Bias against philosophy in scientific circles/forums

Quoting Shushi

But it just seems to me an almost impossible task to discuss anything remotely meaningful in most branches of academia if philosophy is completely rejected, which is impossible, and replaces it with philosophical theories like scientism, physicalism, reductionism, materialism, etc. (and claim that those beliefs are pure science and that they don't hold to any beliefs and that they are not philosophy at all). It seems really ridiculous to the point that you may get banned or silenced if one attempts to discuss these things in these circles, as though they were a cult of scientism or something akin to that

Quoting Shushi

Do scientists have an irrational bias against philosophy, specifically philosophy of science?

Yes. To separate philosophy from science is to make science a religion. They think they have eliminated metaphysics from physics, but all they have done is blind themselves to the metaphysics in physics. They often believe they are dealing with the fundamental constituents of existence, and that there is no belief involved in their conclusions or in the reasonings that lead to their conclusions. They are not aware of their metaphysical beliefs, and it takes some philosophizing to uncover them. Without philosophy they just react like a cult.

Ask them if the wavefunction is metaphysical and see what they say.

Quoting Shushi

It seems really ridiculous to the point that you may get banned or silenced if one attempts to discuss these things in these circles, as though they were a cult of scientism or something akin to that (I don't mean any offense to them by that, it's just difficult to properly label these sorts of behavior).

I left my last forum, now defunct, for exactly this reason. I was told that "non-scientific" topics were unsuitable for discussion. Such topics were trolled and treated with derision - even by our moderators! - with the intention of preventing their discussion. And this in a supposedly philosophical forum, not a specifically scientific one.

Quoting Shushi

Do scientists have an irrational bias against philosophy, specifically philosophy of science?

I don't think so. The people you refer to are sciencists. They have become enamoured of their own discipline, to the extent that they have come to believe that science is the One and Only Tool that is acceptable for intellectual inquiry. They are zealots, nothing more. The worrying thing is that today, in the world of Trump, Brexit and fake news, their viewpoint is becoming accepted in the wider world. This, I think, we should oppose, where and how we can. :chin:

Quoting leo

To separate philosophy from science is to make science a religion. They think they have eliminated metaphysics from physics, but all they have done is blind themselves to the metaphysics in physics. They often believe they are dealing with the fundamental constituents of existence, and that there is no belief involved in their conclusions or in the reasonings that lead to their conclusions. They are not aware of their metaphysical beliefs, and it takes some philosophizing to uncover them. Without philosophy they just react like a cult

:lol: Yes! :up:

Quoting Shushi

Physics Forums: Metaphysics
it's usually helpful to examine the roots of an unfamiliar term. Try a search on "metaphysical etymology" .

Meta= beyond,
so what's beyond physical ? Philosophy, i guess, and maybe the occult

It's funny, really, that scientists don't realize that science has a metaphysics. In fact, several, not necessarily compatible ones.

I always have thought that metaphysics itself was not a meaningful term, but a chapter heading that followed Physics in a book written by Aristotle.

So if there is a thing beyond physics... what is it? Why is it "beyond" and not "outside", "under", "above" or "beside" physics?

Reply to Shushi Scientists are individuals. They may or may not realize that science is performed within the structure of philosophy, namely, that they believe that the world operates on laws, and the laws can be learned by humans, and the laws don't change.

But most scientists don't worry about that... they just make sure they get passing or better grades in their training, and that their research finds a grantor, and that their research will uncover some publishable fact.

Reply to Shushi Also, most people on forums are not professionals, or even learned in the topics they discuss. The participants are enthusiastic, but not trained or even smart. This applies to all specialized forums.

So the scientists you argued with may not even have been scientists, but avid reader of publications like "Popular Science", "Science", or "Sighans".

So for you to draw a general statement of what scientists are like or what they think, is a bit unfair if you base it on responses on a so-called science forum.

Quoting god must be atheist

So if there is a thing beyond physics... what is it? Why is it "beyond" and not "outside", "under", "above" or "beside" physics?

There are different ways metaphysics is defined, but to me it includes ontological assumptions. Like, there are natural laws, everything is physical. The idea of 'emergent property' could be seen as metaphysical. Certainly much of cosmology in physics is metaphysics discussion. QM raises a lot of metaphysics issues. And if this seems distant, it's not. QM based phenomena affect large organisms, like birds and plants and perhaps for things. IOW a bird will change course due to qm phenomena inside its visual system. And any attempt to be objective is necessarily working with metaphysics. What is, fundamentally, perception and how is ours skewing our metaphysics. Since we need to know this to know what are objective conclusions and ones biased by the fact that we are primate bodies/brained, time bound something or others? And the idea that there are natural laws is a kind of metaphysical viewpoint and there is quite a bit within science challenging it. Not that the patterns we've noticed aren't there, but they may be much more local and time bound then we assumed. They may not be laws but local, temporary patterns. Of course 'local' may means something huge from part of to the whole of our universe in a multiverse. And time bound may be in billions of years - though there are indications of changes in constants in much short time periods.

Paradigm shifts in physics would, it seems to me, involve metaphysics.


I wouldn't take that word 'beyond' too literally. metaphysics usually has to do with fundamental principles, not (necessarily) transcendent things. It could include the latter - depending on the metaphysics - but need not at all.

Wikipedia, is well, wikipedia, but even so it casts some light on this....

Wikipedia:Metaphysics continues asking "why" where science leaves off. For example, any theory of fundamental physics is based on some set of axioms, which may postulate the existence of entities such as atoms, particles, forces, charges, mass, or fields. Stating such postulates is considered to be the "end" of a science theory. Metaphysics takes these postulates and explores what they mean as human concepts. For example, do all theories of physics require the existence of space and time,[12] objects, and properties? Or can they be expressed using only objects, or only properties? Do the objects have to retain their identity over time or can they change?[13] If they change, then are they still the same object? Can theories be reformulated by converting properties or predicates (such as "red") into entities (such as redness or redness fields) or processes ('there is some redding happening over there' appears in some human languages in place of the use of properties). Is the distinction between objects and properties fundamental to the physical world or to our perception of it?

Much recent work has been devoted to analyzing the role of metaphysics in scientific theorizing. Alexandre Koyré led this movement, declaring in his book Metaphysics and Measurement, "It is not by following experiment, but by outstripping experiment, that the scientific mind makes progress."[14] That metaphysical propositions can influence scientific theorizing is John Watkins' most lasting contribution to philosophy. Since 1957[15][16] "he showed the ways in which some un-testable and hence, according to Popperian ideas, non-empirical propositions can nevertheless be influential in the development of properly testable and hence scientific theories. These profound results in applied elementary logic...represented an important corrective to positivist teachings about the meaninglessness of metaphysics and of normative claims".[17] Imre Lakatos maintained that all scientific theories have a metaphysical "hard core" essential for the generation of hypotheses and theoretical assumptions.[18] Thus, according to Lakatos, "scientific changes are connected with vast cataclysmic metaphysical revolutions."[19]

An example from biology of Lakatos' thesis: David Hull has argued that changes in the ontological status of the species concept have been central in the development of biological thought from Aristotle through Cuvier, Lamarck, and Darwin. Darwin's ignorance of metaphysics made it more difficult for him to respond to his critics because he could not readily grasp the ways in which their underlying metaphysical views differed from his own.[20]

In physics, new metaphysical ideas have arisen in connection with quantum mechanics, where subatomic particles arguably do not have the same sort of individuality as the particulars with which philosophy has traditionally been concerned.[21] Also, adherence to a deterministic metaphysics in the face of the challenge posed by the quantum-mechanical uncertainty principle led physicists such as Albert Einstein to propose alternative theories that retained determinism.[22] A.N. Whitehead is famous for creating a process philosophy metaphysics inspired by electromagnetism and special relativity.[23]

In chemistry, Gilbert Newton Lewis addressed the nature of motion, arguing that an electron should not be said to move when it has none of the properties of motion.[24]

Katherine Hawley notes that the metaphysics even of a widely accepted scientific theory may be challenged if it can be argued that the metaphysical presuppositions of the theory make no contribution to its predictive success.[25]

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Reply to god must be atheist
Hi god must be atheist!

All of us have different insights and some may have actual valid conclusions to many of these different points that 'seem' to lie beyond reality, but aren't and I have found deep insights from scholars of different disciplines that shed more light in certain areas that may entail a philosophical position over another, that may provide the proper metaphysical framework from which new advancements in science could be made (every discipline and publishing journals lock up their ideas in their own ivory towers and it's difficult for different insights to cross over shed more insight, as our academic circles have become so specialized and illiterate over basic aspects of other fields, where basic issues such as in science for example there's the irreproducibility crisis that's stagnating the scientific community as pseudoscience is garnering reputation and conflicts arise about building upon valid ideas through which a simple examination of other's frameworks, ethics, and political biases may be examined and filter those faulty papers that may be rhetorically framed through simple fallacies).

In my experience, starting out as someone who only wanted to do physics, I later took a side course on philosophy not knowing what it really was and believing that it was just pure speculative talk and nonsense that anyone could make up. To my surprise, I later found out that it's essentially a part of every discipline and most people utilize it without realizing it, which although someone may be a scholar in say cosmology, their philosophy may be weak where they may intentionally add a "fudge factor" to their model science their worldview entails them to believe dogmatically that the universe was past eternal, and eventual studies later verified the initial conclusions of the initial model. In short philosophy examines the underpinning metaphysical frameworks and axioms that underpins all ideas and affects how we conduct a discipline effectively

Now in science the methodological naturalistic principle has been successful in discovering many aspects of the natural world since it worked quite well with a clockwork universe conception rather than the superstitious animistic conception of the universe. But science Einstein's general theory of relativity has replaced the Newtonian conception which involved basic maths and simple notions of comparing the universe to a giant clock, and ever since quantum mechanics replaced many aspects of the general theory of relativity, methodological naturalism would have denied many possibilities that pure empirical approach verified such as kotchen specker theorem, and quantum superposition (and spooky action at a distance), as well as the higgs bosom field, so a method such as that one needs to be nuanced further through its metaphysical underpinnings, like treating logical and mathematical truths as merely empirical truths, like “If p implies q, and p, then q” or “2 + 2 = 4” are to all appearances necessary truths, not merely empirical generalizations, and the principle of induction cannot be scientifically justified.

So if there is a thing beyond physics... what is it? Why is it "beyond" and not "outside", "under", "above" or "beside" physics?

I suppose that is a debate within philosophy, such as Idealism vs Realism vs alethic Realism vs Anti-Realism (like an Aristotelian version) vs Nominalism vs Fictionalism etc.

depending on the worldview of an individual, the distinction between metaphysical and physical may not really be a real one, as it seems that all reality is intertwined/connected and every time we discover new properties or discover new laws or phenomena, they will be categorized as "physical" by definition, but that's just my opinion [as this is a physicalist perspective which I think is sort of ad-hoc as it keeps updating the meaning of what is physical to fit new discoveries].

My opinion about all reality (metaphysical and physical combined together) really stems from my belief, about information, specifically I think that most people will agree that information is a metaphysical entity (which "metaphysical entity" depends on what position one takes about abstract objects, which I don't think this point changes much whether one is a realist, anti-realist, nominalist, etc.).

For example, the point about information in Physics seems to come from some theoretical physicists and philosophers of science discussing Maxwell's Demon and Active Information (a termed coined by john polkinghorne) which more information on that is on the citation below (which I think there maybe an interesting connection with the measurement problem and the kochen specker theorem in quantum mechanics since the human observer is involved in the measurement if we consider the nature of information, which may also relate to the findings and phenomena from Sir Roger Penrose's work on quantum consciousness and microtubules, although I'm not sure since these are just some thoughts I had)
Szilard, Leo (1929). "Über die Entropieverminderung in einem thermodynamischen System bei Eingriffen intelligenter Wesen (On the reduction of entropy in a thermodynamic system by the intervention of intelligent beings)". Zeitschrift für Physik. 53 (11–12): 840–856.

You can find it cited and discussed in the Wikipedia article on Maxwell's demon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_demon.

So it seems that information is more fundamental, yet a part of physical reality with tangible effects as it were, while at the same time being a property of physical instances that may take different physical forms or manifestations like ink on paper [like textbooks], or carvings on stones, or electrical signals/meaningful arrangements of bits and data [like software codes or brain signals], but ultimately those things may not determine information, which information does not seem to be the electricity or ink, because information could manifest itself in almost any physical form, where different physical instances are just conduits/platforms for how information expresses itself, like say for example the number 32 on these substances, because numbers aren't physical in nature, but can take on physical forms which they are independent of (even if ink didn't exist, the number 32 will keep on existing).

So this would beg the question as to what sort of relationship information and the physical world have with each other (as it seems like information may be more fundamental in reality than space-time, matter-energy and the fundamental forces, as in our experience as far as we can tell the blueprints precedes the physical manifestations of things we think about), I believe this would be similar to the debate about the relationship between mind/soul and the brain, which would be the Cartesian-Substance Dualism, Dual Aspect Idealism, Epiphenomenalism, non-Reductive Physicalism or Neutral Monistim debate, but except with information rather than the soul/mind (which I would take a sort of monistic view, as I believe that all reality is interconnected with each other through more fundamental aspects and forces)

Another fruitful discussion would be the "uncanny effectiveness of mathematics" as it were (which maths are fundamental axioms in science, in order for science to work) where there is this objective discoverability of maths in physical reality (empirical verification) and even metaphysical (analytic proofs and validation), which like information, mathematical entities do depend on ones views of idealism, realism, anti-realism, nominalism, etc., but however one views them, this aspect of mathematics must be accounted for in a reasonable sense, like in the case of Meno's Slave, or how a mathematical theorist like Peter Higgs can sit down at his desk and, by pouring over mathematical equations, predict the existence of a fundamental particle which 30 years later (after investing millions of dollars and thousands of man hours, experimentalists are finally able to detect).

Wallows

Ask them if the wavefunction is metaphysical and see what they say.

Although not necessarily related to this discussion (as this is from a theological discussion), Philosopher of Science Bas van Frassen quite nicely explains many other physical phenomena as you do,

Do the concepts of the Trinity and the soul baffle you? They pale beside the unimaginable otherness of closed space-time, event-horizons, EPR correlations, and bootstrap models

That is to say that if you were to ask an honest physicist what electrons were, or what is gravity, or energy, they can describe to you how they are like, but the scientific theories that describe them, do not describe them in a positive sense, as if they exist, like if one were to try to describe coldness, they can't sense that doesn't have a positive existence. But those things that Bas van Frassen mentioned are more counter-intuitive than most ideas that have ever been produced by the human mind.

So for you to draw a general statement of what scientists are like or what they think, is a bit unfair if you base it on responses on a so-called science forum.

I do realize that there are many different scientists, and I don't try to paint with a broad brush (especially since I'm a science major myself studying physics), but I have found this to be a common attitude in the several universities I've been to in Arizona (such as UofA, ASU, etc.) or in California ( Several Cal States, Caltech, Berkley) even among my peers who study physics and philosophy with me, who although are more physicists than they are philosophers tell me anecdotally that they rather spend time in the philosophy department talking with the faculty there rather than with their peers as they don't seem to have much fruitful discussion with them about reality, truth (philosophy) and science. But by no means am I saying this is the case everywhere since this is just my anecdotal experience from interacting with a science forum that is most likely made up of just science enthusiasts, and my university experience and those from my friends as well.

It looks like I just stepped into a nest of venomous religionist snakes.

Tactic: if you don't have a clear argument that makes sense, then use saliva, lots of saliva. I.e. drown the dissenter in a sea of words.

Reply to god must be atheist This post of yours came after I responded to you? Is it a response to me. Am I a venomous religious snake in your opinion?

Quoting Coben

Am I a venomous religious snake in your opinion?

I have no opinion on you. I just feel like all of a sudden I am the centre of attention, and since my posts were not responded to, IN A WAY I UNDERSTAND but people wanted to react, they decided to put a million-word posts in response to what I have written. Three very long posts buoyed up very quickly, and I don't see how they relate to my posts. A bit like being in the snake pit... look left, look right, you don't know where to look, there is danger by numbers.

Maybe I misunderstood the posters' intention. That's possible. I apologize if I did. I just did not understand and still don't why I need to read three very long posts.

Maybe because metaphysics is a complex thing, which can't be described in a few words? Maybe. But maybe not. I still think metaphysics is not a congruent set of thoughts, I think it is a collection of disparate elements that Aristotle thought of, and which could not be 1. discussed in other chapters and 2. together they don't form a whole. They are just put together in a container, called metaphysics, and the name has nothign to do with the contents.

It is possible, however, that the contents gave meaning to the name. However: the disparate diversity of topics in metaphysics would warrant, in my opinion, separate subsectioning. If that makes sense.

Quoting Shushi

It seems as though these individuals are going beyond the scientific method, by making claims that aren't scientifically verifiable about the truth of philosophy (even though science isn't primarily concerned about what is truth but rather the results of expirements and predictions that depend on metaphysical and frameworks about truth and axioms that value ethics, speciifically the virtue of looking for truth),

I've said this many times on the forum. Here I go again - The scientific method is epistemology, i.e. philosophy. It wasn't established based on scientific principles, that would be an endless loop. I think you'll have a hard time getting most hard scientists to agree with that.

On the other hand, I have a lot of sympathy for those who practice the scientific method on a professional or academic level - much of philosophy is baloney. Philosophers love to tie little nitpicky knots with words that have no significant impact or even meaning.

Quoting god must be atheist

I always have thought that metaphysics itself was not a meaningful term, but a chapter heading that followed Physics in a book written by Aristotle.

See @tim wood's reference to Collingwood's "An Essay on Metaphysics" above. He originally steered me towards the essay and I've found it very helpful. The word "metaphysics" can have a very clear, specific, even technical meaning. I like Collingwood's explication of what he thinks it is.

Quoting Wallows

Ask them if the wavefunction is metaphysical and see what they say.

Quoting Coben

Certainly much of cosmology in physics is metaphysics discussion. QM raises a lot of metaphysics issues. And if this seems distant, it's not. QM based phenomena affect large organisms, like birds and plants and perhaps for things. IOW a bird will change course due to qm phenomena inside its visual system. And any attempt to be objective is necessarily working with metaphysics.

I think these types of statements are another reason why scientists don't take philosophy seriously - they demonstrate an inability or unwillingness to acknowledge there is a true and (sometimes) clear separation between metaphysics and science. One, perhaps over-simplistic way of looking at it is that metaphysics sets the rules by which we know things and science describes what we come to know about how the world works.

Quoting god must be atheist

Also, most people on forums are not professionals, or even learned in the topics they discuss. The participants are enthusiastic, but not trained or even smart. This applies to all specialized forums.

That may be true, but respected and influential scientists, Stephen Hawking comes to mind, have indicated explicitly that philosophy does not have anything significant to offer.

Quoting tim wood

Science is the structured asking and attempts to find the answers to questions. That is, to do any science, you have to ask a question (and of course there conventions and rules on how to go about science - these latter the business of scientists).

Two comments 1) I don't think science is only or primarily about asking questions. That's more true for hard experimental sciences like particle physics but much less so for observational sciences like astronomy and evolutionary biology. Much of science is about observing the world and seeing patterns. Those patterns may lead to questions, but it's not the central activity. 2) As I said, in my view, "the conventions and rules on how to go about science" are exactly philosophy.

Quoting Shushi

for example there's the irreproducibility crisis that's stagnating the scientific community as pseudoscience is garnering reputation and conflicts arise about building upon valid ideas through which a simple examination of other's frameworks, ethics, and political biases may be examined and filter those faulty papers that may be rhetorically framed through simple fallacies).

I agree. Irreproducibility, corruption of scientific results by business and political interests, denial of established science, fraud by scientists for personal gain or advancement, sloppy methodology and poor quality control, and more are evidence of science's inability or unwillingness to take metaphysics seriously.

Quoting Shushi

I think that most people will agree that information is a metaphysical entity (which "metaphysical entity" depends on what position one takes about abstract objects, which I don't think this point changes much whether one is a realist, anti-realist, nominalist, etc.).

I don't think I agree that information is a metaphysical entity. I'll think about it more. I do think that saying that to a scientist is a good way to invite ridicule.

Quoting Shushi

That is to say that if you were to ask an honest physicist what electrons were, or what is gravity, or energy, they can describe to you how they are like, but the scientific theories that describe them, do not describe them in a positive sense, as if they exist, like if one were to try to describe coldness, they can't sense that doesn't have a positive existence.

As I said previously, I think science describes how the world works but doesn't say anything about why. Is "why" metaphysics? Maybe, but it seems to me it's more a meaningless question. But then, I guess that's a metaphysical statement.

Quoting god must be atheist

I just feel like all of a sudden I am the centre of attention, and since my posts were not responded to,

I thought I responded to what I cited, and that in context.Quoting god must be atheist

Three very long posts buoyed up very quickly, and I don't see how they relate to my posts. A bit like being in the snake pit... look left, look right, you don't know where to look, there is danger by numbers.

I haven't read the other long posts, just glanced at them. I can't see how snake pit is much of an analogy for getting long responses in a philosophy forum to a set of complex issues. I'd link you to the long article in Stanford's Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which goes into some of the complexity related to metaphysics in philosophy, but then this, it would seem, might qualify as venomous.Quoting god must be atheist

I just did not understand and still don't why I need to read three very long posts

You don't need to. If you're interested you can, that's what the forum offers, along with no possible way to make you need to.

Quoting god must be atheist

Maybe I misunderstood the posters' intention. That's possible. I apologize if I did

You could forget about the intentions, iow ad hom type stuff, and then either choose to read and respond to the posts or not.

Quoting god must be atheist

It looks like I just stepped into a nest of venomous religionist snakes.

This kind of psychic guesswork and insulting metaphor...well, my guess is it won't increase the chances of anyone learning anything or having a good discussion.

Since you suddenly felt the center of unpleasant attention. I can instantly avoid doing that from here on out.

Quoting T Clark

I think these types of statements are another reason why scientists don't take philosophy seriously - they demonstrate an inability or unwillingness to acknowledge there is a true and (sometimes) clear separation between metaphysics and science. One, perhaps over-simplistic way of looking at it is that metaphysics sets the rules by which we know things and science describes what we come to know about how the world works.

Epistemology is the rules/viewpoints on how we know things, not metaphysics. And it doesn't seem like you responded to any of the points made or what is in the Wikpedia quote. I get that you are disagreeing, but that's about it.

Quoting god must be atheist

I have no opinion on you. I just feel like all of a sudden I am the centre of attention, and since my posts were not responded to, IN A WAY I UNDERSTAND but people wanted to react, they decided to put a million-word posts in response to what I have written. Three very long posts buoyed up very quickly, and I don't see how they relate to my posts. A bit like being in the snake pit... look left, look right, you don't know where to look, there is danger by numbers.

I went back and looked. As you said, there were three long responses to your post. They seemed reasonably responsive and clear. Also respectful. Usually, that kind of response would make someone feel good - like people are interested in what they have to say.

Quoting Coben

Epistemology is the rules/viewpoints on how we know things, not metaphysics.

Epistemology is often included in definitions of metaphysics. I checked once and it came out about 50/50. To me it seems clear that it belongs as part of metaphysics. I suggest again that you take a look at the Collingwood paper referenced by Tim Wood.

Quoting Shushi

In my experience of talking with scientists about philosophy, I have found that many times most scientists seem to look down on it like if it were just speculative non-conducive discussions about random thoughts that anyone can make up.

It is probably more related to what Linus Torvalds quipped: "Talk is cheap. Show me the code." In that kind of context, Linus demands that you do something considered objectively "hard" in order to first gain respect.

For example, in the philosophy of engineering, they want you to first show why they should respect you as an engineer. Generally spoken, in the philosophy of X, they want you to show your real proficiency in X.

From there on, aptitude and knowledge of philosophy is considered impressive. Peers will respect you more as a practitioner in the field of X, if you have a deep understanding of the philosophy of X, and ultimately of general philosophy. Free-standing, general philosophy, however, is not much appreciated, because there is the impression that everybody can just spout whatever vague ideas, i.e. mere verbiage.

It is the same with sales and management. You cannot sell airplane repair services, if it is obvious that you have never held a screw driver in your hands, ever in your life. You cannot manage programmers, if they detect that you cannot write a line of code. These people will not accept you in those circumstances. They will simply not respect you. Still, if you can really do the work itself, and you are good at philosophy, then you will automatically rise to the top of your field. Thought leaders in any field are always good philosophers, and they typically work their way through the philosophy classics too, because that really helps.

People tend to learn things in the wrong order. Theory follows practice, and not the other way around. That is why you better get lots of work experience in your field first, before even getting a degree. The other way around will often make you sound like an arrogant prick who seeks to "skip the hard part".

This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.

Quoting tim wood

Scientists look for patterns, but usually not passively, but rather as revealed by experiment.

As I said, that may be true for physics, but it's not for evolutionary biology. Which isn't to say that such observational, historical sciences don't eventually have to be tested, not generally by experiment but by more observations, probably more focused this time.

It is really any surprise? Science forums regularly get inundated with hacks trying to use 'philosophy' to prove whatever pet theories they have about the universe, or else prove [major and well-acceped scientific theory] wrong in some manner or another. 'Philosophy' being whatever tripe said person thought of in the shower 20 mins ago. [I]We[/i] get that shit on a semi-regular basis. Not to mention that philosophers - professional and amateur - are notoriously undereducated with respect to science. Science is right to be weary of philosophy. That said, you'll occasionally get a science popularizer like Massimo Pigluicii or a Carlo Rovelli who argue for the necessity of philosophy in science, which is nice.

