The MANY WAYS TO GAIN OR ACCESS KNOWLEDGE! ....

[MarkCharles]

Science!



End of thread.

[ZombieHorde]

1. Can't people access knowledge by reading a book?

Or taking a class?

[rug]

2. NO!

[Lint Head]

3. Abraham Lincoln was a reader who basically educated himself.

[MarkCharles]

5. Well, you present an interesting question! What book? The Bible?

NO!

No "knowledge" there!

But if you're choosing to read one of Richard Dawkins' books, maybe!

But you are reading ABOUT knowledge, not getting knowledge first hand.

Reading is the way MOST of us get our "knowledge", and we "believe" what we read, and, in a few instances, we actually "test" our book learning against the real world.

Learning is like wealth accumulation: we see a few dollars, we know we earn more, we see reports on paper or on the internet testifying that we know or have more. We see so few real dollars we earn. We see reports of those dollars, and reports of what we do with those reports of dollars earned.


Where is real knowledge? Real wealth? Is our knowledge "real" or only reports that it is real?

[humblebum]

7. Nothing biased about your opinion of what constitutes knowledge.

(cough! hrrumph! cough, cough) Actually both Dawkins work and the Bible demonstrate knowledge.

I think it was Charles Peirce who defined knowledge in the modern age by assigning to it levels or degrees of attainment. 1.data 2.information 3.knowledge 4.understanding 5. wisdom. That puts it in a better light for me.

[cleanhippie]

14. Just one example of knowledge gained through some "other way of knowing." Just one.

And you cannot do it.





Just. One.





And.

You.
Can't.

[humblebum]

16. Have already given you about a half dozen, so now you idle blathering

demand constitutes a lie.

[cleanhippie]

20. No, you have not.

You have given some examples of these "other ways of knowing" but not a single example of any actual knowledge gained via one of these "other ways of knowing".

Not a single one.

[Deep13]

13. I never knew any of the Arabic language.

After reading a book and listening to lectures, I know a little. Later, I will know a little more.

[Azooz]

4. Let there be science. n/t

[rrneck]

6. What kind of knowledge? nt

[laconicsax]

8. I'd have to assume he means the kind...

That's tripled the human lifespan, created the modern world, and put people on the moon.

[rrneck]

10. That it has.

Although on a more personal note I rather enjoy air conditioning and ice in my Scotch. Of course its also given us global warming, resource wars on a global scale, and seven billion people on the planet. Maybe that extended lifespan wasn't such a good idea. But on the whole I wouldn't take anything for it.

I think there are other kinds of knowledge worth seeking. They don't put ice in your Scotch or a man on the moon, but they are indispensable nonetheless.

[Angry Dragon]

9. Knowledge is where you find it................

[struggle4progress]

11. The vast majority, of facts that you know, are simply not verifiable by repeatable experiment

[Deep13]

12. I agree that verifiable fact trumps feelings. ..

But I also think that rational thought is one aspect of feelings or instincts or whatever we call it. Our ancestors survived millions of years without science and they must have been able to apprehend at least their immediate environment and social interactions.

[MarkCharles]

15. You raise an interesting point! One has to wonder, (as long as one believes in evolution) about

how human beings survived in a world, built pyramids, etc., without "other ways of knowing".

Homo Sapiens' divergence from a common ancestor of the chimpanzee is estimated to have happened roughly 5.5-7 million years ago. And we have have not only the pyramids, but actual burial sites, cave images, etc. indicating human cultures and evidence of the use of symbols, advanced planning, engineering, community organizing that existed well before both Christianity and Judaism. It is likely such organizing and use of symbols and images existed tens of thousands of years before those rather "modern" religions, one of which is perhaps 5-9 thousand years old at most. We are also aware that other religions existed in other parts of the world well before the Christian era.

The fundamental question here is what do we call "knowledge"? How is that "knowledge" passed from one generation to the next throughout the history of the human species. Is the act of making cave paintings on the walls in Lascaux, France a result of "instinct" or "feelings" or rather of a certain "knowledge", combined with planning, practiced skill, and intention to communicate? The cave paintings date as far back as about 17,000 years, give or take 500.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux

"Over 900 can be identified as animals, and 605 of these have been precisely identified. There are also many geometric figures. Of the animals, equines predominate, with 364 images. There are 90 paintings of stags. Also represented are cattle and bison, each representing 4-5% of the images. A smattering of other images include seven felines, a bird, a bear, a rhinoceros, and a human. Among the most famous images are four huge, black bulls or aurochs in the Hall of the Bulls."

