Subjectivity and Science

[Robin]

But there are people who appreciate science, yet see it as having some important flaws, and similarly we get sick of the scientific evangelists telling us that science has got everything pretty well sussed.

Who, for example, claims that science has got everything pretty well sussed? Certainly nobody I have ever heard of.

More than a few people in our modern culture consider this overplaying of the scientific philosophy as an insidious arrogance.

Or to put it another way, they misrepresent certain people as overplaying the scientific philosophy in order to paint them as arrogant.

You are right, of course, not to be sure who else could fill in the blanks, but so much of the scientific community appears to be pretending that all the blanks are about to be filled in, and could only ever be filled in by science, because it has a correct philosophical/metaphysical model of reality and a correct methodology for investigating everything.

Quite the opposite of the truth.

One of the reasons that science is such an effective epistemology is that it does not have a "correct" philosophical/metaphysical model of reality. Science operates quite independently of any metaphysical assumptions.

 

[John Freestone]

For reference, I said:

Ironically, science seems to develop just such a powerful orthodoxy (edited - can't bear that misspelling now Pixy!), prejudging all other philosophies as false, or demanding evidence be provided for them, even when they have not been tested in the way the test must be carried out, and the proponents have explained again and again why it is difficult - impossible - to bring anything that would satisfy the scientist as evidence.

and Dancing David said

You sure wander far and wide, which can be good.

However you still won't apply isotropy and reductionism to your pet beliefs. Why is that?

If it is difficult or impossible to test then you haven't really thought about it.

What can't be tested?

Hmmm. I bet that you can!


So show me and I will tell you how to test it.

Hi David

I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you mean. I looked up isotropy at wikipedia and it has dozens of different meanings, but I would be happy to discuss this further. I'm more familiar with 'reductionism', so I could say that I don't know how to apply reductionism to my pet beliefs. Actually, I don't know what my pet beliefs are that you're referring to. Generally, I consider reductionism as one of the limitations of science, if that's any help, although when it began to develop systems theory and gained some understanding of holistic viewpoints, it still (naturally) used its external, 3rd-person conceptual modelling. Now, you will note that several people on the woo side here have been saying that consciousness is not a 3rd person phenomenon (my original proposition, since I called it 'subjectivity', and Nick sensibly said he preferred to talk about awareness), and also that it is not a singular, reducible phenomenon (either, as some state, because it requires things like language or, as others state, because at its most fundamental it is simply non-dual, or holistic in nature). If it is this pet theory you're referring to, then my meaning above was that, since subjective discoveries are subjective, the usual scientific tests to establish objectivity are not applicable. I was admitting a failing, in a sense, of my position, putting myself in your position, and seeing that everything I might claim is just in my head.

I don't know if any of that makes sense to you, but if you understand what I'm saying, you might reconsider: "If it is difficult or impossible to test then you haven't really thought about it." I have a particular feeling when I look at a blue sky that I call 'blue'. I wonder if it has any relation to what others feel when they look at a blue sky or use the name of the colour. I have no way of testing the theory that we have different (or similar) subjective experiences, have you? It seems to me that it is impossible to test, and that I have thought about it. It would seem to be the very basis of strength claimed by science that it avoids such subjective, untestable concerns. It sticks, as we keep being told, to dealing with the real world.

The thing is that the more I think about these questions, the more 'the real world' becomes exactly those interior, subjective realities - indeed, just the singular momentary one Here Now - and that all philosophy (including science) is modelling, abstraction, reduction of wholes into fundamentally unreal (holistically abused) parts. It's not useless, because it can make fridges and democracy, but one of the fundamental mistakes I see in science, again and again, is that assumption that reduction - or the approximated isolation of some feature from its embeddedness in nature - will not cause distortion of results.

 

[articulett]

Yes, I don't agree with this idea that scientists are arrogant because they don't pay attention to gurus or "trod upon god's territory" or whatever. I think science and the accumulated knowledge of mortals is the best way we have for understanding our world and understanding more. Plus, science has a built in error correcting mechanism--peer review AND when it works, we get results and learn more. Plus science, like skepticism, understand how readily humans can be fooled and take measures to ensure that we are not confirming biases. Faiths never do that. I don't know if philosophy ever does. But Dennett and Shermer are great philosophers, and I understand them just fine. I don't understand all the isms... it's either naturalism or something else in my world... and that something else tends to sound useless and woo-ish to me.

I think such people call scientists and the like arrogant, because science is dismissive of their unsupported alternative viewpoint.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

When you get down to it, though, it's basically Kant with a little twist.

I value your opinion, thanks, I feel honored

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I don't burst a blood vessel... I used to be "into" new age kind of thinking, and I understand that the only world we will know is the one we get from our brain's interpretation-- but the world exists even when I'm not thinking about it... and even when I don't exist, the world will, just as it existed long before I have came to be.

Right, but what I think he is basically saying is that the world that you think is out there is not really what is actually out there. We create this world, in some sense. Look at it from a science perspective -- what is really out there is a blooming, buzzing mess of strings comprising quarks, etc. with most of everything that we think of a solid being empty space. And add dark matter and dark energy to the mix -- we have no clue what they are and they comprise 95% of what is 'out there'.

He isn't saying that there isn't really anything out there (actually he is, but I think that idea is tied to another basic concept, which is why I think it isn't a good place to start), but that what we experience isn't the 'real reality'. Instead, there is the noumena, which was Kant's term for the reality that we can't reach because we are stuck in our own perceptual matrix. We create what we experience as the world in a very real sense because that is the only way to make sense of anything. Thought and experience are not possible without the structure inherent in our nervous system.

We all know that our perceptual systems filter an enormous amount of data that exists 'out there', but our brains also construct the means by which any of that data has meaning. We create meaning from that blooming, buzzing mess 'out there' through not only our perceptual filters but also our cognitive set-up.

The deeper philosophical idea that underlies all of this -- again from a science perspective -- is that the universe itself may be a 'nothing' -- all the matter and energy may exactly balance so that in some grand equation it all equals one big zero. But we live within a momentary flicker (in the greater realm of an eternity) where all the forces of the universe are separated and we can experience time and matter and energy as a something. Despite this, it is all an illusion in the greater scheme of things.

Goes all the way back to Parminides in the western tradition. Everything is illusion.


But, even if it is, it's a damn persistent illusion and worth spending time working out the details in my opinion.

Of course, I could have this all wrong. But it was fun typing it nonetheless.

 

[articulett]

Okay, I agree with that much... we know that other creatures have senses and interpret things differently than we do and have different reactions to color cues or shapes or sounds that have been favored by their species undergoing natural selection over time. But these are genetic tendencies... they evolved to make a machine (brain) that can be programmed by it's environment to meet the needs of it's owner and enhance it's owner's chance of passing on those genes.

We've evolved to see in a very small part of the spectrum and exist in a relatively tiny space compared to the universe or a huge space compared to atoms. We can only intuit a life time, so in many ways... at least when you are a child-- a thousand years ago is the same as a million years ago. We evolved to be creatures of this environment--this world with the senses that best help the genes that create them survive... just as an octopus has evolved for it's world.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Okay, I agree with that much... we know that other creatures have senses and interpret things differently than we do and have different reactions to color cues or shapes or sounds that have been favored by their species undergoing natural selection over time. But these are genetic tendencies... they evolved to make a machine (brain) that can be programmed by it's environment to meet the needs of it's owner and enhance it's owner's chance of passing on those genes.

We've evolved to see in a very small part of the spectrum and exist in a relatively tiny space compared to the universe or a huge space compared to atoms. We can only intuit a life time, so in many ways... at least when you are a child-- a thousand years ago is the same as a million years ago. We evolved to be creatures of this environment--this world with the senses that best help the genes that create them survive... just as an octopus has evolved for it's world.

Yep. Now the thing that is really going to piss everyone off, and I can smell it coming from somewhere, is the idea that evolutionary theory is just a construct of our minds too. It is based on all the data that we see 'out there', but one of the natural retorts is that we use our minds to talk about a theory that was created by our minds, etc., etc. Undercover Elephant would jump at the chance.

You and I both agree, I would think, that our brains evolved in a certain way and we are stuck within that 'construct' so to speak. The best tool we have to talk about anything in our experience is still science, whether it investigates anyting actually real or not.

 

[articulett]

You said "undercover elephant"... I had a flashback.

aaarrrghghgh

No one better say "synchronicity",or I'll vomit.

 

[Robin]

I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you mean. I looked up isotropy at wikipedia and it has dozens of different meanings, but I would be happy to discuss this further. I'm more familiar with 'reductionism', so I could say that I don't know how to apply reductionism to my pet beliefs.

Ironically reductionism has more meanings in philosophy that isotropy.

 

[John Freestone]

Whoopee, more straw.

It doesn't matter to materialism at all.

Are you amazed that the universe does not act the way we think it does on the macro scale.

It is not nonsense.

That is the way that it acts on the super micro scale.

Do you have a problem with that?

No, I think I understand what you're saying, and these are fair points. There is no particular way that subatomic reality should behave, and by 'nonsense' I just meant to point to the weirdness that many others have noted at this level. However, extending this general point, I was just noticing how this philosophy we're calling materialism suggests solid stuff - atoms, then subatomic particles, still being smashed together in particle accelerators, I thought - but you say that there's no matter, just energy. I thought there were states of being that physicists argue about how to depict or describe, and certainly can't just call waves of energy. I am sincerely wanting to learn more. Have things changed since I learned that light, for instance, in certain experiments behaves as particles and in others as waves? Is it that there is only energy, but it comes in quanta, packets? And how does all that affect the 'subject'/'consciousness' question? Will this view of just energy make it easier for me to grasp the formation of subjective experience from the action of unconscious synapses? I would love to actually get my head round this process that Pixy describes as 'reflection' - actually, you know, visualise it so that I can go "Oh, I seeeeeee!". I would be disappointed to be a zombie, but at least I could relax and bask in that wonderful state of absolute knowledge.

You ought to join BAC with your rant.

I don't know what BAC is (USA?) - in Britain it used to be the British Association for Counselling. I guess it doesn't matter, since it is only there to provide structure for an insult.

You seem to be stuck in the Victorian era.

Well, if you're really going to stretch everything I say to ridiculous extremes for the sake of putting me down, I'll mind my place, Guv. You're the expert. Dont suppose I could ave a quick look down yer microscope, could I? What am I saying....sorry Sir.

Lets us make this clear.

There is no matter.

There is only energy, it behaves like waves all the time everywhere.

Is that clearer?

Much, thanks. I didn't realise science had cleared up so much confusion in the last few years while I wasn't looking. Why's it called materialism?

When I said "The really funny thing is that, just as geocentrism isn't actually wrong, but depends merely on a rather complicated attribution of the position of the witness (on Earth), and heliocentrism is not 'correct' in an absolute manner either (because all bodies are moving as a system, or, if you prefer, are orbiting around their collective centre of gravity, while the whole universe is in motion as well) ... materialism isn't wrong in an absolute sense, but also depends on maintaining a particular standpoint." ... you said:

That is meaningless, don'w walk in front of a bus please.

What is meaningless, surely not that the orbits of bodies are round their collective centre of gravity, and thus 'heliocentric' is simply an approximate term? It's true you know, the sun isn't at the centre of the solar system (I know you know that). You must be referring to my metaphysical musing. It's ok to use your imagination, you know. Buses hurt, yes. Saying things that turn out to be silly doesn't kill you. Maybe someone else will see what I was grappling with and clarify it for me. You just never know. It's quite exiting not having sorted everything out, now I come to think of it.

 

[PixyMisa]

You don't think it is possible that we can be pretty darn sure that we can't know everything without being able to describe in some detail what it is that we can't know?

That's a completely different question. We can't know everything. But we can explain everything.

The principle of consistency says that the same explanation for a given process applies everywhere in the Universe. You don't, by any means, need to know everything to fully understand everything in principle.

As with your argument on consciousness, this is confusing parameters with functions.

OK, I'll stop being coy. We are limited by our perceptual systems and by our particular cognitive ability. We have significant difficulty thinking in higher dimensions. Mathematicians do it to some degree, but most of us have a big problem thinking really outside the box.

This is true. I understand that some mathematicians really can visualise four dimensional space. I certainly can't.

There are very likely aspects to reality that we are not going to be able to understand because of our limitations. We have to be able to conceptualize something in order to get a handle on it.

No, not at all. I can't visualize four dimensional space, but I solve problems in more than four dimensions every day. (I'm a computer programmer.)

