The Last Word

[Cancer]

Maybe they should have ads.

 

That way the service pays for itself instead of your tax dollars at work?

 

Hrm... I wonder if there's a way to get other government agencies to pay for themselves?

Given that the weather data were already paid for through the funding of the agencies collecting the data, dissemination of the data is part of what has already been paid for. Usually it's businesses that are trying to make you pay more than once for the same thing.

 

.com sites subordinate content to ads, which I hate with the fury of ten billion Type II supernovae.

[Bazza]

Agree with Cancer.

[Cancer]

hey Cancer, hope you liked by big post about the definitions i got from a book. re logical positivism and positivism. (you can ignore the others).

 

Today was insanely busy, but hope to look tomorrow. Which thread is that in?

[Bazza]

Today was insanely busy, but hope to look tomorrow. Which thread is that in?

this one previous page. 

 

here http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/15145-longest-running-thread-ever/page-1316?do=findComment&comment=2343000

[Pariah]

Pretty sure Pariah & I are both in Utah.   Positive I'm in Utah, though at the far southern end of the state, I think he's closer to Salt Lake.

Salt Lake County, in fact. But we're having St. George-like weather. 63F today.

[Bazza]

30.1C here at the moment. 

[L. Marcus]

+1 at home, -1 here at the hospital. Ice skates would be appropriate and welcome.

[Bazza]

you want to practice for next winter games? 

[L. Marcus]

I'm well above the Olympic age for even ice hockey.

[Bazza]

So you could compete in the Vetrans Games then  

[L. Marcus]

To be a veteran, you must have played the game.

[Bazza]

not really, here the Veterans Games like the Masters Games (as it is called) is just based on age from what I can gather. you don't need to have played in the sport before. 

[Cancer]

this one previous page. 

 

here http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/15145-longest-running-thread-ever/page-1316?do=findComment&comment=2343000

Positivism is something I am very causally acquainted with, because in one of his tomes on positivism, Auguste Comte set out a list of things "forever unknowable to the mind of man". On that list is composition of the stars. Determining those is, in fact, my research specialty. Comte made the error assuming completeness in his own knowledge, and overlooked Fraunhofer's invention of the spectroscope and discovery of hundreds of dark lines in the spectrum of the Sun, followed (about the time Comte's big book was published) by Kirchhoff's and Bunsen's work connecting those absorption lines to bright emission lines in flames in the lab, allowing people to identify elements in the stars via spectrum analysis. That error -- of assuming one knows all that is important to be known and making policy dictates based on what one knows or what one likes to think one knows -- is a very common one, hardly unique to Comte. In fact, I am much more comfortable with positivism than I am with all other philosophical ideas I have looked at in any detail (i.e., where I've done the reading myself). I can't say I embrace it fully, but if you were to put a gun to my head (more about that below) and make me choose a philosophy, positivism would be it.

 

Comte's book is also on a list of the 10 most harmful books ever published, because it explicitly places verification and experimentation over faith as a way of learning and deciding what's important. Now, that list is one compiled by a gang of archconservatives and fundamentalist wannabe-theocrats, and that choice implicitly exposes their motive, which is suppression of thought and imposition of an authority structure based strictly in faith and adherence to the dictates of those handing down the conservative agenda. Putting Comte on a list of harmful books is nothing but a declaration of war upon science and reason, and that declaration is one I keep in mind in rejecting any assertions that come out of someone speaking from the conservative agenda. Because they have declared that things I believe in are "most harmful". To quote a famous historical figure from these boards, that gets you ignore.

[L. Marcus]

Boo hiss, theocrats!

[BlueCloud2k2]

Boo hiss, 99% of theologians.

 

Very rare is someone who says, "follow your conscious and you do right by (insert deity here)."

[Pariah]

Funny, I was taught that conscience is the way you know that you're doing right by (insert deity here).

[L. Marcus]

Just be conscious of your conscience.

[Bazza]

Positivism is something I am very causally acquainted with, because in one of his tomes on positivism, Auguste Comte set out a list of things "forever unknowable to the mind of man". On that list is composition of the stars. Determining those is, in fact, my research specialty. Comte made the error assuming completeness in his own knowledge, and overlooked Fraunhofer's invention of the spectroscope and discovery of hundreds of dark lines in the spectrum of the Sun, followed (about the time Comte's big book was published) by Kirchhoff's and Bunsen's work connecting those absorption lines to bright emission lines in flames in the lab, allowing people to identify elements in the stars via spectrum analysis. That error -- of assuming one knows all that is important to be known and making policy dictates based on what one knows or what one likes to think one knows -- is a very common one, hardly unique to Comte. In fact, I am much more comfortable with positivism than I am with all other philosophical ideas I have looked at in any detail (i.e., where I've done the reading myself). I can't say I embrace it fully, but if you were to put a gun to my head (more about that below) and make me choose a philosophy, positivism would be it.

 

Comte's book is also on a list of the 10 most harmful books ever published, because it explicitly places verification and experimentation over faith as a way of learning and deciding what's important. Now, that list is one compiled by a gang of archconservatives and fundamentalist wannabe-theocrats, and that choice implicitly exposes their motive, which is suppression of thought and imposition of an authority structure based strictly in faith and adherence to the dictates of those handing down the conservative agenda. Putting Comte on a list of harmful books is nothing but a declaration of war upon science and reason, and that declaration is one I keep in mind in rejecting any assertions that come out of someone speaking from the conservative agenda. Because they have declared that things I believe in are "most harmful". To quote a famous historical figure from these boards, that gets you ignore.

 

As you are a scientist and have been working in this field most of your life, it doesn't surprise me much that you would find positivism appealing. I can acknowledge and respect you for that. For me personally, I find positivism insufficient as a worldview for reasons I have stated elsewhere (last paragraph). I may go into this in more detail later (a future time).

 

A few points/questions/requests for confirmation to make sure we are on the same page:

#1 Would you agree with the definition of positivism from the book in the original post (100 Essential Thinkers  by Philip Stokes, reposted for ease rather than making you go back to the post and read it again): "Positivism The theory introduced by Auguste Comte that limits knowledge to what can be derived from observation and comprehended within the bounds of science. "

 

#2 I assume the book you are referring to is The Course in Positivist Philosophy and/or A General View of Positivism? (I ask as Comte wrote other books developing Positivism which took a more moderate and softer position (according to the book).  

 

#3 Who are you referring to with the terms “archconservatives” and/or theocrats? My guesses are:

A. Christianity in general / traditional Christian worldview

B. The Roman Catholic Church specifically

C. The Religious Right / “Bible Belt” (I'm assuming these are political conservatives)

D. All of the above

[Bazza]

Just want to address/respond to a specific point you raised and though it would be better in a new post (boldfacing mine): 

 

Putting Comte on a list of harmful books is nothing but a declaration of war upon science and reason and that declaration is one I keep in mind in rejecting any assertions that come out of someone speaking from the conservative agenda.

 

Quoting the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy:

 

However, Comte's decision to develop successively a philosophy of mathematics, a philosophy of physics, a philosophy of chemistry and a philosophy of biology, makes him the first philosopher of science in the modern sense...Even though the founder of positivism is rightly considered to be one of the great philosophers of science.

 

So for me it is not science and/or reason per se that the listing of Comte's books as harmful is it the philosophical worldview that (i'm guessing) prompted the banning. I also found this during a search to try to check if Comte was banned by the Roman Catholic Church and found this which says it was "banned for religious reasons". Still pretty broad, also the website is not published by the Vatican so I'm taking it with a grain of salt.  

 

I also found this during the same "Comte banned books" web search. This page appears not to be related to the Vatican listing per say (assuming the web page to be fairly reasonable): 

Comte, the product of a royalist Catholic family that survived the French Revolution, turned his back on his political and cultural heritage, announcing as a teenager, “I have naturally ceased to believe in God.”[...] He did so while theorizing that the human mind had developed beyond “theology” (a belief that there is a God who governs the universe), through “metaphysics” (in this case defined as the French revolutionaries’ reliance on abstract assertions of “rights” without a God), to “positivism,” in which man alone, through scientific observation, could determine the way things ought to be.

 

So for me  based on this information my conclusion is that it is reasonable for the Church objected to the book "Cours de philosophy positive" and listed it on the "List of Prohibited Books" as it proposes an alternate philosophical worldview with the absence of any form of theology. Giordano Bruno (IIRC) also proposed an alternate worldview and the Church likewise placed his books on the List of Prohibited Books. I also know that the Church (i.e. Pope John Paul II) as apologised for burning Bruno at the stake, so maybe the Church might de-list Comte's books of the List of Prohibited Books.  