Obviously, these painters had a form of "knowledge", not simply instincts or feelings, and they were able to use art imaging to represent real visions of real animals from their real world. There's a distinct set of intellectual skills being displayed here, skills that confirm that the people painting them had a remarkable level of "knowledge" of their world.

Whether we call the human skills and activities shown there "knowledge" or engineering, (like the obvious engineering of the pyramids), the means to acquiring and utilizing these skills must have been through trial and error; what is, in essence a crude "scientific" methodology.

[rrneck]

22. There are two basic parts to every work of art ever made:

form and content. Form is anything you can point at - line, shape, value, color, edge, surface, texture - basically anything that can be empirically measured. Content is what it means or why it is made. This holds equally true for Lascaux as for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Both are equally important for the success or failure of the work. Without one you can't have th3 other, much like life.

[MarkCharles]

36. Your limited analysis is noted.

I guess you didn't bother finishing that degree in Art appreciation


You went with the Freshman text..thought that was all there was to the field of study.

Kudo's for taking the first step into knowledge, going furher seems to have compromised your life somehow.

Of course, you FAIL with comments like "Both are equally important for the success or failure of the work. Without one you can't have.."

Equally important: HOW?

[rrneck]

37. Awwwww.

MFA

You can't have one without the other.

A painting without content means nothing. The function of art is to convey meaning. That meaning cannot be discerned without form (described above).

[Deep13]

44. Well, the pyramids relied on some pretty sophisticated geometry...

...limitless cheap labor and decades of time.

The art of Lascaux is in part painting what they saw, although there is a theory that given the inaccessible location of the paintings, the odd, repetitive or spiraling patterns, and the choice of animals that the paintings may have been inspired by drug-induced hallucinations. In any event, observation is a critical part of the scientific method, but not, by any means, the only part.

I'm actually talking about instinctive or "gut" impressions. The ability to recognize human faces, the rise in awareness and apparent slowing of time when in danger, the instinctive hierarchical social structure, the recognition of patterns and regularity in nature, the feeling that there is something special about fire.

I fully appreciate that repeatable, verifiable facts cannot be trumped by gut feelings. The scientific method represents a quantum leap in our capacity for knowledge. I instinctive drive to develop that method began millions of years ago. When the first hominid with enough grey matter to think beyond the tip of his or her nose looked up on a clear night and saw the Milky Way or got its first look from a high hill at the surrounding landscape, a spark in its primate brain told him or her that there was so much more to the world than previously imagined.

[humblebum]

17. The Scientific Method is based upon Logical Positivism, which

by application automatically ignores several other methods or ways of knowing. Therefore, science is limited and quite narrow in focus, and does not have the ability to consider or assess anything other than empirical evidence. To say that it is the only way to gain knowledge is a lie, and a display of either ignorance or contempt for other epistemologies and methods.

[MarkCharles]

18. "ignores several other methods or ways of knowing" Let me see if

the hippie and I want to go for a ride on the merry-go-round today!


Nah...I'll pass, and I bet s/he will too!

Nice try, tho!

Let's talk about "logical positivism" in the history of philosophy, shall we?

Of course, most of the scientific disciplines have been around for many centuries, and, (counting the mathematics and engineering of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Arabs,Egyptians, Chinese and others), ALL preceded this concept of "logical positivism" growing out of eminent 20th century philosophers, broadly labelled "The Vienna Circle".

"During the late 1920s, '30s, and '40s, Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein's formalism was developed by a group of philosophers in Vienna and Berlin, who formed the Vienna Circle and Berlin Circle into a doctrine known as logical positivism (or logical empiricism). Logical positivism used formal logic to underpin an empiricist account of our knowledge of the world. Philosophers such as Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach, along with other members of the Vienna Circle, claimed that the truths of logic and mathematics were tautologies, and those of science were verifiable empirical claims. These two constituted the entire universe of meaningful judgements; anything else was nonsense.

