Category: Scientism
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Angst and the Empty Set
When I first saw this article, I thought to myself, "Oh boy, another load of stinking, steaming, scientistic bullshit by some know-nothing science writer or physicist for me to sink my logic shovel into!" You have heard it said, 'Take the bull by the horns.' But I say unto you, 'Take the bull by the…
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Seeing and Reading: More on Marcelo Gleiser’s Physics-Driven Pseudo Philosophy
This entry takes up where I left off yesterday. R. Crozat, responding to yesterday's post, e-mails: I agree that philosophy is tasked to evaluate the philosophical claims of scientists. Your post on Professor Gleiser does the job. In addition to confusing seeing with object seen, Gleiser seems to mix physics with meaning. He writes “You…
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This Just Now In: There is no Now! More Bad Philosophy from a Physicist
One of the tasks of philosophy is to expose bad philosophy. Scientists pump out quite a lot of it. Physicists are among the worst. I have given many examples. Here is another one. Let's get to work. Dartmouth physicist Marcelo Gleiser writes in There is No Now, You say, “I’m reading this word now.” In…
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Global Warming: Questions That Need Distinguishing
My posting of the graphic to the left indicates that I am a skeptic about global warming (GW). To be precise, I am skeptical about some, not all, of the claims made by the GW activists. See below for some necessary distinctions. Skepticism is good. Doubt is the engine of inquiry and a key partner…
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On the Scientism Front
We defenders of the humanities need to do battle on three fronts against three enemies: scientism, leftism, Islamism. Each is represented by a disturbing number of crapweasels, individuals who won't own up to who and what they are. Thus prominent scientisticists — to give an ugly name to an ugly bunch — will deny that…
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Book Notice: Edward Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics
This from the back cover: Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (editiones scholasticae, vol. 39, Transaction Books, 2014) provides an overview of Scholastic approaches to causation, substance, essence, modality, identity, persistence, teleology, and other issues in fundamental metaphysics. The book interacts heavily with the literature on these issues in contemporary analytic metaphysics, so as to facilitate…
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Conscience, Brain, and Scientistic Pseudo-Understanding
One of the tasks of philosophy is to expose and debunk bad philosophy. And there is a lot of it out there, especially in the writings of journalists who report on scientific research. Scornful of philosophy, many of them peddle scientistic pseudo-understanding without realizing that what they sell is itself philosophy, very bad philosophy. A…
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Popular Science: No Comments are Good Comments
Popular Science closes its combox. A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to "debate" on television. And because…
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Memory and the Operations of Reason
"Memory is necessary for all the operations of reason." (Blaise Pascal, Pensées, Krailsheimer, #651) This seems right. Consider this quick little argument against scientism, the philosophical, not scientific, view that all knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge: 1. I know by reason alone, a priori, and not by any natural-scientific means, that addition has the associative and…
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Is Philosophy of Mind Relevant to the Practice of Neuroscience?
This from a reader: There’s a youngster here considering going to college to study neuroscience, and I’m doing my best to inoculate him against scientism while offering a case for dualism. I’ve offered broad worldview reasons why that would matter, but I’m not sure off the top of my head what I would say if…
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Rosenberg’s Definition of Scientism and the Problem of Defining ‘Scientism’
A good deal of nonsense about scientism has been written lately by philosophers and scientists who, apparently unwilling to own up to their embrace of scientism, want to co-opt the term and use it in an idiosyncratic and self-serving way. Fodor is a recent example among the philosophers and Pinker among the scientists. (See articles below.) So…
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Steven Pinker on Scientism, Part One
Herewith, some commentary on a very poor article by Steven Pinker, Science is not Your Enemy. I will first state in general why I consider the article of low quality, and then quote a large chunk of it and intersperse some comments (bolded). This is Part One. Part Two to follow if I have the time…
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Eric Voegelin’s 1948 Definition of Scientism
I thank old blogger buddy Keith Burgess-Jackson for sending me a pdf of Eric Voegelin, "The Origins of Scientism," Social Research, Vol. 15, No. 4 (December 1948), pp. 462-494. Voegelin speaks of . . . the scientistic creed which is characterized by three principal dogmas: (1) the assumption that the mathematized science of natural phenomena is…