[lisper]

> It is what natural sciences branched off of.

Yes, that's true. But it wasn't science before the branching, and what is left over after the branching is not science either.

> Oxford dictionary starts with “it is a science…”, why do you say it is not?

Math is a tool used by science, but it is not in and of itself a science (with a few exceptions). The reason is that this discussion is taking place within the context of a specific definition of science that requires experimental data to verify or refute hypotheses. Math generally doesn't fit that definition.

> Scientific method ... cannot make a statement about “underlying reality” ...

Yes, all that is true.

> A position that molecules is what causes us to flourish or not, meanwhile, is textbook physicalism.

No, it's a testable hypothesis with a lot of supporting evidence.

[strogonoff]

> what is left over after the branching is not science either

Yes. I’d say philosophy is not science in the same sense music is not drumming.

> this discussion is taking place within the context of a specific definition of science that requires experimental data to verify or refute hypotheses

Did we agree to that specific definition? If so, my bad, but I don’t recall that. Also, what are some other definitions available?

In any case, there are natural sciences, and there are other kinds of sciences that are not less important, and potentially more so depending on one’s values.

> No, it's a testable hypothesis with a lot of supporting evidence.

Not as far as I know.

There are plenty of so-called “proofs” that include things like cutting or stimulating parts of the brain seemingly causing changes in mind-state, but they obviously miss the part where the very cutting or the stimulating is caused by mind-state in the first place—i.e., they all presuppose materialism without even realizing it.

What is a way to definitively prove or falsify idealism or materialism that is available to us, without presupposing either idealism or materialism in the first place?

What is one piece of hard evidence that actually works as evidence to prove materialism without presupposing materialism?

[lisper]

> Philosophy is not science in the same sense art is not music

No, that is not at all the same thing. There was not a field of human intellectual endeavor called "art" which begat music. A much better analogy is that philosophy is not science in the same sense that alchemy is not chemistry, or astrology is not astronomy, or banging on a hollow log with a stick is not playing the violin.

> Did we agree to that specific definition?

This discussion is taking place in a thread whose topic is a blog post which defends that specific definition. So no, we didn't explicitly agree to it, but it's a reasonable assumption, a generally understood part of the HN social contract.

> What is one piece of hard evidence that actually works as evidence to prove materialism

Materialism is not the testable hypothesis. The testable hypothesis is "molecules is what causes us to flourish." And I should have said "falsifiable" not testable. The way you falsify it would be to demonstrate some aspect of human flourishing that cannot be explained as the actions of molecules.

[strogonoff]

> A much better analogy is that philosophy is not science in the same sense that alchemy is not chemistry, or astrology is not astronomy

Not at all. Astrology is irrelevant, whereas philosophy is quite relevant in the sense that it is an integral part of scientific activity and takes place despite certain people forgetting that they do it even while doing it.

> or banging on a hollow log with a stick is not playing the violin

Yes, I actually edited my comment to provide a better analogy: philosophy is not science in the same sense music is not drumming.

> Materialism is not the testable hypothesis. The testable hypothesis is "molecules is what causes us to flourish."

These follow from one another. If you claim that molecules are the cause of some phenomena taking place in your mind, which flourishing, self-actualisation, happiness, suffering, etc. all are, then you implicitly claim materialism.

For anyone who claims that mind-state is the cause, you can claim that it is in fact the consequence (or an illusion, as some do), and it will be your word against theirs.

That’s where it stops being a scientific experiment and becomes a higher-level philosophical argument where testability is, unfortunately, out of our reach, but we can still judge theories by their elegance and logical soundness.

> The way you falsify it would be to demonstrate some aspect of human flourishing that cannot be explained as the actions of molecules

As above, if you claim that there is some aspect of flourishing that cannot be explained as “actions of molecules” (I would be hard-pressed to ascribe any agency to molecules, personally) you would likely be implicitly adopting monistic idealism (or some sort of dualism, which I personally find dubious due to even more drastic lack of elegance than in monistic materialism), and that is not testable since to anyone who claims that mind-state is the consequence you can very simply point out how it can be the cause—and since neither way can be proven or disproven, it is once again a higher-level philosophical argument.

That argument is more fundamental and more important, actually, than predicting some molecular activity or the like; and before you object, using the fact that scientific method is as of now limited and unable to provide evidence either way can’t serve as a justification for calling the question itself unimportant if we were to have this discussion with any rigour and truth-seeking determination (as opposed to mere desire to socially signal or appear “right”).

[lisper]

> philosophy is quite relevant

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about that.

> you implicitly claim materialism

Nope. In fact, I actually do claim all of these things while at the same time denying materialism because quantum mechanics. Molecules don't really exist, just like the force of gravity doesn't really exist. Both are just very good approximations.

> For anyone who claims that mind-state is the cause

The cause of what?

You don't have to get into consciousness at all. Food and water, for example, are clearly integral to human flourishing, and you don't have to get into any metaphysical woo to defend that position.

> That’s where it stops being a scientific experiment

That's just nonsense. Malnutrition and dying of thirst obviously yield to straightforward scientific inquiry.

Like I said, if you want to argue otherwise, the burden is on you to demonstrate some aspect of human flourishing that does not yield to scientific inquiry. I'll bet you can't do it.

[strogonoff]

If you forget to drink water while working for many hours, you may feel dehydrated and poorly. If you remember to drink water, you feel better.

Drinking water clearly causes a change in your mind-state. However, drinking water is something you decide (or forget) to do, i.e. it’s obviously caused by your mind in the first place (or that of your partner or another person helpfully bringing you a glass). However, we can further speculate that said mind is, in turn, affected by certain chemical interactions (approximations of something external to those minds), and even call the general existence of minds into question. Yet further, we could treat that chemical reaction as, in turn, derivable from (or be a representation of) mind-states, yours or otherwise, further down the line.

You can see how as far as scientific method is concerned this gets nowhere very quickly—it’s unfalsifiable and outside of what scientific method is equipped to help us with (not a bug, since it’s by design).

Naively, it seems that best we could do is 1) acknowledge that uncertainty and perhaps 2) pick a point in the above chain, reason why to believe that point is not arbitrary, and explicitly adopt that as a philosophical position.

> I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about that.

We can simply do that, though I did attempt to provide a justification for my position. Philosophy, whether done explicitly or implicitly, always informed the application of scientific method.

[lisper]

> we can further speculate that said mind is, in turn, affected by certain chemical interactions (approximations of something external to those minds)

Indeed, there is quite a bit of evidence to support this hypothesis.

> and even call the general existence of minds into question

Well, you can call anything into question, but there is quite a bit of evidence for the existence of minds.

> we could treat that chemical reaction as, in turn, derivable from (or be a representation of) mind-states

Well, I suppose we could, but again there is quite a bit of evidence that the causality of that particular mechanism (if I'm understanding you correctly -- you are being pretty imprecise here) runs in the other direction.

> You can see how as far as scientific method is concerned this gets nowhere very quickly

Sorry, no, I don't see that at all. AFAICT the way in which minds arise from chemistry is pretty well understood. In fact, it is sufficiently well understood that we are on the cusp of being able to create artificial minds that are not based on chemistry.

> Naively, it seems that best we could do is 1) acknowledge that uncertainty

Sorry, no, I don't see any uncertainty to acknowledge.

> I did attempt to provide a justification for my position.

Yes, but I think your attempt has failed.