The claims of ethics and aesthetics were subjective preferences. Theology and other metaphysics were pseudo-statements, neither true nor false, simply meaningless nonsense."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vienna-circle/

[humblebum]

26. Yep. You just validated my claims about Logical Positivism.

You told me nothing that I already did not know. Now, tell me where you have a problem, Bubba.

Another name for logical positivism is the philosophy of science or the scientific phylosophy. It is one epistemology, and NOT the only one. An epistemology is a "way of knowing."

[MarkCharles]

29. Let's see, I "validated" your "claims" by showing that your

conceptual understandings are kind of a few thousand years off?

You conceptualize science with an early 20th Century more precise reframing of what the discipline of science and the concepts of knowledge are. And I "validated" your "claims"?

How so?

[humblebum]

30. What do you mean how so? you are right in saying it is an

early 20th century reframing of science and the concepts of knowledge, and it also fits to a tee the method you are using to define science. There are still many who claim to be positivists among the scientific community and the atheist community.

[MarkCharles]

33. Your response was non-responsive.

Sorry, non-sequiturs, non-responsive comments, less than logical responses.

Nothing intelligible in your above comment that reads as follows:

"The Scientific Method is based upon Logical Positivism, which

by application automatically ignores several other methods or ways of knowing. Therefore, science is limited and quite narrow in focus, and does not have the ability to consider or assess anything other than empirical evidence."


"automatically ignores several other methods or ways of knowing"

Back on the merry-go-round......

other methods or ways of knowing

Major figures in 20th century philosophy of science clearly state what "fits to a tee the method you are using to define science", and you think you are superior in judging what is "knowledge" and what is science? Pretty bold of you, my adversarial friend, I hate to make you look foolish, but, really, I think you have done so all on your own.

They also discard ALL assertions of knowledge obtained in any other way, calling it "nonsense"! Did you miss that?

Do your really think Bertrand Russel never read a King James Bible?

[humblebum]

38. The statement ""automatically ignores several other methods or ways of knowing"

is absolutely true if you know anything about the Vienna Circle or Logical Positivism. Things like a priori knowledge, intuition, metaphysics, religion, etc. are those things that are purposely ignored for the simple reason - that they cannot be validated empirically. They were said to be meaningless or nonsensical. The meaning of "nonsense" as it was applied here did not mean that these elements are non-existent, but that they are not able to be empirically tested, as observational, experiential, or BY THE SENSES, which is the definition of empirical. Yes, they are automatically ignored. As well they should be in assessing material existence.

Nowhere is it suggested that there are no other ways of knowing - other epistemologies.

[MarkCharles]

31. Just that troublesome thing of which came first. You seem to have ignored

about 20 thousand years of human progress in knowledge, just because a bunch of philosophers in the first part of the 20th century decided to refine the process and make it more honest and effective?

Not buying your reverse engineering of what science is, as you "claim" in one of your posts above. You said, and I quote, "The Scientific Method is based upon Logical Positivism, which

by application automatically ignores several other methods or ways of knowing. Therefore, science is limited and quite narrow in focus, and does not have the ability to consider or assess anything other than empirical evidence."


What OTHER evidence, other than empirical, EXISTS?

You never offered any, there simply is none, when it comes to real knowledge.

Just because science becomes more efficient in methodology, none of that means any of your "other ways of knowing" has a half milligram of weight in the realm of knowledge.

Sorry, mate, you just love to display your ignorance, you just love to brag about it, That's nice if you get off on it! I don't, (I even feel a bit embarrassed when someone points out that I have misunderstood, or I had a fact wrong, but I seldom celebrate when I get B before A, or 2 before 1!).

[humblebum]

39. Logical Positivism IS the basis for the MODERN Scientific Method,

You reference the preceding "20 thousand years of human progress in knowledge." That is exactly why an attempt was made at the Vienna Circle to develop a unified method for conducting scientific research. Thousands of years ago magic and religion and everything was applied to what could be considered science. You have advertised yourself as an experienced lecturer on these matters. You should know what you are talking about. But, your ignorance is revealing the truth.

