If You're Your Own Ref, You Probably Suck

Some time ago, a bright friend of mine wrote a lengthy blog post in defense of a widely misunderstood point.

Traditionally, people go about investigating claims, evaluating observations, and drawing conclusions in a truly narrow, insensitive and, ignorant fashion.  This is because, as Mr. Shockley indicates, there are many, many aspects of our reality that are not quantifiable.  He argues that the reason we find farts funny rather than sad, for example, ought to be considered on the same level as the speed at which the universe is expanding.  For a full justification as to why, you can read his entire post(linked below).  What I am interested in is a truth that the legitimacy of qualitative evidences exposes: science is a weak machine.

It is so well established that you may even hear it called a fact; the scientific method is the best way to investigate.  Consider a question, make a guess as to the answer, then set up a model with conditions such that the guess's probable accuracy is exposed.  This is a phenomenal way to investigate certain types of claims.  The problem is that these types of claims are so abundant, and thus such a great amount of science takes place, that it is considered the perfect tool for answering all questions.

The scientific method put a monumental limit on itself on step one of the process: formulating a testable question.  If we don't know how to test something, then we can't do anything to try to answer it, so what's the point of posing a such question?  It's a very reasonable limit.  Disaster ensues when this limit goes unacknowledged or under-appreciated.

A question is testable when we can come up with an answer whose accuracy is testable.  If such an answer can never be thought of, then the question has to be thrown out entirely.

Limit 1: Scientific process is limited by imagination.  This doesn't always seem terribly daunting.  Most would lessen the blow by simply saying that as time goes on, knowledge increases and imagination increases with it.  It's only a matter of time before we'll have the answers to today's questions.

But while certain big and very important questions are pushed aside, awaiting a creative enough mind to formulate a test, science marches on.  It is continuously finding more possible solutions to questions, and the compilation of these answers directs all new investigations down a certain path.  At best, this is a waste of energy of resources.  At worst, it creates entirely incorrect bases of thought that are incredibly difficult to correct down the road.  Either way, nutritionists get rich while we keep on getting fatter, and your 7-year-old junior college diploma is about as meaningful as that weird kid next-door's self-ordination into the Jedi Council.

There are yet greater limitations that the testable question requirement sets on discovery.

Scientific process only works if the hypothesis is of a material nature - we have to be able to test it by manipulating material things with our material bodies.  This gives us two limits.

Limit 2: Scientific process demands a naturalist worldview.  There's no denying the immense popularity of belief in something supernatural across all cultures and time periods.  This isn't evidence that such a thing does in fact exist, only a decently good reason to be cautious.  Unless claims of supernatural things have been demonstrated to be false at their root, they are still on the table as possibilities...unless you're a scientist.

Admittedly, any claim of the supernatural isn't really very fair.  There's nothing to stop a lad from pointing to any particular natural process or naturalistic explanation for something and saying "My god made it that way".  This is frustrating and fruitless.

But a belief's failure to offer constructive value to investigation is no reason to call it invalid.  Maybe an invisible turtle really did vomit our world into motion, creating things with the appearance of self-sustainability and a natural origin.  There is zero evidence against this.  We like to call statements like that foolish and not worth considering.  But why?  It's not because we know it's false.  We simply choose to take a skeptical stance, really just because we feel like it.  Sounds childish when you say it like that, don't it?

Yet, science builds and builds its expert-approved, big picture theory that leaves no room for any un-testable variables.  It does this out of necessity more than ignorance - if we can't consider true the explanations that our tests prove valid, we might as well stop doing science.  So it operates in a way that can sustain itself.  It believes in what it would prefer to be true, as if its will has any bearing on the truth at all.

Limit 3: Science requires us to abandon our intuition.  This is where funny farts come in.  There are certain things people just experience to be the case.  Some acts are wrong.  People can love.  Humans are more important than rocks.  The justifications for these statements are by no means quantifiable and sometimes one can't be offered at all.

But this lack of quantifiable evidence doesn't take away from the validity of these statements.

If science isn't careful(which it doesn't have a great reputation for), it will delve into challenging intuitions, playing as both the opponent and the judge.  This can be devastating.

There are a very select few people that are able to deny key things that cannot be explained with quantitative facts.  There is something inside that tells us that human life means something.  We can't shake the idea that something is wrong with us, implying there is some ideal, something we are meant for, that we haven't reached.  This is every bit as important as any measurement, any calculation.


