exchemist
Valued Senior Member
You sound like a plaque hanging on the wall. All hail the scientific method. Eternal arbiter of what is true and real. Amen! lol!
Look, I don't expect people, even strutting self-appointed spokesmen for science like you, to be without values. I simply propose that they acknowledge that there are no values in facts or knowledge per se. The value is placed on it by ourselves, and those values are what we each, in our own lives, were raised to believe in and espouse in our own lives. Is that really so hard to admit? That science expresses a devotion to ideals and aspirations that you have for yourself in your personal life. That you USE science as others would a life philosophy or a religion?
I think I see your basic point, which sounds to me like a criticism of what has been called "scientism", i.e. the elevation of a pragmatic discipline for understanding the physical world into a total worldview, from which, among other things, a moral code can supposedly be derived. You are contending, if I understand you, that any values a subscriber to scientism may claim are derived from their scientific outlook have instead been subjectively attached by them to what should be a value-free intellectual enterprise. Is that a reasonable paraphrasing?
I tend to think the attaching of values to science is inevitable and merely results from science being just another human enterprise. We all, thank goodness, apply our values to our activities and studies, almost unconsciously. We are moral beings. People sometimes try to argue that moral behaviour arises from what can be shown scientifically to work best for human society. I struggle with this, starting with the subjectivity in deciding what is "best". Furthermore, if you consider the "selfish gene" hypothesis, for example, it seems to me it can only explain a certain amount of the sort of altruistic behaviour that most of us admire.
To turn it on its head, there are also other people - a lot of them - who insist that science should be governed by a moral code, imposed from outside science by society. One sees the effects of this in legislation concerning topics and methods of research and sometimes in the dismissal or censorship of uncomfortable findings or hypotheses.