You are right that scientific laws cannot be deduced from experiment. They can't be deduced a priori (from pure reason) either. Deduction is only one form of inference, however. Usually both induction (generalization) and abduction (inference to the best explanation) are used in science. Induction and abduction are more fallible than deduction. Although scientific theories can be confirmed and disconfirmed, they can't be proven deductively like a theorem in mathematics.

You do ask a big question, and an important one. I can offer a couple of thoughts to use in exploring the issues: happiness is not the only measure of human wellbeing, important though it may be. (life expectancy, increased knowledge, quality of life experiences etc also matter) there is no need to show that "overall" technological progress is good or bad. We don't need overall measures. We just need to assess each technology in its proposed context of use you assume that it is a moral requirement to choose the job that can best advance human wellbeing. (A utilitarian might argue this, but many other moral theorists would say that it is praiseworthy but not morally required to do so)

Many concepts in science are at least in part socially constructed. That does not mean that the world is socially constructed, just that our concepts about the world are devised by scientific communities. "Planet" is one of those terms that is partially socially constructed. Over the last 5 years that social construction has become visible in the debate over Pluto's status. "Planet" was first used to mean "object revolving around the sun." But then all kinds of small objects--comets and meteorites--also revolve around the sun, and the decision was made not to call them all planets, but only to call the sizeable ones planets. "Sizeable" reflects our interests as Earth inhabitants in revolving objects of about the same size as we are. But then in the late twentieth century thousands of celestial bodies of the same size or larger than Pluto were found in the Kuiper belt. Scientists could have decided to call them all planets, so that we would have thousands of planets in the solar system,...

You ask a good question that I have wondered about myself. The classic examples of immoral work in science are Nazi experiments on human physiology and the Tuskegee syphilis study. Neither were up to current methodological standards, but both were OK science for their time. In a way it would be more convenient if these cases would be bad science as well as immoral science, because then no questions need be asked about whether it is permissable to use the results. Perhaps it is difficult to acknowledge that science can be used successfully in ways that are immoral. But I think we learned this lesson with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

You sound as though you are thinking of two choices (1) tell your son to shape up or you'll cut the financial cord OR (2) bite your tongue and keep your promise to help him through grad school. But there are many more choices than this. In fact, there need be no association between your efforts to improve your son's behavior and your financial support of his education. You can make it clear to him that keeping a relationship with you is contingent on mutual respectfulness, and simply walk out of the room when he is disrespectful. If you would not tolerate the behavior from a friend or a partner, then don't tolerate it from him. Do you think that money is your only "leverage" when trying to influence your son? I hope not: let's hope he has respect for you as a person. Obviously you are proud of your son's achievements and promise. But I have seen smart, healthy good looking people fail to achieve their potential because of moral/interpersonal flaws such as the ones you mention. You...

You make an insightful observation. Perhaps one reason is that there is a close coincidence between lying (which is often although perhaps not always morally wrong) and telling falsehoods. Perhaps another is that we sometimes regard the search for the truth (in science or other fields) as morally praiseworthy, which might lead to thinking of falsehoods as improper conclusions to inquiry. In any case, I think you are correct to distinguish what philosophers call epistemic correctness from moral correctness.

I think you are right to claim that parents have responsibilities towards their children, and do not have the right to raise them "any way they want." Children are not property. The larger moral concern, however, is that the state will decide what children are to learn, and in American society, we are most fearful of that (because of our history with totalitarianism and communism). The law protects the rights of individuals. So parents have a legal right to withdraw their children from state-sponsered education. They also have a legal right to teach them rubbish. However, I would argue that they do not have a moral right to teach them rubbish, particularly if it is rubbish that is harmful (Santa Claus probably does not fall into that category; but Abstinence is harmful rubbish).

If Mediums did get "results" then it would be rational to go to them for advice i.e. not a waste of time! So I think the thing to focus on is the results, and ask the question, are the amazing pronouncements just coincidences and/or wise vague sayings? There's no shortcut to answering this--it is an empirical question. Remembering of course, that Mediums, TV and authors don't always report reliably.

Actually the universe is not infinite, although it is extremely large. Your claim that "it is inevitable that at least one of the millions of planets has the required characteristic for life" is not a logical claim (it is not true because it follows the laws of logic); it is an empirical claim and depends crucially on the likelihood of (a) a suitable planet and (b) suitable evolution on that planet. We don't yet know how likely or unlikely the evolution of life is, because our understanding of evolution, and life, is paltry. Intelligent design theorists take advantage of this ignorance to argue that a designer was necessary for the wonderful yet highly improbable complexity of life. But in fact we do not know how (un)likely life is in this universe or how a designer might work in the universe.

Actually the universe is not infinite, although it is extremely large. Your claim that "it is inevitable that at least one of the millions of planets has the required characteristic for life" is not a logical claim (it is not true because it follows the laws of logic); it is an empirical claim and depends crucially on the likelihood of (a) a suitable planet and (b) suitable evolution on that planet. We don't yet know how likely or unlikely the evolution of life is, because our understanding of evolution, and life, is paltry. Intelligent design theorists take advantage of this ignorance to argue that a designer was necessary for the wonderful yet highly improbable complexity of life. But in fact we do not know how (un)likely life is in this universe or how a designer might work in the universe.

This is an excellent question. Science aims for both objectivity and truth. Sometimes science fails to be objective (for example, when scientists ignore important evidence, or lack evidence) and sometimes scientific theories fail to be true (for example, Newtonian mechanics turns out not to be true from an Einsteinian perspective) but lack of objectivity is different from falsity. Now let's turn to your case of reasoning about ghosts. If a person has an experience that seems to be due to the supernatural" then that experience is deserving of scientific explanation. In a society with less scientific knowledge than ours, the explanation might be that the cause of the experience is a ghost. That explanation would be incorrect, but not lacking in objectivity (the people in that society are reasoning objectively, given their beliefs and their evidence). The "supernatural" is not automatically "unscientific;" in fact what we count as supernatural changes as science changes. Newton, for example, used...