Scientism is, first of all, an ideology, in the sense that claim, ‘a priori’, to be able to understand all of reality. The accusation is authoritative because it comes from the words of Mauro Ceruti, Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University IULM, Milan, one of the main exponents of the 'complex thinking' together with the philosopher and sociologist Edgar Morin. Scientism is, as claimed by John Dupré, philosopher of science, the truth about physical matter and about everything; believe, and the word is misused, that such evolution is unable to explain anything; claim to be able to apply a scientific idea of success far beyond its original domain, and usually with less and less success as the application is extended.
Like any ideology, scientism starts from a true ‘datum’, irrefutable, but partial, of reality: the existence of matter, the corporeal man. Hence it resulted also the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century.
The main accusation directed to scientism invests the ground of ethics: it argues that the scientific picture of the world leading to a desperate conception of life, in which values and what matters most to the full realization of a human being reduced to a contingent expression of subjective tastes, variable both in space and in time ("ethical relativism"). The fact is that if the assumptions of scientism were passed under the lens of philosophical analysis, there would arise an unexpected effect "deflationary ": the ball of scientism will deflate revealing for what it is, a rhetoric invention used for political or apologetic purposes.
Popper expressed strong criticism of constructivist rationalism that underpin scientism, seeing there the assumption of totalitarianism. Scientism, in fact, does not take into account that science does not proceed by induction, but it is always the result of human invention, and therefore should be reassessed in the critical role that it takes other forms of thought such as intuitive or metaphysical.
What is important is to emphasize that scientism starts from the same premise: having, by statute, to explain everything, it reduces the complexity of reality to what is less complex. Hence the foundation of scientism: man is only matter and genetics, can be studied exactly like a stone. Escapes the scientistic the fact that the only attempt to explain man, differentiates him from other forms of life and non-life, more easily understood. It was scientism that, generalizing theories, attributing them meanings philosophical, ideological or religious, using it to support systems thinking, converted legitimate axioms into arbitrary dogmatism and spread the illusion that scientific knowledge was the sole or supreme form of knowledge
In dogmatism and scientist misunderstanding fell or are still passing many subjects: philosophers, cultural operators, teachers, academics etc. Also much of the media simplifies and manipulates, with superficial incompetence, mere hypotheses and theories, making them sensational 'facts'.
These pseudo-cultural, arbitrary and unfounded manipulations, distort reality by giving real and universal content to terms purely conventional, processed for convenience of expression.
In conclusion there is to recognize that the scientific method is still the one that is the foundation of our knowledge.
Something has split scientism and led to the "crisis of science", or the confidence that these sciences may be that human progress leading to the resolution of the existential problems of man. Faith, this, and trust, understandable if we take into account the cultural context in which it is expressed. The positive sciences, strong as foundation of knowledge, collapsed as the basis of life, as constant progress and way to happiness.
Dear professor Gianrocco Tucci ,
I personally think that the tendencies pushing modern humans towards scientism and the whole human culture at different paste has to be exposed and so desacralized. The desacralization of the dominant desacralizer of our time.
There are many ideological expression of this geist force and one form of expression loose strenght and get defeated another one arise because the root are hidden and totally alive.
I locate the beginning of this geist in very weak forms with the birth of natural philosophy at the transition from an dominant anthropomorphic discourse on the world to a philosophical naturalist narrative, at the transition from a mostly oral anthromorphic culture to a mostly written objectified discourse on the world.
I locate the beginning of the end of this geist ,into the acceptation of the anthropomorphic nature of our mind.
My further comments will be done from more specific perspectives.
Regards
I am a medical doctor. In medicine we decided to stick to statistics and to an acceptable error (alpha) of 5%. Whether or not this is good, who knows. I personally can work with it.
Yet, doing so we decided to accept statistics and math to decide what is true, helpful, and even pay-worthy for insurance companies. There is a grey zone or even fraud in this system: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22342632.
