Thread: The Limitations of Science and the Danger of Scientism

Originally Posted by really

And how is this approach any different than a talented musician doing the same thing? There is potentially an audience for whatever sound you're going to make. Science is not essential to art at all. An artist who knows their audience already knows what they like, and often that just happens naturally.

It wouldn't be, if that's what musicians were doing. A musician crafts his music either based on (a) what he or she personally likes, or (b) what he or she guesses that the listener will like. Clearly this works out fine, and everyone would agree that music is an extremely enjoyable experience, but the process that a musician goes through in composing and performing music has nothing to do with science.

Originally Posted by DuB

It wouldn't be, if that's what musicians were doing. A musician crafts his music either based on (a) what he or she personally likes, or (b) what he guesses that the listener will like. Clearly this works out fine, and everyone would agree that music is an extremely enjoyable experience, but the process that a musician goes through in composing and performing music has nothing to do with science.

Not 'nothing to do with science,' but to an extent. '(b) what he guesses that the listener will like.' is not what normally happens. A good artist knows the trends; knows their audience, but doesn't guess them. There is a science behind it but it is subtler and also it is often intuitive. Nevertheless, my question should have really been worded in the likes of "Having considered the enormous number of variables, what is the relevance of doing a study as compared to an artist just making music?"

Originally Posted by really

Not 'nothing to do with science,' but to an extent. '(b) what he guesses that the listener will like.' is not what normally happens. A good artist knows the trends; knows their audience, but doesn't guess them. There is a science behind it but it is subtler and also it is often intuitive. Nevertheless, my question should have really been worded in the likes of "Having considered the enormous number of variables, what is the relevance of doing a study as compared to an artist just making music?"

An artist would surely like to think that they "know the trends" and that they can tell what people will like, but at the end of the day they're just guessing. There is not a science behind it at all; no systematicity, no theory building, no randomization or control trials, nothing like that.

And to answer your reworded question, I'm not recommending that this is how music ought to be made. That's an awful lot of work to do something which people do just fine all the time by simply winging it. What I'm saying is that the option is available to us, and that we might learn something interesting from approaching music this way--in other words, the question is within the purview of science, which is the point of this discussion.

Originally Posted by DuB

An artist would surely like to think that they "know the trends" and that they can tell what people will like, but at the end of the day they're just guessing. There is not a science behind it at all; no systematicity, no theory building, no randomization or control trials, nothing like that.

How good artists go about determining what will sound good primarily depends on who they're doing it for, and the way they go about this takes many shapes and forms, but of course this is still generalizing. I still don't see what is so special about doing 'science'; at the end of the day it may still be considered guessing too. The strategy to please others is there regardless of what we call it, and often it is going to be different for everybody.

Originally Posted by DuB

And to answer your reworded question, I'm not recommending that this is how music ought to be made. That's an awful lot of work to do something which people do just fine all the time by simply winging it. What I'm saying is that the option is available to us, and that we might learn something interesting from approaching music this way--in other words, the question is within the purview of science, which is the point of this discussion.

Right, well that is true. I thought that was common sense though. Anything beyond the scope of learning about an individual's influence however, it tends to become far too complex.

Originally Posted by really

I still don't see what is so special about doing 'science'; at the end of the day it may still be considered guessing too.

We may indeed call it a form of guessing, but it seems obvious that it's a very different kind of guessing than saying "I bet they will like X," and then doing X, and then calling it a day. There's nothing inherently "special" about science; in a way, it's just a way of crafting the process and nature of our guessing so as to make it maximally effective and most likely to get us the answers we want. Hypothesis testing is optimal guessing.

Originally Posted by really

Right, well that is true. I thought that was common sense though.

Evidently not.

Originally Posted by Dannon Oneironaut

Well, creationists also have a problem with science's age of the Earth. And the speed of light is testable. But you are preaching to the choir here. I believe in evolution. I am not a creationist. I think that the point is that such conclusions are outside the territory of the scientific method. I am not saying that it means that it isn't true. Evolution is true, but it isn't science.

This is where I stopped reading. Seriously?

Science is a method for analyzing and predicting events in physical reality. It is a very useful tool, but if you are not trying to analyze or predict events in physical reality, it won't be much use to you. The best way to find those areas of human experience that science doesn't apply to is to look for the things that scientists like to say don't exist. Meaning, purpose, and conscious experience are all good examples. This last one is a good one, because it is not as widely accepted in the scientific community as the others, and this means that the scientists that say that conscious experience doesn't exist are incapable of using the scientific method to prove it to those scientists that do not agree.

As far as the claims that science is equipped to deal with such issues as art and music, the proof is in the pudding in those aspects of life. What can you show me? What great masterpieces has science created? It would be my argument that there are none, and there cannot be any either since science is not a discipline of creation. Science is in the business of what is, and "what could be", but does not venture into "what will be". Science and Technology are too very different things. Science can influence art, music, meaning, purpose, technology, etc. but can never come to encompass these things completely. We will never say, "why have artists, we have scientists?" or lose touch with the meaning of art because all of artistic discipline and appreciation has fallen under the definition of Science.