[rrneck]

24. Well, actually

science is limited in focus to the entire universe and everything in it - as long as it can be empirically studied.

[MarkCharles]

27. That's kind of all encompassing. Sort of short-circuits any critique of

science, as being "limiting" doesn't it?

[rrneck]

32. Yes.

I recall a scene in a movie, sorry I can't remember which one, where a professional gambler was explaining gambling to someone and he simply said, "A gambler will bet on anything that moves." I think that a bet on a drop of sweat from someone's nose ensued.

Scientists love measuring shit and proving it. They live for it. And as far as I know there is nothing that physically exists in the universe from the smallest subatomic particle to the size of the universe itself they won't take some kind of ruler to.

But there are other things that can be measured that are not available to the tools of science. Others have been using them for a long time as well. Some call them the arts.

Believers get into trouble trying to describe the experience of faith in concrete terms when they should be using literature or poetry. A lot of believers are simply consumers and couldn't actually examine the experience of faith if their life depended on it. Generally speaking fundamentalists fall into that category. In fact, I have a fancy that the more literally they take their faith, the more their faith is just a consumer product plucked off a shelf.

[MarkCharles]

34. here are other things that can be measured that are not available to the tools of science

here are other things that can be measured that are not available to the tools of science

Other "things"


"Can be measured"

"not available to the tools of science"

name ONE!

[rrneck]

35. Love. nt

[Humanist_Activist]

45. Actually, love has been studied and measured in neuroscience...

this includes different types of love, from romantic to familial, the hormone levels in the body, the activity in the brain, etc. are measured and studied. Not saying we have all the answers as to what love is, but being one of the strongest emotions in human experience and very important in our social lives and for our mental health, its being studied intensely.

Its even studied in other animals, and indeed, its been discovered that paternal and maternal feelings(hormone levels, activity in the brain) can be easily invoked in humans through interactions with our pets, and even more striking, those same feelings, as measured, are also present in our pets, dogs and cats in particular. This explains the very intense feelings many people have for their pets, that they are family, regarded as practically indistinguishable from children, on an emotional level, and at the same time, the pets themselves share these feelings, dogs more strongly than cats. In other words, there is actually evidence that not only do we love our pets, but they love us back.

[humblebum]

46. So, if love is nothing more than an electro-chemical reaction

in the brain, and by default all human emotion, then am I to assume that love and all emotion does not exist, except as an electro-chemical reaction in the brain?

What you are measuring is an electro-chemical reaction in the brain, and not love. And I must add that if you have any concern for humanity, it is nothing more than an electo-chemical reaction in the brain, and therefore does not exist as anything but, by your own definition of emotion.

[Humanist_Activist]

49. Why reduce love, or indeed any emotion this way?

Yes its an electro-chemical reaction, so what? What else could it be? You seem to think that because its produced in the brain, that makes it less real, or less profound. I simply find this baffling, to me its enriching, we don't need an external source for our emotions, and that makes them more profound, not less. The fact that we can measure, and in some ways control them, has enriched the lives of millions of people. Yet you want to have me believe because it can be measured and studied its value is reduced. The fact is that without these studies, we wouldn't have advanced in mental and emotional health as much as we have. People that, in the past were shunned, judged and in many cases suffered in what can only be described as their own personal hells are able to live stable and happy lives.

We haven't solved these problems, but we certainly have improved them, and despite what you think, the research still advances.

[MarkCharles]

51. Brilliant post! n/t

[rrneck]

54. Is a 57 Chevy an electrovhemical reaction in the brain?

What is the difference between thinking (an electrochemical reaction) about a 57 Chevy and thinking about one's feelings for their sweetie?

[Humanist_Activist]

61. Well, the areas of the brain that "light up" as it were are generally different...

but really it depends on your feelings towards your sweetie and your car. For some people the reactions would be very similar, or even identical, I've known quite a few people who are attached to their cars and/or other inanimate objects in this way. For most people, however, I imagine there is a large difference.

I don't understand why you even asked the question, just all of our reactions, thoughts, and emotions come from our brains doesn't mean they are all the same. Our various emotions are shared by all humans because the reactions in our brains are, more or less, identical because we are all the same species and have generally identical physiology.

