Starboy

Thanks Guillaume, I was beginning to think this was a lost cause. I have been trying to get people to realize that science is radically different from any previous knowledge tradition such as philosophy or religion.

Starboy

Hugo Holbling

Perhaps you could answer my questions instead of posting a long diatribe that says nothing? When you refer to the "authority of experiment on nature" you rely on the philosophy of science which has been historically indulged in by scientists hoping to understand their work as much as the "armchair generals" you castigate. I appreciate your attempts to explain science to those who are not working within it, but in return i'd like to ask which philosophers of science you've studied in order to reject? This is not meant to be disingenuous - i think if you did so you'd realize that the philosophy you despise is as much a mischaracterization as the scientism that some philosophers suppose you guys in the field to worship.

There's a lesson here for someone. Let's look again:

Wrong. They are attempts to understand what the referals to the "authority of nature" that you describe mean. Do you suppose that Popper, the philosopher of science, has had no influence on praxis? The demarcation between science and pseudo-science is predicated on his philosophical work, which is very much reliant on the "authority of nature". In earlier times different criteria were used.

Indeed, but that is what philosophy of science is concerned with - when you perform a reality check, what does it mean? Are you verifying a theory, testing predictive power, or showing that the theory is not yet falsified? These three examples are very different interpretations of an experiment. I like to think that scientists are not merely worker ants...

Conincidentally - and once again without meaning to appear disingenuous - what do you make of those scientists that not only pay attention to philosophy of science, but even indulge in it themselves?

This question isn't very helpful; i could just as easily ask how obvious can it be that scientists don't understand philosophy, but i don't wish to make such blanket assertions. Both groups have plenty to learn from each other without the need to dismiss anything as useless.

Incidently, i liked your remarks on serendipity. I think you'll enjoy Feyerabend, even though he was something of a philosopher, because he viewed the history of science in just this way and hoped to see science proceed without theoretical restrictions. No kidding: i think you'd appreciate his work.

flatland

Starboy:

Why? What does the exploration of reality give us? I readily admit the usefulness of engineering, but engineering is not science as you are using it. You seem to be speaking of theoretical science, with hypothesis, experimentation, etc. The results of this are sometimes used in engineering, although often engineers have to simply try time and again until they get something that works.

Now, separating applied science (engineering) from the theoretical, why should we explore reality this way? Does it affect us in any way that we understand *some* of the information about black holes, DNA, viruses, chemical bonding, cosmology, or any of the other myriad answers of science? Obviously not. So why do we as a species devote such effort towards these pursuits, and why do you in particular give them such importance?

Please note that I am not trying to convince you that philosophy has these answers, or even that philosophy is anything but the fantastical mindgame you claim it is. I doubt that I, or anyone on this board can convince you of that. I am just curious to see if you have explored your own intuitions before you damn ours.

Starboy

Greetings Hugo,

Perhaps I did not make myself clear. The entire approach of philosophy is ineffectual. When I said that scientists were embedded in reality I assumed that you would understand that this makes science part of reality. If you were going to engage in a study of science that had a reality check it wouldn’t be the philosophy of science, it would be the science of science. It is almost supernatural the bias philosophy has in its presumption of a view of reality that it doesn’t posses. It is the result of a “mind” centric point of view that implicitly assumes that the mind is not part of reality. Because of the fundamentally flawed approach of philosophy to science and reality in general, it is unimportant what a particular philosopher has to say about science.

Why is my background in philosophy or anything else for that matter germane to this discussion? If I am full of sh*t it should be easy to deal with my arguments. You say that I have mischaracterized philosophy, and that maybe so, but no one on this thread has been able to present a coherent well-accepted definition of philosophy, so as far as I am concerned your protestations are moot. As for philosophers’ opinion of science, please explain to me why this has anything to do with my primary criticisms of philosophy.

I am not debating that philosophers have not tried to understand science. My claim is that they have failed to understand science and they will continue to fail because of the inherent limitations of philosophical inquiry. Of course philosophers like Popper, Kuhn, Bayes and so forth have had an influence on science, but so has Marx, Roosevelt and Jesus. All this points out is that it is people that do science and they do not live in a vacuum. The influence of the environment on people can be seen in all human endeavors, philosophy included. It is very amusing that you think that the demarcation between science and pseudo-science is predicated on philosophical work! Heeeelllloooooo, it is predicated on scientific work, in particular actual comparisons to nature. You see a pseudo-science is a human endeavor that makes claims about reality that cannot be substantiate with repeatable experiments on reality. Kinda sounds like philosophy doesn’t it?

Your questions are illustrative of the blinders philosophers wear. All of these questions are regarding the nature of reality. The only way to deal with them is to make further explorations of reality itself. Philosophical discussions are pointless. Great scientists are hardly worker ants. They engage in what is probably the most difficult puzzle mankind will ever be faced with. They don’t just get to concoct ideas about reality like philosophers; their ideas have to actually work.

