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

devhdb said:
Again, as I mentioned to Robin above:

In other words, you are right, maybe there is NO CERTAINTY and we shouldn't say that a certain homeopath is 100% pseudoscientific but 80% pseudoscientific, right?

Hmm... I guess that's not the case, for when you call someone a pseudoscientific there's no middle way with words here: he is either

a) a pseudoscientifist
b) a scientifist

right?

I'm glad you agree with me that there's no absolute demarcation. :-)
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You know we do have the circumstance where a reputable scientist embraces positions of ill-repute as far as solid evidence goes. (Linus Pauling: Vitamin C, Roger Penrose: microtubules.) I don't like name-calling categorizations. Individual people can, and often do have pseudoscientific positions.

I don't think the term "pseudoscientific" is useless. Again, there is a functional distinction. Pseudoscientific references a notion that has no basis in empirical evidence, but is advanced anyway.

That's right, no absolute/certain demarcation, as future evidence may entail a modification, if not overturn a previously held one.

The Earth is not flat. It's a sphere, right?
Actually with later evidence it turned out that the earth isn't a sphere but a misshapen, oblate spheroid. To assert the Earth as flat is pseudoscience. but saying the Earth is a sphere is not in that same ballpark.

Again, it's a matter of functionality. And that functionality can be pretty vital. Since Homeopathy sows no real evidence of working, to prescribe it instead of medicine could be, and has been, fatal.

Of course there's no certainty in medicine. A drug that has been approved by careful testing and peer review can turn out to have serious issues after seeing the results of its wide use. (The statins for example.)

Knowledge is not absolute (Not even in Mathematics). We live in a dynamic of uncertainty. But that uncertainty doesn't have us in a soup of ignorance and confusion.
 
devhdb said:
Mine is not a claim, mine is a NEGATION: that it can be possible to distinguish between science and pseudoscience.

And, for the simple rules of logic and argumentation, negations don't need to and cannot be "proved". But assertions do. :-)
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Too vague.

Do you mean that it can be impossible to distinguish if a particular idea is pseudoscience, or do you mean that it can never be possible to distinguish if any idea is pseudoscience?

Also, are you perhaps confusing the concepts of mathematical proof and scientific evidence?
 
I must confess that huge walls of text cause my eyes to glaze and I tend to skip stuff, but it looks here an awful lot like a kind of standard "sorites" problem.

If you cannot find an absolute demarcation between one thing and another, does that mean you cannot affirm that two things are different? Is it all or nothing?

Having long ago forgotten most of the philosophy I once pondered, and retired to the land of greasy metal and firewood, I stand at the back window and look out, and I can see that I cannot definitively say where the field ends and the woods begin. It may even be that I cannot precisely define the difference at that margin. And yet, I am confident that I can mow the field without hitting any trees.

Different things can overlap but still be different. Our language is less complicated than the world it seeks to describe, but I do not think this means we can know nothing at all.

I have a kind of premonition that we're in the larval phase of an argument for a theory that has been condemned as pseudo science, or another variant of the contention that something heretofore considered scientific, like the theory of relativity, is about to be overturned. Either way, I'm betting that the exposition will not be terse.
 
Robin said:
You forgot to provide your demarcation criterion to distinguish between the two.
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Oh, I see what you mean: you cannot be sure if there's a world "out there" or if I'm existing only in your mind, that's right.

We can debate ontology, gnoseology, empirism and even on the smell of clouds but today, in this thread we are debating about Philosophy of Science. :-)

Easy questions:

1. Do you claim to be able to know the difference between science and pseudoscience with certainty?
2. If so, how?

:-)
 
Jack by the hedge said:
If you have been working at this for thirteen years and searching through Google Scholar and have found not a single example of science then I can't help you.

Perhaps you have unique criteria for detecting science.
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Oh, ok. In that case, do you agree with me that there's no way of telling science from pseudoscience apart with certainty?

Also, could you please answer ANY of the 5 questions above?

Thanks! :-)
 
devhdb said:
Easy questions:

1. Do you claim to be able to know the difference between science and pseudoscience with certainty?
2. If so, how?

:-)
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Easy question:

Can you discern whether someone is an adult or a child with 100% certainty?

If not, clearly there are no such things as adults.

That's how this works, right?
 
devhdb said:
Oh, ok. In that case, do you agree with me that there's no way of telling science from pseudoscience apart with certainty?
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I'm not going to agree with such an ambiguous claim.

Do you agree with me that there's no way of telling adults from children with certainty?
 
Robin said:
I am not sure how you got from what I said to that, but maybe you should try again.

The point is that you seem to be saying that if there are cases where it is not completely certain whether something is an X or not X then this implies that there can be no cases in which you can be completely certain if something is X or not X.

I am pointing out that this is a non-sequitur.

When I walk into a house there are points at which you could not say for certain that I was in the house or not in the house. That does not imply that there are cases in which I am definitely in the house.

The absence of a sharp demarcation between X and not X does not imply that nothing can be X and it does not imply that nothing can be not X
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NO.

"The point is that you seem to be saying that if there are cases where it is not completely certain whether something is an X or not X then this implies that there can be no cases in which you can be completely certain if something is X or not X."

I have never implied that: if you cannot tell a green colour from a blue color in the CONTEXT of an optical illusion it doesn't mean that you cannot tell them apart in another CONTEXT.

When I walk into a house there are points at which you could not say for certain that I was in the house or not in the house. That does not imply that there are cases in which I am definitely in the house.

I understand.

