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Perhaps it went over my head but in summary he wanted the scientific process of discovery in physics research to stop because his philosophy couldn't keep up?

• lisper 3y ago
  Yep. Pretty much. This is a not-uncommon sentiment among philosophers. It's the only way they can cope with the shift in the societal power dynamic that has happened since Newton and Darwin and Einstein and Turing and Bell. Science has subsumed philosophy, and the philosophers really hate that.
  • uoaei 3y ago
    On the other hand, the hubris of physicists to call their trade a replacement for philosophy exposes the fatal flaw in scientism.
    • lisper 3y ago
      Why is that a fatal flaw?
      • AnimalMuppet 3y ago
        Because even if you have experimental results in your favor, you still need epistemology to tell you why you can believe the results of the experiments. And you can't derive epistemology from experiments. Logical positivism tried to do this, and failed. Michael Polanyi's Personal Knowledge pretty much killed logical positivism, because he showed that no scientist is in the fully objective position that was required to set up and evaluate the experiments.
        • lisper 3y ago
          > you still need epistemology to tell you why you can believe the results of the experiments No, you don't. This is a common mistake. Science is not about knowledge, it's about explanations. The whole idea of "knowledge" is just part of a vast web of explanations that turn out to be exceptionally good at accounting for the data. > logical positivism The mistake of logical positivism is the unjustified assumption that there exists such a thing as "truth", and that this thing is accessible to us by thinking. It isn't. It's a consequence of the empirical observation that the scientific method converges towards something. "Truth" is just a label that we attach to the thing that it's converging to (or at least appears to be converging to -- we won't know if that limit actually exists until we get there).
          • hetman 3y ago
            How do you define "explanation"?
            • dventimi 3y ago
              Speech which conjures in the mind of the listener a model of the world with which they can make deductions about their sensory experiences
            • lisper 3y ago
              https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-explanation/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-explanation/
          • uoaei 3y ago
            Then it's a common mistake that many scientists and technologists make, which further informs their worldviews and ideologies.
            • lisper 3y ago
              Yes, that's true. Many people, including scientists, don't actually understand how the scientific method works. However, there is also another possibility, and that is that the word "knowledge" is being used in two different ways. "Knowledge" in science is often used as a shorthand for "The best explanation we currently have in hand, one which has so far withstood all attempts to falsify it." This is different from the kind of knowledge studied by epistemology, but it is a not-entirely-unreasonable use of the word.
        • dventimi 3y ago
          Explain "believe."
          • borlanco 3y ago
            "Believe" means you are willing to consider some results as premises for your next deduction.
            • dventimi 3y ago
              What I'm willing to do is very personal. Personally, I don't need epistemology to judge whether I'm willing to consider some results for my next deduction, and no philosopher is in a position to tell me otherwise.
              • borlanco 3y ago
                What you say means you're a philosopher too! Seriously, philosophy is a personal endeavor. You derive your own, make your own deductions, and you believe in them. That makes it valid for you. But ... if your philosophy is about how the world works, about some aspects of reality, and you want to ensure that both your philosophy and reality agree, then you can choose to do science: 1. From your philosophy, derive some hypothesis. 2. Check you hypothesis with some experiment.
                • dventimi 3y ago
                  Not to me, it doesn't. To me, philosophy is a profession inhabited by trained professionals working in academic departments, teaching students, and publishing in journals. That's not me. I'm just a human doing human things. We've existed for millions of years before philosophers and their departments and their journals came along. More important, following this thread upward we see: 1. The urge of some scientists to offer science as a replacement for philosophy was scored as a fatal flaw 2. The question was asked, "Why is this a fatal flaw?" 3. That question was answered with the claim that something called "epistemology" is needed in order to make decisions based on experiences. Evidently, "epistemology" is an essential ingredient to human decisions which would be lost if we tried to replace philosophy with science. 4. But I said, no, I personally don't need "epistemology"--whatever that is--to make decisions. 5. Then it was claimed that whatever I'm doing to make decisions is inherently "philosophy." Yet, I'm not doing anything special, so if I'm doing philosophy then I guess everyone is doing philosophy, even scientists. 6. If that's true then what happened to "epistemology" and the fatal flaw of omitting it in the vain attempt to substitute science for philosophy? This really isn't adding up.
        • bee_rider 3y ago
          Why is that flaw fatal? Just borrow epistemology from the philosophers of whatever. Purity and inter-field spats are stupid, scientists just want the results.
        • shellac 3y ago
          > Michael Polanyi's _Personal Knowledge_ pretty much killed logical positivism, because he showed that no scientist is in the fully objective position that was required to set up and evaluate the experiments. That's an unusual claim. It's typically attributed to the criticisms of Popper and Quine, after which the foundations were undermined.
