Impracticability of Traditional Scientific Methods
Karl Popper realized that the practice of collecting all data without preconceptions as proposed by the traditional scientific method was impossible. Popper instead suggested the following alternative. First, a scientist must find a problem. A scientist has as a guide to problem-seeking his values, beliefs, and prior knowledge. Once a problem is identified, the scientist must literally create his hypothesis any way he can. Often the best hypotheses are created by non-rational ways like insight, inspiration, and intuition. However, this is as far as non-rational thinking can take the scientist. He must now subject his hypothesis to scientific tests and collect empirical evidence in an attempt to prove his theory. If a certain hypothesis were very complex and difficult to test, Popper would determine his experiment using the process of rational deduction, slowly and carefully working from one indubitable statement to its logical conclusions and repeating the process until enough information was gathered.
Logic Impeding Progress
According to philosopher David Hume, when presented with evidence that defies the known laws of the universe (e.g. a miracle), one should dismiss it as false. His reason for this is simple: our thousands of years of past experience overshadow the relatively tiny amount of evidence for the miracle. Therefore we should believe our past experiences and throw out the evidence for the miracle. There is a key flaw in his argument. In practice, the theory inhibits scientific progress. A revolutionary and innovative scientific theory might very well sound like a miracle when first published. Under Hume’s theory, an earth-shattering scientific breakthrough would be dismissed as false because it conflicted with our past experience.
Pragmatism and Science
The pragmatic theory of truth states that a statement is true if it works, if it has good consequences, or if it makes life easier for a person. For example, God exists for you if it benefits you to believe in him. The obvious flaw in this theory is that a statement can be true for one person and false for another. A scientist, dedicated to the search for scientific progress and new knowledge, cannot logically believe in the pragmatic theory of truth. Let’s say a scientist has formulated a hypothesis that proved that homosexuality was caused purely by genetics. If this theory were true, it would drastically change the way gays and lesbians are thought of in the United States. With the knowledge that homosexuality is a “born” trait, the hatred and prejudice that many people harbor towards gays would begin to subside. Realizing the good consequences of his theory, our pragmatic scientist accepts it as absolute truth. His experiments repeatedly disprove his theory, but the scientist overlooks this and publishes a report confirming the relationship between genetics and homosexuality. In doing this, the scientist has contradicted his goal of scientific progress by labeling as truth a theory that has been repeatedly disproved.
Idealism and Reality
The idealistic theory of
perception states that when you experience an object, you are not
experiencing an actual thing but a mental representation of that thing.
Moreover, the objects that the mental images represent do not actually
exist. Objects are merely names we give to bundled sense perceptions.
The whole world to an individual is just a mental slideshow of countless
numbers of mental representations. Finally, the idealistic theory
states that objects can’t exist unperceived, since they are nothing more
than sense perceptions, which can’t exist without someone to experience
them.
There are at least two criticisms of the idealistic
theory of perception. First, it leads to solipsism, the idea that
nothing in the world exists but oneself. If one’s life consists of
nothing more than a film about a world that doesn’t exist, what reason
does one have to believe that the people I encounter in this film exist?
Second, the theory cannot account for objects that do things while no
one perceives them, like fires and ice cubes. One could light a fire,
leave and prevent anyone from looking at the fire, and come back to find
ashes where the logs once were. Similarly, an ice cube will melt
whether it is perceived or not. This seems to disprove the idealistic
theory of perception.