Freethought & Rationalism Archive

xunzian · 10-07-2007, 08:20 PM

The trick of it is, there have been a variety of philosophical questions that have been answered by science quite successfully. Evolution and the Big Bang answered several big questions, while things like neuroscience is resolving many others. Now, there are some areas that science isn't able to touch, but as I said earlier, those areas are getting smaller by the day.

TruthPrevails · 10-07-2007, 08:54 PM

Quote:

The trick of it is, there have been a variety of philosophical questions that have been answered by science quite successfully. Evolution and the Big Bang answered several big questions, while things like neuroscience is resolving many others. Now, there are some areas that science isn't able to touch, but as I said earlier, those areas are getting smaller by the day.

smaller.. I wonder?

It should noted that whatever knowledge gaps and questions that humans are able to generate at present, are based on a being that is 98%-primate.
I think we humans are only a bit better than the chimps in terms evolutionary time. Our science and philosophy is relatively close to being 'primitive'.

In millions of years into the future, humans will evolve to be more humans rather than being more animal as it is now. It is unlikely that we will be eating bananas by then.

IMO, there is a lot of room for humans to discover in this universe, for which we at present do not have any inklings of its limits. There are millions, trillions, nth-lions of galaxies awaiting to be explored out there.

Science can probably step off a few rungs from what is known, but philosophy has the free rein to explore a wider no-man's-land between the known and whatever projected unknowns. Thus philosophy will always be one step ahead of science.

kennethamy · 10-08-2007, 07:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pragmatista

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zossima

I don't know that I can think of any really philosophical questions that science has come anywhere close to "answering."

Give me a few examples of philosophical questions, with definitive answers.

1. Does knowledge imply truth? Yes it does.

2. Do we understand what it means to say of something that it exists? Yes we do.

3. Is Fatalism (the doctrine that human actions are inefficacious) true? No, it is not.

4. Do people have freedom of the will (can they sometimes do as they please)? Yes they have.

5. Do we know what it means for A and B to be identical? Yes we do, it means that every property of A is a property of B, and conversely.

6.The fact that there are objections to these answers does not imply that those answers are not correct.

Blueskyboris · 10-08-2007, 07:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kennethamy

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pragmatista

Give me a few examples of philosophical questions, with definitive answers.

1. Does knowledge imply truth? Yes it does.

2. Do we understand what it means to say of something that it exists? Yes we do.

3. Is Fatalism (the doctrine that human actions are inefficacious) true? No, it is not.

4. Do people have freedom of the will (can they sometimes do as they please)? Yes they have.

5. Do we know what it means for A and B to be identical? Yes we do, it means that every property of A is a property of B, and conversely.

6.The fact that there are objections to these answers does not imply that those answers are not correct.

LOL. Definitive answers for those who believe in and live ideology x, y or z.

Ierrellus · 10-08-2007, 08:05 AM

That science and philosophy are incompatible pursuits is a suggestion given by Hilary Putnam, a purist, abstractionist philosopher. It does not hold true in the world we ordinary people inhabit. We see science and technology flourishing while philosophy, especially metaphysics, wanes.
I would assert that the duty of philosophy regarding science, which is its offspring, is to offer critical analysis of all implications of scientific theories. This does not set philosophy above science as some parental custodian. It allows the scientific method to have philosophical relevance and the philosophic analysis to have logical tools. The identity between scientific logic and philosophic logic should be the place from which one approaches the value of each.

TruthPrevails · 10-08-2007, 08:14 AM

Quote:

1. Does knowledge imply truth? Yes it does.

2. Do we understand what it means to say of something that it exists? Yes we do.

3. Is Fatalism (the doctrine that human actions are inefficacious) true? No, it is not.

4. Do people have freedom of the will (can they sometimes do as they please)? Yes they have.

5. Do we know what it means for A and B to be identical? Yes we do, it means that every property of A is a property of B, and conversely.

6.The fact that there are objections to these answers does not imply that those answers are not correct.

The above definitive answers are crude and are relative to 98%-primate beings.

Philosophy is more of the journey rather than the destination. I would agree with Russell that philosophy toils the no-man's-land between the known and the unknown.

It is this hope that there is new truths just over the horizon (of known truths) that drives humans to discover finer and finer truths. This will go on indefinitely.

kennethamy · 10-08-2007, 08:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TruthPrevails

Quote:

1. Does knowledge imply truth? Yes it does.

2. Do we understand what it means to say of something that it exists? Yes we do.

3. Is Fatalism (the doctrine that human actions are inefficacious) true? No, it is not.

4. Do people have freedom of the will (can they sometimes do as they please)? Yes they have.

5. Do we know what it means for A and B to be identical? Yes we do, it means that every property of A is a property of B, and conversely.

6.The fact that there are objections to these answers does not imply that those answers are not correct.

The definitives answers are crude and are relative to 98%-primate beings.

Crude truths are 100% better than refined falsities is what I always say.

