What dreams may come in the days without toy safety regulations., Atomic Energy Labs and Cap Guns Options

[hobgoblin]

force of habit? and if everyone else heads south, there is more room for those that stay (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

oh, and there seems to be more then enough hot days for the girls to get into those summer dresses (IMG:style_emoticons/default/silly.gif)

[Draco18s]

Why? Wouldn't Hawaii be more attractive?

Sure. But Minnesota reminds them of home.

BTW, I can say mean things about Norwegians because I am one. Also, it's true. Minnesota has lots of Norwegians (ever listened to Prairie Home Companion?)

[hobgoblin]

hmm, ill have to keep that in mind (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[AllTheNothing]

Sure. But Minnesota reminds them of home.

BTW, I can say mean things about Norwegians because I am one. Also, it's true. Minnesota has lots of Norwegians (ever listened to Prairie Home Companion?)

What's Prairie Home Companion?

[nezumi]

PHC is a radio show on NPR. One of those diversity shows (forget the word) where they'll play some music, tell some funny stories, et al. Pretty fun, easy going. My parents like it.

[ludomastro]

PHC is a radio show on NPR. One of those diversity shows (forget the word) where they'll play some music, tell some funny stories, et al. Pretty fun, easy going. My parents like it.

I like it and I doubt that I am anywhere near your parents age. It's a fun variety show all around.

[Draco18s]

PHC is a radio show on NPR. One of those diversity shows (forget the word) where they'll play some music, tell some funny stories, et al. Pretty fun, easy going. My parents like it.

Mostly about a made up place, Lake Wobegone, which if you print out Minnesota onto four maps then the town is right where the four corners meet, which is why it's not on them. All the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all of the children are above average.

http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/

And American Public Media produces it, but most of the radio stations that broadcast NPR also broadcast PHC (Wiki: "Most public radio stations broadcast a mixture of NPR programs, content from rival providers American Public Media and Public Radio International, and locally produced programs").

[Gawdzilla]

I've studied physics for most of my life, quite intently. I own more physics textbooks than is strictly sane.

So when you say you've "studied physics", do you mean that you're read some of the textbooks that you own?
Or that you actually have a degree in physics, or have at least taken upper-division physics classes at a university?
Because those are two very, very different things. For myself, I'm currently taking upper division classes at a university.

I didn't claim that physics says knowledge is futile, I said it shows the quest for knowledge to be futile, because it is impossible to actually know anything--you can only guess or assume.

Well, no, that is not what physics says at all.
We know a lot of things -- most of those things are data. Data just IS. You cannot refute that something falls to the Earth when you drop it, for instance. You can only debate that we don't know the correct reason that it does. We cannot say for certain that our theories about why are correct, but we certainly can be sure in the knowledge of our measurements -- or at least, what the limits of our measurements are.

I suppose you could argue that objects do not fall to the Earth because we can't prove that the objects even exist, but then you're getting into lame ideas like Cartesian Dualism, which is so preposterous that even most serious philosophers have given it up.

If you follow the theories and principles of quantum physics to their conclusion, it essentially states that reality does not exist. It's too much of a pain in the ass to go into

The reason that it is too much of a pain to go into is because of all the hand-waving you'd have to do; mostly because that isn't what it says at all.

What is says are that there are certain attributes of a given object or system that cannot be known, even in principle. It suggests that objects can be in several mutually exclusive states simultaneously. It says that physical objects can have wave-like properties. It does NOT suggest that the object doesn't exist. That is utterly preposterous. If you've taken quantum physics, you know that you can come to some very definite conclusions about real physical systems.

but there's a shortcut: The scientific method itself also infers that physics is pointless bullshit.

That would be a good point, except that it doesn't.

The core principle of scientific study is the collection empirical evidence, but observing this evidence requires senses that cannot be tested or verified adequately.

I disagree. Our senses can be verified quite adequately, mostly because we have other people as well as non-human instruments to verify them. In fact, most observations are not made by our senses, but rather by instruments. Machines that behave, by some wonder of wonders, according to the principles which millions of scientists over long decades have repeatedly and consistently verified experimentally. I'd say that so much repeatability is perfectly adequate verification. In fact, it is verification using the mode of the scientific method. What was that you were saying about the scientific method invalidating itself? It seems to me that it did exactly the opposite.

