What's the Difference between Philosophy and Science?
Science of Philosophy, or philosophy of science?
Can scientific truth and philosophical truth contradict each other and yet retain their validity, respectively?
Does science deviate from the philosophical project when it rolls up its sleeves and gets down and dirty with observation of nature, experimentation, and double-blind testing?
If science discovers a posteriori the facts of nature, then does it follow that science, being the source of empirical truth, equates itself with materialism?
Is every category of science a type of materialism?
Does philosophy hold aloof from science within an academic fortress of abstract math and logic?
If philosophy of science governs scientific practice, then does it follow that philosophy, being the source of the rules, equates itself with metaphysics?
Is every category of philosophy a type of metaphysics?
Can scientific truth and philosophical truth contradict each other and yet retain their validity, respectively?
Does science deviate from the philosophical project when it rolls up its sleeves and gets down and dirty with observation of nature, experimentation, and double-blind testing?
If science discovers a posteriori the facts of nature, then does it follow that science, being the source of empirical truth, equates itself with materialism?
Is every category of science a type of materialism?
Does philosophy hold aloof from science within an academic fortress of abstract math and logic?
If philosophy of science governs scientific practice, then does it follow that philosophy, being the source of the rules, equates itself with metaphysics?
Is every category of philosophy a type of metaphysics?
Comments (77)
Philosophy of science does not govern scientific practice.
You can philosophize about science, as you can about anything, real or imagined. But a science of philosophy would have find something to measure, some process to follow from one state to another. That's not impossible, maybe, but it sure isn't easy!
Quoting ucarr
I don't see how. But that's okay, because philosophers catch up with scientific discovery sooner or later, and change their conjectures accordingly.
Quoting ucarr
Science was never in the service of a "philosophical project"; observation of nature and experimentation is what science does.
Quoting ucarr
Science doesn't equate itself with an ism; it just tries to discover how things work.
Quoting ucarr
Again, without any ism, real, tangible things and real, observable relationships is what science deals with. Immaterial things are too hard to study.
Quoting ucarr
I never have the slightest idea what philosophy's up to.
Quoting ucarr
Philosophy doesn't govern science or anything else. It wonders, postulates, theorizes, formulates and advances theories that cannot be tested. Certainly, metaphysics falls within that realm. Philosophers may propose rules, but they don't make rules.
Quoting ucarr
Is every category of science a type of physics?
The study of natural and physical phenomena was once the domain of philosophy, but so was the study of politics and ethics. Over time the one diverged from the other according to modern usage of either terms, especially as the sciences became more specialized. Nonetheless, PhD still stands for Doctor of Philosophy.
Quoting ucarr
'Philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds' ~ Richard Feynmann.
Quoting Vera Mont
This is how I first thought to word my question.
If there's only a narrow separation between materialism and physics, does this suggest a reason why philosophy seeks its playing field upon the platform of subjectivity?
Quoting wonderer1
If philosophy of science has no practical application, what value do philosophers find within it?
Quoting Wayfarer
Some scientists are very firm on a big difference between the two fields: Richard Feynmann. Must they wax philosophical when they describe the difference?
Quoting Wayfarer
Have philosophers established talking points explaining why science should not be privileged above philosophy?
Quoting Wayfarer
Do you deem these reasons for classifying philosophy within the humanities?
Quoting NOS4A2
Can the philosopher nowadays be taken seriously as a science generalist? This label is meant to parallel the general practitioner of medicine, a doctor who does not specialize.
I understand that German has a term 'geistewissenschaften' meaning 'sciences of the spirit', in which they include philosophy. There is no English equivalent for that term that I can think of.
I'd push against this a bit.
It's not like scientists cite philosophers of science, of course, tho Scientific practice could have its own philosophy -- one which, I suspect, isn't so general as "philosophy of science" might suggest.
But perhaps there are underlying philosophical presuppositions to any given science?
