JS Mill, free speech, and creationism/global warming

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse Philosophy is useless garbage for the same reason that any other discipline which does not make any sense without intricate knowledge of its esoterica, which provides no ability to verify its conclusions and which provides no useful service to the outside world is garbage.

First of all im not sure A is true, at least not for modern analytic philosophy. I think you could open up a lot of articles on modern phil problems and read them with no technical prep. I took Phil of mind as a freshman in college. POTM took Phil of mind summer BEFORE last (at 13 - granted it was at nerd camp) of course you will probably use that as evidence its a lesser field than physics, which just shows your opinion isnt falsifiable, but then Popper is dead, or so Im told.

You verify its conclusions BY THINKING, as with math, or logic or many other subjects.

No useful service - sayeth the cosmologist. At least phil is cheap, by comparison. Of course you can find phil useful, but then youve got to integrate it with empirical disciplines. Like Law, or psychology, or even science.

[Kuciwalker]

No useful service - sayeth the cosmologist.

I thought KH did HE physics, not cosmology... not that it changes anything.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Or you propose to show that creationnism or intelligent design isn't a religious viewpoint, that its actually a scientific viewpoint?

It's both IMO.

No way. Not by the definitions of science that have been accepted for the last 400 or so years. How do you test Creationism? How do you theorize based on Creationism? How -- and this is crucial -- do you prove Creationism wrong. You can't. In fact, the cetral assertion of Creationism/Intelligent Design is that we know the answer to the question before its even asked (i.e., God did it), and every question stemming from that answer can be referred back to the original answer, which will alsways remain unchanged. That's not science; that's the opposite of science.

One of the glorious things about Science is that it moves forward by acknowledging its own prior misconceptions -- the sun doesn't revolve around the earth, disease isn't caused by humors, etc. Every good scientist must hold, if only in the back of his mind, the notion that his central assumptions could well be wrong. Such thinking is anathema -- indeed, is openly threatening -- to Creationism or Intelligent Design, which is another reason why they can never be science.

It's always worth remembering that the ultimate aim of Fundies is not to dethrone Darwin, but to scuttle Science itself.

[Kuciwalker]

No way. Not by the definitions of science that have been accepted for the last 400 or so years. How do you test Creationism? How do you theorize based on Creationism? How -- and this is crucial -- do you prove Creationism wrong. You can't.

[Kuciwalker]

I agree with every single point you made and still don't think it has relevance to the point I was making.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

No way. Not by the definitions of science that have been accepted for the last 400 or so years. How do you test Creationism? How do you theorize based on Creationism? How -- and this is crucial -- do you prove Creationism wrong. You can't.

Didn't realize we were on page 9 already. Oops.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
I agree with every single point you made and still don't think it has relevance to the point I was making.

Ok, let me take it back to your OP:

You quote Mill as follows:

There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation.

I would submit that evolution is an example of the first category -- in spite of numerous opportunities to refute it, it has not been refuted. Creationism, on the other hand, is effectively an example of the second category -- its truth is assumed for the purpose of not permitting refutation. Put another way: if eveolution could be disproved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, scientists would welcome the development because it would move our scientific understanding of the world forward. By contrast, if Creationism were disproved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Creationists would condemn the proof as heretical and blasphemous and continue to believe. Thus, evolutionary biologists operate in a spirit Mill would approve of, and creationists do not.

[Kuciwalker]

I would submit that evolution is an example of the first category -- in spite of numerous opportunities to refute it, it has not been refuted.

And now we've practically decided "okay, it's been long enough, now we're going to close off debate."

Creationism, on the other hand, is effectively an example of the second category -- its truth is assumed for the purpose of not permitting refutation.

Excep the creationists don't have the power to forbid its refutation.

[Kuciwalker]

Put another way: if eveolution could be disproved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, scientists would welcome the development because it would move our scientific understanding of the world forward. By contrast, if Creationism were disproved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Creationists would condemn the proof as heretical and blasphemous and continue to believe. Thus, evolutionary biologists operate in a spirit Mill would approve of, and creationists do not.

This entire thread is based on the observation that re:Creationism, they aren't really. There's no debate. That's a problem, even if it's due to the fact that the Creationists don't have anything on their side.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

No useful service - sayeth the cosmologist.

I thought KH did HE physics, not cosmology... not that it changes anything.

Both. More HE stuff lately

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


Okay. Im sure the philosophy of mathematics had advanced since Witt, and im sure how thats integrated into the rest of phil is quite interesting. Too bad some folks want to cut off such investigations.

Who?

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
No useful service - sayeth the cosmologist. At least phil is cheap, by comparison. Of course you can find phil useful, but then youve got to integrate it with empirical disciplines. Like Law, or psychology, or even science.

A and B and C

An intersection, not a union...

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

I would submit that evolution is an example of the first category -- in spite of numerous opportunities to refute it, it has not been refuted.

And now we've practically decided "okay, it's been long enough, now we're going to close off debate."

Not at all. The decision here -- similar to what happened with Newtonian physics, for example -- has been, "Evolutionary biology is the best explanation we've got, so we're going with it until enough abberrant date shows up to cause us to rethink it."

Are you really suggesting Creationists works the same way? That a God-created world is what they're going with right now, but that they'll rethink the paradigm in the face of enough contradictory evidence? Nonsense.

Creationism, on the other hand, is effectively an example of the second category -- its truth is assumed for the purpose of not permitting refutation.

Excep the creationists don't have the power to forbid its refutation.

Oh course they do; they do it in the very way they formulate the explanation. It's the premise itself that doesn't permit refutation. One can imagine that enough data might pile up to refute evolution, as has happened with previously-accepted scientific paradigms. But it is impossible to imagine that enough data would pile up to refute the idea that God created the world and everything in it -- because the initial proposition isn't based on data to begin with.

[Kuciwalker]

Not at all. The decision here -- similar to what happened with Newtonian physics, for example -- has been, "Evolutionary biology is the best explanation we've got, so we're going with it until enough abberrant date shows up to cause us to rethink it."

The problem is that we're also using it to combat the not-insignificant minority who believe in creationism. In fact, many people explicitly think of evolution education as a way to dispel the myth. We are using the state to wipe out opposing ideas.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Put another way: if eveolution could be disproved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, scientists would welcome the development because it would move our scientific understanding of the world forward. By contrast, if Creationism were disproved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Creationists would condemn the proof as heretical and blasphemous and continue to believe. Thus, evolutionary biologists operate in a spirit Mill would approve of, and creationists do not.

This entire thread is based on the observation that re:Creationism, they aren't really. There's no debate. That's a problem, even if it's due to the fact that the Creationists don't have anything on their side.

But that's not true. There's robust debate -- debate regarding whether Creationism/ID should be regarded as science. I actually saw it literally debated 25 years ago, in college; the debate packed a sports arena. Since then, scientists have spent an extraordinary amount of time explaining publically -- in the press, on college campuses, in courtrooms like the one in the Dover case -- why they think Creationism/ID is not science; and the other side has had their say, in many of the same venues (probably fewer campuses and more churches). That's what debate is -- the prominent public airing of both points of view.