However, this doesn't mean that we aren't individuals, if I thought of my car under a brain scan, the parts of the brain associated with emotion wouldn't light up in the same way they would if I was thinking of my fiancee.

To give another example, grief is something all of us has felt at one time or another in our lives, and for many of us, it is very similar, hence terms such as heart break and heartache. However, we also react in various different ways, people bury themselves in work, others laugh at what could be considered inappropriate times, we cry, we sometimes isolate ourselves, and generally the rules are that there is no wrong way to grieve, because our coping mechanisms can be so unique.

Also, I fear I may have over simplified my previous post, love isn't just one electrochemical reaction in the brain, but a whole series of them, and again, our outward reactions can be unique, depending on who it is we love and our personalities. Some people are affectionate, others less so, and again, the general assumption is that there is no wrong way to express love outside of unhealthy stalking/infatuation.

[MarkCharles]

63. Most masterful response, and most energetic response to someone who

probably doesn't grasp the concepts, but I have to reward you for trying to make sense in their world.

[rrneck]

65. I find the electrochemical question interesting.

If a heartache could be considered real and the product of an electrochemical reaction, would causing an atheist to think about a deity also make god real?

[Humanist_Activist]

67. No, because that's thinking of an external being and whether its real...

humans have imagined all sorts of fantastical creatures, gods, griffons, mermaids, unicorns, elves, fairies, the list goes on, that doesn't make any of them real, just imagined.

The difference is this, heartache is real in the sense that the reactions in our brains and bodies actually makes us feel it, the heaviness and ache that is centered on the chest. the term is used as artistic license as it were, because, as anyone who suffered angina or heart attacks can tell you, a real heart ache feels completely different physically. So the term shouldn't be taken literally.

[rrneck]

68. So emotions aren't real?

They certainly cause us to do things.

We fall in love, shoot at each other, giggle, cry... you get the picture. So what is the difference between the electrochemical reaction called compassion that causes us to help others and the electrochemical reaction some call God?

[Humanist_Activist]

70. How is one connected to another?

I'm trying to follow your train of thought, but its hard, where did I claim emotions aren't real?

You seem to confuse what is imagined in our minds, and frankly higher cognitive processes with our subconscious. Outside of "third person sense" which apparently is a real phenomenon in the minds of many people, God has to be imagined and elaborated on.

The difference is this, gods and other mythological creatures are not claimed by believers to be products of our minds, but outside of ourselves. That they exist outside of our brains.

To given an example, compassion is an extrapolation of two built in things, altruism and empathy, however, compassion is still internal, we are compassionate towards each other, so we act on that. Third person sense, which many people experience, seems to also be built in, and may have aided in our survival as a species because assuming personal agency in a phenomenon, such as the rustling of a bush, could be the difference between being eaten and running away to live another day. However, its still internal, calling it a god makes no more sense than calling it a monster under the bed, neither is real outside of our minds.

[rrneck]

73. If everything you just described

is the result of an electrochemical process in the brain, and I have no doubt that it is, would not bringing to mind the concept of God cause God to exist even in the mind of someone who does not believe in God? Kind of like not thinking of an elephant?

[MarkCharles]

62. Deleted misplaced answer...

I would suggest a less rigorous course of reading for you, because it's obvious you are not following, nor able to articulate a rational response when confronted with facts.

I suggest you start with about a 7th grade science book, and work up from there.

[rrneck]

66. You don't have to be so touchy. nt

[rrneck]

47. Yeah?

I've been feeling a little lonely lately. Think you could put some in an envelope and send it over?

[Humanist_Activist]

50. If you feel lonely, go out and meet people...

if you suffer from some type of social anxiety, see a doctor, not a priest, they will actually give you some help.

[rrneck]

52. I agree about the doctor

but I was speaking metaphorically to make a point. Can you put love in an envelope?

[Humanist_Activist]

59. I guess it theoratically possible in the future, similar to how happiness can be bundled up...

but usually that's in baggies. :)

[rrneck]

64. People have been doing it for hundreds of years.

It's called a love letter.

But the baggies work too.