It is an extreme example, but it is a case in point. Not until there are no words but "Science" can we ever say that science does not have limitations, since there are obviously other concepts that we use to communicate and describe the world around us. There are things that we know and experience that are not analyzable but they are hard to talk about because they are not included in the model of our reality (which is what science is designed to deal with) and I mean that personally as well as culturally. Unless you are one of those people that deny the existence of conscious experience, I think you'll agree that you have experienced something that you are unable to put to words. It is those things that we cannot even speak of that are completely outside the realm of science, as well as those other aspects of our lives that are so heavily influenced by these unspeakable experiences; art, meaning, purpose, etc.

Science affects these areas of our lives, but it cannot encompass them and this is how science is limited. It should be an obvious and harmless statement to make.

I am always on my gaurd when anthropomorphisms are so freely used. I hardly think a discussion is worth the words or effort when these anthropomorphisms are the real center of contention--disguise the real faults--the real misunderstandings--and promote the most absurd judgments.

Used by who? Care to elaborate?

When one studies meaning by statements, it is a knack that is developed. One can judge something of anothers level of comprehension by the use and frequency of anthropomorphisms. The first example is in the Title of this thread and continue throughout the given references.

Nice location, I was born there.

EDIT: I responded before I saw that there was a whole second page! So my response is to the last couple of posts on page 1

Well, I disagree, of course. I think that actually feeling the music emotionally is deeper than analyzing it mentally. When you think about music with mental concepts, you don't hear it as well as when you bypass the mental filter and let it go directly to your emotions. That is why a lot of technically trained musicians lack soul in their music.

But I get your point. I also analyze why some people like aggressive music, while some people like romantic music, and some people like light rock, and some people like smooth jazz. I think that people who like Pop music haven't developed a sophisticated ear to appreciate the subtleties of better quality music.

But there's no reason why we have to restrict ourselves to low-level questions about which resolutions seem to work best (we already have music theory for that!). Which instruments are the most pleasing? Which tempos are the best at fostering which moods? For a given style or a given song, do people prefer complex drum beats or minimal ones? Once again, these are empirical questions, and approaching them systematically can yield answers that are not obvious. (Again, I am downplaying the important factor of individual differences, but these can be taken into account in just as systematic a way. It's just a whole lot of extra work.)....

Musicians do this.
And of course the wider the audience, the more mainstream the music is.
Generally, melodic musical instruments are supposed to imitate the human voice.
Of course each instrument has a different timber that imitates a different aspect of the voice.
The instruments considered to be the closest to the human voice are the cello, viola, flute, and the Indian instrument the serengi.

Of course in Rock music the distorted guitar imitates screaming and grunting, thus expressing more primal emotions. I think that it falls closer into the realm of psychology.

@thegnome54: I like the link that you provided in your post. That is relevant to the discussion about music as well. That not all information is physical information.

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal chords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’.… What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then is it inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. Ergo there is more to have than that, and Physicalism is false.
The argument contained in this passage may be put like this:

(1) Mary has all the physical information concerning human color vision before her release.
(2) But there is some information about human color vision that she does not have before her release.

Therefore

(3) Not all information is physical information.

{Some} say that qualia are not natural kind terms in that it is not up to the sciences to tell us what having an experience of a particular kind amounts to (we know what it amounts to by having them and attending to the quality at issue).

the whole article is very interesting and in my opinion points out an important limitation to natural science that applies to many areas of life.
However, I think that there must be a way for science to investigate subjective things but that would involve changing the scientific method a little, which unfortunately might have undesirable effects on the validity of the evidence. And it wouldn't be called "science".
So possibly there needs to be another branch of science with its own method just for subjective states. I don't know, maybe psychology falls into this category. But I don't think that psychology covers all possible subjective states.
Well, reading Freud, Jung, and Stanislov Grof is very thorough. I would like to see more experiments with lucid dreaming but from a subjective experience. I guess that is what one of the things here at dreamviews aims to do. Task of the Month, etc.

Originally Posted by DuB

Hey, a relevant question. For one, it can't answer questions about morality. All the cause-and-effect facts in the world are not sufficient to render an action moral or immoral; that is for each person to decide. (Although see here for an interesting and provocative argument to the contrary.)

I didn't like that talk. He states in the beginning that he thinks the question of a moral right or wrong
being subjective is dangerous and we have 'actually been brought to believe that there is no objective
morality'. I would argue the opposite and say that his approach has dangerous implications. Well,.. I
think there is a reason, why only 'religious fundamentalists seem agree with him there.' (His words)

In regards to the discussion, I see science as basically just a method. Sometimes there are tendencies
to a scientific fundamentalism, but this is actually anti-scientific by definition and has little to do with
the method itself. Art and music you can surely discuss through a scientific approach, but it's certainly
not the only way to to do so. I don't understand this dichotomy, when it's simply just an additional
and optional viewpoint that is provided. It's just one of the many ways of looking at things.

Lol: