Truth is subjective?

Another sign of decadence in our society? Is academic postmodernism where truth is subjective engulfing and degrading science? Maybe this is the end of "science", the search for truth, as we know it. If this philosophy had been followed from the start, our present knowledge and technology would not exist. The founders of modern science based their endeavors on a firm conviction derived from their heritage that there exists a Divine order which man has been enabled to discover and utilize.

Article, "Pluralism: Beyond the One and Only Truth", by John Horgan, at https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro...nly-truth/ :

"I was what philosophers sneeringly call a naïve realist, who thinks scientific questions have a single, correct answer, which reflects reality, how things really are. But my views have shifted. Now I suspect that certain big questions might not have a single, definitive answer. They might have lots of possible answers, an idea I once considered oxymoronic. This position is called theoretical pluralism. 
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...my view has evolved. In my book Mind-Body Problems, I argue that there is and never will be a single, objectively true solution to the mind-body problem. There are many and maybe even an infinite number of solutions, including ones still unconceived. You may prefer an information-based theory, a strange-loop model or a quantum hypothesis, but your choice is subjective, a matter of taste, not truth.
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I suspect our debates over materialism, the mind-body problem and the meaning of quantum mechanics will never be resolved. Neither will our debates over God and free will, the epistemological status of moral or mathematical claims, the origin and ultimate destiny of the cosmos, the possibility of other universes. These conundrums are strands within the big, knotty meta-mystery of our existence. We should be grateful that this meta-mystery does not have a single, objectively true solution, because that means we can keep inventing new solutions, solutions that astound us, that make us see the world anew, forever."

Another sign of decadence in our society? Is academic postmodernism where truth is subjective engulfing and degrading science? Maybe this is the end of "science", the search for truth, as we know it. If this philosophy had been followed from the start, our present knowledge and technology would not exist. The founders of modern science based their endeavors on a firm conviction derived from their heritage that there exists a Divine order which man has been enabled to discover and utilize.

Article, "Pluralism: Beyond the One and Only Truth", by John Horgan, at https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro...nly-truth/ :

I wouldn't get too excited. One thing history has taught us is that opining about what an answer is going to look like, before you have it, is dumb. Also, philosophers know squat about science.

Linda

I wouldn't get too excited. One thing history has taught us is that opining about what an answer is going to look like, before you have it, is dumb. Also, philosophers know squat about science.

Linda

Really? People with qualifications similar to Bernardo Kastrup might disagree.

Really? People with qualifications similar to Bernardo Kastrup might disagree.

Generally speaking they know squat. Just as most scientists don't know philosophy.

Really? People with qualifications similar to Bernardo Kastrup might disagree.

I’m not sure where you’re going with that. Bernardo doesn’t seem to know much about science either. 

Linda

"Bernardo Kastrup has a PhD in computer engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology and specializes in artificial intelligence and reconfigurable computing. He has worked as a scientist in some of the leading research laboratories, including the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and Philips Research Laboratories. Bernardo Kastrup has written many scientific papers and books on philosophy and natural sciences."

 -https://www.freewiki.eu/en/index.php?title=Bernardo_Kastrup


See also his Scientific American articles.


That said I can think of times when philosophers got egg on their face b/c they weren't willing to go along with the science or didn't have a good understanding of science & philosophy working in tandem:

1. Dennet's folly in writing Breaking the Spell as a polemic against religion. It might seem convincing until one reads Cognitive scientist Armin W. Geertz's comments:

"....A recent book by philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, called Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York 2006) is a catastrophe if our goal is to persuade skeptics of the advantages of cognitive approaches to the study of religion - or even just introduce cognition to the curious! Dennett seems to be hellishly bent on turning his readers off. I would say that about 40% ofthe book is an inelegant, polemical attack on religion and religious people. He claims to be using all those pages to persuade intolerant religious people to read his book.

I used to think that philosophers by definition are sophisticated thinkers, gifted in the art of persuasive argument, valiantly exposing hidden assumptions and opaque meanings. But I am wrong.

What Dennett has done is a disservice to the entire neuroscientific community.

If people were skeptical before his book came out, they will be downright hostile ftom now on, and the rest of us in the cognitive science of religion will have to pay the price!

The worst thing about the book is that the cognitive part is poorly done..."

2. Dennet, again, trying to claim lobsters are robotic and thus so are we - corrected by the anthropologist Graeber:

Reconsider the lobster. Lobsters have a very bad reputation among philosophers, who frequently hold them out as examples of purely unthinking, unfeeling creatures. Presumably, this is because lobsters are the only animal most philosophers have killed with their own two hands before eating. It’s unpleasant to throw a struggling creature in a pot of boiling water; one needs to be able to tell oneself that the lobster isn’t really feeling it. (The only exception to this pattern appears to be, for some reason, France, where Gérard de Nerval used to walk a pet lobster on a leash and where Jean-Paul Sartre at one point became erotically obsessed with lobsters after taking too much mescaline.) But in fact, scientific observation has revealed that even lobsters engage in some forms of play—manipulating objects, for instance, possibly just for the pleasure of doing so. If that is the case, to call such creatures “robots” would be to shear the word “robot” of its meaning. Machines don’t just fool around. But if living creatures are not robots after all, many of these apparently thorny questions instantly dissolve away.

