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Short summary first, long rant follows. Summary: Mathematics and small parts of philosophy and many other disciplines rightly qualify as non-empirical science,

Short summary first, long rant follows. Summary: Mathematics and small parts of philosophy and many other disciplines rightly qualify as non-empirical science, but no lesson can or should be drawn from them about empirical science. Empirical questions are fundamentally different from non-empirical questions. Long rant: I don't disagree fundemantally but what you say about philosophy irks me as a philosopher. If you looked at a random sample of publications in philosophy you would find out that only a very small percentage of them has the rigour and exactness that we associate with science. I have also met many philosophers, perhaps even the majority of all I've met so far, who would not describe themselves as scientists. The remaining part of philosophy that adheres to strict standards and uses mathematical method is akin to mathematics and computer science, and perhaps most similar related to formal linguistics and economics in the way it works. I personally consider this part of philosophy a science, it is a kind of applied mathematics, although often speculative and conditional on axioms that are not as evident as in mathematics. Other disciplines have similar non-empirical parts, a typical example is Social Choice theory in sociology, which I would consider a scientific theory, although it is not empirical. In the end, it's applied mathematics. I agree that mathematics and the relevant rigid and formal parts of other disciplines are non-empirical science, but to these areas the debate about hypothesis testing and the right use of statistics simply doesn't apply. It a fallacy to presume that, because these fields exist, clearly empirical disciplines (or parts thereof) could do without statistics. If a question is empirical, then it has to be addressed with proper quantitative methodology. This is extremely important to me personally, since I've been in deep disagreement with colleagues for many years about this issue. They work in related disciplines within our philosophy institute and habitually make "qualitative empirical analyses" of texts without treating them as mere precursors to quantitative studies. They see no problems with their methodology, even when I point out to them that the size of their samples would be too small to support the generalizations they make if they did make quantitative studies. To me, this is absolutely crazy, I just can't see how a qualitative analysis of 20 texts could allow you to take these as representative for hundreds of thousands of texts if a quantitative studies of the same texts could not possibly reveal anything useful because the sample size is too small. What's worse, their whole discipline seems to be based on these kind of extremely small scale qualitative empirical studies, plus a very vague mix of fairly imprecise philosophy and common sense. I'm a nice person and get along with my colleagues well, so I won't ever tell them my opinion, but if I'm honest, I'd say that their discipline is pseudo-science or, at best, imprecise, non-scientific philosophy in disguise. (To make this clear, I have no problem with imprecise philosophy and have done it occasionally myself, I just don't think it can qualify as science and not many philosophers consider it as such.) Long story short, empirical question have to be addressed with quantitative methodology or you get what I'd call "elaborate opinions".

