5 ms·

Can you give any examples of philosophical ideas proved experimentally?

by tdb7893 10y ago

woodruffw 10y ago
Proof theory itself. You can thank Boole, Cantor, Peirce, Russel, Frege, and Peano (among many others) for that. Depending upon what you mean by a proof, there are also "ideas" in philosophy that are trivially true: 1. I am. 2. There is a thing that I am. 3. The thing that I am is me. 4. I am me. These are completely trivial, but they're also interesting from a language-and-object perspective.
- placebo 10y ago
  I'd expect philosophy to try and dive into what point 1 actually means rather than to jump to conclusions with points 2 to 4, otherwise it becomes mostly a practice of defining axioms within the realm of thought and manipulating concepts and relations, much like mathematics but without the practicality (in most cases). Of course, answering what point 1 means could require venturing beyond the scope of what can be reached by thought alone, which would place it outside the acceptable scientific boundary. It appears to me as if philosophy is in the unfortunate position where on one hand, it is ill equipped to answer the deepest questions and on the other it can't arrive at any important and empirically falsifiable conclusions. Would be happy to be proved wrong, though.
  - woodruffw 10y ago
    Oh, they were meant to be individual axioms, not a cohesive argument. That's what makes them interesting - they're four things that say essentially the same thing, but with profoundly different implications and preconditions. > otherwise it becomes mostly a practice of defining axioms within the realm of thought and manipulating concepts and relations, much like mathematics but without the practicality (in most cases) That tradition in mathematics comes from analytic philosophy. That's not to say that all philosophy is about defining and manipulating relations (it isn't, and shouldn't be), but that language-games (to borrow Wittgenstein's term) are a subject of valid inquiry. > It appears to me as if philosophy is in the unfortunate position where on one hand, it is ill equipped to answer the deepest questions and on the other it can't arrive at any important and empirically falsifiable conclusions. Yeah, it often appears that way. However, we except such a sorry state of affairs in theoretical physics and the workings of the mind -- why should we be any less charitable with philosophy? > Would be happy to be proved wrong, though. With emphasis added: wouldn't we all? ;)
    - placebo 10y ago
      > However, we except such a sorry state of affairs in theoretical physics and the workings of the mind -- why should we be any less charitable with philosophy? Well, personally I don't expect nor accept any non-falsifiable theories from any branch of science. There is a tendency to relax this requirement in some theoretical fields of physics and to say that it suffices if a theory is empirical and unambiguous. Of course one can make the line fuzzy with some of them and say that they are tentatively falsifiable (i.e they can be once humanity will be reach a certain level of progress), but as far as I'm concerned, those type of theories are more suitable as a special branch of mathematics than of physics. Perhaps philosophy can help in categorising these theories ;) >> Would be happy to be proved wrong, though. >With emphasis added: wouldn't we all? ;) Yes, well, I never claimed to be free from the constraints of thought :)
- johncolanduoni 10y ago
  Why would you file proof theory under philosophy as opposed to mathematical logic? Proof theory isn't any less mathematical than, say, the integers. You start with a fully formal set of ground rules specifying the system you're studying, and then use a specified mechanism of formal deduction to determine features of that system that are a product of that specification. You can use proof theory to strengthen/weaken claims in the philosophy of mathematics, like how Godel's incompleteness theorems removed the possibility of a universal logical framework for all possible mathematics. But you're doing the same when you shoot down Aristotle's claims with the physical sciences, so I don't see why you would that would be a reason to file it under philosophy.
  - foldr 10y ago
    If you are going to exclude anything that could be considered mathematics or science from the domain of philosophy, then trivially, you will find that philosophy concerns things which can't be precisely quantified or empirically proven. Proof theory does, however, originate from the work of philosophers (Aristotle being a salient example), and issues relating to proof theory are central to epistemology and metaphysics. One problem that philosophy has is that its most conspicuously successful branches often become disciplines in their own right, so that philosophy doesn't get any credit.
    - johncolanduoni 10y ago
      There's a difference between excluding them from the domain of philosophy, and co-opting them as developments of philosophy. The distinction here is that the methods used to develop proof theory look exceedingly similar to how mathematics is developed, and quite alien to the methods of philosophy both of that time and now. Frege didn't develop his proof theory by spending years doing literary reviews of previous philosophers, or by writing papers and books based on suppositions. You're right that proof theory, like mathematics and science, branched off from philosophy some time in the past. But looking at the successes of these branches as evidence that you should read old philosophy or engage in the mainstream methods of contemporary philosophy when their methods are worlds apart does not make much sense.
- ommunist 10y ago
  These are not trivial at all. Read Metzinger's "The Ego Tunnel" for more information. There are neural nets within neural nets, but there is no such thing as "me", "you" or "I". Also additionally Dawkins's "The Magic of Reality" is quite a food for thought.