Really, the only other verification you could ask for would be some sort of philosophical, idealistic proof. But that has nothing to do with the scientific method at all and, if you ask me, is of dubious value anyhow.

Ultimately, all scientific "evidence" is reliant on faith in one's perceptions, which is a scientifically unsound basis.

No, it is a philosophically unsound basis, according to philosophers whose principles are now largely irrelevant.
Don't confuse science and philosophy. Empirical observations nowadays, especially in physics, have virtually nothing to do with human sensory apparatus, but even more than that -- it is not a scientifically unsound basis to have faith in perceptions that have been independently verified by other people. In fact it is at the very CORE of the scientific method to obtain evidence through repeatable independent corroboration. Your argument makes no sense.

Science destroys itself. It's a faith-based religion whose god is logic, that is built upon a logical fallacy.

LOL.
Faith is a belief based on zero evidence.
Your assertion that our senses cannot be trusted does not nullify the evidence that we do have; it cannot be a faith if we have good reasons to believe our conclusions, and we do. If you could come up with a reason that so many individuals would agree on so many millions of experiments over the entire history of science if we were all being independently fooled by our senses, then maybe you'd have a point... but not a great one.

But giving you the benefit of the doubt, there are only two conclusions that can come about by assuming that our senses are not able to be trusted.

At worst it leads to nihilism, since we can never truly verify that anyone besides ourselves exists. This is a fruitless and pointless philosophy that leads to a debate over what "counts as real". But of course if you really believed that, we wouldn't even be talking since you can't even say for sure that me, or the computer you're typing on even exist. I hope you can see what a dead-end that sort of thinking is.

At best, our senses are unreliable so that we have to repeat and independently verify experimental findings. We already do that, so there is no real impact.

Feel free to use denial to spare yourself the sanity loss, most physicists do. Personally, I find the abyss comforting.

Empiricism is more comforting than denial or philosophy, and less pointless (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)
I think you should take some classes to go with those textbooks.

[Gawdzilla]

Makes it easier to cope with a world that technically doesn't exist. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I'm just really curious how you came to the conclusion that quantum mechanics says that the world doesn't exist?
Because QM makes some very definite predictions. That's a hard thing to do if your core principle is that none of the things you're predicting correspond to real systems.

[Dream79]

Oh, I agree. Rather than having to trust your senses and the book/old man/book and the old man who wrote it, you only have to trust your senses. Then again, how many of us have personally performed all the experiments our current understanding of physics is based on?

We're still trusting old men and their books, until we repeat the experiment ourselves and understand the results--then we're just trusting our un-testable perceptions. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Cool, I thought I was the only one who noticed these paradoxes of logic.

[pbangarth]

Empiricism is more comforting than denial or philosophy, and less pointless (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)
I think you should take some classes to go with those textbooks.

While I might also take exception to rad's categorical and extremist view expressed above, I think you may be going overboard in your response, Gawdzilla.

Once your upper division courses finish starting you on your path to understanding, you may find that some of your counterarguments overstate your case. I suggest reading a bit of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn to start, and follow that up with a few general criticisms of knowledge production in modern science. A very interesting read is:

Latour, Bruno and Steven Woolgar. 1986. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. 2d ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Empiricism isn't -all- it's cracked up to be and the farther you go in physics the closer you will approach philosophy.

[Gawdzilla]

Empiricism isn't -all- it's cracked up to be and the farther you go in physics the closer you will approach philosophy.

It seems to me that it approaches philosophy only insofar as progression requires speculation (i.e. a theory or hypothesis).
However, any speculation on the laws of physics must subsequently be backed up with empirical support, or else it remains pure speculation. Or, in other words, philosophy.

Karl Popper, btw, was a critical rationalist, which is eminently compatible with empiricism. He simply says what every scientist already acknowledges -- that theories can never be verified, only falsified, and that science should be about rational criticism. Given that the very first thing you learn in most science classes (at least mine) is that the object of science is "to reject false hypotheses", I'd say that we're in agreement.