cbkeller 8y ago
Sounds fair enough. I do wish that physical scientists, including myself, had more philosophical training though, even if its not science per se, such that we could reliably have original, educated opinions on empiricism, rationalism, etc.
- learnfromerror 8y ago
  Might I mention my book (Statistical Inference as Severe Testing: How to Get Beyond the Science Wars (Mayo CUP)). https://twitter.com/learnfromerror/status/1071970206371713026 https://twitter.com/learnfromerror/status/107197020637171302... I did not know of Hacker news but was trying to trace why my blog errorstatstics.com got its maximal # of hits in over 7 years as a result of my posting their letter on the ASA Statement Now I'll disappear.
  - cbkeller 8y ago
    I'll have to check it out!
  - JohnStrangeII 8y ago
    Very interesting, I'll order your book tomorrow!
claudiawerner 8y ago
I feel (as a non-philosopher who only casually reads) as though the question of empirical methods in philosophy comes down in large part to critiques of positivism, operationalism and therefore also the Frankfurt School's aim to synthesise the social, economic, historical, philosophical (if you'll bear with me) and juristic sciences in a total approach rather than restricting to one area. It seems that one could avoid the onus to pursue quantitative methodology by rephrasing the question not as an empirical one. Your example of the twenty texts seems to call for an empirical analysis, but perhaps identifying "common themes in the genre" might not, depending on how the point is elaborated. It's another discussion as to whether such a question should be answered with empirical methods. To me it's a mistake to conflate rigor with empirical analysis, but you seem to agree when you talk about mathematics. Philosophical arguments can be rigorous, but a lot of what counts as some flavor of philosophy (the synthesis mentioned above) is critical and some really does make the claim to be rigorous. So it seems there's now a choice: either to say philosophy is not a science because it is not rigorous (due to some of its elements), or to say that philosophy can be scientific, just as information theory or theoretical physics, or theoretical computer science can be scientific. Many philosophers don't consider themselves scientists but I think this is at least in part because the mainstream conception of science really is empirical rather than rigorous analysis. In fact, even non-rigorous empirical analysis can pass for science. Depending on the area, I think that qualitative methodology can capture what quantitative can't, or where quantitative would be unreliable or impossible to use without changing the result significantly. In a nutshell, philosophy can be scientific if a method is pursued rigorously, but a lot of what is called philosophy is critical theory which is important if not scientific (despite using qualitative and quantitative analyses where appropriate). I have a feeling that critical theorists would question the separation we're erecting between science and non-science, especially those who view critical theory as in part an artistic endeavor too.

cbkeller 8y ago

Sounds fair enough. I do wish that physical scientists, including myself, had more philosophical training though, even if its not science per se, such that we could reliably have original, educated opinions on empiricism, rationalism, etc.

learnfromerror 8y ago
Might I mention my book (Statistical Inference as Severe Testing: How to Get Beyond the Science Wars (Mayo CUP)). https://twitter.com/learnfromerror/status/1071970206371713026 https://twitter.com/learnfromerror/status/107197020637171302... I did not know of Hacker news but was trying to trace why my blog errorstatstics.com got its maximal # of hits in over 7 years as a result of my posting their letter on the ASA Statement Now I'll disappear.
- cbkeller 8y ago
  I'll have to check it out!
- JohnStrangeII 8y ago
  Very interesting, I'll order your book tomorrow!

claudiawerner 8y ago

I feel (as a non-philosopher who only casually reads) as though the question of empirical methods in philosophy comes down in large part to critiques of positivism, operationalism and therefore also the Frankfurt School's aim to synthesise the social, economic, historical, philosophical (if you'll bear with me) and juristic sciences in a total approach rather than restricting to one area. It seems that one could avoid the onus to pursue quantitative methodology by rephrasing the question not as an empirical one. Your example of the twenty texts seems to call for an empirical analysis, but perhaps identifying "common themes in the genre" might not, depending on how the point is elaborated. It's another discussion as to whether such a question should be answered with empirical methods. To me it's a mistake to conflate rigor with empirical analysis, but you seem to agree when you talk about mathematics. Philosophical arguments can be rigorous, but a lot of what counts as some flavor of philosophy (the synthesis mentioned above) is critical and some really does make the claim to be rigorous. So it seems there's now a choice: either to say philosophy is not a science because it is not rigorous (due to some of its elements), or to say that philosophy can be scientific, just as information theory or theoretical physics, or theoretical computer science can be scientific. Many philosophers don't consider themselves scientists but I think this is at least in part because the mainstream conception of science really is empirical rather than rigorous analysis. In fact, even non-rigorous empirical analysis can pass for science. Depending on the area, I think that qualitative methodology can capture what quantitative can't, or where quantitative would be unreliable or impossible to use without changing the result significantly. In a nutshell, philosophy can be scientific if a method is pursued rigorously, but a lot of what is called philosophy is critical theory which is important if not scientific (despite using qualitative and quantitative analyses where appropriate). I have a feeling that critical theorists would question the separation we're erecting between science and non-science, especially those who view critical theory as in part an artistic endeavor too.