Gregory Bateson put it best: "The would-be behavioural scientist who knows nothing of the basic structure of science and nothing of the 3000 years of careful philosophic and humanistic thought about man - who can define neither entropy nor sacrament - had better hold his peace rather than add to the existing jungle of half-baked hypothesis". How many here can talk of both entropy and sacrament?

Quoting T Clark

Epistemology is often included in definitions of metaphysics. I checked once and it came out about 50/50. To me it seems clear that it belongs as part of metaphysics. I suggest again that you take a look at the Collingwood paper referenced by Tim Wood.

Well, if you want to include epistemology in metaphysics then it is completely and utterly true, without controversy, that science has metaphysics, which was my original assertion in this thread. It seemed like, though I could be wrong, he took associating metaphysics with science as religious. (I am not quite sure what was going on there, since he didn't quite respond to me). But if he is taking epistemology to be a part of metaphysics, I can't see how metaphysics could possibly be problematic when associated with science..

Quoting alcontali

It is probably more related to what Linus Torvalds quipped: "Talk is cheap. Show me the code." In that kind of context, Linus demands that you do something considered objectively "hard" in order to first gain respect.

For example, in the philosophy of engineering, they want you to first show why they should respect you as an engineer. Generally spoken, in the philosophy of X, they want you to show your real proficiency in X.

From there on, aptitude and knowledge of philosophy is considered impressive. Peers will respect you more as a practitioner in the field of X, if you have a deep understanding of the philosophy of X, and ultimately of general philosophy. Free-standing, general philosophy, however, is not much appreciated, because there is the impression that everybody can just spout whatever vague ideas, i.e. mere verbiage.

It is the same with sales and management. You cannot sell airplane repair services, if it is obvious that you have never held a screw driver in your hands, ever in your life. You cannot manage programmers, if they detect that you cannot write a line of code. These people will not accept you in those circumstances. They will simply not respect you. Still, if you can really do the work itself, and you are good at philosophy, then you will automatically rise to the top of your field. Thought leaders in any field are always good philosophers, and they typically work their way through the philosophy classics too, because that really helps.

People tend to learn things in the wrong order. Theory follows practice, and not the other way around. That is why you better get lots of work experience in your field first, before even getting a degree. The other way around will often make you sound like an arrogant prick who seeks to "skip the hard part".

I generally agree with this, but one problem for instance in fundamental physics is that practicing a lot of theory-learning and problem-solving can lead one to become very disconnected from the meaning of the concepts and symbols that are being manipulated. For instance when while studying general relativity we are told that matter tells spacetime how to curve and the curvature of spacetime tells matter how to move, it's very easy to start reifying spacetime as a concrete entity that does curve, especially when you have to spend a huge amount of time manipulating and solving mathematical equations, and once this misconception and others start adding on top of one another you start going down a rabbit hole that it becomes very hard to get out of. When you spend years and years studying difficult theories and learning how to solve problem within them, afterwards it becomes very difficult to think outside their frameworks and to philosophize about them.

And I feel strongly that the more productive way would be to focus first on observations and experiments with as little theory as possible, rather than to focus on the theory-learning and the problem-solving. After all theories are built out of observations and experiments, not the other way around, and it is much more illuminating to look at how theories were developed rather than learning how to apply them, because the observations and experiments could have been explained in different ways, and focusing on the theory makes one blind to these other ways, and then we start thinking that what these theories say is more certain than it is and we have a hard time seeing the beliefs at the roots of the prevalent paradigm.

So I actually think that focusing on observations and experiments and good philosophy with little theory could make one a better scientist than the ones who are being trained now, who focus mostly on theory. But then the problem is that these other scientists don't see you as one of them if you don't think within their paradigm, and so it becomes hard to be acknowledged and for your ideas to be considered by these peers, and so it's not necessarily the cream that rises to the top, rather it's a system that perpetuates itself while accepting little influence that it sees as coming from outside, and then the more complicated the theories within the paradigm are the harder it is to make the system evolve, and I submit that this is why fundamental physics has become pretty much stagnant for the past decades.

Whereas at the end of the 19th century the prevalent theories were less complicated to learn and the system had less inertia, which allowed for a paradigm shift in the beginning of the 20th century, but maybe now it would take much more than new observations and new experiments for there to be a paradigm shift, I think it would require that scientific education become more focused on observation and experiment and philosophy and much less on theory. Or one could assume that physics is pretty much done, that we have the good foundations and it's just a matter of working out the details, but I think there are way too many unsolved fundamental problems to see that as acceptable.

it's usually helpful to examine the roots of an unfamiliar term. Try a search on "metaphysical etymology" .

Meta= beyond,
so what's beyond physical ? Philosophy, i guess, and maybe the occult

I think it's worth mentioning that they seem to separate Philosophy and the occult. If you say what lies beyond a fence is trees and flowers, you don't necessarily imply they are alike at all.

Also worth mentioning that the forum is (mostly) about physics. Makes sense to me that they might not know about things outside of their area of expertise, i.e. metaphysics.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

Also worth mentioning that the forum is (mostly) about physics. Makes sense to me that they might not know about things outside of their area of expertise, i.e. metaphysics.

There would be no issue if they didn't make metaphysical claims about what's possible and what's not possible, what the world is and what it isn't, what we are and what we aren't, where we come from, where we are going, and then ridicule or attack people who disagree with their metaphysical claims because supposedly these people don't understand 'physics'. If they don't know about things outside of their area of expertise, it might be better if they didn't claim to know about them no? The worst part is they aren't even aware they're doing it, so fundamentally they don't even know the limits of their supposed area of expertise, and so they aren't experts about physics either, but they believe they are, and that cult is widespread.

Quoting leo

But then the problem is that these other scientists don't see you as one of them if you don't think within their paradigm, and so it becomes hard to be acknowledged and for your ideas to be considered by these peers, and so it's not necessarily the cream that rises to the top, rather it's a system that perpetuates itself while accepting little influence that it sees as coming from outside, and then the more complicated the theories within the paradigm are the harder it is to make the system evolve, and I submit that this is why fundamental physics has become pretty much stagnant for the past decades.

Well, when you first need several billions of dollars to build a particle accelerator of sorts, then you will probably not see much spontaneous innovation or creative thinking.

The most powerful accelerator currently is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, built by the European collaboration CERN. Other powerful accelerators are KEKB at KEK in Japan, RHIC at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the Tevatron at Fermilab, Batavia, Illinois.

The environment around that kind of gigantic investment assets will automatically create excess orthodoxy in their core business. You won't see much innovation, unless the idea costs even more. Then, they will undoubtedly listen. If you can attractively justify why the next toy needs to be ten times more expensive, your employer will promote you, and even the funding agencies will love you.

Now that CERN has apparently put together the largest toy in the world, I guess that Fermilab is throwing its best teams at the administrative paperwork that will explain why the next biggest toy of the world now needs to be built in Batavia, Illinois. Believe me that they have already set aside the land for that.

Still, I've got to admit that one particular sideshow at CERN, by some external consultant of sorts, i.e. Tim Berners-Lee, seems to have nicely taken off, to say the least.

His originally relatively obscure concoction, which at the beginning of the nineties he called, "my www project", has actually done surprisingly well. He even shoehorned a hack on SGML into that project, some kind of simplification of that markup apparatus, which became yet another markup language (but not YAML, which is another hack by someone else) of which I cannot or don't want to remember the name for the time being.

Quoting Coben

Wikipedia, is well, wikipedia, but even so it casts some light on this....

Wikipedia:Metaphysics continues asking "why" where science leaves off....

Nit-pick: metaphysics asks "why" before the prerequisites for science even exist. :smile: :up:

In my experience in school, science and mathematics contexts often had no time for philosophy because a common approach was to simply not care about those sorts of issues. There was a purely pragmatic, instrumental approach most of the time--they were merely concerned with whatever worked, whatever accounted for data/observations, and whatever produced results in applied settings. Focusing on what was "really the case ontologically," how we could know certain things, etc. was seen as a waste of time that had no practical upshot.

The etymology of "metaphysics," by the way, is simply that it was an untitled book placed after the book entitled "Physics" in Aristotle anthologies (this is going back to the first century CE or even the last century BCE). The subject matter was conventionally the subject matter of that book, the bulk of which was what we know call ontology, as well as "first principles."

Reply to Pattern-chaser That's where science leaves off in time....:joke:

Quoting StreetlightX

That said, you'll occasionally get a science popularizer like Massimo Pigluicii or a Carlo Rovelli who argue for the necessity of philosophy in science, which is nice.

Carlo Rovelli has a great interview on "The Philosopher's Zone," a program from the Australian Broadcast Company. It was a couple of years ago. There was also a follow up interview by Tibor Molnar, an Australian philosopher. Here's a link to the Molnar interview. Down the page is also a link to the Rovelli one. About 30 minutes.

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/an-answer-for-carlo-rovelli-and-his-quantum-problem/8659546

Quoting StreetlightX

Gregory Bateson put it best: "The would-be behavioural scientist who knows nothing of the basic structure of science and nothing of the 3000 years of careful philosophic and humanistic thought about man - who can define neither entropy nor sacrament - had better hold his peace rather than add to the existing jungle of half-baked hypothesis". How many here can talk of both entropy and sacrament?

Agree completely about half-baked philosophy and how it undermines credibility, but Bateson's statement is bologna. I don't have to study 3,000 years of philosophy to understand humanity.

Quoting Coben

Well, if you want to include epistemology in metaphysics then it is completely and utterly true, without controversy, that science has metaphysics, which was my original assertion in this thread. It seemed like, though I could be wrong, he took associating metaphysics with science as religious. (I am not quite sure what was going on there, since he didn't quite respond to me). But if he is taking epistemology to be a part of metaphysics, I can't see how metaphysics could possibly be problematic when associated with science..

Whether or not you include epistemology in metaphysics, it is still philosophy and it's at the heart of science.

Quoting alcontali

People tend to learn things in the wrong order. Theory follows practice, and not the other way around. That is why you better get lots of work experience in your field first, before even getting a degree. The other way around will often make you sound like an arrogant prick who seeks to "skip the hard part".

Good post.

Quoting leo

when while studying general relativity we are told that matter tells spacetime how to curve and the curvature of spacetime tells matter how to move, it's very easy to start reifying spacetime as a concrete entity

People often call things "reification" as a way of undermining the legitimacy of an idea. Spacetime is as real as gravity, electrons, and dog hair. There's a good argument to be made that calling something "dog hair" is also reification, but that will just make scientists even surer we are all boneheads.

Quoting T Clark

. I don't have to study 3,000 years of philosophy to understand humanity.

He didn't say you have to study all of it; just that you ought to know more than nothing about it. So some of it will do. Will try listen to the podcast when I have a moment; the Phil Zone stuff is usually pretty good.

Quoting T Clark

People often call things "reification" as a way of undermining the legitimacy of an idea. Spacetime is as real as gravity, electrons, and dog hair. There's a good argument to be made that calling something "dog hair" is also reification, but that will just make scientists even surer we are all boneheads.

Sorry no, if I can make predictions as accurate as general relativity without using the concept of curved spacetime, I'm not gonna say that curved spacetime is as concrete as dog hair I feel with my hands. If I let a ball fall to the ground, I'm not gonna say it accelerates because it contains some substance called potential energy that gets converted into another substance called kinetic energy, cause I can't feel these substances either. Otherwise by that logic I can just say that unicorns are as real as dog hair because I can think about unicorns, it's just a matter of thinking about them and they become concrete, they exist! But then let's stop disrespecting or ridiculing people who believe in ghosts or in the afterlife, because it's concrete to them just like curved spacetime is to you.

Quoting leo

Otherwise by that logic I can just say that unicorns are as real as dog hair because I can think about unicorns, it's just a matter of thinking about them and they become concrete, they exist! But then let's stop disrespecting or ridiculing people who believe in ghosts or in the afterlife, because it's concrete to them just like curved spacetime is to you.

Are you saying that unicorns and ghosts are as real as spacetime? Also, I don't understand why you would feel the need to ridicule people who believe in ghosts or the afterlife anyway. Here we are whining about how scientists ridicule us about our beliefs.

Quoting T Clark

Whether or not you include epistemology in metaphysics, it is still philosophy and it's at the heart of science.

Agreed. I think there are a number of ways metaphysics is a part of science- in theory and practice.

Quoting Shushi

Do scientists have an irrational bias against philosophy, specifically philosophy of science? Or am I not understanding an obvious truth, such as that science doesn't seem to have anything to do with philsophy of science?

Well, Science Forums has an explicitly stated narrow focus and tight moderation, so the fact that your thread was closed immediately and the earlier thread was short-lived as well is not an indication of anything. However, it has been my experience that people with scientific and engineering background do often display little patience for and a good deal of prejudice against philosophy. Unsurprisingly, this is mainly seen among those who know little about the field, or worse, have distorted ideas about it.

For example, outside of its specialized usage, the word "metaphysics" can mean "abstract theory with no basis in reality" (OED), and historically it has often been associated with the irrational and the occult. Is it surprising that people who are into natural sciences would tend to be allergic to such a notion? You yourself have confessed to thinking that "it was just pure speculative talk and nonsense that anyone could make up" - before you learned a little more about what philosophy was really about. And, to be fair, a good deal of philosophy has been and still is "speculative talk and nonsense" - but not all of it, as you and I agree (although to my mind, Penrose and Polkinghorne offer examples of the more disreputable kind of "metaphysics").

No doubt, some of the prejudice comes from ignorance and the sort of arrogance that people who are accomplished in their field often display for other fields (here, of course, I am talking about people like Hawking and Krauss, not just random Science Forum posters, most of whom are not even scientists). Physicists might be especially guilty of this:



There have always been scientists with an interest in and a respect for philosophy. Off the top of my head, a few of the prominent working scientists are George Ellis, Sean Carroll, Anthony Aguirre - perhaps not surprisingly, all cosmologists. I could also think of some theoretical physicists. But it used to be - I don't know if things have changed in the recent decades - that philosophy was almost a taboo subject in science departments. David Albert, who earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1981, says that after he developed an interest in philosophy he almost got kicked out of the grad school when he said that he wanted to write his thesis on foundations of physics. In the end he was forced to do a thesis on a very technical, calculation-heavy subject picked for him by the department, but eventually, after working with Aharonov at the Tel Aviv University, he became one of the more prominent philosophers of physics.

Quoting T Clark

Are you saying that unicorns and ghosts are as real as spacetime? Also, I don't understand why you would feel the need to ridicule people who believe in ghosts or the afterlife anyway. Here we are whining about how scientists ridicule us about our beliefs.

I don't ridicule people who believe in ghosts or the afterlife, but it's often what scientists do.

I'm saying that if you believe in curved spacetime, curved spacetime is as real to you as unicorns and ghosts are real to people who believe in them. While if you don't believe in unicorns or ghosts, they exist to you as an idea, just like curved spacetime exists to me as an idea.

It's also somewhat the way Einstein viewed it:

we have attempted to describe how the concepts space, time and event can be put psychologically into relation with experiences. Considered logically, they are free creations of the human intelligence, tools of thought, which are to serve the purpose of bringing experiences into relation with each other, so that in this way they can be better surveyed.
(in his book Relativity and the Problem of Space)

The only justification for our concepts and system of concepts is that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have no legitimacy.
(in The Meaning of Relativity)

You imagine that I look back on my life's work with calm satisfaction. But from nearby it looks quite different. There is not a single concept of which I am convinced that it will stand firm, and I feel uncertain whether I am in general on the right track.
(in a letter to a friend in 1949)

He saw curved spacetime as a tool of thought, whose only legitimacy is to "represent the complex of our experiences". He didn't assume that curved spacetime was necessary to account for observations.

The geometry of space is not something that can be tested experimentally. For instance you can account for gravitational lensing by assuming that light travels in straight lines in curved space, or by assuming that light has a curved trajectory in flat space.

Poincaré understood that over a century ago already, here is what he said in his book Science and Hypothesis:

[i]we could give up Euclidean geometry, or modify the laws of optics, and suppose that light is not rigorously propagated in a straight line. Euclidean geometry, therefore, has nothing to fear from fresh experiments.

no experiment will ever be in contradiction with Euclid's postulate; but, on the other hand, no experiment will ever be in contradiction with Lobachevsky's postulate.[/i]

It's a bit sad that these insights aren't found in the minds of most physicists and science enthusiasts today.

I mean, a century ago scientists-philosophers like Einstein and Poincaré understood fundamental ideas about science and the concepts it uses that many scientists and teachers today do not understand, and then people who are curious about science do not understand them either. There are so many fallacies and misconceptions in recent educational materials, it took myself a great deal of time and effort to see through them and all the confusion it generates.

Something has gone terribly wrong since then, my view is that in preferring mathematical elegance over intuitive simplicity, physicists of the 20th century have built theories that are much more complex than they need to be, and instead of rethinking the foundations they keep building on top of them and they have created a monster which has become almost inscrutable to philosophers, in which the motto is "shut up and calculate". So physics students have no time to philosophize, they have to learn all the intricacies to shut up and calculate properly, and by the time they become professional researchers they keep on making the monster grow, trying to unify its different parts by coming up with ever more complex concepts that encompass them.

I think most if not all of the great advances in science came from scientists who were also philosophers, or from chance discoveries. There is probably more to gain by thinking about and rethinking the foundations of fundamental physics that by continuing to develop the current theories, which in my view are stuck in an impasse of growing complexity and diminishing returns.

Quoting leo

I'm saying that if you believe in curved spacetime, curved spacetime is as real to you as unicorns and ghosts are real to people who believe in them. While if you don't believe in unicorns or ghosts, they exist to you as an idea, just like curved spacetime exists to me as an idea.

Everything we know, everything we think is metaphorical. Spacetime is as real as gravity, inertia, atoms, countries, oceans, dog hair, and so on and so on. The world isn't split up into anything until we come along and do it. Everything is a reification. Why pick on spacetime?

Quoting leo

There would be no issue if they didn't make metaphysical claims about what's possible and what's not possible, what the world is and what it isn't, what we are and what we aren't, where we come from, where we are going, and then ridicule or attack people who disagree with their metaphysical claims because supposedly these people don't understand 'physics'. If they don't know about things outside of their area of expertise, it might be better if they didn't claim to know about them no? The worst part is they aren't even aware they're doing it, so fundamentally they don't even know the limits of their supposed area of expertise, and so they aren't experts about physics either, but they believe they are, and that cult is widespread.

This sounds like more of a critique on human hypocrisy than a single group. I think it's inevitable for people to have misconceptions on ideas they don't know of or understand, especially when the outstanding members of a community misrepresent the actual ideals of a community.

I think @StreetlightX said it best-

Quoting StreetlightX

It is really any surprise? Science forums regularly get inundated with hacks trying to use 'philosophy' to prove whatever pet theories they have about the universe, or else prove [major and well-acceped scientific theory] wrong in some manner or another. 'Philosophy' being whatever tripe said person thought of in the shower 20 mins ago. We get that shit on a semi-regular basis. Not to mention that philosophers - professional and amateur - are notoriously undereducated with respect to science. Science is right to be weary of philosophy. That said, you'll occasionally get a science popularizer like Massimo Pigluicii or a Carlo Rovelli who argue for the necessity of philosophy in science, which is nice.

I think if we want to be respected, it's up to us to gain that respect. We can't count on outsiders to just give us the benefit of the doubt when everything they see says otherwise.

For a long time Philosophy has been cast aside by most. At least in America, they don't even teach it in school. (outside of the occasional reference to philosophers that may have inspired the founding fathers, of course.) If we want to change that, we have to prove that it's worth it to change that. We have to present what our findings contribute to humanity and show that we don't agree with those who would manipulate our work to accommodate their delusional world view.

It is hypocritical to have physics without metaphysics, but those who live hypocrisy don't realize they're living it. I would assume even you and I live some sort of hypocrisy. We have to rely on others to make us question things we take for granted.

Quoting T Clark

Everything we know, everything we think is metaphorical. Spacetime is as real as gravity, inertia, atoms, countries, oceans, dog hair, and so on and so on. The world isn't split up into anything until we come along and do it. Everything is a reification. Why pick on spacetime?

If that's the way you see it, then again by that logic unicorns and ghosts are as real as oceans and dog hair, just because we can think about them.

Reification is defined as treating an idea as a concrete thing. For instance a rock is a concrete thing, you can see it, you can touch it, even smell it or taste it. You can do that with dog hair too, and with ocean water. You can't do that with a country, but you can do it with concrete things that you define as part of a country, or with a part of a concrete map that you define as a country. You can't do that with inertia, or gravity, or spacetime. That's the distinction.

And when we talk of spacetime really curving, and when we say that planets (which are concrete things, we can at least see them) move the way they do because spacetime is curved, we're treating spacetime as a concrete thing, as if it was some concrete entity really curving, but spacetime is nowhere to be seen or touched, it's an idea that is defined from concrete things, or as Einstein put it it's a free creation of the human intelligence, a tool of thought, as opposed to, say, a rock.

If you don't want to make a distinction and remain consistent, you either have to treat every idea as a concrete thing (so a ghost is concrete like a rock because you think about it), or you have to treat every concrete thing as an idea (so a rock is an idea just like a ghost or a unicorn is). Otherwise if you want to make a distinction and you're treating an idea as a concrete thing then you're making the fallacy of reification.

I'm not necessarily picking on spacetime, I just think it's a good example, because it's a concept I struggled with for a long time precisely because teachers and physicists talked of it as if it was a concrete thing, precisely because they made that fallacy of reification, and I see that as a sign that philosophy is sorely needed in physics and more generally in science. But besides spacetime I could also pick gravity or energy or force or plenty of others.

To say for instance that gravity isn't a concrete thing isn't to say that we don't observe things falling to the ground, but it's a fallacy to say that things fall because of gravity: gravity is a summary or model of observations of concrete things, a thing falling to the ground is just an instance of what we call gravity, it is not caused by gravity, gravity isn't a concrete thing we have identified independently. Whereas if we see you pick up a stick and cut it in half, we can say the stick being cut in half was caused by you, since you are a concrete entity, you aren't just an idea.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

For a long time Philosophy has been cast aside by most. At least in America, they don't even teach it in school. (outside of the occasional reference to philosophers that may have inspired the founding fathers, of course.) If we want to change that, we have to prove that it's worth it to change that. We have to present what our findings contribute to humanity and show that we don't agree with those who would manipulate our work to accommodate their delusional world view.

At some point people need to have a bit of intellectual integrity, they just have to look at the history of science and read papers of renowned scientists of the past to see that these scientists were also philosophers, and that philosophizing led them to their path of discovery. People keep talking about "the scientific method", "the scientific method" doesn't say what hypothesis ought to be formulated or how it ought to be tested, at that point philosophy enters the stage. Bridgman used to say there are as many scientific methods as there are individual scientists. If people won't acknowledge that, if they are not willing to make the effort to see the importance of philosophy in science, what do we have to prove and what can we prove to them? They are not willing to accept the proofs, they just want to stay in their ivory tower and think they are better than everyone else while they are actually poor scientists and more like parrots who regurgitate what they have rote-learned.

Quoting leo

If people won't acknowledge that, if they are not willing to make the effort to see the importance of philosophy in science, what do we have to prove and what can we prove to them? They are not willing to accept the proofs, they just want to stay in their ivory tower and think they are better than everyone else while they are actually poor scientists and more like parrots who regurgitate what they have rote-learned.

This sounds, at least to me, like an "us versus them" argument. I think it may be time to step back and realize what team we're on.

We rely on the progress science makes to improve our lives. If that progress slows or even halts because of a flaw in their ideology, we will suffer. All mankind will suffer. Under the right circumstances, it could even result in the regression or even extinction of our species.

This, civilization, is a collaborative effort. We must all bring to the table what we have, because if everyone does, the rewards will be greater than anything we've given up. If we can fix something now that may cause problems later, it is our very purpose to do so. Even if you refuse to accept an apology, even if your disgust towards these people never fades, you must at least acknowledge that a world without them is a world you don't want to live in.

Quoting Coben

That's where science leaves off in time.... :joke:

Parsing error. No meaning detected. :confused:

"I do not like to suffer at all from what I call the German disease, an interest in philosophy"
- James Watson

Quoting TogetherTurtle

This sounds, at least to me, like an "us versus them" argument. I think it may be time to step back and realize what team we're on.

Hi TogetherTurtle,

I think at this point of the discussion you seem to insinuate a belief that there aren't major issues with science, in that the philosophy community needs to do a better job at contributing to mankind, which philosophy hasn't been doing a good job in recent year which is why it has garnered a sort of status as a trivial discipline that is dead for the most part, which either philosophy has to be more like science in that it makes contributions that are equivalent to it (the sort contributions that science makes) or something else (which I'm trying to guess from your perspective at this point). Is this sort of accurate to your view? If not please correct me, and I do apologize if I am inaccurately portraying/strawmanning your position.