I admit that I'm a hardcore empiricist, but so far I've seen no good reason to be dissuaded.

[Kanada Ten]

The Shiawase Atomics Glo-Worm! Comes wrapped in a cuddly lead blanket.

Ares Entertainment Ex-Laser Light Kit: The included tutorsoft teaches you how to put on your own laser show, or build your own laser alarm system, complete with dual-beam technologies. Batteries not included.

Burping Baby Dragon: Burbs real flames! Matching boy or girl flame-retardant pajamas included.

[pbangarth]

It seems to me that it approaches philosophy only insofar as progression requires speculation (i.e. a theory or hypothesis).
However, any speculation on the laws of physics must subsequently be backed up with empirical support, or else it remains pure speculation. Or, in other words, philosophy.

At the very core of the scientific method are logical processes developed first as philosophy. The nature of reality and how it best might be approached is a fundamental subject of philosophical inquiry. How one might deal with the contradictions that occur in empirical analysis at the fringes of our bubble of knowledge (a notable example might be quantum theory) is being addressed daily by philosophers. Philosophy is about thinking and hypothesizing, structuring ideas and theories. It is unfair to characterize it as mere speculation, in the sense I think you mean it.

I admit that I'm a hardcore empiricist, but so far I've seen no good reason to be dissuaded.

I wouldn't think of trying to dissuade a 'hardcore empiricist'. I fly dizzyingly high in machines built by such people. I put a great deal of trust in their craft.

I do think that any science is better conducted when the scientist delves as deeply into his own assumptions, predispositions and methods as he does into the facts. Such inquiry is the realm of philosophers. We are all better off because some of us do that shit.

[Gawdzilla]

Philosophy is about thinking and hypothesizing, structuring ideas and theories. It is unfair to characterize it as mere speculation, in the sense I think you mean it.

I could certainly agree with that, and I agree that scientists should think about what things are being assumed in any set of ideas. General Relativity came about because Einstein realized that our heretofore implied acceptance of inflexible, universal time was incorrect.

I suppose it probably sounded as if I was railing against the entire discipline of philosophy. I didn't mean to -- I'm hardly an expert, but I've taken a few philosophy courses with some very good professors, and found them enjoyable. I do appreciate the subject in that it forces people to "practice thinking", as it were; analyze everything and take nothing for granted. It is an exercise that everyone should engage in, really.

I just sometimes become frustrated by the type of philosophy that supposes that you can know everything without knowing anything. Like the Greeks who, as much as I love them for their role in kicking off natural philosophy and mathematics, speculated endlessly on how heavier objects fall faster, and yet never bothered to drop a small rock and a big rock and notice that they hit the ground at the same time. Occasionally all the logical gymnastics needs to be subjected to a reality check.

[Dream79]

...and this is why I think it's a pitty we don't have an equivalent pastime to the 18th century coffee houses of Europe. Maybe it's just me, but it seems that feeling has by in large replaced thinking as a social pastime.

[hobgoblin]

thinking, at least in the kind of getting a education and wear a tie to work, was all the rage in the 50's.

but then came the late 60's and the hippies...

and things have gone steadily towards the mystical and emotional...

i think we can even see a pattern of it in politics...

[Gawdzilla]

It's true that things have moved towards being more "touchy feely".
I'm not convinced that this is entirely a bad thing, although doing it instead of thinking is.
Also, I don't know if I'd count getting a business degree and wearing a tie to work as "intellectualism".

Clearly, feelings have no place in empiricism. But there are many other gray issues where it could be important. Having emotions is part of being human and, personally, I think that unless we acknowledge that reality, a lot of problems will be very difficult to solve. All too often, people who think about social problems do it in a way that seems logical, or fair, but which fails to take into account the likely reactions of the groups involved. This even applies to things like foreign relations. It is precisely because people are emotional that there is often a difference between the way that is logical to act, and the way that people are likely to act. If we ever hope to get things right, we need to deal with solutions that take into account the latter, not the former.

My hope is that we come to a balance where we can acknowledge the realities of being human when it is necessary, and look past them when it is not.