In which case there'd be a philosophy of science ... tho not governing, at least influencing scientific practice.
There is a huge gulf between physics and materialism. Physics describes how matter behaves; materialism is the desire to acquire wealth and comfort. How did isms get mixed up with science in the first place?
Quoting ucarr
Neither college-anointed nor self-styled philosophers have a monopoly on articulating what their field of study is about.
Philosophy of science.
Philosophy is not theoretical but rather is interpretive (i.e. makes explicit problemarizes presuppositions and/or implicitations) of non-theoretical as well as theoretical statements.
Science extends, not "deviates" from, philosophy into matters of fact (e.g. applied maths and logics).
No
No.
I don't understand this question.
"Philosophy of science" does not "govern science", it only clarifies and interprets concepts, methods, models, experiments, etc (and maybe even the import to, or impact on, non-scientific, or cultural, practices).
IMHO, a (kataphatic) metaphysics proposes a categorical hierarchy, or organization, of topics/aporias in philosophy (e.g.)
[ontology¹ [axiology² [epistemology]]]
which can be read knowing derived from valuing derived from being
that is, 'conceptually making sense in the most general way of reality in the most general sense'.
(including theology & cosmology)¹
(i.e. aesthetics, ethics, logic)²
Except philosophy, which is the science of science or the science of scientiIzing. So philosophy is inherently self-reflective taking as its subject, the subject.
I didn't say philosophy of science has no practical application. I said PoS doesn't govern science.
I can't speak much to what value philosophers find in PoS. It appears to me that a substantial fraction of philosophers (or at least those who fancy themselves philosophers) find PoS to be justification for being pretty ignorant of science.
:sad:
I'm not sure how to parse philosophers from those who fancy themselves philosophers, but I'd say that Philosophy of Science is more like the Olympic sport of philosophy.
And those who wanted to remain ignorant had no need of phil-o-sci.
Sure. I was specifically pointing out that it would be a misunderstanding to think that philosophy governs science.
Popper and Kuhn elucidated things that have been valuable to scientific thought, but I'd say that if it makes any sense to talk of something governing science 'Mother Nature' is the one laying down the laws.
Yeh, OK. I don't think there's a relationship of governance.
Quoting wonderer1
I wouldn't go that far, though.
I'd say there are no laws.
But that's at an abstract level.
In practice we have good enough measurements, theories, and predictions that make sense to enough of us to get along.
"laws", however, is a human concept we use to make sense of the regularity we happen to be able to collectively perceive. It's something of an interpretation rather than something that can be laid down, just as there is no mother nature that can lay it down.
At least to my mind -- tho this is getting to a level where I feel I'm just expressing what makes sense to me rather than arguing.
"Materialism" means two different things. A quick google gives me this:
1.
a tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values.
"they hated the sinful materialism of the wicked city"
2.
PHILOSOPHY
the theory or belief that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications.
the theory or belief that consciousness and will are wholly due to material agency.
You're talking about definition 1, while contextually in this conversation, it's safe to assume everyone else means something more along the lines of definition 2 - which is entirely unrelated to definition 1.
Someone could be a definition 1 materialist and not a definition 2 materialist - and vice versa.
You're right, of course. I was using the the more common definition tongue in cheek.
Science doesn't require one to "believe in" anything. A physicist can be a hedonist, an ascetic hermit, a fervent Muslim, a nihilist, a Marxist, a Quebec separatist or whatever in his personal philosophy. In his work, however, he studies the nature of physical matter and phenomena. If any philosophy, or ism, is allowed to influence the work of a physicists, he comes up with absurd, unprovable hypotheses, the way ancient philosophers did, and their experiments won't work.
Not guaranteed but required. It's the fundamental requirement for their discipline. Physics is singularly unforgiving, it's almost impossible to drag fanciful beliefs into the work. But a complex science, like medicine and climatology, can be contaminated by philosophical vagaries - especially lucrative ones.