[Humanist_Activist]

71. See, that's me taking it too literally...

of course love letters are an expression of love, and can invoke the feeling in the reader as well, but I wouldn't necessarily call it "love in an envelope" as it were though, if that actually was true, then the love letter I wrote to a girl in 8th grade would have gotten a different reaction than the one I actually got.

[rrneck]

72. We'll i kinda snuck up on ya there.

People frequently save love letters for their entire lives and receive comfort from them as if they just gotten them. Just think of all the stuff we save for its sentimental value. How many refrigerators have pictures all over them?

There's an old joke that goes, "That's a helluva axe! Its had two heads and six handles on it!"

People seem to invest emotion and meaning in everything and everyone around them all the time. In fact, those who are unable to do so are considered mentally ill or impaired.

Can science measure and quantify that? Maybe, but I doubt it. There are other ways of letting others know how much something means to us - the arts. It's simply another way of knowing what something means to someone.

[MarkCharles]

53. Another bit of wise advice.

Arguments employing "reductio ad absurdum" as your adversary attempted to do, seldom impress with me.

[rrneck]

55. Soooo

Can you put love in an envelope?

[Thats my opinion]

19. Certainly science is one way to obtain knowledge

But science, like other disciplines, is fluid. What the scientists hold this year may be passe next year. So scientific knowledge is always proximate.
While science is a good way to obtain the latest in some sorts of knowledge, it does not offer wisdom. So knowledge without wisdom is minimally valuable, or even disastrous. Science can tell us how to split the atom, but it cannot tell us why is should or should not be used.

We also accrue knowledge--and--wisdom in interpersonal relationships, awe, humanization, experience, grief, introspection--just to name a few.
So to be knowledgeable and wise calls for a variety of things. Otherwise we end up as one dimensional knowledgeable fools.

[MarkCharles]

21. "But science, like other disciplines, is fluid", I appreciate your thoughts, but..

Fluid is NOT the adjective I would use to describe the discipline.

"More precise", "more revealing", "more accurate", perhaps.

"We also accrue knowledge--and--wisdom in interpersonal relationships, awe, humanization, experience, grief, introspection"

Disagree again, sorry! We weigh the findings of science against the emotional responses we have to the same.

Let me give you a NON-scientific personal example, which might or might NOT prove how I disagree with that.

When I was 36, my 75 year old mother was admitted to a hospital for heart palpitations. Four days later, she was dead.

She suffered a fatal heart attack, while doctors were aggressively treating her phlebitis with drugs later ruled to be "too aggressive" in the treatment of that condition.

She was 30 pounds overweight. Her newly crowned post resident Mass General Hospital doctor thought he was onto some new miracle cures for older folks with heart conditions. His ideas and aggressive treatment killed her. We didn't find this out for about 10 years, as probably a few thousand other unfortunate older patients were treated in the same manner, and suffered or died. When we found that out, 10 years later, she was still dead. What could we do? Nothing! The science of medicine just doesn't have all the answers, but patients today don't suffer the same outcomes that my mother did, not because of "interpersonal relationships, awe, humanization, experience, grief, introspection", but because the discipline of science is neutral to emotion, it relies ONLY upon "evidence".

Am I angry at the science of medicine for not being more precise, for not figuring this out earlier? Of course I am!
But science is not some "fluid" set of beliefs and assumptions. It is a process of refining more and more the scope of what is reasonable, what is possible, what causes harm, and what brings success.

"Interpersonal relationships, awe, humanization, experience, grief, introspection" has nothing to do with advancements in our knowledge. I'll agree it's part of the human experience, I'll give you THAT, but not part of advancements in knowledge in this world.

[Thats my opinion]

40. You can use the word "precise" instead of "fluid"

but that may be a rhetorical ploy. What about the word, "evolved"? Science changes radically from one era to the next--as does every other human discipline, including religion. They evolve. What they say in one generation is not what they say in the next. Medicine was not imprecise, it just didn't have the answers, or had the wrong ones. Religion is often in that spot. But thankfully both disciplines evolve.

[LARED]

56. Seems to me you're moving the goal posts

"Interpersonal relationships, awe, humanization, experience, grief, introspection" has nothing to do with advancements in our knowledge. I'll agree it's part of the human experience, I'll give you THAT, but not part of advancements in knowledge in this world.