Can you give any examples of philosophical ideas proved experimentally?

by tdb7893 10y ago

Can you give any examples of philosophical ideas proved experimentally?

Proof theory itself. You can thank Boole, Cantor, Peirce, Russel, Frege, and Peano (among many others) for that. Depending upon what you mean by a proof, there are also "ideas" in philosophy that are trivially true: 1. I am. 2. There is a thing that I am. 3. The thing that I am is me. 4. I am me. These are completely trivial, but they're also interesting from a language-and-object perspective.

placebo 10y ago
I'd expect philosophy to try and dive into what point 1 actually means rather than to jump to conclusions with points 2 to 4, otherwise it becomes mostly a practice of defining axioms within the realm of thought and manipulating concepts and relations, much like mathematics but without the practicality (in most cases). Of course, answering what point 1 means could require venturing beyond the scope of what can be reached by thought alone, which would place it outside the acceptable scientific boundary. It appears to me as if philosophy is in the unfortunate position where on one hand, it is ill equipped to answer the deepest questions and on the other it can't arrive at any important and empirically falsifiable conclusions. Would be happy to be proved wrong, though.
- woodruffw 10y ago
  Oh, they were meant to be individual axioms, not a cohesive argument. That's what makes them interesting - they're four things that say essentially the same thing, but with profoundly different implications and preconditions. > otherwise it becomes mostly a practice of defining axioms within the realm of thought and manipulating concepts and relations, much like mathematics but without the practicality (in most cases) That tradition in mathematics comes from analytic philosophy. That's not to say that all philosophy is about defining and manipulating relations (it isn't, and shouldn't be), but that language-games (to borrow Wittgenstein's term) are a subject of valid inquiry. > It appears to me as if philosophy is in the unfortunate position where on one hand, it is ill equipped to answer the deepest questions and on the other it can't arrive at any important and empirically falsifiable conclusions. Yeah, it often appears that way. However, we except such a sorry state of affairs in theoretical physics and the workings of the mind -- why should we be any less charitable with philosophy? > Would be happy to be proved wrong, though. With emphasis added: wouldn't we all? ;)
  - placebo 10y ago
    > However, we except such a sorry state of affairs in theoretical physics and the workings of the mind -- why should we be any less charitable with philosophy? Well, personally I don't expect nor accept any non-falsifiable theories from any branch of science. There is a tendency to relax this requirement in some theoretical fields of physics and to say that it suffices if a theory is empirical and unambiguous. Of course one can make the line fuzzy with some of them and say that they are tentatively falsifiable (i.e they can be once humanity will be reach a certain level of progress), but as far as I'm concerned, those type of theories are more suitable as a special branch of mathematics than of physics. Perhaps philosophy can help in categorising these theories ;) >> Would be happy to be proved wrong, though. >With emphasis added: wouldn't we all? ;) Yes, well, I never claimed to be free from the constraints of thought :)
johncolanduoni 10y ago
Why would you file proof theory under philosophy as opposed to mathematical logic? Proof theory isn't any less mathematical than, say, the integers. You start with a fully formal set of ground rules specifying the system you're studying, and then use a specified mechanism of formal deduction to determine features of that system that are a product of that specification. You can use proof theory to strengthen/weaken claims in the philosophy of mathematics, like how Godel's incompleteness theorems removed the possibility of a universal logical framework for all possible mathematics. But you're doing the same when you shoot down Aristotle's claims with the physical sciences, so I don't see why you would that would be a reason to file it under philosophy.
- foldr 10y ago
  If you are going to exclude anything that could be considered mathematics or science from the domain of philosophy, then trivially, you will find that philosophy concerns things which can't be precisely quantified or empirically proven. Proof theory does, however, originate from the work of philosophers (Aristotle being a salient example), and issues relating to proof theory are central to epistemology and metaphysics. One problem that philosophy has is that its most conspicuously successful branches often become disciplines in their own right, so that philosophy doesn't get any credit.
  - johncolanduoni 10y ago
    There's a difference between excluding them from the domain of philosophy, and co-opting them as developments of philosophy. The distinction here is that the methods used to develop proof theory look exceedingly similar to how mathematics is developed, and quite alien to the methods of philosophy both of that time and now. Frege didn't develop his proof theory by spending years doing literary reviews of previous philosophers, or by writing papers and books based on suppositions. You're right that proof theory, like mathematics and science, branched off from philosophy some time in the past. But looking at the successes of these branches as evidence that you should read old philosophy or engage in the mainstream methods of contemporary philosophy when their methods are worlds apart does not make much sense.
ommunist 10y ago
These are not trivial at all. Read Metzinger's "The Ego Tunnel" for more information. There are neural nets within neural nets, but there is no such thing as "me", "you" or "I". Also additionally Dawkins's "The Magic of Reality" is quite a food for thought.