I have no problem with scientists engaging in the science of science. Who could be more qualified?

You may ask if scientists understand philosophy, but before that question can be answered perhaps you should ask yourself if philosophers understand philosophy? From what I have seen the answer is a resounding NO!

As for Feyerbend, thanks but no thanks, I am quite busy trying to keep up with reality.

Starboy

Starboy

You could ask that same question of anything we do like why do we go on living, why do we have children, so forth and so on. If you asked a thousand people you might get a thousand different answers. Why do I want to explore reality? Intense curiosity.

It is kinda funny that your question as posed in a philosophical manner implies that there is a “correct” answer.

Arg! I am repeating myself a great deal on this thread. I didn’t say that philosophy has not tried to understand science, I claim that it fails to understand science and that its failure is inherent in the traditions of philosophy itself. As much as philosophers try to argue to the contrary, these failings of philosophy make it clear that it is of little utility in understanding much of anything.

Starboy

Frotiw

You(Starboy) seem to ignore my posts though I have attempted to give a moddest account for the "role of philosophy".

I repeat once more when I say what your attacking is not a concept of philosophy any philosophers(proffesional) will accept. Your not attacking philosophy. I find myself trying to explain science(in this case philosophy) to a zealot.
Yes if philosophy was anything like the view you seem to present it would be redicules. I would agree with then it really would be stupid. However this is not and have never been philosophy as philosophers would accept.
It you find it science attacked by a religious zealot attacking some WAY OFF and completely WRONG concept of science would you not object? This what is happening here just with philosophy in the place of science. Lucky most natural scientist(proffesors and students of math, physics, molecular biology and others) does not share this misconcept of philosophy.
As a matter of fact consider it a counterattack: I find it slightly depressing(for science) that rougly all the MAYOR contributions in physics seems to be very philosophyically minded scientists.

Isaac Newton: "The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"

Albert Einstein: "Relativity: The Special and General Theory"

Niels Bohr: varius publications on the foundation of quantum physics. Btw The Niels Bohr Archive "Complementarity beyond Physics" was edited by my old proffesor(recently emeritus) D. Favrholdt. YES proffesor in philosophy that is.

S. Hawkings/Sir R. Penrose: singularity theorem(don't remember title)

All well known for the contributions to physics. To frustation for natural scientist with the "STARBOY VIEW" they all seem to go beyond pure empirical science. Large parts of the works of these philosophers are based on philosophical argumentation. Their strength and great contributions seems to be connected to the fact that they have been able to "transcend" pure natural science. They have not just followed natural science as it was before them but have by different means(for some part philosophy) challenged the current view. It's my experience that is faily well accepted by philosophers and scientist. Not long ago Penrose attended my university his lecture was aimed just as much against philosophy as math and physics. He himself present his theory as work of physics, math and philosophy. I don't know what experiece Starboy has in the meeting between science and philosophy but it is not like anything I have meet so far. It is especially redicules now as areas such as: theoretical physics, cosmology, computer science, neuro science become more and more theoretical and rely equally more on philosophical argumentation. There was "a dark age" for some 50 years ago where science due to it's sucess seem to have unlimited potential and philosophy was not needet. Now things are "returning to normal" and philsophy actually seem to grow again. The frontier areas of research in different areas such as cosmology and quantum physics seems to go more in direction of philosophy as the borders of emperical investigations are reached. This was what Einstein and Bohr knew and it is not less true today*.

*You may e.g. read about the Einstein-Bohr debates if you wanna read pure philosophy from physical scientists.