If that is your position, I think there is a sort of "talking past each other" going on here. Let me explain. The main focus on this thread is the recognition of something lacking in the scientific community, which examples of problems plaguing this community like pseudoscience and deceptive practices infiltrating scientific journals where there is an irreproducibility crises affecting the community, much of which simple tools of philosophy would take care of,

(such as scientists being formally trained to recognized the distinctions between the ethos, pathos and logos of an argument, the distinction between ontology and epistemology, the differences between inductive, deductive, and abductive arguments, or a valid or sound deductive argument or a strong or cogent inductive argument [which is essential when examining causation/correlation] knowing what the limits are of the scientific method, and learning simple epistemological tools [which is examining the theory behind and the making of the scientific method] such as Analytic A Priori [logical], A Priori Synthetic, A Posteriori Analytic [hypothetical], and A Posteriori Synthetic [empirical], and simple epistemological positions like evidentialism, reliabilism, pragmatism, presuppositionalism, fideism, positivism)

[which, having started off as a science major myself, I had originally pursued physics thinking that it was the best tool that described the world, as well as describe ultimate truth and reality, which after I have taken a side course in philosophy [mainly because thought that it would have been a free B], I had come to realize that I was mistaken in my initial belief, that what I was truly aiming for was not necessarily in physics, but it was in philosophy, which I found to be the case with many who do science, which is why I believe a basic 101 course of philosophy is important to all of those who want to do science, mainly so that many can recognize these distinctions between science and philosophy as well as the limits of science, in what it says and what it doesn't say, like the difference between a scientific fact vs a fact vs a concrete ontic object, or the distinctions between what a theory, scientific theory, hypothesis and a philosophical belief are]

Now, what is see Leo is arguing about, is also another problem that has been plaguing the scientific community (which has also affected his ability to be effective in science) which a large portion of the scientific community dogmatically impose a sort of perspective onto others in order for one to be accepted in the community and to receive tenor and recognition. This sort of view that Leo has an issue with is this sort of (epistemological) scientism and ontological naturalism (realism) perspective on what science is [which science just is the search for natural causes or explanations of phenomena which what is natural and physical are realities that are verifiable empirically with real world effects], as well as the inability for anyone to question some mechanisms that have been instituted ever since the mid 20th century. The issue is that much of these instituted limits are metaphysical arguments or philosophical in nature, and there is this sort of allergic reaction to philosophy, most in part due to the ignorance of what philosophy and metaphysics are, as SophistiCat has mentioned.

That's not to deny that there have been many who have questioned it for the wrong reasons such as trying to make science accept or include many ideas such as astrology, or ideas that aren't grounded in either empirical verification as well as being logically consistent, which what comes to my mind is the Kosol's Metaphysics thing. So to summarize, the scientific community does not need to throw away the baby with the bathwater, in that the baby, which is philosophy is actually essential to the growth of science, and although certain knowledge or expertise does not seem to necessary at all levels of science, (such as associates or bachelors undergrads in engineering, or basic physics or astronomy [who may be focused more on areas that require measurements and calculations and knowing some theories that are general to the work they do] vs post grad systems engineering, information expert analysts, theoretical physicists, cosmologists, etc)

Philosophy has made progress and continues to do progress such as the old guard that used to champion some forms of positivism or the verificationist principle, have in recent years been dispelled with from the works of Paul Benacerraf (significantly in the area of philosophy of mathematics in philosophy and science) or Alvin Plantinga.

Here are some neat videos that go more in depth on the progress of philosophy and if you're a visual learner like I am, a neat presentation on the importance/defense of philosophy.







and a sort of general overview of philosophy and science

Builders also have a disdain for Architects, with their airy-fairy notions of form and function and beauty, and no proper understanding of brickwork. Let the brickies discuss trowel size and pointing finishes in peace, and the architects can discuss their rarified and impractical concerns amongst themselves elsewhere. Just don't expect a bricky to design your new house, even if he thinks he can.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

This sounds, at least to me, like an "us versus them" argument. I think it may be time to step back and realize what team we're on.

We rely on the progress science makes to improve our lives. If that progress slows or even halts because of a flaw in their ideology, we will suffer. All mankind will suffer. Under the right circumstances, it could even result in the regression or even extinction of our species.

I don't see it as an us vs. them, to me science and philosophy are inseparable, and trying to separate them makes science a religion and philosophy something irrelevant to most people. I see the whole endeavor of making observations and thinking about them and interpreting them and comparing them and connecting them as both science and philosophy, they didn't use to be separate in the minds of people, but now they are for no good reason in my view, simply because of confusions and misconceptions.

So whatever progress is a result of what I would call science-philosophy, even scientists who say they despise philosophy make use of it in their research, they just don't realize it, but that means they are often not aware of their beliefs underlying their research. Also I disagree that what we call 'progress' necessarily improve our lives, it seems to me we're on a course towards destroying life on Earth all while reveling in the idea that we're making progress. Maybe if we thought more about what we are doing, rather than just keep on doing whatever we're doing, we wouldn't be going that way.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

This, civilization, is a collaborative effort. We must all bring to the table what we have, because if everyone does, the rewards will be greater than anything we've given up. If we can fix something now that may cause problems later, it is our very purpose to do so. Even if you refuse to accept an apology, even if your disgust towards these people never fades, you must at least acknowledge that a world without them is a world you don't want to live in.

I don't have a disgust for scientists, I have a disgust for the idea that thinking about what we are doing is useless, that it's useless to think about the meaning of what we're doing, to think about how certain the results we get are, to think about the beliefs and assumptions underlying what we do, to think about other world views we would get by picking other beliefs or assumptions, to think about the consequences of what we do. The idea that the only thing that's useful is to keep doing whatever we're doing because supposedly we're making Progress and supposedly we're getting closer to Truth and supposedly Science will solve all our problems. We might very well go on to destroy the world while being stuck in that cult.

Quoting StreetlightX

the Phil Zone stuff is usually pretty good.

Quoting Constrained Maximizer

"I do not like to suffer at all from what I call the German disease, an interest in philosophy"
- James Watson

That quote is from his paper "Biology: A Necessarily Limitless Vista".

I find it quite funny that in the very next paragraph James Watson engages in philosophy:

I should begin by saying what I mean by science. It is simply a method of trying to explain the animate and inanimate objects around us – or at least their reproducible parts, how the world works, and what it is made of. That is, what are sometimes called the laws of nature.

Then

A question I find more interesting than the abstract discussion of the limits to scientific knowledge is how far can you limit human curiosity? Are there ways of prescribing what humans think about?

then

[i]life is organized solely around molecular structures that initially spontaneously came together to create the first form of life and which later evolved using natural selection into the extraordinary diversity of living organisms that now populate our planet.

We should thus accept the fact that we alone, without any help from the heavens, must organize our futures to the best of our abilities.[/i]

I guess he did suffer from that disease too, and the worst part is he didn't even know it.

I wanted to just add this video on this recent movement that's been happening within science, that's looking to add and create new maths in order to better describe quantum mechanics and solve a lot of issues that have stagnated science (which I would include philosophy as not not just another factor to add, but the most important one as far as I can tell, since one would need to think between new and different mathematical models and approaches which may be informed by both epistemic and analytic inferences). Its provides interesting insights to the main subject of this thread esspecially since a lot of scientists today would call all these new mathematics and different metaphysical assumptions as too philosophical and off-putting,



And this presentation from Sir Roger Penrose on the limitations of science in computations, current arithmetic and mathematic induction (and the relationship between mathematics, logic and philosophy and how advancements in those provides a proper metaphysical framework and tools through which new progress could be made in science, which current scientists are dogmatic about their current metaphysics)
(particularly between 16:27-25:55 but the entire video is worth a watch)


Btw I'm not saying that they are completely correct, but rather these are interesting insights that point out some of the issues of progress in science (since they are metaphysical in nature) and plausible solutions that may be true to some degree.

Quoting leo

Reification is defined as treating an idea as a concrete thing. For instance a rock is a concrete thing, you can see it, you can touch it, even smell it or taste it. You can do that with dog hair too, and with ocean water. You can't do that with a country, but you can do it with concrete things that you define as part of a country, or with a part of a concrete map that you define as a country. You can't do that with inertia, or gravity, or spacetime. That's the distinction.

So gravity and spacetime are reifications. What about electromagnetic radiation, subatomic particles, the universe, galaxies, forests, black holes. I'll go back to oceans again. Salt water is concrete, but I don't see how an ocean is. We know space time using the same general techniques as we use to know stars - indirectly through observations of radiation which has been travelling for millions or billions are years.

Quoting Shushi

I think at this point of the discussion you seem to insinuate a belief that there aren't major issues with science, in that the philosophy community needs to do a better job at contributing to mankind, which philosophy hasn't been doing a good job in recent year which is why it has garnered a sort of status as a trivial discipline that is dead for the most part, which either philosophy has to be more like science in that it makes contributions that are equivalent to it (the sort contributions that science makes) or something else (which I'm trying to guess from your perspective at this point). Is this sort of accurate to your view? If not please correct me, and I do apologize if I am inaccurately portraying/strawmanning your position.

I apologize if it came out this way. I meant almost the opposite. My point Is that there are major issues with science, (as well as most everything else) and the responsible thing for anyone to do (a philosopher or not) is to fix something when they can instead of dealing with it when the problem becomes larger.

I believe very much so that philosophy contributes to the world. I think that particularly philosophy helps us solve problems in systems we create but can't live without. The Theseus' Ship problem for example, of course a ship is just molecules assembled into a shape, but it isn't useful for us to think of the entire universe like that. We have to make decisions about when one thing becomes another and back up our thinking with philosophical arguments. These same man-made systems make up science itself.

If there was/is a fundamental problem with philosophy that we couldn't acknowledge, I would hope that someone somewhere would point it out before our discussions become too incompatible with reality, because that benefits everyone. We all rely on each other for this.

Reply to Pattern-chaser
As much as I actually have somewhat of a bias against the preference for "logic" within scientific reasoning, I actually don't think that scientists have much of a use for Metaphysics or that Metaphysics has much of use in general. Metaphysics asks, "What is?" Scientific reasoning is better suited to the task in most regards. The whole theory and method can be better applied to everything corporeal, which I would argue is all that anything is comprised of. Nothing exists except for atoms and the void and all.

"Science" has replaced Metaphysics. Because the reasoning is better suited to task, this is not necessarily negative.

Quoting leo

I don't see it as an us vs. them, to me science and philosophy are inseparable, and trying to separate them makes science a religion and philosophy something irrelevant to most people. I see the whole endeavor of making observations and thinking about them and interpreting them and comparing them and connecting them as both science and philosophy, they didn't use to be separate in the minds of people, but now they are for no good reason in my view, simply because of confusions and misconceptions.

No, no, that is further proof of the deep interconnection of science and philosophy. The "us versus them" argument refers to specifically people. You believe that philosophy is important and they disagree. That conflict is what I think the problem is, and I'm not disagreeing with you on the importance of philosophy. I'm sorry if that came out wrong earlier, because someone else also questioned that.

Quoting leo

So whatever progress is a result of what I would call science-philosophy, even scientists who say they despise philosophy make use of it in their research, they just don't realize it, but that means they are often not aware of their beliefs underlying their research. Also I disagree that what we call 'progress' necessarily improve our lives, it seems to me we're on a course towards destroying life on Earth all while reveling in the idea that we're making progress. Maybe if we thought more about what we are doing, rather than just keep on doing whatever we're doing, we wouldn't be going that way.

That is the very problem. If we have science without a purpose, science without philosophy, science will stagnate and any science that is done will be done without purpose or reason. science may have caused some of our problems, but I think it wrong to believe that knowledge can be evil in any way. It is the application of this knowledge that hurts us. I think that is one of the many places we find our use. We can use science to fix any damage we've caused to our planet, but only if we can justify doing so, of course, with a philosophical argument.

Quoting leo

I don't have a disgust for scientists, I have a disgust for the idea that thinking about what we are doing is useless, that it's useless to think about the meaning of what we're doing, to think about how certain the results we get are, to think about the beliefs and assumptions underlying what we do, to think about other world views we would get by picking other beliefs or assumptions, to think about the consequences of what we do. The idea that the only thing that's useful is to keep doing whatever we're doing because supposedly we're making Progress and supposedly we're getting closer to Truth and supposedly Science will solve all our problems. We might very well go on to destroy the world while being stuck in that cult.

This is what I was trying to get across before- don't let it happen. It will take more than just a handful of us, but we need to get across that this can and will happen. We can find the ideas of scientists disgusting all we like, but unless we work with them, they won't change, and we will suffer from the destruction of our world. Furthermore, if we continue to find flaws and fix them, not only philosophy in science but all of us finding flaws everywhere and fixing them, we can make this world a better place.

To scoff at the ignorant and be annoyed at their shortcomings may be amusing for a while, but eventually their problems become yours. We all live on the same planet, after all.

Quoting Terrapin Station

In my experience in school, science and mathematics contexts often had no time for philosophy because a common approach was to simply not care about those sorts of issues. There was a purely pragmatic, instrumental approach most of the time--they were merely concerned with whatever worked, whatever accounted for data/observations, and whatever produced results in applied settings. Focusing on what was "really the case ontologically," how we could know certain things, etc. was seen as a waste of time that had no practical upshot.

I suffer from that approach to this day. If I was taught more than just what worked, I would have thought math was interesting a long time ago and became better at it.

Quoting T Clark

So gravity and spacetime are reifications.

Reification is the act of reifying, of treating an idea as a concrete thing, it doesn't mean anything to say gravity and spacetime are reifications, they are ideas. Treating them as concrete things is a reification.

Quoting T Clark

What about electromagnetic radiation, subatomic particles, the universe, galaxies, forests, black holes.

I'm going to answer them all because I find it interesting to think about.

Electromagnetic radiation is an idea, we don't see electromagnetic radiation propagating. Some of the things we do observe behave as if there is invisible stuff propagating between them at a specific speed, and it can be useful to see it that way, but it's also equally valid to say that there is nothing propagating and that things interact at a distance with a small delay.

Strictly speaking I would say treating electromagnetic radiation as a concrete thing is a reification (in part because of the way electromagnetic radiation is characterized: it is said to consist of an oscillating electric field which generates an oscillating magnetic field, which itself generates an oscillating electric field and so on, whereas it has been shown theoretically that there is no causal link between the two, so picturing electromagnetic radiation as concrete electric and magnetic fields mutually creating one another is decidedly a reification).

Same goes with subatomic particles, we don't observe them, however it can be useful to imagine that they are really there, but it's not necessary. Again this is not to say that we don't observe the effects that we do observe.

The universe is an idea, we don't see the universe, we imagine that we see parts of it.

It is customary to think that things we see through telescopes are real things out there that we can hardly see with the naked eye (or not at all). It's surely possible to come up with a model that says that galaxies only exist through telescopes, but personally I do believe like pretty much most people that there really are galaxies out there made of stars and planets and so on. But if we were really pedantic we could say that until we travel to them and see that they're really there, we can't know that they exist outside of telescopes. The ontological difference between galaxies and curved spacetime though is that we don't see the latter in any way.

If we define a forest as a bunch of trees close to each other, sometimes we do see that, so concrete thing.

A black hole is an idea, but it most likely refers to a concrete thing as well (in the sense a collapsed star so dense that we cannot see it directly). In principle one way to check it's concrete would be to travel towards it. Whereas there is no way to check for curved spacetime.

Quoting T Clark

I'll go back to oceans again. Salt water is concrete, but I don't see how an ocean is.

Yes, a whole ocean exists as an idea, unless you see Earth from above and see one all at once.

Quoting T Clark

We know space time using the same general techniques as we use to know stars - indirectly through observations of radiation which has been travelling for millions or billions are years.

Again we don't see curved spacetime in any way, I thought I gave enough reasons why. We can interpret any observation and experiment in a flat space or in a curved space, spacetime is not a concrete thing that can curve and that we observe in any way. For instance gravitational lensing can be interpreted as light having a curved trajectory rather than as space being curved. Einstein himself saw spacetime as a tool of thought, not as a concrete thing. What more do you need?

Quoting TogetherTurtle

I think if we want to be respected, it's up to us to gain that respect. We can't count on outsiders to just give us the benefit of the doubt when everything they see says otherwise.

I don't really care if philosophy is respected. I come to it for my own benefit, for what it gives me. I got here from science and math. That lead me to want to look deeper into what stands behind it.

I don't think anything self-identified as philosophy will be able to make much of a contribution to science. Call it something else - scientific methodology, principles of science, goals of scientific investigations, the structure of scientific knowledge.

Moral and political philosophy might have more to offer.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

t is hypocritical to have physics without metaphysics, but those who live hypocrisy don't realize they're living it. I would assume even you and I live some sort of hypocrisy. We have to rely on others to make us question things we take for granted.

I don't think hypocrisy is the right word. Lack of perspective is more like it. Lack of introspection maybe. Lack of an understanding of principles.

Quoting T Clark

I don't really care if philosophy is respected. I come to it for my own benefit, for what it gives me. I got here from science and math. That lead me to want to look deeper into what stands behind it.

Personally, I don't care much for respect either. What others think specifically about me is subject to change anyway. However, I do care for what a respect for philosophy in others can add to the world and in return benefit all of us.

When people think about why they're doing things, or what their goal is, they typically both work better and do jobs worth doing.

Those things that stand behind math and science are actually the things holding math and science up. Without the ideas that make science and math represent reality, they don't represent reality. As is said often in this thread, without philosophy, science is just another religion.

Quoting T Clark

I don't think anything self-identified as philosophy will be able to make much of a contribution to science. Call it something else - scientific methodology, principles of science, goals of scientific investigations, the structure of scientific knowledge.

Moral and political philosophy might have more to offer.

Aren't those things based in philosophical ideas?

Moral and political philosophy are also very important. I think people tend to stay to firm in their stances in those however. That's probably a similar problem to the one we're discussing for scientific circles.

Quoting T Clark

I don't think hypocrisy is the right word. Lack of perspective is more like it. Lack of introspection maybe. Lack of an understanding of principles.

Maybe they lack the perspective to see the hypocrisy? I think that it's hypocritical to denounce something that all of your work you stand by relies on.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

Aren't those things based in philosophical ideas?

Yes, but I think they should be called something else because of the disdain and lack of understanding felt for philosophy.

Quoting T Clark

Yes, but I think they should be called something else because of the disdain and lack of understanding felt for philosophy.

Why not solve the problem at the source? In all my time fixing things, (fixing things is a large part of my current job) temporary solutions have only caused more problems. They're ok if you need a quick fix to get through a day, but they don't last forever. If you want to want a functioning system, you need to address problems directly.

Instead of masquerading useful philosophy as something else, we should instead prove that philosophy is useful. It's certainly possible to do so, we've already discussed the uses. The hard part is the convincing of others. I think rhetoric would be useful in this regard. We have to make people want to see, otherwise they will avert their gaze.

Quoting thewonder

"Science" has replaced Metaphysics. Because the reasoning is better suited to task, this is not necessarily negative.

And what is this task, for which science is so much more suitable? :chin:

Quoting TogetherTurtle

The hard part is the convincing of others.

That's always the hard part. :up:

Quoting thewonder

"Science" has replaced Metaphysics.

That's a bit like saying that cage-fighting has replaced wallpaper. Apples and oranges, as they say.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

That is the very problem. If we have science without a purpose, science without philosophy, science will stagnate and any science that is done will be done without purpose or reason. science may have caused some of our problems, but I think it wrong to believe that knowledge can be evil in any way. It is the application of this knowledge that hurts us. I think that is one of the many places we find our use. We can use science to fix any damage we've caused to our planet, but only if we can justify doing so, of course, with a philosophical argument.

But we already have science with a purpose, that purpose is Progress or Truth, which supposedly will solve all our problems. Scientists believe that what they do gives us Progress and brings us closer to Truth which will solve our problems. But they won't acknowledge that their own beliefs may be partially responsible for our problems, and that they are not necessarily getting closer to Truth, and that their achievements do not necessarily have to be seen as Progress. Philosophy is sorely needed here, to think about what they are doing, but they won't have it.

I disagree that science can fix any damage if we keep treating it as separate from philosophy, rather I would argue that seeing science as separate from philosophy has caused a lot of damage itself, but we still believe that we will fix our problems by applying what has caused them in the first place.

I didn't imply knowledge can be inherently evil, indeed the problem is how people see it and what they do with it. I agree with Mark Twain: It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

This is what I was trying to get across before- don't let it happen. It will take more than just a handful of us, but we need to get across that this can and will happen. We can find the ideas of scientists disgusting all we like, but unless we work with them, they won't change, and we will suffer from the destruction of our world. Furthermore, if we continue to find flaws and fix them, not only philosophy in science but all of us finding flaws everywhere and fixing them, we can make this world a better place.

I get your point, but how do you get a cult to change their mind? It's as if you're looking at a child doing something stupid, and you can tell he's going to hurt us and eventually hurt himself, but no matter what you say to him he won't listen to you. And then it's not one child, it's a billion of them. You may spend enormous effort to make one change his mind, but meanwhile ten new ones have replaced him. I don't know how to wake people up, I just don't. Even if you find flaws they don't listen, so the flaws don't get fixed.

Years ago I had come to the realization that the only way they would listen is if we came up with a theory that is more simple than the ones we have now (for instance in fundamental physics), but that can explain more and predict more than the ones we have now. This way they would see the use of philosophizing about what they do, as it would be philosophy that got them out of their impasse. But then I thought, probably they still wouldn't see the use of philosophy, they would just say that whoever came up with that theory is a genius, a new Einstein, and they would misinterpret the concepts that the theory uses, and then they would build new theories on top of it while adding their own misconceptions and fallacies, and nothing would have fundamentally changed.

Most people only listen to status and money, that's what runs the world. So I thought if I want to change things, I need to climb the social ladder and get a lot of money, and then I would have the power to make people really listen. But then I realized I'm not good at making money, I don't have the right mindset for it, I like to help people, I don't like to ask for something in exchange. And this society runs on people who want to take from others, not help others without asking anything in return. It's like a huge machine that can't be stopped and that will run its course until it has destroyed so much that it will die while taking almost everything with it, and meanwhile all we can do is watch.

Quoting leo

But we already have science with a purpose, that purpose is Progress or Truth

Hmmm. :chin:

website:Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence.

[Original website is here.]

To say that the purpose of science is "Progress or Truth" is to assign aspirational aims to science, aims that are not an intrinsic part of science, nor do they define or describe its purpose. Even the definition I have quoted goes too far. Science is not a suitable tool to examine the (human) "social world". I'd go farther: the misuse of science these days mainly centres on our social world, and the complete inability of science to address it usefully.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

Why not solve the problem at the source? In all my time fixing things, (fixing things is a large part of my current job) temporary solutions have only caused more problems. They're ok if you need a quick fix to get through a day, but they don't last forever. If you want to want a functioning system, you need to address problems directly.

I'm not talking about a "quick fix" or "temporary solution." Science was once part of philosophy, so let's make the philosophy of science part of science. But we won't call it that, we'll call it something not freighted with negative meanings for some scientists. I love philosophy, but that doesn't obscure the fact that it really isn't anything, at least not anymore.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

Instead of masquerading useful philosophy as something else, we should instead prove that philosophy is useful. It's certainly possible to do so, we've already discussed the uses.

I'm not suggesting masquerading, I'm talking about unmasking. The philosophy of science belongs as part of science. Splitting it off is artificial and misleading.

Quoting Pattern-chaser

That's a bit like saying that cage-fighting has replaced wallpaper. Apples and oranges, as they say.

Seems to me it's more like apples and apple trees.

Quoting Pattern-chaser

To say that the purpose of science is "Progress or Truth" is to assign aspirational aims to science, aims that are not an intrinsic part of science, nor do they define or describe its purpose. Even the definition I have quoted goes too far. Science is not a suitable tool to examine the (human) "social world". I'd go farther: the misuse of science these days mainly centres on our social world, and the complete inability of science to address it usefully.

I was talking about the purpose of science in the minds of many scientists and people, to them there is no need to think about science and about what scientists do and about where science is going, because to them it is on a path to Progress and Truth. I capitalize Progress and Truth because they worship it and want to attain it, like other people worship and want to attain God. That's why I'm saying many scientists and people don't see science as lacking a purpose, they don't see the need for philosophy, to them Science has a purpose and they're moving towards it. And of course I see that as a huge problem, that's why I keep saying that Science has become a religion.

Quoting leo

I was talking about the purpose of science in the minds of many scientists and people, to them there is no need to think about science and about what scientists do and about where science is going, because to them it is on a path to Progress and Truth.

I think a lot of scientists recognize that there are significant problems that undermine the credibility of science and scientists. We've talked about some of them previously in this thread - Replication problems, fraud, misleading interpretation of results for gain, poorly designed studies, misuse of statistics, public distrust of science, the inability to translate scientific results to effective public policy, political interference.

Whether or not that's enough to lead to improvements, I think the solutions will have to come from within scientific institutions. I don't think there's anyone else to do it.

Reply to Pattern-chaser Metaphysics is more complex than I have made it out to be. In so far that Metaphysics addresses "What is?", I feel like "Science" is better suited to discover what actually exists. To me, Metaphysics is sort of the school of thought from when all philosophers were polymaths and part-time astronomers.

Quoting leo

I was talking about the purpose of science in the minds of many scientists and people, to them there is no need to think about science and about what scientists do and about where science is going, because to them it is on a path to Progress and Truth.

Why are we only worried about 'science'? Doesn't every other field (that is non-artistic) fairly flippantly dismiss philosophy as well? And the more loose and and general the philosophy, the less they will be willing to engage. Questions like 'what is the meaning of life?' are sure to make people tune out (after they have given their 30 second answer anyway).

But I don't see how this is a problem at the individual level. If some scientist is studying the link between say, bipedalism and handedness (why do bipeds tend to have a dominant hand while quadrupeds show less preference), where does the philosophy of Progress and Truth come in?

I think you are correct to suggest that Science should remember philosophy (more accurately, acknowledge the truth of its existence - they sound like people claiming to have no beliefs or emotions). However, it seems strange to think it is a problem for most individual scientists doing their job (I am not even sure you are suggesting this, but it seems to be implied).

Quoting thewonder

I feel like "Science" is better suited to discover what actually exists.

Concerning "discovering what actually exists", that is only a small part of the story. A good part of the world we live in, was purposely built like that. We do not live in pristine nature. In fact, we would probably not be able to survive in pristine nature. We probably never even did. We have always shaped nature around us, to suit us.