[hobgoblin]

indeed, was it not greenspan that said something about their theories failing to take into account emotions and/or instincts? that is, things like greed, that most likely is a leftover instinct from when one found a fresh source of food one would eat like mad just to store up reserves for when it ran out?

[Dream79]

It would be irrational not to consider emotions in some circumstances. Namely dealing with the human condition. Since an emotional response is in effect a reaction to stimuli that triggers an instinctual urge on some level or another it has a legitimate role in day to day life. Though without analyzing the core of an emotion/s through the abstractions expressed from can lead to irrational actions in a individual. Thinking and rationalizing our emotions allows us to make a rational action from instinctual responses applied to abstractions which result from the vary capability of higher intelligence. The irony. At least that's my idea.

[BIG BAD BEESTE]

I like the idea of Vikings landing in Hawai'i. Can you imagine the culture shock? Or the genetic offspring that it would have engendered - IE: blonde, well-built polynesians in chainmail swimwear?

Oh, and as for the science stuff, I'm happy that I can stick to the planet without zooming off into the ionosphere simply because I don't believe in gravity.

Anyhow, something unusual and back on topic...

How about Aztechnology buy out Legoland! Real working pyramid and sacrificial wage slaves. Comes with your own chac-mool. Must supply own blood.

[Rad]

So when you say you've "studied physics", do you mean that you're read some of the textbooks that you own?
Or that you actually have a degree in physics, or have at least taken upper-division physics classes at a university?
Because those are two very, very different things. For myself, I'm currently taking upper division classes at a university.

Yeah, we're going to have a problem here. No, I have not studied physics in a university. I could explain that I tested at college level when I was 4, have a higher IQ than my grandfather who was an actual rocket scientist, and as a child corresponded with a colleague of his who worked on NASA's voyager program, but you're really under no obligation to believe any of that, or that learning outside a classroom has any merit.

When I say I've studied physics, I mean I have studied physics. Not taken a class and passed tests, which is not always the same thing. I've read extensively, pursued the latest findings in the field, and had ongoing discourse on the subject with people who are knowledgeable about it. Though admittedly I haven't kept up for the last few years.

Despite what they will tell you in school, course credit and a diploma is not the sole indicator of the quality or depth of one's education. The biggest problem I have with the way physics is taught in schools is that they misrepresent scientific theories as facts or "laws." I suppose if they admitted that they are merely the current best educated guesses of the scientific community, fewer people would be willing to pay the tuition to learn them.

Instead, science is taught as a religion: It's laws inviolate gospel as preached by the prophets Einstein, Feynman, and Newton. Of course, it's possible that your professor doesn't do this and actually teaches it right, in which case good for him. (Or her, I have no empirical evidence of your professor's gender. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) )

Well, no, that is not what physics says at all.
We know a lot of things -- most of those things are data. Data just IS. You cannot refute that something falls to the Earth when you drop it, for instance. You can only debate that we don't know the correct reason that it does. We cannot say for certain that our theories about why are correct, but we certainly can be sure in the knowledge of our measurements -- or at least, what the limits of our measurements are.

I suppose you could argue that objects do not fall to the Earth because we can't prove that the objects even exist, but then you're getting into lame ideas like Cartesian Dualism, which is so preposterous that even most serious philosophers have given it up.

Here you prove my point. You probably don't realize how much you're taking on faith there, or how biased and unscientific some of your statements are. My argument is wrong because it's 'lame'? I'm sure that would fly in academic circles. We probably won't agree on this, that's okay. I gave up trying to convert the faithful some time ago. I'll simply present my counter-arguments which you can consider or not as you please:

The reason that it is too much of a pain to go into is because of all the hand-waving you'd have to do; mostly because that isn't what it says at all.

What is says are that there are certain attributes of a given object or system that cannot be known, even in principle. It suggests that objects can be in several mutually exclusive states simultaneously. It says that physical objects can have wave-like properties. It does NOT suggest that the object doesn't exist. That is utterly preposterous. If you've taken quantum physics, you know that you can come to some very definite conclusions about real physical systems.

Okay, admittedly I'm guilty here too: The idea that nothing is actually "real" as we usually define it is an interpretation of certain aspects of quantum theory. I find it to be the interpretation which requires the fewest unfounded assumptions, but by my own arguments, it's still just a theory, not a law.

