A scientific belief is a type of philosophical belief. To attempt to separate the two is to drive a nail in a complex and symbiotic relationship between the two.
Martian From VenusOctober 17, 2016 at 23:23#273120 likes
Although there is no absolutely clear division between them it may generally be said that philosphical judgements are not subject, in principle, to empirical confirmation or disconfirmation.
True it is; and I think it is often forgotten that philosophical beliefs are mostly as much a matter of evidentially unsupported faith as religious beliefs are.
Reply to John When is a joke not simply a joke? This year the federal government finally admitted they have classified a few jokes as "Vital to the National Defense" due to the mathematics they express being used to develop weapons. This is the same thing that Planck ran across when he discovered quantum mechanics and begged his colleges to please explain the joke.
Already the first quantifiable theory of humor has been established and two computers have been constructed which spit out better than average jokes and serious western academia, politics, religion, and philosophy will never be the same again nor will Vaudeville apparently because it is now possible to earn a degree in comedy.
Depends whether 'serious philosophy' denotes something which takes itself seriously merely on account of itself, or someting which is serious on account of something else; something genuinely important to human life.
The former has no sense of humour but is, as you say, itself a joke. The latter may have a sense of humour, but being funny is certainly not a primary, or even an important, aim for it.
Humor and beauty are indivisible complimentary-opposites and modern academia have merely turned the art of denial into a science for profit. That's why both Socrates and Lao Tzu were able to run circles around them even thousands of years ago using ancient tribal wisdom.
VagabondSpectreOctober 18, 2016 at 21:39#275730 likes
Broadly, science deals with the physical world as a matter of study, whereas philosophy is a more broad term for many fields of study. Dathbarracuda is right though, scientific beliefs are also philosophical beliefs.
Any random belief regarding the physical world is not therefore science however, beliefs need to fill additional criteria before we would want to label them scientific.
Consider the nature of any scientific experiment. A hypothesis is put to the test by taking a prediction which follows from it and seeing if this prediction holds true with an actual experiment we run and can observe. When the results of an experiment contradict the prediction made by a given hypothesis, we take it to mean that the hypothesis is therefore falsified. When the results of an experiment hold true with the predictions of a given hypothesis, we do not presume that the hypothesis is true, but rather we continue to test it's predictions from as many angles as possible and with as much reproduciblity as possible. After we've exhausted our ability to test the predictive power of a given hypothesis and are unable to falsify it, we resign to accept it as a sufficiently robust belief to call it "scientific". Scientific beliefs are basically predictively and experimentally robust or reliable beliefs.
In the future if we manage to falsify such beliefs, we will consider them to be less or unscientific as a result. Or if we come across a fundamentally different and more predictively powerful model of something, we may also consider them to be less or unscientific beliefs, but this is a matter of hindsight and the relative progress of "science" as a whole (which equivocates scientific truth with "science" and separates "science" from it's method).
So a few robust observations some spiraling out of this. In a nut shell: scientific claims must necessarily relate to the physical (or actual) world we live in, in such a way that it is somehow conceivably observable, or else it's predictions can never be tested, and therefore can never be falsified, which would render us unable to determine if it is a predictively reliable belief or not.
It can also be noted that as science improves itself, which is to say gains more predictive power and more reliable predictive power, the standard of "reliability" continuously goes up, making some once "scientific" beliefs of the past look like "pseudoscience", which is a word we use to refer to predictively weak or easily falsifiable hypotheses.
The final point of note regarding this subject is that science is more useful to us because it has reliable predictive power, not because we assume or hope that it reflects or approximates the true behavior of the external world (but many scientists wish that too). Utility has got something to do with science, although I'm not very confident what it's extent might be.
Barry EtheridgeOctober 18, 2016 at 22:05#275790 likes
science is more useful to us because it has reliable predictive power
I can't help[ feeling that reliable predictive powers were granted us long before 'science'. After all knowledge of the acceleration due to gravity is neither necessary nor useful if there is a piano falling on you from a great height nor to my dog when she's happily catching biscuits tossed across the room to her.
