But why can't you have a scientific study of normative questions? And any sort of scientific study presupposes an answer to certain normative questions. In particular, if you want to say, "my experiment shows that we should believe theory A rather than theory B", then you presuppose that there is some notion of what we "should believe".
Of course, answering these sorts of questions is outside the scope of the experimental method, but lots of science proceeds in other ways - just consider the methods of evolutionary biology (lots of which proceeds through observation and/or computer modeling), mathematics (which proceeds primarily through pure reasoning and logic), theoretical physics (which proceeds by modeling and considering the notions of good explanation) and so on.
And thus, I think the relevant areas of philosophy (epistemology and ethics) are in fact amenable to scientific study, though it's clearly a somewhat broader view of science than you take.
Also, while some religious claims are about "how to live our lives, what we should cherish or fear, why there's a universe", there are other religious claims about what someone did two thousand years ago, how the universe came into existence, what the relation is between desire and suffering, and what happens to consciousness after death, which I think even you can agree can be studied by standard scientific methods. (FWIW, I think "the scientific method" is a bit of a red herring - there are many methods that are scientific, and there is no one model that even all core scientific inquiry follows.)
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timeasmymeasure
Re: religious darwinists
Date: 2010-10-13 06:55 pm (UTC)Of course, answering these sorts of questions is outside the scope of the experimental method, but lots of science proceeds in other ways - just consider the methods of evolutionary biology (lots of which proceeds through observation and/or computer modeling), mathematics (which proceeds primarily through pure reasoning and logic), theoretical physics (which proceeds by modeling and considering the notions of good explanation) and so on.
And thus, I think the relevant areas of philosophy (epistemology and ethics) are in fact amenable to scientific study, though it's clearly a somewhat broader view of science than you take.
Also, while some religious claims are about "how to live our lives, what we should cherish or fear, why there's a universe", there are other religious claims about what someone did two thousand years ago, how the universe came into existence, what the relation is between desire and suffering, and what happens to consciousness after death, which I think even you can agree can be studied by standard scientific methods. (FWIW, I think "the scientific method" is a bit of a red herring - there are many methods that are scientific, and there is no one model that even all core scientific inquiry follows.)