Philosophy Updates

[C C]

The next scientific revolution won’t come from scientists
https://iai.tv/articles/the-next-sc...ont-come-from-scientists-auid-3448?_auid=2020

INTRO: Thomas Kuhn taught us that scientific revolutions arrive only in moments of a crisis of the paradigm. Now, as philosopher Steve Fuller argues, we may be able to intervene without having to wait for a Kuhnian paradigm shift. In a scientific world dominated by computer simulations and unread research, generative AI offers a radical solution. By mining the entirety of scientific knowledge and placing it in the hands of non-experts, AI could trigger a metascientific revolution -- one that finally delivers on science’s promise of collective empowerment. 80% of scientific studies are ignored, but that's about to change... (MORE - details)
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[exchemist]

The next scientific revolution won’t come from scientists
https://iai.tv/articles/the-next-sc...ont-come-from-scientists-auid-3448?_auid=2020

INTRO: Thomas Kuhn taught us that scientific revolutions arrive only in moments of a crisis of the paradigm. Now, as philosopher Steve Fuller argues, we may be able to intervene without having to wait for a Kuhnian paradigm shift. In a scientific world dominated by computer simulations and unread research, generative AI offers a radical solution. By mining the entirety of scientific knowledge and placing it in the hands of non-experts, AI could trigger a metascientific revolution -- one that finally delivers on science’s promise of collective empowerment. 80% of scientific studies are ignored, but that's about to change... (MORE - details)
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What is this “promise of collective empowerment”, supposedly offered by science but not until now delivered? I’ve never heard of this before and don’t recognise it at all as a goal of science. This smells to me of tendentious political notions. Do I hear an axe being ground?

P.S. I thought this smelt funny - and now I discover this Steve Fuller guy is a supporter of Intelligent Design.

 

[Wizard of Whatever]

I had read this, last weekend. While I agree that some emotions are mediated by a cultural and temporal placement, I thought maybe Boddice, playing the maverick, overstated matters. I can't believe there's a big difference in what a medieval smith and a modern renovator (me) feel when we whack our thumbs with a hammer. We both ameliorate the raw throb of pain by knowing it goes with tasks we find meaningful and probably both briefly are pissed at our carelessness and resolve to proceed more carefully. Probably both of us engage in a brief flexing and palpating to assure nothing got broken, so work may proceed.

We can't even know the inner feelings of our family, friends, and next door neighbors. We can only intuit them from their actions and words.

 

[TheVat]

In a scientific world dominated by computer simulations and unread research, generative AI offers a radical solution. By mining the entirety of scientific knowledge and placing it in the hands of non-experts,

Someone just shoot me now.

 

[TheVat]

We can't even know the inner feelings of our family, friends, and next door neighbors. We can only intuit them from their actions and words.

Yes, that seems to be generally how social animal species go about relating to others. In cognitive science, the ability to intuit the feelings and thoughts of others is called a theory of mind. The better our intuitions are, the better we navigate social situations and form pair bonds, so genes that may enhance the ToM faculty tend to be selected for in social species.

Of course, my social relations are probably not as heavily dependent on guessing at the feelings of medieval blacksmiths.

 

[C C]

What is this “promise of collective empowerment”, supposedly offered by science but not until now delivered? I’ve never heard of this before and don’t recognise it at all as a goal of science. This smells to me of tendentious political notions. Do I hear an axe being ground?

P.S. I thought this smelt funny - and now I discover this Steve Fuller guy is a supporter of Intelligent Design.

• Steve Fuller: Designer trouble: Fuller claims he doesn't personally favour ID, but feels that it should have a "fair run for its money". [...] When pushed, he labels himself a "secular humanist", admitting he does so partly to provoke a response...
  
  Steve Fuller and the hidden agenda of social constructivism: Specifically, Fuller regards himself as a leader in the movement to "open up" science by nurturing and canonizing ways of "doing science" that differ radically from practices currently endorsed by the professional scientific consensus. This is a theme that plays well on the academic left, since it explicitly includes such notions as "citizen science" and "people's science," projects that Fuller gives leave to confront and reject the findings of established science. There is an obvious nod to the epistemic relativism that is central to the postmodernist view of things, notwithstanding the fact that Fuller indignantly refuses the "postmodernist" label.
  