The reason I say it's too much of a pain to go into is because it's easier to point out the fundamental contradictions physics is built on than to delve into quantum mechanics. Why bother arguing a complex mathematical theory when you can show it's entire foundation to be flawed?

I disagree. Our senses can be verified quite adequately, mostly because we have other people as well as non-human instruments to verify them. In fact, most observations are not made by our senses, but rather by instruments. Machines that behave, by some wonder of wonders, according to the principles which millions of scientists over long decades have repeatedly and consistently verified experimentally. I'd say that so much repeatability is perfectly adequate verification. In fact, it is verification using the mode of the scientific method. What was that you were saying about the scientific method invalidating itself? It seems to me that it did exactly the opposite.

Really, the only other verification you could ask for would be some sort of philosophical, idealistic proof. But that has nothing to do with the scientific method at all and, if you ask me, is of dubious value anyhow.

You say that our senses can be verified quite adequately, I challenge you to support that claim. Every observation a human being can make is made through their senses. We can use instruments, but in order to read those instruments we still must rely on our physical senses. We can ask another person to verify the results, but in order to even be sure that other person exists, we must rely on our senses.

It is impossible to independently verify the data of our senses because we have no other way of perceiving the world outside our skulls. Without independent verification, there can be no empirical evidence.

For an SR example: Say a rigger is jumped into a drone and is scanning an area with it's cameras. Everything seems clear. He checks the area with the same camera several times, always getting the same result. He turns the drone to look at his teammates who are on-site with it, and the leader gives him a thumbs-up.

One pass later, a corporate strike team is busting though his bedroom window. Turns out they hacked the feed from his drone, and since he relied solely on his drone's sensors instead of messaging them via commlink or checking the feeds from their cybereyes, he never found out until it was too late.

The best we can possibly do is come up with an internally consistent theory that fits our perceptions. The problem is that science itself continually provides evidence that our senses are unreliable--undermining the very basis of it's own evaluation. It's like building a computer and having it inform you that binary logic doesn't work.

It is not scientifically unsound to have faith in perceptions that have been independently verified by other people. It is scientifically unsound to test the accuracy of your hearing by asking someone "did you heat that" and then listening to their answer. You cannot independently verify a sense if you have to use it to detect the result, and since everything you perceive is interpreted by your brain, it is impossible to verify the reliability of your own mind.

Think about this too long and you will go crazy, thus proving my point. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Faith is a belief based on zero evidence.
Your assertion that our senses cannot be trusted does not nullify the evidence that we do have; it cannot be a faith if we have good reasons to believe our conclusions, and we do. If you could come up with a reason that so many individuals would agree on so many millions of experiments over the entire history of science if we were all being independently fooled by our senses, then maybe you'd have a point... but not a great one.

But giving you the benefit of the doubt, there are only two conclusions that can come about by assuming that our senses are not able to be trusted.

At worst it leads to nihilism, since we can never truly verify that anyone besides ourselves exists. This is a fruitless and pointless philosophy that leads to a debate over what "counts as real". But of course if you really believed that, we wouldn't even be talking since you can't even say for sure that me, or the computer you're typing on even exist. I hope you can see what a dead-end that sort of thinking is.

At best, our senses are unreliable so that we have to repeat and independently verify experimental findings. We already do that, so there is no real impact.

No, faith is belief independent of evidence--such as the assumptions you're making about me because I didn't agree with you.

As for an explanation: There are plenty, all unprovable by the scientific method. The one I find most likely has to do with the probability wave theory and the issue of what qualifies as an "observer" in order to make the wave collapse. I find it requires less assumption to believe nothing qualifies as an observer and that the waves never collapse into a single reality, but that the probabilities within those waves may be observed separately.

For the record: We're talking because I find it mildly amusing, regardless of whether you, I, or my computer actually exist.

Empiricism is more comforting than denial or philosophy, and less pointless (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)
I think you should take some classes to go with those textbooks.

A scientist should not base his beliefs on what is more comforting.

