Marigolds, and the measuring thereof

Inspired by this post in another thread:

Now, there are two ways I could approach that. The first is that believing in a soul doesn't rule out applying SCIENCE to that soul, studying exactly what it's made of and what properties it holds. But I think the second is more interesting.

Does believing that a person is more than just SCIENCE really count for anything? Does it even matter whether or not thoughts and feelings can be studied and explained? (More than we already study and explain them, I mean?)

edited 29th Aug '11 3:39:20 PM by feotakahari

Psychology is indeed a science.

Well to treat a soul as something more than the physical, I'd like a verifiable explanation of one that isn't basically your personality and memories.

"The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together."

I don't believe in a deterministic universe, and science only really works in deterministic settings.

Science is cool, it works in a lot of situations. But, I know that there are things it can't explain yet, and so I can't take its opinion as law.

Point: I doubt we'll ever get to the point where we can predict with 100% accuracy what a single person will do, let alone a large group (though, to be fair, large groups are sometimes a bit easier).

I also doubt scientists will ever stop trying to.

Quantummechanics is science.

Sadly, a human being is not composed entirely of SCIENCE!.

It's composed of atoms.

Edit: and information

edited 29th Aug '11 3:53:54 PM by honorius

Yes they are. It's just soft science.

edited 29th Aug '11 3:53:37 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

This is laughably wrong. Go read up on Quantum Mechanics sometime. I recommend In Search of Schrödinger's Cat by John Gribbin.

If the soul is any kind of tangible item or substance, we'd have found it by now. Which more or less probably rules out any SCIENCE! being done on it...

Does believing that we're more than SCIENCE! get you any bonus points? Depends on what "SCIENCE!" means. If it means that nothing has worth unless it gives to the cause of furthering the pure sciences, then yeah, believing that we're more than that is a good thing. If it means that basically everyone is explainable in some way—even if we don't yet know that way, then, not really. It's all about context. If us not believing we're anything more than atoms means we devalue the individual in the pursuit of the collective goal of SCIENCE! than damn right believing people are more than that makes you the better person. Otherwise, not particularly, though...

edited 29th Aug '11 4:12:04 PM by USAF713

USAF; there is kind of a problem with that statement. Atoms are tangible things, but it took us hundreds of years to find out what those little things were and how they go together to make us.

Not that I think the soul really is tangible, I'm just saying if it is that maybe our science isn't yet advanced enough to perceive it. They haven't yet invented the kind of microscope that can see it.

Anyway, saying that we're more than SCIENCE! seems a rather strange statement. Last I checked, a human individual is not a field of study. But yeah, we are more than the SCIENCE! that is involved in all our biological processes. Those alone don't tend to determine the decisions we make, the circumstances into which we're born, or the billion other factors that happen to us over the course of our lives. Plus, I happen to be an optimist who believes in things like the power of love and God and that we're more than our biology/anatomy.

Science isn't knowledge, it's a process, and a process that's still underway and has been underway for hundreds of years. Just because we don't know something now doesn't mean we won't know it in the future, for a given value of "know". You're absolutely right to not take what science says as law, and theoretically speaking no scientist worth their title does either. Because the whole point of the scientific method is that our knowledge continuously updates itself.

As for believing in more than science (I refuse to capitalize this) having an effect on us... Of course it does. Believing anything has an effect on our behavior. I could believe I'm a duck and start quacking and attacking mirrors. That doesn't mean that I'm a duck or that the theory has value. I could also believe that the Nigerian Prince is a trustworthy individual who I should lend my bank account information to. It's certainly conceivable that certain beliefs improve society in material ways (relative to an individual), but it's very hard to empirically test for that. As far as I know materialists haven't demonstrated a particularly higher crime rate than spiritualists, and indeed many spiritualists justify their crimes by appealing to their beliefs, but it's very hard to tell given the historical development of society in general and how that shapes the premises we grow up with.

edited 29th Aug '11 4:34:22 PM by Clarste

Yes, Ace, but think, how long have we had the technology to detect infinitesimally-sized things? How about forms of radiation?

Either the soul isn't something in the physical world—which, I grant, is a possibility—or it's completely removed from current understandings of physcis and chemistry, etc. Either way, we won't be doing SCIENCE! on a soul for a long time, if at all...

Now I can't help picturing a scientist trying to dissect a soul, in a manner not unlike how the Decepticon leader took out that one psycho lackey's spark.

My mind goes strange places sometimes. That thought terrifies me.

And that is why pure science—science for the sake of science—is something I usually detest...

Well as long as ethics are in place, there won't be any such dissecting.

However, I'm not entirely sure what it means that a human is worth more than just the "science". Science does not assign any value to anything. That's up to humans to decide.

Science is plainly not all there is. If it were, "science" would mean "universe" and "to be scientific" would be the same as "to be".

I don't think that argument follows. Let's see...

(0. "A belief that has an effect on the believer is to be treated a rational")

1. A believes in hypothesis Q.

2. A's belief in hypothesis Q has an effect on A.

3. From (0. and 2.) Q is to be treated as a rational theory.

If you add the bits in brackets, the argument's form holds, but I would still demand an explanation of why 0 is a valid proposition. To me, it doesn't seem so.

Let's test this...

(0. "A belief that has an effect on the believer is to be treated a rational")

1. Alan believes that squirrels are actually vampires that are out for his blood.

1.1. Because of (1.) Alan does what he can to avoid encounters with squirrels.

1.2. The behaviour described in (1.1.) has an effect on Alan.

2. From (1.2.) Alan's belief that squirrels are actually vampires that are out for his blood has an effect on Alan.

3. (from 0. and 2.) Alan's belief that squirrels are actually vampires that are out for his blood is rational.

See? Looks like I demonstrated that the premise of the original argument was false.

To discuss the issue of whether or not there is more to us than "SCIENCE" (which, in this case, I assume to mean the laws of nature and the effects thereof that define this Universe, but limited to the parts that can be considered to form a person,) it would seem to me that any hypothesis that there is "more" to us than that would need proof before we are to introduce it into our understanding of the Universe.

Even if we don't know everything about nature, we can still suggest with a relatively high certainty that we probably are products of nature and part of it in our entirety. This claim is based on our previous success in determining a natural cause for most of the phenomena we have studied, and the advances that we've made regarding the study of humans throughout our history (with heavy emphasis on recent history).

Without suggesting anything like that, merely conceding that, despite all of the things that we do know, we don't know exactly what we are composed of - (though I personally don't believe this to be the case, if we're willing to allow a reasonable degree of uncertainty regarding the precise measures) - and that we don't know exactly how our bodies and the phenomena therein work, leaves us only with the statement: "We don't know how exactly our bodies work and of what exactly the human body is composed (but we do know a lot.)" Note that there is no mention of non-natural entities or phenomena, and if such are to be introduced, they will need to come with sufficient evidence for us to include them in our understanding.

Yes well, we need to make sure ethics are considered in everything we do. We can attempt to measure the soul all we want so long as no one actually gets hurt.

Though I suppose this would cause a furor even greater than that of stem cell research.

Actually, that makes something else occur to me. If all we are is a learning process than are any of us actually worth anything but the facts we can learn? I'm pretty sure no one's ever going to learn anything valuable from me, but I'm also pretty sure my family loves me anyway.

Value is something which people assign, and isn't determined by a single specific criterion.

Personally I'd like to dissect a soul. If possible, I'd donate my own soul to be dissected. Not sure how this is unethical.

There is a differnce between "everything is SCIENCE" and "everything can be explained by science".

Value is a concept that exists only in our head. If there were no entities capable of understanding the concept of "value", there would be no "value"; concepts don't have an existence outside of the minds that contain them.

"Unless they do"... Well, uhh... Yeah, I guess so. Can't prove a negative, and all that jazz. "Unless they do". I have to emphasise, though, that I agree with the way you ended your post.

edited 29th Aug '11 4:55:33 PM by BestOf

Unless they do. But they probably don't.