[dist-epoch]

> scientific epistemology

Science can't tell us so far what really exists. It can only predict experiments. To put it in more common terms, "is the wave function real or not?", or "do quantum fields really exist, or are just elegant mathematical abstractions for explaining experiments?"

Or as others say "shut up and calculate".

[pdonis]

> It can only predict experiments.

Your "only" here makes it seem like predicting experiments is a narrow thing. It's not. All of the modern technologies we have--including the computers we're all using to post here--are based on science "predicting experiments"--but the "experiments" are things like building computers, or the Internet, or the GPS system. The fact that all those things work exactly as our science predicts makes it very hard to view that science as "only predicting experiments". It's telling us how to use real things to build real technologies that have real impacts on people's lives.

[bheadmaster]

Not only that - one could argue that all observed phenomena are experiments, and the way we behave in the world is based on predicting them.

A religious person - if not honest enough to simply say "existence of God is an axiom and cannot be derived from reason alone" - uses the very predictions of experiments to reason God into existence: everything that exists has a cause; universe exists; therefore universe has a cause.

[lo_zamoyski]

Epistemically speaking, the existence of God is not axiomatic. Your second claims is more accurate, though not entirely. Knowledge of God's existence is derived from observed features of reality. However, these features are very general and not scientific per se; rather, they are presupposed by empirical science. Examples include the reality of change, causality (especially per se vs. what science is generally concerned with, per accidens), or the existence of things. The denial of these general features would undermine not just the possibility of science, but the very intelligibility of the world. You would hang yourself by your own skepticism.

These are also not axiomatically accepted features either (except perhaps in the sense that they are in relation to the empirical sciences, as science presupposes their existence).

[bheadmaster]

> Knowledge of God's existence is derived from observed features of reality.

If it were so, God's existence would be just another scientific fact.

[lo_zamoyski]

Did you read my entire post? I already explained to you why this isn't the case. We known that, for example, change is real through general observation, but it is not something belonging to any empirical science per se. Rather, it is presupposed by each of those sciences.

Of course, the classical definition of "science" is more expansive, including what would be the most general science - metaphysics - so in that sense, yes, you can say the existence of God is a "scientific fact". (God here is self-subsisting being, not some ridiculous "sky fairy" straw man of New Atheist imagination.)

[bheadmaster]

Yes I did, but the rest of the comment hangs on the initial claim I replied to.

If you redefine God to mean "fundamental assumptions of the universe", its existence becomes tautological. But that is not what most people mean (including the author of the article we're commenting on) when they say "God".

[TheOtherHobbes]

That's a straightforwardly circular argument - creating your own definition, then using it as a proof.

Change is not presupposed by science. Various experiences/models of change are described by science, which is not the same thing at all.

There are block universe interpretations of cosmology which do not require change.

[pdonis]

> Examples include the reality of change, causality (especially per se vs. what science is generally concerned with, per accidens), or the existence of things.

How do any of these things allow you to derive knowledge of God's existence?

[dist-epoch]

> It's telling us how to use real things to build real technologies that have real impacts on people's lives.

That's the popular definition of the word "real".

But this article is about the philosophical meaning of the word "real". And from that viewpoint science hasn't delivered yet, science doesn't know yet what "really exists out there", it can only predict how that thing behaves in experiments.

[pdonis]

> this article is about the philosophical meaning of the word "real".

If the philosophical meaning of "real" admits that computers, the Internet, and the GPS system are real, then I don't see what grounds it has for rejecting that things like transistors and electrons and other such underlying things are real as well, since transistors and electrons and other such underlying things are what we build computers, the Internet, and the GPS system out of.

If the philosophical meaning of "real" casts doubt on whether computers, the Internet, and the GPS system are "real", then why should we care about it?

> from that viewpoint science hasn't delivered yet

If science hasn't, then neither has anything else.

[TheOtherHobbes]

It does neither. The philosophical meaning of "real" is exactly the process of exploring the various possible definitions.

And it leads to the observation that our experience of reality is not objective, not absolute, and is likely very species-specific.

A cat can sit on a laptop without understanding the laptop or the Internet. All it experiences is a warm object

Is it rational or realistic to assume we don't have analogous perceptual and conceptual limitations which - of course - we're not aware of?

[pdonis]

> Is it rational or realistic to assume we don't have analogous perceptual and conceptual limitations

I never claimed we don't have perceptual and conceptual limitations. Indeed, recognizing that we do should make us extremely wary of "philosophical" concepts like "real" that appear to go beyond the obvious pragmatic definitions that I described, that are grounded in what we can actually do with things.

[lo_zamoyski]

Pragmatism as a broad, basic, and reductive view of knowledge is self-refuting and incoherent. If "truth is what is useful" or "what works," you face a self-refutation problem. If you claim something is just "useful" rather than objectively true, then it has no authority. If it is claimed as objectively true, it contradicts the pragmatic premise that truth isn't a relation to reality. And what is "useful", anyhow? Is usefulness useful?

[huertouisj]

you are confused.

the question is about what does fundamentally exist, not what you perceive through eyes or experiments.

do particles exist or not? is it all just in your imagination because you are a "brain in a vat?" what about the everettian multi-verse, is that real or not?

by saying these SCIENTIFIC questions are trivial to answer because you can hold a GPS receiver in your hand is to completly misunderstand what is being discussed here

nobody said something else deliverd on this question. but neither did science. it's the consensus in physics right now that it can't say what "really exists", this is not a fringe position

[pdonis]

> you are confused

No, I'm not. I'm just not drinking the "philosophical" Kool-Aid.

> do particles exist or not?

What difference does it make? What should I expect to see if particles "exist", that I should not expect to see if they don't?

> what about the everettian multi-verse, is that real or not?

Same question as above.

> by saying these SCIENTIFIC questions

If you can't answer the questions I posed above about what difference it makes, on what grounds are you saying such questions are scientific?

> are trivial to answer

I made no such claim. You are attacking a straw man.

> it's the consensus in physics right now that it can't say what "really exists"

I completely agree.

But you appear to think this is a flaw in science. I think it'a a flaw in the question "what really exists?" And as far as I can tell, that's what most physicists who hold the "consensus" position you describe think as well.

[mejari]

>Science can't tell us so far what really exists.

Only inasmuch as nothing can tell us what "really" exists. By any practical definitions of any of the words in that sentence science is the best way of determining what exists.

[IAmBroom]

... which is still far more than religion can provably do.