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We've all seen those articles in Time magazine or Newsweek that purport to tell us about our sex lives, about love, about human happiness, about sexuality, marriage, and all number of things having to do with nothing less than what it means to be human. Am I the only one who thinks these popular journalistic attempts at drawing ethical or normative conclusions from scientific facts are, for the most part, bogus?

I have a kind of thesis... that as the popular mind (and this even includes scientists and medical professionals to the degree that they make unwarranted assumptions about the human condition... I'd rather ask a novelist or poet about humanity personally) attempts to conglomerate an immensely complex set of scientific data there will be mistakes and oversimplifications made in the interpretation of this factual knowledge into ethical or human terms. As a result, our mass-oriented culture will end up forcing a kind of regression of our conceptions of "normal" back to a mean which is itself reinforced by these popular mistakes and overly narrow interpretations.

In other words, I am saying that much of what will come to be known and accepted as "knowledge" will be bogus: a constructed idiom forced on the populace implicitly. Not everything of course, but the "knowledge" having to do with what it means to be human... that is, certain psychological presuppositions and also "biological truths" which purport to connect raw scientific data with ethical imperatives in a necessary fashion. What the scientists and journalists are missing is the philosophical, subjective, and often contingent but always existential connection between fact and reality, is and ought, object and subject.

This is an important and interesting issue to me, so I was wondering if anyone felt the same way. I am very skeptical about any set of statements regarding the issue of human happiness, for example, or love. My opinion is that they are fundamentally inaccessible to science and that only erroneous interpretations of these ideas into physical analogues results in our believing otherwise.

Question for all: If love and happiness are fundamentally inaccessible to science or objective evaluation then why do we find "scientific" articles about these subjects in our popular magazines?

jadeval wrote:

Question for all: If love and happiness are fundamentally inaccessible to science or objective evaluation then why do we find "scientific" articles about these subjects in our popular magazines?

Well I wouldn't say "fundamentally" inaccessible. I think a complete understanding of the human brain and genetic inheritance is theoretically possible (and from that, an understanding of what will cause feelings of love or happiness). It's just not achievable. But I would say some of the scientific concepts are probably on the right track.

Can you give a specific example of an article you object to?

It's all chemistry and biology. As Iavas notes, that means it's within the realm of the knowable, if not the easily knowable. And knowing isn't the same thing as correctly interpreting.

So what you're saying, Jadeval, is that if the media and scientists tell us what makes us happy, and we praise them for telling us this. It will make us think what they say is the truth and we will search for happiness in what they assign to bring us happiness?

Sounds like religion to me.

I think that we have been told for so long how to behave and what makes us happy that we have no idea what we like. And if we fall outside those constricts then we are not socially acceptable.

The other thing I see going on is people not accepting all their emotions. If someone shows a least little bit of anger, well they need anger management and have issues. If someone is sad, then they are depressed and need help and Lexapro. So if someone isn't in the pre-cut mold of what science and society accepts as happy then they are disfunctional. Maybe they aren't disfuntional at all. Maybe it's the standards that are disfunctional.

Of course I am still trying to figure out why everyone has to be happy happy joy joy all the time. And why if someone has a tragedy happen that if they feel sad or angry about it they need help. Aren't they supposed to be upset?

If, as ax says, and as all these articles want us to believe, it is all biological and chemical, and knowable... then we can all be reduced to the same person. We can all be exactly alike. We can genetically engineer people to be the same, and if that doesn't work, we can pump their brains full of enough stuff so they think they're the same.

Personally, I don't believe it is all biological and chemical. That implies that at some level, our intelligence is artificial. At some root level, we must always make the same decisions (I'm thinking on the brain=computer level)... because it's programed in biologically or chemically.

To me, this falls into the same category of Science being by default incapable of comprehending God. The incomprehensible in our minds, is that we can have the same stimulation two different times, and make a different choice each time. A computer can't do that. An animal can't do that. It's what makes us different, and makes most of what we do possible.

Careful, Ara, you don't want to imply that science is a religion... people don't like to hear that...

halplm wrote:

The incomprehensible in our minds, is that we can have the same stimulation two different times, and make a different choice each time. A computer can't do that. An animal can't do that. It's what makes us different, and makes most of what we do possible.

I don't agree with that. I contest that if I was put back into the same situation, identical in every way (which is impossible to do in reality), I would make the same choice every time. Therefore my choice was predictable, IF the knowledge of how my brain was wired, and how outside stimuli affected it, was detailed and accurate enough. You can never do an experiment to give a person two identical stimuli because the brain is constantly changing over time, so the conditions are never the same.

If you want to compare it to computers, then at some level we are all the same, but we all have different file networks, processing speeds and total disk space.. and most importantly, different system files depending on our genetics and life experiences.

To say we are different from animals is ridiculous when we clearly evolved from them, and to imply that there was a moment in evolution when some omnipotent spirit decided to "switch us on" is, frankly, laughable.

agree to disagree

jadeval wrote:

We've all seen those articles in Time magazine or Newsweek that purport to tell us about our sex lives, about love, about human happiness, about sexuality, marriage, and all number of things having to do with nothing less than what it means to be human.

