Is morality objective or subjective?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Why on Earth would anyone cultivate an essentially meaningless existence that ends in oblivion?

That really is the question.

[Will Bouwman]

It's not, actually. Socratic method is a philosophical and pedagogical strategy, not a scientific one.

So what is different about Bacon's method that makes it scientific?

I did already answer this, by providing you with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method.

Well:

Wiki is an open-source, which means anybody can contribute to it. You need a credible source. You've given none.

It is your opinion that interests me. You clearly regard Bacon's method highly:

...the best method for dealing with material problems...

What do you think makes it better than every other?

....until Bacon, and even after Al Haytham, there was no Scientific or Industrial Revolution: the coincidence of scientific method and the commencement of the modern period not being a coincidence at all, but a cause-effect relation, I suggest.

The first claim isn't entirely true and the conclusion needs a bit of adjustment. It's wikipedia, but this might interest you:
"Medieval technology is the technology used in medieval Europe under Christian rule. After the Renaissance of the 12th century, medieval Europe saw a radical change in the rate of new inventions, innovations in the ways of managing traditional means of production, and economic growth."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_technology
I don't think you will persuade anyone who isn't a Christian that science is a Christian development, but you can make a better case if you get your facts straight.

[Skepdick]

So what is different about Bacon's method that makes it scientific?

I did already answer this, by providing you with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method.

Well:

Wiki is an open-source, which means anybody can contribute to it. You need a credible source. You've given none.

It is your opinion that interests me. You clearly regard Bacon's method highly:

...the best method for dealing with material problems...

What do you think makes it better than every other?

....until Bacon, and even after Al Haytham, there was no Scientific or Industrial Revolution: the coincidence of scientific method and the commencement of the modern period not being a coincidence at all, but a cause-effect relation, I suggest.

The first claim isn't entirely true and the conclusion needs a bit of adjustment. It's wikipedia, but this might interest you:
"Medieval technology is the technology used in medieval Europe under Christian rule. After the Renaissance of the 12th century, medieval Europe saw a radical change in the rate of new inventions, innovations in the ways of managing traditional means of production, and economic growth."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_technology
I don't think you will persuade anyone who isn't a Christian that science is a Christian development, but you can make a better case if you get your facts straight.

Would it make your testicles tingle less if he were to say that science is a development of the Abrahamic religions?

This sort of hair-splitting is so peculiar, and yet spectacular coming from an atheist who rejects all the Abrahamic religions.
Islam itself is an iteration on Abrahamic theology.

It's like you are completely incapable of proximate reasoning.

[Will Bouwman]

Would it make your testicles tingle less if he were to say that science is a development of the Abrahamic religions?

No.

[Gary Childress]

I did already answer this, by providing you with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method.

Well:

Wiki is an open-source, which means anybody can contribute to it. You need a credible source. You've given none.

It is your opinion that interests me. You clearly regard Bacon's method highly:

...the best method for dealing with material problems...

What do you think makes it better than every other?

....until Bacon, and even after Al Haytham, there was no Scientific or Industrial Revolution: the coincidence of scientific method and the commencement of the modern period not being a coincidence at all, but a cause-effect relation, I suggest.

The first claim isn't entirely true and the conclusion needs a bit of adjustment. It's wikipedia, but this might interest you:
"Medieval technology is the technology used in medieval Europe under Christian rule. After the Renaissance of the 12th century, medieval Europe saw a radical change in the rate of new inventions, innovations in the ways of managing traditional means of production, and economic growth."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_technology
I don't think you will persuade anyone who isn't a Christian that science is a Christian development, but you can make a better case if you get your facts straight.

Would it make your testicles tingle less if he were to say that science is a development of the Abrahamic religions?

This sort of hair-splitting is so peculiar, and yet spectacular coming from an atheist who rejects all the Abrahamic religions.
Islam itself is an iteration on Abrahamic theology.

It's like you are completely incapable of proximate reasoning.

