Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!rochester!sol!yamauchi From: yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Science (was Re: Consciousness) Message-ID: Date: 1 Dec 90 20:58:48 GMT References: <1990Nov9.202525.11717@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <3489@aipna.ed.ac.uk> <15724@venera.isi.edu> <1990Nov21.045833.11768@mentor.com> Sender: news@cs.rochester.edu (Usenet news) Organization: University of Rochester Lines: 46 In-Reply-To: msellers@mentor.com's message of 21 Nov 90 04:58:33 GMT In article <1990Nov21.045833.11768@mentor.com> msellers@mentor.com (Mike Sellers) writes: In article <15724@venera.isi.edu> smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) writes: >it >would not be ludicrous to say that scientists assume patterns of behavior based >on those of other scientists. It is not ludicrous to say, and in fact is a widely held attitude -- all you have to see this in action is wander into a lab and watch a graduate student and his or her advisor at work! However, this sort of description is unsatisfying, and leaves the reader with the distinct impression that these scientists (or musicians, or artists, or politicians) don't really *know* what it is that they are about, and that they are once again trying to snow us all so they can spend more of our taxpayer dollars on some fool project. It also weakens the case often touted by those championing the conclusions of science, that as a method of describing the world it is somehow qualitatively better than what the poor ignorant souls of previous eras had available to them. If we cannot describe science any better than to say that 'science is what scientists do, and what scientists do, precisely, is what other scientists do', then I suggest that science and its practitioners are not epistemilogically in a position that is any more defensible than any other describer of the world, such as a shaman, priest, philosopher, artist, or politician. The difference is that, unlike the shaman or the priest, *our* magic works -- consider aircraft, telephones, computers, CD players, and CAT scanners. To the average layman these may indeed be magic, but it is a magic that *works*. If a someone prays for world peace, he doesn't really expect it to work, but if he picks up a cellular phone and calls his office, he will be very perturbed if it *doesn't* work. The fact that science is useful for developing new technologies is what separates it from superstition, religion, philosophy, art, and politcs. Science is a better description because you can't build supersonic jets and digital synthesizers based on philosophical treatises or religious dogma. I would argue that, to a large extent, technology is what "validates" science. (This is why it always surprises me to find scientists who are anti-technology, although this disease is relatively rare in the "applied" sciences like CS and AI. Ironically, businesspeople seem more enamored of high-tech than basic scientists.) -- _______________________________________________________________________________ Brian Yamauchi University of Rochester yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu Computer Science Department _______________________________________________________________________________