For example, by merely studying nature, and looking for patterns in it, you cannot uncover the world of automata, because they simply do not exist in nature. Automata theory was painstakingly designed and developed long before Jon Von Neumann proposed his now ubiquitous computer architecture (1945).

Automata theory and abstract machines are epistemically out of reach for science. In a world where all knowledge must be acquired through experimental testing, i.e. in a world of scientism, we would still be living in caves.

Reply to alcontali Is that Metaphysics, though?

Quoting leo

But we already have science with a purpose, that purpose is Progress or Truth, which supposedly will solve all our problems. Scientists believe that what they do gives us Progress and brings us closer to Truth which will solve our problems. But they won't acknowledge that their own beliefs may be partially responsible for our problems, and that they are not necessarily getting closer to Truth, and that their achievements do not necessarily have to be seen as Progress. Philosophy is sorely needed here, to think about what they are doing, but they won't have it.

I think the purpose of science for most scientists is monetary gain.

Quoting leo

Most people only listen to status and money, that's what runs the world.

Is Truth really a motivating goal in itself? Only if you want it, I suppose, and you would only want it if you see it as something that would improve your life.

Most scientists I would assume take for granted the work of others before them in their field. This is understandable because they have very little to gain from uprooting what they've learned and very much to gain from discovering something new that confirms it. I would say that while they do find "truths" and often these truths are true, sometimes these truths are false, and only because the works they build upon are flawed.

As for progress, I think it's a mixed bag. Sure, pollution seems like a bad idea, and I think most people realize that, but perhaps it was a necessary evil? The industrial revolution was perhaps just the growing pains of a civilization that will eventually be great. Of course, we don't know that for sure, and of course, if that's the case, we should probably grow a bit faster.

I think almost every field facilitates progress. Even the lowly fast food employee helps feed the masses and keep them working toward some kind of progress. Every person who learns something new about the universe and every person who applies something learned about the universe is making some sort of progress for the human race.

You can only make progress towards some sort of ends. That ends should be what everyone on this Earth wants, and I think that is eudaimonia. The ultimate goal for the individual is a world where they can be fulfilled their entire life, and so that is what we all collectively strive for, fulfilment.

Quoting leo

I disagree that science can fix any damage if we keep treating it as separate from philosophy, rather I would argue that seeing science as separate from philosophy has caused a lot of damage itself, but we still believe that we will fix our problems by applying what has caused them in the first place.

We draw imaginary lines between our fields of study. Where does biology start and physics begin? If you could define that objectively, then you could narrow down how abiogenesis happened to far fewer theories than there are now.

The same with philosophy and science. Philosophy is the foundation upon which science is built, but where exactly does one begin and one end? They are fundamentally intertwined. All of our subjects are.

There is nothing isolated in the entire universe except in our imagination, and if we wish for our knowledge to be true, a good first step would probably be the breaking down of these invisible boundary lines between otherwise related fields. Sure, we could arbitrarily decide where the line is, but I believe that would be more of a hinderance than a boon too our purpose.

Science, generally speaking, is at the very least an attempt to know about the physical world, and at most actually knowing about the physical world. I think that it's reasonable to say that if we have a problem in the physical world, they're the experts.

They have a bit of an Iron Man complex as of late. Sure, they destroyed the environment to improve our industry, but they'll fix the environment too, eventually, when it becomes a big enough problem. That kind of foolhardiness is dangerous, and should probably be kept in check. Of course, part of the problem is that anyone can become a scientist now, as long as you're willing to carry a few thousand dollars of debt for a while. You don't necessarily have to have an appreciation for science to do it, just a desire for a paycheck. I won't lie to you, I'll do a lot for a big enough paycheck, not even necessarily just for indulgences. I've got stuff to pay for.

With knowledge of the physical world, you can do things in the physical world. The problem is with motivation. If scientists see no reason to fix something, they won't. To compound the issue, most are easily distracted from issues by a big enough paycheck. Scientists will do what they're paid to do, the problem is that no one want to pay them to fix environmental problems, and the reason no one will is that the people who have enough money to pay for them don't benefit from fixing those problems.

Quoting leo

I get your point, but how do you get a cult to change their mind? It's as if you're looking at a child doing something stupid, and you can tell he's going to hurt us and eventually hurt himself, but no matter what you say to him he won't listen to you. And then it's not one child, it's a billion of them. You may spend enormous effort to make one change his mind, but meanwhile ten new ones have replaced him. I don't know how to wake people up, I just don't. Even if you find flaws they don't listen, so the flaws don't get fixed.

You have to convince them that you're on their side, because you are. You have to not be cruel. You have to convince people that they want to be convinced. On the individual level, you have to relate and appeal to their worldview. It's easier said than done.

In making your comparison to children, you inadvertently make a point. I think the problem starts at a young age. Children are taught from a young age to shut up and listen to facts. They aren't necessarily told the significance of those facts. Of course, talking about the significance of color in art while teaching kindergarteners about colors is probably going a bit over their heads, but at the very least we can tell high school students why the quadratic formula is important, as opposed to a few of them finding out later and regretting not learning it. No one ever told me, and so I just didn't learn how to do the problems to be frank. I now regret that.

I know the kind of people you're talking about. I went to school with quite a few of them. I knew a math wizard who was incredibly catholic. He didn't even question enough to realize that the only thing in his life he did blindly was believe in god. Not that that's a bad thing or an unrealistic belief, but the level of self awareness in that man's brain was so damn low. I made fun of him accordingly.

But he never came around. The reason why is that I only wanted to make fun of him. My own selfish drive to assert myself as dominant was the cause for his stagnation. Not that I regret it too much, I had more fun doing that than he probably had in his whole life, but if I had imprinted some sort of appreciation for complexity instead of a slave-like obedience to it, that probably would have been a more responsible use of my time.

Of course, I'm not saying that you were making fun of anyone, what I am trying to say is that you have to be a friend rather than a rival. Offer your services, and if they say no, be their friend anyway.

And of course, it's difficult to appeal to many people on an individual level, but it's done all the time actually. No matter what you think of the intellect of most movie stars, people do genuinely seem to like them.

Quoting leo

Years ago I had come to the realization that the only way they would listen is if we came up with a theory that is more simple than the ones we have now (for instance in fundamental physics), but that can explain more and predict more than the ones we have now. This way they would see the use of philosophizing about what they do, as it would be philosophy that got them out of their impasse. But then I thought, probably they still wouldn't see the use of philosophy, they would just say that whoever came up with that theory is a genius, a new Einstein, and they would misinterpret the concepts that the theory uses, and then they would build new theories on top of it while adding their own misconceptions and fallacies, and nothing would have fundamentally changed.

Then there is a fundamental problem, no? I think it unlikely that the basis of physics would be flawed if it was done so long ago by such different people and still stands. The problem, at its source, seems to be in people.

The problem seems to be a lack of omnipotence. I highly doubt anyone is making up flawed science just for kicks. The people who put out that kind of stuff likely think they're doing the right thing. It isn't even really their fault, their mind just didn't see the whole truth. We all suffer from this.

I think a lack of omnipotence could be downplayed with a good amount of caution and skepticism, not only toward people that are obviously wrong, but towards everything. What we need to do is make it beneficial for scientists to do that, because if we're speaking honestly, I wouldn't go out of my way to do it either. Everyone loves being sure and hates doubting what they're sure about. People want structure.

Quoting leo

Most people only listen to status and money, that's what runs the world. So I thought if I want to change things, I need to climb the social ladder and get a lot of money, and then I would have the power to make people really listen. But then I realized I'm not good at making money, I don't have the right mindset for it, I like to help people, I don't like to ask for something in exchange. And this society runs on people who want to take from others, not help others without asking anything in return. It's like a huge machine that can't be stopped and that will run its course until it has destroyed so much that it will die while taking almost everything with it, and meanwhile all we can do is watch.

I don't think you would make people really listen, they would just do what you say without needing them to listen.

I too sometimes have an issue with taking money for things. I think this is something we need to get around. If you want to change anything, anywhere, you have to be able throw your weight around a bit. I think a good way to start justifying it to ourselves is by only using profit for the greater good. I've convinced myself that I don't need too much to live, so any profit I make is likely to go into an investment fund for compounding until later use.

I've spoken a lot of what others have to gain, but what of us? I think that if we aren't just talking nonsense, then saving a world headed for destruction is payment enough for me, even if nobody knows.

Quoting T Clark

I'm not talking about a "quick fix" or "temporary solution." Science was once part of philosophy, so let's make the philosophy of science part of science. But we won't call it that, we'll call it something not freighted with negative meanings for some scientists. I love philosophy, but that doesn't obscure the fact that it really isn't anything, at least not anymore.

Where does science begin and philosophy end? If we don't know that, how are we supposed to know what we call science and what philosophy?

Quoting T Clark

I'm not suggesting masquerading, I'm talking about unmasking. The philosophy of science belongs as part of science. Splitting it off is artificial and misleading.

If true, I find it strange that philosophical ideas can be exclusively part of science and not of both.

Where are we drawing our invisible lines this time?

Quoting Pattern-chaser

That's always the hard part.

It isn't the hard part when you're convincing others of something that they want to believe.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

Where does science begin and philosophy end? If we don't know that, how are we supposed to know what we call science and what philosophy?

That's sort of my point - they don't. They used to be together and that's where they belong.

Reply to T Clark Then I see no reason to convince people of something that isn’t true. I think this grey area is what we should be bringing awareness to, instead of changing names to better fit a compartmentalized view of a very non-compartmentalized world.

Quoting thewonder

Is that Metaphysics, though?

If we define metaphysics as "presuppositionalism", then automata theory, being clearly axiomatic, is in a sense, indeed, "presuppositionalist".

By presupposing what we want the world to be, we occasionally manage to change it to match our presuppositions.

Reply to alcontali
I think that I understand what you are saying, but I don't think that I would define Metaphysics as being "presuppositional". Metaphysics assumes that there are things that are "out there" that are "true". I don't quite know how to put this as I am just parcelling this out. It seems to assume that there is an abstract truth that exists which is independent of the human experience. I feel like the methodology was a substitution for the mythic that didn't go quite far enough. It proceeds too much from Platonic forms. Granted, I'm only really considering Western Metaphysics, and haven't really given the methodology quite enough credit.

Edit: Like, what I mean is, like, that there's no abstract thing that is "out there". Like, when you do logic, things are defined as being "true" and then you discover what is comparable as according to the rules that have been defined. "Truth" is not discovered through abstract reasoning. Concerning "What is?", scientific methodology is better suited to discover what there is and what it is like. If I want to know about a rock, I will ask a geologist. A Metaphysician no longer has all that much to tell me about a rock.

I've written this in a colloquial sense because I'm not quite sure how to get this across, but, like, what I mean is that there is no abstract "thing". I guess I feel like Metaphysics assumes that another abstract world exists somehow.

Quoting thewonder

Metaphysics assumes that there are things that are "out there" that are "true".

The idea that there are things out there that are true is a metaphysical position, but it is not the only one.

Quoting thewonder

I think that I understand what you are saying, but I don't think that I would define Metaphysics as being "presuppositional". Metaphysics assumes that there are things that are "out there" that are "true".

Metaphysics study is conducted using deduction from that which is known a priori. Like foundational mathematics (which is sometimes considered a special case of metaphysics applied to the existence of number), it tries to give a coherent account of the structure of the world, capable of explaining our everyday and scientific perception of the world, and being free from contradictions.

"To know a priori" is a synonym for "to presuppose".

A "presuppositional" approach to the world is viable when it concerns issues where we have enough degrees of freedom. Morality is like that, but technology is, to an important extent, also like that. We do not merely accept the world as it is. On the contrary, we actively shape it, not because the things we want, are true and out there, but because we want them to become true and out there.

Reply to T Clark
To be honest, I do have a fairly rudimentary understanding of Metaphysics. From what I glean, the methodology does sort of assume that there is an abstract truth that is to be deigned somehow.

Reply to alcontali
I don't know that I would define a priori as being equivalent to presupposition in a Philosophical sense. Philosophically speaking, a priori truths are those which exists independent of the human experience. Kant critiqued this in Critique of Pure Reason which I haven't read in a long time. A critique of a Rationalist epistemology could be that a priori truths are presupposed. We presuppose things all of the time, but that one should do so in Philosophy, I think, would indicate that they haven't thought critically enough about their subject matter. Nothing is given and all reason is somewhat faulty, but to assume in advance that one does, in point of fact, "know" how things stand seems, to me, to be indicative of a lack of critical consideration.

Quoting thewonder

A critique of a Rationalist epistemology could be that a priori truths are presupposed. We presuppose things all of the time, but that one should do so in Philosophy, I think, would indicate that they haven't thought critically enough about their subject matter.

Well, as Aristotle wrote, if nothing is assumed then nothing can be concluded. Being critical about axioms almost always leads to infinite regress. That is why we do not much think critically about axioms. We simply presuppose them.

The better opinion about axioms is to consider them to be arbitrary inputs, i.e. arbitrary construction bricks. That is why you can axiomatize whatever you like. What matters, is that particular conclusions are unavoidable outputs from a given set of such presuppositional inputs. From there on, some kind of structure will emerge that will make an entire world of conclusions either unavoidable or impossible.

So, presuppositionalism is meant to be evaluated at the level of an entire system of rules, not at the level of one individual rule. Therefore, if you do not like a particular system or its building bricks, you can always propose an alternative one. People do that all the time.

Reply to alcontali
You necessarily have to presuppose some information, but ideally it seems like you shouldn't presuppose anything at all. It's unlikely that I would agree with Aristotle, but I will avoid further derailing this thread as none of this has all that much to do with bias against Philosophy in scientific circles.

Quoting thewonder

You necessarily have to presuppose some information, but ideally it seems like you shouldn't presuppose anything at all.

Idealized worlds necessarily have an abstract, Platonic nature, which are built from presuppositions only. You cannot investigate an idealized world without building it first. So, no, the idea that ideally "you shouldn't presuppose anything at all" cannot possibly work for idealized worlds.

Quoting thewonder

I will avoid further derailing this thread as none of this has all that much to do with bias against Philosophy in scientific circles

Indirectly, or even directly, it does.

It is incredibly easy to say something like "you shouldn't presuppose anything at all", and still somehow sound reasonable, while it simply isn't. That is the core problem with philosophy. Nothing to painstakingly test. Nothing to painstakingly prove. So, where is the barrier to mere bullshit? Where are the anti-spam measures?

As Linus Torvalds so beautifully said, "Talk is cheap. Show me the code."

Hence, it is trivially obvious why scientists do not want to discuss with people who want to talk about the philosophy of science but who seem to be incapable of doing anything worth mentioning, in science. It is just too easy, peasy to do that, and that is why they should not take anybody seriously, who does exactly that.

You will first need to show skills and experience in a field that is substantially less forgiving than philosophy. So, if you want to talk philosophy of science with scientists, scientists will demand that you first show that you can operate successfully at a very high level in science proper.

Quoting alcontali

. That is the core problem with philosophy. Nothing to painstakingly test. Nothing to painstakingly prove. So, where is the barrier to mere bullshit? Where are the anti-spam measures?

Philosophy can be a kind of spiritual discipline, conducted by dedicated students supervised by experienced teachers. That at any rate is the description of the discipline according to Pierre Hadot who wrote extensively on the topic of 'philosophy as a way of life':

According to Hadot, twentieth- and twenty-first-century academic philosophy has largely lost sight of its ancient origin in a set of spiritual practices that range from forms of dialogue, via species of meditative reflection, to theoretical contemplation. These philosophical practices, as well as the philosophical discourses the different ancient schools developed in conjunction with them, aimed primarily to form, rather than only to inform, the philosophical student. The goal of the ancient philosophies, Hadot argued, was to cultivate a specific, constant attitude toward existence, by way of the rational comprehension of the nature of humanity and its place in the cosmos.

Of course it is also often true that scientists often have no interest in philosophy. Often, but not always. And there are some current physicists who are very interesting philosophers - Lee Smolin and Carlo Rovelli come to mind. The early quantum physicists were very interesting philosophically - Heisenberg's Physics and Philosophy is a great read, Schrodinger had some very interesting things to say about the same topic. Bernard D'Espagnat is an interesting philosopher of physics ( obit). There are also physicists and popular intellectuals who are utterly crap philosophers - Lawrence Krauss and Sean Carroll are stand-outs.

George Ellis and Joe Silk are two current physicists who have launched a movement to debate whether string theory really is a scientific theory or not. That has given rise to much interesting debate also. (See here.)

But if you join physics forum and ask philosophical questions (as I have from time to time) you'll generally get pretty short shrift - something which doesn't [s]overly bother[/s] surprise me given our cultural psychology.

Quoting alcontali

It is incredibly easy to say something like "you shouldn't presuppose anything at all", and still somehow sound reasonable, while it simply isn't. That is the core problem with philosophy. Nothing to painstakingly test. Nothing to painstakingly prove. So, where is the barrier to mere bullshit? Where are the anti-spam measures?

It is certainly true that one can say a lot of stuff in philosophy, get it published somewhere, and it may not be useful or insightful. The anti-spam measures are not as cut and dried as in science and one must, as an individual, do work to sort stuff out. Philosophy is not about directly coming to facts, but about generating ways of looking at things, finding assumptions, creating ideas. Then it takes time to see which ones are useful. IOW the reader must work over time or allow others to work over time. One doesn't I hope read philosophy to come away with packaged units of truth or likely to be true data - as one might when reading what one's peers are publishing in in nature. But that's a criticism based on treating philosophy as science, which it is not. A scientist reading the philosophy of science or a cosmologist reading works on metaphysics or ontology or language philosophy, would not be, one hopes reading as if reading scientific papers. But rather they would be reading it to challenge their own assumptions, to see other ways to view things, to get at how language might be skewing their view of things. Not taking in chunks of pretty darn reliable information, but improving their own minds. Getting at being better thinkers. Now there might be direcly applicable ideas at times, but that's not really the purpose. And it would be a category type error to dismiss philosophy for not being science. Quoting alcontali

Hence, it is trivially obvious why scientists do not want to discuss with people who want to talk about the philosophy of science but who seem to be incapable of doing anything worth mentioning, in science. It is just too easy, peasy to do that, and that is why they should not take anybody seriously, who does exactly that.

That would be their loss and based on a poor criterion. iit would certainly be a waste to read most posts in philosophy forums on line. And just hopping into the smaller journals would like be also be likely wasteful. But reading the works of philosophers who have good reputations and perhaps ones that have lasted for a while could contribute in a number of ways, just, again not like reading science would.

And it would definitely be helpful for scientists when they wander into discussions that are in part or in the main philosophical. Or make comments that are in these areas, even when they think they are just saying obvious stuff they 'know' from their own field means X in other fields or about phenomena or interpretations different from their own.

Quoting Wayfarer

Bernard D'Espagnat is an interesting philosopher of physics ( obit: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/science/bernard-despagnat-french-physicist-dies-at-93.html)

Unfortunately, NY Times has a policy of endlessly nagging for readers to create a "free" account and give up lots of personally-identifying data, in order to access the information linked to. I have a personal policy that says, if the only source is NY Times, then it has no source, and then the information simply does not exist. My policy works absolutely fine. We do not "need" NY Times. How could we "need" them, if they are not even convenient to use?

So, I ended up checking Bernard D'Espagnat's wikipedia page, but it is scant on useful details:

D'Espagnat remained troubled by the scant attention most physicists paid to the interpretational questions raised by quantum mechanics.

From his wiki page, it is not clear how much further D'Espagnat gets than discussing Schrödinger's cat and the paradoxical nature of entanglement.

Even though it is certainly interesting and even intriguing, I personally do not have access to multibillion supercollider installations, such as CERN's Large Hadron Collider. So, as an outsider, I look at these things from quite a distance. So, my perennial remark is always: "Yes, but what do you need me for in all of this? I can't see anything, really ..."

Quoting Wayfarer

George Ellis and Joe Silk are two current physicists who have launched a movement to debate whether string theory really is a scientific theory or not. That has given rise to much interesting debate also. (See here.)

Interesting link:

But, as many in Munich were surprised to learn, falsificationism is no longer the reigning philosophy of science. Nowadays, as several philosophers at the workshop said, Popperian falsificationism has been supplanted by Bayesian confirmation theory, or Bayesianism, a modern framework based on the 18th-century probability theory of the English statistician and minister Thomas Bayes. One concern with including non-empirical arguments in Bayesian confirmation theory, Dawid acknowledged in his talk, is “that it opens the floodgates to abandoning all scientific principles.”

Concerning "Bayesian confirmation theory, or Bayesianism, a modern framework based on the 18th-century probability theory", we will probably need to unleash the king of the epistemology of probability onto these guys, Nassim Nicolas Taleb (NNT), the master at slagging off exactly this kind of stuff:

Taleb contends that statisticians can be pseudoscientists when it comes to risks of rare events and risks of blowups, and mask their incompetence with complicated equations ... Nonetheless, [a critic] calls the book "essential reading" and urges statisticians to overlook the insults to get the "important philosophic and mathematical truths ... Yet beneath his rage and mockery are serious issues ... Taleb and Nobel laureate Myron Scholes have traded personal attacks."

In my opinion, anything based on probability theory and statistics must be treated with utmost scrutiny, because these things are core ingredients in the snake-oil industry. Not only NNT complains about that.

If Dawid wants to replace falsificationism by Bayesianism -- people would think that he is not serious, but ok he probably is -- he will have to fight a lengthy and acrimonious uphill battle. He will not manage to reach the other side of the hill in my life time. Seriously, I can't imagine. So, my own take is that headquarters need to throw in some extra regiments from the standing reserves into the fray after duly carpet bombing the enemy's position, called "Bayesianism", prior to authorizing a general advance.

“The Bayesian framework is much more flexible” than Popper’s theory, said Stephan Hartmann, a Bayesian philosopher at LMU.

Ha ha ah! Stephan Hartmann clearly does not get it. Something that is "much more flexible", is exactly what we do not want. We want much, much more shit testing of novel ideas, and not less.

“The imprimatur of science should be awarded only to a theory that is testable,”Ellis and Silk wrote, thereby disqualifying most of the leading theories of the past 40 years. “Only then can we defend science from attack.”

I completely agree with Ellis and Silk. In my opinion, we certainly need an entire battery of extra anti-spam measures against the snake-oil industry. We need to build a huge wall against non-testable theories, and it is Mexico who will pay for it! ;-)

Reply to alcontali :lol:

Quoting TogetherTurtle

That's always the hard part. — Pattern-chaser


It isn't the hard part when you're convincing others of something that they want to believe.

If they want to believe it, they already do. So there's no convincing necessary. To persuade someone to change their mind, from something they already believe to something different: that's the difficult bit.

Reply to Pattern-chaser People don’t know everything. There’s surely things out there that I would believe if I was just told them. Well, of course I don’t know for sure, but I would say there’s a pretty good chance with the thousands of years of human knowledge I haven’t touched yet.

Quoting alcontali

, it is trivially obvious why scientists do not want to discuss with people who want to talk about the philosophy of science but who seem to be incapable of doing anything worth mentioning, in science. It is just too easy, peasy to do that, and that is why they should not take anybody seriously, who does exactly that.

One of the things that occurs to me is how much 'elbow room' speculative cosmology and physics now provides. I read a 2013 book by Jim Baggott called 'Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth'. 'Baggott got the idea to write the book and become a science activist when watching the BBC program What is Reality? In his opinion, the program started out well, but became what he calls "fairy tale physics" when it included interviews with theoretical physicists who talked about such ideas as multiverse, superstring theory, and supersymmetry. These topics, according to Baggott, are fascinating to read about and are an entertaining way to make documentaries, sell books, or spend time at parties, but are "abstracted, theoretical speculation without any kind of empirical foundation" and "not science".'

But such ideas are being pursued by highly-qualified and accomplished scientists who will venture philosophical opinions based on these speculative theories. Meanwhile mere philosophers feel utterly intimidated due to the feeling of not having the requisite prowess in mathematical physics to comment intelligently.

But one of the ideas lost due to this tendency is the very idea of 'cosmos' - 'cosmos' meaning literally 'an ordered whole'. I feel (I can only feel) that were the necessity of accepting the reality of the Cosmos (or uni-verse which means something similar) deeply impressed upon one's mind, that it would introduce a kind of sobriety and even modesty* which is nowadays lacking from the speculative sciences; as if the erection of these theoretical superstructures, manyverses or multiverses or whatever, really are in some ways intellectually corrupting. (Of course I know I have no way of proving that or impressing it on anyone but do like to sound off on it from time to time.)

-------

* 'Erwin Schrödinger died on January 4, 1961. Along with a small group of colleagues, I had visited him in his apartment in Vienna the previous spring. There was no cat. Schrödinger did not like cats. As we were leaving, he remarked, “There is one thing we have lost since the Greeks.” We paused. “Modesty,” he added, in his lightly accented English. I have no idea what he meant, and I regret not asking him.'

Jeremy Bernstein, Einstein's Entanglements, Inference Review.

Quoting alcontali

I ended up checking Bernard D'Espagnat's wikipedia page, but it is scant on useful details:

Try this. Also speculative, you might say, but in a register which I personally find more congenial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_d%27Espagnat

Quote: "The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment."

Is he talking only about the “human world”, or the world in general? Do human beings play some special role in the world, or did he mean consciousness in general? Or is there no such thing as “the world in general”, or is there no other consciousness but human?

I believe he wanted to say that the objective world is not independent of subject’s conciousness...

Reply to Hrvoje It's the whole 'observer problem in quantum physics.' It leads to many acrimonious and also unsolvable debates here and on other forums. Suffice to say that there is something like an idealist tendency in 20th century physics, of which D'Espagnat is one exemplar.