Is the argument being made that without the Abrahamic religions, there would be no scientific method? If so, then I don't know how one accounts for the Greeks in all that. It seems that they were a noteworthy exception. It seems difficult to argue that the Greeks weren't way ahead of their time and that their civilization seems to have somehow encouraged inquiry and laid the early groundwork for many of the sciences. The way I was taught European history, the Renaissance involved rediscovering classic antiquity after the dark age that was dominated by the Church. I was taught that the church orthodoxy was an impediment to science almost every step of the way. Is that not true? Are we rewriting history now?

[Immanuel Can]

I don't think you will persuade anyone who isn't a Christian that science is a Christian development,...

Well, the alternative you've suggested is that we have to regard everything from Pythagoris and Aristotle forward as being "science." And that has huge problems, not least of which it requires us to believe that things like alchemy, astrology, phrenology and animal magnetism, all of which persisted for hundreds or thousands of years within the learned community, were as "scientific" as biology, chemistry and physics; because that reckoning fails to differentiate them in any way.

So if you want to argue that a distinct thing called "science" (as opposed to superstition, guessing, traditions, inventions, flat-earth theories, and so on) actually exists, you're going to need to define that discipline. I have, for my part; so it's your turn to propose a contrary account of what criteria separate true "science" from all those things that others have tried to march under that banner.

I'll be interested to see what you think those criteria are.

[iambiguous]

Obviously, it poses as a truth — “life is meaningless, futile, senseless, purposeless” — but I note that this is something you are imagining. (Held in the imagination, cultivated like a dear plant).

I've never argued otherwise. But to cultivate it? Why on Earth would anyone cultivate an essentially meaningless existence that ends in oblivion? You can deal with it as best you can -- me through distractions -- but hover over it as a "dear plant"?
Why on Earth would anyone cultivate an essentially meaningless existence that ends in oblivion?

That really is the question.

And then our respective answers. From my frame of mind, your frame of mind reflects but one more rendition of Satyr's "biological imperatives" approach to "natural behaviors". That nature happens to be wholly in sync with your own rooted existentially in dasein political prejudice is, what, no less a "natural" truth as well?

I make a crucial distinction between essential and existential meaning in our interactions with others. Existential meaning is derived from the points I raise in the OPs here:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

And what I often suggest to others is this: that in regard to a particular moral conflagration how is their own moral philosophy different?

[Skepdick]

Is the argument being made that without the Abrahamic religions, there would be no scientific method? If so, then I don't know how one accounts for the Greeks in all that. It seems that they were a noteworthy exception. It seems difficult to argue that the Greeks weren't way ahead of their time and that their civilization seems to have somehow encouraged inquiry and laid the early groundwork for many of the sciences. The way I was taught European history, the Renaissance involved rediscovering classic antiquity after the dark age that was dominated by the Church. I was taught that the church orthodoxy was an impediment to science almost every step of the way. Is that not true? Are we rewriting history now?

You can trace the lineage of the Abrahamic religions back to Platonism. And Aristotle's unmoved mover. The Greek Logos became central to Christianity and the symbolism around Jesus.

All of these ideas permeated the minds of metaphysicians and in general - people who were trying to grapple with the world.

The Church or the prevalent social institutions have nothing do with this. The formal structures that emerged within Christianity aren't themselves Christianity any more than the government of any given country is the people of a country.

It's about the informal culture of thinkers and tinkerers, contemplators and the sort of people grappling with big questions and the hotpot of cultures that planted the early seeds for the sort of ideas that permeated their thoughts, and influenced them in some direction or another. The ideas which have been polished over centuries and you've come to recognize as the modern scientific method.

For better or worse you can't pry apart the history from the religious folk.

[Gary Childress]

For better or worse you can't pry apart the history from the religious folk.

OK. I suppose that's a valid point.

[Gary Childress]

Why on Earth would anyone cultivate an essentially meaningless existence that ends in oblivion?

In the case of the Abrahamic god, possibly because the alternative is pretty much hell for simply catering to our 'god-given' desire for dopamine.

I think we once again circle around to what kind of "god" creates such temptations to do behavior that it doesn't want us to do. It's absurd. So we are left with a God who creates absurdity. That doesn't jive very well with the notion of a benevolent creator, and if the creator is not benevolent, well, then what difference does anything make? Heck, maybe it sends EVERYONE to hell when we die, just to be a dick. (Maybe double punishment in the helliest of hells for the ones who managed to get joy out of life before they were struck down.)