But, of all the scientific ways for research, in medicine, the a-priori defined hypothesis and its endorsement is the best kind of research. Should there, by serendipity, research bring a post-hoc enlightenment, then I appreciate it. In medicine, thought, post-hoc is most often abused to make a non-sense-study or just a non-significant one to look as an enlightenment.
BMS
@Bruno M Strebel,
the last paragraph of your intervention is particularly interesting to me. In fact,
the conventional creativity starts from problems proposed by other researchers or suggested by the state of the art and gives a divergent solution, operating in line
of what psychological research called ‘lateral thinking’. Serendipian creativity
instead gives a solution more or less divergent to a problem,
not generated within the framework of the knowledge acquired, which in most
Interesting cases is an anomaly in the context of that knowledge.
Thank you for your contribution and best regards
Gianrocco Tucci
@Gianrocco Tucci, as it was with the CAST-Study (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199103213241201). In the 80ies of last century medicine knew that the most likely reason to die from myocardial infarction (once you reached a hospital) was cardiac arrhythmia. Subsequently, these patients were treated with 'heart-rhythm-stabilising' agents. It took 10 years (1991) until the CAST-study hit the scene to prove (a-priori) that anti-arhythmicas did more harm then good.
Pre-hoc, post-hoc, ad-hoc (the most pervert fraud probably, the ad-hoc)–it needs brain and, as you stated, 'lateral thinking'.
Thank you for your quick response,
Bruno
The very formulation of the question involves the following assets: a) the scientistic ideology constitutes something having to do with the study of science or a scientific theory; b) the scientistic ideology claims to know a priori; c) since the scientistic ideology is an ideology the way of knowing a priori may be object of discussion; d) science achieves results; e) the scientistic ideology achieves results as well; and finally f) the question or problem posed: should the result of the scientistic ideology be considered at the same level as the result of science?
The question then has to do with the following problems,
1. the problem of ideology in connection with science. Are ideologies scientific? The problem of the mode of thinking in science. 2. the problem of knowledge and the way of knowing by human subjects and scientists since they are human. 3. the peculiar way of knowing both by scientists and humans: do human subjects, and scientists with them, know a priori? If so, do they know a posteriori? The problem of knowledge as well. 4. the problem of science. It is not enough to give for granted that science achieves results. The scientist must justify why; 5. the problem of science as well. It is necessary to justify if the scientistic ideology can achieve results or not. If it does, what are those results like in connection with the ones in science?
From the point of view of gnoseology there is a hierarchy in these problems. First it is the problem of knowledge. But previous to the problem of knowledge it is the problem of the conception of what to be a human is. Second, it is the problem of knowledge as well, the exclusive and privative way of knowing of humans. Third and dealing with humans, it is the problem of language. Forth, it is the problem of science and the different types of sciences. And finally, it is the problem of the mode of thinking and the different modes of thinking and the corresponding modes of being of things.
A human being is a free and historical subject whose only means to survive in the circumstance he is in at any moment (Ortega y Gasset) is his peculiar and exclusive way of knowing (Kant, Ortega y Gasset, Martínez del Castillo). Since a human being is free he is creative, absolute (Coseriu, Ortega y Gassset) and transcendent (Kant, Martínez del Castillo). But at the same time he is historical, that is limited and contingent (Coseriu, Ortega y Gasset), having the necessity of making himself in history, that is, in participation with others (Coseriu) in a particular place and particular period of time, that is, in a speech community (Coseriu) constituted in this way in a community of thought (Martínez del Castillo). These two dimensions (freedom and historicity) in a human subject (Coseriu) make the human way of knowing peculiar and exclusive and privative.
The only means a human subject has to survive in the circumstance he is in is his senses (intuition, sensation), imagination and intellect (Kant). Because of this human subjects apprehend things with their senses (intuition, sensation, αἲσθησις, Aristotle), transform the thing apprehended (sensual and concrete) in something abstract thus adding with it something of theirs own by means of their intellect through their imagination (Kant). The thing they add to the sensual and concrete thing they apprehended is universality and necessity (Descartes) thus making a symbolic representation of the thing first intuited and apprehended. They do not apprehend things in what they really are but in a symbolic, mental and abstract representation of the thing come to them through their senses (Ortega y Gasset, Coseriu, Martínez del Castillo). They apprehend the universal in the individual (Coseriu). In this sense, the human act of knowing is nothing but an interpretation of the things first intuitied, apprehended, changed in their way of being and in a word, known (Ortega y Gasset). So the human knowledge consists in the synthetic connection of sensibility (intuition, αἲσθησις, experience) and intellect (reason) through imagination (Kant). This has to do with the first dimension of a human subject, his freedom, creativity and absolute-ness.