Although philosophy is love of wisdom it doesn't follow that philosophers would be wise.
They say in China today you can still come across the occasional vagabond meditating in the woods, but if you ask them if they are Zen or Taoist they will likely chase you away with a stick yelling, "NO! I'm just me! Go away!"
Socrates refused all payment for teaching, didn't even support literacy, never wrote down his philosophy, and was normally as quiet as a church mouse preferring to simply ask questions or spout the same lame jokes repeatedly.
Without a personal truth philosophy and wisdom are merely words politicians spout while, with one, its possible to change the world for the better.
VagabondSpectreOctober 19, 2016 at 04:29#276540 likes
I can't help feeling that reliable predictive powers were granted us long before 'science'. After all knowledge of the acceleration due to gravity is neither necessary nor useful if there is a piano falling on you from a great height nor to my dog when she's happily catching biscuits tossed across the room to her.
In the past we had predictive power yes, but science has given us more predictive power, and more reliable predictive power.
Science is not useful once the piano is falling; science usually takes more than an instant to achieve results. But it could help in the calculations required to figure out how many straps are required to spread out the weight and keep them from ripping. The medical science that was put into your dogs biscuit to ensure that it is healthy has utility, even though your dog will likely never grasp how or why.
Philosophy is a science. The conclusions of one branch of investigation of reality must not contradict those of another. All knowledge must be integrated.
Both science and philosophy identify and integrate sensory evidence. Both have a need to "make sense of all those facts". They are both based on observation and logic. The act of looking under a rock or into a telescope are scientific acts. So is the act of observing and thinking about your own mental processes.
They are both the same in that they both gather knowledge through observation and then classify this knowledge, and through classification, elaborate general principles or ideas. Science is simply organized knowledge.
The whole "science vs philosophy" shtick is a complete misunderstanding of what either of them are. Indeed such a question can only be asked and answered by attempting to philosophize. There is no great smackdown between the two, because to assert that there is ends up being suspiciously philosophical (and downright retarded in any sense). You'll end up shooting yourself in the foot, in the same manner global skeptics or deniers of hypothetical reasons do: it's using philosophy to argue that we ought not use philosophy.
Although that statement would be incoherent, philosophy has historically had a knack with mutilating itself. Leave it to a philosopher to attempt to deconstruct their own field!
And that is precisely why philosophy is so important and necessary, and what makes it unique: it is a process, an activity, an attempt, to come to terms with the world, characterized by its practically limitless flexibility. From one question spawns multiple new ones in an ongoing process of refinement of truth-estimation. The history of philosophy can be summarized neatly as a dialectic between self-confidence and self-consciousness, and in fact the recent trend of scientism itself can be described as a naive rejection of metaphysics from skeptical self-consciousness (a rejection of one's own tendency to do metaphysics), and an even more naive self-confidence in Science™ as the one-true-method of obtaining whatever it is that we want (that wasn't the product of science anyway...)
The sciences were born from this very activity; it's not as if the sciences just popped up in a vacuum randomly and proceeded to shit all over the superstitious nonsense those toga-wearing plebs spat. In order to even ask if there is a friction between science and philosophy, one has to have a clear definition of what either of them are - a truth that many seem to have a vague idea of but are unable to put into crisp words because they either don't see the relevancy of it (which isn't an argument), or don't know what the hell they're talking about to begin with (which also isn't an argument).
People get scared of philosophy because it doesn't use numbers, equations or models like the sciences do (which is false but whatever). And yet once again we see the primacy of philosophy emerge: the dependency on these things is itself not a number or equation, but a model that doesn't use numbers or equations.
In fact I think we ought to be more concerned and skeptical of science than we are of philosophy, at least in these days and ages and given a context. A brief peruse of the internet leads the critical observer to recognizer how much the term "science" is abused as a way of validating a position without evidence. It's a trump card used by quacks and bullshitters alike: "I have science on my side, so I WIN! Ha!...now buy my books, watch my television show, vote for me for political office, spend billions of dollars on a public utility of my fancy, etc."
