Quote:
Originally Posted by LEMONZEST
What do you mean by these?
Quote:
"Philosophy is normative
Philosophy is not normative
Theology is normative
Theology is not normative"
By this I merely mean an understanding that both philosophy and theology can be descriptive analysis (how "things" are) and normative analysis (what "things" should be). It can be important to understand if the person and / or text you use is either or both. A classic example would be someone like Immanuel Kant who both worked hard to develop a philosophical framework to understand experience, but also developed a philosophical framework to judge moral actions.
If I for example quote Nietzsche as authority in a discussion about religion, I can hardly pretend I'm merely making descriptive philosophical arguments.
Quote:
"Science can't be normative"
Science is often held to be some neutral authority, "look here it is is science, so this is just how the world (seemingly) is". But while it is indeed true that describing the world is far more important in science overall, there is definitely a lot of science with normative elements.
A good example (and the one most widely used in RGT) is probably psychiatry and psychology. Psychiatry often contains a lot of normative assumptions about normality ("you should be normal"). This is due to its roots in medicine. Psychology on the other hand, has a more descriptive approach towards normality ("what is normal"), likely due to its roots in philosophy. Note that this is over-simplified, and both statements to some extent hold true to both fields... but for explanation's sake, I find that this is a good example.
So if Bob calls your religion (if you have one) a mental disorder, what he is trying to say is "you are a nutcase", but what he is also stating is "people shouldn't be nutcases". So essentially Bob is merely saying "you shouldn't be religious", without really offering an explanation.
This is one is simple and probably the most interesting one (to me). Whereas a lot of science is based on empiricism (observing and deducing),
it is still just one of many, many approaches.
It is for example perfectly fine and scientific to conclude about the world based on immediate experience. This is called phenomenology, and it is a recognized scientific method. It probably won't win you any awards in physics, but it is certainly not without scientific value - a very good example is pain research. The patient experience of pain is often a better metric of pain's impact on treatment than some bio-electrical measurement of the neural system.
Assuming something is unscientific because it is not empirical is therefore very bad. It is legitimate to say it does not hold empirical support, however.
Last edited by tame_deuces; 09-16-2015 at 05:23 AM.