But the knowing subject goes out of himself and manifests to the other, to the You (Ortega y Gasset, Martínez del Castillo) in dialogue, διά-λογος (Ortega y Gasset, Coseriu). With this, the condition of being of a human subject cannot be understood unless with language. Human subjects speak because the have something to say (creation, human creativity). They say because they define themselves in the circumstance they are in at any moment (saying). And this is possible because human subjects can know, that is, they are able to create the world surrounding them, imagine they can overcome the difficulties they find out in their circumstance and representing their imagined world and imposing it the things surrounding them. Human subjects then create things and since in as much as the things represented are imposed to the things surrounding him they create reality. With this, since speaking subject is together-with-another one (Coseriu), the "You", or his co-speakers, he has the necessity of manifesting his interior (his conscience) to the others, and manifest the things created to the others (Ortega y Gasset, Martínez del Castillo). Because of this a human subject makes himself in history in participation with others (Coseriu), his co-speakers, thus forming a speech community and eventually a community of thought. In this way a human subject is a knowing, saying and speaking subject (Martínez del Castillo). This has to do with the second dimension of human subjects, their historicity. Since historicity involves participation (Coseriu) it has to do with the way of thinking, the modes of conceiving things, and the different modes of thinking (Martínez del Castillo).
In the formation of knowledge, there are different types of statements. Analitic statements, those in which the syntactic subject has the same contents as the predicate, or the subject is included in the predicate. For ex. "all objects are extensive" (Kant). To be extensive is something implicit in the concept of "object". Extensive statements, those in which the contents in predicate goes beyond the contents in the syntactic subject. Ex. "all objects are heavy" (Kant). The condition of being heavy is not included in the concept of "object". Analytic statements are necessarily true since they say the say in the subject and the predicate. Because of they are deductive. So the truth drawn from analytic statements is a priori (=necessary). Another example: "Peter is mortal because all human beings die". In this way, analytic, deductive and a priori denote the same reality of things. And synthetic a priori statements (Kant). Synthetic a priori statements are extensive but at the same time the have a priori force, that is, they are attributed universality and necessity (Descartes). The example, "all objects are heavy" is true, since it can be verified. It is extensive but it applies of all objects; Why? Because since I can find that this object by me (although it was only one) is heavy, I can make an image of all objects being heavy, that is, the human subject makes a mental representation of it assuming that all the items being similar to the thing just being apprehended by him at this very moment are heavy. The reason of this is analogy (Ortega y Gasset). It is impossible to me to verify that statement in all objects existing in the world. So I, as an intelligent and imaginative knowing subject, because of analogy, attribute universality and necessity, two mental attributes, to the only item of the class of objects I have in front of me, thus constituting this mental image in the essence of all objects. Synthetic a priori statements constitute the base of human knowledge since the human knowledge deals with the real and reality constituting something external to the human conscience of the knowing subject. At the same time synthetic a priori statements are the condition sine qua non of science. All sciences are based on synthetic a priori statements, sometimes called assumptions, principles or even hypotheses (in present-day Science).