What is the difference between philosophy and science:
The short list, and assuming the human condition alone .
..no science is ever done purely a priori, and no philosophy is ever done purely a posteriori;
..philosophical truths are proven logically and are necessarily so, scientific truths are proven empirically and are contingently so;
..no science is done that isnt first a philosophical construct, from which follows .
..a scientist is always a philosopher, but a philosopher is not always, nor needs be, a scientist;
..all together, philosophy differs from science merely in the determination and application of rules.
There are some philosophers who are versed in contemporary knowledge who might qualify as well.
JMHO
Interesting elaboration of certain practices likely going on quietly within science circles. Thanks for turning on this light.
Quoting jgill
Yes. This activity needs to be occurring steadily, and it is. Complicated processes need regular oversight with regard to methodology. Maybe it's a stretch, but I think metaphysics as the grammar or rules of procedure offers suggestions as to how methodology might evolve.
I don't see how philosophers looking over scientists' shoulders does any good. The various sciences have their own procedures, with the exception of quantum theory where there are questions.
Quoting Mww
Do you think it's also true when we switch the position of the two disciplines in the above statement?
Quoting Mww
This statement is interesting in a suggestive way: empirical truth, logically speaking, examples provisional knowledge in reference to abstract logical statements. Does this imply abstract logical statements are idealizations?
Quoting Mww
Here you show that scientific theorizing dovetails with philosophy: thinking in terms of correlation, logic and causation is always epistemological.
Quoting Mww
I differ with you here. If a philosopher is not first a scientist, then they need to always maintain a direct line to someone who is. I think the relationship between scientific truth and philosophical truth is bi-conditional. They're always linked by a double-implication. I think you say as much with:
Quoting Mww
and with:
Quoting Mww
Quoting Mww
I think this difference, when the two disciplines dialog constructively, for my reasons above, shrinks to a near vanishing point. I suppose I'm saying science and philosophy are two sub-divisions, or specializations operating under one over-arching category.
Philosophy is concerned with constructing ideas into language that makes sense logically. You can use this logic and attempt to apply it. So for example, lets say I create a definition of good which is built up from the ground logically. It seems good right? The next step is to apply it. That's science.
In another case, science can test something and find an outcome that no one thought possible. No one knows what this outcome means. Philosophy tries to capture that outcome into a language that is consistently logical and can then be tested against again.
I do not think the complete scientific method can exist without philosophy. I do not think a completely philosophical exploration can be complete without science. But, the fields can be separated enough at times where there is viable work to be done on the hypothesis alone vs work on the application alone. Thus the division of study.
Quoting jgill
We're on the same page here. I smile upon scientists who do in-house philosophizing about the meaning of one type of procedure versus another type. However, as you say:
Quoting jgill
So, it should be okay too if philosopher-specialists provide some of the thinking about proper scientific goals in general and likewise proper general scientific procedure.
Quoting Philosophim
So, it appears that you, like me, see the two disciplines connected within a bi-conditional relationship.
Quoting Vera Mont
You refer to a frequent problem of language. Materialism within science circles means matter is the basis for all of existence; there is no immaterial realm. Materialism within social circles means, as you say, prioritizing the acquisition of wealth. Usually, the two senses can be kept distinct by using "materialism" for the scientific sense, and using "materialistic" for the social sense.
Yes, that's correct. :)
If the differences between the two hold, one cannot be switched with the other. So, first, it would have to be shown how they are not, in order to show how the purities by which each is conditioned, are removed. Still, it is the requisite of metaphysics that it is purely a priori, eliminating it from being even partially a posteriori, as the switch in positions would ask.
Quoting ucarr
I might agree with that, iff the one over-arching category, is reason. Science and philosophy are both done by humans, and reason is the singular human condition, so .
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Quoting ucarr
The philosopher doesnt need a scientific consult if he is theorizing in, or merely speculating on, that which cannot at all be legislated by natural law. Or, in the interest of fairness, why would he?
