4 ms·
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 yo
by 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 agoHow do you define "explanation"?
- uoaei 3y agoThen it's a common mistake that many scientists and technologists make, which further informs their worldviews and ideologies.
- lisper 3y agoYes, 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 agoExplain "believe."
- borlanco 3y ago"Believe" means you are willing to consider some results as premises for your next deduction.
- dventimi 3y agoWhat 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 agoWhat 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 agoNot 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 agoWhy 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.