The problem of science and the formation of theories has to do with the peculiarities of the human knowledge. A theory is nothing but the justified interpretation of an act of knowing. Science is a set of theories interpreting reality or part of reality (Martínez del Castillo). Science starts with a set of statements and ends in a new set of statements (Bloomfield, Ortega y Gasset, Popper). Since a theory constitutes an interpretation of the real, as an act of knowing, it must be based, consciously of not, in a theory of knowledge (Popper), that is, the scientist proposing a theory must have "a faith" in reason (Popper). A theory mut be adequate to the object it studies (Coseriu, Ortega y Gasset, Popper). It must at the same time be certain (Coseriu) and the combination of both will make a theory true (Coseriu, Martínez del Castillo). The adequacy of a theory has to do with the external face of the concept: a concept must be adequate to the object it studies (the object of study). In order to achieve this it must state which facts constitute the facts of the theory. At the same time the scientist making the theory must be certain, that is, he must care for the mental attributes given to the initial assumption (universality and necessity). A theory must be logical, coherent and congruent (the logic of scientific discovery, Popper). The certainty of a theory has to do with the internal face of the concept, the one looking at the inside of it. A theory starts with a personal intuition, made into a concept, this into an idea, and this into a theory, stated in words of a language and constituted in an assumption. In the long run by means of verification in the real, the scientist who had that intuition can verify that it is adequate, logical, coherent, congruent, certain and true. All theories, then, since they are based on the human knowledge, are both a priori and a posteriori, that is, they are deductive and verifiable, based on synthetic a priori statements.
The problem with science and theories consists in the fact that the human subject wants to know about everything in the world and reality he has created. Reality is the connection established between the human mind and the things in the world. In this sense the reality of things is multifarious. One can distinguish different types: a) things with designation in the real thus existing in themselves, for ex. a dog, a river, a tree; b) things with designation in the real but not existing in themselves but in something else, for ex. colour; c) abstract things existing mentally but with no designation at all, for ex. the numbers; and d) the reality of the very speaking, saying and knowing subject (Martínez del Castillo). The human reality is at the same time something created and always being created by the human subject himself, and something known and referred to in the conscience of the very speaking, saying and knowing subject. Dealing with the human reality, the mental symbolic representation would lead the scientist to an infinite regress (Martínez del Castillo). In the study of the different aspects of reality you can distinguish three types of sciences: natural, physical or positive sciences studying objective or objectified objects (a) and (b) above; analytical sciences, mathematics, geometry and the numbers, (c) above; and the human sciences, which study human manifestations, for ex. language, thought, the mind, freedom, creativity, etc. This has to do with the problem of demarcation (Popper), the degree of reality of things (Ortega y Gasset), search for the radical reality (Ortega y Gasset) or the so-called original knowledge (Coseriu).
Natural, physical and objectified sciences are made on the base of synthetic a priori statements, that is, they are deductive and are to be verified in the real. Philosophy, Mathematics, geometry and the numbers in general are based on analytic statements, that is, they are a priori, that is, mental, with no possibility of being verified in the real. And human sciences, which study human manifestations, are based on analytic and synthetic a priori statements with a peculiarity: the things to be studied are in the human conscience of the scientist; the scientist knows them because of an interior experience (Coseriu, Vico, Pagliaro, Husserl). Because of this, the only means to study human sciences (linguistics, literature, history, the Arts in general, etc.) is interpreting the object of study in terms of the human life particularly in terms of the human possibilities and capabilities of knowing. Human sciences are, then, hermeneutics (Vico, Pagliaro, Husserl, Humboldt, Ortega y Gasset, Coseriu, Donatella Di Cesare).
With this, although we have not seen the problem of the mode of thinking, I can answer the question posed: a) idiologies (=a set of beliefs) have nothing to do with science. They are social and sometimes politic; b) all sciences are both a priori and a posteriori. They all except for mathematics must be verified in the real; and d) the results mathematics are necessary. The results of objective things are real and true. And the results of the human sciencies and human manifestations (hermeneutics) are real and true as well. The results of human sciences are more deeply founded than the results of objective sciences (Coseriu). But since human sciences are based on the conscience of the knowing subjects, the study of human manifestations has the risk of adopting beliefs (=ideas having being accepted unconsciously from the tradition in the scientist’s community of thought, constituting an ideology) thus making them false theories or sciences. But to prevent this Ortega y Gasset proposes analysing the degree of reality of the things studied and finding out the radical reality.
