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Mon 14 Nov, 2005 06:17 am
If you find all this a bit cryptic and I have failed to communicate my meaning you can study the matter in "The Open Society and its Enemies" Chapter 2, Vol. II, by Popper.
Facts
1) Scientific objectivity is not a product of individual impartiality.
2) Scientific objectivity results incrementally because of the scientific method.
3) Scientific objectivity results because of the institutionally organized objectivity of the natural sciences.
4) Sociology erroneously assumed it to be possible for the individual to "unveil" unconscious assumptions.
5) Sociology has failed to produce objective knowledge through this self-analysis technique.
6) Sociology failed to understand the scientific method.
7) Natural sciences provide theory in a form that can be understood and tested by the community.
8) Natural science recognizes experience "of a public character" as the impartial arbiter of controversies.
Conclusions
1) Sociology looks upon knowledge as the product of the individual scientist.
2) Objectivity is bound up in the "social aspect of scientific method".
3) "It is only in attempts to explain his work to somebody who has not done it that he can acquire the discipline of clear and reasoned communication too is part of the scientific method".
Narrative to support facts and conclusions.
We are all enamored with science. Science is fundamentally the ?'scientific method' in action. Method is what makes the natural sciences so marvelous.
We can understand a prejudice only after having got rid of it.
Popper informs us that "it is only in attempts to explain his work to somebody who has not done it that he can acquire the discipline of clear and reasoned communication which too is part of scientific method."
If I cannot develop the self-discipline inherent in the ability to communicate I cannot hope to deal with prejudice in myself and in others.
Sound bites and bumper stickers, alone, are adequate only for the unenlightened.
Our educational system prepares us for the job market. Enlightenment begins where formal education ends. If I am unwilling to become self-enlightened I shall never be more than a producer and consumer.
Search for meaning through self-actuated study can provide a purpose similar to the purpose believers find in religion. Understanding resulting from study, leading to meaning and purpose, is perhaps a legitimate foil to religion.
"Each different understanding of a situation provides a commitment to what is real about a situation. Each such real commitment is a version of a commitment to truth."
An overriding problem in all science (domains of knowledge) is the highlighting of assumption and prejudice?-objectivity. The social sciences, sociologists of knowledge, determined that a kind of psychotherapy or perhaps socio-therapy an socio-analysed self could be the avenue to the highest synthesis of objective knowledge.
Such self-analysis and other-analysis has proven to be a failure. Karl Popper, "The Open Society and its Enemies" Chapter 23 Volume II claims that this failure of the sociology of knowledge results from its failure to understand the scientific method.
"If scientific objectivity were founded, as the sociologist theory of knowledge naively assumes, upon the individuals scientist's impartiality or objectivity, then we should have to say good-by to it. Indeed, we must be in a way more radically skeptical than the sociology of knowledge; for there is no doubt that we are all suffering under our own system of prejudices; that we all take many things as self-evident, that we accept them uncritically and even with the naïve and cocksure belief that criticism is quite unnecessary; and scientists are no exception to this rule, even though they may have superficially purged themselves from some of their prejudices in their oracular field. But they have not purged themselves by socio-analysis or any similar method; they have no attempted to climb to a higher plane from which they can understand, socio-analysie, and expurgate their ideological follies. For by making their minds more ?'objective' they could not possibly attain to what we call ?'scientific objectivity'. No, what we usually mean by this term rests on different grounds."
Your thesis would be valuable in public discource, if it could be formed into a nail, hammered into the thick skulls of religionists and political ideologues, after which it would dissovle, suffusing their benighted minds with enlightenment.
But, in short, it ain'ta gonna happen . . .
Re: Failure to Understand Scientific Method
Popper wrote:"In my opinion, the greatest scandal of philosophy is that, while all around us the world of nature perishes - and not the world of nature alone - philosophers continue to talk, sometimes cleverly and sometimes not, about the question of whether this world exists. They get involved in scholasticism, in linguistic puzzles such as, for example, whether or not there are differences between 'being' and 'existing'."(Popper, 1975)
979
We, who understand Popper, can help change this attitude by involving ourself in the effort to enlighten the population.
coberst wrote:979
We, who understand Popper, can help change this attitude by involving ourself in the effort to enlighten the population.
Coberst,
I do my part by answering questions here on A2K.
OK then Chuck.
How many of your prejudices do you want rid of?
spendius wrote:OK then Chuck.
How many of your prejudices do you want rid of?
I have been following Popper's advice for years. I have no biases or prejudices left to rid myself of.
Okay then Chuck-
Do you think you're addicted to oil?
You wouldn't have a nervous breakdown or anything if it was cut off?You could handle the "cold turkey" alright.
I have loads of prejudices.I like big tits for example.Not too big mind you.34 up to 48 DD cup is within my range.I don't know what I'd do without prejudices.Suffocate probably.
spendius wrote:Okay then Chuck-
Do you think you're addicted to oil?
You wouldn't have a nervous breakdown or anything if it was cut off?You could handle the "cold turkey" alright.
I have loads of prejudices.I like big tits for example.Not too big mind you.34 up to 48 DD cup is within my range.I don't know what I'd do without prejudices.Suffocate probably.
Is oil an addiction? Is an addiction a prejudice or bias?
As far as the last paragraph. First I would need to know if spendius is male or female. My answer would be different in both.
Chuck-
With your age and experience you ought to be able to sex me easily enough.
"Is oil an addiction" sounds like you haven't thought of oil in this way before.You have been taking it for granted.Now that's a prejudice in my view.Most prejudices are unconscious.But the fact is that humans have been around for 2million years,some say 4, and taking oil for granted is a thing for say,the last 100 years,which is nothing compared to even the lowest estimate.You'll have a prejudice that you are perfectly entitled to squander oil on your whims and you will welcome those siren voices that try to say that our consumption of it is harmless and you will demand of those who say it is harmful scientific proof whilst conveniently forgetting that you have no scientific proof that it is not.
Onto Popper on sociology.With modern data processing one could take every marriage certificate and relate it to the places of birth of the two participants,with reference to the distance between them, and one could do this for a large number of years.If one discovered a trend that showed the distance to have been steadily increasing as the industrial age progressed one would have some sort of objective truth.About "love" say.And about many other things.Don't you think that would have more science in it than speculations about the nature of sub-atomic particles which are all based on observable effects of these particles under certain laboratory conditions.And to try anything similar with the marriage certificates would reduce humans to particles.
Spendius
I looked up prejudice. One of its meaning, which is the only way I think of it, is a prejudgement without just grounds. I think that our unthinking attitude toward most things in life are unfortunate and should be corrected.
Your last paragraph baffles me. I have come back to it several times but still do not understand.
Gee Chuck!
That that baffles you baffles me.It's elementary stuff.You should see what they do now with tie-ups between birth,marriage and death records and medical histories right back into the 17th century.
Some American spent two years in an Irish rural area which was admired for its informality,its help thy neighbour mores and general all round sweetness and discovered that the bottom line was dead level which showed they had all been cynically calculating every move they made.
What was baffling?Are you being obtuse in order to continue believing all that love at first sight malarky so dear to the hearts of chocolate,jewelry and fashion manufacturers and that the houses are not just breeding hutches and energy sinks for a wildly profigate efficiency of production.
Do those adjust your unfortunate,unthinking attitudes in any way?
Spendius
Thanks for the clarification.
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