¯\_(*_*)_/¯

[Will Bouwman]

...if you want to argue that a distinct thing called "science" (as opposed to superstition, guessing, traditions, inventions, flat-earth theories, and so on) actually exists, you're going to need to define that discipline. I have, for my part...

Well, according to you, science is defined by what it says about the Baconian method on a Wikipedia page. You clearly don't know what that method involves, nor why it defines science.

...so it's your turn to propose a contrary account of what criteria separate true "science" from all those things that others have tried to march under that banner.

I'll be interested to see what you think those criteria are.

As I said: observation, speculation, calculation and manipulation.

[Alexis Jacobi]

And then our respective answers. From my frame of mind, your frame of mind reflects but one more rendition of Satyr's "biological imperatives" approach to "natural behaviors".

Focus on “from my frame of mind”. Your frame of mind determines what you see, how you see, and what conclusions seem accurate and justified.

But from my frame of mind (!) you give all the signs of a man who projects inner content that is only marginally reflective of the actual subject.

Ask Satyr about this ….

The proper term for it is (as I have suggested) “intellectual neurosis”.

[promethean75]

"The way I was taught European history, the Renaissance involved rediscovering classic antiquity after the dark age that was dominated by the Church. I was taught that the church orthodoxy was an impediment to science almost every step of the way. Is that not true?"

It's entirely true. U grab any ten scientists from a sample group during that period and maybe two of em will call themselves christians. The rest are either atheists or deists... which was the logical alternative to believing something as childish as christianity but still being held in awe by the nature of life and the universe.

[iambiguous]

And then our respective answers. From my frame of mind, your frame of mind reflects but one more rendition of Satyr's "biological imperatives" approach to "natural behaviors". That nature happens to be wholly in sync with your own rooted existentially in dasein political prejudices is, what, no less a "natural" truth as well?

I make a crucial distinction between essential and existential meaning in our interactions with others. Existential meaning is derived from the points I raise in the OPs here:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

And what I often suggest to others is this: that in regard to a particular moral conflagration how is their own moral philosophy different?

Focus on “from my frame of mind”. Your frame of mind determines what you see, how you see, and what conclusions seem accurate and justified.

But first the part where, for years, children are indoctrinated to think and feel what the parents, the family, the community, the culture, the historical context stuffs into their brains.

And with you, we are always bumping into ponderous theoretical contraptions pertaining to race and gender and sexuality and liberals and Jews. And, here, morality. And God and religion. But, in my view, you refuse to flesh that out in proposing actual "rules of behavior" in a community where you possessed the power to enforce your own rendition of "biological imperatives".

But from my frame of mind (!) you give all the signs of a man who projects inner content that is only marginally reflective of the actual subject.

Typical abstract bullshit. You choose the "actual subject". And, again, you can start by noting how, in regard to moral conflagrations like abortion and sexuality and gun ownership, your own moral philosophy either accepts or rejects the points I raised in the OPs here:

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529
https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

[Immanuel Can]

You clearly don't know what that method involves, nor why it defines science.

Well, now, I gave you that information on the web page. I can't say why you're finding it hard to digest. But if you understand it, then that's fine with me: I'm not forcing you to agree.

...so it's your turn to propose a contrary account of what criteria separate true "science" from all those things that others have tried to march under that banner.

I'll be interested to see what you think those criteria are.

As I said: observation, speculation, calculation and manipulation.

Well, since all those things have been going on since pre-historical days, and are even steps in the making of fish hooks and arrow heads, as well as astrology charts, alchemy experiments and phrenological heads.

So that would lead you to conclude that there really was no special or particular thing called "science" at all...that "science" was just a word for "people figuring out stuff." It would not make any distinction at all, in fact, between "science" mere "making," or even between "science" and "witchcraft."

If that's the definition you want to stand by, I can only say that it's too vague, and includes far too many activities. I don't think it tells us what "science" is at all, actually.