Dear Jesus Martinez,
If I may - with full respect - I remained astonished by your 'encyclopedic' intervention on 'everything' addressed to us, your fellow researchers. The story is infinite if you think to the hundreds of questions and answers published up to now. As far as I am concerned I invite you - if you wish - to know my thought through my contributions on the several questions you posed in your intervention.as I should write again pages and pages as a synthesis of my partecipation to RG. I'd suggest to procede topic by topic. In this way, I would appreciate much more the essence of your thoughts. Sincerely, Gianrocco Tucci
Dear Jesús Martínez,
'' idiologies (=a set of beliefs) have nothing to do with science. They are social and sometimes politic''
I rather think that science is a special type of belief , one related to method of justification which itself is also a belief. Basically we cannot escape the belief room. All we can do is to choose to the best we can, what are the belief I will commit. And here creation will play a role.
The separation of philosophy from cosmogony, the separation of mathematics from building practices and counting practices came after the maturation of these living practices. They did not existed a priori although through convention after their extraction can be presented that way.
''
Because of this human subjects apprehend things with their senses (intuition, sensation, αἲσθησις, Aristotle), transform the thing apprehended (sensual and concrete) in something abstract thus adding with it something of theirs own by means of their intellect through their imagination (Kant) .''
The intellect is not creative, it can only translated in language what is being created in the action.
Video of a talk of Isabelle Stengers :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-H1JgxE2mA
Starting at 29 minutes, Stangers describes in a few minutes how she sees the wrong extension of science to human affairs and which relevant to the question of this thread.
Dear Louis
I mean with beliefs those ideas, or rather, attitudes, human subjects behave in accordance with not conscious of the existence of those beliefs or the implications of those beliefs. For example, Whorf speaks of some sinisters he had, as an inssuarance agent, to deal with. In one of the many he spoke of workers in a chemical industry smoked near an empty tank. Some threw a burning cigarrette end in the surroundings and suddenly a fire broke out. Whorf attributed the cause of this sinister to language thus saying that they thought that the tank was -as it really was- empty. Beliefs are in us without our participation in the acceptance of them.
You think that science is a type of belief. But in science there are not beliefs but assumptions. An assumption is a statement, true or not, whose implications and extension have been studied and justified in order to study things in the world. Imagine you adopt the dichotomy yes/no as an assumption. From the point of view of the real this assumption is contradictory in its term. However since it is an assumption you studied its implications and found out that the pair can be used in a new science. The new science is computer science. So an assumption is not a belief. It is something adopted since it was studied.
For Kant both sources of knowledge, sensation and intellect have to do with imagination. In his words intellect is imaginative the same as with sensation. Both are imaginative.
Of course human sciences must be separated from objective sciences. Human sciences have to do with human freedom and human freedom is basically mental and thus infinite. Objective sciences belong to the realm of necessity. Human sciences then must be dealt with as hermeneutics, that is, interpretation of human facts in terms of the human life.
Human sciences are both a priori, that is, deductive, analytic. and must be verified in the real. In this sense they are experimental o a posteriori. The same as with objective sciences which are a priori but starting with the assumption defining them; they must be verfied in the real, that is, they are a posteriori or experimental; and in most cases they must be analytic especially in the study of facts.
Dear Jesús Martínez del Castillo ·,
I did not equate ''scientific knowledge'' with ''belief'' as these words are usually interpreted. To understand what I meant with these words, you need to interpret them along Michael Polany philosophy of science. Here is an extract from
Michael Polanyi, Scientific Beliefs, Ethics, 61 (1)Oct. 1950, 27-37.
http://www.compilerpress.ca/Competitiveness/Anno/Anno%20Polanyi%20Scientific%20Beliefs%20Ethics%201950.htm
''Science can never be more than an affirmation of certain things we believe in. These beliefs must be adopted responsibly, with due consideration of the evidence and with a view to universal validity. But eventually they are ultimate commitments, issued under the seal of our personal judgment. At some point we shall find ourselves with no other answer to queries than to say “because I believe so.” That is what no set of rules, or any model of science based on a system of rules, can do; it cannot say “because I believe so.” Only a person can believe something, and only I myself can hold my own beliefs. For the holding of these I must bear the ultimate responsibility; it is futile, and I think also ignoble, to hunt for systems and machines which will take that burden from me. And we, as a community, must also face the fact that there is no system of necessary rules which will relieve us from the responsibility of holding the constitutive beliefs of our group or of teaching them to the next generation and defending their continued profession against those who would suppress them.''
