Are "social sciences" actually sciences? What's Veeky Forums's opinion of things like linguistics?

ayy

Not it's not. It's "laws" are in part derived from observations on human behavior, which is largely irreducible to a purely physical nature. Hard science, like physics, have for their subject matter physical and determinable material, not subject to free will.

Economics is still an important and useful discipline, but it is not science.

Who said a science needs to be reducible to physics? This is just narcissism on the part of physicists. According to your definition, a great deal of biology is not science, most especially systems biology, which takes a holistic rather than reductionist approach.

Social science fields have good research and bad research. Animal models with a genetic component in every paper= good, self reported human data= bullshit. Linguistics is different though, not sure why thats your chosen example

Which is a myth unless you believe that cause and effect don't apply to the human mind for some reason.

And at that point you've left science behind yourself.

You either didnt read my post entirely or missed my point.

Im not reducing to physics. Im talking about reduction in subject matter. Subjects of hard science are composed solely of physical material, and therefore can be determined by physical laws. Subjects of non science are not, and therefore are simply estimated by general observations which are often changed ad hoc. At best they rely on statistics for prediction, but that would only yield a functional explanation.

Cause and effect do not apply to the human mind. Human mind is liable to be influenced by environmental and genetic factors, but we are not determined completely from them. Even if sub consciously we tend to act in predictable ways, notice as soon as make that explicit the behavior is easily changed.

Pretty sure he means linguistics is one of the social sciences closest to being a hard science as it has a great deal of overlap in nueroscience, CS, logic, and by extension math.

At this point, while linguistics is anthropological in nature, it has moved beyond being a purely social study, and has become increasingly more interested in the physical process of language rather than it as a social curiosity. And in that sense it's a bad example of a social science. And it's really hard to even call it one at this point as that's not really an accurate picture of what the field is.

>while linguistics is anthropological in nature
>has become increasingly more interested in the physical process of language
What the fuck are you talking about?

What's with the blob art? Someone forcing another meme?

>Are "social sciences" actually sciences?

There are actual social scientists, and there are pseuds who are drawn to the social sciences because their "softness" lets you get away with all kinds of nonsense. It should be noted that the hard sciences also attract fruitloops, they're just easier to expose when they're talking nonsense about quantum mechanics than when they're talking about difficult-to-verify social phenomena.

Nothing you just said implies we are a system outside of cause and effect.

Unless you bring in spiritual dualist shit there's no way a physical system determined by electrical and chemical signals isn't beholden to cause and effect.

I didn't imply it. I explicitly stated we are not entirely subject to cause and effect like physical phenomena.

Consider the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions. First, a cause is always sufficient. That much is obvious. But the existence of the physical network of neurons is only necessary for human "consciousness" because all the credible scientific evidence we have in that field today does not imply it is sufficient. Therefore we are not justified in making that leap.

Second, consider that in all these centuries of science we have not yet succeeded in discovering a causal structure between neuroscience and human behavior. We can at best make general observations until the phenomena disproves the "laws". Cue in ad hoc fixes. Also note that rationality, perhaps the best causal example of behavior, can be easily replaced by irrational choices at will. Once I know the rational choice, I can simply act irrationally.

>Dualism is real because we haven't reduced an extremely complex biological system down to a one-to-one translation of human behavior

Please get out of here with your bullshit non-science. You might as well be in a thread arguing God is real because you can't disprove him.

If your logic is "nobody figured it out yet, so it must be supernatural lol," you can't pretend like you're being scientific.

Lol good one

it is though

You're clinging to your idea like a religious zealot.

economics at its core is simply the best/most efficient way to allocate resources

And you aren't?

No.... We simply live in a physical universe, and until there's a single proven example of something supernatural, there's literally no reason to assume the mind isn't simply a physical system, and there definitely is no reason to believe that it's immune from cause and effect when your only evidence to the contrary is can much more easily be met with the response "the brain is extremely complex" as opposed to "welp must be magic lol"

I'm not that guy, but you're missing his point entirely. Besides he never said anything about supernatural things, seems like you feel your ideological beliefs are being challenged and you're responding by strawmanning him like a religious zealot would. I was just point that out.

