[Fis] I do not understand some strange claims

[Stanley N Salthe]

Jesse, Arturo -- Science is necessarily culture-laden in being motivated
and supported by the interests of the culture affording it.  The observer
cannot escape itself nor its position in the world of possibility. The
information sought by scientific means is already implicit in the
initiation of a search, and will be, given luck and craft, narrowed down by
that search so as to serve as the stepping-off point for the next search.
In this way science progresses toward ever more refined explorations of
cultural desiderata. A nice example is quantum mechanics, as the current
furthest reach of our cultural interest in the ever more minute, which has
already 'paid off'' by an understanding of biology (as well as the building
up of massive and profitable superstructures required by science discourse).

STAN

On Thu, Nov 16, 2017 at 7:39 PM, Jesse David Dinneen <
jesse.dinneen at vuw.ac.nz> wrote:

> Dear Arturo (and greetings to everybody),
>
> Just a few more reasons to be wary of dismissing concepts and thinking
> that science is free of them:
>
> The position you are promoting constitutes a pop view (sometimes called
> the received view or naive view) of science, in which empirical items
> (e.g., measurable things) are taken to be unassailable rather than
> contingently defined and conceived of by science, implicitly or otherwise.
> To call concepts like the previously discussed triad 'useless' ignores the
> fact that they are necessary for meaningful scientific discourse (e.g., you
> cannot talk about observables without having a concept of what they are).
> Scientific discourse is inescapably value- and concept-laden (and full of
> implicit philosophical views), especially so when the terms used are
> implicitly defined or dogmatically defended; if you find these claims
> dubious, the introductory philosophers of science, like Kuhn and Popper,
> might be of interest to you. Further, the theories and observables of past
> scientific discourse have been either abandoned or refined beyond
> recognition despite relative successes in their time (e.g., phlogiston),
> and so it is reasonable to induce that the equivalent items of our time
> will someday meet similar fates -- thus it is risky to put too much faith
> in their objects being somehow more epistemologically sound or reliable
> than the objects of abstract thinking or their study free of concepts,
> philosophical thinking, etc.
>
> Your concern that discussion of information theories leads to NO-VAX
> surprises me; I am curious to know what harmful social movements you
> foresee being caused by, say, the Bar-Hillel-Carnap Paradox.
>
> Finally, it seems to me that by promoting this view of science, you are
> doing philosophy more than doing science, at least by your own view of the
> latter.
>
> Here I'm not trying to lower science, but defend concepts -- they are
> useful and necessary for scientific discourse, and seem to me very
> appropriate for this particular venue.
>
> Respectfully,
> Jesse David Dinneen
> School of Information Management, Victoria University of Wellington
>
> On Thu, Nov 9, 2017 at 10:11 AM, tozziarturo at libero.it <
> tozziarturo at libero.it> wrote:
>
>> Dear FISers,
>>
>> science talks about observables, i.e., quantifiable parameters.
>>
>> Therefore, describing the word "information" in terms of philosophers'
>> statements, hypothetical useless triads coming from nowhere, the ridicolous
>> Rupert Sheldrake's account, mind communication, qualitative subjective
>> issues of the mind, inconclusive phenomelogical accounts with an hint of
>> useless husserlian claims, and such kind of amenities is simply: NOT
>> scientific.
>> It could be interesting, if you are a magician or a follower of Ermetes
>> Trismegistus, but, if you are (or you think to be) a  scientist, this is
>> simply not science.
>> Such claims are dangerous, because they are the kind of claims that lead
>> to NO-VAX movements, religious stuff in theoretical physics, Heideggerian
>> metapyhsics.  Very interesting, but NOT science.
>>
>> That's all: 'nuff said.
>>
>> *Arturo Tozzi*
>>
>> AA Professor Physics, University North Texas
>>
>> Pediatrician ASL Na2Nord, Italy
>>
>> Comput Intell Lab, University Manitoba
>>
>> http://arturotozzi.webnode.it/
>>
>>
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>
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