But why people favor science so much is because they are largely inherently pragmatic (and not necessarily in the good way). Life is fast and hard, nobody has time to read some apparently-pontificating nonsense. They want results, and they want them now goddammit!, before the quarterly review! Anything that fulfills this nihilistic agenda is approved, and anything else it hailed as bullshit - but the reality is that it's not bullshit, it's just it doesn't fit in with their progress-oriented agenda. In other words, they just don't care. But that's not an argument.
And the fact is that philosophy is everywhere, you just have to sit down every now and then to appreciate it. In my opinion we need to get rid of the view that philosophy is a discipline with a strict code of what it can do and what it cannot do. It's something everyone does, for better or for worse.
So it's not as if philosophy and science are diametrically opposed, as the silly pop-scientist pseudo-philosophers assert. They're two sides of the same coin - what happens in science can be analyzed by philosophers, and what happens in philosophy can be applied or transformed into science. Indeed I am thoroughly unimpressed myself at any attempt to separate the two or show how one is "better" than the other. What use is the theoretical if it cannot be applied? Of what importance or meaning is the practical if we have no way of understanding it?
So, in order to single out one of those (philosophical) theories from all the rest and make it valid, you'd need to perform testing and falsifying that it passes. Philosophy goes nowhere without science.
In a nut shell: scientific claims must necessarily relate to the physical (or actual) world we live in, in such a way that it is somehow conceivably observable, or else it's predictions can never be tested, and therefore can never be falsified, which would render us unable to determine if it is a predictively reliable belief or not
I suppose that means that various interpretations of quantum mechanics are not scientific?
I suppose that means that various interpretations of quantum mechanics are not scientific?
Most interpretations of quantum mechanics are in fact alternative theories, which in the end make different predictions. Some interpretations however can be dismissed as emblematic of bad philosophy, e.g. Copenhagen and "Shut Up and Calculate".
What's the difference between a philosophical belief and a scientific belief?
Science is a method within a theory of knowledge.
Science relies upon empirical evidence and/or logic to support claims of knowledge.
Essentially belief is irrelevant to science, it is about what evidence you can demonstrate and whether or not the logic you use is valid.
VagabondSpectreOctober 21, 2016 at 20:19#281280 likes
Reply to Michael If a hypothesis cannot generate or be used to assist in generating any testable predictions then we are unable to test it by observing the outcomes of experiments; it cannot be falsified.
So if we have a given hypothesis which cannot generate any predictions whatsoever, it will never be scientifically reinforced through experimental confirmation. If a hypothesis does generate predictions, but we are (as yet) unable to test those predictions (due to being unable to control the required experiment, or to observe the results), then at that time a given hypothesis likewise cannot be considered scientifically reinforced/accurate/valid/confirmed/tested/etc...
Keep in mind that when experimental results agree with our modeled predictions we do not instantly take the predictive hypothesis to be "confirmed", instead we ascribe it a degree of confidence; confidence in predictive power; reliable predictive power. The more accurately and reliably a model can make successful predictions, the more confidence points we give it. When a hypothetical model results in incorrect predictions, we do not instantly throw it out (we check to make sure we conducted the experiment and recorded the results correctly) and then we try to modify the model (especially if the model has some predictive power to begin with) but if a model continues to generate inaccurate predictions, then we consider it falsified.
So what does this mean for some of the more esoteric hypothetical models of the quantum world?