Sociology is a little ridiculous, and incorporates psychology, biology, and history. Human behavior in large groups is inexplicable with "hard" sciences, and likely never will be.

>Besides he never said anything about supernatural things
Except he did. Assuming consciousness comes from some abstract, unexplainable source other than our physical brains is pseudoscience at best and supernatural belief at worst.

I'm actually pretty open to whatever ideas people have, but this isn't scientific. There's no scientific method determining the mind isn't subject to cause and effect, and it implies dualism which is a whole philosophy that isn't based on scientific reasoning.

My defense can only be called zealous if you believe that the scientific method is religious zealotry and that we should open the floor to unknown explanations (which by definition are supernatural) as opposed to much simpler, physical explanations for phenomenon.

I understand that people like to think their mind is something special, but it really isn't. It's an organic computer and nothing more.

>you're responding by strawmanning him like a religious zealot would
Ad Hom!!!!!!
See, I can be a faggot too.

Perfect example. Economics is for autists and alt-white nutjobs

Empirical economics is actually becoming more and more important within the field.

econometrics

social science is real science if it's done scientifically - it's the study of how people interact
psychology is the study of how people behave

Im the original user.

To clarify: all my arguments are based on current knowledge. So based on what we know, there is no case for you to assume our human mind is based on cause and effect, because there is no credible scientific evidence. To assume consciousness comes from physical make up of our brain is just as unscientific as you charge my position. But I am open to literature that I might've missed.

Now, in the absence of evidence for either positions, we can only speculate logically. One of the key assumptions of economics and decision theory is some axiom of rationality. In decision theory we can (mostly) deduce a rational series of actions based on some criteria that a rational agent, if he is rational, will follow. So that is an example of "cause and effect" because we can have a clear chain of actions. But there is nothing preventing the rational agent from deviating from that chain and acting irrationally. That can be simply due to a whim. That spontaneity cannot be modelled with cause and effect because the cause is seemingly arbitrary.

>psychology is the study of how people behave
Not quite. That's behavioral psychology. Social and cognitive psychology are examples of fields that aren't so clearly axed on behavior, although they are not necessarily dissociated from it either.

Also, you did strawman me. But that's probably not because you are stupid but rather because you are ignorant. There are different theories on the interaction between the brain and mind that is neither dualism nor reductionism. If you are a scientist interested in this field, I suggest you look at some of those papers from psychology, philosophy, medicine, etc.

>not quantitive
>not measurable
>not objective

Is this bait?

>To assume consciousness comes from physical make up of our brain is just as unscientific as you charge my position.

Except it literally isn't. Assuming that a system operates under some unknown laws of reality simply because it's too complicated to know in full at the moment is basically just religious explaining.

That's not even to mention the multitudes of case studies out there where people have damage to certain parts of their brains and their personalities change in predictable ways. Just because we haven't figured out the entire programming of the human brain doesn't mean consciousness somehow transcends the physical world, and assuming it does when literally nothing else in the universe does is definitely more absurd than the alternative.

It's like saying "well we haven't actually seen a graviton, so gravity must be caused by something beyond the physical world". That is stupid. Assuming the source of gravity is physical is not.

Is archaeology science?

Please address my example of rationality.

And again, damaging the brain correlating with behavioral patterns does not entail the brain causes the behavioral change. It at best entails that the brain is a necessary condition.

I'm behaving normally, therefore my brain is working normally.

My brain is not working normally, therefore I'm not behaving normally.

We have to be humble in the face of lack of evidence.

some parts of linguistics are science, other parts might not be. formal linguistics, or most of what stemmed from generative grammar in one way or another, tries to answer questions about the human language faculty. most people (at least those who are familiar with it) seem to consider formal linguistics to be a pretty good example of science. but linguistics departments a lot of the time also include people doing historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, language documentation, etc, which can be pretty different in their goals and methods.

Is that what privilege is?

