I challenge you:cite ONE paper that discerns Science from Pseudoscience wth CERTAINTY

Darat said:
As I said the first time I answered you, you are wrong.
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I've tried to find where exactly you argument in what way I'm wrong but I haven't found it, other than you saying that you don't understand me.

Do you care to elaborate, please?

Thanks.
 
Hellbound said:
Science is in the method.
Observation->Hypothesis->Experiment, at a high level. The key bits are really Hypothesis and Experiment.
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Hi Hellbound, welcome.

What kind of experiments String Theory, a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings, conduct?

What kind of experiments the hypotheses of the Multiverse, that is, a hypothetical group of multiple universes that together, these universes comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them, where the different universes within the multiverse are called "parallel universes", "other universes", or "alternate universes", conduct?

Are they falsable? If so, how, what particular observable 'datum' would do it?

Thanks.


As a reminder to all, in order to stay on topic, I beg you to at least try and cite ONE paper, which is THE initial objective —though yet unfulfilled as of now— of this interesting collective didactic experiment within the so-called "international SKEPTIC" community.



I shall paste it for reference again:

  • What are the necessary and sufficient conditions so that a certain assertion, precisely defined and without any kind of ambiguity can be considered scientific vs. a pseudoscientific one?
    [*]Why don't you cite ONE paper on Philosophy of Science that allows us to follow a logical, rational and consistent method to determine with certainty between science and pseudoscience, that's to say a Demarcation Criterion? -> please cite from Google Scholar.


Otherwise, unless someone achieves to mention this Demarcation Criterion, we'll have to assume that such paper doesn't exist and that determining what is "pseudoscience" is something COMPLETELY ARBITRARY and unfounded on logic and reason.

Hence, we could properly call those who affirm to know such Demarcation Criterion but do not communicate it to be practising




[IMGw=640]https://i.imgur.com/F6QwZyd.png[/IMGw]





Happy inquiry to all! :thumbsup:

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Edited to reduce the extreme formatting.
Please dial back the use of large fonts and bold colours, or else you will be in breach of rule 6.
 
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RedStapler said:
Homeopathy is worthless and no amount of Karl Popper will change this :)
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Indeed.

I very rarely use the term pseudo science myself.

Better to call homeopathy what it is, a confidence trick.. A cynical scheme to separate gullible people from their money.
 
devhdb said:
As read in the first post my only "agenda" is to learn from all of you.

As anyone versed in logic and debates can see, who I might be is completely irrelevant to any particular argumentation, sorry.

I hope I have answered your two questions now that I "dodged" before.
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No you haven't. The questions are the sentences terminated by a question mark. They can be answered by a simple "yes" or "no".
 
Robin said:
Again, let's take these one by one.

As I understand it your definition of episteme does not include the process that was required to learn or develop the system of ideas, yes?

That would make this concept irrelevant for your reply to Darat.
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I was trying to think of a real world situation that dvhpb could address.

According to theory, a windmill is most efficient with two blades, and two blades are all a windmill needs.A two bladed windmill is theoretically ideal. Designers, using the theory, made windmills with two blades, and the blades kept falling off. Based on experience, a small maker of windmills determined that those made with three blades would work reliably and for many years his windmills worked reliably. He may or may not have come up with any theories regarding the peculiar forces that affect a spinning windmill when it swivels, but for many years thereafter designers of large windmills, wedded to theory, continued to make them with two blades, and the blades kept falling off. Eventually, theory caught up with practice, and nowadays we see three bladed windmills everywhere.

Are the people designing those windmills committing episteme or techne? Why?

The real world is full of examples in which technological designs fail in ways their initial theories did not even consider to exist. New theories lead to new technologies, and subsequent shortcomings of the technologies lead to refinements of the theories. At what point in this neverending process is either one or the other component pure?
 
devhdb said:
Hi Mojo, welcome to the debate.