Well, let's start with the double slit test; the wave-life function of quantum particles enable them to interact with possible versions of themselves when unobserved (forgive me Einstein, I know not what I say!). Even though we're not yet where we want to be with our grasp of how or why this happens, we still are able to set up meticulously regulated experiments in order to see if this model holds true (the wave pattern it creates after interacting with itself). So long as this model remains unfalsified through experimentation and so long as it's predictions remain true, it is "scientific" simply by virtue of being the most predictively reliable, and as yet unfalsified, explanation we have (remember the changing or relative "standards" of science and it's various fields). The model itself is going to be modified (perhaps greatly) in the future in order to expand it's predictive power and then to refine the reliability and accuracy of those predictions, but for now it's a part of one of the best quantum models we have. It might turn out to be totally wrong one day, sure, but that's always a risk inherent in science. There's no ultimate certainty, only degrees of confidence in reliability; science is a wager.
When it comes to some other hypotheses, like the many worlds interpretation of QM phenomenon, we are not yet and may never be able to use it to make any predictions or run any experiments to see if it holds true with what is observable. That's why the wave function description of quantum mechanics is said to be scientific while the MWI and many other hypotheses are not; experiments, predictions, and observable results..
When it comes to some other hypotheses, like the many worlds interpretation of QM phenomenon, we are not yet and may never be able to use it to make any predictions or run any experiments to see if it holds true with what is observable.
Comments (36)
True it is; and I think it is often forgotten that philosophical beliefs are mostly as much a matter of evidentially unsupported faith as religious beliefs are.
Not if it's SERIOUS PHILOSOPHY.
Oh I don't know. Isn't 'serious philosophy' something of a joke in itself?
Nothing, they are both equally irrational.
Better to have arguments and ideas, and to subject them to criticism or testing.
Already the first quantifiable theory of humor has been established and two computers have been constructed which spit out better than average jokes and serious western academia, politics, religion, and philosophy will never be the same again nor will Vaudeville apparently because it is now possible to earn a degree in comedy.
Depends whether 'serious philosophy' denotes something which takes itself seriously merely on account of itself, or someting which is serious on account of something else; something genuinely important to human life.
The former has no sense of humour but is, as you say, itself a joke. The latter may have a sense of humour, but being funny is certainly not a primary, or even an important, aim for it.
Any random belief regarding the physical world is not therefore science however, beliefs need to fill additional criteria before we would want to label them scientific.
Consider the nature of any scientific experiment. A hypothesis is put to the test by taking a prediction which follows from it and seeing if this prediction holds true with an actual experiment we run and can observe. When the results of an experiment contradict the prediction made by a given hypothesis, we take it to mean that the hypothesis is therefore falsified. When the results of an experiment hold true with the predictions of a given hypothesis, we do not presume that the hypothesis is true, but rather we continue to test it's predictions from as many angles as possible and with as much reproduciblity as possible. After we've exhausted our ability to test the predictive power of a given hypothesis and are unable to falsify it, we resign to accept it as a sufficiently robust belief to call it "scientific". Scientific beliefs are basically predictively and experimentally robust or reliable beliefs.
In the future if we manage to falsify such beliefs, we will consider them to be less or unscientific as a result. Or if we come across a fundamentally different and more predictively powerful model of something, we may also consider them to be less or unscientific beliefs, but this is a matter of hindsight and the relative progress of "science" as a whole (which equivocates scientific truth with "science" and separates "science" from it's method).
So a few robust observations some spiraling out of this. In a nut shell: scientific claims must necessarily relate to the physical (or actual) world we live in, in such a way that it is somehow conceivably observable, or else it's predictions can never be tested, and therefore can never be falsified, which would render us unable to determine if it is a predictively reliable belief or not.
It can also be noted that as science improves itself, which is to say gains more predictive power and more reliable predictive power, the standard of "reliability" continuously goes up, making some once "scientific" beliefs of the past look like "pseudoscience", which is a word we use to refer to predictively weak or easily falsifiable hypotheses.
The final point of note regarding this subject is that science is more useful to us because it has reliable predictive power, not because we assume or hope that it reflects or approximates the true behavior of the external world (but many scientists wish that too). Utility has got something to do with science, although I'm not very confident what it's extent might be.