>Please address my example of rationality.
Sure. Cause and effect have literally nothing more to do with rational decisions than irrational ones. You have an influx of hormones and you behave irrationally to use economic terms. Moreover, what may be rational to one may not be to another due to differing preferences and the utility any action yields.

>We have to be humble in the face of lack of evidence.
Except we don't have a lack of evidence. We simply haven't mapped every neuron of the brain. The parts of the brain we have mapped, like the Broca's and Wernicke's regions, perform predictably to provide the ability to formulate and understand language, and we can see those areas be underdeveloped in case studies where children are raised without human language.

It honestly just seems to me that you want very badly to believe in the idea of a mind/soul/whatever, but, again, in the absence of evidence you go with what is most likely, and what is most likely here?

That the mind is the software of the brain or that its something completely unknown to all science that is apparently beyond even the most basic laws of the universe?

>Cause and effect have literally nothing more to do with rational decisions than irrational ones

So casual structure of neuronal activity that determines human behavior does not determine our behaving rationally or irrationally?

What did he mean by this?

Where in the word linguistics do you see science. It never claimed to be a science, but that doesn't mean it's easy

Every linguistics textbook claims it's a science.

No clue about what you're on about, but I simply meant that irrational behavior being caused by a "whim" doesn't somehow remove a cause. A cause can be as simple as a certain smell causing a subconscious desire to do x, meaning you decided to do it. It's not a hard concept to understand. A billion tiny causes go into every decision you make, but it's cause and effect nonetheless.

Good. I'm glad you followed your logic to this stage. If every decision we make can be completely determined, and since we are not isolated from other agents, that would entail all decisions made by everyone are not actually decisions, since a decision implies the ability to do otherwise. In a fully deterministic world, concepts such as opportunity costs don't matter since there are technically no alternatives. Rationality also doesn't matter, since you couldn't have done otherwise. Learning from mistakes is impossible because your next action is not a choice but already determined. In a world of pure determinism like I believe you are suggesting, decisions are illusory. This not just a matter of how to find a one to one mapping of neuronal activity to observable behavior. This is a picture of the world that is simply absurd.

Lol, free will is a myth, which is what I've been saying since the first post. You haven't reduced my argument to absurdity because there's nothing "simply absurd" about what you just described. That innumerable causes go into every thought, action, etc. isn't ridiculous. Assuming that can't possibly be the case because it makes you personally uncomfortable is.

Again, your argument assumes that the human mind literally transcends the most fundamental laws of the universe and your argument for why is because you apparently believe it's self evident how silly a world without free will is. It isn't.

And nothing you said is useless in that post is actually useless. Those are all simply methods of figuring out and predicting behavior by understanding some of the more common of those trillions upon trillions of causes.

Frankly I'm just kind of confounded how you keep presenting your posts as if you've proven determinism is unlikely when nothing you've said is actually unlikely, just not acceptable to many people's view of themselves.

>>not quantitive
>>not measurable
>>not objective
"I literally have no idea what I'm talking about"
We get it, you saw a le me-me making fun of social scientists, don't pretend you know why

You can get away with murder in court if you master social sciences.
Also social sciences are mostly about standing above the masses and therefor give you great advantages

It's an actual science

determinism has been proven false already. go play in your basement.

>proven
Okay, kid

>Inb4 popsci but muh chaos theory

okay, kid
whatever makes you sleep at night

If it's been disproven, then you can educate me on how.

educate me on how quantum mechanics is deterministic

It's not a matter of whether things at a subatomic level are beholden to cause and effect, it's a matter of whether or not that has any impact on the physical world beyond the subatomic.

But in relation to the topic at hand, let's assume that a subatomic particle's location does impact your rationale. If it exists in a state/location not beholden to cause and effect itself, is that indicative of free will, or simply a different type of cause?

