What is the Force MkII

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote:

Williamkaede wrote: I'm a big fan of the 'three blind men and the elephant' parable when it comes to exploring the Force.

Six blind elephants were discussing what men were like. After arguing they decided to find one and determine what it was like by direct experience. The first blind elephant felt the man and declared, 'Men are flat.' After the other blind elephants felt the man, they agreed.

Moral:

We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
-Werner Heisenberg

Nice one Kyrin.

Now in the future if you could reply to something like

Adder wrote: I like this

"we can conceive of no radical separation between forming and being formed, and between substance and space and time…the universe is conceived as a continuum [in which] spatio-temporal events disclose themselves as "stresses" or "tensions" within the constitutive matrix…the cosmic matrix evolves in patterned flows…some flows hit upon configurations of intrinsic stability and thus survive, despite changes in their evolving environment…these we call systems."
~ Ervin Laszlo

with something like

What do you like about it?

It would make everything so much better, thank you.

So to tie this idea of systems philosophy to the parable of the elephant as a method to discern truth, the parable is deeply flawed on many levels. The parable itself is not a path to truth because it is still just an assertion and not an argument. An assertion is just a point of view, an opinion. An argument on the other hand is a point of view supported by reasons that demonstrate the view is a good one. While the parable is a powerful illustration it is still just an assertion because it does not prove anything in itself. It does not make the point a rational or valid one through justified evidence.

Another failing of this parable is in the idea of claims of personal relationship. When it comes to something like Christianity they claim to have a personal relationship with God and when it comes to Jedi they claim to be able to commune with or feel or otherwise communicate with the Force. If this is truly the case, opinion and conjecture of what the force is should be put to rest. If this power can make itself known to us it can reveal its true nature. But the parable does not take this idea into account. i.e. the elephant does not talk and tell the men what it is.

Had the blind men explored just a bit more deeply instead of jumping to conclusions their error would have been revealed to them. This is a God of the gaps argument where inductive reasoning is used instead of deductive reasoning. Broad generalizations are made about the elephant in the face of incomplete data. This is the idea that when faced with disparate ideas all of them can’t be right. More data and research must be completed before conclusions are made. The blind men failed to do this. The elephant can’t be both a rope and a snake, it has to be either one or the other or something else altogether.

The blind men failed to gain a full and accurate picture of the situation and erroneously made conclusions there was not sufficient evidence for. They were clouded by their bias in their attempts to explain the elephant because they remained within a limited system. This is different than the King who was outside the system and could clearly see the truth of the situation. His view is meant to be an objective and true assessment of the world in contrast to the folly of the blind men who know they are blind and yet claim they can see. This is a contradiction in the fact that if we are all blind then none of us can know if any of us is mistaken and so the only logical conclusion to draw is a skeptical one until such time as one of us actually proves he can see.

Is psychology a science? One quote from online said;

Psychologists examine the relationships between brain function and behavior, and the environment and behavior, applying what they learn to illuminate our understanding and improve the world around us.

... but the scientific method can only go so far when the tools are not available to handle the system being investigated.

So what is the difference between philosophy and psychology? Or perhaps its just that psychologists spend a lot of time philosophizing and call it counselling :silly:

So to the topic of the Force, and what is it... the context of my Ervin Laszlo post was actually my prior post on the topic in the thread. I prefer to post that way, as if concepts were both forming and reacting to the thread topic and progression. And as such the quote to me references ''what we think as how we think', rather then 'how we think as how we think'. The later being a neuroscience question and the former being one more in the realm of psychology. For I like to think that when it comes to Jedi, they foster and exercise a connection to something that cannot be fully known called the Force and as such examine the relationships between brain function and behavior, and the environment and behavior, applying what they learn to illuminate our understanding and improve the world around us.

Along those lines the topic of systems philosophy is a 'worldview', being; the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual's or society's knowledge and point of view. A world view can include natural philosophy; fundamental, existential, and normative postulates; or themes, values, emotions, and ethics.

Sorry I was not able to post my thoughts sooner

Adder wrote: Is psychology a science?

Yes, it is.

One quote from online said;

[a quote]

I don't know who "online" is. Call me old-fashioned but even when you quoted Dr. Laszlo I was still missing the paper or book title and page or talk from whence the quote came for context. "Online" is not even a person. I did however just copy the text and google it because at the end of the day I'd look like the spoiled and lazy one for expecting references to be something one can look up without doubting whether one is working with the same sources or not. The only place I could find with the exact same text at a glance was the homepage of the American Psychological Association. Not exactly a neutral source on the matter. But then again, I'm not sure (again) what point you are getting at.

... but the scientific method can only go so far when the tools are not available to handle the system being investigated.

You can do particle physics with LEGOs and a subwoofer. The scientific method does not begin or end with high power lasers or scanning electron microscopes. Galilei only had marbles and wooden slides, doesn't make his work any less scientific. The only thing needed to investigate observations is making them in the first place. Sure, some things cannot be seen directly without the proper instruments. Your own eyes are instruments, too, though. In that sense, nothing can be seen directly and that point is entirely moot. An effect that is so weak as to escape our detection is literally too weak to matter. This "only so far" is, frankly, as far as it gets, period, and no amount of "tools" can change a thing about it. Any further than the scientific method can go is at best unreliable and at worst utter nonsense, when it comes to any kind of observable realm. There are plenty difficult questions out there up for grabs. No need to hijack the simple ones also.