3. Patricia Churchland, who claimed Orch-OR was only as scientific as pixie dust - she was corrected by anesthesiologist Stuart Hammeroff. 

More egregiously, her beliefs were further shown to be mistaken when Anirban Bandyopadhyay discovered quantum vibrations in the microtubules just as Orch-OR predicted.

See also the further work on anesthesia & the possibility of quantum mind.

Had scientists restricted their research to Churchland's neurophilosophy science would have suffered.

4. Churchland's philosophy has also been criticized by the accomplished philosopher & neuroscientist Raymond Tallis:



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Another sign of decadence in our society? Is academic postmodernism where truth is subjective engulfing and degrading science? Maybe this is the end of "science", the search for truth, as we know it. If this philosophy had been followed from the start, our present knowledge and technology would not exist. The founders of modern science based their endeavors on a firm conviction derived from their heritage that there exists a Divine order which man has been enabled to discover and utilize.

Article, "Pluralism: Beyond the One and Only Truth", by John Horgan, at https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro...nly-truth/ :

It seems to me he is saying we in our limited capacity aren't going to get to the "True Answer" but rather must be satisfied with competing theories ->

Although I share Feyerabend’s distaste for scientific hubris, I think his pluralism goes too far. Pluralism shouldn’t apply when scientists have established truth beyond a reasonable doubt. Given all the evidence that we evolved from microbes that emerged on Earth more than 3 billion years ago, for example, you really shouldn’t be a young-earth creationist. But that still leaves lots of cases in which pluralism is appropriate.

In many situations, we should think like engineers, who are natural pluralists. Faced with a problem like building a new bridge, electric car or smart phone, engineers don’t ask, What is the definitive, ultimate, true solution to this problem? That sort of thinking would be counter-productive. The engineer’s job is to find a solution that works.

A solution can work in lots of ways. It can give us power over nature, or over ourselves. It can help us make sense of data and predict the outcome of experiments. On a more personal level, an answer can console us, give us meaning, help us make sense of our lives. It can amaze us, tearing the scales from our eyes so we see the world anew.

That, I think, is different that saying the answer is inherently subjective in the usual post-modern sense?

Bernardo Kastrup has a PhD in computer engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology and specializes in artificial intelligence and reconfigurable computing. He has worked as a scientist in some of the leading research laboratories, including the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and Philips Research Laboratories. Bernardo Kastrup has written many scientific papers and books on philosophy and natural sciences."

He’s recently also completed a second PhD in Philosophy. 

I hold a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another Ph.D. in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence). I've worked as a scientist in some of the world's foremost research laboratories, including the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the "Casimir Effect" of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). I've authored many academic papers and books on philosophy and science, being a regular contributor to 'Scientific American.' Check out this site for freely downloadable papers, essays, videos, etc.

It seems to me he is saying we in our limited capacity aren't going to get to the "True Answer" but rather must be satisfied with competing theories ->


That, I think, is different that saying the answer is inherently subjective in the usual post-modern sense?

Maybe it's just that Horgan hasn't fully worked out his ideas here, so they are kind of confused or incoherent. The following quote from his article seems to clearly imply that on this particular scientific and philosophical mind-body problem a one and only true solution simply does not exist - just an array of subjective choices that scientists can freely adopt based on their subjective preferences. That sure looks like "truth is subjective" post-modernism.   

"...my view has evolved (from naive realism). In my book Mind-Body Problems, I argue that there is and never will be a single, objectively true solution to the mind-body problem. There are many and maybe even an infinite number of solutions, including ones still unconceived. You may prefer an information-based theory, a strange-loop model or a quantum hypothesis, but your choice is subjective, a matter of taste, not truth."

Whereas you found the quote where he suggests the issue is to realize that some problems necessitate the pragmatic engineering approach, just finding the best practical solution among many, all having different tradeoffs. Implying that there in fact may be one and only one true understanding of nature with respect to the problem at hand, but that it may be forever beyond our grasp. 

Which interpretation is his true opinion? Maybe he hasn't defined that yet.   

He’s recently also completed a second PhD in Philosophy. 

I'm not sure of your point. Neither Philosophy or computer engineering are scientific fields (at best, computer engineering could be regarded as an applied science). But that wouldn't matter if Kastrup's writings showed an understanding of science. It is because he deals in straw men when attempting to write about science, or because he misunderstands neuroscience research related to consciousness, which suggests that he doesn't know much about the topic.

Linda