Quoting ucarr
I dont understand what bi-conditional means. Nevertheless, Im not sure there is a relationship between truths predicated on an observable natural order, and truths predicated on speculative conceptual order.
Quoting ucarr
If it is the case these two dialogue constructively only by means of reason, then the difference may well vanish with respect to the determination of rules, but would remain for the application of them, insofar as rules determined as governing empirical conditions cannot apply to abstract conceptions. Bearing in mind, of course, cause/effect is a principle, not a rule, and as such applies to both.
Anyway .worthy subject, but I cant think of much else to say about it.
Agreed. But that philosophy should be provided by the scientists.
I know you've already discussed this, but I wanted to draw out a point. This is the view that physics is paradigmatic for science generally, and by extension, as a model for reliable knowledge. That is the basis of physicalism, which is how 'philosophical materialism' is described nowadays. And that is a theory about the nature of reality, which claims that the fundamental constituents of reality are material in nature. Usually it is associated with the idea that the mind is also a product of those material constituents, mediated by the brain. And that, I think, is more or less the default view of scientific culture.
Of course. Assuming that physical manifestations are caused by physical means through physical processes is a prerequisite of sound scientific method.
But that doesn't mean a scientist can't have irrational, fanciful and religious beliefs in his personal life.
Science is fact-based; human thinking is not not necessarily so.
Can't help but notice your categorisation of 'religious' with 'irrational' and 'fanciful' there. That is a value judgement, no?
Quoting Mww
Consider the pertinence of the following: a philosopher arrives at some logically valid statements about the potential of the reasoning mind: it can work through unlimited higher orders of categorical thinking within a discipline. The conclusion is that human freedom is unlimited by the standard of higher orders of categorical thinking. However, neuroscience discovers through long-term testing that the human brain, after reaching higher order X of categorical thinking, cannot process the data transfer rate from short-term processing to full cognition beyond higher order X without experiencing fatally high-volume error rates. The first conclusion being that artificial intelligence must take over beyond order X of categorical thinking. The philosopher would not know this a priori. The second conclusion being that the landscape of categorical perception beyond order X is not a reality for humanity whereas it is for artificial intelligence. The philosopher would not know the limit of what can be humanly real by this standard a priori.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Are you answering "yes" to the question:
Quoting ucarr
I understand what you're stating in a general sense. I think good philosophy should use as many facts and hew as close to current scientific understanding as possible.
I still think there are some cases where we need strong philosophy and where philosophers can help science. Knowledge, morality, and 'God' (or the nature of origin) are the few that come to my mind. However, other philosophy like "Philosophy of mind" is pretty much dead as an independent philosophical field and should be kept in the realm of science as much as possible.
Basically prior to there being a science, philosophy is our necessary start. Once there is an established science, philosophy must use that science as a basis.
It's three different available categories. There are several more, but I doubt scientists would hold those.
In the following sense, yes. Philosophizing is a reflective, meta activity. The earth formed and out of the waters animals diversified, and human beings thought. Somewhere in there was a moment where philosophy was new. At that moment, there was the thing (earth, waters diversifying animals, etc), and now the meta thing held or dispersed by a human. Philosophizing is humans being meta with things.
In the following sense no. Metaphysics starts with concepts (the meta) and gets theoretical and speculative from there (more meta). Metaphysics is a category of philosophy. But it is separate from logoic, which I think belongs in philosophy. Logic is pretty meta, pretty human, but maybe not just human, so maybe not only metaphysics (though it is a category of philosophy.)
I see ethics as tied to having a body in the world interacting with other bodies, causing ethical quandaries and being affected (so the effect) by ethical behaviors. So ethics as a category of philosophy cant stay purely metaphysical.
Epistemology is like logic and metaphysics overlapping - maybe another type of metaphysics. Ontology overlaps with pure physics, but is maybe half metaphysics and half physics.
