The validity of the most basic ideas behind science can not itself be demonstrated.
They call those hypotheses and theories, not facts.
You misunderstand. I'm not talking about facts, hypotheses or theories, I'm talking about things far more basic than that, the basic ideas behind science in the first place, the philosophy of science (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science), the idea that observations reflect reality, the idea that their are universal scientific laws that generally apply, even the idea that basic logic is essentially valid (science depends on logic). I don't doubt those ideas (well there is some doubt that the the laws of the universe are essentially the same across the universe, but that's doubt within science, it isn't quite as foundational as the other points).
I understood you that say that they WERE reality,
The idea about reality, is that slavery is actually wrong. And yes, I think that is real, I just don't claim to know it for the strongest senses of the word know.
When you declare that slavery is immoral, period end of subject, and inherently and absolutely immoral and when you declare"I'm saying ['it is true']I can and have," what else would I conclude but that you consider it an absolute certainty?
It could reasonably be said that nothing is an absolute certainty, even (for example) the foundations of science. Even moving away from that relatively philosophical question of certainty, its typical to say things are true without even meaning they are totally certain even in a more every day sense of that word. Its normal within science as well. We say the universe is over 10 billion years old (or even much more specific statements about its age than that), that "nothing can go faster than light" etc. I think those are true, but I'm not absolutely certain of them, in fact my belief that slavery is wrong is stronger than my belief in either of those.
"Certainty" oddly enough, can be a rather fuzzy concept.
Edit - Science really doesn't deal with certainty. It deals with falsifiability (which is itself never quite totally certain, but is often reasonably so). Science (quite properly and beneficially IMO) revises itself all the time. I suppose we could qualify every statement, scientific or otherwise with "I think that...", "Its my opinion that", "I believe...", but what's the point? |