I'm doing my best to address all the interesting contributions (while ignoring the trolls: as read in the first post I meant this dialogue to be an educated conversation) —it's all of you against me, after all :) — that I find interesting but I haven't got the time to reply to all comments, I beg you all excuse me for this.

Please, if you are so kind, could you quote any particular interesting reply that I might have ignored?

Thanks.
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You could start with the part of Robin’s post that you snipped before asking “how?”.
 
bruto said:
I was trying to think of a real world situation that dvhpb could address.
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And found a very good one. Most of engineering is a mixture of theoretical and empirical knowledge, most successful empirical designs advance theoretical understanding, most theoretical advances inform future design. Drawing a sharp distinction between episteme or techne is about the sort of thing I'd expect from a society that draws a sharp distinction between citizens and slaves, and about as relevant to current real world situations.

Dave
 
devhdb said:
Hi Hellbound, welcome.

What kind of experiments String Theory, a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings, conduct?
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Which string theory? There are multiples, and each differs slightly. If you'd read my posts, you'd know that some have already been ruled out by experiments conducted at the LHC. Some predicted a larger size for the rolled-up dimensions. If that had been true, mini-black holes would have been created by some of the LHC collisions. Since they were not, that ruled out some variants of string theory.

But beyond that, string theory hasn't conducted many experiments, because they are still just a hypothesis. Not accepted as fact yet. Or, to be more precise, they're consistent with the results of current particle experiments, but nothing yet that we can do to uniquely choose between them (or other theories). This doesn't mean they're unscientific, just untested.

And in asking these types of questions, it reveals that you have no real knowledge of either string theory (by which, as a working assumption, I assume you mean superstring theory, as string theory has long been abandoned) or scientific process. No one treats string theory as fact; it's a working hypothesis.

They're still discussed and studied, because people are looking for ways to test them; they're looking for predictions that could be tested now or in the near future. Predictions such as the nature of dark matter, for example.

What kind of experiments the hypotheses of the Multiverse, that is, a hypothetical group of multiple universes that together, these universes comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them, where the different universes within the multiverse are called "parallel universes", "other universes", or "alternate universes", conduct?
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Again, this seems to be a lack of understanding on your point. This question is akin to "what does blue taste like?" There are numerous multiverse theories, in varying forms. Each makes different predictions, and some would actually not be provable by experiment within a single universe. These, again, are not considered as fact. Many are not even considered as science, merely interesting to think about. I'm not sure what this has to do with anything else you've posted.

Are they falsable? If so, how, what particular observable 'datum' would do it?
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The various string theories are falsifiable, just not yet. Most would require a particle accelerator beyond our technical capabilities for some time. But they do make testable predictions, just not ones we can test now. But with enough energy, concentrated in a small enough area (what accelerators are built to do), there are ways to differentiate between them based on the sub-particle specie produced. What separates them from pseudoscience is:
1. They are not yet accepted as scientific fact (although the consensus view now is that one of them, or a combination of them, will likely turn out to be right)
2. They are consistent with other well-tested scientific theories. They don't contradict what we already know.
3. They are theoretically falsifiable.

Multiverse theories are, for the most part, non-falsifiable. But again, they aren't considered as fact, and they are consistent with current data and things we already know to be true.

Compare that with homeopathy, which seems to be a common topic in this thread. First, it's well past the hypothesis stage: repeated experiments have been done and shown it to be false, yet that data is ignored by proponents. Failed experiments are explained away with ad hoc reasoning.

Even looking at it just at the hypothesis stage, it is NOT consistent with what we know elsewhere. Much of science: physics, biology, and chemistry, would have to be re-written. And not in the way that GR expanded gravitational understanding, but to the point that many of the current, successful theories in those areas could NOT be true if homeopathy were true. But these are areas where we know those theories are true, and the technologies base don those work...which could not be the case if homeopathy were true.

The primary difference: science doesn't ignore contradictions or experimental results, and it attempts to maintain internal logic and consistency. Psuedoscience uses scientific-sounding words (such as talking about string theories and multiverse theories), without really understanding what they mean, and without applying the actual concepts behind them.

