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Well, you did ask about justifying the sciences, not the other things that go into a toaster. As for social institutions, I'm not convinced that the influence

Well, you did ask about justifying the sciences, not the other things that go into a toaster. As for social institutions, I'm not convinced that the influence of philosophers has been net positive. But that seems like a politically fraught topic. Maybe you could name some uncontroversially good social changes that came from philosophy?

danharaj 11y ago
> Well, you did ask about justifying the sciences, not the other things that go into a toaster. If those other things didn't go into the toaster, science would not make a toaster. Science is useful, but its usefulness is tied up in the rest of human endeavor. Science is a human process. It is good at what it does. Its goodness enriches us because of how it fits into everything else we do. > Maybe you could name some uncontroversially good social changes that came from philosophy? I think most people would consider Enlightenment ideals much, much better than what came before them. But I think we're starting to circle around where we are disconnected. You are threading a narrative of progress, of milestones; you're marking human development with milestones where things become better. I am very much more concerned with the process of coming to and going beyond particular advancements. Philosophy is important because it is a rich store of human experience dealing with human experience, human methods. For example, philosophical methods were and are employed in figuring out what probability is. The history of probability is very rich with ideas. How we come to modern probability is interesting, and it is inseparable from the philosophical investigations of probability. Really, it doesn't matter whether you or I respects philosophy or deploys it in our lives. Its usefulness or not is what it is. All I'm saying is, you're missing out if you're discarding it. At the very least, if you were to become versed in philosophy and still decided it wasn't worth much, you would have a much better grasp of what science is; your facility with scientific methods would be improved at a minimum.
- cousin_it 11y ago
  I think there's a bit of bait and switch involved. Natural philosophy (Descartes, Leibniz, Laplace...) was indeed very important to science, and it's no accident that the leading proponents were great scientists themselves. I'm certainly not discarding their philosophical ideas, even the weird ones like monads, because they turned out to be illuminating once and might do so again. On the other hand, modern philosophy is mostly derived from social thinkers (Locke, Hobbes...) who have repeatedly tried and failed to leave any mark on science. That, IMO, wasn't an accident either. The differences in attitude between the two original groups (rationalism vs empiricism) were very deep and interesting, though maybe a bit outside the scope of this comment. But if you simplify and fast forward to today, you get the modern "science vs philosophy" conflict, in which I have a clear favored side. On one hand, you have folks who believe in the power of the individual reasoning mind, and put a man on the Moon. On the other hand, you have folks who claim that all understanding is social, and cannot explain how a toaster works. (But they sure have a lot of ideas about society!)

danharaj 11y ago

> Well, you did ask about justifying the sciences, not the other things that go into a toaster. If those other things didn't go into the toaster, science would not make a toaster. Science is useful, but its usefulness is tied up in the rest of human endeavor. Science is a human process. It is good at what it does. Its goodness enriches us because of how it fits into everything else we do. > Maybe you could name some uncontroversially good social changes that came from philosophy? I think most people would consider Enlightenment ideals much, much better than what came before them. But I think we're starting to circle around where we are disconnected. You are threading a narrative of progress, of milestones; you're marking human development with milestones where things become better. I am very much more concerned with the process of coming to and going beyond particular advancements. Philosophy is important because it is a rich store of human experience dealing with human experience, human methods. For example, philosophical methods were and are employed in figuring out what probability is. The history of probability is very rich with ideas. How we come to modern probability is interesting, and it is inseparable from the philosophical investigations of probability. Really, it doesn't matter whether you or I respects philosophy or deploys it in our lives. Its usefulness or not is what it is. All I'm saying is, you're missing out if you're discarding it. At the very least, if you were to become versed in philosophy and still decided it wasn't worth much, you would have a much better grasp of what science is; your facility with scientific methods would be improved at a minimum.

cousin_it 11y ago
I think there's a bit of bait and switch involved. Natural philosophy (Descartes, Leibniz, Laplace...) was indeed very important to science, and it's no accident that the leading proponents were great scientists themselves. I'm certainly not discarding their philosophical ideas, even the weird ones like monads, because they turned out to be illuminating once and might do so again. On the other hand, modern philosophy is mostly derived from social thinkers (Locke, Hobbes...) who have repeatedly tried and failed to leave any mark on science. That, IMO, wasn't an accident either. The differences in attitude between the two original groups (rationalism vs empiricism) were very deep and interesting, though maybe a bit outside the scope of this comment. But if you simplify and fast forward to today, you get the modern "science vs philosophy" conflict, in which I have a clear favored side. On one hand, you have folks who believe in the power of the individual reasoning mind, and put a man on the Moon. On the other hand, you have folks who claim that all understanding is social, and cannot explain how a toaster works. (But they sure have a lot of ideas about society!)