 

To my understand of things at present, the Roman Catholic Church worldview (cf. Thomism) is not opposed to science (maybe it was historically in a different era cf. Galileo ), hence there is no modern-day "war on science". The knowledge gained from science and the scientific method is embraced. The disagreement is between philosophical worldviews, one that includes theological metaphysics and one that doesn't. 

[Bazza]

And like you I suspect, I prefer a rational and intellectual approach* to knowledge and wisdom over one based on (blind) faith. It was the later by a Christian mob that killed classical scholar and scientist Hypatia, thus she became a "martyr for paganism". So I try to distance myself from ignorance produced by blind faith when/if i can; and Hypatia serves as a reminder to me of what can happen. 

 

(*although we would disagree with the inclusion of the mysticism). 

[lemming]

Salt Lake County, in fact. But we're having St. George-like weather. 63F today.

 

Yea, St. George is 80 miles to the west of us and 2000 feet lower.

[Bazza]

Funny, I was taught that conscience is the way you know that you're doing right by (insert deity here).

i would moistly agree with that. 

 

For me, in Christian terms, the source of conscience is the Holy Spirit. So when you are doing right by your conscience you are acting in alignment with the Holy Spirit.   

[Cancer]

...

A few points/questions/requests for confirmation to make sure we are on the same page:

#1 Would you agree with the definition of positivism from the book in the original post (100 Essential Thinkers  by Philip Stokes, reposted for ease rather than making you go back to the post and read it again): "Positivism The theory introduced by Auguste Comte that limits knowledge to what can be derived from observation and comprehended within the bounds of science. "

 

#2 I assume the book you are referring to is The Course in Positivist Philosophy and/or A General View of Positivism? (I ask as Comte wrote other books developing Positivism which took a more moderate and softer position (according to the book).  

 

#3 Who are you referring to with the terms “archconservatives” and/or theocrats? My guesses are:

A. Christianity in general / traditional Christian worldview

B. The Roman Catholic Church specifically

C. The Religious Right / “Bible Belt” (I'm assuming these are political conservatives)

D. All of the above

1: I have read very little philosophy (even Comte), so I don't think I can answer this. I certainly haven't read enough of positivism to know if I find it adequately complete on a personal basis; I don't consider that sort of question as a general rule, and I don't trust any author enough to consider a single work to be a complete reference on anything. Frankly, I suspect that it is actually a fundamental error to think that question might have a unique, eternal answer, because human perception is so limited in scale (both physical and temporal scales) and so irremediably rooted in experience within a stunningly limited range of physical conditions that intuition will always generate a preference for familiar hypotheses even if those hypotheses are demonstrably fallacious.

 

2: Pretty sure it was The Course, but I would have to track down some old notes (or re-do the reading) to be certain.

 

3: C. Catholic voices in the US are fragmented enough now (especially with Pope Francis) that it is a mistake to think they have an actively burning desire to exterminate the scientific world view. That's even more true of Christianity in general. But the Religious Right does have that agenda, though it usually manifests itself only in questions in the observational sciences (evolutionary biology, cosmology, atmospheric sciences, epidemiology, physical anthropology, paleontology, etc.)... going after experimental sciences like chemistry only makes them appear to everyone as obvious idiots and even they know it.

[BlueCloud2k2]

Pariah Says:

 

Funny, I was taught that conscience is the way you know that you're doing right by (insert deity here).

 

 

I used to be Mormon (I'm feeling much better now BTW). And one of the thing they always harped about on was that if you don't do EVERY-SINGLE-THING the scriptures tell you to do you cannot fully inherit the kingdom of heaven and blah-blah-blah.

 

And most organized faiths I was subjected to only had this to say: "If you aren't a member of our church you are damned to hell." The Definition of "Our Church" was sometimes stretched a bit to be redefined as "baptized and living free of sin" but for the most part the message was clear - "Only Christians in Good Standing get to go to Heaven; All others are damned. Period."

 

So no Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Agnostics, Hindu or even Pagans, no matter how good the lives they lived were permitted beyond the Pearly Gates.

 

So where as you may have personally been brought up right (as I see it), I had to figure it out for myself.

 

 

Bazza Says:

i would moistly agree with that.

 

 

 

For me, in Christian terms, the source of conscience is the Holy Spirit. So when you are doing right by your conscience you are acting in alignment with the Holy Spirit.

 

 

Yeah but how do you feel about non-Christians being able to do right by God?

[Bazza]

Yeah but how do you feel about non-Christians being able to do right by God?

 

Easy. There are many conceptions of God that I am aware of, even amongst Christians; so it depends which one you want to refer too.