  [...] It might pay, at this point, to inquire a little more deeply into the question of motivations, that is to say, the motivations of those proponents of science studies who have, like Fuller, spent the past two decades or so beating the drums for epistemic relativism and cognitive pluralism, making social constructivist doctrine bear the weight of their argument...

While most of theist pseudoscience also denies any association with postmodernism (due to the far-left politics of the latter), they're still relying on the same thing as the constructivists: The theory that one's social background and other acquired thought orientations affect cognition and introduces interpretative biases with respect to data.

Even if every aspect of theist pseudoscience escapes having direct roots in those literary intellectual influences, theist pseudoscience would still be a partial parallel of postmodernism that arose independently of the latter. As kind of exemplified by indigenous and regional peoples likewise campaigning for their own creation stories under the banner of inclusiveness (or a radical degree of parity in that direction).

For postmodernist crusading, the tyrannical social-based bias to be fought (especially with respect to knowledge) stems from the hegemony of the West that oppressed the beliefs and lifestyles of the rest of the world during colonial times. While counterpart Christian crusading differs in that it supports the West, with the exception of when the secular elements conflict with its own stances. But both are still fractional bedfellows in the context of the above.

Since Fuller is an advocate of transhumanism, too (belonging in the broader antinaturalism category), he really can't successfully deny that he's borrowing from the constructivist toolkit (and perhaps didn't in the past, as hinted below). Whereas the rest of the ID camp may be better shielded behind its facade(?) of self-sufficiency and independence from postmodern and critical theory offshoot movements.

• (additional excerpt): "That in itself won't save him, I believe, from the disdain of most social constructivist colleagues. He is giving aid and comfort to too dire an enemy [conservative religious camps, Western oppression, capitalism, etc]. His career is probably headed for some fairly rocky shoals. Nonetheless, he is merely extending to a nasty gang of right-wing religious nuts the logic that has led the science studies community and its hangers-on to speak up for tribal shamans, UFO cultists, and homeopathists."

 

[exchemist]

• Steve Fuller: Designer trouble: Fuller claims he doesn't personally favour ID, but feels that it should have a "fair run for its money". [...] When pushed, he labels himself a "secular humanist", admitting he does so partly to provoke a response...
  
  Steve Fuller and the hidden agenda of social constructivism: Specifically, Fuller regards himself as a leader in the movement to "open up" science by nurturing and canonizing ways of "doing science" that differ radically from practices currently endorsed by the professional scientific consensus. This is a theme that plays well on the academic left, since it explicitly includes such notions as "citizen science" and "people's science," projects that Fuller gives leave to confront and reject the findings of established science. There is an obvious nod to the epistemic relativism that is central to the postmodernist view of things, notwithstanding the fact that Fuller indignantly refuses the "postmodernist" label.
  
  [...] It might pay, at this point, to inquire a little more deeply into the question of motivations, that is to say, the motivations of those proponents of science studies who have, like Fuller, spent the past two decades or so beating the drums for epistemic relativism and cognitive pluralism, making social constructivist doctrine bear the weight of their argument...

While most of theist pseudoscience also denies any association with postmodernism (due to the far-left politics of the latter), they're still relying on the same thing as the constructivists: The theory that one's social background and other acquired thought orientations affect cognition and introduces interpretative biases with respect to data.

Even if every aspect of theist pseudoscience escapes having direct roots in those literary intellectual influences, theist pseudoscience would still be a partial parallel of postmodernism that arose independently of the latter. As kind of exemplified by indigenous and regional peoples likewise campaigning for their own creation stories under the banner of inclusiveness (or a radical degree of parity in that direction).

For postmodernist crusading, the tyrannical social-based bias to be fought (especially with respect to knowledge) stems from the hegemony of the West that oppressed the beliefs and lifestyles of the rest of the world during colonial times. While counterpart Christian crusading differs in that it supports the West, with the exception of when the secular elements conflict with its own stances. But both are still fractional bedfellows in the context of the above.

Since Fuller is an advocate of transhumanism, too (belonging in the broader antinaturalism category), he really can't successfully deny that he's borrowing from the constructivist toolkit (and perhaps didn't in the past, as hinted below). Whereas the rest of the ID camp may be better shielded behind its facade(?) of self-sufficiency and independence from postmodern and critical theory offshoot movements.