Quoting alcontali

Unfortunately, NY Times has a policy of endlessly nagging for readers to create a "free" account and give up lots of personally-identifying data, in order to access the information linked to. I have a personal policy that says, if the only source is NY Times, then it has no source, and then the information simply does not exist. My policy works absolutely fine. We do not "need" NY Times. How could we "need" them, if they are not even convenient to use?

You don't need a NYT account to read this article. If somehow, despite your policy, you've exceeded their free articles-per-month limit, you can just open it in a private/incognito window or delete newyorktimes cookies.

Anyway, there is a link there to d'Espagnat's 1979 article in Scientific American, The Quantum Theory and Reality. Apparently he was pushing for a link between consciousness and quantum measurement - not a new idea even then, but one that was and still is largely rejected both by physicists and philosophers. Still, d'Espagnat is given credit for the resurgence of interest in philosophical problems of quantum theory.

Quoting alcontali

Interesting link:

But, as many in Munich were surprised to learn, falsificationism is no longer the reigning philosophy of science. Nowadays, as several philosophers at the workshop said, Popperian falsificationism has been supplanted by Bayesian confirmation theory, or Bayesianism

I don't think it's fair to say that Bayesianism supplanted Popperian falsificationism. Bayesian confirmation theory was developed by Ramsey, de Finetti and others long before Popper came on the scene, and remains with its variations, such as likelihoodism, one of the dominant quantitative treatments of theory selection. Falsificationism, on the other hand, never really took off and isn't much talked about, except in connection with Popper.

Quoting alcontali

In my opinion, anything based on probability theory and statistics must be treated with utmost scrutiny, because these things are core ingredients in the snake-oil industry.

Statistics is a very tricky and philosophically fraught subject. Nevertheless, statistics is where the rubber meets the road, as far as philosophy of science is concerned. If your philosophy has no implications for statistical methodology, then it has little relevance to science.

Quoting SophistiCat

Statistics is a very tricky and philosophically fraught subject. Nevertheless, statistics is where the rubber meets the road, as far as philosophy of science is concerned. If your philosophy has no implications for statistical methodology, then it has little relevance to science.

I like Nassim Taleb's rants on how statistics is being abused nowadays. They are a cautionary tale against brainless number crunching and phishing for correlations.

Beyond that, the question in science is rather: How did you test that? How did you take care of scientific controls? Has anybody else tested it again? These anti-spam measures neatly hark back to Popperian falsificationism, which in my impression, still rules as king over the epistemic domain of science.

Reply to alcontali It's simply that if you can't falsify it by an objective observation, then it's not an empirical hypothesis.

Quoting Wayfarer

It's simply that if you can't falsify it by an objective observation, then it's not an empirical hypothesis.

Agreed, that is obviously the core of it. Still, that is not enough:

A scientific control is an experiment or observation designed to minimize the effects of variables other than the independent variable. This increases the reliability of the results, often through a comparison between control measurements and the other measurements. Scientific controls are a part of the scientific method.

As you can see, there is the need for an additional battery of anti-spam measures.

Reply to alcontali That’s over and above ‘falsification’ into the general aspects of scientific method.

Quoting Wayfarer

That’s over and above ‘falsification’ into the general aspects of scientific method.

Yes, falsificationism is just the core of the method. Pavlov's dog was also falsificationist. It is obvious that it was not enough for the dog to understand what was really going on. So, scientific control is what is needed to avoid behaving like Pavlov's dog in an otherwise legitimate falsificationist situation.

There are a lot of scientific publications in otherwise prestigious journals of which the merely basic falsificationism does not exceed the level of intelligence of Pavlov's dog.

Quoting thewonder

Metaphysics is more complex than I have made it out to be. In so far that Metaphysics addresses "What is?", I feel like "Science" is better suited to discover what actually exists. To me, Metaphysics is sort of the school of thought from when all philosophers were polymaths and part-time astronomers.

Yes, metaphysics is difficult. If we look at wikipedia, and the Stanford dictionary of Philosophy, and so forth, we find many different descriptions of what metaphysics is, most of them unclear (IMO). About the only thing I am sure about is that metaphysics has nothing to do with physics. :smile:

Does metaphysics address "What is"? I don't know. I can only offer an example. Whether I am a brain in a vat, or one of the many other possibilities applies instead, is a question science cannot begin to address, because there is no evidence. None at all. So there is no grist for science's mill. Metaphysics allows us to consider such issues (and others too, of course). Not in the same way that science does, but that's the point. The two disciplines are complementary, with little or no overlap.

Then you refer to discovering "what actually exists", which confuses me. Do you mean to refer to Objective Reality (that which actually is, regardless of our beliefs, opinions, etc.)? If so, then I would suggest science cannot address that one either, because we have no knowing access to Objective Reality. Did you mean that, or were you intending to describe the apparent reality that our perception shows us pictures of, that science addresses as the space-time universe?

Reply to Wayfarer

Falsificationism doesn't work though, because so-called scientific or empirical hypotheses cannot be falsified: if an observation appears to falsify a hypothesis, it's always possible to not falsify the hypothesis, by assuming that the observation is due to another phenomenon that wasn't accounted for. For instance general relativity can never be falsified if we assume that difference between observation and theory is due to unseen matter or energy, theories of particle physics can never be falsified if we assume that difference between observation and theory amounts to the discovery of a new particle, and in general we can always assume the existence of an unseen phenomenon or invoke errors in the instruments of measurements or invoke a shared hallucination to never falsify a hypothesis.

Here is an example of the vomit-inducing science we get these days and why philosophy (or at least critical thinking) is desperately needed:

Dark Matter May Have Existed Before the Big Bang, New Math Suggests
https://www.space.com/dark-matter-before-big-bang.html

If dark matter consists of new particles that were born before the Big Bang, they affect the way galaxies are distributed in the sky in a unique way.

If dark matter were truly a remnant of the Big Bang, then in many cases researchers should have seen a direct signal of dark matter in different particle physics experiments already

Indeed, if dark matter was really there, the plenty of experiments on dark matter should have most likely detected it by now. The absence of detection could have been considered a falsification of general relativity and of the standard model of cosmology. But no wait, if we say that dark matter is really weird and that it existed before the big bang, then we can use some maths to explain why we haven't detected it in our experiments!

So let's say that dark matter is really there, but we can't detect it directly in experiments, let's also say that it existed before the big bang (before what we call the beginning of the universe), and if that's the case then we should see galaxies distributed in the sky in a specific way, but our current telescopes are not powerful enough to detect that, so we need bigger telescopes.

Then if we don't find the galaxies distributed in the way we predicted, it will be because dark matter is even weirder than weird, maybe then if we say that dark matter interacts with dark matter from other dimensions or from other universes then we'll come up with some maths to explain why our telescopes didn't detect a signature in the distribution of galaxies, and dark matter will not have been falsified and our cherished theories will be saved from falsification, and we'll come up with some new experiment to detect an indirect signature of it! We can keep doing that forever too.

But if we do find galaxies distributed in the way we predicted, even if we can find plenty of alternative explanations for why galaxies would be distributed that way in the absence of dark matter, we will say it is proof of the existence of dark matter, and we will run big headlines around the globe saying dark matter at last detected, dark matter found in the sky, a great scientific achievement, Einstein was right again, another success for science! All the news networks will talk about it for a few days, we'll get our moment of fame, maybe even a Nobel prize down the road, funding for dark matter research will explode, the kids curious about the universe will want to become dark matter scientists, our cherished theories will be more certain than ever, and no one will listen to the philosophers who want to spoil the party, after all these guys are useless and bring nothing of value to society, whereas the world admires us and listens to us, scientists.

Quoting T Clark

Seems to me it's more like apples and apple trees.

So what do you think metaphysics is, if it is so similar to science, as you imply? Please compare/contrast science and metaphysics to show the similarity you claim. I await your reply with genuine interest.

Quoting Pattern-chaser

Yes, metaphysics is difficult. If we look at wikipedia, and the Stanford dictionary of Philosophy, and so forth, we find many different descriptions of what metaphysics is, most of them unclear (IMO). About the only thing I am sure about is that metaphysics has nothing to do with physics.

Metaphysics is presuppositionism about the real, physical world. In Immanuel Kant's lingo, it would be "analytic a posteriori", which he resolutely rules out as being possible. To the extent that metaphysics investigates the real, physical world, it can safely be considered to be a failed discipline. Presuppositionism itself, however, lives on in, for example, mathematics, where presuppostions, i.e. axioms, are the building bricks of abstract, Platonic worlds.

Quoting Pattern-chaser

So what do you think metaphysics is, if it is so similar to science, as you imply? Please compare/contrast science and metaphysics to show the similarity you claim. I await your reply with genuine interest.

First off, I've never known you to play games here, so I always assume that your posts reflect genuine interest and I try to respond appropriately.

I don't think science and metaphysics are similar, I think they're different aspects of the same subject. The assumptions, methods, practice, results, and interpretations of what we call "science" are inextricably wound together. The current separation of the philosophy of science from science is artificial, unnecessary, and misleading.

By the way, just to show the value of the forum, this is a new idea for me - the idea that the philosophy of science should be part of science. It changes the way I think about things and clarifies some ideas in my mind. Somebody in this thread said that part of the reason philosophy is looked down on by scientists is that the philosophers don't do or understand science. We should turn that around too, make people understand that so-called scientists who don't understand the intellectual underpinnings of what they do are just technicians.

I'm also thinking now - how can this insight be applied to other aspects of philosophy and practice. I'm going to think about that.

Quoting thewonder

the methodology does sort of assume that there is an abstract truth that is to be deigned somehow

That is a metaphysical statement. It is one, probably the most common, way of looking at things. It's not one I endorse on an absolute basis, but it is useful depending on the particular situation.

Quoting Wayfarer

I read a 2013 book by Jim Baggott called 'Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth'. '

Thanks for the reference. The first two or three chapters are available free on the web. Just the preface is worth the price of admission, so I bought the book. I look forward to reading it.

Before it get's into a discussion of the title subject, it spends half the book describing what the current, "authorized" understanding of the world is. Baggott writes very well and has a very direct and clear understanding of the metaphysics of science.

Systems Philosophy is a relatively new discipline which is a convergence of the scientific and, lets call it 'exo-scientific' perspectives. It utilizes the inter-disciplinary perspective of systems theory (cybernetics), which lends itself to successful descriptive models across theoretical domains.

"Systems Philosophy is the philosophical component of Systemology, the transdisciplinary field concerned with the scientific study of all kinds of systems. Systems Philosophy was formally founded in the 1970s as a scientific branch of philosophy, that is, one that respects and incorporates the findings of science, and proceeds in the way science does, i.e. by insisting on rigour, internal consistency, clarity, consistency between theory and observations, and subjecting its theories and models to empirical testing. As a scientific philosophy it embraced moderate forms of Naturalism (the idea that all changes in the concrete world are proportionate to changes elsewhere), Realism (the idea that the world has some objective aspects) and Scientism (the idea that science progressively reveals the truth about the nature of the concrete world). It nevertheless remained philosophical in the sense that its objective is to make sense of the world and our place in it, and it tries to find ways to answer questions of ultimate concern. As a philosophical framework it started out as a systems oriented and moderate version of what is sometimes called "Scientific Realism" or "Scientific Materialism". In its original form it was the philosophical component of what was then called "General Systems Theory in the broad sense", and which has since been more appropriately renamed "General Systemology" (see papers by Pouvreau and Drack in the reading list).

The field of systems studies has expanded greatly in the last half century. As academics from different disciplines increasingly engaged with the systems paradigm the philosophical perspectives within Systemology diversified, and today Systems Philosophy includes not only the naturalistic strand it started as but it also has strands that are unscientific, anti-scientific, heuristic or phenomenological, e.g. grounded in Radical Constructivism, Postmodernism, Idealism, Radical Holism, Discordant Pluralism, and so on. That said, the 'centre of gravity' of Systems Philosophy in terms of attention by academic philosophers still lies with the scientific realist approach of the founders of Systems Philosophy "

http://www.systemsphilosophy.org/

Quoting alcontali

To the extent that metaphysics investigates the real, physical world...

I don't think it does, certainly not in the sense that science does so.

Quoting T Clark

First off, I've never known you to play games here, so I always assume that your posts reflect genuine interest and I try to respond appropriately

Kind of you to say so. :smile:

Quoting T Clark

I don't think science and metaphysics are similar, I think they're different aspects of the same subject.

And yet you compared the two to "apples and apple trees", so you seem to see some, er, relationship between them. What is this relationship?

Reply to Pattern-chaser
My assumption is that what Metaphysics originally set out to do was to discover what could be referred to as "objective reality". The methodology became much more open and, so, I was perhaps being unfair to the field.
Reply to T Clark
How is a statement about the methodology "metaphysical"? Everything can be defined as being metaphysical, but I fail to see how I've made a metaphysical statement.

Reply to TogetherTurtle

I hadn't realized you replied to me.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

I've spoken a lot of what others have to gain, but what of us? I think that if we aren't just talking nonsense, then saving a world headed for destruction is payment enough for me, even if nobody knows.

I think that a few people can't save the world if the vast majority isn't willing to wake up on how it is progressively destroying it. Sometimes the example of Gandhi is given to show that a single individual can change a lot of things, while being peaceful, and without money, but the reason Gandhi changed things is that the revolt was already latent within the Indian people, and he was the spark that ignited it. Whereas I see no such revolt within most people, rather they are content with the way things are, they are content with their comfort and technology and they trust science to solve their problems, there is no revolt to ignite, we are sleepwalking while destroying nature. They don't see a problem, because they believe whatever the problem science will come to the rescue, meanwhile they can just be mindless drones enjoying themselves in runaway consumerism. The world won't be saved if they don't wake up.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

I too sometimes have an issue with taking money for things. I think this is something we need to get around. If you want to change anything, anywhere, you have to be able throw your weight around a bit. I think a good way to start justifying it to ourselves is by only using profit for the greater good. I've convinced myself that I don't need too much to live, so any profit I make is likely to go into an investment fund for compounding until later use.

I actually think money is at the root of a lot of the problems we face, and that we won't change things if we don't question money. Money destroys relationships between humans and between humans and nature. Nature has lived without money for eons, but now human society prevents us from living without it. The land doesn't belong to all life, it belongs to a few people. If we want to use land or settle on land, we need first of all to have money, otherwise the self-proclaimed land owners force us out with the help of other humans called the law enforcers. To have money we have to work for the people who have money, and usually that involves helping grow an industry that contributes to destroying nature. So essentially money and the people who enforce it force us to perpetuate the very system that is destroying nature.

Replacing money with bartering wouldn't help. Bartering rests on the notion that "if you do this for me, I do this for you, otherwise I don't do this for you", rather than on a notion of "let's help ourselves and let's help others", so in bartering there is still the implicit idea that the value of a human being stems from the resources he has, which leads people to accumulate as much resources as possible, and then the few who own the most resources can enforce their ownership and force people to participate in their own system, and since it is the lust for power that got them there, their system too would likely involve seeing nature as a tool to master and to use rather than seeing it as their own habitat and as something to respect and cherish.

And unless people wake up to all that, that won't change and we'll just stay on our current course towards destroying life.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

I think it unlikely that the basis of physics would be flawed if it was done so long ago by such different people and still stands.

Newton's laws stood for several centuries until they were found to be flawed. I believe the foundations of electromagnetism and relativity and quantum mechanics are flawed, and all the modern theories are built on them. They work to some extent but that's it, and now we're in an impasse because questioning these foundations is frowned upon in the scientific community, aspiring physicists become professional physicists by spending years studying and mastering the content and application of these theories, their professional career becomes built on these foundations, they get funding for their research by working on developing the paradigm based on these foundations, they don't get published in professional research journals if they drift too far away from the status quo, so they have every incentive to not question these foundations. The paradigm doesn't change not because scientists of every generation question the foundations and agree that they are the best ones, but because they don't question these foundations, they grow up in a system that teaches them to accept them before they can become scientists.

I would have loved to make a living working on my own theories based on different foundations, but academia wouldn't give me the liberty to do that, and I haven't found people who would believe in me enough to be willing to fund me, so it's something I did in my spare time. But then I grew tired of it, I thought even if I dedicate myself to it 10 or 15 years and I succeed then what? We would have a theory that is simpler and explains more, but people still wouldn't understand why it took so long for such a theory to appear, the fundamental issues in academia and in the scientific community wouldn't be solved, that theory would become the new oppressive paradigm that people aren't allowed to question, and the fundamental issues in our society and in our relationship with nature wouldn't get solved either.

Even if I became famous and began writing on these issues, the world still probably wouldn't listen, because while people are willing to agree with a theory that makes predictions that are observed, they don't want to question their deeply held beliefs unrelated to that theory, they don't want to be told that they are responsible for where the world is going, and they don't want to be told that science won't save them. That's how the later writings of famous scientists get dismissed as the rants of old men who should have stuck to writing about their theory, when they say things that people do not want to hear.


That post is so long already and I have replied only to a little of what you said, I will reply to the rest later on.

Quoting Pattern-chaser

And yet you compared the two to "apples and apple trees", so you seem to see some, er, relationship between them. What is this relationship?

The reason I picked apple trees is because apples grow out of them. I guess you could say science grows up out of the philosophy of science. As I've said, another way to look at it is that science and the philosophy of science are both part of one thing. Like apples, apple trees, soil, rainfall, the farmer could all be seen as part of the system that grows apples.

Quoting thewonder

How is a statement about the methodology "metaphysical"? Everything can be defined as being metaphysical, but I fail to see how I've made a metaphysical statement.

What you wrote is:

You originally wrote:
Quoting thewonder

the methodology does sort of assume that there is an abstract truth that is to be deigned somehow.

The idea of abstract truth is a metaphysical concept. There is a good case to be made that the idea of an objective reality is not the only or necessarily the best way of looking at things. Even many scientists recognize that.

Reply to T Clark
I'm sort of critiquing the metaphysical assumption that abstract truths exist. I'm not stating that there is an abstract truth which Metaphysics seeks to discover.

Quoting thewonder

I'm sort of critiquing the metaphysical assumption that abstract truths exist. I'm not stating that there is an abstract truth which Metaphysics seeks to discover.

Aren't we saying the same thing?

Reply to T Clark
You claimed that I had made a metaphysical statement. I don't think that I did.

To me, proceeding from Platonic forms, Metaphysics seems to assume that there is an abstract realm where truth resides and sets out to discover what it is. It's like a substitution for the divine. I don't think that the abstract realm exists.

Quoting thewonder

I don't think that the abstract realm exists.

The statement that the abstract realm doesn't exist is a metaphysical statement.

Reply to T Clark
I see what you're saying. I just don't think that Metaphysical methodology is any longer all that useful.

Quoting thewonder

I just don't think that Metaphysical methodology is any longer all that useful.

As you can probably see from my and other people's posts on this thread, there are a lot of us who disagree.

Reply to T Clark
Well, you don't have to. I was just sort of tossing that out there, and don't necessarily care to get into an argument.

I honestly don't know all that much about Metaphysics. I've read some Pirsig who I do think is rather interesting. I also ostensibly, because I could not at all understand it, read François Laruelle's Introduction to Non-Philosophy (or something like that). I took some really great notes on that text which look like the records of a Physics experiement, but still have no idea as to what it was that he was on about.

You seem to be utilizing an appeal to the boundlessness of a theory which I think could be a logical fallacy of some sort. It's like an appeal to ideology. It'd be like suggesting that because Christianity is so widespread and nearly everything can be interpreted as a Christ metaphor that it is impossible not to believe in God. The antithetical negating claim is still concerned with the topic at hand, but does not prove for what it negates to be true by that it is still concerned with the topic at hand. There's some logic or Philosophy of Language that I don't know which could probably support this.

I was honestly just tossing that out there, though. The reason for the bias could be that Science has surpassed Metaphysics. The bias is still problematic, but it may not be wholly unfounded. I actually rather dislike the Scientific slant against Philosophy. I'm just arguing to the contrary.

I don't know. I only care so much to get into a dispute. I realistically don't know enough about this to level a decent argument.

Quoting T Clark

I read a 2013 book by Jim Baggott called 'Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth'. '
— Wayfarer

Thanks for the reference. The first two or three chapters are available free on the web. Just the preface is worth the price of admission, so I bought the book. I look forward to reading it.

Very good book - very difficult in places but overall first rate. I've also been reading Peter Woit's blog Not Even Wrong, and various pieces from Quanta and other sources - a great deal of it is over my head, but I find it interesting.

Quoting thewonder

I don't think that the abstract realm exists.

The interesting test case is the reality of numbers, laws, conventions, scientific principles, and so on. For instance, ask yourself the question 'does the number 7 exist?' 'Of course', you might say, 'you just referred to it, it's right there in the question.' But what's in the question is a symbol, and you could use others to communicate the same thing. So what is being communicated? Well, I'm not going to try and explain number, only to observe that it is something that can only be grasped by a mind capable of counting. So I think the nature of the existence of numbers - the ontology of number, if you like - is actually a clue to the meaning of metaphysics. And I bet when you try and conceive of 'the abstract realm', your mind instinctively tries to imagine where such a realm could be. But 'where' is the 'domain of natural numbers?' Obviously nowhere, and the use of the word 'domain' is in some sense metaphorical in this context; but nevertheless, there is such a domain, because some numbers are 'in' it, and others are 'outside' it.

[quote=Neil Ormerod]There are a whole range of other realities whose reality we can now affirm: interest rates, mortgages, contracts, vows, national constitutions, penal codes and so on. Where do interest rates "exist"? Not in banks, or financial institutions. Are they real when we cannot touch them or see them? We all spend so much time worrying about them - are we worrying about nothing? In fact, I'm sure we all worry much more about interest rates than about the existence or non-existence of the Higgs boson! Similarly, a contract is not just the piece of paper, but the meaning the paper embodies; likewise a national constitution or a penal code.

Once we break the stranglehold on our thinking by our animal extroversion, we can affirm the reality of our whole world of human meanings and values, of institutions, nations, finance and law, of human relationships and so on, without the necessity of seeing them as "just" something else lower down the chain of being yet to be determined.[/quote]

The Metaphysical Muddle of Lawrence Krauss.


Quoting Pattern-chaser

metaphysics is difficult. If we look at wikipedia, and the Stanford dictionary of Philosophy, and so forth, we find many different descriptions of what metaphysics is, most of them unclear (IMO). About the only thing I am sure about is that metaphysics has nothing to do with physics. :smile:

Does metaphysics address "What is"? I don't know. I can only offer an example. Whether I am a brain in a vat, or one of the many other possibilities applies instead, is a question science cannot begin to address, because there is no evidence. None at all. So there is no grist for science's mill. Metaphysics allows us to consider such issues (and others too, of course). Not in the same way that science does, but that's the point. The two disciplines are complementary, with little or no overlap.

Then you refer to discovering "what actually exists", which confuses me. Do you mean to refer to Objective Reality (that which actually is, regardless of our beliefs, opinions, etc.)? If so, then I would suggest science cannot address that one either, because we have no knowing access to Objective Reality. Did you mean that, or were you intending to describe the apparent reality that our perception shows us pictures of, that science addresses as the space-time universe?

>Does metaphysics address "What is"? I don't know.

Perhaps one way of understanding this distinction is to ask whether 'what is real' and 'what exists' are the same. Reality is much greater than what just exists, because it includes possibilities, meaning, and much more more.

Perhaps another interpretation is that 'what is' comprises not just 'things which exist' but the totality of things, which is, of course, changing in every instant, because everything is in motion, everything in nature is change. So 'what is' is actually always fleeting, because it is changing at every moment, while 'what exists' are just those things that we actually can know, measure, and talk about. We can pick them out, name them, and identify them. In this sense, reality transcends existence. In this understanding, 'what exists' is indeed what can be measured, ascertained, photographed, captured, and so on. But 'existence' itself is simply a momentary aspect of the totality - and the totality is what is real.

I think this relates to the original insight behind the Parmenides, which is the origin of metaphysics in the Western tradition. I'm not well-schooled in the Greek texts, but there's a couple of points that I think I can still make about it. The wikipedia entry on Parmenides avers that:

The goddess [that Parmenides is taken to meet 'on a chariot'] resides in a well-known mythological space: where Night and Day have their meeting place. Its essential character is that here all opposites are undivided, or one. He must learn all things, she tells him – both truth, which is certain, and human opinions, which are uncertain – for though one cannot rely on human opinions, they represent an aspect of the whole truth.

How could what is perish? How could it have come to be? For if it came into being, it is not; nor is it if ever it is going to be. Thus coming into being is extinguished, and destruction unknown. (B 8.20–22)

In any case, I think this points back to a radically different kind of understanding or mentality - that of the paradigmatic 'awakened sage', and towards the elusive understanding of non-dualism ('undivided, or one'). This is associated much more with Indian philosophy, but according to Thomas McEvilly's ground-breaking Shape of Ancient Thought, there was considerable mutual influence between the Greek and Indian sources (see https://vimeo.com/7078365).

Quoting leo

Indeed, if dark matter was really there, the plenty of experiments on dark matter should have most likely detected it by now.

I'm dubious about the whole idea, although of course, what do I know? But I'm convinced it will never be solved in my lifetime.

Quoting alcontali

Beyond that, the question in science is rather: How did you test that? How did you take care of scientific controls? Has anybody else tested it again? These anti-spam measures neatly hark back to Popperian falsificationism, which in my impression, still rules as king over the epistemic domain of science.

