Facebook conversation, March 2021
IAIN: Science is like a calculator. Its very useful for a lot of things, but it will not tell you how to love your kids, strengthen your marriage or make the perfect cup of tea
- Anthony MillsI would say science is very useful for "how" questions, it's just not as useful for "why would you want to do that?" questions.How to love your kids? Child psychology has a lot of answers.How to strengthen your marriage? Check out John Gottman's research.How to make the perfect cup of tea? Check out J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's Food Lab.Yeah - again, it may help. Will not answer. FOR EG - what you may consider the perfect cup of tea may not for me.Does John Guttman's research include Dani tribal culture? Or Falani african tribal culture? How useful would it be to a Pakistani Muslim woman in her beliefs and culture? Would a man whose defnition of marriage "as patriarchy" be helped?Love your kids - again, psychology can help (laden with a lot of western assumptions i suspect), but it will not answer a multiplicity of cultural and familial situations that exist. Again, calculators are useful, they cannot give you everything. Its a limited tool.It's a limited tool, but everything is a limited tool in that sense. John Gottman's research is generally about archetypes of marital conflict. Could that help Danis and Falanis and Pakistanis? Sure, why not? I bet there are a lot of similarities in how people deal with marital discord in different cultures. People are people, after all.Also, why not include research potentially done by Dani and Falani and Pakistani researchers on their own cultures? Why assume science can only be done by some cultures and not others?"How" questions are questions about efficient causality; "why" questions involve final causality. When the modern period ditched Aristotle's metaphysics, it ditched final causality. Modern science does a great job going far and deep with explanations that appeal only to efficient causes; but it must remain silent about final causes. Alas, too often it regards them as unnecessary at best, or at worst, bogus.IMO explanation that only acknowledges efficient causality is incomplete. "Why" questions about meaning are just as important as "how" questions about structure and process.I dunno about you, but I got past "ought" a lot way back when it comes to questions of loving my wife or kids. Yes, I want to love my wife and kids. I have made the choice! Once I have done that, I am in the domain of science. How best to do that?The questions science answers are the interesting questions. The questions of how to get to the goals you've decided on. The questions of how to love your kids. The questions of how to strengthen your marriage. The questions of how to make the cup of tea that you've decided is perfect. Those are perfect examples of the kinds of questions science excels at.Why do you want to love your wife and kids, Anthony? Have you ever NOT been loving toward your wife and/or kids, even though you knew how to do it? If so, why?
Why do you want to strengthen your marriage? Why would anyone want to make a perfect cup of tea? Is it only because you have been determined by nature or nurture?I have a goal of maintaining a healthy blood glucose level, and I know exactly what I need to do to accomplish it, but sometimes I fall off the wagon. Why would I do that, when I **know** it's not in my best interest? I also have a goal of being kind and patient with my husband, but sometimes I'm not kind or patient. I know better, but I choose NOT to act on what I know. Why is that?Yes, science can give us all kinds of important information about HOW to do things, but WHY should I do them? Naturalists can only dismiss those questions, either as uninteresting or incoherent, or else by conflating WHY with HOW.<In The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Science (1964), Abraham Kaplan again mentioned the law of the instrument saying, "It comes as no particular surprise to discover that a scientist formulates problems in a way which requires for their solution just those techniques in which he himself is especially skilled." And in a 1964 article for The Library Quarterly, he again cited the law and commented: "We tend to formulate our problems in such a way as to make it seem that the solutions to those problems demand precisely what we already happen to have at hand.">I think that applies to explanations as well as techniques. We use the instruments we have at hand. Naturalists have fewer instruments than some theists--they think efficient causality is all that is needed for explanation. When they see those theists positing final causality they bristle, and accuse them of violating Ockham's razor. But those theists insist that, at least for explaining human behavior, final causality is necessary.How you fill your "tool box" is a scientific matter, but WHY you fill it with the instruments you do is a philosophical or theological matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment