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

devhdb said:
Hi all,

I consider myself a true skeptic in the sense that I know that I know nothing... and even I couldn't be sure of that, may I add. :-)

My philosophical and intellectual position is that there is NO WAY to tell science from pseudoscience with certainty. But I'm happily open to you changing my mind, of course.
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What is your your idea?

Threads like this don't happen without an idea. There's a backstory here about an idea you had, that was rejected for not being "scientific". I want to know that backstory. What is the idea?
 
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The forum members are being spoken at with very little reciprocal engagement with their interesting ideas. Boring.
 
devhdb said:
9 pages. 300+ comments. Not ONE single paper cited yet.
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Don't shout so loud, please. We're not deaf.
Do you really think that there are not a lot of philosophers who think the opposite of Harry Laudan? I can quote you a few. Shall we start with Mario Bunge, for example?
Mario Bunge (University of Montreal): "What is science? Does it matter to distinguish it from pseudoscience? A reply to my commentators", New Ideas in Psychology
Volume 9, Issue 2, 1991, Pages 245-283.

Whenever you want.

The thing about Laudan is that he's a bit ingenuous. If you don't want to use terms like truth, pseudoscience, well-confirmed and others you don't like, you have to explain what is "adequate" knowledge and "significant" problem. Then you will be faced with the same lack of definition that you attribute to the concept of pseudoscience. In other words, in these matters we cannot pretend to make a clear distinction between black and white. But the distinction does exist.
 
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9 pages on and the thread starter still hasn't come to the point.

So what? Why does there have to be a sharp cut-off between science and non-science?

Only a few months ago I said on this forum that no-one had come up with a cut and dried method to distinguish science from pseudo-science and no-one batted an eyelid.

So what is the big deal?

Pretending little bottles of plain water are medicine is still just pretending little bottles of plain water are medicine even if you call it science.
 
Actually, technically, I win, because I pointed out that there was no cut and dried way to distinguish between science and pseudo-science in August last year.

Sorry devvy babe, you snooze you lose.
 
Robin said:
Actually, technically, I win, because I pointed out that there was no cut and dried way to distinguish between science and pseudo-science in August last year.

Sorry devvy babe, you snooze you lose.
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But did you use 72pt red text? If not it doesn’t count!
 
Darat said:
But did you use 72pt red text? If not it doesn’t count!
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Is there some sort of terminology for that exact point, that moment in time when someone decides that increased font size, different colored text and seemingly random bolding of specific words or sentences becomes a good persuasive tactic?

It's way too common a thing to not have one, right? I can't help but be reminded of timecube.
 
Crazy isn't more or less crazy because it's not well formatted.

He's not saying anything more insane then stuff we hear from this board's resident "Philosophers" in every thread they participate in.

If you regularly argue "Well this long dead person said something in Latin... therefore here's a bunch of unscientific, un-falsifiable nonsense" you have zero right to try and take the OP's nonsense to task just for being less erudite.

If your problem with Woo is its lack of style and not it's intellectual hollowness, you're no better.

That's always been my issue with these kind of pile on threads. Not that the OP has earned or deserved it, but that we don't do in equally valid cases where the person spewing it is just more well spoken.

There's multiple people in this thread who would be gushing over the OP as yet another defender of philosophy's virtue if he had just worded what he was saying differently.
 
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Deadie said:
Is there some sort of terminology for that exact point, that moment in time when someone decides that increased font size, different colored text and seemingly random bolding of specific words or sentences becomes a good persuasive tactic?

It's way too common a thing to not have one, right? I can't help but be reminded of timecube.
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It’s the modern day equivalent of “green ink”.


https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Green_ink
 
Robin said:
So what? Why does there have to be a sharp cut-off between science and non-science?
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There doesn't have to be, but the absence of one means that decisions about what is science and what else is pseudoscience become more debatable. And for people who are on one side but who want to be on the other can argue that since the criteria aren't clean cut and well demarcated, the decision that something is pseudoscience is "really" being made on political or ideological grounds, not according to the merits. In other words, if there can be no objective agreement on the merits of something, then it's rhetorically advantageous for the aggrieved party to look for justification elsewhere. It's just an inept attempt at social engineering when other arguments fail to convince.

Pretending little bottles of plain water are medicine is still just pretending little bottles of plain water are medicine even if you call it science.
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There's a story attributed, I believe, to Abraham Lincoln when he was a practicing lawyer. He was asked (or he asked it rhetorically) how many legs a dog has if you call a tail a leg. His answer was four, because a tail is not a leg no matter what you call it. Since hearing that story I've learned to beware people whose argument begins and ends with quibbling over nomenclature. As with Jabba's search for the soul, such propositions never escape the confines of word games.
 
David Mo said:
In other words, in these matters we cannot pretend to make a clear distinction between black and white. But the distinction does exist.
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The O/P’s implication seems to be that because we cannot categorise some grey things as black or white, nothing can be categorised as black or white.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Crazy isn't more or less crazy because it's not well formatted.

He's not saying anything more insane then stuff we hear from this board's resident "Philosophers" in every thread they participate in.

If you regularly argue "Well this long dead person said something in Latin... therefore here's a bunch of unscientific, un-falsifiable nonsense" you have zero right to try and take the OP's nonsense to task just for being less erudite.

If your problem with Woo is its lack of style and not it's intellectual hollowness, you're no better.

That's always been my issue with these kind of pile on threads. Not that the OP has earned or deserved it, but that we don't do in equally valid cases where the person spewing it is just more well spoken.

There's multiple people in this thread who would be gushing over the OP as yet another defender of philosophy's virtue if he had just worded what he was saying differently.
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Speaking of scientism.
 
Sideroxylon said:
Speaking of scientism.
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*Yawn* Someone else who wants to use "Label the epistemologies" to try and turn "Reality exists" into a conspiracy theory and "Doesn't pretend reality doesn't exist" into a slur.

Be gone figment of my imagination or stop arguing with me if I'm a figment of yours, either way.
 
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