I don't think you understand what determinism means.

nice pivot.
thanks for playing.
the universe doesn't care for your autistic need for order

NO

they don't use proper scientific or analytical methods to confirm their hypotheses.

it's all observational. observational studies can show correlation, but they CANNOT show causation. only "manipulative experiments" can show causation. these are rarely, rarely done, and most "social" "science" these days is basically a front for practicing and spreading (suprise!) cultural marxism, which aims to homogenise all cultures of the world into one dull grey slush for the sake of "diversity", ironic isn't it?

So is astronomy not a science? Is evolutionary biology not a science?

>it's all observational. observational studies can show correlation, but they CANNOT show causation

expanding on this, without a properly designed and carried out, and analysed experiment the true cause of your observation can be masked by third variables that are unknown to you.

it's for this reason that you see so much crap in the media like "a glass of red wine is the same as an hour in the gym". they saw an effect, they used the wrong statistical methods for the thing they're testing, and of course they get a result that doesn't make any sense when an educated statistician, or scientist who's educated in using statistics, thinks about it, but it makes for a great headline that jives with people's sentiments, even though it's obviously false

kill yourself, pinko

I'm not really concerned with it, either. I simply posit that the actions of human beings are beholden to cause and effect.

If you believe I was advocating broadly for a certain philosophical belief, I apologize for the confusion.

Nor does it care about anyone's autistic need to feel in control.

Not an argument. Your definition of science fails as my counterexamples show.

notice how i never even mentioned free will and how you're the triggerly fedora who brought all of this up into a conversation that had nothing to do with it

So you're saying doesn't imply free will?

If not, what's the whole point of this entire conversation?

>A world without free will is not absurd

Please explain and argue your point. Simply stating it doesn't amount to much. As a scientist you should understand that you must back up your statements.

Yeah.

>As a scientist
Not a scientist.

And I was responding to a point which also had no evidence. Nothing in the post I replied to explained why it was absurd. Why would that warrant a point-by-point breakdown of my statement.

Free will, as argued itt, is predicated under the assumption that the mind is something beyond the physical brain. Assuming that this is not the case and that the mind, like all other things in the universe, is based in the physical world is not absurd simply because there's no reason to assume otherwise.

how bout that computational econ tho?

Read the post next time. If everything is determined then concepts such as opportunity cost, rationality, learning from mistakes are meaningless. All decisions are meaningless bc you couldn't choose otherwise. Now respond instead of ignoring the topic.

nope , worse then stats.
just lies and ideals, no profs.

I already responded in . Economics is just an attempt to understand how decisions are made. Those decisions ultimately being the product of uncountable micro causes doesn't negate it as a field of study, and I really don't know why you think it would.

>All decisions are meaningless bc you couldn't choose otherwise.
This is not a discussion of philosophy and about whether or not you want meaning in your life. The fact is that you, I, and everyone else with this hardware and software system called a human brain have the very practical illusion of control. And it really doesn't matter one in real life if that's an illusion or not because there are so many variables that go into any slight whim that it would be impossible to model it accurately--at least for the foreseeable future.

I don't know what else you want me to answer there. If it makes you uncomfortable to think that you don't *really* have control and you're just a bundle of cells that believes it does, so what? We have no reason to believe the case is anything other than that without bringing in things like religion.

By most definitions social science, political science, economics, linguistics, etc are sciences

>
>I already responded in . Economics is just an attempt to understand how decisions are made. Those decisions ultimately being the product of uncountable micro causes doesn't negate it as a field of study, and I really don't know why you think it would.
>>All decisions are meaningless bc you couldn't choose otherwise.
>This is not a discussion of philosophy and about whether or not you want meaning in your life. The fact is that you, I, and everyone else with this hardware and software system called a human brain have the very practical illusion of control. And it really doesn't matter one in real life if that's an illusion or not because there are so many variables that go into any slight whim that it would be impossible to model it accurately--at least for the foreseeable future.
>I don't know what else you want me to answer there. If it makes you uncomfortable to think that you don't *really* have control and you're just a bundle of cells that believes it does, so what? We have no reason to believe the case is anything other than that without bringing in things like religion.
Pls post this on Veeky Forums.
Pls.

Why don't you?