The claim that science is not dogmatic because it claims of not believing its own theories but hold them as temporary falsifiable hypothesis is bogus in several ways and dangerous because it creates a dogma that it is not dogmatic. This is the main theme of Polanyi's philosophy that it lead scientists to total irresponsibility. It was the main opposition of Polanyi to Popper. See ''The Stability Of Beliefs''http://polanyisociety.org/mp-stability.htm . Popper is not named but his philosophy of science is the target of this paper.
Polanyi was also opposed to the emphasis of the gaps of human sciences from the natural sciences. C.P. Snow ''Two cultures'', he opposed it on the same ground than a long line of philosophers who emphasized the creative side of science instead of focusing only on the epistemological side and justification of knowledge already found side. The creative side of science also needs to emphasized the interpretation and necessarily enter the realm of fiction creation. It is true that scientific fiction is much more constraint by other type of fictions but it still remain a mythological style, one that has a claim of truth.
Dear Louis Brassard
(Sorry if my answer is too long).
As I said previously the problem of beliefs has to do with the problem of knowledge. You cannot solve the problem of knowledge unless you define what to be a human subject is. Human subjects are free and historical, that is, creative and absolute and at the same time limited and together-with-others (otherness, Coseriu) thus participating with others in their speech community (historicity). Their peculiar way of being means that they must do something in order to survive in the circumstance they are in at any moment, either creating something or accepting something from the community they live in. Because of this peculiar and privative way of being, the only means a human subject has in order to survive in the circumstance he is at any moment is his senses and intelligence together with his imagination, the only means he has to know. A human being is human in as much as he knows. The peculiar way of knowing by a human subject consists in the mental representation of the elements constituting the circumstance the human individual subject is in at any moment. This mental representation involves defining himself before the things in his surroundings (saying). His senses give the human subject nothing but a sensation. To make a mental representation out of his sensation and especially to say his co-speakers what he feels it is necessary to change the character of the thing felt, that is, to transform it (by means of this intellect and imagination) in a symbol of what he feels thus making a symbolic mental representation. That is, a human subject when he knows he adds something invented, that is, created, to the thing come through his senses. And in this human freedom, that is, creativeness, takes part. Human subjects know in this way because they are free to invent and create things not existing, things imagined added to the thing felt. Things imagined once added to the thing felt through their senses and made symbols constitute ideas.
And as I said above, a human subject either creates his ideas or accepts the ideas from his speech community. The ideas created by him were the answer to a problem solved by him and thus constituting ideas justified by him. But the ideas accepted from his speech community were not justified by him but merely accepted. Because of this a human subject will consider these ideas as if they were reality itself (Ortega y Gasset). These are beliefs. For example, the sun rises in the East and sets in the West: it is clear that it is the sun that moves.
The four types of beliefs said by Polanyi, religious beliefs, Soviet beliefs, the naturalist view of the universe and the I-It relationship to recognize the distinction between persons and things, are defined only in terms of the acquisition of them: “beliefs are acquired by us uncritically in the course of our early education or subsequent apprenticeship to science”. This is true and part of the definition of beliefs. But Polanyi thinks, “that no succeeding critical examination of these basic beliefs can ever eliminate all fiducial elements of our thinking”. To solve this problem Polanyi proposes accepting “scientific beliefs”. From my point of view the task of human knowledge in general and especially of science is fighting against beliefs. In the history of science there have been different conceptions of what a science is. One of them is the positivistic conception of science. Polanyi in his article, published in 1950, who criticizes positivism and the positivistic conception of science, conceives what he calls “scientific beliefs” as necessary. Of course, beliefs are necessary in the human life. In many sciences there are no beliefs but assumptions, justified statements got out of an initial intuition. Many of these assumptions may bear with them different beliefs and types of beliefs. This fact is not an obstacle to make science when you deal with sciences studying things with the same nature as those beliefs born in the initial assumption. The truth of a science consists in the adequacy of the theory to the object it studies. So if the initial assumption bears with it beliefs that are objective, for example, and the object to be studied is objective as well there is a perfect matching between beliefs and object studied. The problem then is in the nature of the object to study. From this fact we can see that there must be different types of sciences.
