Squeers
Well I think it’s unfair to say I’m prejudiced against anything you say when I have only recently explicitly agreed with you; besides it’s mind-reading.

“What I was saying… is that discrete, objectively derived, "evidence" is also highly dubious when alienated from its context.

Wny? How? Against what standard?

Why can’t we abstract objective truths? Why can’t we validly say “These 2 apples + those 2 apples=4 apples”?

“I also alluded to the fact that the discrete evidence is inevitably and reciprocally corrupted by that context.

What’s that supposed to mean? What is the standard of truth against which you are determining what is “dubious” and what is “corrupted”?

“Scientists and philosophers are well aware of these difficulties.”

I’m asking *you* to explain them.

“ My more important point… that the social detachment (asceticism?) associated with the analytic tradition is questionable in at least three ways,

Well I’m in the analytic tradition but no-one ever accused me of asceticism.

a) it devalues the mysterious capacity humans have demonstrated for fathoming manifestations of reality intuitively, imaginatively, serendipitously, aesthetically and contextually.

No it doesn’t. Just because I can analyse a sunset in terms of dust particles and light spectrum, does not in the least detract from my ability to appreciate its beauty.

“Examples are legion, but Hegel and Crick, and yes, Marx, are a few.”

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA, oh ye-es (wipes tear of mirth from eye) … there’s that great perspicacity of Marx again. He was such a genius at economics BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAAAAA! (slaps thigh with hilarity)

“And b, even more important, the detachment employed by our analytic priests is irresponsibly subservient to the powers that be.”

That's an argument against irresponsible subservience to the powers that be, not against analytical objectivity.

But want I want to know is, if you deny the possibility of objective knowledge, how do you know you're not being more irresponsibly subservient to the powers that be?

(cont)
“Scientific production is non-aspirational (except when it is openly politically aligned, though as I say it is aligned by default. If our societies were ethical and self-sufficient our science would follow suit), and thus its endeavours are driven by demand, without recourse to ethics (ethical considerations are socially imposed or ignored) “

Hang on. You still haven’t shown any objective basis on which your ethics could be founded.

“and c) scientific rationalism is also a social phenomenon,..."

that doesn't mean it's incapable of objectivity

"a church"
you haven't established that

"that cultivates a kind of grand nihilism that despises the "irrational" nature of social consciousness--scientific self-loathing.”

What do you mean the “irrational nature of social consciousness”? What’s that supposed to mean?

Please define objectivity.

Why is there no objectivity per se?

The argument is this: if the laws of physics apply to human action, then the principles of logic do too. For example, a person can't be in two places at the same time. A person's time on earth is limited. A person's actions always consist of preferring A to B.

These propositions follow from our physical nature. And that being so, their logical consequences follow, and from these logical consequences, we can derive universally valid propositions of fact that are objectively true and objectively demonstrable. Therefore we economic and social science is possible. (You have *denied* it, but you haven't *disproved* it.)

The fact that empiricists and positivist social science employ a wrong methodology, and that all knowledge may be hired for the wrong ends, does not disprove that proposition of pure theory.

Hrrmph.

Houellebecq,
you're a wit among dunces and a dunce among wits. Being a dunce myself, however, I can relate to your sense of humour. But sometimes I get serious.

Peter Hume,
you are a tedious fellow.
I'm sorry but I'm not here to educate you in rudimentary philosophical aporia. I've said nothing that isn't (un)common knowledge on the philosophical front, though my extrapolations are my own. It must be dreadfully dull living with such complacency day in and out?
So how about you go away and do some homework, and when you know your philosophical times table we can chat..

I wonder sometimes, if these drought ridden dust-bowl people can ever find there way beyond the farm gates.......lol.....its like watching a re-run from the eighties, with all members of the scripts repeating the same out of date thinkings as you would except:) I mean the ( god is not what you think it is ) is in-fact reportedly well understood by many of top sciences, in being one has to think higher or at least look at the evidences, but NO! Belief is something only others can understand, depending on ones evolutionary advances, given that the type of DNA ones supply's with, can make all the differences:)

Now, if some still needs a pocket-book supporter, this will thus conclude the following sentence.

Humans can be convinced of absolutely anything....... except me of course:) Anything Religious Concerning A Deity Will Always cause a sensation (: to put it lightly :) and one of the cruelness mind inflictions ever to be put on man as a way of controlling one-another.

1 . If this is wrong, then how come Iam as happy as pig in the, and it dont cost me a cent?

2 . How come billions of others needs not but themselves for joy?

3 . Why is science and truth of natural-life, so completing.....and other religion.....and in-clueds the towel-heads.

4 . Why do we live in peace, while religions make harm?

LEAP

Squeers
The problem is that, according to your theory, there’s no such thing as knowable objective reality, it’s just whatever people think it is. So when someone challenges your garbled third-hand Marxist balderdash with a view to disproving it, you just retreat into denying that there’s any such possibility as your arguments being rationally disproved. But of course if the philosophic truths you contend for are as basic as you claim, you should have no trouble making your case. But if they're true, there’s also no possibility of your utterances being meaningful either – and certainly no justification for any of the re-distributionist policies you advocate

Peter Hume,

you misrepresent everything I say. Like it or not there is ultimately no reality objectively available and fully disclosed to us, but I've never said and don't say that "it’s just whatever people think it is"; that would be relativism and idealism, which I don't condone.
The only reality we need concern ourselves with, for practical purposes, is this one, and it needs urgent attention.
I would be delighted for you to challenge "with an eye to disproving" what I say, but first you have to understand it, and second, to paraphrase your good self, you'll need more than ad hominem.