• (additional excerpt): "That in itself won't save him, I believe, from the disdain of most social constructivist colleagues. He is giving aid and comfort to too dire an enemy [conservative religious camps, Western oppression, capitalism, etc]. His career is probably headed for some fairly rocky shoals. Nonetheless, he is merely extending to a nasty gang of right-wing religious nuts the logic that has led the science studies community and its hangers-on to speak up for tribal shamans, UFO cultists, and homeopathists."

I very much enjoyed reading Norman Levitt's hatchet job on Fuller, which amply confirms all my suspicions. The Wiki page on Fuller contains similar criticisms of him from a wider cast of academics, so it is not just a question of Levitt's personal animosity. Fuller appears to have almost invented the flaky-seeming field of "social epistemology" and launched himself into orbit, in the academic world, on a column of bullshit. He is not too bright apparently, having been taken in by the Sokal Hoax and also by the "scientific" pretensions of the ID crowd. He seems to support the latter because they attack established science, rather than because of any understanding of their arguments. Rather funny that his testimony as a defence expert witness in the Kitlzmiller trial was cited by the judge as evidence undermining the Dover school board's claim that ID was science - what in Britain we refer to an an "own goal".

So he's an anti-elite, anti-science crusader, trying to bring down science and make it just another socially constructed "belief system", without any valid claim to objective understanding of nature. The irony is that although he does this out of leftish ideology, wanting to build up "citizen science" and give greater credence to the folklore of simple people, his natural soulmates are now the Vances of this world, the MAGA crowd and other movements of the populist, anti-intellectual far right! So he's in tune with the shitegeist all right, but not in the way he would like. Quite funny in a way.

But the upshot of all this is I don't think we need to take at all seriously the ideas of his that you originally posted, about AI leading to a democratisation of science.

 

[parmalee]

I had read this, last weekend. While I agree that some emotions are mediated by a cultural and temporal placement, I thought maybe Boddice, playing the maverick, overstated matters. I can't believe there's a big difference in what a medieval smith and a modern renovator (me) feel when we whack our thumbs with a hammer. We both ameliorate the raw throb of pain by knowing it goes with tasks we find meaningful and probably both briefly are pissed at our carelessness and resolve to proceed more carefully. Probably both of us engage in a brief flexing and palpating to assure nothing got broken, so work may proceed.

Experiential relativity is a fascinating subject. I was gonna go on a little rant about a phenomenon that greatly interested me in previous decades--that is, the prevalence of conversion disorder and/or hysteria diagnoses amongst certain populations and the relative lack of such amongst others, but... I don't know, that doesn't speak so much to experiential relativity as it does to, say, colonialist, misogynistic, racist, etc. attitudes among the dominating classes. (There are still plenty of American "doctors", especially in the Bible Belt, who maintain that Black people feel less pain generally.)

That said, I'm inclined to agree with William James on this matter, just as I'm inclined to agree with American Pragmatists generally on a lot of matters. Our interpretations and valuations inform precisely what we feel as much as does anything else.

 

[TheVat]

The irony is that although he does this out of leftish ideology, wanting to build up "citizen science" and give greater credence to the folklore of simple people, his natural soulmates are now the Vances of this world, the MAGA crowd and other movements of the populist, anti-intellectual far right! So he's in tune with the shitegeist all right, but not in the way he would like. Quite funny in a way.

He seems to have been thoroughly duped, as to which masters ID really serves. I guess one can't expect too much from a "social epistemologist," who doesn't have the science knowledge or methodology tools to understand that decolonized science, or street science, or herb-enriched science, is still going to need to defer to objective facts and the experts who labor to remove interpretive bias in getting at them. Otherwise you get citizen science like RFK Jr. backing Miasma theory and WiFi causing cancer and "leaky brain."

I liked Levitt's takedown, in that respect, and found this passage to be a bullseye hit:

The ultimate aim of the ID movement is not only to replace secular science by a zombie simulacrum deferential to fundamentalist myth, but further to exploit that anticipated achievement in order, ultimately, to turn this country into a fundamentalist Christian commonwealth. This is perfectly clear to anyone who has paid attention to the pronouncements of ID godfather Phillip E. Johnson. Fuller's rather blithe defense is that he is trying to keep the ID movement from falling completely into the hands of the religious right. He advises his critics to "Mainstream these guys [ID advocates] now, so that they don't have to depend on the religious right for material support." This is rather like advocating support of the SS in order to prevent it from falling completely under the sway of the Nazis! Fuller is too feckless to perceive that ID belongs to the religious right, body and soul. It was dreamed up by the religious right, and continues as an arm of that movement.

