tff: "It's NOT that the idea is wrong or false or even harmful in itself that's the issue", and also with this: "The danger isn't necessarily with dogma, per se -..."
redewenur: "Which is why I disagree with the preceding sentence:"
Yea. I kinda disagreed with it at first, too. I had to think about it a bit before realizing it, but I think I still agree with it now. The fact that an untestable idea MIGHT be wrong or false is a worrisome problem - it's worrisome since, because it's not even testable, there's no way of discovering and recovering from our error. Surely that's A problem. But a problem I think is worse is this: the deterioration of the scientific process. Even if any particular assumed idea is true and ultimately beneficial, that doesn't mean that ALL Of the ideas are true and beneficial - and they all get the Underwriter's Lab (science) seal of approval - not because they're derived from scientific principles, but simply because they made some philosopher happy.
What's more is this: I strongly suspect that one of the implicit assumptions of modern ethics is wrong; namely, that it's even conceptually possible to align reality into categorical imperatives. (I doubt philosophers would actually say that they do this, but when I have talked with them - not often, admittedly - it seems pretty clear that it is just the lens through which they view the world. Note that this is not exactly the same thing that Kant actually SAID, which is something like "we should act in such a way that our action could be made a general operating principle." That's not exactly it, but it's a reasonable facsimile.)
