Why subjective theories are not science.

How can a theory exist without somebody to entertain the idea? You can have all the 'empirical data' you want, but without an hypothesis that connects all the dots, you haven't got much. And where does 'the hypothesis' exist, eh? You won't find that wandering around on the plains or lighting up your bubble chamber. Think about that.

Does all science need to be based on empirical data, and what empirical data is sufficient to be called science. When does something leave the objective realm and enter into the subjective. How can subjective experience be tested?

6.362 What can be described can happen too: and what the law of
causality is meant to exclude cannot even be described.


6.363 The procedure of induction consists in accepting as true the
simplest law that can be reconciled with our experiences.


6.3631 This procedure, however, has no logical justification but only a
psychological one. It is clear that there are no grounds for believing
that the simplest eventuality will in fact be realized.


6.36311 It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this
means that we do not know whether it will rise.


6.37 There is no compulsion making one thing happen because another has
happened. The only necessity that exists is logical necessity.


6.371 The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the
illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of
natural phenomena.


6.372 Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as
something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages.
And in fact both are right and both wrong: though the view of the
ancients is clearer in so far as they have a clear and acknowledged
terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything
were explained.

The question was: When does something leave the objective realm and enter the subjective? And one answer is: when we hypothesise about it.

Science may well be founded on empirical data, but the data must often be interpreted subjectively for an hypothesis to be formed. 'Scientific progress' is often not a very scientific matter - it involves dreams, hunches, intuitions, arguments, and many other aspects of subjective experience. Which is precisely the point.

Excellent question. I suggest this obvious but overlooked fact. We simply must use our sense organs to test any hypothesis, and the experience of sensation is private/subjective. Sensation is one kind of private experience. There are others. Here's Wittgenstein:



That's Witt. Make of it what you will.:flowers:

Can subjective experience itself be tested scientifically. For example, consciousness, etc.

How can a theory exist without somebody to entertain the idea? You can have all the 'empirical data' you want, but without an hypothesis that connects all the dots, you haven't got much. And where does 'the hypothesis' exist, eh? You won't find that wandering around on the plains or lighting up your bubble chamber. Think about that.

Can subjective experience itself be tested scientifically. For example, consciousness, etc.

Isn't that what psychology is supposed to be about? And cognitive science?

Precisely. But when does that leave the scientific and become non-scientific.

n psychology, phenomenology is used to refer to subjective experiences or their study. The experiencing subject can be considered to be the person or self, for purposes of convenience. In phenomenological philosophy (and particularly in the work of Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty) "experience" is a considerably more complex concept than it is usually taken to be in everyday use. Instead, experience (or being, or existence itself) is an "in-relation-to" phenomenon, and it is defined by qualities of directedness, embodiment and worldliness which are evoked by the term "Being-in-the-World".[1]

Nevertheless, one abiding feature of "experiences" is that, in principle, they are not directly observable by any external observer. The quality or nature of a given experience is often referred to by the term qualia, whose archetypical exemplar is "redness". For example, we might ask, "Is my experience of redness the same as yours?" While it is difficult to answer such a question in any concrete way, the concept of intersubjectivity is often used as a mechanism for understanding how it is that humans are able to empathise with one another's experiences, and indeed to engage in meaningful communication about them. The phenomenological formulation of Being-in-the-World, where person and world are mutually constitutive, is central here.

Precisely. But when does that leave the scientific and become non-scientific.

Precisely. But when does that leave the scientific and become non-scientific.

Chemists do not consider sociology scientific

Does all science need to be based on empirical data, and what empirical data is sufficient to be called science. When does something leave the objective realm and enter into the subjective. How can subjective experience be tested?

Please provide some concrete examples, else we poke around in blindness, or have to make assumptions based on shaking the x-maz gifts

I have been researching whether Chomsky's universal grammar is scientific inquiry according to Popper's philosophy of science.

I have been researching whether Chomsky's universal grammar is scientific inquiry according to Popper's philosophy of science. I am trying to gain some insight.