The "Why Farting Is Funny" Argument by Maxwell Schockley
http://pirateperspectivetheology.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-why-is-farting-funny-theological.html?spref=fb

My Mind Tells Me No...My Body Tells Me "You're Not In Charge Here"

Here I am again, attacking relativism.  Someone better get me all riled up on a different theme, or this blog is going to be as one-dimensional as Michael Cera's acting.

This is an important one, though.

Underneath all the searching, the asking, the judgments and prioritizing, there is an obvious tendency for people to assume purposes exist.  We experience in our thoughts and feelings that some things are right, some things are wrong, some things are good and some things are bad.  What things go in which categories are for the moment unimportant.  The critical observation here is that so much of our habits of thought require acknowledgment of the idea that outcomes do matter - and that's a big deal.

To say that one outcome is better than another is to say that it upholds, or fails to violate, some value better.  Thus, in order to make the claim that any action in history matters, one must also acknowledge an underlying value that it upholds.

Say a value is selected.  That selection has to be justified by something.  For example, it isn't enough to say that an action is good if it promotes life in some way - it saves human lives, it improves perceived quality of lives, it maximizes evolutionary potential, etc. - promoting life, as a value, must be rooted in something.

So the question, then, is what kind of thing can really function as a true, reliable root cause of a distinguishing between right and wrong?  The test is a counter question: why is that a justification?  What is its root?  Try this as many times as you feel is appropriate.  Eventually we see that something must just be.  An independent, eternally existing thing that is not derived from another thing is the only type of source we can blame for absolute things such as right and wrong.

So our conclusion is this: Believe in an eternal creator, or submit that nothing is right nor wrong, good nor evil, better nor worse.

This isn't a new argument by any means.  What's very odd though, is that many will consider the problem, conclude that morality is a purely subjective phenomena, and go on their way, considering this subjective, derivative, man-made, irrational morality as an important thing that good people uphold and bad people violate.  Why?  If it has no unwavering root, why would a person choose to consider it of consequence?

We experience convictions.  There's something that seems to keep people from accepting certain things as equal to other things.  People do not want to live in a world where choices don't matter.  Mankind just keeps on with its habit of establishing lists of unacceptable acts, along with this pesky feeling in their bellies that seems to say that there is some end that they perpetually fail to reach.  It's referred to as happiness most often.  I call it peace.

That didn't feel very thorough.  Screw it.

Relative Meaning

My earliest memory of  fine art was an elementary school field trip to the local art museum.  During our tour, the teacher would occasionally ask several students what they thought a particular piece represented.  Each kid had a different answer, and she responded to each one of them with "That's very good!".  

During my time in high school and college literature classes, there were discussion periods where we'd all speculate or attempt to deduce the meaning of various works.  As we did so, without exception, the instructor would remind us that "there's no right or wrong answer".

It's not uncommon for works of art to be deemed "up for interpretation".  In one respect, this practice is satisfying.  Since a work can remind different people of different things, it ought to make sense to say that they are all correct, so long as their perception is of real meaning and substance.  The problem arises when you reintroduce the artist into the equation.

The Everyone's Right doctrine operates under the assumption that art is by nature subjective.  It can't be said of a subjective thing that it has a meaning, because its identity is dependent on observation.  It would require that every artist always attempts to create something more like a mirror; something that is intended to absorb part of the viewer and reflect that input back out.  A mirror may have a purpose, but it does not have meaning.

Artists are expressive.  All forms of art(literature, dance, painting, poetry, sculpture, speech, etc.) are meant to operate as means of communication, sending an encoded message, through an obstructed version of an idea, from the artist to the observers.  Things can get lost in translation, so every observer won't accurately translate the piece into the correct idea it's based on.  That does not mean that any observer's translation is all of the sudden correct.  Say two viewers develop definitively contrasting interpretations.  Where does that leave us?  To say they could both be correct would deem art paradoxical, an thus practically meaningless.

Our differences will always affect our perceptions.  While acceptance and symbiosis are absolutely important, we can't let the pursuit of an "equality of ideas" deprive those responsible for the beautiful things in the world of the truth behind their creations.  This may even mean concluding that we can't ever know who's right or wrong, but it's far better to fail to understand than to obstruct.