      • rz2k 3y ago
        Isn’t scientism the idea that we have a set of knowledge that is conclusively known along with a heavy reliance on authority, while science is about inquiry, experimentation and searching for theories? A physicists dismissing philosophy as out of date implies that we are already on the optimum path to discovering the remaining knowledge about the universe to be learned.
        • uoaei 3y ago
          > A physicists dismissing philosophy as out of date implies that we are already on the optimum path to discovering the remaining knowledge about the universe to be learned. It implies they believe that. Which is ultimately a dogmatic ideology. That is why I call it scientism and not science. Obviously we cannot know if that is the case or not because of the nature of time (the future holds answers that the past cannot, yet remains inaccessible to beings such as us). There is no good reason to believe that our theories aren't missing some crucial aspects which were already understood and subsequently lost. The cultural narrative of progress is so strongly asserted, yet what we know of as "history" is such a narrow and skewed perspective. I myself am a physicist. I once had the confidence to assert that physics is the One True Way to understand life, the universe, and everything and that progress is inevitable (Newton's "shoulders of giants"). I no longer believe this is the case because of my explorations through the traditions of thought present in philosophy. For sure I can cram the lines of discourse that most interest me into quasi-physics-based theories (post-structuralism is especially interesting as a systems person) but that's not to say that physics can represent everything there is to know. Physics is a language just like any other and there are some ideas that physics simply cannot express.
        • lisper 3y ago
          No, scientism is simply the belief that the scientific method is applicable to all areas of intellectual inquiry, and that it's the most productive such method. The dismissal of philosophy is a straightforward corollary to that belief. Note that the scientific method is self-correcting even in this regard: if someone can demonstrate a more productive method of inquiry, someone following the scientific method would accept that new method, just as they would accept any hypothesis that is demonstrably superior to the current state of the art.
      • hetman 3y ago
        It's also worth adding that the scientific method is fundamentally based on unprovable axiomatic assumptions. In other words it's still philosophy all the way down. To be clear, I don't think all philosophical ideas are equally valid and this particular set of axioms has proven quite useful in practice, but at best all we can really say is that it provides a user window for examining reality. We don't know how wide that window happens to be and how much of reality we can see through it. We don't even know if the scientific method is the best it could be in what we use it for. After all, it was only expanded with the idea of falsification in the 20th century yet we were still doing useful science before than.
        • lisper 3y ago
          > It's also worth adding that the scientific method is fundamentally based on unprovable axiomatic assumptions. No, it isn't. This is a very common myth, but it is in fact a myth. Science has no axioms. > We don't even know if the scientific method is the best it could be in what we use it for. That's true. But what we do know is that the scientific method is vastly more effective than anything else humans have come up with in helping us navigate our existence and exercise some degree of control over our destiny. > After all, it was only expanded with the idea of falsification in the 20th century yet we were still doing useful science before than. That is also true, and that is one of the reasons to believe that the scientific method is special and unlikely to be improved upon. It's not just an arbitrary choice. It is privileged, and there is actually reason to believe that this privileged status is a reflection of some underlying reality. But this is not an axiom, it's a result.
        • mannykannot 3y ago
          In practice, science is, and has been, rather flexible about its assumptions, and, ironically, has been criticized for that by philosophers - and yet it has been remarkably successful, arguably because it gives a lot of weight to empiricism and not so much to debating axioms. > We don't know how wide that window happens to be and how much of reality we can see through it... We don't even know if the scientific method is the best it could be in what we use it for. It is telling that these sentiments are not followed by something beginning "analytical philosophy, in contrast..." > [Science] was only expanded with the idea of falsification in the 20th century yet we were still doing useful science before than. It was doing de facto, though somewhat ad hoc, falsification long before Popper focused his attention it. The philosophy of science is much more descriptive than prescriptive. Having said this, you may be surprised to learn that I spend a some of my free time reading and thinking about various aspects of philosophy. I must say, however, that I feel that western metaphysics lost its way in its attempt to address fundamental questions through the analysis of language.
    • ajuc 3y ago
      We've seen countless subjects on which philosophers argued for centuries solved by physicists and mathematicians. We've yet to see one example going the other way. At best philosophers provide interesting questions. At worst they are just paperpushers categorizing the work others did into pointless and arbitrary categories and arguing about them :)
    • bee_rider 3y ago
      What’s scientism?
      • mellosouls 3y ago
        It has a couple of definitions but the relevant one here is a blinkered, complacent over-confident belief in the power of science to explain everything, often accompanied by an ignorant dismissal of philosophy. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
        • dventimi 3y ago
          Can you give any examples?
          • mellosouls 3y ago
            Sure, just look at the dismissive, anti-philosophy tone of some of the comments in the discussion here.
            • dventimi 3y ago
              Can you be more specific?