It seems to me that it approaches philosophy only insofar as progression requires speculation (i.e. a theory or hypothesis).
However, any speculation on the laws of physics must subsequently be backed up with empirical support, or else it remains pure speculation. Or, in other words, philosophy.

Karl Popper, btw, was a critical rationalist, which is eminently compatible with empiricism. He simply says what every scientist already acknowledges -- that theories can never be verified, only falsified, and that science should be about rational criticism. Given that the very first thing you learn in most science classes (at least mine) is that the object of science is "to reject false hypotheses", I'd say that we're in agreement.

I admit that I'm a hardcore empiricist, but so far I've seen no good reason to be dissuaded.

Oh, so we agree. Any speculation on the laws of physics must be backed up with empirical support. Since that is impossible, all theories regarding the laws of physics remain mere speculation.

As a hardcore empiricist, you've put your faith in something unattainable by mortal man. Not an uncommon decision. I suppose you could call me a hardcore empiricist too, but I'm still waiting for evidence that our mind and senses can be verified. Since all of physics relies on that assumption...

I just sometimes become frustrated by the type of philosophy that supposes that you can know everything without knowing anything. Like the Greeks who, as much as I love them for their role in kicking off natural philosophy and mathematics, speculated endlessly on how heavier objects fall faster, and yet never bothered to drop a small rock and a big rock and notice that they hit the ground at the same time. Occasionally all the logical gymnastics needs to be subjected to a reality check.

My point entirely. How many of the fundamental assumptions of physics have you actually tested? Have you dropped a small rock and a big rock and observed which one hit the ground first?

If not, you're as guilty as the Greeks, arguing an accepted theory without ever subjecting it to a reality check.

How many other theories have you tested? Have you measured the speed of light lately, or are you still taking that one on faith?

Now, practically speaking it is probably impossible to recreate every experiment that physics is based on yourself. The problem is, until you have you're relying on faith, not science.

...and this is why I think it's a pitty we don't have an equivalent pastime to the 18th century coffee houses of Europe. Maybe it's just me, but it seems that feeling has by in large replaced thinking as a social pastime.

Eh, the internet's kind of like that--though less civil and rational most of the time. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[marinco]

So what happened to the toy thread?

[pbangarth]

So what happened to the toy thread?

People stopped believing in it.

[Gawdzilla]

Despite what they will tell you in school, course credit and a diploma is not the sole indicator of the quality or depth of one's education.

I understand that it is possible to have a good education outside of a formal classroom setting, nor do I think that schools have a monopoly on valid knowledge. But I also believe that it is important, no, vital, that anyone studying physics have an understanding of the mathematical background and how to apply it to current theory in order to actually understand the theory. Even if your mathematical acumen is high, it is not always easy to see how it applies to or illuminates the physical theory that you're studying. Though I understand that it isn't impossible, I have somewhat of a difficult time believing that anyone would have independently subjected themselves to the kind of mental rigors that you experience when you are guided along a very difficult academic path by people with expertise in the subject. But if you say that you have a deep understanding of how quantum mechanics works, I shall not dispute it.

Instead, science is taught as a religion: It's laws inviolate gospel as preached by the prophets Einstein, Feynman, and Newton.

I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, in general, although the words you use sure make it seem that way.
The purpose of a physics class is generally to understand how the theory works, not to talk about whether it is valid or not. If every class turned into a philosophical debate over the validity of the theory, people would learn very little about how the thing they're critiquing actually works. Even if the class is kept in focus, prefacing every theory with, "This may or may not be actually true" is of dubious value. The people who are pushing the bleeding edge of physics already understand that all theories are subject to invalidation, and in fact, every theoretical physicist tries their best to "break" these laws, because that's how you make high-profile papers. It is just that the best way to proceed is to treat a theory as valid and its assumptions as true; if its assumptions are not true, the theory will be invalidated at some point.

it's easier to point out the fundamental contradictions physics is built on than to delve into quantum mechanics. Why bother arguing a complex mathematical theory when you can show it's entire foundation to be flawed?

...

You say that our senses can be verified quite adequately, I challenge you to support that claim. Every observation a human being can make is made through their senses. We can use instruments, but in order to read those instruments we still must rely on our physical senses. We can ask another person to verify the results, but in order to even be sure that other person exists, we must rely on our senses.

