Mengele certainly is a very interesting human specimen to observe and do science on, especially in the context of ethical committees and moral standards of sorts.Nonc Hilaire wrote:Observing Dr. Mengele?Parodite wrote:I think those ethical committees and standards are the result of sound scientific observation.
How would you arrive at ethical committees standards and moral standards without science also on psychopaths? On mirror neurons? On social phenomena like dehumanizing other groups of people that possibly desensitize mirror neurons and/or block the attached emotional centers in the brain.. how would that work?
On the question of animal sentience and emotion, notably mammals but also other species? Can they experience as much pain and distress as we do? how you do science on such questions? Is it possible, needed, helpful?
Somehow I think that just praying for revelations is not really the most helpful approach here.
Well, of course it matters what you want to label as science. Usually people associate science with a detached, cold, calculating, dissecting sort of activity not much different from forensic science on corpses. A surgeon may empathize with his patient.. but the moment he starts fixing body parts.. he has to shut down emotions of empathy in order to focus on what he is doing like a car mechanic.
So the question I like to throw in the air now that we are stuck in the mud in the middle of nowhere anyways:
1. Where does science start and where does it end?
Does science start when a surgeon stops observing his fellow human being on the level of normal eye to eye human interaction.. beginning to execute the technicalities of opening a body, checking the interiors cutting and stitching things?
Was it not science when Albert Einstein was walking in the park pondering in his mind questions and riddles using his imagination and devising thought experiments... but only science when he came up with a ready to test and falsifiable theory?
Does science end the moment a theory is empirically confirmed enough times.. or do those answers raise new questions.. that in turn require more pondering... free imagination... new experiments and models? Does this cycle ever end?
If all science starts with an observation... why would "just observing another human being" that is in distress and causing your mirror neurons to generate empathy not be a full and necessary part of the cycle of the scientific method.. namely the first step?
How, and this a good illustration I think of the fact-value distinction, would you separate fact and value here? The factin this example is that you observe somebody in pain or distress and feel empathy. You can try of course to separate yourself from what you observe.. but that is never factual, the separation just serves an analytical purpose and planning future action, like deciding on a MRI scan.. or an operation right away. Sometimes just a pat on the shoulder will do.
So this brings me to me second muddy question to throw in the air:
2. Can observation of fact be value free?
I would say no.. facts are never value free. What makes them facts.. is that they have intrinsic value. "Things without value" is a contradiction. As saying "facts have no meaning" is false. Everything "has meaning", or rather.. is meaningful, has significance.
Or as somebody (forgot who, David Bohm?) once said it: "Life has no meaning.. it is its meaning."
So I'll just say that all facts are always meaningful. How else could it be? CAVEAT: there are as many different types of value or meaning.. as there are different sorts of facts!
Poking in an anesthetized brain while looking at monitors with graphs and bleeps creates a different sort of fact alias meaning than talking to, observing the patient's behavior and facial expressions before the operation. Is one set of observations, of facts, of meaning.. part of the scientific activity... while another is not?
The reason that it is very hard to determine where science starts and ends.. is probably because it seamlessly builds on our natural modes of learning, of problem solving and tool-making.
Austin L. Hughes makes this important observation in his article where he is a 100% right:
The criterion of falsifiability is appealing in that it highlights similarities between science and the trial-and-error methods we use in everyday problem-solving. If I have misplaced my keys, I immediately begin to construct scenarios — hypotheses, if you will — that might account for their whereabouts: Did I leave them in the ignition or in the front door lock? Were they in the pocket of the jeans I put in the laundry basket? Did I drop them while mowing the lawn? I then proceed to evaluate these scenarios systematically, by testing predictions that I would expect to be true under each scenario — in other words, by using a sort of Popperian method.