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Locke and Molyneux had a hypothesis: "Not. For, though he has obtained the experience of how a globe, how a cube affects his touch, yet he has not yet obtained

Locke and Molyneux had a hypothesis: "Not. For, though he has obtained the experience of how a globe, how a cube affects his touch, yet he has not yet obtained the experience, that what affects his touch so or so, must affect his sight so or so; or that a protuberant angle in the cube, that pressed his hand unequally, shall appear to his eye as it does in the cube." They didn't have an experiment that could test this hypothesis. When we were able to perform an experiment, their hypothesis turned out to be correct. This isn't "dumb luck" any more than Einstein's theory of general relativity being confirmed by the precession of mercury. And it doesn't have anything to do with neurology - it's about the structure of the mind and perception, rather than the anatomy of the brain, eye, and hands (software, rather than hardware).

ajross 9y ago
That hypothesis was wrong though. It's just word salad, they didn't have a theory for how one "obtains" "experience", or for how that "what affects" can be transfered or not between senses. And it's fine as philosophy, because you're allowed to do that. But it's not science, shouldn't be called science, and you shouldn't be using a scientific result based on proper hypothesis testing and two centuries of theory work to argue about who was the "better philosopher". Not. Science. That's my only point.
- kbutler 9y ago
  The hypothesis was that the correspondence of visual perception with tactile perception is learned, not innate. That's a perfectly valid scientific hypothesis, and turns out to be testable and correct. Science, from Google: the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. They hardly need a theory for how you gain those experiences - you gain those experiences by seeing objects and by handling them, obviously. Granted, they didn't understand Maxwell's equations and photoelectric effects and some complete model of the light-retina-nerves-brain-mind system, but they didn't need that in order to make scientific hypotheses about whether we learn to correlate sensory stimuli with the world around us or if it just automatic. We know more now (but hopefully not as much as people 200 years from now will know), but that doesn't mean they weren't doing science: the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment
- vokep 9y ago
  I may agree with you that it is not science. However I disagree with the reasons you use to back this up. They did have a theory for how one obtains experience, a basic one (the senses collect info about the outside world and...thats it, experience gained!) It really sounds like you're claiming philosophy is not a science, which doesn't really make sense. Philosophy is certainly a unique kind of science, one where hypotheses must be made on nebulous difficult to define concepts, and lots of things are difficult or impossible to test. However that doesn't automatically make it not scientific. Just because theories are untestable doesn't mean science cannot be done with them. Because they aren't truly untestable, they just aren't entirely testable. You may not be able to prove/disprove a given theory, but you can test a group of theories, limit it to "okay, we can't tell which theory is true, but it absolutely IS one of these theories, not any others" And quite possibly as other science advances, previously untestable aspects may become testable and the list can be shortened. To claim that philosophy isn't science is to claim it cannot make any objective progress, which is something I definitely disagree with.

ajross 9y ago

That hypothesis was wrong though. It's just word salad, they didn't have a theory for how one "obtains" "experience", or for how that "what affects" can be transfered or not between senses. And it's fine as philosophy, because you're allowed to do that. But it's not science, shouldn't be called science, and you shouldn't be using a scientific result based on proper hypothesis testing and two centuries of theory work to argue about who was the "better philosopher". Not. Science. That's my only point.

kbutler 9y ago
The hypothesis was that the correspondence of visual perception with tactile perception is learned, not innate. That's a perfectly valid scientific hypothesis, and turns out to be testable and correct. Science, from Google: the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. They hardly need a theory for how you gain those experiences - you gain those experiences by seeing objects and by handling them, obviously. Granted, they didn't understand Maxwell's equations and photoelectric effects and some complete model of the light-retina-nerves-brain-mind system, but they didn't need that in order to make scientific hypotheses about whether we learn to correlate sensory stimuli with the world around us or if it just automatic. We know more now (but hopefully not as much as people 200 years from now will know), but that doesn't mean they weren't doing science: the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment
vokep 9y ago
I may agree with you that it is not science. However I disagree with the reasons you use to back this up. They did have a theory for how one obtains experience, a basic one (the senses collect info about the outside world and...thats it, experience gained!) It really sounds like you're claiming philosophy is not a science, which doesn't really make sense. Philosophy is certainly a unique kind of science, one where hypotheses must be made on nebulous difficult to define concepts, and lots of things are difficult or impossible to test. However that doesn't automatically make it not scientific. Just because theories are untestable doesn't mean science cannot be done with them. Because they aren't truly untestable, they just aren't entirely testable. You may not be able to prove/disprove a given theory, but you can test a group of theories, limit it to "okay, we can't tell which theory is true, but it absolutely IS one of these theories, not any others" And quite possibly as other science advances, previously untestable aspects may become testable and the list can be shortened. To claim that philosophy isn't science is to claim it cannot make any objective progress, which is something I definitely disagree with.