We happen to know about the bits of the electromagnetic spectrum that we cannot directly experience because we can experience some of it (visible light). But we cannot know what it is really like to "see" in the UV spectrum -- this is similar to the Mary problem.

The Mary problem is based on a lie.

There is something left out of descriptions of events that emerges in the experience of those events. There is nothing woo about that -- it is just an aspect of reality contained within particular experiences.

No, that only means the description is incomplete. That's the lie I just mentioned in the Mary problem.

Subjective experience is a physical process, and there is nothing in principle to limit our understanding of that process.

There may be aspects of energy/dark energy that we simply cannot conceptualize because we have no reason to think about them.

That's just silly. We had no reason to think about hydrogen atoms or positrons before we knew they were there either. Then we discovered them, and thought about them, and understood them.

So, this is more along the lines of the old J.B.S. Haldane quote -- or paraphrase in my case since I can't remember it exactly -- the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.

It's a nice turn of phrase, and it illuminates the weirdness - relative to our everyday experience - of twentieth-century physics. But it's not an argument.

By extension, if science could explain everything, then it should be completely formalizable. But any formalized system contains assumptions that it cannot account for or contains internal contradictions.

Sort of.

What Godel's Theorem says is that any sufficiently powerful (and arithmetic is sufficiently powerful) formal system contains propositions that cannot be shown to be either true or false using the axioms of that system.

But science is a system for generating explanations of the Universe, and the Universe isn't a formal system. So exactly how, or even if, Godel's Theorem is a limitation on science is not at all clear.

We must begin with assumptions. The beauty of science is that it only holds those assumptions provisionally and tries to examine them -- rejecting any that are proved false. There are some assumptions that we cannot see, however. That is just a consequence of constructing any thinking system.

No.

 

[PixyMisa]

No, I choose not to do so. Use your own definitions.

Fine. "God" is cheese. "Libertarian free will" is also cheese.

Cheese is compatible with materialism. Therefore you are wrong.

Or what?

Or I will, and you won't like it.

 

[PixyMisa]

Blimey Guv, we have got to a wonderful place of understanding, haven't we! And, yeah, I agree with that up to a point. However, articulett, if you have a look at what Pixy says, you'll find that science can not only explain consciousness (in a single sentence, apparently), but can build a machine that has that property from a few bits out of Radio Shack. And Pixy is not alone.

If you have an problem with my definition of consciousness, and you can produce a coherent statement of that problem, you are of course free to do so.

More than a few people in our modern culture consider this overplaying of the scientific philosophy as an insidious arrogance.

Tough.

You are right, of course, not to be sure who else could fill in the blanks, but so much of the scientific community appears to be pretending that all the blanks are about to be filled in, and could only ever be filled in by science, because it has a correct philosophical/metaphysical model of reality and a correct methodology for investigating everything.

If you would care to show where this is incorrect?

 

[articulett]

Fine. "God" is cheese. "Libertarian free will" is also cheese.

Cheese is compatible with materialism. Therefore you are wrong.


Or I will, and you won't like it.

But I do.

 

[PixyMisa]

No, I think I understand what you're saying, and these are fair points. There is no particular way that subatomic reality should behave, and by 'nonsense' I just meant to point to the weirdness that many others have noted at this level. However, extending this general point, I was just noticing how this philosophy we're calling materialism suggests solid stuff - atoms, then subatomic particles, still being smashed together in particle accelerators, I thought - but you say that there's no matter, just energy.

Matter and energy are the same thing. That's why you can convert, for example, a proton and an anti-proton into a gamma ray and some neutrinos - and vice-versa.

I thought there were states of being that physicists argue about how to depict or describe, and certainly can't just call waves of energy.

You can describe them as particles or waves. Both descriptions work.

I am sincerely wanting to learn more. Have things changed since I learned that light, for instance, in certain experiments behaves as particles and in others as waves? Is it that there is only energy, but it comes in quanta, packets?

Matter and energy are both quantised. And everything behaves as both particles and waves; not just light, but electrons and people and planets and so on.

And how does all that affect the 'subject'/'consciousness' question?

Not at all.

Will this view of just energy make it easier for me to grasp the formation of subjective experience from the action of unconscious synapses?

No; it doesn't change anything.

I would love to actually get my head round this process that Pixy describes as 'reflection' - actually, you know, visualise it so that I can go "Oh, I seeeeeee!".