...

It is impossible to independently verify the data of our senses because we have no other way of perceiving the world outside our skulls. Without independent verification, there can be no empirical evidence.

All of these statements rely on the assumption that we have no way to verify that anything we perceive, and that we can make no definitive statements about anything we experience. While there are some convincing arguments to be made for this outlook, there are some problems with actually proceeding with such a philosophy.

If we go ahead with the idea that our experiences may not reflect reality in any particular way, then we have to talk about what exactly "reality" is. Because to most of us it means, "what is actually true". But things that are "actually true" are always defined to be so by the products of our own scrutiny which is, as you pointed out, dependent on our senses in the end. The word "reality" is inseparable from our experiences. If it isn't, what exactly does "reality" refer to? Is "reality" in such a scenario even a significant idea?

So, there are two assumptions that we could possibly go along with:
1) Our senses are completely unreliable and are either unrelated to "reality", or related to it in an irregular or random fashion, in which case "reality" is undiscoverable. The illusion cannot be broken, even in principle, and no statements about reality, whatever that word refers to, can be made. Under such a regime, empiricism becomes pointless; indeed, trying to understand reality by any method becomes pointless. There is no method, in principle, that could reveal it.

2) Our senses do reflect reality, either perfectly, or imperfectly but in a predictable way. In such a scenario, reality is discoverable by repetitious experiment. Even if your senses do not reflect reality exactly, one can at least discover the relationship between your senses and reality since the relationship is consistent. One can therefore find a basis for believing and verifying the things we see, and perception no longer becomes an act of faith, but a tried, tested, and true method for discovering the world as long as one acknowledges that you should always question what you see and find ways to verify it.

This second way of thinking is exactly what scientists, and I, espouse. The first way seems to be your method.
So, I am curious: If there is no method for discovering reality, then do you think it is a worthwhile pursuit to discover a consistent method for describing consensual experience? Because if you do, then I would simply move to redefine "reality" as "consensual experience" and our entire disagreement dissolves in a cloud of irrelevant smoke.


As for your rigger example, it doesn't reflect your argument.

In this scenario it would have been possible for the rigger to discover reality empirically, using his own senses, if he just used different methods of investigation. He would have found different sensor readings by using a different analysis method, and would have had to reformulate his Safe/Unsafe Theory according to new information, because he would assume that he could, in fact, count on what his brain told him about the sensor readings.

By YOUR method, he could not assume that any information he got from any other sources besides his drone were valid anyway, since his senses may be unreliable. In fact, there would be no way, even in principle, that he could gain any better information about the situation. In fact, it is a mystery how he even knows that he is in the situation he thinks he is in. Are his teammates there or not? Is he jacked into his drone? Who knows! He may as well just guess anyway.

You say that "the problem is that science itself continually provides evidence that our senses are unreliable--undermining the very basis of it's own evaluation."
But it doesn't, at least, not according to your argument.
Science actually doesn't provide any evidence about anything at all, since any measurements we make may be totally invalid. And since our perceptions are unreliable, we have no way of investigating which measurements might be valid or invalid.

It is not scientifically unsound to have faith in perceptions that have been independently verified by other people. It is scientifically unsound to test the accuracy of your hearing by asking someone "did you heat that" and then listening to their answer. You cannot independently verify a sense if you have to use it to detect the result, and since everything you perceive is interpreted by your brain, it is impossible to verify the reliability of your own mind.

Well then you just argued that is IS scientifically unsound to believe independent verification, since you can't be sure that what you saw, and what the other person said they saw, are the same thing, even if it appears to be so. What you're arguing for is an interpretation of reality in which discovering anything outside your own thoughts is, in principle, impossible. While it may not be possible to argue against such a position without assuming certain axioms which you could dispute, I can say with certainty that such a philosophy is not one that can put into practice. It leads to de facto abandonment of the philosophy for all practical purposes, since acceptance of consensual reality by participation is necessary to stay alive. Taking the philosophy seriously leads to paralysis by analysis and complete stagnation, or simply not believing that anything we do is "real", in which case the word "reality" loses potency completely.