Like many who rail against interpretive bias and the mote in science's eye, Fuller can't seem to perceive the boulder lodged in his own eye.

 

[C C]

[...] But the upshot of all this is I don't think we need to take at all seriously the ideas of his that you originally posted, about AI leading to a democratisation of science.

I don't think "alternative scientific cultures" would be a good thing, but I can't rule out AI prowling through and digging up a body of ignored papers, and in the course of that giving center stage to an array of "new" crackpottery. Strange that Fuller doesn't mention what the same could do for continental philosophy (setting aside Sokal and Bricmont's "fashionable nonsense" label for certain eddies of it), since there's surely an ocean of "neglected" academic work in that regard, too. But maybe he already has in a separate essay.
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[exchemist]

I don't think "alternative scientific cultures" would be a good thing, but I can't rule out AI prowling through and digging up a body of ignored papers, and in the course of that giving center stage to an array of "new" crackpottery. Strange that Fuller doesn't mention what the same could do for continental philosophy (setting aside Sokal and Bricmont's "fashionable nonsense" label for certain eddies of it), since there's surely an ocean of "neglected" academic work in that regard, too. But maybe he already has in a separate essay.
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I am highly sceptical that an AI trawl through the backwaters of published papers is likely to lead to any kind of scientific revolution. Far more likely is that it will generate a load of time-wasting, chasing up bad research with unreproducible findings or even faked papers, many of them generated by AI of course. I think Fuller is talking his own book. He’d like it to be true, because it suits his agenda. But that’s not evidence it will happen.

 

[parmalee]

He seems to have been thoroughly duped, as to which masters ID really serves. I guess one can't expect too much from a "social epistemologist," who doesn't have the science knowledge or methodology tools to understand that decolonized science, or street science, or herb-enriched science, is still going to need to defer to objective facts and the experts who labor to remove interpretive bias in getting at them. Otherwise you get citizen science like RFK Jr. backing Miasma theory and WiFi causing cancer and "leaky brain."

It is kind of odd though, in that his approach and background should really make him more sensitive and attuned to the nature "as to which masters ID really serves"--just as he ought be sensitive to and aware of the irony to which Exchemist alludes above. Something something about according equal legitimacy to all ideas, no matter their origins or underpinnings or subversive political intent.

Of course, academics in general have yet to work out how to appropriately situate things like, say, the Latter Day Saints and Jehovah's Witnesses within the context of Christianity broadly. So...

 

[parmalee]

I am highly sceptical that an AI trawl through the backwaters of published papers is likely to lead to any kind of scientific revolution. Far more likely is that it will generate a load of time-wasting, chasing up bad research with unreproducible findings or even faked papers, many of them generated by AI of course. I think Fuller is talking his own book. He’d like it to be true, because it suits his agenda. But that’s not evidence it will happen.

Again, I'm reminded of Rupert Sheldrake here. Had he simply been honest and upfront about his methodologies, and the aspects which were anything but scientific, he would less likely be widely viewed as a kook today. And it's unfortunate really, because there is something to some of Sheldrake's work and, moreover, the guy actually has the proper background to discern the bits which adhere to a rigorous and formalized approach and those which do not.

Edit: Sorry--I think I was responding to a post prior to the one which I quoted. I'm a bit distracted at the moment by all this Epstein Files shit. It's really starting to unravel (or come together?) a bit like The X-Files mytharc. I'm half expecting some crazy epileptic guy to come forward, claiming to have all the answers, only to be mysteriously "disappeared" by the Smoking Man or something.

Also, I'm going to have to retract a claim that I have made many times previously. Trump did not rape/sexually assault nearly three dozen women--he quite clearly raped and assaulted way more than three dozen women and girls.

 

[TheVat]

Again, I'm reminded of Rupert Sheldrake here. Had he simply been honest and upfront about his methodologies, and the aspects which were anything but scientific, he would less likely be widely viewed as a kook today. And it's unfortunate really, because there is something to some of Sheldrake's work and, moreover, the guy actually has the proper background to discern the bits which adhere to a rigorous and formalized approach and those which do not.

Yeah I was disappointed that some of his more interesting hypotheses never got much tested because of the kook stuff. If he could have focused on just a couple that were closer to his area of professional expertise, like the termite colonies and a possible group mind of some kind, I think he could have been more credible. Some of his conjectures, like about dogs knowing when their owners were headed home, had setups that seemed plagued with potential information leakage, and/or biased interpretation of canine behaviors.

