Here's a fascination question: Do Tony and the others actually know anything at all about astrology other than "it's stupid"? If one does not have at least a passing familiarity with the workings of a subject, any opinion rendered is, at best, pointless, or, at worst, dishonest...

I don't consider it stupid. I put it in the same category as religion or any forms of divination. People who believe it do so out of faith as opposed to a provable fact.

Though it could be countered that faith is a way of knowing. Facts are limited; the most important aspects of being human are not, properly speaking, quantifiable. I would also posit that to blanket religion and astrology is also problematic, not least because it is very much a matter of apples and oranges. You may identify the faith as pect as being the same, but to use that similarity as the basis of a one to one correspondence is a gross over simplification.

Yes. Though I am not an expert on it, I have more than a passing familiarity with it, including a fair understanding of the differences between western astrology (tropical zodiac) and eastern astrology (Vedic). That includes why the recent flap about the additional zodiac sign (which actually wasn't recent; just recently a media event) wasn't an issue for the tropical zodiac but should have been one for Vedic. It's been a while since I dug into it, but I vaguely recall there are a couple of more obscure forms, too, though I could be misremembering.

John, I am familiar with astrology. In fact I was a newspaper astrologer for three years, am reasonably familiar with the methodology of the system, and am also familiar with research done into it. So my opinions are not based on blind bias. And I don't see how faith can be considered a way of knowing. I would have considered it the very antithesis of knowing.

I suppose that depends on how you define faith. Faith is an act of the will that believes a given set of propositions on the basis of the source of those propositions rather than on the empirical verification. A scientist who accepts another researcher's opinon on the basis of that man's reputation rather than by repeating his experiments. That is faith. My believing that you are familiar with astrology and were in fact a newspaper astrologer is an act of faith. Faith is a matter of the will. I come back to this point, because I think it matters. To believe your wife when she says, "i love you" is an act of faith. There can be no purely empirical verification. Friendship, beauty, humor, all of the most vital parts of human existence, fall out of the realm of pure empiricism and in a larger circle of knowing. The larger circle is the one that matters most, I think.

"Have you been down on your luck in the past few years? You can finally breathe a sigh of relief! 2011 opens with a bang. On New Year's Day, Jupiter, planet of good fortune, conjoins Uranus, planet of luck, in Pisces - and both of them connect delightfully with the Moon and Venus. This indicates relief from worries concerning creativity, friendships, and romance.
But it won't stop there. The Sun conjoins Saturn and Mars in Capricorn, combining with the Moon and Venus - so career and money problems should begin to ease up, too. Your circumstances won't be perfect - but they should be better."

Hard to beat such good science! I am going to check the tarot, runes and chicken bones first before I commit to "Your circumstances won't be perfect - but they should be better."

On the serious side, shouldn’t the chart be figured off the date of conception? Since Pluto, is 29,700,000,000km to 49,300,000,000km from the earth, wouldn’t such a cosmic body manipulate the millions of sperm or an ovum(s) more at conception then a random birth date?
Perhaps that explains astrology’s dismal predictive record? AHHHHHHH……….. A new science is born

Come clean buddy, we are all charlatans here, just at varying degrees.

I'm not sure if you refer to me...Mind you, I do not believe in Astrology as a predictive tool. (Or any, for that matter.) I find it useful as a means of sizing up people. My objection is not to the views expressed, but the rather anemic philosophy that stands behind it. My philosophical mantra is "preserve the phenomena.' If a particular theory cannot account for our experience or, by definition, cannot actually be tested becuase it intrinsically goes against our everyday experience, I reject it. Empiricism cannot fully account for what it is to be human. Neither can objectivism, existentialism, positivism, idealism, rationalism, or most any other ism you pick. They all, to one degree or another, leave something out. Not that they are wrong, so much as incomplete. The attitude expressed of "science" versus "astrology" falls into the trap of thinking that science is omnicompetent. It isn't; it may only comment on what may be measured. It cannot, of itself, account for most qualitative differentiation.