I don't read those magazines. And if I don't- then I imagine there is a sizable chunk of the population that also don't read that sort of thing. So, I can't imagine that there is a danger of the society as a whole forming itself into the "reality" as presented in those articles.

halplm wrote:

agree to disagree

i.e. your opinion is faith-based, mine is based on reason?

no, meaning we aren't going to agree

halplm wrote:

no, meaning we aren't going to agree

To make that assumption implies that your view is unshakeable, which means it can't be based on reason.

no, saying we arent' going to agree, is acknowledging that you and I believe different things, and since we've been arguing about them for years now, I'm not going to waste time trying to convince you that what you believe is wrong, not even if you claim my beliefs are unshakable, unreasonable, laughable, or anything else. If all you can do is insult my point of view, well, I don't really have much to argue with... I don't really feel like turning it around and insulting your point of view while adding no substance to the discussion whatsoever.

halplm wrote:

no, saying we arent' going to agree, is acknowledging that you and I believe different things, and since we've been arguing about them for years now, I'm not going to waste time trying to convince you that what you believe is wrong, not even if you claim my beliefs are unshakable, unreasonable, laughable, or anything else. If all you can do is insult my point of view, well, I don't really have much to argue with... I don't really feel like turning it around and insulting your point of view while adding no substance to the discussion whatsoever.

Your faith does not prevent you addressing my argument that it's impossible to test the same stimulation on the same person and get an accurate result. This is purely about the scientific method.

I didn't say your "beliefs" plurable were laughable, I said the idea that humans were suddenly switched on is laughable (IMO). Do you really believe this? If so, when do you think it happened?

You really aren't supposed to argue about the "agree to disagree" idea.


edit: That kind of defeats the purpose!

Iavas,

So your saying, if I read it correctly, that if you were in the same situation, and had the same choices to make, you'd make the same choices?

I am just the opposite, there's plenty of choices I wouldn't make over again, starting in my past life time.

Hal...

What no saying that worshipping at the alter of science is the same thing as worshipping at the alter of God? boo no fair. I can't argue there's a grey elephant in the sky that's carrying us around on a pink poof flower.

One example of what I was referring to:

http://www.time.com/time/health/article ... 54,00.html

There was also a cover article (I think in Newsweek?) a month or two ago titled "Romance" and it purported to cover everything from the chemical and biological origin of romance and love to mating and coupling into old age, as if anyone who disagreed with such journalistic babble would simply be out of touch.

The problem is this: it's not a matter of whether "happiness is preordained" precisely. The problem is with the very DEFINITION of happiness itself. No one can say what it is and these articles make no attempt at a philosophical investigation into the term. Therefore they are essentially nullified a priori. What they seem to miss in all their infinite wisdom is that happiness is not identical with pleasure... and furthermore there is no way to really determine happiness in general or even for a specific individual when observing from the outside. And even further... we cannot even rely on peoples' own self-evaluations of their happiness level because peoples' self-interpretations are always changing. In short, it's hopeless.

Such articles enrage me to no end because they make unwarranted assumptions about the human condition.

Ara-anna wrote:

I think that we have been told for so long how to behave and what makes us happy that we have no idea what we like. And if we fall outside those constricts then we are not socially acceptable.

The other thing I see going on is people not accepting all their emotions. If someone shows a least little bit of anger, well they need anger management and have issues. If someone is sad, then they are depressed and need help and Lexapro. So if someone isn't in the pre-cut mold of what science and society accepts as happy then they are disfunctional. Maybe they aren't disfuntional at all. Maybe it's the standards that are disfunctional.

Precisely! Yes, that is what I'm talking about. It is this: as a society, our "solutions" are implicitly hidden in our methods. In other words, the answer is given in the way we state the question. What this means is not that the answers are wrong, but that they are arbitrary according to cultural and societal norms. They restrict our freedom beyond these norms. It is a fundamental tenet of a post-structuralist analysis.

For instance, any scientific analysis of "love" or "happiness" will fail a priori because there will always be some arbitrary philosophical assumption as to what the definition of these terms is in the first place.

Axordil wrote:

It's all chemistry and biology. As Iavas notes, that means it's within the realm of the knowable, if not the easily knowable. And knowing isn't the same thing as correctly interpreting.

I object as per what I said above. Any scientific analysis of "love" or "happiness" will inevitably involve arbitary philosophical assumptions as to the definitions of these terms.

As to halplm and Iavas' issue of predictability, I would say that our embodiement as beings in a world means that, as Iavas said, the situation is never repeatable. This means that there is no set of rules for determining human behavoir because the set would involve the entire world-set of rules. But a world cannot have rules because it is not delimited. It can have objective scientific theories/laws, but these are human mental models which reflect the object orderliness rather than actual rules as to the totality of worldhood with man embodied therein.

Iavas_Saar wrote:

Your faith does not prevent you addressing my argument that it's impossible to test the same stimulation on the same person and get an accurate result. This is purely about the scientific method.

But it's also about philosophy Iavas. For human freedom considered in a per se fashion is not first of all scientific. Any scientific analysis always involves a particular conception or translation of those philosophical terms into physical analogues (translations which may be arbitrary), otherwise they could not be studied in an objective form. In this way, objectivity is a kind of limitation or delimitation of phenomena by our minds. It is the narrowing down of something broader so that it can be studied in a certain way. But there is always a sacrifice to be made when this translation occurs. It is the problem of the relation between human and fact, or the problem of the world as our world.