“Another reason science is superior - it avoids the whole debate over relative and absolute truth and sticks with what is objective - reality.”
But that’s not what you’re doing, John. Like most people running around talking about “objectivity” and the “scientific method”, you just seem to be flashing it around like a badge of authority then making assertions based on speculation: for instance, this erroneous notion that neuroscience must necessarily lead to a conclusion that must exclude the possibility of a participating self. As I wrote earlier:
“Once again you run into the self contradiction that hardcore materialism runs into. You talk about the brain creating this illusion. But how does an illusion happen in terms of just meat, blood, and guts? How do you have that without consciousness? Furthermore, you talk about empirical evidence while asking us to accept your argument based on what you argue science will EVENTUALLY be able to do, not on what it has. But what if science actually finds evidence of a participating self? Your argument reads more like an appeal to the authority of science (an informal fallacy) than an appeal to real evidence.”
But the more interesting aspect of this is the very real possibility that science is starting out with that foregone conclusion –that is given that the materialistic position seems to fit within the scientific comfort zone. And if that is the case, is there any wonder we might actually question the scientific method?
It seems to me that these issues only seem to be relevant when we’re engaged in meta-discourses about discourse, these pissing contests that tend to emerge when people are striving for power and influence as compared to real understanding. I mean, at some point or other, we have to ask why we are engaging in debates about what method is superior when we could simply use that method and prove it. We have to ask what John expects to achieve here (that is outside of some snide dismissal of any sensibility not like his (when he could actually be engaged in science and not contradicting himself at every point along the way.
And in that sense, doesn’t this all feel like more of a distraction as well as kind of petty? Does it really matter where we get our understanding from as long as it gives us enough understanding to change the understanding of others and possibly make things better? And wouldn’t “making things better” (the pragmatic criteria (in evolutionary terms, be the only real criteria by which we judge our assertions, regardless of what method we use to arrive at them.
I get it: John is working from the assumption that science, and the technology it has produced, is one of the higher achievements of man. But it is only one among others: art, philosophy, literature, etc… And to succumb to this notion that science is above them all is to succumb to Capitalistic and corporate values. And I don’t see how that contributes to our evolution as a species.