 

[exchemist]

Again, I'm reminded of Rupert Sheldrake here. Had he simply been honest and upfront about his methodologies, and the aspects which were anything but scientific, he would less likely be widely viewed as a kook today. And it's unfortunate really, because there is something to some of Sheldrake's work and, moreover, the guy actually has the proper background to discern the bits which adhere to a rigorous and formalized approach and those which do not.

Edit: Sorry--I think I was responding to a post prior to the one which I quoted. I'm a bit distracted at the moment by all this Epstein Files shit. It's really starting to unravel (or come together?) a bit like The X-Files mytharc. I'm half expecting some crazy epileptic guy to come forward, claiming to have all the answers, only to be mysteriously "disappeared" by the Smoking Man or something.

Also, I'm going to have to retract a claim that I have made many times previously. Trump did not rape/sexually assault nearly three dozen women--he quite clearly raped and assaulted way more than three dozen women and girls.

Were you reacting to the Oliver Sacks revelation?

 

[TheVat]

Were you reacting to the Oliver Sacks revelation?

Is there much of a revelation there? Epstein liked to have scientists about, would dangle funding in front of them. He would pull eminences like Frank Wilczek and SJ Gould into his orbit and try to get some science glow to rub off on him. Unless there's some new reveal about Sacks?

 

[exchemist]

Is there much of a revelation there? Epstein liked to have scientists about, would dangle funding in front of them. He would pull eminences like Frank Wilczek and SJ Gould into his orbit and try to get some science glow to rub off on him. Unless there's some new reveal about Sacks?

Eh? I know nothing about Sacks and Epstein. I meant C C ’s post about Sacks having written fictitious stories in his most celebrated popular books.

 

[TheVat]

Eh? I know nothing about Sacks and Epstein. I meant C C ’s post about Sacks having written fictitious stories in his most celebrated popular books.

Oops. Sorry, I misread what you were responding to. Parma was digressing to the new Epstein reveals in that post, and I Iost track of which thread I was in. I'd blame spiked eggnog, but I can't handle the stuff anymore.

 

[exchemist]

Oops. Sorry, I misread what you were responding to. Parma was digressing to the new Epstein reveals in that post, and I Iost track of which thread I was in. I'd blame spiked eggnog, but I can't handle the stuff anymore.

Well we all seem to talking a bit at cross purposes. (I think the Epstein stuff is overblown, by the way. None of it is going to show anything about under age girls. The guy was a well connected socialite who gave a lot of parties. It won’t reveal a smoking cock, so to speak.)

 

[C C]

Is democracy always about truth? Why we may need to loosen our views to heal our divisions
https://theconversation.com/is-demo...loosen-our-views-to-heal-our-divisions-269038

EXCERPTS: We find ourselves in the midst of a crisis of truth. Trust in public institutions of knowledge (schools, legacy media, universities and experts) are at an all-time low, and blatant liars are drawing political support around the world. It seems we collectively have ceased to care about the truth.

The nervousness of democrats before this epistemic crisis is partly based on a widespread assumption that the idea of democracy depends on the value of truth. But even this assumption has a cost. Sadly, the democratic tendency to overemphasise the value of truth enters into conflict with other democratic demands. This leads us into contradictions that become fodder for the enemies of open societies.

[...] But do we really need truth to share a reality? In practice, most of our experiences of shared realities are not involved in truth. Think of myths, neighbourly feeling, or the sense of community, perhaps even religion and certainly the ultimate shared reality: culture itself. It would be hard to argue that we share in our community’s cultural reality because our culture is true or because we believe it to be true... (MORE - details)
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COMMENT: When it comes to achieving radical equality of all individuals, societies, population groups, etc -- it probably is the case that such a multicultural utopian goal will require having to sacrifice truth in at least a mitigated manner. In order to both accept and be in harmony with all the varying beliefs and conspiracy models entertained in that global array of different communities. But that does not entail that we ought to go in a postmodern direction like that. That kind of moral prescription circularly arises within the guilt complex itself that the West has acquired from collectivism and the critical analysis of its later Neo-Marxist iterations. Democracy shouldn't be using the super-idealistic dreams of the very school of thought that is the source of its angst as the standard for making a decision like that. But rather engage in volition outside such.
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