This isn't so much Popperian falsificationism as just empiricist principles that were around, more or less, since Bacon's time. Falsificationism is something more technical and specific - one analytical treatment out of many that were being developed starting from around the turn of the century in an attempt to formalize and precisify those widely shared ideas. Poper, Duhem, Hempel, Ramsey, Fisher, Neyman, etc., etc. - they weren't in disagreement about the general principles (except when they were trying to exaggerate their differences, as Popper in particular was apt to do) - they disagreed about analysis.

But while such analytical work still continues, I think the era of all-encompassing analytical programmes for science has been eclipsed over the last half-century by a more historical-sociological approach of Kuhn, Feyerabend, etc. that acknowledges science's messy, complex human nature. None of the simple analytical models that have been proposed proved to be a good universal fit for science's successes and failures. Instead, there are general, necessarily vague empiricist principles, and then there are many particular methodologies, protocols, techniques and know-hows that are being gradually developed and adjusted as we go along.

Quoting leo

Sometimes the example of Gandhi is given to show that a single individual can change a lot of things, while being peaceful, and without money, but the reason Gandhi changed things is that the revolt was already latent within the Indian people, and he was the spark that ignited it.

Well, I would hope I don't have to do it alone, or without money. At the very least, you and I agree that this could be a problem, so there are at least two.

Quoting leo

They don't see a problem, because they believe whatever the problem science will come to the rescue, meanwhile they can just be mindless drones enjoying themselves in runaway consumerism. The world won't be saved if they don't wake up.

Perhaps "waking people up" isn't the right approach. People get upset (specifically at the one who awoke them) when they're woken up.

People chase after their desires. If we want people to do something, there has to be something in it for them, likely in the immediate future.

Quoting leo

I actually think money is at the root of a lot of the problems we face, and that we won't change things if we don't question money. Money destroys relationships between humans and between humans and nature. Nature has lived without money for eons, but now human society prevents us from living without it. The land doesn't belong to all life, it belongs to a few people. If we want to use land or settle on land, we need first of all to have money, otherwise the self-proclaimed land owners force us out with the help of other humans called the law enforcers. To have money we have to work for the people who have money, and usually that involves helping grow an industry that contributes to destroying nature. So essentially money and the people who enforce it force us to perpetuate the very system that is destroying nature.

Yes, but what of the positives of money? Currency, at least in the modern era, is used as a certificate of work done. Essentially, unless obtained illegally, what you're saying when you buy groceries is "somehow, human society has justified that my work equals this food". It's the somehow that is the problem.

A fair society without money would be a bureaucratic nightmare. It would take an immense amount of work to track all of the work a person does, give that work a value, and then also value the items they wish to obtain. It would be that, 7 billion times over.

People pursue money for pleasure and comfort. It's that "something in it for them" especially "in the immediate future".

Quoting leo

Replacing money with bartering wouldn't help. Bartering rests on the notion that "if you do this for me, I do this for you, otherwise I don't do this for you", rather than on a notion of "let's help ourselves and let's help others", so in bartering there is still the implicit idea that the value of a human being stems from the resources he has, which leads people to accumulate as much resources as possible, and then the few who own the most resources can enforce their ownership and force people to participate in their own system, and since it is the lust for power that got them there, their system too would likely involve seeing nature as a tool to master and to use rather than seeing it as their own habitat and as something to respect and cherish.

What if we could develop a system in which money was always made from benefiting the whole? What benefits the whole would be decided on by looking at scientific evidence as well as the goal as a whole being pleasure for all.

Of course, we need unbiased science and unbiased decision making. That seems to be the problem.

Quoting leo

Newton's laws stood for several centuries until they were found to be flawed. I believe the foundations of electromagnetism and relativity and quantum mechanics are flawed, and all the modern theories are built on them. They work to some extent but that's it, and now we're in an impasse because questioning these foundations is frowned upon in the scientific community, aspiring physicists become professional physicists by spending years studying and mastering the content and application of these theories, their professional career becomes built on these foundations, they get funding for their research by working on developing the paradigm based on these foundations, they don't get published in professional research journals if they drift too far away from the status quo, so they have every incentive to not question these foundations. The paradigm doesn't change not because scientists of every generation question the foundations and agree that they are the best ones, but because they don't question these foundations, they grow up in a system that teaches them to accept them before they can become scientists.

I agree mostly. Especially quantum physics seems to be flawed. I was referring more to basic things like how matter changes from gas to liquid to solid. Stuff that we've generally understood pretty well for thousands of years.

Quoting leo

I would have loved to make a living working on my own theories based on different foundations, but academia wouldn't give me the liberty to do that, and I haven't found people who would believe in me enough to be willing to fund me, so it's something I did in my spare time. But then I grew tired of it, I thought even if I dedicate myself to it 10 or 15 years and I succeed then what? We would have a theory that is simpler and explains more, but people still wouldn't understand why it took so long for such a theory to appear, the fundamental issues in academia and in the scientific community wouldn't be solved, that theory would become the new oppressive paradigm that people aren't allowed to question, and the fundamental issues in our society and in our relationship with nature wouldn't get solved either.

Whatever you would have come up with certainly would have been interesting. Again though, I think it's interesting how if there was money in it, you would have been able to conduct your research. It might be a bit against your nature, but if you still want to do that work, you would have to find a way to monetize it.

Quoting leo

Even if I became famous and began writing on these issues, the world still probably wouldn't listen, because while people are willing to agree with a theory that makes predictions that are observed, they don't want to question their deeply held beliefs unrelated to that theory, they don't want to be told that they are responsible for where the world is going, and they don't want to be told that science won't save them. That's how the later writings of famous scientists get dismissed as the rants of old men who should have stuck to writing about their theory, when they say things that people do not want to hear.

I don't think it's your fault people don't listen, but I don't think it's the people's fault either

We all see such a small amount of this universe. We are forced to make real decisions based on a fantasy we make up based on this small amount of observation. Everyone's vision is too narrow, and they are forced to walk only where they can see. If we could remedy that, I think most human problems would disappear.

Quoting T Clark

Somebody in this thread said that part of the reason philosophy is looked down on by scientists is that the philosophers don't do or understand science.

This situation is changing though. Just as science is no longer the province of gentlemen dilettantes, as it was until about the mid-19th century, philosophy is catching up and becoming more professional and specialized. It is not uncommon now for philosophers of science to have an honest-to-goodness science degree. And while such a formal degree is not a prerequisite for doing good philosophy, I believe that only those philosophers who demonstrate a decent grasp of their subject deserve to be taken seriously.

Quoting T Clark

We should turn that around too, make people understand that so-called scientists who don't understand the intellectual underpinnings of what they do are just technicians.

Some people here tend to arrogantly overestimate their understanding of science and scientific process and underestimate scientists' intellectual abilities. It is easy enough to find examples of uninspired or incompetent science (provided that you have the competence to judge!) just as it is easy to find examples of uninspired or incompetent carpentry, and for pretty much the same reason: when something is so ubiquitous, it can't all be excellent. (And how much excellence does hammering a nail require, anyway? A lot of research is basically hammering nails.) But there have always been outstanding intellectuals working in science, who could give the best of philosophers a run for their money, even if they didn't spend much time poring over their Aristotle and Kant. Frankly, the conceptual riches that have opened up in science and mathematics over the last 200 years make a lot of philosophy look shallow and insignificant in comparison.

I am embarrassed for those "philosophers" (not talking about you, T Clark) - nitwits and crackpots who come here to sneer condescendingly at the Borns and the Feynmans - those benighted bunglers! If only they listened to our sophomoric insights, science wouldn't have been in such a hot mess that it is nowadays! If any self-respecting scientist happened upon this forum, she would tell them where they can stuff their philosophy - and would be absolutely right. Philosophers need to step up their own game if they want to be relevant.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

Well, I would hope I don't have to do it alone, or without money. At the very least, you and I agree that this could be a problem, so there are at least two.

Yes, even more than two, but still so few. Though it surely would help if those who agree there is a problem would think together about how to solve it. I'm used to thinking about those things on my own, but when we're all alone some problems appear as insurmountable, while they don't appear that way when we face them together.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

Perhaps "waking people up" isn't the right approach. People get upset (specifically at the one who awoke them) when they're woken up.

People chase after their desires. If we want people to do something, there has to be something in it for them, likely in the immediate future.

I suppose it depends if they are woken up from a beautiful dream or from a nightmare. Avoiding the destruction of nature and life would benefit them too, but if they want to blind themselves to the deforestation and destruction of the ecosystem and of other species, or if they believe that anyway science will come to save the day, then they don't care.

Children would be more willing to listen, but then education should be partly focused on making them aware of these problems, rather than shaping them to be efficient cogs in the very system that created and aggravates these problems.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

Yes, but what of the positives of money? Currency, at least in the modern era, is used as a certificate of work done. Essentially, unless obtained illegally, what you're saying when you buy groceries is "somehow, human society has justified that my work equals this food". It's the somehow that is the problem.

A fair society without money would be a bureaucratic nightmare. It would take an immense amount of work to track all of the work a person does, give that work a value, and then also value the items they wish to obtain. It would be that, 7 billion times over.

You're reasoning within the paradigm of money there. Why do we need certificates of work done? As if work done was necessarily a good thing. We have plenty of people who make a lot of money while contributing by their work to make the lives of many people worse, while making this world a worst place to live in, they have a certificate that says they have done a huge amount of work, so supposedly they have contributed a lot to society and deserve to be greatly rewarded for it, while they got that money easily by scamming people or by making people addicted to something that destroys them or while destroying an ecosystem. And the very value of their money comes from all the people who are forced to participate in this system, who are forced to need money to get anything.

While on the other hand plenty of people who work tirelessly to help others, to make this world a better place to live in, do not make any money while doing it, they have no certificate of work done, as if they had contributed nothing to society.

You see the problem? But it's not a problem that can be solved by tweaking some things about money or how we use it, it's systemic.

The value of what an individual does for others is not objective, it's subjective. Some people bring tremendous value to other people who have little or no money, so they don't get money from it, and so by the metric of money they have done nothing of value, but the people who have been helped would strongly disagree. While if you carry out a criminal act for some powerful individual, you bring a little positive value to that individual, you bring a lot of negative value to potentially many people, and yet you get a lot of money, and then society values highly what you have done.

That system is rotten. Remove money and bartering and we have a system where people work for themselves and bring value to themselves, to the people they love and to the people they want to help. In such a system society wouldn't reward you for destroying the lives of other people, and you wouldn't be forced to contribute to a system that destroys life and nature. That doesn't mean we would automatically live in a utopia where people all love one another, but at least we could stop the destruction of nature and solve the problems that stem from forcing people to need money.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

What if we could develop a system in which money was always made from benefiting the whole? What benefits the whole would be decided on by looking at scientific evidence as well as the goal as a whole being pleasure for all.

I really don't see how you could do that. Once people are forced to need money for anything by the few people who have the most of it, money doesn't benefit the whole, because usually those who have the most power have a lust for power, and that lust for power transcends their desire to benefit the whole (which they usually don't have, they simply care about benefitting themselves).

Quoting TogetherTurtle

Again though, I think it's interesting how if there was money in it, you would have been able to conduct your research.

I guessed you would pick up on that. It's not that I would do it for money, nor that it couldn't be done if money didn't exist, it's that I need to eat and a place to live and some freedom in order to conduct that research, and in a world ruled by money it is money that allows to get that. If I go build a shack somewhere I will get kicked out by the land owners and those who enforce that ownership. In a world without money, people who believe in me could provide me with food and shelter and the tools to conduct that research. In this money world people could do that too, but they would need to have money themselves, which is why I referred to funding.

In a world without money I could build my own place and get my own food, and conduct my research the rest of the time without needing anyone. And then if people believed in me they could help me get food or bring me food so that I could focus on the research. No need for money.

Quoting T Clark

The reason I picked apple trees is because apples grow out of them. I guess you could say science grows up out of the philosophy of science. As I've said, another way to look at it is that science and the philosophy of science are both part of one thing. Like apples, apple trees, soil, rainfall, the farmer could all be seen as part of the system that grows apples.

But I wasn't talking about science and the philosophy of science, I was talking about science and metaphysics. I thought we all were.... :chin: I don't see how science could 'take over' from metaphysics any more than I can see how cage-fighting could 'take over' from wallpaper. They aren't the same thing, and they don't address the same issues. They seem to me to be complementary. :chin:

Quoting SophistiCat

If any self-respecting scientist happened upon this forum, she would tell them where they can stuff their philosophy - and would be absolutely right.

Well I did maths, physics and chemistry at A level, I have a degree in Electronics, and a 40-year career in applied science (hardware and software design). I have had a lifetime interest in philosophy too, but no academic education or qualifications in that area.

I am a "self-respecting scientist". :up:

From my perspective, what you say is mistaken. Any area with a mental component has philosophy somewhere in its foundations, if you grub around enough to find it. How could it possibly be otherwise? :chin:

Quoting Pattern-chaser

From my perspective, what you say is mistaken. Any area with a mental component has philosophy somewhere in its foundations, if you grub around enough to find it. How could it possibly be otherwise?

Did you read just this last sentence? I don't deny the value of philosophy, nor even its applicability to science.

Quoting SophistiCat

If any self-respecting scientist happened upon this forum, she would tell them where they can stuff their philosophy - and would be absolutely right.

Quoting SophistiCat

I don't deny the value of philosophy, nor even its applicability to science.

You seem to be contradicting yourself. :chin:

Quoting Pattern-chaser

But I wasn't talking about science and the philosophy of science, I was talking about science and metaphysics. I thought we all were.... :chin: I don't see how science could 'take over' from metaphysics any more than I can see how cage-fighting could 'take over' from wallpaper. They aren't the same thing, and they don't address the same issues. They seem to me to be complementary.

I was trying to do two things 1) Avoid the confusion I may have caused in the past by lumping epistemology in with metaphysics. That's why I called it philosophy of science rather than metaphysics. 2) Be clear about what I include as part of science and what I don't. There's a lot to philosophy, a lot to metaphysics. Not all of it has to do with science. I think the philosophy of science belongs with science, but not morals, aesthetics, politics, etc.

Quoting T Clark

That's why I called it philosophy of science rather than metaphysics.

I still think these two subjects, while both are 'philosophy', are quite distinct. The philosophy of science belongs with science, I agree. It considers the hows, whys and wherefores of the theory and practice of science. The only other place for the philosophy of science, if it doesn't belong in the science cupboard, is in the philosophy cupboard. :wink:

Wikipedia:Philosophy of science is a sub-field of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultimate purpose of science. This discipline overlaps with metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, for example, when it explores the relationship between science and truth.

Well, it seems Wikipedia disagrees with me, and that there is some overlap between metaphysics and the philosophy of science. But the example they quote makes it fairly clear that the subjects are mostly distinct, but have some overlap in the consideration of science and truth, and other similar areas. Metaphysics only overlaps in their example when the philosophy of science steers away from the scientific mainstream toward peripheral (to it) areas like truth.

But I do believe that there is much more to metaphysics than truth. The nature of reality - that which actually is - is something only metaphysics can address. Science certainly can't. It confines itself - maybe sensibly? :wink: - to the apparent reality that our senses show us pictures of. It's the only 'reality' to which we have direct access, so we're stuck with it. One the one hand, common sense says that we should just stick with the only thing we have. On the other, some philosophers are fascinated by the possibility that the reality we see and hear is not what actually is. Science cannot address this. After all, there's no evidence, which disables just about every method and technique science can bring to bear.

That's not a failing of science, but only a recognition that no tool, however powerful, can address all problems. But that's not what this topic is really about. From the OP:

Quoting Shushi

In my experience of talking with scientists about philosophy, I have found that many times most scientists seem to look down on it like if it were just speculative non-conducive discussions about random thoughts that anyone can make up.

My answer to this is "yes", there are some scientists who are dismissive of philosophy, and indeed everything except science. They are mistakenly convinced that science is the One and Only Tool worthy of intellectual inquiry. These poor unfortunates are indeed dismissive of philosophy.

Quoting leo

You're reasoning within the paradigm of money there. Why do we need certificates of work done?

"Work done" refers to doing what society believes is work. In theory, everyone who contributes to society should get something out. However, it's entirely up to us to decide our goals and how we should reach them.

People don't like giving away their precious goods for less than they're worth. If they can abuse the system to be paid more than they're worth, they will, but almost nobody on the planet is ok with the opposite, getting less than they're worth.

You're right that the system is flawed, for sure, but the flaw begins in us. I think it would be wise to instead of completely abandon it, use the very problems to our own advantage.

Money is the carrot on a stick that keeps people moving. If you want someone to do something, money is probably going to be involved.

I think if you want change, your only hope is to monetize it. Even if it's an immediate life or death situation and everyone on Earth will die in two days, nobody will care unless they can make some cash.

There is no inherent wrongdoing in an action, it's the effects of the action that can be considered good or bad. If bashing people in the skull made them smarter, it would be recommended, but it doesn't, and so it's not. There is nothing morally wrong with the act of buying Nike shoes at low prices, the problem lies in the effects of that action, the effect being that child factory workers in the third world have to be paid close to nothing.

Quoting leo

While if you carry out a criminal act for some powerful individual, you bring a little positive value to that individual, you bring a lot of negative value to potentially many people, and yet you get a lot of money, and then society values highly what you have done.

And so comes the grand miscalculation. It's my belief that nobody does evil things on purpose. It's impossible to see everything and act accordingly, and so sometimes people make mistakes, and people don't like to admit their mistakes, even to themselves. When this "powerful individual" asks you to commit a crime, they're doing so because they genuinely think that keeping themselves in power is for the greater good. Whether they're wrong or not is entirely another matter, as it's not something that they or even their detractors can even really know. You would have to have the entire picture to always do the right thing.

Quoting leo

I really don't see how you could do that. Once people are forced to need money for anything by the few people who have the most of it, money doesn't benefit the whole, because usually those who have the most power have a lust for power, and that lust for power transcends their desire to benefit the whole (which they usually don't have, they simply care about benefitting themselves).

There would need to be someone who saw everything, believed that the benefit of all people was a worthwhile goal, and could keep everyone in check. God, essentially. Regardless of anyone's religious beliefs, I don't think one is doing any of this.

Quoting leo

In a world without money I could build my own place and get my own food, and conduct my research the rest of the time without needing anyone. And then if people believed in me they could help me get food or bring me food so that I could focus on the research. No need for money.

Would you have time for research when you're too busy farming, preserving, or hunting depending on where you build your shack? Civilization exists to solve that very problem. If you want to do this work, you'll absolutely have to rely on others.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

People don't like giving away their precious goods for less than they're worth. If they can abuse the system to be paid more than they're worth, they will, but almost nobody on the planet is ok with the opposite, getting less than they're worth.

Money is the carrot on a stick that keeps people moving. If you want someone to do something, money is probably going to be involved.

Come on, nature has been working without money for eons, people have lived without money for eons, it's not money that makes people move no, but in this ugly society it is, because of the few in power who force people to need money to get what they need, and indeed who have implemented it in a way that it serves as a carrot on a stick.

The current system is abused left and right in horrible ways and there is nothing you can do about it. The system isn't made to be efficient, it's made in such a way that the majority remains poor, so that they have to work hard every day, so that their overlords can enjoy the fruit of their labor, while most people earn just enough to get shelter and food and a tiny bit of fun to keep them motivated. Most people have to earn just enough to be slaves as efficient as possible, if they earn too much they work less and then money becomes less effective as a tool of control, while if they earn too little at some point it becomes unbearable for them and they revolt against their overlords. The system is like that by design, realize that.

If money was efficient it wouldn't take 30 years to pay for a house, because it sure as hell wouldn't take 30 years to learn how to build a house and to build one.

I find disgusting the very notion of forcing people to do something, I don't want to force people to wake up, I want to change what's preventing them from waking up.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

It's my belief that nobody does evil things on purpose. It's impossible to see everything and act accordingly, and so sometimes people make mistakes, and people don't like to admit their mistakes, even to themselves. When this "powerful individual" asks you to commit a crime, they're doing so because they genuinely think that keeping themselves in power is for the greater good.

I used to be naive like that. What some people see as the greater good is serving the Devil, literally, they don't worship God they worship Satan. Tyrants don't want the greater good, they care about themselves. People who manipulate others to get what they need do not care about others, they care about themselves. People who want the population to remain slaves do not care about the greater good, they only care that the slaves remain efficient slaves and don't want to revolt. There are actually plenty of people who are focused on themselves and not on a greater good.

We can empathize with them if we want by saying that they do that out of fear, that they need power because they fear for their life if they don't have that power, but it doesn't change the underlying fact that they don't care about the greater good. Not by mistake, by design.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

Would you have time for research when you're too busy farming, preserving, or hunting depending on where you build your shack? Civilization exists to solve that very problem. If you want to do this work, you'll absolutely have to rely on others.

People had the time to paint in the Lascaux Cave 17,000 years ago, I guess they had some free time back then, they weren't constantly farming or hunting. Other animals don't spend all their waking hours hunting for food. And somehow we're supposed to believe that without money we would never have any free time? Yea, no.

I would have free time on my own, and I would have more free time if some other people believed in me and brought me food.

I was watching a documentary the other day about Amazonian people who get forced out of the forest so some big foreign companies can come destroy it and exploit its resources. In compensation these people were given small houses in a small city nearby, in essence they were forced into civilization. They were interviewed, and what did they say about it? That they much preferred the life in the forest, there they only had to hunt for a little while to get food, while in civilization they have to work all day long to get money to get food. And they said that in civilization there is constant stress, dangers everywhere, they have to watch out for cars and motorcycles on the road, people have guns, while life in the forest was much simpler and more peaceful, there they were connected to nature.

I don't see modern civilization as a solution, I see it as the problem.

Quoting Pattern-chaser

I still think these two subjects, while both are 'philosophy', are quite distinct.

Well, if Wikipedia disagrees with you, you must be wrong. More importantly, I disagree with you.

I don't really care what we call it. There are intellectual underpinnings to science I would typically consider as part of philosophy. Just in the course of this thread, I've started convincing myself that that distinction is not useful one.

I haven't convinced you with my best argument. I don't have anywhere else to go. I'll fall back on an unimpeachable source - Because Wikipedia says so.

Quoting leo

Newton's laws stood for several centuries until they were found to be flawed.

They are not flawed in the sense you are describing. It has been acknowledged that they are not applicable in some situations, e.g. when the speed of a phenomenon is greater than about 10% of the speed of light, i.e. phenomena at human scale. Engineering uses Newton's laws almost exclusively because it's right, i.e. it works.

Quoting leo

Indeed, if dark matter was really there, the plenty of experiments on dark matter should have most likely detected it by now.

You and I have been back and forth on this issue previously. Dark matter has been detected. It was detected by observing the gravitational behavior of the visible universe. Do you think I have to hold it in my hand or lick it to see how it tastes before there is evidence. Just about everything we know of that is outside human scale we know indirectly, including dark matter.

I think you have misunderstood what "know" and "evidence" mean.

Quoting leo

Come on, nature has been working without money for eons, people have lived without money for eons, it's not money that makes people move no, but in this ugly society it is, because of the few in power who force people to need money to get what they need, and indeed who have implemented it in a way that it serves as a carrot on a stick.

Money is simply a tool used to represent value. Things of value exist in nature. Food, shelter, comfort, all of these things can be found in nature. We distribute these according to money. In nature, all of these are also unevenly distributed. Your problem with money is just the same problem we would have without money.

Quoting leo

The current system is abused left and right in horrible ways and there is nothing you can do about it. The system isn't made to be efficient, it's made in such a way that the majority remains poor, so that they have to work hard every day, so that their overlords can enjoy the fruit of their labor, while most people earn just enough to get shelter and food and a tiny bit of fun to keep them motivated. Most people have to earn just enough to be slaves as efficient as possible, if they earn too much they work less and then money becomes less effective as a tool of control, while if they earn too little at some point it becomes unbearable for them and they revolt against their overlords. The system is like that by design, realize that.

Originally, the system is built by those people who revolt. Therefore, it's a flaw in that very system designed originally for efficiency that is our problem. If we fix that problem, we have no problem.

Quoting leo

If money was efficient it wouldn't take 30 years to pay for a house, because it sure as hell wouldn't take 30 years to learn how to build a house and to build one.

I never said it was. I said it could be.

Quoting leo

I find disgusting the very notion of forcing people to do something, I don't want to force people to wake up, I want to change what's preventing them from waking up.

And in changing whatever is keeping them asleep, you force them to wake up. There is no wrongdoing in the action, only in the effects. Of course, I don't even think that's necessarily a bad thing.

Quoting leo

I used to be naive like that. What some people see as the greater good is serving the Devil, literally, they don't worship God they worship Satan. Tyrants don't want the greater good, they care about themselves.

My point was that they literally believe that the greater good is serving themselves.

I think world leaders believe that people are foolish without their guidance, and so they attempt to stay in power. Whether they are right or wrong is irrelevant, because years of skewing the truth has skewed their world view. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, whether they're yours or someone else's.

Quoting leo

People had the time to paint in the Lascaux Cave 17,000 years ago, I guess they had some free time back then, they weren't constantly farming or hunting.

Rome wasn't built in a day, and I assure you those cave paintings weren't painted in a day either. That was likely the product of multiple lifetimes of free time.

Quoting leo

Other animals don't spend all their waking hours hunting for food. And somehow we're supposed to believe that without money we would never have any free time? Yea, no.

You're right, they spend that time raising young, protecting their territory, and resting due to the immense stress that doing these things puts on any animals body. I wouldn't consider recovering from intense physical activity free time.

Some believe that it's cruel to keep animals in zoos because they can't "roam free". In reality, animals stay in a relatively small area their entire lives. Even birds stick to their migration paths.