So you agree with me that there is NO way to tell science from pseudoscience with certainty but, if only, with a certain percentage, i.e.: 80% pseudoscientific because of THIS and because of THAT, correct?

Hence I'm asking you: what is your particular Demarcation Criterion to do that?

Also, could you please answer ANY of the 5 questions above?

For some reason uknown to me, nobody has dared to do it, YET.

O:-)

In that case, what do you think about String Theory or the hypothesis of the Multiverse? Are those science or pseudoscie
 
Devhdb,

You said, "Mine is not a claim, mine is a NEGATION: that it can be possible to distinguish between science and pseudoscience."

What I'm saying is that we can and do make functional distinctions between science and pseudoscience. There's no need to go all Descartes or Hagel. We can be pragmatic.

When it comes to philosophy, we believe a lot of stuff. Those beliefs are less subject to empirical evidence. They are in fact matters of preference that hang on more than just empirical evidence.

To admit them as intellectual preferences is intellectual honesty. To assert them as certainties and dogmas is a failure of integrity in that instance.

(and before someone tries to do this number on me, I admit that I just expressed a preference.)

One must beware sweeping either-or assertions or negations. It's the quickest way to paint oneself into a corner.
 
Apathia said:
Knowledge is not absolute (Not even in Mathematics). We live in a dynamic of uncertainty. But that uncertainty doesn't have us in a soup of ignorance and confusion.
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I like that. :-)

Question: how do you claim to be able to tell a scientist from a pseudoscientist? Do you address a pseudoscientist with "a 90% pseudoscientist" or, once your particular Demarcation Criterion points that you seem to have found one, you address him as a 100% pseudoscientist?

I wonder, because I've never heard the term "80% pseudoscientist" and maybe -and just MAYBE- we should begin to address them like that.

Also, could you please answer any of the 5 questions above?

Thanks! :-)
 
Do you agree with me that there is no way to tell day from night with 100% certainty?

Do you agree with me that we can only ever say with 50%, 80% or 15.275% certainty whether it is day or night?

Please show me on Google Scholar a paper describing your method for measuring the percentage of day and night.

Thanks
 
This thread is a good example as to why philosophy has achieved nothing of practical value.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
Too vague.

Do you mean that it can be impossible to distinguish if a particular idea is pseudoscience, or do you mean that it can never be possible to distinguish if any idea is pseudoscience?

Also, are you perhaps confusing the concepts of mathematical proof and scientific evidence?
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I'm glad you ask.

I mean that, to my knowledge, nobody has never ever produced a paper or any other piece of knowledge such as a book, a thesis or anything similar where it is possible to distinguish if a particular investigation is pseudoscience or science.

I do NOT mean by that that it can never be possible to distinguish if any idea is pseudoscience. It could be: it's just that in my 13 years looking for it, I haven't found it. But I'm certainly sloppy. :-)

And yes, you are right: when I mean "proof" I mean "evidence". Thanks for clarifying it.

Also, could you please answer ANY of the 5 questions above?

Thanks!
 
devhdb said:
Hi Blue Mountain, welcome! I'm afraid that, as I already replied to Darat above:

Epistēmē != Techne

Sorry, try again. ;-)
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I notice you cut off the second part of my post. Was that deliberate?

Blue Mountain said:
Carl Sagan said it many years ago: “Science delivers the goods.” Psuedoscience doesn't, because it has no way of determining if it has succeeded or failed.
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If a pseudoscientist who is, for example, a proponent of some ineffective medicine also believes in real things, like gravity or carbon dating or electromagnetic induction, does that reduce their pseudoscience percentage?

Not clear how this pseudo-percentage thing works.
 
Devhdb, you asked, "In that case, what do you think about String Theory or the hypothesis of the Multiverse? Are those science or pseudoscience?"

They are scientific conjectures on the fringes of Cosmology and Physics, but they are open to the evidentiary process and questioned on the basis of empirical evidence. One can get pseudoscientific about them if ze says, I believe in them in spite of what evidence you have to the contrary.
 
Darat said:
I’ll just reply on my non existent iPad.
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Well that was the starting point for a lot of philosophy attempting to solve the demarcation problem but ultimately failing. The idea that we have this way of knowing that seems remarkable but what makes it different? It seems obvious what kind of things we want include in a definition (evolution, relativity) and what we wish to exclude (astrology, creationism) but proposed measures either capture too little or too much. And that’s just the beginning of problems.

OP, I do like Richard Feynman’s idea that what distinguishes science is a rigorous honesty manifested in reporting to peers the ways in which you have earnestly tried to falsify your own theories. Other than that I like Paul Feyerabend’s anything goes idea of science.
 
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bruto said:
If you cannot find an absolute demarcation between one thing and another, does that mean you cannot affirm that two things are different? Is it all or nothing?
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Hi bruto, welcome to the debate.

When you define something as pseudoscientific, is it all or nothing or you address it with a "80% pseudoscientific".

If that would be the case:

5. What degree of certainty (in percentage) would you demand from a judge to justify his sentence to you for condemning you to indemnify with $100.000 and 5 years of prison for you having slandered the honor of a certain homeopath calling her 'pseudoscientific' without justifying which Demarcation Criterion did you use to discern between Science and Pseudoscience with certainty? 70%?, 95% of certainty? What value (precisely) would leave you satisfied so that your prison sentence would be rationally justified?

Do you claim to be able to tell them apart or not?
Are there any "in betweens" or "middle ways" in this last question or is it a 0% vs. 100%?

Also, could you please answer ANY of the 5 questions above?

Thanks! :-)
 
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