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That is a very 19th-century view that you're expressing (although I know that some popular blogs are espousing this rather quaint view of rationality today[0]). Today, the view is much more nuanced. Science is based on a few assumptions and interpretations that have been the study of what's known as the philosophy of science[1]. Just to get a taste of the difficulty of going from science to knowledge, read about epistemology and, especially, the Gettier problem[2]. The paradox raised by the Gettier problem is not interesting in and of itself, but it strongly ties what we know or think we know about the world, to what we are and what we think. This inseparable connection is a source of more modern views on the relationship between science and knowledge, like phenomenology[2]. If you want to translate these views back to scientific, or mathematical terms, you can see the essential problem a brain — i.e. a computer — introduces into the universe. Due to universal computation, a universe may contain a material approximation (that it is just a finite approximation matters little) that is more general than the containing universe itself (as it can contain any universe), and thus more general than the laws of nature, which are particular to the “host” universe. This makes subjective experience, namely the inner workings of the computer, not secondary to objective experience, namely the laws of the host universe. The mechanical construction of the computer bears little relevance to the to the computation -- or simulation -- the software is carrying out. Truth, therefore, can mean different things depending on which universe you are talking about, and neither can be said to be secondary to the other. The scientific method has, obviously, been extremely useful in uncovering certain types of truths, and extremely unhelpful in uncovering others, that cannot be said to be of less import. Since we live in a world constructed by our software, it makes little sense to say that it is the laws of the host universe that matter more (except in the sense that they can kill us, or interfere with the software, but that only makes them important -- not supremely important). [0]: Although the modern reincarnation justifies itself through utility rather than a deeper philosophical justification, namely, science is useful in the physical world, hence science is the "best" form of knowledge (accepting the supremacy of the physical world as either an axiom, or a materialist belief that smooths over definitions of reduction). You can call this "utilitarian epistemology", namely the view that 'what we know is what we can use'. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(philosophy) |