I can't help[ feeling that reliable predictive powers were granted us long before 'science'. After all knowledge of the acceleration due to gravity is neither necessary nor useful if there is a piano falling on you from a great height nor to my dog when she's happily catching biscuits tossed across the room to her.
Science is merely a tool and without the wisdom to use it we have world wars.
They say in China today you can still come across the occasional vagabond meditating in the woods, but if you ask them if they are Zen or Taoist they will likely chase you away with a stick yelling, "NO! I'm just me! Go away!"
Socrates refused all payment for teaching, didn't even support literacy, never wrote down his philosophy, and was normally as quiet as a church mouse preferring to simply ask questions or spout the same lame jokes repeatedly.
Without a personal truth philosophy and wisdom are merely words politicians spout while, with one, its possible to change the world for the better.
In the past we had predictive power yes, but science has given us more predictive power, and more reliable predictive power.
Science is not useful once the piano is falling; science usually takes more than an instant to achieve results. But it could help in the calculations required to figure out how many straps are required to spread out the weight and keep them from ripping. The medical science that was put into your dogs biscuit to ensure that it is healthy has utility, even though your dog will likely never grasp how or why.
Prove it! I will accept video footage of you jumping out of windows as evidence
The way it was proven was by dropping little iron balls into clay, and they said she was so arrogant for daring to dispute Newton.
Philosophy asks why it is.
Both science and philosophy identify and integrate sensory evidence. Both have a need to "make sense of all those facts". They are both based on observation and logic. The act of looking under a rock or into a telescope are scientific acts. So is the act of observing and thinking about your own mental processes.
They are both the same in that they both gather knowledge through observation and then classify this knowledge, and through classification, elaborate general principles or ideas. Science is simply organized knowledge.
Really? So how would you set about testing and falsifying a philosophical theory?
Easy. If it's my theory it's correct. If it's anyone else's theory it's wrong. Can't get any more scientific than that!
Science is a part of philosophy.
Although that statement would be incoherent, philosophy has historically had a knack with mutilating itself. Leave it to a philosopher to attempt to deconstruct their own field!
And that is precisely why philosophy is so important and necessary, and what makes it unique: it is a process, an activity, an attempt, to come to terms with the world, characterized by its practically limitless flexibility. From one question spawns multiple new ones in an ongoing process of refinement of truth-estimation. The history of philosophy can be summarized neatly as a dialectic between self-confidence and self-consciousness, and in fact the recent trend of scientism itself can be described as a naive rejection of metaphysics from skeptical self-consciousness (a rejection of one's own tendency to do metaphysics), and an even more naive self-confidence in Science™ as the one-true-method of obtaining whatever it is that we want (that wasn't the product of science anyway...)
The sciences were born from this very activity; it's not as if the sciences just popped up in a vacuum randomly and proceeded to shit all over the superstitious nonsense those toga-wearing plebs spat. In order to even ask if there is a friction between science and philosophy, one has to have a clear definition of what either of them are - a truth that many seem to have a vague idea of but are unable to put into crisp words because they either don't see the relevancy of it (which isn't an argument), or don't know what the hell they're talking about to begin with (which also isn't an argument).
People get scared of philosophy because it doesn't use numbers, equations or models like the sciences do (which is false but whatever). And yet once again we see the primacy of philosophy emerge: the dependency on these things is itself not a number or equation, but a model that doesn't use numbers or equations.
In fact I think we ought to be more concerned and skeptical of science than we are of philosophy, at least in these days and ages and given a context. A brief peruse of the internet leads the critical observer to recognizer how much the term "science" is abused as a way of validating a position without evidence. It's a trump card used by quacks and bullshitters alike: "I have science on my side, so I WIN! Ha!...now buy my books, watch my television show, vote for me for political office, spend billions of dollars on a public utility of my fancy, etc."
But why people favor science so much is because they are largely inherently pragmatic (and not necessarily in the good way). Life is fast and hard, nobody has time to read some apparently-pontificating nonsense. They want results, and they want them now goddammit!, before the quarterly review! Anything that fulfills this nihilistic agenda is approved, and anything else it hailed as bullshit - but the reality is that it's not bullshit, it's just it doesn't fit in with their progress-oriented agenda. In other words, they just don't care. But that's not an argument.