To equate science with faith - in John's own words, belief based on the source rather than on empirical evidence - is lunacy. We all know that a scientist accepting the research of another scientist is not the equivalent of someone accepting the word of a dodgy scroll from a middle-eastern desert. Scientific research can be repeated. Dead Sea scrolls have the validity of any other work of fiction.
If you genuinely believe both things are equivalent there is not much point in even entering into debate with you.

John, I see what you mean in equating faith with knowledge as I have run across it in myriad forms before, but it is a mistaken equation. Outside of mathematics it is true that little is known as absolute knowledge, but just as two imperfect things are not necessarily equal in their imperfection, two things which are not fully knowable are not equal.

A history of accuracy, repeatability, and demonstrable utility while imperfect is much to be preferred to a history of vagueness and ill-defined retrofitting.

And as an aside, emotions and emotional responses, including your list of beauty, humor, et al, are indeed empirically verifiable, though on a day-to-day basis we settle for something short of neurological analyses.

Tony, either you are intentionally misrepresenting my words or you yourself don't understand them. I am not equating hard science with faith; I am noting the presence of faith between persons who, in my example, happen to be scientists. Your response takes the most extreme example (religious faith which is really not what is under discussion) and pits it against the more common, not exactly a straw man, but certainly missing the point. Now it may well be that there is no purpose to entering a debate, particularly if you are unwilling or unable to do so reasonably and charitably.

Garette, I am not equating faith with knowledge. You're brighter than that, I hope. I am identifying a broad class of human capacities that fall under the word "knowing" and noting within that class a spectrum of apodicticity, from the surety of mathematics, to the knowing that is faith. You may disagree, and you are encouraged to logically demonstrate the reasons for your disagreement, but simply assuming an epistemology that I do not concede is not, properly speaking, argumentation.

John, it is far too big a step to equate faith, basing your belief on a source, with a scientist accepting the peer-reviewed research of a fellow scientist. They are poles apart. I would not accept faith as a way of knowing. It is a way of thinking you know. But real knowing has to be based on observation at some point in the process.

And I would agree (though your objection doesn't quit hold up-you're failing to note the distinction between the structures of knowing and the content of knowledge), to a point. Let me offer another example, one taken out of the context of "hard science" into everyday life. Someone calls me and tells me that my mother has gone to the local postoffice, removed a handgun from her purse, and proceeded to unceremoniously gun down every person she could before being subdued. Now I respond, "no she didn't." They say, "yes she did, I have proof." I respond, "so do I, and it's a different sort than yours."
We're dealing with a difference in categories. My knowing that my mother as I know her did not shoot anyone (she's more likely to strangle them with her bare hands), is different from so and so knowing that Eulalie H. Wells went did, in fact, shoot a dozen people before being tackled by the local sherriff. Both are knowledge. The second is fact as understood by the scientist necessary and true. The first, that my mother in her right mind did not do so, is, both legally and logically, also necessary and, I believe, true. Youy may reject my mode of proof as not being "knowledge." Very good. What are we to call it? That sotrt of knowledge is a. part of our phenomenological world as beings in relationship and b. while not the domain of science (sociology and psychology I suppose, but those are not, properly speaking, hard sciences), are the domain of human life, the principle reason we do science, to fulfill that basic characteristic of being human, to know. My point is not that I think your views are wrong , but that they are insufficient.

Since the thread has gotten off trck, let me make the token effort by acknowledging that no, astrology is not a science in the commonly accepted sense of the term.

John,

Sorry for the delay in responding; as I said earlier, my availability for such is limited now, and while I could have dashed something off rather quickly, I believe your comments deserve a bit more thought than I could provide sooner than this.

That being said, I will add that while this topic is in its own way fascinating, it is no longer relevant to the OP. I will therefore write this response to your comments and reserve any further comments for a separate thread should you care to start one. Of course, any comments relevant to the OP will still earn my return comments insofar as my schedule allows.

