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Describes consciousness as a natural phenomenon and establishes a theoretical foundation for justice based upon the democratic decisions of free and educated people.
Science can be described as a collection of information that has been carefully filtered to remove any impurities, leaving only the closest thing that we have to the truth at this time in history. The scientific community can be described as a group of intellectual elitists who are committed to keeping this valuable collection of information free from fantasy and superstition, and uncontaminated by politics or religion.
Members of the scientific community are generally uncompromising in their condemnation of any irrational ideas or unprovable claims. Disputes and disagreements are a normal part of this process, and we can only hope that by carefully examining the theories and the evidence, and through open debate, scientific reasoning will continue to prevail in the pursuit of rational truth.
For those scientists who study the physical properties of the universe, each theory must be able to accurately predict the results of an experiment, and we have learned to expect that every detail can be neatly described using mathematical equations. As physical scientists continue to discover the secrets of matter and energy, and as this knowledge finds practical applications in fields like engineering and medicine, we continue to enjoy the fruits of advancing technology.
Compared to the physical sciences, despite more than a century of research, the social sciences have failed to agree on any reliable theories about human nature or the nature of human society.
Social sciences like anthropology, sociology, and psychology emerged from the political and social revolutions of the 1800s, when new scientific discoveries were destroying the intellectual credibility of Christianity. No longer held back by fear of religious persecution, and no longer satisfied with the speculations of philosophers, scientifically minded thinkers confidently set out to apply scientific methods to the study of humankind.
However, because of the fluidity of the human mind and the complexity of everyday social interactions, human behavior soon proved to be too difficult to predict with any degree of certainty.
In the absence of any measurable quantities or objective standards, the best that can be done is to compare different cultures or collect and analyze statistics. But because of the countless uncontrollable variables of everyday life, it is almost always impossible to reach any reliable conclusions.
Social realities are so complex that any kind of social theory can only ever be a generalized approximation. Any attempt to describe human behavior quickly becomes bogged down by the limitations of human language. Achieving a perfectly clear explanation requires more effort than most social scientists are prepared to give. Unrefined explanations are easily misinterpreted, and most contributions to social science have been spoiled by ambiguities, arbitrary categorizations, and subjective valuations.
Ideology
From the very beginning, the uncertainties and inaccuracies of social science created opportunities for ideological extremists to interpret observations in ways that justified their own political agendas. Claiming to have science on your side is a powerful form of political propaganda, and social science immediately became a battlefront in the struggle for political power.
Most people recognize that we inherit some of our behavioral characteristics from our parents while other characteristics are shaped over our lifetime by our social interactions and other environmental influences. But many early social theorists overstressed the importance of hereditary characteristics in order to justify continuing racial discrimination, sexism, and class distinction. They said that the reason why some cultures are more advanced than others is because some groups of people are biologically superior.
Such potentially destructive ideas were fiercely resisted by other theorists who maintained that all people have roughly the same mental capabilities regardless of their race, sex, or class. The human brain is highly adaptable and everyone has the ability learn new skills.
Other theorists went even further, saying that no culture can be said to be more advanced than any other. Each culture has followed its own equally valid path to the present time, regardless of their current level of technology or material wealth. Every traditional culture deserves equal respect despite what its people believe or how they behave.
Some theorists even rejected the significance of technological change, refusing to admit that patterns of human behavior adapt over time to suit the prevailing technological conditions, insisting instead that human choice plays a greater role in defining culture than any materialistic influence. This way of thinking better suited Christian and Marxist hopes of reconstructing society and reinventing human nature in order to bring about their promised utopias.
More concerned about political outcomes or moral sensitivities than scientific objectivity, and often ignoring any evidence contrary to their position, these kinds of ideologies have been battling to dominate social science since the 1800s. Support for each ideology has shifted over the decades in response to European imperialism, world war, the spread of communism, the Great Social Revolution, and the postmodern age.
Under the influence of postmodernism, many social scientists have now lost faith in the possibility of discovering any reliable patterns in human nature or in the nature of human society. They instead prefer to believe that human history is just a disconnected series of meaningless events. Concepts like ‘progress’ and ‘civilization’ are rejected as myths invented to uphold Western cultural values. Cultures may be observed, but any attempt to compare or evaluate them based upon any notion of progress raises the fear of cultural discrimination and racism. Any attempt to justify the emergence of the modern world is condemned as being a rationalization for oppression.
Many students of postmodern social science no longer even believe in the scientific method, and those that still do believe often feel so disillusioned that they give up any hope of ever eradicating the political bias, moral censorship, anti-scientific sentiment, and pseudo-science from their profession.
Many scientifically minded people now believe that the traditional social sciences are so paralyzed by relativism and skepticism, and so crippled by political correctness, that they should be abandoned in favor of new disciplines like sociobiology and evolutionary psychology that derive their ideas directly from the theory of evolution.
Over the next few decades, computerized neurobiological models should become powerful enough to simulate the functioning of the human brain, and they may eventually become sophisticated enough to simulate the complex interactions of human society. This should bring an end to many of the uncertainties of social science. Even then, we may never be able to account for all of the biological, environmental, historical, and technological factors that create our human world.
However, no computer model will ever be able to answer the ultimate question of human existence, the question of whether consciousness has any kind of cosmic purpose. This question is relevant to social science because the ultimate determinant of all social theory is metaphysical.
Social theories that assume the evolution of humankind was a mere accident of nature and the discovery of advanced technology was an unplanned consequence are philosophically incompatible with social theories that allow for the possibility that consciousness might have evolved to fulfill some kind of cosmic purpose.
The rest of this chapter has been cut from the internet. It contains concepts that might appear too philosophical for the average reader to absorb.
Continue to chapter 15 ... Politics and Religion
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