              • mellosouls 3y ago
                I think it's pretty clear. If I start pointing fingers it starts an argument. Tbh I'm suspicious of your inability to find them yourself or your quest for examples. It's a bit sealiony.
                • dventimi 3y ago
                  Suit yourself. I'm not going to make your case for you.
                  • 3y ago
  • AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    But hasn't it always been that way? Copernicus was a revolution to philosophy. Newton was a revolution to philosophy. Is it just that we're more aware of the current philosophers, who will be forgotten in a century or two? Or is the philosophical opposition actually stronger now?
    • lisper 3y ago
      > But hasn't it always been that way? Copernicus was a revolution to philosophy. Newton was a revolution to philosophy. Yes, that's why I specifically cited Newton. I could have cited Copernicus as well, and Galileo, and a few dozen others but I didn't want to get too long-winded. > Is it just that we're more aware of the current philosophers, who will be forgotten in a century or two? Or is the philosophical opposition actually stronger now? If anything I think it's weaker now than in the past because the fruits of science are so evident to everyone. It is plain to everyone that smart phones did not come out of philosophy departments. The niches in which philosophers can make meaningful contributions are getting narrower and narrower, which makes them more and more desperate and shrill. But I predict they will eventually go the way of the alchemist. Or maybe the astrologer. Astrologers figured out a way to eke out a living as charlatans. Maybe philosophers will too. (Maybe they already have.)
  • uptheroots 3y ago
    Philosophy can approach many questions that currently feel out of the realm of science
    • lisper 3y ago
      Like what?
      • spookthesunset 3y ago
        How do you believe the results you are getting? What makes such a belief justified? What is the nature of consciousness? What are things beautiful? What makes something ascetically pleasing. Why any of this exists at all? What is the purpose of this existence? Is something ethical? Science can provide answer about consequences of an action but cannot determine if said action is moral or ethical. … science is not a book of facts. It is merely a process for testing a hypothesis. It is not a replacement for philosophy, it is underpinned by philosophy.
        • lisper 3y ago
          Those are all very good questions, and I can't do them justice in an HN comment. But here's a first cut: > How do you believe the results you are getting? What makes such a belief justified? Read David Deutsch "The Fabric of Reality" chapter 7. > What is the nature of consciousness? Read Daniel Dennett, "Consciousness Explained". > What are things beautiful? What makes something ascetically pleasing. Read Richard Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene" (and, if you want to get deep into these weeds, "The Extended Phenotype"). > Why any of this exists at all? What makes you think that any of this does exist at all? > What is the purpose of this existence? What makes you think that this existence has a purpose? > Is something ethical? Science can provide answer about consequences of an action but cannot determine if said action is moral or ethical. Read "The Evolution of Cooperation" by Robert Axelrod. (The Selfish Gene addresses this as well.) > science is not a book of facts. That's true. > It is merely a process for testing a hypothesis. No, it's not "merely" that. It is a process for producing good explanations that account for observations. That turns out to be tremendously powerful. > It is not a replacement for philosophy, it is underpinned by philosophy. No, it isn't. The existence of philosophy (and philosophers!) can be explained by science.
  • johnnyworker 3y ago
    If scientists had the slightest bit of societal power, our response to climate change wouldn't be this shameful, and climate activists wouldn't be so successfully marked for the daily sessions of "5 minutes of hate". What did gain societal power is capitalism is brute-forcing its way into everything via "tech" that then pats the people in gold-plated cages, who allow their genius to be used for that on the back, while feeding them crumbs. Where nothing that can't be counted matters and destroying the environment -- both physical and that of society, that which minds get formed in -- is perfectly rational, as long as there is a cent of profit to be made. Some people get really high on it, think someone's "won" (what?) and it might even be them, but let's not pretend any of the great scientists that get name-dropped so easily have anything to do with that, or haven't even spoken against it at length. > Our entire much-praised technological progress, and civilization generally, could be compared to an axe in the hand of a pathological criminal. -- Albert Einstein > Let us not forget that human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the enquiring and constructive mind. > What these blessed men have given us we must guard and try to keep alive with all our strength if humanity is not to lose its dignity, the security of its existence, and its joy in living. -- Albert Einstein > As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. [..] This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. -- Charles Darwin, "The Descent of Man" (1871) > It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love. -- Stephen Hawking Science is a tool. More precisely, it's a method to make and improve and gauge tools. But those tools can't ask questions (we didn't somehow put there first), they cannot judge. They can tell you if something is fair according to your parameters and heuristics, but they know nothing of the inherent value in being fair, they can't answer "should I be fair?", and the same for everything else that actually matters.
    • lisper 3y ago
  • zquzra 3y ago
    No, they don't. Well, not the ones I read. Philosophers have been cheerleading science since Kant.
• 725686 3y ago
  Anytime this philosophy vs. science comes up I like to quote Richard Feynman: "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds."