I sincerely was not expecting my OP to ruffle so many feathers so intensely. I apologize for not choosing some of my words and phrases more conscientiously, and for not applying more wisdom in constructing my sentences and paragraphs.
I confess I find some of the heat I sense coming off some of your reactions to be hard to handle, especially amidst my current state fatigue and malaise. But I'll do my best respond while I'm up for air.
@Trish said, "This forum is not a philosophical debating chamber...."
I hear that. I apogize if my lack of clarity in my OP conteributed to ceeating the impression that I see it as auch. The problem have with it, though, is that science itself is a philosophy.* It's a branch of epistemology invented by, and developed by, philosophers. It's also, for me, as Richard Rorty noted (in the introduction to one of his papers compilations I forget the title of, but want say, "Objectivity, Truth and Relativism"?), a form of therapy, or theapeutic, a strategy for coping with reality. (I paraphrase from memory, so forgive me if I butchered it.)
As far as demarcation goes, I ahould have been clear about my deep suspicion rhat the line between science and pseudoscience has always been and still is fluid, or like
@hotblack said, "always a rough approximation." That's why it's still called The Demarcation PROBLEM.
It seems to like two duscussions and/or debates are happening in this thread (maybe more?). The first is whether demarcation is even a thing; the second that, assuming, or deeply suspecting ss I do, that demarcation is s thing, what kind of thing it is, and what the pragmatic implications of that assumption or deep suspicion and its type are. For this thread, I'm only interested in the second discussion/debate. I'm truly sorry I didn't explicate that plainly enough.
As a good faith gesture, perhaps we could leave the first discussion/debate in this sub forum, and move the second to the the chit-chat sub?
Also, by "aternative term" I did not mean as a replacement term, but was peoposing that a pause amidst discourse be taken where the users clarify which of the above two senses of science and pseudoscience is being used by each speaker. I apologize for not appreciating the extent to which some members value the term as given in the sense of the first discussion/debate.
@Utsikt said"...you’re doing exactly what you’re accusing everyone else of now: you’re asserting categorically that something belongs to one of two categories. I thought the line wasn’t clear, so what gives you the authority to decide what is science?"
I apologize. I did not intend to be universally accusational of "everyone", strictly binary, and especially not categorical. Regarding that last sentence, that's what I'm getting at? What gives anyone that authority? But because the line isn't clear, but how do we best use a fluid line to assist our distinction making, and whether what we decide in that historical moment is pseudoscience has then been rendered totally without value.
Perhaps If I had, as proper philosophers instruct us to do, began my OP by defining my terms. For example, what do I mean by science? Ok. I define science.as the art of critical thinking. It's not something you are, but something you do. Discussing what these doings are, and how to operate their functions, is part of science as the art of critical thinking, and those whats and hows are different from science to science.
There is no such thing as THE scientific method. There are at least as many methods as there are sciences, and probably as many as the sum of each person doing science at any given moment.
I didn't list examples because I thought it bore y'all. I was wrong to assume that we could all think of those things. If you search for "things that used to be science that are now pseudoscience," and "things that use to be pseudoscience that are now science", or replace "science" with, "things thought to be scientific" and "pseudoscientific" "things thought to be pseudoscientifc," you'll get oodles and oodles of examples on each "side." I do it frequently and it's always fun and educational.
If you want to discuss or debate an example from your search results, and if the mod team approves, please start a new topic thread, and I'll donmy best to participate. Keeping track of all thses discussions and excursions is already challenging my cognitively impaired faculties.
*I still go by the definition of philosophy my epistemology professor taught me twenty-five years ago: "philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom, where 'wisdom' is defined as 'the capacity for sound judgment.'"(Later that semester, somewhere between Plato's cave and Descartes' oven, I challenged him after class one afternoon about the universality of the definition and he assured me it was unassailable. After a quarter century, I still haven't found a better one. But I've alwqys got my ears on.)