So here goes (note that some of my comments are in response to some of your comments toward Tony; as the subjects are related, I do not think this is inappropriate):

My apologies for misreading what you wrote. On re-reading, it is clear that you were not conflating faith with knowledge.

You do, however, say that faith is a “way of knowing,” meaning, I think, that one can find knowledge simply through faith. I can agree with this to the extent that knowledge is vaguely defined and to the extent that it does not apply to scientific knowledge, but you need to be clear that you are defining knowledge to suit your belief as opposed to changing your belief to suit knowledge. (On re-reading what I wrote in that last sentence, I am not sure it is well written or clear, but I cannot at the moment think how to improve it; I will leave it in hopes you get my meaning).

You give examples of faith, including that of a scientist believing another based on reputation and that of your wife saying she loves you. I do not agree that these are examples of faith. They are short of scientific knowledge, but there is a middle ground between empirical certainty and faith. That middle ground is actually a spectrum as opposed to discrete quanta, but for ease of reference I would label the middle as “trust.” The difference between trust and empirical certainty (knowledge) is that it is second-hand; it’s likelihood of being incorrect is somewhat greater. Still, it is evidence-based trust; this person has shown a significant tendency to accurately report the facts on this subject; it is earned.

The difference between trust and faith is far larger. It is not evidence-based, or is not largely evidence-based, and it is not earned. If it were evidence-based, it would no longer need to be called faith. The likelihood of faith-based knowledge being incorrect is far far greater than that for trust or empirical certainty.

===

You say “You may disagree…but simply assuming an epistemology that I do not concede is not, properly speaking, argumentation.” If I may be so bold (and believe me, I may), you need to address that statement to yourself. You have asked nothing about epistemological systems to me or to Tony; when both Tony and I responded to your attempt at implying that we know little or nothing about astrology and its claims you gave a brief and half-hearted acknowledgment to Tony and none to me as if the topic were only worth discussing when you “knew” that our knowledge was limited. More importantly, you have indirectly painted a picture of your own epistemological system but in such a way that leaves terms ill-defined and mingling and with at least one instance of a direct contradiction. That is certainly not, properly speaking, argumentation.

That last paragraph is written rather harshly. I hope that you will take it in the manner intended. Your comments and writing style imply an ability to take criticism by either demonstrating that it is incorrect or by adjusting your comments and beliefs to account for it. That is why I did not waste time trying to sugarcoat the comments. Take it as an indication of respect, please.

Back to epistemology. If you wish to discuss this (in another thread), I will be happy to, but only if you define your starting point. I’m afraid your comments on how you reject theories if they cannot “account for our experience or, by definition, cannot actually be tested because it intrinsically goes against our everyday experience,” is simultaneously vague, contradictory, and, to start with, like the scientific method. I need clarification before I can comment more. Including a definition of what you mean by “a larger circle of knowing” would be helpful.

I have to admit that your comment that the “isms” “cannot fully account for what it is to be human” incorrectly attempts to place a burden on some of those isms that they never claimed to shoulder. You continue this mistake in your comment about falling “into the trap of thinking that science is omnicompetent.” The accusation simply does not stick; neither Tony nor I have fallen into that trap, and few if any in the scientific community think that science is omnicompetent, though I have to guess at your meaning. I hope that you are bright enough not to perpetuate a common and fallacious misrepresentation of what science is and what it claims.

===

I mentioned earlier that you had at least one contradiction. Here it is:

You say: “I do not believe in Astrology as a predictive tool. (Or any, for that matter.)”

But you immediately follow it with “I find it useful as a means of sizing up people.”

Perhaps I am misreading, but this reads to me as “Astrology is not a good tool for anything, but it is a good tool for this thing.”

Can you please expand on (1) whether I am misreading or not, and (2) how it is a useful means for sizing up people?