>mental causal laws exist

>Magic means human thoughts are independent of cause and effect

Are we just going to keep having this argument in circles?

generative grammar is science. if that doesn't make sense to you it's probably because you don't know what it is. it's NOT about literature, translation/interpretation, documenting languages, learning languages, or uncovering the history of languages (though the people who do those things are also called linguists).

manipulative experiments are done in linguistics. they're actually extremely easy to do and replicate. the convergence rate for linguistics experiments is about 95%. traditionally they've just been judgments obtained informally on sentences designed to test a particular hypothesis.

Its apparent that due to lack of knowledge you assume anything less than total determinism entails "magic" or "dualism". You should read more before you post.

Explain what else you think it is, and if your explanation includes quantum uncertainty/chaos theory then explain how an arbitrary difference in a subatomic particle's location isn't a cause itself.

Fine let's take quantum mechanics. I'm not sure what you mean by arbitrary difference, but in the classic double slit experiment there's absolutely no way to determine the route the electron takes without changing the outcome of the experiment. This is not a matter of inability due to shitty equipment. This is a fact of quantum mechanics. Therefore there is absolutely no way to trace deterministically the determinant cause of the outcome without changing the outcome itself. This is of course based on the standard interpretation.

You could also just Google for theories of the mind for a much more in depth explanation of other theories.

Your posts argue that if we don't have full determinism then that must mean we resort to "magic". "Magic" is unscientific. So we can't resort to "magic", hence determinism. That's a bad argument because there are other theories that lie in between full determinism and "magic".

>Double slit experiment

It's hard to take you serious when you instantly resort to pop science, but let's go with it anyway.

>I'm not sure what you mean by arbitrary difference
That's the entire point of quantum uncertainty. That the location of a subatomic particle can be any arbitrary point within an area of probability.

But again what your experiment proves is if that particle is influenced ("observed" in pop-sci speak) then the wave function collapses.

The idea that our thoughts are a result of truly random, unpredictable and uninfluenced locations of subatomic particle's is dependent on a lot of assumptions about the system. It also assumes that quantum uncertainty actually has an effect on that system.

But again. I've been arguing since the beginning of this thread one thing: that fee will is a myth. I don't really care about determinism, and even if you're right and quantum uncertainty does in fact influence thoughts, then it's just yet another in a long list of causes that "you" have no control over.

Don't argue with soultards, they're just as bad as flat earthers.

I don't even care about soultards. They specifically believe in the soul for spiritual reasons. They accept it's supernatural and don't try to bullshit it as if it's scientific.

Nothing, from a scientific standpoint, exists beyond the physical brain.

Double slit experiment is at the foundation of quantum mechanics. I dont understand your fascination with associating "pop" science with somehow less credibility.

I used "observed" because that's how physicists talk. We use observed or measured to talk about the problem of measurement in quantum mechanics. But we aren't here to argue semantics, and you can't hide behind it.

It's clear you don't even try to understand what we post. You obviously also have no grasp of the fundamental idea behind the standard interpretation. That is that there is inherently probability built in to our physical world. That makes it not fully deterministic. Your constant strawmans are pathetic, as other anons have pointed out. As is your failure to recognize arguments, or supply any of your own. Repeating your statements over and over is a sign of an ideologue, which you are.

Unless you're the person who has been arguing with me ITT about the mind existing beyond what is physical, i honestly don't know why you keep replying to me. Me thinking you are that person isn't "strawmaning" because if you're not him, then you picked up on one post 70 posts down and have been replying to it over and over again.

This will be my THIRD time saying this: I do not care about the deterministic argument. I do not propose that is the absolute truth in the world, and I do not care about it one way or another. I simply argue against saying that the mind cannot be reduced to the physical.

If you are not also arguing this, then simply stop replying to me because I have nothing to argue about with you.

Mind-user here.

It's the third time you said it, but also the third time you missed its implications. If the mind can be reduced to the physical then it is part of the causal chain of determinism, since the physical is dictated completely by cause and effect as you suggest. Anyway before this dies it was fun arguing with you while it lasted.