"Science works, bitches" -- to answer particular types of questions which have certain properties. Questions about ethics (that is, what one "should" do) can be informed by science, but there is no such thing as a falsifiable ethical framework; an ethical framework must by its nature involve assumptions which are not determined by science.
Thus, an "answer" or "truth" within ethics is a different type of thing than an "answer" or "truth" within, say, chemistry. Coyne glosses over this by assuming the only type of "answer" or "truth" that matters is the type that comes from science or can be verified by science. This is not an isolated misstatement; he has previously said that "Only science has the ability to answer questions" [0]. Rather amusingly, this is a philosophical and non-scientific assumption.
This is why Coyne's response is essentially useless. Science is an awesome tool, but there are questions it can only address within a framework dependent on non-scientific assumptions.
[0] http://vimeo.com/31505142 around the 34:20 mark
Er, isn't that the entire point? Coyne didn't set this trap; Hughes did by contrasting science with ???, where ??? is some as-yet undefined way of apprehending truth. It's incumbent on Hughes to solve that dilemma, not Coyne. And, of course, Hughes doesn't. At all.
But since some theoretical physicists can't tell you why the universe exists and evolutionary psychologists still publish papers, the periodic table of elements, Maxwell's equations, and the theory of evolution are all part of a religion. QED!
I'm speaking broadly here, but qualia are not scientific. My internal experiences aren't scientific. So I'd say that, on one sense, at least half of what I experience is not scientific.
No one actually knows what is going on inside of my head at this moment. Yet I know my own thoughts, emotions and experiences. Science may know that I can experience love, for example. But it can't tell me that I am experiencing love at this moment, as I write this comment, or who I fall in love with.
The question I was responding to was: "Show me something that's not science that we know". My response is that there are lots of things that we, as people, actually know but can't study scientifically.
For example, if I'm hungry and eat a good meal the changes in my brain chemistry that induce the sense of well being that follows are well understood.
That doesn't tell me anything at all about the actual subjective experience of feeling pleasure though. That is something distinct.
Let me make an argument by analogy.
You are saying that understanding the chip architecture and the instruction set of a computer does not allow you to understand what it is like for that chip to run a given program. Is that a fair analogy? Can you improve it?
If this is a fair analogy, then I think it is clear that you are wrong. We absolutely can understand what running a given program is like. We may need to use a different vocabulary and abstract away detail in order to efficiently communicate the idea of running the program (say, talk about a data structure rather than the individual bits that compose it), but that is true in every field. This is basic tool of reasoning.
If that is not a good analogy, please let me know how. I am not satisfied at all that I understand what you mean when you write "the actual subjective experience". I understand what those words mean but I cannot match them with an object.
The problem with this argument is that your conscious perception is actually the only thing you can know to exist. Everything else is sense data fed into that consciousness. You assume that the external world that manifests itself via sense data exists because it appears consistent.
But as I sit here typing this the only thing I can know with certainty is that 'I' exist and am conscious (by definition).
This process of being conscious, of perceiving the world, is what I am arguing is outside the realm of science.
Now I know a number of people are of the opinion that if you have a sufficiently complicated machine, biological or otherwise, consciousness will become some emergent property. And maybe this is so. But just saying 'it emerges' is not science. It's hand waving. So instead we have to just accept that for the moment we cannot speak of it.
Even more to the point: the impetus lies with the proponents of "love as a useful, concrete object" to defend their hypothesis from dissection by neuroscientists. Linguistic and poetic convention have no hold over hard data.
Do you think they'll remain unscientific?
As a matter of fact, there is an interesting book about it: [What We Believe but Cannot Prove](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_We_Believe_But_Cannot_Prov...).
Just off the top of my head, I'd say the most obvious thing that people know that isn't scientific is to make creative leaps and discover/invent new ideas. Science can tell us a lot about how it happens, but there is no scientific formula for creating new, true, useful, or provocative ideas. When people make a creative leap, do they know it's true, in the scientific sense?
Or how about humor? Can you scientifically prove a joke to be funny? I know what I find funny, but humor is not provable, or created following the scientific method.
Demonstrably false. Going by Steve Martin's autobiography, as just one example, stand-up comics routinely submit their new material to controlled tests with sample audiences. Jokes (and performance details) that fail to elicit laughter and post-show satisfaction (i.e. as practical a demonstration of "funny" as any), are judged provably false and left out of the routine.
To rephrase this, science is the only thing we know. Show me something that's not science that we know. Of course, you can't. You've given yourself the answer before you begin to ask the question.
Effective science and humility have to go hand-in-hand. Otherwise you're just creating a new religion with the rubric "science" stuck on it.