Iggy · 10-08-2007, 10:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kennethamy

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iggy

dug_down_deep,
I agree, science has not pushed back the darkness to completely illuminate the quintessential questions. We argue here about "What is", "How do we know", and "What is it worth" constantly and these questions may outlive the stars if we happen to survive them. In science,we are still in a quandary on most of our basic assumptions. Did we begin in a big bang and what prohibits the integration of quantum reality with relativity? Is the fundamental particle a wavicle or a string? And the primary instrument of scientific reasoning has been blunted by Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem!

Yes, the only answer to the question , "how do we know?" can be, the question, "How do we know, what?". For it depends on what it is that is supposed to be known. The answer to "what is?" is obvious. "Everything". What else could it be? And, the answer to the question, "What is it worth?" must be, "It obviously depend on what 'it' is" for how could you possibly answer that question unless you know that. All three questions commit the famous fallacy of, the fallacy of asking about nothing in particular.

You worry me. Why refute what was never in question? It is unquestionably clear I said Ontology, ie what is that generates the question "how do you know" because I did so in my very first post on this thread.

It is also not obvious "everything" is the answer. The classical greeks ( centuries commented on the possibility) that it was the "atoms and the void" ie something and nothing. Scientifically speaking there are more "nothing" than "something" in an atom.

And this brings us to the question, is everything mere illusion, Maya, while all that "is", is the "one"? Here again science embraces what philosophy postulated eons ago. Hindus and later Greek philosophy noted that the idea of separate identities is an illusion. Anyway this is about science trumping philosophy but everywhere you see science you see the philosopher doing the grunt work.

In any event, you must admit that we exist ( even if we may be the Universe apprehending itself) so the idea that this questioning being a logical fallacy ie arguing about nothing is as pessimistic as you can get; the skeptic nightmere. Even if my life is an illusion of separateness to be eventually be reconciled to the "one", I am sure having lots of fun in it. That is "something" to me that I know.

Iggy · 10-08-2007, 10:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kennethamy

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hugh Nose

The title of this thread is provocative.

Can someone/anyone provide an example of the conquest of philosophy by science in the last, say, 100 years-- since about 1900!

Hugh Nose

I don't know whether this will fill the bill, but philosophers like Russell, and Quine, have advocated what Quine called a "naturalization" of philosophy, so that, for example, epistemological questions were converted into quasi-psychological or physiological questions. Hume, in the 18th century argued that since metaphysics was a dead end (which Hume argued in various places) that philosophers turn their attention to the "moral sciences" i.e. the social sciences, and try to do for them what Galileo, and Newton, did for the physical sciences. Establish them on a firm footing. And he even suggested that philosophers become moral scientists, just as he, Hume, was a moral scientist, i.e. an historian.

Of course, it has been philosophers who have suggested this, and this suggestion has been based on their belief that either there is no such thing as substantive a-priori knowledge, as in the case of Hume, or, as in the case of Russell and Quine, there there is really no demarcation between the a priori and the empirical. And, of course, that is really what is at issue.

"Inertia" and "force" are as metaphysical as concepts can get. And Hume was definitely wrong about History being a moral activity or even a science.

Iggy · 10-08-2007, 10:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pragmatista

Please, not another NOMA.

There must be more to philosophy than claiming to ask the questions that science can't answer.

I hope you are not addressing me. You would be stepping beyond the available evidence and rushing to stick your label where it does not belong.

No one suggests( at least not me) as you inferred, that philosophy asks questions that science cannot answer. Science does not simply goes out on probing explorations to test the bounds of reality. Rather the questions in philosophy offer up potential avenue for explorations in science. And often it is the scientist that puts on the philosophers hat and questions; "what would happen if I catch up with a ray of light", "why does the apple fall and the moon stays up in the heavens!

Further, I noted earlier science is paradigmatic. Paradigm shift in science is not a rational exercise ( as Explained by Kkun) but one fraught with all sorts of incommensurable squabbles. Philosophy becomes the tool for the re transitioning and reconciling of the opposing world views at the end of it.

Often the scientist is overwhelmed as Einstein was in suggesting "god does not play dice" dispite incontrovertible evidence of dices being thrown in every direction. Note, the rest of his life can be considered a philosophical step backward!

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10-07-2007, 08:20 PM	#41
xunzian Veteran Member Join Date: May 2007 Location: Indianapolis Posts: 2,691	The trick of it is, there have been a variety of philosophical questions that have been answered by science quite successfully. Evolution and the Big Bang answered several big questions, while things like neuroscience is resolving many others. Now, there are some areas that science isn't able to touch, but as I said earlier, those areas are getting smaller by the day.

10-08-2007, 08:05 AM	#45
Ierrellus Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Canton, Ohio Posts: 2,082	That science and philosophy are incompatible pursuits is a suggestion given by Hilary Putnam, a purist, abstractionist philosopher. It does not hold true in the world we ordinary people inhabit. We see science and technology flourishing while philosophy, especially metaphysics, wanes. I would assert that the duty of philosophy regarding science, which is its offspring, is to offer critical analysis of all implications of scientific theories. This does not set philosophy above science as some parental custodian. It allows the scientific method to have philosophical relevance and the philosophic analysis to have logical tools. The identity between scientific logic and philosophic logic should be the place from which one approaches the value of each.

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