I'm happy to go into that further. The best thing to do is read Godel, Escher, Bach, but it's a huge book with a lot of diversions.

I would be disappointed to be a zombie, but at least I could relax and bask in that wonderful state of absolute knowledge.

Welcome to Zombietown! Population: Everyone.

But we're all out of absolute knowledge. You could try the cheese shop...

Much, thanks. I didn't realise science had cleared up so much confusion in the last few years while I wasn't looking. Why's it called materialism?

Because as much as matter is energy, energy is matter. Some philosophers prefer the term "physicalism", but it's the same thing.

 

[John Freestone]

Yep. Now the thing that is really going to piss everyone off, and I can smell it coming from somewhere, is the idea that evolutionary theory is just a construct of our minds too. It is based on all the data that we see 'out there', but one of the natural retorts is that we use our minds to talk about a theory that was created by our minds, etc., etc. Undercover Elephant would jump at the chance.

You and I both agree, I would think, that our brains evolved in a certain way and we are stuck within that 'construct' so to speak. The best tool we have to talk about anything in our experience is still science, whether it investigates anyting actually real or not.

This and your last post are really helpful. It's wonderful when someone can translate woo into terms normal sceptics can understand! I'm obviously more evolved than an undercover elephant, because I wouldn't doubt evolution for a moment - given the rather paradoxical possibility you explored about a base (non-dual) state. This is very close to Ken Wilber's model, which involves evolution and external matter, but also considers that every holon (person, wasp!, cell, molecule, etc.) has an interior reality as well, which also evolves. Hence, he does not push consciousness down the phylogenetic tree, but sees consciousness as the evolutionary level of 'interior' arising with human beings (and interiors, he says, go all the way down). Also, he gets over the problem of this seeming like a duality, by suggesting that it is just a natural duality - a surface has to have an inside. His scheme relates various internal sensations or functions to their exterior physical forms - including relating different emotional/cognitive capacities to different evolutionary systems of the brain. (Integrative Psychology, 2000)

My first musings about the evolution of consciousness came from a fidelity to the same principle that seems so important in energy - neither being created nor destroyed - and indeed in our intuitive liking for monism rather than dualism - i.e. it seems odd if consciousness suddenly comes into being in the universe at some point of complexity, when its subjective quality - its qualitative quality (the 'qualia', like pain, anger, compassion, image, thought) are so utterly unlike the stuff you can pick up and stick under a microscope. If that difference and those principles are impressive, it adds weight to contemplations of consciousness being somehow immanent, a deep potential or 'the Ground of Being'. It doesn't have to lead to naive philosophies of God stirring the stars, but it does re-enchant the world that materialism has 'disqualified'.

 

[PixyMisa]

Yep. Now the thing that is really going to piss everyone off, and I can smell it coming from somewhere, is the idea that evolutionary theory is just a construct of our minds too. It is based on all the data that we see 'out there', but one of the natural retorts is that we use our minds to talk about a theory that was created by our minds, etc., etc. Undercover Elephant would jump at the chance.

Elephants can't jump.

Evolutionary theory is a theory, a model of reality. No-one here disputes that. It says so right on the label.

We test it; it works.

You and I both agree, I would think, that our brains evolved in a certain way and we are stuck within that 'construct' so to speak. The best tool we have to talk about anything in our experience is still science, whether it investigates anyting actually real or not.

All we have is behaviours, and all we have to study those is our perceptions - suitably augmented by our instruments - and our brains - likewise augmented by everything from abacuses to supercomputers.

Since that is all we have, it is futile to argue whether it is "actually real". It can kill you; that is sufficiently real for most people. Dead philosophers raise few arguments with this position.

 

[John Freestone]

Matter and energy are the same thing. That's why you can convert, for example, a proton and an anti-proton into a gamma ray and some neutrinos - and vice-versa.

You can describe them as particles or waves. Both descriptions work.

...snip...

Oh, I thought there was some point to DD telling me that there wasn't matter, it was all energy. Maybe you two disagree there, and anyway, you've volunteered to answer for him. ...and also acknowledge that the difference doesn't affect the question of consciousness at all.

I'm happy to go into that further. The best thing to do is read Godel, Escher, Bach, but it's a huge book with a lot of diversions.

