> _“You cannot however use science alone to take it.”_
Challenge accepted!
> _“You must first of all decide whether wealth transfer or social intervention are things that should be done, that is, if you think it is a moral and acceptable thing.”_
**Economics**: a (social) science. It studies the allocation of scarce resources (in this case, money), and in doing so provides answers to the eternal conflict between _efficiency_ (economic growth) and _equity_ (redistribution) — which is at the root of my hypothetical scenario. Necessary here.
**Moral philosophy**: a (soft) science. The study of ethics. Definitely helpful for this example too, to help disentangle questions of “is vs ought” that Economics alone can't resolve.
**Political science** (it's in the name): concerned with systems of governance and power (redistribution is implemented within those systems).
**History**: a (soft) science studying the past, and change. Because redistribution measures have been proposed or implemented before. (How did they work, what happened?)
**Medicine** (focused on physical health) and **psychology** (because individuals react to the status quo, and to proposed policies). We're trying to optimise human well-being here, after all. **Sociology** too, because _societies_ as a whole react to the status quo and to proposed policies also.
Underpinning it all: **mathematics** (especially **statistics**). **Chaos theory** to better understand market dynamics under the proposed changes.
Throw into the mix also **computer science** (to run simulations of public policies and changes in incentives). Heck, even the systematic study of **literature** [would provide useful inputs here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cassandra_(literature)).
These are all “sciences” (admittedly, under a lax definition of “science”) — in any case, definitely closer to the realm of science than to any of the other epistemic systems we've mentioned (tradition, intuition, religion, etc).
There you are. What else do you need to work on this problem and come to a solution, other than #science?
@tripu
These are not sciences, since not all of those follow the scientific method.
Defining moral philosophy as science is laughable.
@ImperfectIdea
It is not, it's the founding base of science.
If you know nothing about the philosophy of science then you can not do science, because you don't know what you're doing.
If you're working in a scientific environment and you don't know nothing about this, I'm sorry, but you will have to reconsider your position and your competencies.
Either way, if you want to discuss about science you should know what science is and on what philosophical base it is founded on, so you should know what are the various theories regarding the philosophy of science.
It appears that you know nothing about it, thus start from here and branch out learning about the various things.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science
@tripu
@ImperfectIdea
I mean, there's a whole branch of philosophy dedicated to defining science and how it works.
If you work in science you should at least know what that is about; this is my opinion.
In my opinion, if you don't know that stuff then you are a bad scientists and I have a low esteem of you.
It's what I consider the base of the scientific method.
While you can do science without knowing the scientific method, I do believe it is proper to know what it is and how it works in order to conduct good research.
@tripu
@rastinza
That's debatable: (good modern) moral philosophy tries to derive statements rationally from a parsimonious set of axioms (yes, there are axioms at the root of it, but as we said that's true of _any_ discipline).
But I'm willing to drop that one for the sake of making progress in the debate.
My question stands: what else do you need to work on this problem and come to a solution, other than #science?
/cc @ImperfectIdea