And the fact is that philosophy is everywhere, you just have to sit down every now and then to appreciate it. In my opinion we need to get rid of the view that philosophy is a discipline with a strict code of what it can do and what it cannot do. It's something everyone does, for better or for worse.
So it's not as if philosophy and science are diametrically opposed, as the silly pop-scientist pseudo-philosophers assert. They're two sides of the same coin - what happens in science can be analyzed by philosophers, and what happens in philosophy can be applied or transformed into science. Indeed I am thoroughly unimpressed myself at any attempt to separate the two or show how one is "better" than the other. What use is the theoretical if it cannot be applied? Of what importance or meaning is the practical if we have no way of understanding it?
Uhh. By using science. Duh!
Which philosophical theory that hasn't been tested is better than any that also hasn't been tested? Which one would you say is more valid?
Uhh? Duh!
Exactly.
So, in order to single out one of those (philosophical) theories from all the rest and make it valid, you'd need to perform testing and falsifying that it passes. Philosophy goes nowhere without science.
I suppose that means that various interpretations of quantum mechanics are not scientific?
Most interpretations of quantum mechanics are in fact alternative theories, which in the end make different predictions. Some interpretations however can be dismissed as emblematic of bad philosophy, e.g. Copenhagen and "Shut Up and Calculate".
Science is a method within a theory of knowledge.
Science relies upon empirical evidence and/or logic to support claims of knowledge.
Essentially belief is irrelevant to science, it is about what evidence you can demonstrate and whether or not the logic you use is valid.
So if we have a given hypothesis which cannot generate any predictions whatsoever, it will never be scientifically reinforced through experimental confirmation. If a hypothesis does generate predictions, but we are (as yet) unable to test those predictions (due to being unable to control the required experiment, or to observe the results), then at that time a given hypothesis likewise cannot be considered scientifically reinforced/accurate/valid/confirmed/tested/etc...
Keep in mind that when experimental results agree with our modeled predictions we do not instantly take the predictive hypothesis to be "confirmed", instead we ascribe it a degree of confidence; confidence in predictive power; reliable predictive power. The more accurately and reliably a model can make successful predictions, the more confidence points we give it. When a hypothetical model results in incorrect predictions, we do not instantly throw it out (we check to make sure we conducted the experiment and recorded the results correctly) and then we try to modify the model (especially if the model has some predictive power to begin with) but if a model continues to generate inaccurate predictions, then we consider it falsified.
So what does this mean for some of the more esoteric hypothetical models of the quantum world?
Well, let's start with the double slit test; the wave-life function of quantum particles enable them to interact with possible versions of themselves when unobserved (forgive me Einstein, I know not what I say!). Even though we're not yet where we want to be with our grasp of how or why this happens, we still are able to set up meticulously regulated experiments in order to see if this model holds true (the wave pattern it creates after interacting with itself). So long as this model remains unfalsified through experimentation and so long as it's predictions remain true, it is "scientific" simply by virtue of being the most predictively reliable, and as yet unfalsified, explanation we have (remember the changing or relative "standards" of science and it's various fields). The model itself is going to be modified (perhaps greatly) in the future in order to expand it's predictive power and then to refine the reliability and accuracy of those predictions, but for now it's a part of one of the best quantum models we have. It might turn out to be totally wrong one day, sure, but that's always a risk inherent in science. There's no ultimate certainty, only degrees of confidence in reliability; science is a wager.
When it comes to some other hypotheses, like the many worlds interpretation of QM phenomenon, we are not yet and may never be able to use it to make any predictions or run any experiments to see if it holds true with what is observable. That's why the wave function description of quantum mechanics is said to be scientific while the MWI and many other hypotheses are not; experiments, predictions, and observable results..
Except that it is testable:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.02048v3.pdf