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That science needs philosophy like a hand needs a thumb.

by olavk 11y ago

mannykannot 11y ago
Here I get to say, with reason in this case, what does that even mean? You apparently practice the passive-aggressive school of philosophy - the one where you write as if you are disagreeing with someone, but you neither offer any specific rebuttals of the other's arguments, nor do you make any specific, refutable statements about your own position. But none of this matters anyway. If you want to argue that science needs philosophy, and regardless of what metaphor you are trying to pass off as an actual argument, the one thing you have to do is to show one or more significant examples where contemporary science has depended on contemporary philosophy. Without that, anything else is just talking around the issue. Of all the people who have replied to this thread, only shabda seems to understand this.
- mannykannot 11y ago
  I came back to edit this (but I am too late) because I think I am being unnecessarily confrontational. Here is how I would reply today: I get your point that scientists sometimes do things that can be described as philosophy in the broad sense, but generally, I do not think they would be able to do that if they had been educated in academic philosophy. I believe Bohr himself falls into this category. It would be more accurate to say that philosophy is dependent on science in these matters. I also get the point that scientists use the scientific method that was developed by people who can be called philosophers, but they developed science through doing it, and that is not a dependent relationship even if you call what they did philosophy. With regard to examples, I am sticking with my position that they are the only argument that really counts (which is why I suggested it to pierrec), but I don’t think there are none: for example, I think Daniel Dennett has made many valuable contributions to cognitive science, and made a number of trenchant observations with regard to the expectations of computational neurologists.

That science needs philosophy like a hand needs a thumb.

by olavk 11y ago

That science needs philosophy like a hand needs a thumb.

Here I get to say, with reason in this case, what does that even mean? You apparently practice the passive-aggressive school of philosophy - the one where you write as if you are disagreeing with someone, but you neither offer any specific rebuttals of the other's arguments, nor do you make any specific, refutable statements about your own position. But none of this matters anyway. If you want to argue that science needs philosophy, and regardless of what metaphor you are trying to pass off as an actual argument, the one thing you have to do is to show one or more significant examples where contemporary science has depended on contemporary philosophy. Without that, anything else is just talking around the issue. Of all the people who have replied to this thread, only shabda seems to understand this.

mannykannot 11y ago
I came back to edit this (but I am too late) because I think I am being unnecessarily confrontational. Here is how I would reply today: I get your point that scientists sometimes do things that can be described as philosophy in the broad sense, but generally, I do not think they would be able to do that if they had been educated in academic philosophy. I believe Bohr himself falls into this category. It would be more accurate to say that philosophy is dependent on science in these matters. I also get the point that scientists use the scientific method that was developed by people who can be called philosophers, but they developed science through doing it, and that is not a dependent relationship even if you call what they did philosophy. With regard to examples, I am sticking with my position that they are the only argument that really counts (which is why I suggested it to pierrec), but I don’t think there are none: for example, I think Daniel Dennett has made many valuable contributions to cognitive science, and made a number of trenchant observations with regard to the expectations of computational neurologists.