Is science useless if it doesn't aid people in procreating?

[Night FM]

I consider this a reducto ad absurdum, and I think that concepts such as Maslow's hierarchy of needs do a good job of addressing these (e.x. purely material needs such as procreation are at the lowest end of the hierarchy). Nevertheless, I think it does a good job debunking the conventional wisdom that the only purpose of life is procreation.

Basically, if someone believes the only purpose of life is procreation, then science is useless to humans unless it somehow aids them at procreating. And for most of human history, people lived as hunter-gatherers without modern science or technology (which presumably took off with the advent of agriculture) and still met their procreative needs. Therefore, this would lead to the absurd conclusion that, if not useless, science and technology are unnecessary unless they somehow better enable us to procreate than we would have been able to without them (this would coincide with the ideas of anarcho-primitivists such as John Zerzan, which I reject). 

[swansont]

11 minutes ago, Night FM said:

the conventional wisdom that the only purpose of life is procreation

Is that the conventional wisdom? I don’t think your premise is true. There may be a few who believe this, but I don’t think it has widespread acceptance 

[exchemist]

5 minutes ago, Night FM said:

I consider this a reducto ad absurdum, and I think that concepts such as Maslow's hierarchy of needs do a good job of addressing these (e.x. purely material needs such as procreation are at the lowest end of the hierarchy). Nevertheless, I think it does a good job debunking the conventional wisdom that the only purpose of life is procreation.

Basically, if someone believes the only purpose of life is procreation, then science is useless to humans unless it somehow aids them at procreating. And for most of human history, people lived as hunter-gatherers without modern science or technology (which presumably took off with the advent of agriculture) and still met their procreative needs. Therefore, this would lead to the absurd conclusion that, if not useless, science and technology are unnecessary unless they somehow better enable us to procreate than we would have been able to without them (this would coincide with the ideas of anarcho-primitivists such as John Zerzan, which I reject). 

Aunt Sally Alert: Who has ever suggested the only purpose of life is procreation?

[Night FM]

3 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Aunt Sally Alert: Who has ever suggested the only purpose of life is procreation?

I don't typically hear educated or thoughtful people say it, but given that there is an evolutionary or biological imperative to procreate, I believe some people reduce the purpose of life to sex and procreation, or at least offer no purpose of life other than sex and procreation.

Edited September 14 by Night FM

[exchemist]

10 minutes ago, Night FM said:

I don't typically hear educated or thoughtful people say it, but given that there is an evolutionary or biological imperative to procreate, I believe some people reduce the purpose of life to sex and procreation, or at least offer no purpose of life other than sex and procreation.

In other words, you've made it up. I thought as much. I note that you are already shifting the goalposts: from procreation to sex and procreation. That already makes a significant difference, of course. 

Anyway, since you've posted this in Philosophy, I would simply draw your attention to the distinction between what the biology of the human species as a whole may optimise itself for, and what purpose an individual human being may seek or find in the course of his or her life. I suggest clarifying which of the two you want to talk about.  

Edited September 14 by exchemist

[swansont]

20 minutes ago, Night FM said:

I don't typically hear educated or thoughtful people say it,

IOW people who don’t know what they’re talking about say this. Not much of a basis for discussion.

20 minutes ago, Night FM said:

but given that there is an evolutionary or biological imperative to procreate, I believe some people reduce the purpose of life to sex and procreation, or at least offer no purpose of life other than sex and procreation.

There is a biological imperative - a species will die out if there’s no procreation - but that’s not a “purpose”

If it was the purpose, then there would be no need for women live past menopause, or for impotent people to live at all.

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

If it was the purpose, then there would be no need for women live past menopause, or for impotent people to live at all.

Or having two sexes for the purpose of procreation.

[MigL]

Perhaps it's a little misleading, being in the Philosophy section, and the fact the thread title mentions 'people', but I believe the OP mentions

4 hours ago, Night FM said:

the only purpose of life is procreation

Not People or humans, but life in general.

What is the purpose of a single cell organism ?
What is the purpose of a plant ?
What is the purpose of an insect that fertilizes its mate, and is then eaten by that mate ?
What is the purpose of the 'queen' in an ant or bee colony ?

Maybe humans, as a thinking ( sometimes ) species, have evolved past that.

Edited September 14 by MigL

[sethoflagos]

5 hours ago, Night FM said:

And for most of human history, people lived as hunter-gatherers without modern science or technology (which presumably took off with the advent of agriculture) and still met their procreative needs.

So you don't regard say Levallois tool-making as a scientific advance?

Good luck managing to procreate in the palaeolithic if you can't even make a decent pointy stick.

[Sensei]

Quote

Is science useless if it doesn't aid people in procreating?

Thanks to science, so many people in the world are alive. Science is also the discovery of vaccines, drugs, artificial fertilizers, fast transportation. Without artificial fertilizers, the soil would not produce so many, such good quality fruits every year. Previous systems ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-field_system ) have reached their limits. Without fast transportation, fuel, fertilizers, ready food could not reach people who are hungry, creating a natural bottleneck.

