our thoughts and communications. In that we aim at it, it is a norm, maybe never to be fully realized. We cannot empirically confirm that there is such a norm because that norm is presupposed in any search for it. It undergirds all knowledge, including scientific.

In addition to all this, there's the idea that science depends on philosophical decisions all the time, that the 'data' often do not compel one interpretation over another, even tho the interpretations are constrained by the data.

Also the fact that observation itself is theory laden, that it's all shot through with inference. So dividing things up neatly into empirical vs. theoretical or philosophical may not be helpful.

[The Pixie]

Px, I'm not sure what you mean here by 'complicated but not irrational'?

Here's the Wiki article on mathematical chaos, anyway, for something to keep talking about...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

What that article is talking about is deterministic systems, where small changes in the initial system can result in huge differences later. That means the results are predictable, and so not irrational, however, predicting them is very complicated as a lot of factors must be considered.

[The Pixie]

This is the "Problem of Induction" that Hume talked about. It can be confirmed retrospectively but can't be confirmed prospectively without circularity. It's an assumption, not an empirical finding.

It is an assumption that is supported by empirical findings.

This is an assumption we bring to experience. It is part of what makes "experience" possible, so that whatever we experience will be, to some extent, rational. This is closely related to the induction assumption, that the world is uniformly like the way our field of experience suggests. Since humans have experienced a mind-bogglingly tiny fraction of reality, this assumption cannot possibly be empirically confirmed.

It cannot be proved, but the empirical evidence does support it. Bear in mind that we can see stars billions of light years away and confirm that they too follow the same laws as the sun. Of course, if the universe is infinite, that is still a mind-bogglingly tiny fraction of reality, but it is still the case that everywhere we look the same laws apply, as far as we can test them.

What I meant was that we assume there are truths independent of our minds that our minds are able to discover and understand. We cannot step outside of our minds to independently confirm this assumption. If all of what we experience is an 'illusion' such as the matrix, then everything we experience will be part of that illusion.

Agreed. This is true of all human experience, of course. If you find this a reason to doubt science, it is also a reason to doubt what you had for lunch earlier.

This is a theory in the philosophy of mind, namely that there's an essential link between mental events and behavior. This theory is not empirically confirmed but assumed. We instinctively attribute minds like our own to other creatures. One theory is that we evolved a theory of mind module that was adaptive but not necessarily true. Why would we need a module if this idea were empirically transparent?

Well I know there is a link between my mental events and behavior. Is it different for you?

Yes, this is assumed, but the empirical evidence does support it.

That there's this thing called truth that we aim at in our thoughts and communications. In that we aim at it, it is a norm, maybe never to be fully realized. We cannot empirically confirm that there is such a norm because that norm is presupposed in any search for it. It undergirds all knowledge, including scientific.

You are saying we cannot be sure there is even anything true to be determined? Is this a common philosophical position?

I think the same arguments apply. Yes, science assumes there is a truth to be discovered, but the rationality of the universe supports that assumption.

In addition to all this, there's the idea that science depends on philosophical decisions all the time, that the 'data' often do not compel one interpretation over another, even tho the interpretations are constrained by the data.

Can you give an example from mainstream science?

Also the fact that observation itself is theory laden, that it's all shot through with inference. So dividing things up neatly into empirical vs. theoretical or philosophical may not be helpful.

Can you give an example from mainstream science?

Claims like this are easy to make. Without some data to back them up they are, however, entirely vacuous.

[met]

Px, I'm not sure what you mean here by 'complicated but not irrational'?

Here's the Wiki article on mathematical chaos, anyway, for something to keep talking about...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

What that article is talking about is deterministic systems, where small changes in the initial system can result in huge differences later. That means the results are predictable, and so not irrational, however, predicting them is very complicated as a lot of factors must be considered.

No, I don't think you have the idea?

Predicting chaotic systems is only theoretically possible if an infinite amount of information could be processed, so it's not a question of sufficient computational power?


(...& whether an "infinitely deterministic system" is a valid concept or not is a philosophical question, right? Why is "an infinitely complex ordering" any different than no ordering at all? )

[The Pixie]

Predicting chaotic systems is only theoretically possible if an infinite amount of information could be processed, so it's not a question of sufficient computational power?

Where do you get that from?

The page you linked to had as an example a hinged pendulum, and a model of such a system was visible to the right. Pretty such that did not need infinite information.

[Metacrock]

I'll cover more of PX's opening statement latter. Just a couple of glib comments first.

You don't really cover what Jim is talking about, He's talking about the book by Burtt the metaphysical foundations of early modern science, it is s]\true that since upon metaphysical. foundations./ Saying the assumptions of empiorical thinkingare 'good" ois not a counter,