===

There is more that I am tempted to write, but I fear I am getting too long and too distracted, and my time is running short, so I will end with one comment that struck me. You say that you are “identifying a broad class of human capacities that fall under the word ‘knowing’ and noting within that class a spectrum of apodicticity, from the surety of mathematics, to the knowing that is faith.”

I am sorry if I have missed it, but I do not see any identification of human capacities in your posts. Just as importantly, you are grossly misusing “apodictic” (or “apodicticity”). It has been a long while since I delved with any depth into philosophy so I had to double check to make sure I wasn’t misremembering; I wasn’t. There is no spectrum of things apodictic. It is or it isn’t. “The knowing that is faith” falls under things problematic or assertoric. If you wish to contend otherwise, you will need to demonstrate it as opposed to merely assert it. And I fear that that road will be a difficult one.

All the best

Serves me write for posting my response (composed offline) before reading to see what has been added.

Thank you for this. I agree, but only because it has failed all efforts to validate it.

As I say in my post before this, though, the sidetrack is interesting, so if you wish to continue it I will be happy to do so in another thread should you choose to create one. Subject, of course, to my limited availability right now.

John, thank you for clarifying your position, which is not so radically opposed to mine as I initially thought. I was composing a more detailed reply last night but exhaustion set in (ten hour car journey). Meanwhile Garrette has said what I wanted to say, and said it better than I am capable.

I know that it is a quirk of mine to disregard anything that cannot be analysed and measured. I know that things exist outside the realms of measurement, but they mean little to me. But the thread has taken an interesting turn, at least. All the best.

Interesting posts.
Astrology is not a proven science in India...though efforts have been made to prove it both ways.
Whenever it comes to " double blind trials" they have not been seen to be accurate( as seen on Indian TV channels).

For the record, in case it seems as if JohnWells has abandoned the thread: He sent me a well-considered pm addressing the gist of my comments. Neither of us has changed the opinion of the other, but I agreed with his decision not to continue the discussion in this thread or another.

Still, it was an interesting diversion and kudos to John for his knowledge and his willingness to rationally engage.

Couple of points - Astrology is not all about divination. Most of you know nothing of how it works or you wouldn't make stupid statements about it. Sun sign astrology in magazines is not astrology. Also the Forer/Barnum effect uses vague sun sign astro.

As for the newspaper astrologer - being reasonably familiar with the methodology is a weird statement to make. You either understand it completely and apply the principles to create as accurate forecast as possible or not. If you were writing BS sun sign scopes without erecting proper charts then what you were doing is not astrology.

The debate over whether it's a science or not is in the eye of the beholder. It is a systematic set of rules using natural phenomena to understand life on earth. You can parse your definitions, but it has all the hallmarks of a science and was studied in major universities until the 1800's. I see it work, I might be deluded and wrong, but I know the applied rules seem to show the implied result. That is not a scientific approach to prove validity, but the application of the rules was done in a scientific manner. How it works or doesn't has countless debates in the astrology community. It can never be proven for many reasons. Read the Cosmic Loom for more insight into astrology as science or not and why that will always remain. Astrologers spend too much time wanting to make it a science in the eyes of skeptics and skeptics stomp on it because it is a topic that generates publicity. It's been going on now for a long time and no one has convinced the other,

As to the Vedic astrologer and Shermer, only a moron would not see an unscientific approach by Shermer to discredit the guy. Shermer had two ways to win, the astrologer only one. Shermer set an unfair test, lost and he couldn't take it. Skeptics are usually thin-skinned and resort to trying to change the rules during the game or harp on semantic variations when they can't fully refute something. Modern science has often been a barrier to itself - germs? there's not such thing as germs - bleeding will take care of you. The ancients talked of germs and bacteria (paracelsus), atomic theory and much more. Lighten up skeptics, if astrology is proven wrong or right you lose. You don't have Phrenology to kick around anymore. What would you !@#$% on then?