The next step, if the population continues to grow, will be the mass production of artificial food from GMO organisms. i.e. instead of raising animals on farms, human can make artificial meat in vats with specially created bacteria.. There will be no other option. Land space, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen on Earth have their limits.

Edited September 15 by Sensei

[MSC]

Didn't science figure out how procreation even happens? Making it easier for people to procreate due to the knowledge of how it actually works? What is IVF?

[LuckyR]

On 9/14/2024 at 12:45 PM, MigL said:

Perhaps it's a little misleading, being in the Philosophy section, and the fact the thread title mentions 'people', but I believe the OP mentions

Not People or humans, but life in general.

What is the purpose of a single cell organism ?
What is the purpose of a plant ?
What is the purpose of an insect that fertilizes its mate, and is then eaten by that mate ?
What is the purpose of the 'queen' in an ant or bee colony ?

Maybe humans, as a thinking ( sometimes ) species, have evolved past that.

Alas, the term "purpose" is subjective, thus requires a perspective from which the "purpose" can be determined. So the purpose of a hammer will differ between a carpenter and a hitman. 

[Ken Fabian]

The procreation part is less significant - or at least a lot less hard work - than the caring and raising of young. That biological imperative to deal with the results of procreaton imbues a lot of animals - not just humans -with empathy or some equivalent, where a lot of behavior is devoted to the welfare of others; it takes no knowledge of gods or morality or even thinking it through and deciding and I would not call it "purpose", but for want of more nuance, humans trying to make sense of the world by thinking about it found it beneficial to frame it that way. For apes including humans the troupe and group is how their young are kept safe and cared for; even if an individual's own survival may (but doesn't always) take precedence they will care for their children. Their own children may have priority over others but there is overall benefit including to those children to looking out for everyone's children - as well as for other adults, who aid the providing of care for all the group's young. In dire circumstances it is more common amongst humans to require a willingness to sacrifice their lives than to revert to every individual for themselves; the group matters more than the individual. Self sacrifice for the good of others may be easier for some by believing something of themselves, if only in the memories of others, goes on after their death.

I expect more applied science has been used to assure the food, health care and education of our young than for aiding successful procreation, although we do that too.

[swansont]

2 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

The procreation part is less significant - or at least a lot less hard work - than the caring and raising of young.

For those who do this. There are species that lay eggs and then take off. 

[MigL]

4 hours ago, LuckyR said:

the purpose of a hammer will differ between a carpenter and a hitman. 

How so ?
In both cases, it is used to hit things.
Pliers and blowtorches can similarly be used by mechanics and hit men,

[Harrot]

To say "something has a purpose" we need to say that there is "a will" involved. Purpose with no intention, so no will, is not a purpose : It remains a fact.

In the case of a hammer, because if "someone" is a human and because human do things because of their will, someone who designed the hammer did it obviously by some purpose.

Per example, an idiot can design a hammer of 100lbs to test the genuflexion reflex of some patient or to kill flies. He did it by purpose. Is it the best or even the suitable way relativ to the goal ? So is the FACT that it can be used in some situation or not, apply to the purpose it was intented for ? There is no obligation between the fact and the purpose.

Purpose come from imagination, and the facts come from reality. You can name "hammer" a piece of wood found in the forest : You imagine his purpose unlike you dident designed the real hammer.

 

On 9/14/2024 at 4:56 PM, Night FM said:

Basically, if someone believes the only purpose of life is procreation, then science is useless to humans unless it somehow aids them at procreating. And for most of human history, people lived as hunter-gatherers without modern science or technology (which presumably took off with the advent of agriculture) and still met their procreative needs. Therefore, this would lead to the absurd conclusion that, if not useless, science and technology are unnecessary unless they somehow better enable us to procreate than we would have been able to without them (this would coincide with the ideas of anarcho-primitivists such as John Zerzan, which I reject). 

We can't say that science is useless for human procreation. It's not true to say that knowing more is useless.  Knowing more (and that's what science does) gives you the possibility of doing more, knowing less takes away the possibility of doing more: That's a fact.

The right question is: Are we using science to do more in the area of procreating human life? The answer is: Without scientific progress, there would certainly not be 10 billion human beings on Earth.

General question: Is the aim of science to help mankind? There is no answer to this question. Science is a fact, and the reason why it is developed and used has nothing to do with any fundamental property of science: It depends on the people involved.

So, people can do something one day and do something else another day, making “science” (the application of knowledge) beneficial to a certain field.

[dimreepr]

2 hours ago, Harrot said:

To say "something has a purpose" we need to say that there is "a will" involved. Purpose with no intention, so no will, is not a purpose : It remains a fact.