Those are not just part of the human experience. They are part of an individuals acquisition and accumulation of knowledge and not always derived via science. Yet your response frames knowledge as a sort of corporate entity derived only from science, a distinction not at all clear in your OP if that was your intention.

[MarkCharles]

57. So I'm extending the goal posts, but you want to add, memories, emotions, and

a bountiful ship filled with each and every human experience to that concept we call "knowledge"?


Aren't you saying EVERY human experience is "knowledge"?

Aren't you confusing the word "knowledge" with "memory" or any "experience"?

Who is moving the goal posts?

[LARED]

58. Every human experience?

I don't think that was even remotely implied.

As a child many of us burned our finger on something hot. We gained valuable knowledge via this experience and memory. All this was without science being required to acquire this knowledge. Of course the next time we burn ourselves on a hot object we don't gain much in the way of knowledge yet we may have a memory of this event.

So my point was not that I am trying to add a "bountiful ship filled with each and every human experience to that concept we call "knowledge"? but rather that there will be individual experiences providing knowledge without science. Also, I am pretty certain that our experience as a basis for acquiring knowledge is hardly a controversial concept. The position that science is the only way to knowledge would be a position needing a rigorous defense.

Your OP states that science is the only way to knowledge. Yet when it is pointed out that there are paths to acquiring knowledge not available "as part of advancements in knowledge in this world" you won't concede this simple point.

[MarkCharles]

60. Personal experience is NOT "knowledge" other than when it conforms to

actual scientific knowledge.

Personal experience is meaningful, consequential, even in conformation with actual knowledge.

But personal experience can also be exactly opposite of scientific knowledge.

Witness people who "believe" excess carbon dioxide is good for planet Earth, or people who eat Chocolate ice cream and don't like it, or people who touch cold stove tops as children and never learn the same lesson that those kids who touch warm stove tops learn.

Individual human experience is NOT "knowledge", it is simply anecdotal moments, some in compliance with generally accepted "knowledge" (hot stoves) some in contradiction to those same moments of "knowing".

I can eat chocolate ice cream, ride a bike, swim or sink in water without the proper skills. None of this is "knowledge": it is human experience. Were we to limit the goal posts of "knowledge: to only what one human child actually experiences, we would have widely divergent primitive folk tales, (e.g. eating shellfish or gay sex is an abomination to the lord) not "knowledge".

[LARED]

69. You are free to define knowledge in any way that suits you

but don't expect others to take you seriously.

As for me I will stick with the accepted definitions.

[rrneck]

23. Science is not fluid.

Science is cumulative. Please do us the courtesy to avoid expressing empirical knowledge in spiritual terms. Next you'll be trying to sell us on creation science.

[MarkCharles]

25. In defense of "Thatsmyopinion" as a poster..and his.her thoughts

I think it was just the choice of an improper adjective.

By use of the word "fluid", I think the meaning was "changing" which fluidity is.

But fluids move in any direction, science works by motion in the same direction, with occasional detours.

Those detours often lead the river to flow in other directions, but never upstream.

[rrneck]

28. You're very kind

but I have found that that particular poster has a history of carefully selected terminology. If he said it, he meant it.

Of course, divining the implications of what he means can be an interesting exercise in whack-a-mole.

Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[Thats my opinion]

43. That is a personal puts down.

i do tend to be careful about terminology. I never intend to be slippery, as your whack-a mole bit suggests. If we are going to have a decent conversation, what you said is not helpful.

[rrneck]

48. It was accurate.

Condescension is a put down.

Solicitation for discussion followed by disregard is a put down.

Fleeing to umbrage in the face of your errors is a put down.

Denying the import of what you say in the face of the text itself is a put down.

Trying to pit one group of people against another based on your own ego is a put down.

Juvenile attempts to dominate the discussion through format changes is a put down.

Challenging others with whom you disagree to prove their worth to society is a put down.

And that's just off the top of my head typing with one finger on a phone.

[Thats my opinion]

42. Science may try to move in the same direction,

but that may be a euphemism
for the wrong direction. At least science is able to admit it.

[Thats my opinion]

see my answer just above nt

[Thats my opinion]

41. see my answer just above nt