SCIENCE!

[elanid]

I'm supposed to be doing my homework, but I'd rather not (c'mon, you guys, I have a Chinese midterm, give me a break :P), so instead, I'm going to write about evolution.  One of my classes this year is an upper-division biology class, Experimental Ecology & Evolution (E3, for short, and I love it more than any class ever), which is giving me uppity

Comments

[sarahbrand]

You're accusing me of making assumptions, but I think you have to make assumptions to get anything done. (More on this in a bit.) If I reject Occam's Razor, for example, it gives me license to completely make stuff up, which is not generally conducive to reasoning out anything that is correct or true.

I actually do hold to determinism, now that you bring it up. Free will is basically an illusion resulting from lack of perfect knowledge. (Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen is the best illustration I can think of for this.) And I'm okay with that.

And what does science do? It maps causes and their effects or vice versa -- through either inductive or deductive reasoning. It can never reach the full picture, because the number is infinite, right? Yet it assumes -- ASSUMES -- there are causes and effects that it can map.

Right. That's the reason that introductory physics problems tell you to assume five million things so that you can actually solve for x. But once you've made those assumptions, you can solve for x. And, if the effect of the

[brugenmeister]

(And yes, my initial "benefit of the doubt" spiel was meant to be ironic. I'm not trying to contradict myself.)

[brugenmeister]

5

[sarahbrand]

First off - I was rude to you in my previous post, and I am sincerely sorry for that.

Your previous post seemed to set free will as equivalent to being, which is why I characterized your paradigm as "Being is [free will]" rather than "Being is [because of free will]." It wasn't my intention to put words in your mouth. Similarly, if effects are latent in being, and if free will is also (latent in?) being, it did not seem entirely unfair to characterize it as a cause, albeit the only cause of any action. Would calling it something like a necessary and sufficient condition be more accurate?

I do apologize for insulting you regarding gravity. I was just getting frustrated because you said we don't know what gravity is (and mischaracterized it as a force, which it really isn't), I told you what gravity is, and you responded, we don't know what gravity is. But I think I understand what you were getting at a little bit better now - to you, it is that (and here I may be misunderstanding you again) we can't know what gravity is

[brugenmeister]

Yay! Reason! I could hug you Sarah. Yes, you are pretty close to what I'm saying. Unfortunately, you lack the whole picture, mainly because to elaborate upon a lot of these points would literally require me to write books explaining them

[brugenmeister]

A spiral that goes ever inward and ever outward.

[brugenmeister]

I'd finally like to say that I'm tired of arguing, so I'll respond to questions if either of you need something clarified about my ontology, but I won't quibble over which ontology is more valid. It's an argument no one can win. Yes, I believe in free will. You seem to think that makes me insane. Fine. I'd rather live thinking that I chose the way I lived

[elanid]

And frankly, I don't want to get into that argument with Rachel. We'll just both end up calling each other lunatics and yelling a lot, as we seem to have done already. It's not constructive.

Devon, I understand that you are feeling a little bit frustrated, but - in service to an argument utterly unrelated to science or existentialism - I would submit that the only reason your discussion with Sarah hasn't descended to this point is that she is being exceedingly polite and careful in her points, while I am replying in the same tone that you are using with both of us. Do consider what this says about your own manner of argument.

I'd finally like to say that I'm tired of arguing, so I'll respond to questions if either of you need something clarified about my ontology, but I won't quibble over which ontology is more valid.Fine. Pray return, then, if you don't mind, to your points about science in society, which I personally found a far more interesting and useful discussion than whether or not causality exists. (You may have picked up

[sarahbrand]

I am certainly willing to wrap up my part of the discussion here, and I'm very glad that you and I managed to conclude on an amicable note.