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

I just want to say that formatting a post like this makes it less likely that someone will actually read it. If you want to get your message across, this is the worst way to do it.

Furthermore, disruptive post formatting is against the forum's rules (specifically, Rule 6) and may result in an infraction. But of course you already knew that since you read the Membership Agreement when you signed up, right?

devhdb said:
Many members of the mainstream scientific community react with extreme
hostility when presented with certain claims. This can be seen in their
emotional responses to current controversies such as UFO abductions, Cold
Fusion, cryptozoology, psi, and numerous others. The scientists react
not with pragmatism and a wish to get to the bottom of things, but
instead with the same tactics religious groups use to suppress heretics:
hostile emotional attacks, circular reasoning, dehumanizing of the
'enemy', extreme closed-mindedness, intellectually dishonest reasoning,
underhanded debating tactics, negative gossip, and all manner of
name-calling and character assassination.

Two can play at that game! Therefore, I call their behavior
"Pathological Skepticism", a term I base upon skeptics' assertion that
various unacceptable ideas are "Pathological Science." Below is a list
of the symptoms of pathological skepticism I have encountered, and
examples of the irrational reasoning they tend to produce.

For full list see: http://amasci.com/pathsk2.txt

Main page: CLOSEMINDED SCIENCE: Examining the negative aspects of the social dynamics of science.




"Humanity's first sin was faith; the first virtue was doubt."
Carl Sagan



[qimg]https://mnmstatic.net/v_149/img/menemojis/36/popcorn.gif[/qimg]
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Again, which P-Zombie argument are we talking about here. The refutation will depend upon that.

For example if the Chalmers P-Zombie argument is the one in question, well it depends upon the premise that anything that is conceivable is metaphysically possible.

So we only need to find one thing that is conceivable and not metaphysically possible to show that this is false.

It is conceivable that I could find an exception to the Pythagorean Theorem. Note that the improbability does not rule out finding something conceivable.
 
Wudang said:
Stanford's Plato is a good resource. In https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/
it has this


The 1974 reference is
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Thanks for the right quote. Obviously the quote entered here by dvhdb was manipulated. The quote is still too short - a paragraph would be desirable - but it is enough to deny dvhb's manipulation. Popper does not refer to pseudo-sciences but to "metaphysical ideas". Popper's concept of metaphysics is a proposition or theory being impossible to be tested. He also speaks of "ideas".

Pseudoscience is not an "idea". It is a system of "laws" and practices. Pseudosciences claim to be successfully tested.

Popper thought of something else: something like "matter is composed of homogeneous, indivisible units" (Democritus) or "everything comes from water" (Thales). Obviously, when these isolated ideas enter science are reconverted into a non-metaphysical system, changing its original meaning by a testable one, which is not the case of pseudosciences.
 
bruto said:
Even if Popper is misquoted or out of context, what might become testable tomorrow has not yet become so, and it isn't until it is. The sun might come out tomorrow, but it's raining today.
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Right. Moreover, by becoming a verifiable concept, the metaphysical idea adopted by a scientist changes its specific meaning. Democritus' atom is not Bohr's, even though the original idea is the same.
 
David Mo said:
Thanks for the right quote. Obviously the quote entered here by dvhdb was manipulated. The quote is still too short - a paragraph would be desirable - but it is enough to deny dvhb's manipulation. Popper does not refer to pseudo-sciences but to "metaphysical ideas". Popper's concept of metaphysics is a proposition or theory being impossible to be tested. He also speaks of "ideas".

Pseudoscience is not an "idea". It is a system of "laws" and practices. Pseudosciences claim to be successfully tested.

Popper thought of something else: something like "matter is composed of homogeneous, indivisible units" (Democritus) or "everything comes from water" (Thales). Obviously, when these isolated ideas enter science are reconverted into a non-metaphysical system, changing its original meaning by a testable one, which is not the case of pseudosciences.
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Enjoying your contributions, David.
 
devhdb said:
Many members of the mainstream scientific community react with extreme
hostility when presented with certain claims. This can be seen in their
emotional responses to current controversies such as UFO abductions, Cold
Fusion, cryptozoology, psi, and numerous others. The scientists react
not with pragmatism and a wish to get to the bottom of things, but
instead with the same tactics religious groups use to suppress heretics:
hostile emotional attacks, circular reasoning, dehumanizing of the
'enemy', extreme closed-mindedness, intellectually dishonest reasoning,
underhanded debating tactics, negative gossip, and all manner of
name-calling and character assassination.

Two can play at that game! Therefore, I call their behavior
"Pathological Skepticism", a term I base upon skeptics' assertion that
various unacceptable ideas are "Pathological Science." Below is a list
of the symptoms of pathological skepticism I have encountered, and
examples of the irrational reasoning they tend to produce.
Click to expand...