A scientist should not base his beliefs on what is more comforting.

I agree. I simply used the word because you used it to describe how you felt about your abyss of absent reality.
I don't find truth in comfort, I find comfort in truth.

Oh, so we agree. Any speculation on the laws of physics must be backed up with empirical support. Since that is impossible, all theories regarding the laws of physics remain mere speculation.

...

As a hardcore empiricist, you've put your faith in something unattainable by mortal man.

As I've said, proceeding with the assumption that empiricism is impossible leads to an incomprehensible view of reality. Or, at the very least, reality becomes a meaningless concept.
We end up formulating theories about how our perceptions work instead of "reality", which we can do since we experience the world as consistent and non-random, and presumably some of us would like to understand the rules that our perceptions are abiding by. But then we just call our perceptions "reality" because, lo-and-behold, the same rules seem to work for everyone who cares to investigate. Whatever reality originally referred to becomes a meaningless, amorphous concept that no one talks about, because no one is interested in what reality actually is if it doesn't coincide with our experiences.

As for what I've put my "faith" in...
In actuality, I have simply defined reality as that which my own perceptions and other peoples perceptions have agreed upon. In that context I don't have to put faith in anything, I simply have to find which interpretations have the most convincing evidence that explain my (and everyone else's) perceptions.
Whatever reality you're talking about, I'm not interested in.

I suppose you could call me a hardcore empiricist too, but I'm still waiting for evidence that our mind and senses can be verified. Since all of physics relies on that assumption...

But by your argument, such evidence could not possibly exist. Can you dream up some sort of evidence that would be capable of convincing you that doesn't rely on the same assumption? Because your ideas seem to exclude such a thing in principle.

How many of the fundamental assumptions of physics have you actually tested? Have you dropped a small rock and a big rock and observed which one hit the ground first?

If not, you're as guilty as the Greeks, arguing an accepted theory without ever subjecting it to a reality check.

How many other theories have you tested? Have you measured the speed of light lately, or are you still taking that one on faith?

Actually we measured that one in lab today (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)
According to you, though, even that wouldn't qualify as evidence. I had to read the oscilloscope with my eyes, after all.
As for doing every experiment myself... well, I must concede that I do believe most of the things I read in my physics texts on their own merit. But, since my experience of my perceptions has led me to the conclusion that everyone experiences the same laws of physics, it is a very reasonable proposition for me to take the word of the author, whom has years more experience and more expertise, and access to better investigative facilities than I do. My belief in their words is not independent of evidence, then, and is not faith. My belief is dependent on the author's expertise, which is attested to the hundreds of schools staffed by other experts that have adopted his book as a guide. If I go by my previous assumption, that my perceptions are reflective of reality, then this is not problematic.

In any case, the idea that believing a textbook requires faith is not true in either of our viewpoints.
At least, not if I understand yours correctly.

Under your philosophy, an experiment that I recreate must be measured with my perceptions. Since I can't prove my perceptions aren't flawed, I can't prove that the experiment reflects reality. Hence, I'd be relying on faith whether I did the experiment myself or not.

With my philosophy, not running my own experiments does not constitute an act of faith for the reasons described above. I have many reasons to suppose that the results attested to are true, and probably of better quality than results that I might derive myself.

Anyway, to summarize:
If we assume that our perceptions don't necessarily reflect reality at all, as you say, then science, empiricism, and learning about reality in general are all fruitless endeavors. Our inability to investigate the reliability of our own perceptions renders empiricism, and everything else, invalid.

If we assume that our perceptions do reliably and consistently reflect what we call reality, then process of science is no longer rendered impossible, and there is no inherent contradiction in the process of empiricism.

Just out of curiosity, by the way... You say that independent verification is impossible because we can't show that our perceptions reflect reality. But what do you make of the fact that virtually everyone else perceives reality in the same way? Isn't that good evidence for the fact that our perceptions DO reflect reality? If the very basic processes of hearing, seeing, and touching were disconnected from reality in unpredictable ways on a regular basis, what reason would there be for people to agree on so much? Doesn't that then render empiricism to be a valid method that we can have a very high degree of confidence in?