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James_Miller comments on How to teach to magical thinkers? - Less Wrong
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I can't resist...
Did scientific method grow on a tree, or did people invent it?
Did people invent scientific method simultaneously everywhere, or was it invented and practiced at specific places?
:D
The real fallacy in my opinion is having a connotation that if something is constructed and promoted within a culture, that makes it wrong. For example, consider the Pythagorean theorem... knowing that Pythagoras was a rich white cis male, shouldn't we remove it from the curriculum? And perhaps replace it with something more enlightened, such as: "all sides of a triangle are equal, even if their lengths may be different".
In the same sense, science, even rationality itself, are cultural constructs. Maybe even human speech is a cultural construct, but luckily that happened sufficiently long ago so now all cultures have it. Okay, I am not sure about the last example. But I am sure that calling things "cultural constructs" is a cultural construct itself.
The scientific method is a cultural construct, but one that yields nice things such as iPhones and reasonably accurate theories of physics. Of course, it also helps produce nasty things like atomic bombs.
I think the real fallacy is saying that the scientific method is just as good as any other method at finding truth.
It looks like the problem might be that saying "X is a cultural construct" gets read as "X is just a cultural construct and as such has no value outside of it's cultural boundaries".
There is more to a thing than how it came to be.
and
Are these statements as independent as they seem? It is my impression that "... and all cultural constructs are equally valid" is at least connotatively associated with the notion of a "cultural construct".
Good point.
Can you say more about where this impression comes from?
I would agree with "...and cultural constructs do not represent a uniquely valid objective truth," and various things along those lines. But "all cultural constructs are equally valid" seems significantly overstating the case.
For example... I expect that most people who talk about cultural constructs at all would agree that chattel slavery and abolitionism are both cultural constructs. I doubt they would agree that they are equally valid for any understanding of "valid" that is at all relevant to this discussion.
Do you expect something different?
I think that the expression "cultural construct" implies that the construct in question is a representation not of physical reality, but of something inside people's heads.
Usually this is held to mean that cultural constructs are somewhat arbitrary, highly malleable, and do not involve laws of nature.
I think the scientific method is something that scientist do. It's not an object in physical reality the way a chair happens to be.
Do you think that the scientific method-1800, the scientific method-1900, the scientific method-1950 and scientific method-2014 happen to be exactly the same thing?
Yes, of course.
I don't understand the question.
Well, I certainly agree that "cultural construct" implies (indeed, I would say it denotes) something inside people's heads. And I agree that many people believe that, or at least are in the habit of thinking as if, the contents of people's heads are somewhat arbitrary, highly malleable, and do not involve laws of nature.
I'm not sure how that relates to the "... and all cultural constructs are equally valid" clause I asked about, though.
It relates through the not involving the laws of nature part. In a certain sense cultural constructs are not real. They are imaginary. And you can think of all imaginary things as about equally valid.
I am aware of holes in that argument, but getting back to the original point, when people call something a "cultural construct" there is a pretty heavy implication that whatever the replacement for it they have in mind is going to be at least as good and probably better.
Just because something is a cultural construct, and thus "imaginary" or pethaps even subjective to some extent, does not mean it's not about reality. To think otherwise is simply a mind projection fallacy.
True, but I'd not place much trust on a map whose creators refuse to constantly check with the territory.
Mm. Yeah, I'll accept that.
If your definition of "truth" is such that any method is as good as any other of finding it, then the scientific method really is no better than anything else at finding it. Of course most of the "truths" won't bear much resemblance to what you'd get if you only used the scientific method.
Also most of these truths will eventually wind up putting you in a position where you start experiencing pain or even dying despite your "truth" telling you that you aren't.
Or as Chesterton put it:
Or as Dick put it: "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
Scientific method should not be blamed, it is the people who created them should be questioned. We all know people who have invented iPhones and bombs have followed a specific method.