Starboy

Richard,

Using philosophy as a guide to exploring reality is like asking someone for directions to a place they have never been. The problem with philosophy is that it confuses “truth” with reality, and then attempts to understand reality from “first principles”. What science has demonstrated is that there is no substitute for actually learning from nature first hand about reality. The only way to validate if we are justified in the inference of “X given data D” is to see if it works. The more it works the more we are justified. To turn to a philosopher in the lab and say “eh buddy, am I justified in inferring X given D”, is just nonsense. The first scientists flew in the face of conventional philosophy by ignoring philosophers, since as any philosopher will tell you, induction is flawed. After all how can you assume something will always happen just because it has happened a few times? Yet this is what science does every day. So, Puhlease, enough with “philosophy is important to science”. Science works just fine without it. Philosophy studies what man thinks reality should be and science explores what reality is.

Starboy

Starboy

Richard,

For an interesting criticism of just how unimportant Popper, Kuhn and Hume were to the understanding science check out this link.

Evolution and Philosophy

Starboy

RichardMorey

That link is specifically about Darwininsm, not science in general. And I never said that they were correct with regards to science - merely that they impacted science in important ways with their ideas and critiques. That link is all philosophy, by the way.

Scientists don't have to "turn to a philosopher" in the lab for two reasons:
1. They are the philospher! That's the whole point!
2. They have, as scientists, hopefully had classes and read books and peer-reviewed articles regarding justified inference. I know I have. It is called "research methods."

On the subject of evolution, the inference Darwin made from evidence in "Origin" was not of the "see if it works" type. That approach is available only for a limited number of types of hypotheses. The phrase "see if it works" is very simple, but we both know that experimental design is very complicated. Seeing if "it" (a theory?) "works" (is able to explain observations?) is the complicated part, and involves all kinds of considerations. You do not do justice to science by making it as simple as you do.

Vorkosigan

Biff:

That wasn't my claim, that was the claim of a man who IS NOT A CHRISTIAN, and who, for all I know, is not even a THEIST. It may be that he is an atheist who was indulging in some reflection instead of pointing fingers (an idea that's long overdue).

Wendell Berry is some kind of Christian, apparently.
http://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/le...y/religion.htm

It was the only thing on the Net I could find about his beliefs. You have to scroll down some to find a discussion on his work on Christianity. He doesn't seem very orthodox, though.

He writes for Christian magazines. He is, however, extremely critical of the Christianity's nihilistic focus on the world to come rather than on the world we live in, and its separation of the Creator from the Creation.

Christianity's historical contribution to environmental destruction is, I think, pretty well established. "Christian stewardship" is another example in a long line of secular values incorporated into Christianity by the usual processes of rationalization and doctrinal rewriting, and is of recent vintage. In fairness, Christianity is probably no worse than any other religious ethic, and a lot less destructive than, say, Stalinist Communism, which may have given up Capitalism's economic structures, but retained its fondness for large, destructive technoscientific systems. It is really not surprising that authority systems such as Christianity, Islam or Communism have the same amount of respect for the planet that they have for its human inhabitants: zero.

Vorkosigan

RichardMorey

Also, to say that Hume had little impact on science is, well, very wrong. Every scientist learns the mantra "Correlation is not causation" because of Hume. We are now careful to consider that in the presence of X and Y, it would not be good science to infer the X caused Y or Y caused X without further evidence.

Also, in experimental design, we do not build experiments to verify our hypotheses, we build them with falsification in mind. If our experiment does not allow us to tell the difference between our hypothesis and other hypotheses (including the null), it doesn't do us much good. That is why we build experiments in the way we do.

Speaking of the null hypothesis, the reason why we "retain" or "reject" the null hypothesis is philosophically driven. The whole concept of a null hypothesis is epistemologically driven.

To say that philosophy is not important to science is to miss the foundation of science. If you don't have a clear idea of the epistemology under science, you'll get ripped apart in the peer-reviewed journals for your unjustified inferences and your bad research designs.

Really, what seems to me to be your fundamental viewpoint is that science, along with modern experimental design and research methods, just happened one day, say, a hundred years ago. This is not the way they came about - they progressed to the point we have today thanks to the philosophy of science.

Regardless, it seems like we are talking past each other. This will be my last post in this thread regarding the philosophy of science unless you want to keep going...the thread has wandered a bit from "naturalism."

RichardMorey

Actually, what is interesting is that history does not support what YOU are asserting. The first humanists were Christians, and very much so. Christians don't seem to realize that, because Humanism is a dirty word to them now, and Atheists don't seem to realize that, because they act like it was their invention. But, in fact, Humanism came straight out of Christianity. The reasons can be debated, but the fact cannot be.

For many in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, justification for humanism was in their religion. Read the Declaration of Independence.

Also, you made the link between ALL religions and environmental destructiveness. History does not justify THIS assertion either. Make the argument that Christianity had that impact, but DON'T link all supernatural belief with it. There are plenty of religions that stress a 'healthy' relationship with the earth.

I am not a Christian; I am an atheist. But don't get historical facts wrong. It makes us all look bad.

callmejay

No, it can't. "Naturalism" doesn't have to do with whether we know an explanation for a given phenomenon. There are many "mysteries" in the natural world for which we don't have good explanations and perhaps never will. "Naturalism" is meaningless, since it just means that there is nothing supernatural. "Naturalism" is tautological, it basically says that everything which exists, exists. If there were some all-powerful being or if people actually did have psychic powers, than those things too would be "natural." "Natural" just means what is. "Supernatural," on the other hand, doesn't really mean anything.

Can you define supernatural? How can something supernatural be said to exist? Where does it exist if not in "nature?"

As for as naturalistic explanations of phenomena, it might be useful to point out the tons of phenomena for which previous generations had only "supernatural" explanations for (the sun rising, the phases of the moon, how the stars got there, why different peoples speak different languages) and to think we'll probably find "natural" causes for currently unexplained phenomena, too.