This is every kind of bollox... 😣

[studiot]

2 hours ago, Harrot said:

To say "something has a purpose" we need to say that there is "a will" involved. Purpose with no intention, so no will, is not a purpose : It remains a fact.

In my view that is too narrow a definition of the word purpose.

There may be a will involved or there may not.

For instance I might come along and look at the pebbles in the river bed or sea shore and say the bumping around in the swash and backwash has server a purpose to round those pebbles. Yet I can scarcely attribute any will to the sea or river be.
I might then move on to look at the conglomorate in the cliffs above the shore and say those pebbles in the conglomerate are rounded so were also formed in a water environment. My purpose in using the former to deduce the latter would indeed involve a will  - mine own.

[LuckyR]

19 hours ago, MigL said:

How so ?
In both cases, it is used to hit things.
Pliers and blowtorches can similarly be used by mechanics and hit men,

No carpenter when asked the purpose of his hammer will answer "to hit things", so no, that's not the purpose of a carpenter's hammer (nor the hit man's), though you're right pliers and blow torches also illustrate my point. 

 

[iNow]

A good carpenter would first ask you to clarify what type of hammer it is.
 

Framing hammer? Ball peen hammer? Tack hammer? Sledge hammer? Dead blow hammer? Rubber mallet? Etc etc. 

[studiot]

24 minutes ago, iNow said:

A good carpenter would first ask you to clarify what type of hammer it is.
 

Framing hammer? Ball peen hammer? Tack hammer? Sledge hammer? Dead blow hammer? Rubber mallet? Etc etc. 

Or he might have burst into song along with Pete Seeger, Trini Lopez and Peter, Paul and Mary.

😀

Edited October 7 by studiot

[MigL]

17 hours ago, iNow said:

Framing hammer? Ball peen hammer? Tack hammer? Sledge hammer? Dead blow hammer? Rubber mallet? Etc etc. 

Exactly.
All are used for hitting stuff.

( in the case of a hit-man it is usually heads, although 'enforcers' often do kneecaps )

[Night FM]

On 9/17/2024 at 7:06 AM, MSC said:

Didn't science figure out how procreation even happens? Making it easier for people to procreate due to the knowledge of how it actually works? What is IVF?

It may have, but, for the most part, I believe that science and understanding the universe is an end in and of itself, and something that scientists on some level simply find to be enjoyable. Animals may not "know how procreation works", but they know how to do it, and have been doing it successfully for millions of years, just as how humans lived as hunter-gatherers for most of human history and did not need detailed knowledge of how procreation works to be successful at it.

This would correlate with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and the fact that mere survival is near the bottom of the hierarchy, while creative pursuits such as science are higher on the list. Therefore, rendering statements that life itself is about survival or procreation factually incorrect. If anything, procreation is just a way for society to further its creative pursuits, such as scientific theories which have developed over many years by many generations.

Edited October 12 by Night FM

[MSC]

12 hours ago, Night FM said:

This would correlate with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and the fact that mere survival is near the bottom of the hierarchy, while creative pursuits such as science are higher on the list. Therefore, rendering statements that life itself is about survival or procreation factually incorrect. If anything, procreation is just a way for society to further its creative pursuits, such as scientific theories which have developed over many years by many generations

I think you misunderstand how Maslow's hierarchy works; it isn't a top down priority structure, it's an order of supervenience wherein foundationary access to our needs is what enables further access to the upper levels. Put simply, you can't climb a pyramid by starting at the top. If you don't have access to water, food, warmth and oxygen, you die, and the rest of the needs you have and access to them, dies with you. 

A much simpler way of interpreting the hierarchy of needs, is just to look at the scale of the sections, not where they are from top to bottom, just the scale. The bigger the section, the greater the need. This turns it into more of a scale of whether or not something is a true need or borders on practically being a want. 

The context of the hierarchy itself is that it is supposed to be a description of what a human needs in order to feel like it is or has led a good and fulfilling life. The baseline foundation of that is simply a life where you have had steady access to food, water, clean air and shelter without worry of scarcity, if you had that, chances are you were able to have the opportunites to achieve access to the upper levels of our needs, which again are physiologically not as important as the lower levels upon which the entire pyramid rests. It doesn't matter how much self actualisation you can do, it will always come back to the foundational needs. 

[Night FM]

6 hours ago, MSC said:

I think you misunderstand how Maslow's hierarchy works; it isn't a top down priority structure, it's an order of supervenience wherein foundationary access to our needs is what enables further access to the upper levels. Put simply, you can't climb a pyramid by starting at the top. If you don't have access to water, food, warmth and oxygen, you die, and the rest of the needs you have and access to them, dies with you. 

The hierarchy also recognizes that some people prioritize needs higher on the hierarchy over lower ones. Obviously if a person starved to death, they would cease being able to meet higher needs, but most people's basic material needs in the developed world are met, and things that people prioritize (e.x. career, hobbies, marriage) encompass needs which are higher on the list.

Edited October 12 by Night FM