Perhaps you see primitivism as some sort of escape to freedom. You would be wrong. Without the luxuries of civilization, life is only harder, more brutish, and much shorter.

Even if you are enslaved by corporate overlords, the alternative is even more suffering. I think it more reasonable to break a broken system if that system could be beneficial.

Quoting leo

I would have free time on my own, and I would have more free time if some other people believed in me and brought me food.

And why would people believe in you, when it is only in our nature to believe things that benefit us? Nobody ever gets the benefit of the doubt for this reason.

Quoting leo

I was watching a documentary the other day about Amazonian people who get forced out of the forest so some big foreign companies can come destroy it and exploit its resources. In compensation these people were given small houses in a small city nearby, in essence they were forced into civilization. They were interviewed, and what did they say about it? That they much preferred the life in the forest, there they only had to hunt for a little while to get food, while in civilization they have to work all day long to get money to get food. And they said that in civilization there is constant stress, dangers everywhere, they have to watch out for cars and motorcycles on the road, people have guns, while life in the forest was much simpler and more peaceful, there they were connected to nature.

Imagine living in the city your whole life, and then being forced into the wilderness. How stressful would it be to not know which berries will kill you? How stressful would it be to encounter even a small animal without a means to protect yourself? How stressful would it for your shelter to collapse because you didn't know how to build a sturdy one?

People operate best when they are in familiar surroundings. People fear difference. That is the source of their fear.

Furthermore, I would add that these Amazonians did have a sort of civilization. Surely they organized their labor, some going to hunt while others cooked, no? That organization is the basis of civilization.

Quoting leo

I don't see modern civilization as a solution, I see it as the problem.

Problems are caused when things are broken. The solution to eating healthy isn't not eating, it's eating the correct foods.

If you really believe you can live on your own somewhere, I think you should try it. There is unused land out there that no one checks on. In fact, I think in Alaska the government still just gives it out. If you make it out there and make any scientific progress, I would like to know. Well, if you can connect to the internet.

Quoting T Clark

They are not flawed in the sense you are describing. It has been acknowledged that they are not applicable in some situations, e.g. when the speed of a phenomenon is greater than about 10% of the speed of light, i.e. phenomena at human scale. Engineering uses Newton's laws almost exclusively because it works and because it's right.

If you won't believe me but you will believe Wikipedia, maybe you will believe the Nobel laureate in physics Frank Wilczek, he says the same stuff as me, somehow when I say something it's not true but when Nobel laureates say it it's true, somehow appeals to authority is what serves as convincing arguments on this forum, so there you go:

http://ctpweb.lns.mit.edu/physics_today/phystoday/%20Whence_cshock.pdf

Quoting T Clark

You and I have been back and forth on this issue previously. Dark matter has been detected. It was detected by observing the gravitational behavior of the visible universe. Do you think I have to hold it in my hand or lick it to see how it tastes before there is evidence. Just about everything we know of that is outside human scale we know indirectly, including dark matter.

We've been back and forth but you still haven't got it. Seeing that observations do not match Einstein's general relativity is not detecting dark matter, it is assuming that the difference between observation and theory is due to invisible stuff rather than due to the theory being flawed. "But the theory is so well-tested!", yea plenty of well-tested theories were found to be flawed and replaced by other ones. Dozens of experiments have failed to detect dark matter, they're doing these experiments because they are looking for independent evidence for dark matter, because they have a tiny bit of integrity left, otherwise every time a theory doesn't work we could just invoke invisible stuff to make it work again, no need for Einstein if we invoke invisible stuff Newton's gravitation works just fine!

Quoting leo

If you won't believe me but you will believe Wikipedia, maybe you will believe the Nobel laureate in physics Frank Wilczek, he says the same stuff as me, somehow when I say something it's not true but when Nobel laureates say it it's true, somehow appeals to authority is what serves as convincing arguments on this forum, so there you go:

I assume we are talking about the issue with Newton's Laws. It's fine to give references to smart people who are familiar with the subject. I can find plenty of quotes to support my position. I am also capable of seeing for myself. This isn't really a matter of fact. It's a matter of the definition of the word "flawed."

Quoting leo

We've been back and forth but you still haven't got it.

As I stated the last time we had this discussion, I've tried my best arguments and failed to convince you of my position. I don't see any reason to continue.

Quoting T Clark

I assume we are talking about the issue with Newton's Laws. It's fine to give references to smart people who are familiar with the subject. I can find plenty of quotes to support my position. I am also capable of seeing for myself. This isn't really a matter of fact. It's a matter of the definition of the word "flawed."

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/flawed
flawed: having or containing one or more faults, mistakes, or weaknesses

So for instance, Newton's laws assume that mass doesn't depend on velocity, that's a weakness. Newton's third law says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, that doesn't work for magnetic forces between charged particles, that's a weakness. Newton's law of gravitation isn't consistent with plenty of astronomical observations, that's a weakness. So Newton's laws are flawed.

That doesn't mean they don't work approximately in some situations, but then again I never claimed they didn't. However that doesn't make them 'right' or not flawed.

Quoting T Clark

As I stated the last time we had this discussion, I've tried my best arguments and failed to convince you of my position. I don't see any reason to continue.

Seeing how your arguments are flawed, they fail to convince me. Meanwhile you fail to point out the flaw in my argument, which I stated as concisely as possible again.

Quoting leo

Seeing how your arguments are flawed, they fail to convince me. Meanwhile you fail to point out the flaw in my argument, which I stated as concisely as possible again.

Saying that my arguments are flawed because they failed to convince you is ....arrogant certainly. I'll go further - laughable.

I made my best effort to point out the flaws in your argument last time we talked. I failed and gave up. I don't see any reason to try again.

Quoting T Clark

Saying that my arguments are flawed because they failed to convince you is ....arrogant certainly. I'll go further - laughable.

I said that they failed to convince me because they are flawed, not the other way around.

Quoting T Clark

I made my best effort to point out the flaws in your argument last time we talked. I failed and gave up. I don't see any reason to try again.

And I addressed every one of them. Here is my argument again, where is the flaw?

Quoting leo

Seeing that observations do not match Einstein's general relativity is not detecting dark matter, it is assuming that the difference between observation and theory is due to invisible stuff rather than due to the theory being flawed. "But the theory is so well-tested!", yea plenty of well-tested theories were found to be flawed and replaced by other ones. Dozens of experiments have failed to detect dark matter, they're doing these experiments because they are looking for independent evidence for dark matter, because they have a tiny bit of integrity left, otherwise every time a theory doesn't work we could just invoke invisible stuff to make it work again, no need for Einstein if we invoke invisible stuff Newton's gravitation works just fine!

Quoting leo

I said that they failed to convince me because they are flawed, not the other way around.

Yes, you are correct. Still arrogant. Still laughable.

Quoting leo

And I addressed every one of them. Here is my argument again, where is the flaw?

As I've said numerous times now, I'm not interested in going any further with this discussion. I see it as futile.

Quoting T Clark

Yes, you are correct. Still arrogant. Still laughable.

Is it arrogant to say an argument is flawed when we notice a flawed argument? You said my argument is flawed, so by that token you're arrogant too.

Quoting T Clark

As I've said numerous times now, I'm not interested in going any further with this discussion. I see it as futile.

Okay, I just wish you realized that there is something you don't understand about how dark matter was inferred. I have studied the subject for years, I presume you haven't, but maybe you'll say it's arrogant to say that too.

Galactic rotation curves that are observed do not match the ones predicted by theory. Either it's because there is invisible matter, or because the theory is flawed. The discrepancy between observation and theory is not a detection of invisible matter, because we don't know that the theory is not flawed. I can't make it simpler than that.

Quoting leo

Is it arrogant to say an argument is flawed when we notice a flawed argument? You said my argument is flawed, so by that token you're arrogant too.

I don't remember saying your argument was flawed.

Surely if scientists found philosophy useful for achieving their scientific goals and purposes, they would embrace it.

Thus, anyone whose opinion it is that scientists need philosophy, or would better able to achieve their goals, or would choose better goals, needs to present compelling arguments for those opinions.

Quoting T Clark

I don't remember saying your argument was flawed.

See:

Quoting T Clark

I made my best effort to point out the flaws in your argument last time we talked. I failed and gave up. I don't see any reason to try again.

Unless you want to argue that saying there are flaws in my argument is not saying that my argument is flawed.

Quoting Brainglitch

Surely if scientists found philosophy useful for achieving their scientific goals and purposes, they would embrace it.

Is that conclusion based on scientific research? If not why should anyone accept it?

Quoting Brainglitch

Thus, anyone whose opinion it is that scientists need philosophy, or would better able to achieve their goals, or would choose better goals, needs to present compelling arguments for those opinions.

Scientists have philosophies. The issue is how good is it? Could an investigation of philosophy improve some facet of their studies? Might it help them see ungrounded assumptions`?
All scientists have some ideas about epistemology and they likely have opinions, perhaps some not fleshed out in the least, about the affects of semantic issues on their work, how paradigms might inhibit areas of research, about the use of models and more. Like everyone else they have philosophies and not just about their professional work. But since they have not been trained, for the most part, in philosophy, it is more likely some of this is negatively affecting their work. Perhaps making them never consider certain lines of inquiry due to problematic assumptions. Does this mean they need a formal study of philosophy? No. Most have work and can probably get by or do fine if they don't do a formal study of philosophy.

Reply to leo You are correct.

Quoting T Clark

There are intellectual underpinnings to science I would typically consider as part of philosophy.

:up: Me too. I just think the philosophy we call "metaphysics" is different from this. Even Wikipedia's example mentions "truth", which is not really addressable by science. Accuracy, correctness, precision, and so forth - all of these are very much part of, and addressable by, science. But truth is too abstract. And so on, for other such vague and abstract concepts as metaphysics eats for breakfast. :smile:

Quoting T Clark

I haven't convinced you with my best argument. I don't have anywhere else to go. I'll fall back on an unimpeachable source - Because Wikipedia says so.

I can't argue with this! :wink:

Quoting Brainglitch

Surely if scientists found philosophy useful for achieving their scientific goals and purposes, they would embrace it.

Thus, anyone whose opinion it is that scientists need philosophy, or would better able to achieve their goals, or would choose better goals, needs to present compelling arguments for those opinions.

It's not what scientists find useful that's important. It's what makes good science, and that's not just for scientists to decide. People, non-scientists, make important decisions based on scientific results. People, non-scientists, pay for scientific investigations. People, non-scientists, must face the consequences of bad or poorly chosen science.

Scientists are not necessarily the best people, or at least not the only people, to decide how science should be practiced. They are not necessarily the best people to select "scientific goals and purposes." They tend to be narrowly focused on what is of interest to them or what has benefits for them. Many, most? don't think of the greater context of the work they do.

Quoting leo

Galactic rotation curves that are observed do not match the ones predicted by theory. Either it's because there is invisible matter, or because the theory is flawed. The discrepancy between observation and theory is not a detection of invisible matter, because we don't know that the theory is not flawed. I can't make it simpler than that.

Quoting leo

I have studied the subject for years,

Given that you have studied the subject for years, you are certainly aware that numerous hypotheses have been proposed to explain the discrepancy, and that most of these involve changes/enhancements to the existing theories of gravitation. However, every alternative hypothesis - at least up to now - has made predictions which are not matched by the data.

Currently, dark matter is the hypothesis which best matches the data, but it is still only a hypothesis - it is not established theory. If you could present an alternative explanation that successfully matches all the data and does not involve hypothetical invisible particles, you would go down in history along with Einstein.

You have my blessings to go for it!

Quoting EricH

numerous hypotheses have been proposed to explain the discrepancy, and that most of these involve changes/enhancements to the existing theories of gravitation. However, every alternative hypothesis - at least up to now - has made predictions which are not matched by the data.

Currently, dark matter is the hypothesis which best matches the data, but it is still only a hypothesis - it is not established theory. If you could present an alternative explanation that successfully matches all the data and does not involve hypothetical invisible particles

You agree that dark matter hasn't been detected, contrary to what some people on this forum say (that dark matter has been detected), and contrary to what many physicists/cosmologists say (that dark matter exists, that it's real, that it's a fact, ...)

The dark matter hypothesis doesn't successfully match all the data, there are plenty of problems with it, see here for instance https://arxiv.org/pdf/1112.3960.pdf (pages 12-34)

And it's arguable whether dark matter is the hypothesis that inherently best matches the data, after all a lot more efforts have been spent in researching and developing the dark matter hypothesis and attempting to make it fit with observations, than in developing alternative models, it's not an indication that alternative models wouldn't have been more successful if they had been worked on as thoroughly.

Also there is a lot of fine-tuning in the dark matter model, the dark matter distribution within a galaxy is inferred from observations of that galaxy, there are lots of degrees of freedom to make the model fit with observations, whereas there are no degrees of freedom in some alternative models which work well in many situations. The more degrees of freedom there are in the theory, the easier it is to make it fit with observations.

How much work has been done on a model, and how easy it is to fit the model with observations through fine-tuning, are two variables that have to be taken into account when we compare different models. For instance it's easy to come up with a model that successfully matches all the data while having a bunch of degrees of freedom.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

Food, shelter, comfort, all of these things can be found in nature. We distribute these according to money. In nature, all of these are also unevenly distributed. Your problem with money is just the same problem we would have without money.

I disagree that the problem I'm talking about would exist without money and bartering. The problem is not the uneven distribution in itself, it is that those who have the most resources actively act against those who have little resources, to prevent them from having more, in essence those who have little resources are enslaved to those who have more, they do not have the freedom to acquire them by themselves. In order to gain their freedom, they have to work much harder than they would otherwise, or they have to be lucky, or they have to be criminals, and even then they're still all enslaved to money.

In nature, what's working against you is the predators, but you don't have an army of predators enslaving you, you can fight them and win, or you can avoid them much more easily than you can avoid the whole of law enforcement and the military.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

My point was that they literally believe that the greater good is serving themselves.

I think world leaders believe that people are foolish without their guidance, and so they attempt to stay in power.

By definition if you only care about yourself you don't care about the benefit of others, you don't care about the greater good. I'm not talking about leaders who believe people are foolish without their guidance, I'm talking about people who actually don't care about hurting others for their own personal gain. You seem to believe such people don't exist, I disagree.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

Rome wasn't built in a day, and I assure you those cave paintings weren't painted in a day either. That was likely the product of multiple lifetimes of free time.

There is evidence that they did have a lot of free time. See the book Stone Age Economics for instance. There are some who say that agriculture was invented to fill the needs of a rising population which was itself the result of a lot of free time. It's surely not obvious at all that back then they had little free time, contrary to popular belief.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

And why would people believe in you, when it is only in our nature to believe things that benefit us? Nobody ever gets the benefit of the doubt for this reason.

The people who get their research funded are believed by whoever funds their research.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

Imagine living in the city your whole life, and then being forced into the wilderness. How stressful would it be to not know which berries will kill you? How stressful would it be to encounter even a small animal without a means to protect yourself? How stressful would it for your shelter to collapse because you didn't know how to build a sturdy one?

People operate best when they are in familiar surroundings. People fear difference. That is the source of their fear.

I've lived in the city most of my life and it's the city that stresses me out, not nature. I feel at home in nature, I enjoy trying to survive on my own. Many city people find the city stressful and feel the need to be connected to nature. You're basically saying that we adapt well to whatever environment we grow up in and find difference always stressful, I disagree.

Then you didn't address my other point, that they had to work much less to get food in nature than to get money to get food in the city. If your employer forces you to work 9 hours a day to give you your paycheck, you can't compress that time even if you become great at your job, whereas if you learn to hunt you can get food much more quickly.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

Furthermore, I would add that these Amazonians did have a sort of civilization. Surely they organized their labor, some going to hunt while others cooked, no? That organization is the basis of civilization.

Civilization is usually defined as "the stage of human social and cultural development and organization that is considered most advanced". Even if in their group some went to hunt and others cooked, that doesn't mean they were forced to work 9 hours a day to get food or cook it.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

If you really believe you can live on your own somewhere, I think you should try it. There is unused land out there that no one checks on. In fact, I think in Alaska the government still just gives it out.

I'm not a US resident, and in my country as far as I know there is no land the government gives freely. Many people successfully live on their own in the wild. Obviously it's easier to live in the wild when education is focused on living in the wild rather than on living in the city. But if you're a bed potato I can understand why you would find that to be unimaginable.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

If you make it out there and make any scientific progress, I would like to know. Well, if you can connect to the internet.

It would be possible to have some sort of internet in a world without money. People would simply build and take care of the infrastructures that they find useful. And research could be carried out in the plenty of free time that people would have.

Quoting leo

The dark matter hypothesis doesn't successfully match all the data, there are plenty of problems with it,

Agree - as would every scientist who is working in this area.

Quoting leo

How much work has been done on a model, and how easy it is to with the model with observations through fine-tuning, are two variables that have to be taken into account when we compare different models.

How much work has been done on a model is irrelevant. If person A spends 10 years working on a hypothesis and person B spends 10 minutes, the only thing that matters is which hypothesis better fits the data.

Quoting leo

For instance it's easy to come up with a model that successfully matches all the data while having a bunch of degrees of freedom.

Well dang it man! If it's easy, then why are you posting here? Go come up with that better model. Fame & fortune will be your reward! :smile:

But kidding aside, it sounds to me that your gripe is that the dark matter hypothesis has been over-hyped, and that more work/attention should be paid to the alternative models. That may be the case. It may be that dark matter will turn out to be analogous to the Copernican model - and that some brilliant person (or persons) will come up with a new model that neatly explains all the data. That would be very cool indeed!

OR - it may be the case that dark matter is the correct explanation and we just didn't fully understand it.

Reply to EricH

In the past, the forum has had active members who could speak to difficult scientific subjects knowledgeably. That has been missing for a while. I hope you will hang around.

Quoting EricH

How much work has been done on a model is irrelevant. If person A spends 10 years working on a hypothesis and person B spends 10 minutes, the only thing that matters is which hypothesis better fits the data.

Of course, but if person A spends 10 years working on hypothesis H1 and person B spends 10 minutes working on hypothesis H2, and H1 better fits the data than H2, it would be wrong to say that the only hypothesis worth developing is H1 because it better fits the data.

Quoting EricH

Well dang it man! If it's easy, then why are you posting here? Go come up with that better model. Fame & fortune will be your reward! :smile:

You know why it's easy? Because every time an observation doesn't fit the model, you can add a degree of freedom in the model to make it fit the observation.

Observations do not match the model? OK let's say there is invisible matter with simple properties that is responsible for the discrepancy, now the model fits the observations. New observations do not match predictions of the model? OK let's say the invisible matter has more complex properties that depend on several variables, and we can make the model fit the observations. Some new observations do not match predictions of that model? OK let's give even more degrees of freedom to the properties of that invisible matter, and the model fits all observations again. And so on and so forth, now our dark matter model fits all the data! We can also do that by having a gravitational model with a bunch of degrees of freedom but without dark matter.

And you know why the models that have a bunch of degrees of freedom and that successfully match all the data are not better models? Because the point of scientific models is the ability to predict. If every time an observation doesn't match the model you add a degree of freedom to make it fit the model, you have a complex model that fits all past observations but that isn't good to predict future observations.

It's like the epicycles of the Ptolemaic model, you can add more and more epicycles to make the model fit observations as precisely as you want. Does it mean it's a better model than one that can explain most planetary motions with a single equation that depends on two parameters? You can make successful new predictions with the latter model, not so much with the former.

Quoting EricH

But kidding aside, it sounds to me that your gripe is that the dark matter hypothesis has been over-hyped, and that more work/attention should be paid to the alternative models.

Indeed, the dark matter hypothesis is like a religion in some scientific circles, they don't treat it as a hypothesis they treat it as fact, I have personally interacted with some of these people (professional scientists), they don't see it as a hypothesis, they clearly say that dark matter exists. Every time there is an observation that is problematic they assume it will be solved, the problems pile up and at no point they even begin to think that, maybe, the dark matter idea is not the right path and, maybe, it could be worth it to seriously research other alternatives. And the problem with that of course is that we have a monolithic science that is stuck while it could be a much more fruitful enterprise if it was more open to alternative ideas.

Thankfully there are a few astrophysicists who are clearly aware of this state of affairs, here is an eye-opening interview with one of them https://medium.com/@aramis720/the-system-of-the-world-a-dialogue-with-prof-stacy-mcgaugh-fa1b3945f194

Some excerpts:

When I first became skeptical, I started asking my colleagues what would shake their faith; i.e., what would falsify [L]CDM? I almost never got a straight answer. One of the few I did get was from Simon White, who said the cusps had to be there. They’re not. Did this lead the field to abandon the paradigm? No, it just led to the invocation of complicated mechanisms that “fix” things. These are band aids that patch a superficial symptom without addressing the underlying malady.

The hard-core cosmologists are more convinced than ever that LCDM has to be right. It has obtained the status of a religion.

Once dark matter is confirmed in one’s mind as having been established to exist, it is incredibly hard to dislodge it. Should it turn out to be wrong, how do we tell? The concept of dark matter is not falsifiable. It cannot ever be excluded as a logical possibility. So once it is established as the preferred choice, how do we get out of that?

It is hard to question one’s own belief in dark matter. It was the hardest thing I ever did to wrap my head around the possibility that maybe I was wrong to believe that there had to be dark matter. I don’t see many of my colleagues engaging with this problem in a serious way.

Reply to T Clark

I find it sad that you don't realize I speak on this subject knowledgeably, and that you don't realize your impression that I do not know what I am talking about stems from your own lack of understanding on this subject.

Quoting leo

I find it sad that you don't realize I speak on this subject knowledgeably, and that you don't realize your impression that I do not know what I am talking about stems from your own lack of understanding on this subject.

I don't see it that way.

Reply to T Clark

Of course you don't. Meanwhile, you kept claiming that dark matter has been detected, even EricH disagrees with that. But I suppose you don't want to argue with him about that because he's wrong too and you're right.

I find this state of mind is quite fitting to the subject of this thread. Scientific circles have a bias against philosophy because they're dogmatic. And you don't realize that you are dogmatic about the existence of dark matter. It's not something you're even willing to begin to question, you're blind to everything I say about it, including to what some professional scientists say about it, like the one I quoted above. Maybe you can send him an email and discuss it with him, he may attempt to explain to you why dark matter hasn't been detected, but I suppose you'll tell him he's wrong because you're right.

It's common to be dismissed on scientific forums when we question dogmas of the prevalent paradigm, but I find it sad (or ironical) to be dismissed in the same way on a philosophy forum, on a thread that is precisely about the bias of scientists and science followers against philosophy.

Reply to leo

I don't see it that way. And, yes, I am being passive-aggressive.

Reply to T Clark

I know, all you see is "dark matter exists, so everything you say against that is wrong, ergo you're wrong, ergo you don't know what you are talking about".

Quoting leo

I know, all you see is "dark matter exists, so everything you say against that is wrong, ergo you're wrong, ergo you don't know what you are talking about".

I don't see it that way. I can keep this up all day.

Reply to T Clark

I know, I just think it makes you look more and more dogmatic as you keep going, but I guess you don't see it that way?

Quoting leo

I know, I just think it makes you look more and more dogmatic as you keep going, but I guess you don't see it that way?

You are correct. I don't see it that way.

On the other hand, now is probably a good time for me to stop. I'll give you the last word if you'd like it.

Quoting T Clark

On the other hand, now is probably a good time for me to stop. I'll give you the last word if you'd like it.

I don't see it that way.

Reply to T Clark Thanks for the compliment - I do have a scientific background. I mostly just lurk - it's fun reading some of these discussions, but it takes a lot of my very limited time to write a post that gets the point across with as few words as possible.

Quoting leo

The problem is not the uneven distribution in itself, it is that those who have the most resources actively act against those who have little resources, to prevent them from having more, in essence those who have little resources are enslaved to those who have more, they do not have the freedom to acquire them by themselves. In order to gain their freedom, they have to work much harder than they would otherwise, or they have to be lucky, or they have to be criminals, and even then they're still all enslaved to money.

You act as if businessmen have no weaknesses. If there isn't a competitor somewhere, the problem is anti-monopoly laws where you live.

The one thing you can do to businesses is the one thing that hurts them most- leave. I highly doubt that most people are working the best paying job they can. Put in some applications and when the time comes, put in your two weeks. I've certainly done it before. The guy I picked up hours from last week certainly did. All you have to do is look around. Sure, you might still be enslaved to money, but nobody has any other choice, even those with all the money.

The only thing standing between the wealthy and poverty is wealth. If they stop doing what they're doing, they suffer. Their lives are significantly more extravagant, but they live in fear of losing that cash flow just as much as we do.

Quoting leo

In nature, what's working against you is the predators, but you don't have an army of predators enslaving you, you can fight them and win, or you can avoid them much more easily than you can avoid the whole of law enforcement and the military.

I would say oppression by predators is relatively equal to oppression by law. While predators don't enslave, they do kill at will. You can't have free time if you're dead. Any animal that is preyed upon typically doesn't have a fighting chance. If two evenly matched animals are fighting, it's over territory. This is because for an animal to be considered prey, it has to be a regular part of another animal's diet. You can't fight even fights on a daily basis and expect to live long.

Running expends immense energy and requires constant food. Like I said above, I wouldn't consider recovering from physical activity free time.

Quoting leo

By definition if you only care about yourself you don't care about the benefit of others, you don't care about the greater good. I'm not talking about leaders who believe people are foolish without their guidance, I'm talking about people who actually don't care about hurting others for their own personal gain. You seem to believe such people don't exist, I disagree.