What separates science from pseudoscience? Openess. Science is open to experimental results, to new data, to new ideas, and to leaving behind old and incorrect ideas when evidence shows them to be wrong. Pseudoscience, for all it claims to be about open-minds, is exactly the op[posite. Pseudoscience exists primarily because it's proponents do NOT accept experimental results, and do NOT accept that their pet theories may be wrong. They go in under the assumption that they're right, and ignore evidence to the contrary.
 
Robin said:
Well you would like to have that criterion maybe, I don't see why we would want it

I don't need a clear cut demarcation between inside and outside the house in order to be able to talk about inside and outside the house in most cases. If I am in the middle of the lawn I am definitely outside. If I am in the middle of my lounge room I am definitely inside the house. If I am in the doorway, halfway in and halfway out, then I cannot determine for sure if I am inside or outside.

That seems to cause us no confusion.

But similarly I can say that Einstein working on the theory of General Relativity is definitely science, but someone engaged in "Creation Science" is definitely not science.

But say someone has conducted a study in evolutionary psychology to determine if drag queens are a case of 'costly signalling' I might suspect that this is pseudo science but I could not be sure.

Why should this cause any greater problem than the "inside/outside" case?
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You were arguing that the observation that we lack currently a necessary and sufficient criterion of demarcation between science and pseudo-science/nonscience is not a valid philosophical problem. I'm afraid it is a genuine one, we cannot just dismiss it apriori as being 'semantics' or even reject the whole philosophy of science as being 'useless' (as some seem to think here).

We have to offer an argument which to show that we can still talk meaningfully about a demarcation between science and pseudo-science even in the absence of the very narrow criterion which the OP starter wants (and not only him, Laudan is quite influential in the philosophical circles). Otherwise almost everything is scientific (including ID and so on, they would be entitled at least to be presented to the public as scientific etc, albeit scientists will still prefer the theories offering the greatest empirical support).

I fully agree with you that we can safely loose the definition and still come with a meaningful demarcation between science and pseudo-science, as an answer to the above mentioned problem (like in Wittgenstein's observation that we can still talk of games even if there is no set of features characteristic to all games), actually there are such proposals in the philosophy of science literature (we may actually need more than 1 criterion of demarcation given the diversity of the methods used by scientists). The price is of course that we cannot exclude that today pseudo-science/metaphysics can, potentially, in some cases at least, become part of an extended science of tomorrow.

These being said my main objection to your approach is the attempt to muddle things via the claim, rather apriori, of 'semantics'; had you accepted the reality of the problem and then proceed with a justification of why we can still talk safely of a demarcation between science and pseudo-science things would have been different. I do not know what agenda has the thread starter (probably there is one) but I definitely know when something is a genuine problem of philosophy.
 
devhdb said:
Hi Hellbound, welcome.

What kind of experiments String Theory, a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings, conduct?

<snip>
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Posts like this break the forum formatting and make it difficult to read the thread.
 
devhdb said:
I've tried to find where exactly you argument in what way I'm wrong but I haven't found it, other than you saying that you don't understand me.

Do you care to elaborate, please?

Thanks.
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You asked me did I mean X twice, I have twice said no you were wrong about what I meant.
 
Robin said:
Indeed.

I very rarely use the term pseudo science myself.

Better to call homeopathy what it is, a confidence trick.. A cynical scheme to separate gullible people from their money.
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I think you can separate it into 2 parts, the initial idea which at the time given what we knew wasn’t a totally crazy idea. That was then over decades examined with the method of science and found it simply didn’t work.

Since it doesn’t work then there is no “science” that can be used to explain it and anyone saying this “science shows it works” can’t actually be using science, so you could call it pseudoscience for want of a word. I would simply say “it doesn’t work”.

But perhaps that could be a way of finding the bright demarcation that the OP wants.

If something doesn’t work or doesn’t do as it says on the tin, then any theory that claims to explain how it does work is not science but pseudoscience.
 
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