this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2026
8 points (70.0% liked)
Asklemmy
55051 readers
322 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's not a philosophical framework, it's a moral stance. Philosophy is about how we interpret the world. This is why you ironically are retreating into abstraction while accusing me of doing so, when I've done no such thing. I'm not arguing faith over facts, I'm arguing that the way we interpret facts is based on our world outlook. By denying world outlooks exist, you let your subconscious world outlook determine it for you.
You can say it isn't but science is a philosophical framework and science with the application of measurably increasing human wellbeing is even more so. I'm not sure which philosophy will change facts around physiological wellbeing like starvation, lack of access to basic necessities, measurable cognitive health and so on. You can be of any political affiliation yet reality will still be there waiting for you.
Science is not a philosophical framework, and you're now describing a moralistic reasoning for it, not a world outlook. Philosophy changes how we view the origin and causes of starvation, lack of access to basic necessities, and more. The philosophy you seem to be pushing is a vulgar approach to empiricism, rather than a more accurate dialectical materialist philosophy.
Here's an example. Do you believe historical change is primarily driven by a development of ideas, or material conditions?
Once again you can say it isn't but it indeed very much is a philosophical framework stemming from the philosophical foundations of logic and reason. Is it better to have a particular outlook on starvation or to actively be ending it through the most optimal means via evidence informed planning and practices? Reality doesn't care what we think about it. You can take any angle you want on it but it'll be there as it is.
As for change its always been guns, germs and steel. The philosophy you're speaking of was an inefficient middleman towards change and development. If for instance a society follows a diety who says cleanliness is holy and they were more clean aka more biologically fit then they were accidentally discovering something true which could have been directly discovered via science. Them having that faith helped but not as much as having a framework for determining facts.
You're abstracting the problem of denying the influence of how we view the world on how we view results of science, which is ironically enough a metaphysical error. It's of course better to be actively ending starvation, but that wasn't the question. The way we interpret facts determines how we go about ending starvation. Of course reality doesn't care about what we think of it, but the way we interact back with reality certainly does!
As for the question, you dodged it. The answer is that the development of history is a result in shifting material conditions, which changes how we think and reshape the world. Like it or not, religion was in fact early science. Science itself is not a philosophy, it's how we understand the world. What you are grasping at is a vulgar materialist conception of science at best, but this misses how change and development actually occur, and results in errors by abstraction.
This is the reason world outlook is important, you're assuming you already have the correct world outlook while refusing to grapple with the fact that you have one. It's SchrΓΆdinger's philosophy.
I mean yeah if we viewed starvation as some uncontrollable demonic force of the body then that would change things but would that be better or worse than the scientific approach? Maybe you have an example to better hit home the point you're getting at.
All forms or attempts of understanding reality aren't early science as in they weren't employing the scientific method in full but observation, testing, and measuring are basic aspects of being alive and aware. I know my nose is on my face through observation, testing, and measurement.
I'm aware reality can be strange, there's a plethora of epistemological arguments to show one the limits of science, but we're not talking about what lies beyond measure and testing or at least I'm not. There's lots of philosophical ideas about things we can not measure or test. Once again what does not appreciably effect reality measurably is worth awareness but not as much as what can be measured and directly influenced.
I wouldn't suggest one use science to attempt to understand epistemology but I would suggest it for methodically increasing societal wellbeing. The view one takes may change their behavior but it won't change physics. They can believe they can fly unassisted but will fall to their death all the same when leaping from a building.
You're still not getting it, both are "scientific approaches." What you are describing as science is merely science with a mechanistic materialist outlook, one that relies on vulgar empiricism and removes the room for logical analysis of what has been empirically studied. Your philosophy underlining your science is better than religious science, but inferior to dialectical materialist science. It's all science, yours is just incomplete for the fact that you refuse to acknowledge the weaknesses of it.
You skipped giving an example. What tangible real world examples do you have to back up your claims? You seem well convinced so you must have many good examples to support your case where material science failed at increasing human wellbeing while dialectic material science produced a better outcome.
Fair enough. Mechanistic materialism does not understand change or development properly. When taken as a social science, this manifedtd in the form of liberalism. Trying to reform and fix a system that cannot be fixed, because it is necessarily trending in a definite direction, towards centralization and monopoly. Trying to means-test welfare fixes does not address the concrete problems with imperialism and late-stage capitalism.
The dialectical materialist approach can more accurately identify how we got here, where we are heading, and how we can best steer this in our own interests. Socialism becomes not just an answer because someone designed it, as the Utopians tried, but because it is the logical next step in production, moving from market-based distribution to planned economy.
Assuming ones scope of testing is limitied to a specific political paradigm or collection of policies I would agree but that's not what I'm speaking about. We're still lacking legitimate real world examples of your claims. Once again you seem thoroughly convinced so I imagine you have quite an awareness of legitimate real world examples to prove these ideas. Where exactly does science fail and Marxism-Leninism succeed in providing better outcomes for society and people, particularly in regards to human and societal wellbeing. Please keep in mind I mean science with the soul focus of increasing individual and societal wellbeing and not science for any purposes whatsoever.
Again, you're pretending I'm arguing against science. I'm not arguing against science, I am arguing against vulgar empiricist forms of science, and not dialectical materialist forms of science. I explained the limitations of refusing to acknowledge that science is interpreted by humans, therefore philosophy impacts the way we read results.
Sure but can you give one singular real world example? I keep asking and again you are deeply convinced of your idea so I'm assuming you have many real world cases that exemplify exactly what you're talking about.
I gave you an example already, one deeply relevant to our conversation considering it centers social science. The liberals that believe they can simply keep trying different reforms and testing them empirically are right along with you, but this ignores the gradual changes in how wealth is distributed and capital is concentrated.
I mean that really doesn't have to do with what I'm speaking about though and I've already addressed that. Like yeah if one is set on a particular political philosophy or collection of policies that's going to seriously limit the solution space. That's more so the issue with that example than it being an issue with using the scientific method as a means of governance.
I'm not talking about political philosophy, but how we actually interpret empirically tested data. I never made the claims you believe me to be making.
Let's get back to the beginning here. We were talking about Marxism-Leninism and how it is superior to vulgar empiricism and of course I've kept on with my original point from the beginning of using the scientific method to determine the best policies and political structures for governance, best in those that measurably increasing human wellbeing.
I guess you could bring in something like the double slit experiment and lot of esoteric science in which there isn't a clear way to tell which interpretation is the correct one or if it really maps to reality to begin with aka maybe the math works but that's not actually what's happening. Although I wouldn't see the connection between that and deciding how best to structure a city.
It really doesn't take much to see if people are healthy and happy, are prospering and living in a better state of being than they were before a policy was implemented.
Okay, then returning, vulgar empiricism is inferior to dialectical materialism because the dialectical materialist understands how change occurs and develops, while vulgar materialists fail to. I gave an example of how at a macro level this manifests in either focusing on reformism or revolution and development.
Why don't you propose an example of how you would use the scientific method in practice to test for a better system, and we will see if you make metaphysical errors in your approach. After all, my point is that philosophy is simply how we view the world, and we all have a given philosophy, even if we don't acknowledge it, and it determines how we interpret the objective reality of the world.