These people consider their own personal gain the greater good. They believe that their position justifies their wealth and they use that position to gain the wealth they deserve. Whether they're right or wrong, they believe what they're doing is right. To them, hurting others is good if it meets this end. Nobody thinks that they're evil, or at least entirely evil. So no, I don't think that people hurt others without somehow justifying it in their mind, unless they're mentally ill or brain dead.

Quoting leo

There is evidence that they did have a lot of free time. See the book Stone Age Economics for instance. There are some who say that agriculture was invented to fill the needs of a rising population which was itself the result of a lot of free time. It's surely not obvious at all that back then they had little free time, contrary to popular belief.

I'm not one to rule out reading a book, so when I get around to it I'll let you know.

What I think to be likely is that what ancient people believe to be fun was in fact more work. People still hunt now because they think it's fun, but back then it was a necessary part of life, and it was something that people did all day. Fun work does not equal free time.

If I recall, the creation of agriculture is in most places considered to have likely been an accident. Someone dropping fruit somewhere near home and connecting the dots later on. These people didn't have the prior knowledge that we have now that seeds are what plants use to reproduce. If they did, agriculture would have happened sooner. It's something that you have to figure out. Even simple developments like spears took thousands of years and were also probably spurred on by accident.

Even the large population doesn't necessarily imply a lot of free time. I think looking at the logistics of reproduction proves that. One birth per 9 months per woman doesn't necessarily imply that there was a lot of time dedicated to making children. Especially when mortality rates in childbirth (for both child and mother) were so high, something that hasn't entirely gone away even today.

I don't know what else is provided as evidence of free time in stone age peoples. Maybe cave paintings, but we haven't found near enough of those to say that they had anywhere close to the amount of free time on their hands that we do now. In my free time I could paint more cave paintings in a year than there were made in thousands.

Quoting leo

The people who get their research funded are believed by whoever funds their research.

And they believe because those researchers promise wealth. It's an investment that those researchers are required to do good on.

Quoting leo

I've lived in the city most of my life and it's the city that stresses me out, not nature. I feel at home in nature, I enjoy trying to survive on my own. Many city people find the city stressful and feel the need to be connected to nature. You're basically saying that we adapt well to whatever environment we grow up in and find difference always stressful, I disagree.

Adaptation does not always mean happiness. You may not be happy in the city, but most city goers would likely die in the wild in a matter of days.

You say you like to try to survive on your own. I don't doubt this, but I would ask where you do this. A national park of some kind? It can't be on someone else's property because you seem to have a desire to avoid doing that.

National parks or campgrounds aren't really the wild. If you get lost or are in danger, people will be actively looking for you soon. You get to see the grass and start a fire or maybe see some animals, but you are very much still in the grasp of civilization. The park ranger is just up the road.

Maybe you do have some unwatched area of the world to truly explore, and that's great, but those people who find the city stressful only want a little less city, not all wilderness. They "feel connected to nature" in a place that isn't true nature.

The reason for this I think is that they've been told all their lives that nature is peaceful. The pseudo-wilderness that is these places only reinforces that notion.

What people want isn't primitive living, what they want is to escape to rebranded civilization. Somewhere they can feel like an outdoorsman without all of the actual stress and danger of being an outdoorsman. If people knew the reality of the wilderness as opposed to their view of peaceful "nature", they would stay in their homes.

Quoting leo

Then you didn't address my other point, that they had to work much less to get food in nature than to get money to get food in the city. If your employer forces you to work 9 hours a day to give you your paycheck, you can't compress that time even if you become great at your job, whereas if you learn to hunt you can get food much more quickly.

I don't know about you, but I can compress my work time. If I close quickly and well, I can get out of my job earlier. There is always a set amount of time you need to do a job, it's those time reliant things that make it quicker. I would assume those natives were working jobs relatively close in skill level to mine.

Also, typically (at least in the first world) people work 7-8 hours a day, only five days a week. It seems like a bit of a petty criticism, but that time does certainly add up. Especially with weekends, since if you have to hunt for your food, you have to do that every single day.

Of course, they could afford less food, but they had more of everything else. Imagine the first time they saw that they could just purchase a knife instead of taking all of the time to make one, or the first time they could just go buy a shirt instead of taking all day to make clothing. Creating tools and equipment without modern techniques is a painstaking process. Self made tools don't last as long either. That's just basic survival too, once they have all of the clothes and tools they need, they don't get as worn down from the rugged wilderness.

Of course, this all depends on the place they lived and at what time. Brazil I think you said? depending on the time period, they probably didn't have all of the modern necessities, but the problem was probably more just "civilized" people disrespecting their culture and looking down on them. I would hate going to cities if I associated them with that.

Quoting leo

Civilization is usually defined as "the stage of human social and cultural development and organization that is considered most advanced". Even if in their group some went to hunt and others cooked, that doesn't mean they were forced to work 9 hours a day to get food or cook it.

So civilization is ok if we do it in a way that benefits everyone? That sounds like what I was thinking. I think it isn't too far of a stretch to think that tribal living isn't the only way of life that can benefit everyone. Especially since it's hard to have tribes with large populations. A tribe of a million simply doesn't work.

Quoting leo

I'm not a US resident, and in my country as far as I know there is no land the government gives freely. Many people successfully live on their own in the wild. Obviously it's easier to live in the wild when education is focused on living in the wild rather than on living in the city. But if you're a bed potato I can understand why you would find that to be unimaginable.

I won't lie, I'm a bit of a sucker for the comforts of civilization. However, if it were all gone tomorrow and I had to work my fill, I don't think I would have a choice. I may be lazy, but I refuse to be a freeloader. I'll revert to a more primitive lifestyle, but only if absolutely necessary.

However, I can't help but notice that if I'm waking up before dawn to feed livestock, then going out to water crops, then scavenging for anything I can find to eat or kill, that's a majority of my day. Not to mention that if I'm doing that, I'm not actually preparing food for myself, so if I do have someone to do that for me, I need to bring home more food for them. Eventually, the sun is setting and I had no time to think about anything, let alone make paper so that I could write it down or use a rock to inscribe it into a tablet.

I think it unfortunate that you can't get even a small plot to live from. You seem like you might genuinely enjoy it. However, I cannot see under any circumstances you having time to do science, especially if you're starting from scratch.

Quoting leo

It would be possible to have some sort of internet in a world without money. People would simply build and take care of the infrastructures that they find useful. And research could be carried out in the plenty of free time that people would have.

If you are referring to a world without money where everyone does things for mutual benefit, that sounds like bartering. Mutual benefit is "If you want fish and I want eggs, then we trade what we believe is a equivalent amount of each", not "Hey, I want fish, can I have some? I know you don't like eggs, but you can have some of mine any time you want".

The problem with a "you scratch my back, I scratch yours" sort of system is that eventually, you have to scratch the other person's back, and that is essentially bartering. And I believe above you denounced bartering.

And what if only one person finds and infrastructure useful? I think you find yourself in a similar situation. You think your science can be useful but nobody who can fund it agrees. Nobody will buy the microscopes or test tubes or whatever you need. The problem at its very core is that at least right now, nobody of importance believes in you.

But I think I believe in you. I don't know for certain about any scientific inquiry. I know that what we have now works a good amount of the time. If you can do better, you can make the world better.

The fact that I think you may be on to something is why I'm telling you where I think the solution is not. Instead of going against the grain in a world you find yourself born into, you have to use the very systems you despise to change those systems. Otherwise, you will have no impact.

Physicists are looked down on in philosophy forums too ... well, they’ve usually better things to attend to so its not common to find them on philosophy forums. On the other hand philosophers frequent science forums and expect to be treated as equals - they are not looked down on just in the wrong forum thinking they have something worthwhile to contribute.

Quoting TogetherTurtle

The only thing standing between the wealthy and poverty is wealth

From a Steve Martin Saturday Night Live monologue:

You.. can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You say.. “Steve.. how can I be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes?” First.. get a million dollars.

Quoting T Clark

You.. can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You can be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes! You say.. “Steve.. how can I be a millionaire.. and never pay taxes?” First.. get a million dollars.

And any aspiring millionaire wouldn't have it any other way.

Quoting I like sushi

Physicists are looked down on in philosophy forums too ..

I remember once being the the philosophy forum of a science forum. I brought up an issue about the cause of a medical condition. The condition was considered to be caused by a bacteria. I pointed out that this is an oversimplication of causes, since environmental factors, social factors, dietary factors can cause the condition. And to be clear the condition was now, because of scientific experiments considered not to be caused by anything but the bacteria. How the bacteria managed to be effectively opportunistic in some people but not others was not an issue to many of the scientists i encountered.

I wrote this all out, put some real work in.

a scientist responded by saying he checked the research and said that it was accepted that the bacteria was the cause.

I asked him if he understood the point I was raising about 'cause'. Then he got nasty and said I didn't understand how science works. I explained that I did and tried another shot at getting at the issue of cause.

He linked me to articles on the research.

i got snarky.

Now of course this is a single interaction. I don't generalize this to scientists. I am sure there are scientists who would have understood and been able to engage in my points and certainly some in public health, rather than, say, in pharmacology (hint, hint about bias), might have agreed with me.

I just bring it up because it is a sort of classic philosophy/science encounter.

Or really any cross-paradigmatic encounter.

80% of people on most forums are quite strange.

It takes patience. Mine has pretty much run out now, but I sometimes find the odd discussion interesting to follow.

Reply to Coben I am a mentor on Physics Forums and the reason philosophy is off topic there is it once was its own sub-forum. It was moderated by someone who was basically qualified in both physics and philosophy and kept it under control. They left and it got out of control - people could not tell the difference between speculations (and mostly gibberish at that) and philosophy. The physicists over there kept the physics in line - by forum rules you basically cant discuss 'junk' only actual physics as in papers, textbooks etc. As a mentor part of my job it to help adjudicate on stuff that's 'borderline' science. A philosophy mentor would need the same and we lost ours, so it was ditched.

Regarding the relationship of physics to philosophy it took a big hit with the story of Kant and Gauss regarding non-euclidean geometry - but that is a thread in itself. The view of today's physicists is probably summed up by Feynman 'Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.'. An example would be what is energy. Philosophers probably argued that one for yonks really getting nowhere. But along came Noether and all was clear, but in a way no philosopher would ever have thought of - its merely a consequence of symmetry in time. As a matter of fact we now know much of physics is about symmetry - but most philosophers don't know it, and of those that do they probably argue about it like what was done about energy. Scientists accept we do not know, and another Noether (who was a mathematician that moonlighted in physics) is needed to resolve it. Its humbling admitting that's the way it is. Heisenberg and Dirac had an interesting discussion about a Kuhn like view of science and its just steady progress:
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1614/

Myself and I would say most physicists side with Dirac eg Weinberg:
https://www.physics.utah.edu/~detar/phys4910/readings/fundamentals/weinberg.html

Thanks
Bill

Reply to leo 'So for instance, Newton's laws assume that mass doesn't depend on velocity, that's a weakness.'

Newtons laws have many weaknesses I will not go into, but they can be rectified and is now the modern theory of Classical Mechanics as you will find in a proper treatment like Landau - Mechanics. The laws are replaced by a critical assumption - The Principle Of Least Action. What is the reason for that assumption? - I will let people think about that - there is a reason - but its not what you would think. Mass in that treatment is shown to be a constant independent of velocity:

Thanks
Bill

Reply to Bill Hobba Interesting. (wasn't your forum I mentioned, though that should be clear since the topic wasn't physics). I didn't realize Kuhn got so skeptical about science having meaning. I could swear I read papers by him, a long time ago, bemoaning how his work was being used to undermine the idea that science was objective. Not how his work sank into me. IOW I neover took him as saying that it was all just a bunch analogies, each paradigm, and now we have shifted into set X, and then set Y, all arbritrary like fashion trends.

Regarding the relationship of physics to philosophy it took a big hit with the story of Kant and Gauss regarding non-euclidean geometry - but that is a thread in itself.

I can see Kant's philosophy took a hit, but I don't see why philosophy in general should. Gauss was a physicist, though Schweikart was not, but he was not doing traditional scientific research. He was exploring math and what seemed like something interesting but not practical ended up being useful and in fact reflected reality. So we have mental activity not based on empirical studies aiding science. While not philosophy per se, I don't see it as undermining philosophical work. It is an example of something outside of science contributing to science.

Quoting Bill Hobba

The view of today's physicists is probably summed up by Feynman 'Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.'. An example would be what is energy. Philosophers probably argued that one for yonks really getting nowhere. But along came Noether and all was clear, but in a way no philosopher would ever have thought of - its merely a consequence of symmetry in time.

Well, it doesn't take a genius to realize that if relative acceleration is a function of distance that doesn't depend on time: dv/dt = f(r), then vdv = f(r)dr, then v²/2-F(r) is a constant that doesn't depend on time.

Which can be generalized to say that if we assume things follow laws that don't depend on time, then there is a quantity that is conserved through time. We call that quantity energy, in reference to the historical concept according to which mechanical motion could be converted into other kinds of motions (such as heat).

It's quite funny that you would quote Feynman on how philosophers are naive and wrong, say that philosophers went nowhere on the question of what energy is, then say that after Noether everything became clear among physicists, when there is this other quote from Feynman that you haven't mentioned (over 40 years after Noether):

"It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is."

Quoting Bill Hobba

its merely a consequence of symmetry in time.

It is an example of poor philosophy to say that "energy is a consequence of symmetry in time" is an answer to the question "what is energy". Just like saying "a sunburn is a consequence of overexposure to UV radiation" is not an answer to the question "what is a sunburn", an answer would rather be something like "sunburn is an inflammatory response in the skin triggered by direct DNA damage by UV radiation".

Another example of poor philosophy is to say that energy is a consequence of symmetry in time. Rather, the existence of a conserved quantity through time (which we call energy) is a consequence of the assumption that physical laws do not change through time. Nothing forces us to geometrize time and talk of symmetry in time, that's just one way to look at it, if you want you can say that in a particular mathematical model energy is seen as a consequence of symmetry in time, but in saying that one risks committing the fallacy of reification, treating time as a physical thing rather than a concept.

Quoting Bill Hobba

As a matter of fact we now know much of physics is about symmetry - but most philosophers don't know it, and of those that do they probably argue about it like what was done about energy.

That's one particular way to interpret the phenomena, simply because physicists of the 20th century have focused on formulating theories in terms of symmetry and symmetry breaking doesn't imply that physics has to be "about symmetry". Just like we can assume physical laws do not change through time without talking of symmetry in time, and we can formulate physical laws without invoking symmetry as a fundamental concept. I recall some well-known physicists mentioning that focusing on symmetry might turn out to be a dead-end, I can't find the quotes now, but symmetry-based reasoning hasn't been much fruitful these past decades, and it isn't clear that alternatives wouldn't be more fruitful.

Quoting Bill Hobba

The laws are replaced by a critical assumption - The Principle Of Least Action.

Physics would be clearer if we did away with this principle. Yea it's mathematically elegant, and increasingly physicists have given up intuitiveness in favor of mathematical elegance, and now we have a physics whose motto is "shut up and calculate" because it cannot be understood, and somehow we're supposed to see that as an achievement. The achievement would be to have a similar predictive power without all that nonintuitive complexity that stems from layers and layers of mathematically elegant principles.

To say that things move the way they do because they move in such a way that they minimize a mathematical function is adding an unnecessary layer of complexity, as opposed to focusing on how things move and describing that.

But then again Newton's laws were unnecessary layers of complexity too, seeing how for instance Newton's second law is a mathematical definition of the concept of force. One could instead focus on how things accelerate one another and do away with the intermediary concept of force.

Reply to leo There is quite a bit wrong with your post eg acceleration does depend on time as does velocity by their very definition. But let's start with the principle of least action, it comes from QM namely Feynman's path integral approach. That's why its more fundamental than Newtons laws.

Quoting I like sushi

Physicists are looked down on in philosophy forums too

I could hardly imagine how. Can you share an example?

Quoting Wayfarer

But 'where' is the 'domain of natural numbers?'

Numbers, or any kind of symbols, were in the mind of C.S.Pierce who said some thing like this universe is full of (if not all) signs. Have you come across semiosis?
My interpretation is that every surrounding we acknowledge is no more than a sign. Some can say that rock on the side road is not because it's been there and will be without your mercy. But how do you know if it's the same rock yesterday - given it may have more or less atoms due to dusts on the road or itself's friction with the tarmac?

Quoting Shushi

In my experience of talking with scientists about philosophy, I have found that many times most scientists seem to look down on it like if it were just speculative non-conducive discussions about random thoughts that anyone can make up.

Well, it's not "just" that, but let's not kid ourselves that that doesn't sum up a large part of it.

[I]Love[/I] the comic strip at the bottom of your opening post, by the way. "What do you mean by 'pure'? What do you mean by 'just applied'? I wonder... do they know I exist?". :lol:

Quoting T Clark

We should turn that around too, make people understand that so-called scientists who don't understand the intellectual underpinnings of what they do are just technicians.

Can there be the case where some well-thought scientists think certain philosophical statements make more sense than their modern science's reach, but who do not dare to speak out loud? I have that kind a feeling after watching video interviews of big physicists. I also read some where that people change position (they used the word "retreat to a safer position", such as agnosticism) under harsh media attacks (provoking/luring questions).

Quoting Dzung

Can there be the case where some well-thought scientists think certain philosophical statements make more sense than their modern science's reach, but who do not dare to speak out loud? I have that kind a feeling after watching video interviews of big physicists. I also read some where that people change position (they used the word "retreat to a safer position", such as agnosticism) under harsh media attacks (provoking/luring questions).

I get the feeling that most scientists don't spend much time thinking about philosophy at all. To some extent, I think that's because they don't understand the nature of metaphysics and epistemology or their unspoken assumptions about reality.

Quoting EricH

Currently, dark matter is the hypothesis which best matches the data, but it is still only a hypothesis - it is not established theory. If you could present an alternative explanation that successfully matches all the data and does not involve hypothetical invisible particles, you would go down in history along with Einstein.

It's not my intention to reopen the dark matter discussion, but I was just reading an article on the web that I thought people might find interesting.

@https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/testing-dama

Quoting Coben

Now of course this is a single interaction.

Which is impossible to judge based on the retelling of one of the participants. For all I know, you could be right, but to a rational observer who knows only that the argument was between a non-expert with a superficial familiarity with the research and the experts who conducted the research (because even before you squabbled with someone on a forum you were in a virtual argument with the authors of the studies in question), the balance of credibility is obviously not in your favor.

But that's not the important point. What was the point of this anecdote?

Quoting Coben

I just bring it up because it is a sort of classic philosophy/science encounter.

From what you have told us, it appears that the "classic encounter" consists of you presuming that scientists in general would not know anything about isolating principal causes of a phenomenon while accounting for relevant confounders. How could they, indeed? After all, 'cause' is a philosophical term of art, so they need an amateur philosopher with little knowledge of the subject matter to set them straight.

What is particularly perplexing about this encounter is that as a philosopher you weren't problematizing a concept that is commonly taken for granted, or bringing to light an unexamined assumption, or suggesting a different conceptual framework. Rather, you were challenging the science on its own turf - perhaps without even realizing that that is what you were doing. It could be that the researchers did not do a good job of accounting for all relevant factors and evaluating alternative hypotheses - I don't have enough information and expertise to judge. But that is precisely what is expected of them as scientists.

How do you think philosophers theorize about causality? How do they evaluate their own theories? They systematize and generalize causality by examining our causal thinking and practice. But toy examples like billiard balls colliding or stones smashing windows can only get you so far. Scientific practice provides a large pool of complex examples, from Newtonian dynamics to epidemiology, and here philosophers mostly learn from scientists, rather than the other way around. If a philosophical account of causality is contrary to the best scientific practices, this is usually taken to be philosophy's deficiency.

That is not to say that philosophers cannot contribute to the discussion of causality, but that would be more in areas where science runs up against conceptual difficulties, such as in quantum mechanics, for example. As for routine problems with the quality of studies and such, scientists and mathematicians are more adept at debugging those than most philosophers.

Reply to SophistiCat Actually there are no conceptual difficulties in QM - really its just what in math is called a generalized probability model:
https://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html

Now what it means - that is another matter.

Thanks
Bill

Quoting SophistiCat

Which is impossible to judge based on the retelling of one of the participants. For all I know, you could be right, but to a rational observer who knows only that the argument was between a non-expert with a superficial familiarity with the research and the experts who conducted the research (because even before you squabbled with someone on a forum you were in a virtual argument with the authors of the studies in question), the balance of credibility is obviously not in your favor.

Sure, there's no reason for you to accept my version of the encounter. But then there's no reason to assume I had a superficial familiarity with the research. The person I was talking to was a physicist. I was a person who suffered from the condition in question and had researched it for years. My classic encounter was with a scientist who appealed to authority and was not willing to show that he understood my objection. What did he do? He read my post, then checked to see what the current cause was considered to be and reported back to me that I was wrong. Which was a strange thing to do since it was stated in my previous post what current consensus was. IOW he did not interact with my argument, he told me what I already obviously knew, but let me know that that was the end of the subject. I encountered this kind of pattern repeatedly with scientists on that site. Even in instances where I was less of an expert than the scientist - for example, when the topic fit their profession or I had no special background in the topic - I noticed a repeated lack of interest in actually dealing with the arguments, though they might spend time lecturing me about me or something not relevant about the group they think I am in or whatever. IOW it wasn't the effort they were resistent to, it was the having a discussion.

Someone could argue that it is so trying to have these amateurs talk about science. Well, that was part of the point of the forum. I did not preface my points with some diatribe about science, which I was obviously interested in and based a lot of my arguments on. Many did not seem to realize that there was non-consensus within science on the issues in question. And by this I do not mean there was a fringe scientist or two, but actual splits in the greater community on issues - this was certainly true on a lot of issues in cosmology that interested me. But if I presented an idea that they thought there was consensus on and even cited polls of physicists or whatever the relevant scientist group was, it would still be treated as fringe and the musings of a pompous idiot (me). And I often found they did not read posts particularly well. My posts would sometimes trigger responses, with incorrect assumptions about what I must mean.

And it's not like the forum was filled with techincal posts meant to be passed between experts, there was opinion throwing and everyday speech by all participants and on all categories of issue, not just within science.

This is how humans are, of course. Scientists may even be less annoying in these ways. Still, given that they were scientists and were taking the position, with regularity, that they did not use their intuition in reaching conclusions and disagreements with non-scientists were part of their war as team rational vs. the irrational horde, it was galling.

I found it less annoying dealing with some Abrahamists who arguments boiled down to faith or, basically, intuition at some point. You wanna take the high rational ground, rather than the high moral or intuitive ground, well, it will likely be more annoying if that's not really what you are managing to live up to.

Further my position did not contradict the research data, it called into question elminating other causes as factors, even decisives ones, despite the research not showing that these were not also causes. There was money riding on this. Billions.

Now in the post you responded to I was writing to someone who I thought might find value in that kind of example. Not as proof, but as a category of talking bpast each other. Quoting SophistiCat

But toy examples like billiard balls colliding or stones smashing windows can only get you so far. Scientific practice provides a large pool of complex examples, from Newtonian dynamics to epidemiology, and here philosophers mostly learn from scientists, rather than the other way around. If a philosophical account of causality is contrary to the best scientific practices, this is usually taken to be philosophy's deficiency.

If it had been contrary that would have been a different situation. It wasn't. That was part of the blind spot, I thought, in the scientist I was dealing with.Quoting SophistiCat

That is not to say that philosophers cannot contribute to the discussion of causality, but that would be more in areas where science runs up against conceptual difficulties, such as in quantum mechanics, for example. As for routine problems with the quality of studies and such, scientists and mathematicians are more adept at debugging those than most philosophers.

I would guess in most cases, the vast majority, of case analyses you are correct. I think in medicine people outside the specific field can often produce great input because 1) so much of the research is funded by biased organizations and 2) we know, from scientific research, that funding sources affect results and what results are shared with us, and how the results are looked at by government oversight. 3) there are paradigmatic influences on medicine - with counter trends now - to isolate causes to single patients. Hm, that's not good wording. To look at diseases and chemical cures, rather than say public health, preventative medical approaches, and certainly not alternative approaches - in part becasue many of them cannot be patented. They want to find causes and treatments that involve pills in a lot of cases where other approaches might be just as effective and with less side effects.

I could mull over if there are other sciences that also might have built in biases where philosophers could be of great help, but since I mentioned, I think, in this thread mainly physics - which you seem to agree about - and in that post medicaine, I stick here.

Reply to Bill Hobba "What it means" is where conceptual issues begin and end. What did you think I meant? Specifically with regard to causality, since that was the context, the issue is pretty controversial in QM. As you know, cause is not really a term in QM's vocabulary (and the same can be said about most areas of physics), so it is all about interpretation.

Reply to SophistiCat What I was pointing out is virtually anyone can learn QM so there is nothing conceptually hard about it, although misconceptions abound. Now, as you correctly point out when you ask questions like is QM casual you immediately run into issues, even issues as to what casual means - I suppose its a quibble on my part about conceptually understand and able to discuss using normal philosophical discourse.

Thanks
Bill

Reply to T Clark they are also humans and the least human should have some level of philosophy I'd trust.But nowadays in the consumptionistic flow, one has less freedom to speak up, compared to say, Renaissance period. For example, scientists need budgets for their projects and better keep mouths shut whenever unnecessary. Having said that, due to specialization of any study subject, a physicist should inherently have less philosophic thoughts than a professional philosopher.

Quoting Bill Hobba

when you ask questions like is QM casual...

Causal? :chin:

Quoting Pattern-chaser

when you ask questions like is QM casual...
— Bill Hobba

Causal? :chin:

It's not a coincidence that the discoveries in QM and the steep rise in the divorce rate correlate.