King's Indian

Hello, Starboy

If you recall, I already offered a common-sense definition, in my first post on this thread. “The best common-place description for philosophy that I can think of is the discipline of not taking things for granted”. So, in this sense, you are examining the foundations of philosophy, and finding that they leave something to be desired. So, here you have identified a “confusion” that philosophy makes with regard to truth and reality. By which scientific method did you come to your decision? (If it's "induction", then read on)
As to your next paragraph, I most certainly did not put words in your mouth. If you think that “How did you arrive by a claim like 'philosophy has no relation to the real world, like science, and just causes muddle’ ”? is an attempt at direct citation, then I cannot comment. If you take it as an attempt at clarification of your position, you would be closer to the truth. You resort to this yourself: “ As far as I can tell, you see it [ie philosophy] as some sort of historic tradition where argument is merely quoting past philosophers” (This is nowhere stated in any of my posts). In any event, this post will only use quotations from this thread, to avoid ambiguity.
The reason I did try clarification is that your statements, taken as a whole, are prey to two types of errors:
1) Errors of consistency
If you are going to distinguish between “without making any attempt to learn” and “makes no attempt to learn”, then it appears to the casual observer that you are playing “word games” (a phrase that appears in the same sentence quoted after ellipses).Again, which is it to be? Conflict or acquiescence? By the way, as you do not address the role of conflict in science, I cannot address it here.
So on the one hand you accept logic as part of what philosophers do, but then state that they “don’t get” induction (but are you implying that the primary tool of science is “just a fancy way of saying come up with any kind of explanation you can by any means possible”)? So again, is there no mechanism, or if there does turn out to be one it will be by definition “worthless”? (I'm thinking of answers to religious propositions that do use such a mechanism to discard discredit etc.)
2) Errors of Fact. So useless for him that he didn’t cast (and publish) his ideas as philosophical debates between Salviati, Sagredo and Simplicio (the latter’s views characterized as “Aristotelian”)?This is just wrong: Inferring a general law by particular instances is more like it.
Finally, your insistence that “, these points don’t have any relation to your philosophical quotations”. Let’s see.
“It is mind centric, and by implication separates the mind from reality and in so doing implies existence without reality (nonsense).”
"Its followers [ie the Oxford School] hold that philosophy arises from a state of perplexity, that all philosophical perplexity is NonSense […]”

“Philosophy suffers from three deficiencies that make it impossible for it to get reality or science”
“The right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing except that which can be said, i.e. the propositions of natural science, i.e. something which has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions”

Please feel free to comment on the above: if you want to reply to the questions posed, so much the better. If any of the questions aren’t replied to, I’ll take it that you accept their point I’ll accept any charge of “selective quoting”, only if you clarify your point to an extent that you disown some, or all, of my quotations of your posts. I look to forward to reading your responses…
…but I myself will not reply to them. In reading all of your posts to date for purposes of quotation, I myself have lost some of my appetite for the question of “What is the point of philosophy”. However, I shall always remember with happiness the times when I would wake up, the question on my lips: “Has Starboy replied? Again?”
Take care,
KI

Starboy

Hi Indian,

So by this definition if you take something for granted then you are not a philosopher? So if you were a philosopher and you took for granted that “truth” was reality then you would not be a philosopher? If you take the sun coming up the next day for granted you are not a philosopher? Based on this definition it is hard to tell if anyone or everyone is a philosopher. I must admit when I first saw this definition I ignored it. I didn’t think you were serious.

I admit that my science is slack. I have only quizzed the philosophers that post on this forum and skimmed a few dozen works of philosophy. And to be frank with you it seems to be an assumption that many people make. In my defense many of the oft-quoted works by philosophers do suffer from the problems I have cited. If I could get funding to do the research I would be more than happy to do the science.

Sorry about that Indian. It was an assumption on my part that quoting past philosophers is what you thought philosophy was since that seemed to be the brunt of your arguments.

In this particular case the conflict can be attributed to the ambiguity of the word learn. There is no doubt that philosophers learn. At the very least they learn philosophy. My point was that philosophers fret a great deal over reality but don’t make any viable attempts to learn anything about reality. Sitting in a chair and conducting a meditation/dialog with oneself is a half-assed way to learn about reality if that is the extent of your explorations. In the light of the results of science over the last four hundred years it is obvious that it is a big joke.

As for the mechanism of concocting scientific theories I thought I had made myself clear. As much as you philosophers insist there is a formula or philosophy or method like induction for concocting a scientific theory, there is none. You see lots of scientists concoct theories all the time in all sorts of ways. It is not the concoction of the theories that makes science successful; it is the fact that it has the authority of experiment on nature to sort the theories out.

Indian, sometimes I think that English is a second language for you. Is that so?

You’re going to have to clarify this for me. I am not sure I understand what you are trying to say. I think you confuse me for a philosopher. Are you trying to say that Galileo wrote philosophy? If so I agree he did. One of the many things that distinguish Galileo from his fellow philosophers was his insistence on learning about nature not from philosophical debate but by actual observation and experimentation on nature. It was this characteristic of Galileo that made him a scientist.

I’m lost Indian. Why do you think these two quotes are related?

Sorry Indian. I don’t understand what you are trying to get at. I recognize my own quotes but I am not sure where the other quotes came from, their context or what you are trying to demonstrate by them. If you understand the ideas behind the quotes perhaps you could state them in your own words in a fashion that is pertinent to the discussion.

For what it is worth Indian, it has been a pleasure, I think.

Starboy

Tyler Durden

Starboy

That is one massive strawman you're busy creating in order to piss on in this thread.

Upon reading your posts, I must prompt you this question: have you ever taken any training in philosophy beyond the introductory courses?

Is that fundamentalist-like conviction in your insipid understanding of philosophy (as well as a complete ignorance of the history of science) is why you were so quick to refuse Hugo's proposal of reading Paul Feyerabend? It couldn't be due to a fear of the unknown?

Philosoft

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