“Science is not political?”

Objective knowledge differs from subjective knowledge.

published 17 February, 2014 (Portland, OR) © Peter Rugh, Public Intellectual

I wrote this (on facebook, with not a completely public profile) in response to a link posted by MediaMatters.org (link to their web page), and decided that it deserved more publicity.

Science is not a political debate?

Actually, mainstream "science" is certainly political (politics extending ethics from conceptual knowledge, e.g., the Hippocratic Oath to "do no harm," while treating pain, following the Epicurean virtue to "avoid pain" because pain hurts), but facts are not susceptible to debate. Allow me to articulate what is meant by "fact," please, I so politely ask?

Science is applied knowledge (justified true belief in the evidence of sensation or reasoning) for the sake of discovering more facts, often motivated by recognizing what is known from whatever is not known (science is characteristically experimental, but not exclusively experimental).

Cause for frustration lay in the condition that science is generally a particular development of individual scientists, especially where conclusively experimental demonstration proves evidence in virtue of justified true belief, even though that may be exotic (or "esoteric"), since such scientific learning, or scientific knowledge (which makes the word "knowledge" redundant), is made available to lesser trained people.

Calling ourselves scientists is unnecessary, EXCEPT in any political context, because there are people who are not only lesser trained in politics, but also heavily in disfavor of science (and they notoriously refer to themselves as "spiritual," "religious," or "subordinate to a higher power").

In the activity of science, however, a scientists does NOT necessarily wait for permission from any higher authority, and there in lay the controversy of moral freedom, because morality is supposed to control freedom, and it does, but we cannot accept magic as an an explanation, now can we?

"But it's all for the children!"

Adults are making laws, right now, that affect who successfully has a family or not, before those families ever have children, by proscribing moral freedom in fear, ignorance and rejection, rather than acceptance, education, and ethics. It's really sick, too, because these very same people demand hospitalization and medical cures, receive it like magic, and care nothing for the moral reality of scientific knowledge. They are, dressed in a cloak of politeness, closet assholes.

Truth is a statement of fact, but is not limited to physical evidence in virtue of justified true belief, since it need only be meaningfully validated as consistently meaningful (which fairly describes the "coherence theory of truth"). Evidence may come in the form of language, alone, and that is the nature of rationality to discover, determine, and liberate howsoever minds can.

Facts, however, exist independent of language to describe them, which differs as evidence of either objectivity or subjectivity, but also preponderates the condition that true statements may be made about those facts, or else truth is disqualified.

Debating dead horses is no fun, right? But we are not really debating the death of horses, rather, we are trying to rescue knowledge from its rejection.

Objective knowledge differs from subjective knowledge.

Objective knowledge is knowledge that anyone may obtain irrespective of anything subjectively meaningful to them.

Subjective knowledge is knowledge about a person, people, class, or society, or in toto relevant exclusively to human being, e.g., skin color, eye color, ethnicity, religion, politics, economics, social science, anthropology, sociology, sociobiology, biopsychology, and so on. If a human is required for something to be meaningful, then it is inherently subjective and cannot escape that subjectivity (which is problematic, because, as rational beings, we do not want to seduce ourselves into thinking we are the center of the universe and everything that is possible, because we would pretend to be gods, or else pretend that there are gods).

I want to point out that the "coherence theory of truth" (wikipedia link; so-called because it doesn't require corresponding meaningfulness between language and objective reality, but may pervasively preponderate subjective knowledge) fails to sustain itself. Something is always intruding such alleged coherence, but also subjectivity never lacks contrast with objectivity.

I feel like I am riddling people.

Knowledge is rational, not because the world is rational, but because the mind is rational, but not all knowledge is obtained solely by reason alone.

You must accept some language and reject other language in the minds natural economy of reasoning, for us to exert ourselves with confidence, but also we should be cautious of being seduced by falsehoods, e.g., self-contradictions or paradox.

Treating this lightly, if treated at all, shouldn't be left to advertising, and you won't hear it in church. You will hear it in your own head reading my words, as a political activity of deciding what to believe should be done and doing that, i.e., doing something is required of politics, at a bare minimum discussing how to make policy (which, for us, is by majority rule, and that majority had better be effing smart or crash the whole thing).

Does this mean that the Conservative "right" and their uneducated children deserve to be defended by slaves? Well? Don't make me shake you outta your comfy sleep!