On The Practice Of Science
Science delivers an ever-evolving understanding of reality — not the truth, because that is the death of science.
👈 || UNSAYING | CONTEMPLATION | TRADITION | MEDITATION | DISCUSSIONS | BACK MATTER || 👉
Science as practiced brings us incremental improvements only, because it operates within a paradigmatic bubble. Any phenomena that lies outside of that bubble that cannot be explained away, or recast into a more plausible outlier within the bubble, or just ignored, is then labeled a supervenient phenomenon, an “epi-something-or-other,” as consciousness is today. It is labeled an epiphenomenon because it cannot be incorporated into the paradigmatic bubble of mechanistic materialism, and yet is somehow, in some non-verifiable way, not separate from the phenomena that are incorporated.
What is glossed over in these newly minted epiphenomena is that there is no return relationship — no possible causal influence. If there were, then they would be a part of that which they are said to supervene upon, and thus they would be subject to strictly determined material mechanisms.