Hyper-skepticism is criticized by Bunge as one of the typical forms of pseudoscience. Bunge's concept is precise as a defect of form. In your version, "pathological scepticism" is an ad hominem argument. Even if some scientists are "pathological skeptics" this would not say anything about the status of pseudosciences. Get back to the point, please.

Since many posts have recommended articles in one way or another, it has become impossible to read all of them. Please give the idea (summary) you want to defend and we could discuss it.
 
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devhdb said:
Yeah, let's spend it on Homeopathy investigations
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Three people have given you the same response to that suggestion:

Pixel42 said:
Enough money (probably is millions by now, though I suspect very little came from the homeopaths who were making the claims and hence on whom the burden of proof lay) has already been spent investigating homeopathy and establishing beyond reasonable doubt that it doesn't work. Spending any more would be a waste, akin to spending money investigating whether the earth is flat.
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Dr. Keith said:
Done and dusted. How much more do you spend after 100 years of studies give you the same result? It has been reputedly falsified. That covers two of the main aspects of scientific endeavor.

In fact, homeopathy is a good picture of when science works, but faith works harder.
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Jack by the hedge said:
Done. It doesn't work. Next
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How about a response?

Note that homeopaths are free to spend their own money trying to find evidence for their claims, as they should have been all along. Why should public money be spent investigating something that's already been shown to be a waste of it?
 
Homeopaths like to talk about high levels issues about how homeopathy could work, like this "matter and consciousness are the same" fluffery. Why? Because as long as they do so they are not discussing why every proper test of the effectiveness of homeopathy shows it does not work.
The UK parliament's Science and Technology Committee's hearings on homeopathy were a prime example. I'll try to find footage.
 
devhdb said:
That's a straw man and a circular argument, sorry.
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The rest of my post explained my reasons for asserting the part you quote; I filled my assertion with a lot more substantial material than straw. As to “circular argument”: do you know what a real circular argument looks like?
 
I may differ from some here in that I never cared much about what Popper thought or said. I don’t care about the philosophy of science as much as the actual science itself.

The important thing is not if homeopathy, or ESP, etc. are inherently pseudoscience. They aren’t! They can be tested scientifically. What makes them pseudoscience in reality is that they have been scientifically tested, proven to be wrong, and yet are still advocated by their practitioners. That is what makes them pseudoscience. Although a better name might simply be: wrong.
 
Giordano said:
I may differ from some here in that I never cared much about what Popper thought or said. I don’t care about the philosophy of science as much as the actual science itself.

The important thing is not if homeopathy, or ESP, etc. are inherently pseudoscience. They aren’t! They can be tested scientifically. What makes them pseudoscience in reality is that they have been scientifically tested, proven to be wrong, and yet are still advocated by their practitioners. That is what makes them pseudoscience. Although a better name might simply be: wrong.
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It's been pointed out many times in this thread that the key difference between science and pseudoscience is whether the conclusion follows the evidence even when the evidence points to a conclusion you want, or expect. Expect the OP to pay as much attention to yours as to everyone else's....
 
David Mo said:
Please give the idea (summary) you want to defend and we could discuss it.
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"Anything goes."

Y5nojWY.jpg
 
David Mo said:
Please give the idea (summary) you want to defend and we could discuss it.
Click to expand...

devhdb said:
"Anything goes."
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It's quite catchy, has certainly shown great longevity, and Spielberg's wife Kate Capshaw did a catchy bi-lingual version of it in 'Temple'. However it lacks a certain clarity as either a philisophical arguement or as an answer to David Mo's point.
 
devhdb said:
"Anything goes."

[qimg]https://i.imgur.com/Y5nojWY.jpg[/qimg]
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Had you heard of him before I mentioned him? Have you read Against Method? (I have not.) What of his ideas in this text or elsewhere might support the idea that research or medical practice should give time to homeopathy? (Bear in mind that some in this thread have pointed out research time has been given over to it, characterising it as a failed idea.) What in Feyerabend”s thought does not support advocacy for homeopathy?

I am going to have to go back over some old reading but I enjoyed him as a troll/polemicist who was erudite and interesting enough to provoke discussion around this centuries old question of what made science a unique human endeavour. That science is special in contrast to other ways of human understanding has not been in much question. I do not remember Feyerabend as an epistemological relativist.*

* ETA, he was for a period.
 
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devhdb said:
That's a straw man and a circular argument, sorry.
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There’s a strawman at the heart of your argument: you demanded that people here support a claim that nobody advances, and then declared victory when this was pointed out.
 
Feyerabend is the John Lydon of philosophy. Lydon sparked a renewed interest in anarchism because he wanted something to rhyme with "Anti-Christ". Feyerabend has the same kind of talent.

Not that he didn't make a few good points along the way.
 
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