So what is the difference between philosophy and psychology? Or perhaps its just that psychologists spend a lot of time philosophizing and call it counselling :silly:

Though I do not have data to confirm this, I can imagine that plenty psychiatrists and counselors more broadly happen to also be psychologists. Still, I do think those are separable disciplines. There is the car mechanic and then there is the combustion chemistry researcher.
I don't know how much philosophizing counselors or actual psychologists do. All I can say is that it is science to exactly the same extent to which it is contributing to the construction of predictive models, and to none other. Psychology is not just glorified philosophy in that sense. It is scientific when and only when it meets this one criterion, just like anything else, and as far as I for one am aware, it actually tries to be a lot of the time, where philosophy almost never does.

My questions were not dichotomous questions but more like semantic differential questions to the scope of what those fields undertake. And asked to illustrate my point.

Gisteron wrote:

... but the scientific method can only go so far when the tools are not available to handle the system being investigated.

You can do particle physics with LEGOs and a subwoofer. The scientific method does not begin or end with high power lasers or scanning electron microscopes. Galilei only had marbles and wooden slides, doesn't make his work any less scientific. The only thing needed to investigate observations is making them in the first place. Sure, some things cannot be seen directly without the proper instruments. Your own eyes are instruments, too, though. In that sense, nothing can be seen directly and that point is entirely moot. An effect that is so weak as to escape our detection is literally too weak to matter. This "only so far" is, frankly, as far as it gets, period, and no amount of "tools" can change a thing about it. Any further than the scientific method can go is at best unreliable and at worst utter nonsense, when it comes to any kind of observable realm.

You're not wrong - the scientific method doesn't begin or end with the tools you're using, and it's the method, not the tools, that makes it science - but the tools available for use are important. The data you can acquire, and its accuracy, is limited by the tools you're using - which is why science often proves itself wrong when new technology for observing and testing phenomena is invented. I think that's what Adder was referring to when they mentioned tools not being able to handle the system being investigated. It's the problem of "hard science" (ie, the physical sciences), which can be objectively proven as fact, versus "soft science" (ie, psychology, sociology, etc) which can sometimes be objectively proven but often has to be taken on the word of the people who are the subjects of the experiments/studies/surveys because it's based on their subjective experiences of the world. (Often those subjective experiences are exactly what's being studied, for that matter, so there's no real way to objectively "prove" those experiences are happening - at least, not within the bounds of current technology and how much we can look at what's happening in a person's brain.)

Adder wrote: For I like to think that when it comes to Jedi, they foster and exercise a connection to something that cannot be fully known called the Force and as such examine the relationships between brain function and behavior, and the environment and behavior, applying what they learn to illuminate our understanding and improve the world around us.

From this quote I see you has viewing the Jedi in the infancy of their understanding of this thing you have labeled as “The Force. However you have already committed a fatal flaw in your assessment that will doom you to mediocracy. You have begged the question. In other words you have come to a preconceived conclusion about a phenomena and then you set out to prove your conclusion. This is not the way science is done nor is it the way philosophy is done.

You can’t assume the conclusion before you investigate the phenomena or the result will be incomplete, cherry picked data that leads you by the nose down not a path of enlightenment but a path of biased inference. You have basically committed the same fallacy as the blind men in the parable. You can’t just pick a worldview and then decide all data you investigate must conform to that. It’s just the opposite, you have to investigate the data first and then let it build a worldview, and in this process you must allow it to be built independent of your personal preference. Meaning you might not like what is built but it will be the truth and you must accept the truth over what you want it to be.

Using intuition and inference is no different than using faith to arrive at a conclusion. There is no way to verify the validity of the claim and so they must be tossed out as valid paths to truth. The various religions that exist in our world make very different claims about things. Some are the same of course, the idea that there is a maximally powerful [intelligent] “force” that drives life is one of them but beyond that high level, its disingenuous to claim all religions are equal because the nature of their claims differ greatly beyond that. And there are things that are just evidential fact.

We know that Scientology is an invented fiction by L Ron Hubbard. We know that Mormonism is a lie constructed by the con artist Joseph Smith. We know that Jediism as a religion is assembled from a science fiction movie franchise. So these things can’t be put on the same footings as other religions that evolved not as a result of intentional construction but as a result of humans trying to solve problems and explain things and as a result stories were created. Mistakes were made of course but the most popular stories and the ones that were least subject to being proven false still persist today. But that’s all they are - myth.

What we know as conditional fact is that the universe began with the big bang. We can decipher a good idea of events after the Plank time. But beyond the Plank time we can really know nothing because the laws of physics break down there. What we can honestly say at this point is we don’t know. However to go beyond that and make an inference that it must have been started by an intelligence or a Living Force is disingenuous. Does that mean we will never know or that we can also infer that it is something we will NEVER know about or otherwise fully understand, of course not! We can’t infer that either.

The psychology of the human condition will also function in this very same way. There are many things we don’t know about human consciousness. But can we say we will never know what it is and how it works. No we can’t. All we can do is take the available data and draw hypothesis and then test those over and over until theories emerge. It may be a never ending process, it is probably a never ending process, but it is definitely not a process that we can ever claim has a limit.

Jediism is named, not assembled from, a sci-fi franchise. There's more Adi shankara in us than star wars.