Attributed to Kant coming to us from the times of Kant in scienc it is made the distinction between the realm of necessity and the realm of freedom. The realm of necessity deals with physical and objective (or objectified) things. In sciences belonging to the realm of necessity (physics, chemistry, biology, geology, natural sciences, objective or positive sciences in general) conclusions from the initial assumptions are necessary. On the contrary the realm of freedom, human sciences (philosophy, history, linguistics) deal with freedom, invention, creation and innovation, justified only purposefully. In these sciences the only possible explanation is to be made in terms of the human possibilities and capabilities of knowing thus explaining a particular object in terms of the human life. The technique used in human sciences is interpreting, that is, they constitute hermeneutics. In order to avoid beliefs, especially in human sciences, the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset proposes the “search for the radical reality”, that is, looking for the reality the thing we want to study is based on. If the reality found out is based on a previous one this one will be adopted. And so forth till finding the reality anything relies on.
In the study of things in the world there is a moment when objective sciences cannot go any further. It is then the moment of studying things in terms of the possibilities and faculties of knowing, that is, it is the moment for a theory of knowledge and the interpretation of those realities studied in terms of the human life, the time of philosophy. To solve this problem Polanyi proposes morality and responsibility because beliefs, for Polanyi, cannot be avoided. But morality is something directly based on the knowledge of the things known, especially of human facts known. If "scientific beliefs" are adopted as assumptions knowledge is previous to beliefs. In this sense beliefs cannot be adopted as assumptions because from the very beginning they will appear as contrary to the knowledge they are going to substitute it for in order to make science. Knowledge and thus morality derived from knowledge is something necessary in human subjects. Science and assumptions prompting science are optional. Morality based on knowledge thus is previous to scientific assumptions. In this sense beliefs could not be adopted as assumptions since they would contradict knowledge and morality.
Dear Jesús Martínez del Castillo
I tend to agree with your last post although I will point three locations where I find matter for dissent.
‘’ The peculiar way of knowing by a human subject consists in the mental representation of the elements constituting the circumstance the human individual subject is in at any moment. This mental representation involves defining himself before the things in his surroundings (saying).
His senses give the human subject nothing but a sensation. To make a mental representation out of his sensation and especially to say his co-speakers what he feels it is necessary to change the character of the thing felt, that is, to transform it (by means of this intellect and imagination) in a symbol of what he feels thus making a symbolic mental representation. ‘’
Our knowledge of the world contrary to what the word ‘’knowledge’’ sudgests: something we can express in language, cannot in large part be expressed. It is not even a mental ‘’re-presentation’’. It is not even totally located in our brain , nor all in our body , nor our body plus environment, but we have to include the past culture and deeper past of constituting us and before us. In language we have to say things explicitly but most of what we know is implicitly known.
My graduate field of studies was perception and so when I read an expression such as ‘’nothing but a sensation’’, I wish to say that the whole biological evolution on earth has been pack into this sensation and a bit of respect for this achievement need to be of order. I consider language, thinking, imagination as just a little, minor modification on the sensory-motor apparatus of the nervous system. A single look at a human body trigger a sequence of events that will in 180 ms capture the essential evolution of this body and all the basic elements of narratives were built-in the sensory-motor system during the mammalian evolution. When this is realize, all that is needed to generate language, to imagine and to think are implicit built-in interaction tools. So the sensation is not a data but already a amazing analysis of the situation which we are implicitly master. Inter-human language interactions which are mediate by expressions allowing mutual sensory-motor re-enactments, the same sensory-motor re-enactment used in normal mammalian interaction but in languages it is a consciously controlled dream.