Well, I'm pretty busy meditating and such, and I have a huge book list I can't get round to reading...maybe if you did go into it a bit further, that might give me some hope that it might actually be worth reading. I'll level with you, Pixy. I think you're good at making up your own language and thinking it means something.

How about anyone else - anyone else able to explain how to build a conscious machine from a few transistors? Anyone else able to describe how to bridge the gap between stuff I can stick in the fridge and stuff I see in my head - from unconscious synapses to feeling like I'm here, alive, real? Any number of synapses/transistors you like, actually.

I wish I had a million dollars to wager.

You see, the thought experiment alone should demonstrate the logical impossibility of proving you could do such a thing. Say you made a robot that said it was conscious. How would you, as its inventor, prove to me, the good sceptic, that it was? That's the fundamental philosophical problem. Its concsiousness would be internal, not transferable by any means we know to any other being or committee for verification. Now from your point of view, you would no doubt equate behavioural clues with proof, but if you test your own consciousness, do you rely on behavioural data? I suppose in a Descartesian view you might - I'm thinking, so I am. Maybe this is where the experience of pure awareness blows all the reasoning out the water, and without it I have to admit there's nothing I can say to convince you you're not a zombie!

However, if you think science has won, you're wrong. I could construct an equally coherent argument that would resist all disproof you could throw at it - that you were a Divine Spark....especially if I'm allowed to refer you to a book.

Oh well, go in peace. Namaste and all that.

 

[articulett]

http://discovermagazine.com/2005/jun/single-brain-cell/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C=
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00087A9B-A742-1330-A54583414B7F0000
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-11/ns-bit111407.php
http://discovermagazine.com/1999/jul/thetenthannualdi1637
http://www.livescience.com/health/050317_brain_interface.html

nice, short, to the point... science trumps meditation when it comes to understanding the brain.

 

[PixyMisa]

Oh, I thought there was some point to DD telling me that there wasn't matter, it was all energy. Maybe you two disagree there, and anyway, you've volunteered to answer for him. ...and also acknowledge that the difference doesn't affect the question of consciousness at all.

There is a point to it, but it's subtle. The important thing to understand is that matter and energy aren't two entirely separate things, but different aspects of the same thing. (And the same goes for things like anti-matter, dark matter, and dark energy - all of these are just unusual examples of the same stuff.)

Well, I'm pretty busy meditating and such, and I have a huge book list I can't get round to reading...maybe if you did go into it a bit further, that might give me some hope that it might actually be worth reading. I'll level with you, Pixy. I think you're good at making up your own language and thinking it means something.

Quite the reverse. Everything I say ties directly to observable behaviours. If I can't observe it in some way, what's the point of talking about it?

My circuit does something - we can observe its behaviour, and it's simple enough that we can follow exactly how a certain sequence of inputs results in a certain sequence of internal states. Human brains are about, oh, ten or eleven orders of magnitude more complex than my little circuit, and so are incredibly difficult to model. But they don't, in the end, do anything different, and human consciousness is not, in essence, any different to the sequence of states in the flip-flops in my circuit.

Or if it is, no-one has yet stated clearly what the difference is.

You see, the thought experiment alone should demonstrate the logical impossibility of proving you could do such a thing. Say you made a robot that said it was conscious. How would you, as its inventor, prove to me, the good sceptic, that it was? That's the fundamental philosophical problem.

Dead simple. You do this exactly the same way you determine that other people are conscious.

Its concsiousness would be internal, not transferable by any means we know to any other being or committee for verification. Now from your point of view, you would no doubt equate behavioural clues with proof, but if you test your own consciousness, do you rely on behavioural data?

Yes.

I suppose in a Descartesian view you might - I'm thinking, so I am.

Exactly.

Maybe this is where the experience of pure awareness blows all the reasoning out the water, and without it I have to admit there's nothing I can say to convince you you're not a zombie!

I experience, therefore I am. Same thing.

However, if you think science has won, you're wrong. I could construct an equally coherent argument that would resist all disproof you could throw at it - that you were a Divine Spark....especially if I'm allowed to refer you to a book.

I'd just ask, what does it do?

Remember, the reason I give science special standing is not because it unveils hidden truths. It's because it allows us to construct reliably useful predictive models of the world. In short, because it works.

Oh well, go in peace. Namaste and all that.

Namaste.