‘’ To solve this problem Polanyi proposes accepting “scientific beliefs”. From my point of view the task of human knowledge in general and especially of science is fighting against beliefs.’’
Polaniy point is that we cannot and should not try to escape to commit for a belief. The challenge is to struggle to reclaim as much as possible the authorship of our beliefs. It is a Socratic stand. There is no outside the belief room in human communication and so the only option is to adopt and create the most responsible ones for life. But even in our private life, we have to commit to life promoting beliefs. But the adoption or the creation do not start in the shallow language games but has to be motivated by felt ultimate life concerns, our of the commitment to such ultimate life concerns, partial discourses are generated and exchanges and allows to gradually make explicit what is implitly felt, gradually creating of mediated narrative realm promoting the re-enactment of the ultimate concerns. Yes science and all human realm of creative expression is social and religious: the domain of ultimate concerns.
‘’To solve this problem Polanyi proposes morality and responsibility because beliefs, for Polanyi, cannot be avoided. But morality is something directly based on the knowledge of the things known, especially of human facts known. If "scientific beliefs" are adopted as assumptions knowledge is previous to beliefs. In this sense beliefs cannot be adopted as assumptions because from the very beginning they will appear as contrary to the knowledge they are going to substitute it for in order to make science. Knowledge and thus morality derived from knowledge is something necessary in human subjects. Science and assumptions prompting science are optional. Morality based on knowledge thus is previous to scientific assumptions. In this sense beliefs could not be adopted as assumptions since they would contradict knowledge and morality. ‘’
From what I said already, it should be clear that I cannot accept that moral derive from the narrative beliefs we adopt. Yes we can be hypnotized by such narrative beliefs our culture is carrying mostly in a veiled manners but we have the power to channel the power of creation that have created us. We can gradually orient our ultimate concern away from the general social direction we are subjected to if we accept the suffering such commitment ot life requires.
Regards
Dear Louis Brassard
Our knowledge of the world contrary to what the word ‘’knowledge’’ sudgests: something we can express in language, cannot in large part be expressed. It is not even a mental ‘’re-presentation’’. It is not even totally located in our brain , nor all in our body , nor our body plus environment,
Yes, I agree, but I would use instead of ‘knowledge’ logos or conscience, concepts coming from old. Language is not enough to express “what we feel” in our inside, that is, our conscience, our individual logos.
but we have to include the past culture and deeper past of constituting us and before us. In language we have to say things explicitly but most of what we know is implicitly known.
Yes, I agree as well. I usually refer to these contents as “otherness”, that is, human subjects are together-with-others (otherness, alterity) and because of this, they are historical, that is, they have to participate with others in the same level of historicity (=participation) thus making themselves in participation with others (they are historical). Our great bulk of knowledge comes to us from the outside, “past culture and a deeper past constituting us and before us”. I subscribe this. But for me, anything in a human being is cultural, transmitted to us by our speech communtiy (society). And this constitutes “beliefs”. From this point of view it is clear that “we have to say things explicitly but most of what we know is implicitly known”; or said in my words: the individual speaker aims at expressing his meaningful intentional purpose of saying what he feels in his interior, his "logos” but he hardly achieves it.
Sensation (aísthesis, Aristotle) is the act of feeling, for example, when I put my hand on a surface. What I feel, of course, involves “the whole biological evolution on earth that has been packed into this sensation” including all contributions by the “sensory-motor apparatus of the nervous system”. Why not? A human subject who perceives this makes this sensation into cultural attributing it the potentiality of referring to all sensations of the same class. And since he must speak to others, he will transform the sensation into abstract, abstract into ideas thus representing classes of things, and ideas into contents of conscience (=meanings, language).
The great bulk of our knowledge is constituted with beliefs. Some of our beliefs are made into ideas and in the end some ideas, coming from beliefs or not, dominate our whole system of knowledge. From that set of beliefs, assumptions and ideas we decide which ones will constitute our morality.
Thank you very much.
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