Any bumper sticker you can provide for why? It seems odd to me. Like saying hydrologists need provide the engineering know-how for hydro-dams.
Quoting ucarr
How would the scientist test the philosophers logically valid statements, the subject and predicate of which are merely abstract conceptions? At bottom would be Aristotles laws of thought, in which it is clear A = A would be impossible to test with deductive certainty.
I grant that science can test some philosophic statements, but I wanted to account for it, by stating that philosophers need no consult for that investigation which in no way involves natural law, which would include statements the validity of which are only logical.
-
Quoting ucarr
Quoting ucarr
Here the philosopher, specifically the metaphysician, would reject even his own the notion of unlimited higher orders of critical thinking, which makes the neuroscientists claims of brain data loss inherent in it, mistaken hence irrelevant. On the other hand, the philosopher may well acknowledge data transfer loss even for the levels of critical thinking he grants to human intelligence; he would simply label forgetfulness what the neuroscientist labels plasticity.
Interesting gedankenexperiment though.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
The scope of science includes more that nature?
The scope of nature includes more than material things and their attendant physics?
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
As the medium is limited, so is the meaning supported by that medium. This is an argument for recognizing the unbreakable link connecting science, math and logic to the natural world. Abstract thought is part of the natural world because its medium is the brain.
I make this argument here because we're examining the difference between science and philosophy. Some argue the difference is centered in the difference between the material_physicality of empirical examination and verification and the supposed immateriality of abstract reasoning.
I argue for the vanishing point of difference between science and philosophy through the essential linkage connecting brain and mind.
I see the difference centered in the older generalism of philosophy and the newer specialization of science. The specialization of science post-European Renaissance creates an illusion of profound difference between the two.
Quoting Mww
As the medium is limited, so is the meaning supported by that medium.
If abstract thought is connected to the brain, then the limitations inherent in the material_physical dimensions of the brain: cells, synapses, electric current, gravity etc. exert controlling limits on what the content of abstract thought can be. In turn, these same limitations exert controlling limits on what the content of judgments about abstract thought can be.
The human, whose thinking is bounded by a physical brain, is blind to those limitations of brain on content of mind, as the human gets their sense of what is real and possible from within the boundaries of those limitations as their thoughts and perceptions of reality. In addition, a serial blindness is human's inability to see what exists that lies beyond the cognitive range of brain-based consciousness.
To exalt the mind's perception of reality beyond limitations of the brain amounts to driving the express lane to fallacy without knowing it.
Quoting Fire Ologist
Your philology and classification of philosophy show promise. I think you should continue as you've been going, with a mind towards detailed elaboration with maximum rigor.
Is see that higher-order thinking (meta activity) spiderwebs through all of your counter-examples. So, even when it ranges out from higher-order thinking, philosophy is still a mixed bag of grit and gaze.
Quoting Fire Ologist
I wonder if you'e thinking philosophy is always an instance of Chinese boxes?
If the human can think whatever he wants, where is the controlling limits by the brain on the content of his thought? All thats left is to say the brains limits prescribe the kind of thinker a human is, the content of his thoughts be what they may.
But I feel ya. The brain informs of all our knowledge, but doesnt give us even an inkling of the knowledge of how it informs of the knowledge we have. Its like the brain keeps to itself its own inner workings, while at the same time permitting the ability for us to know anything else, all else being given.
Quoting ucarr
Because we dont know enough of how the brain works, by what warrant can we say weve over-reached the brains capacity for knowing things? I think we do know when were approaching fallacies, in that Nature will tells us regarding real things (never step in front of a fast-mover), and logic will inform us regarding other-then-real things (A /= B).
Quoting Mww
My point is that the human can think what the brain has the capacity to think, and not beyond that point. That's a limit far short of being able to think whatever we wish to think. Consider that when we conceive of thinking whatever we wish to think, our ability to think out to this limit is limited in ways unknown to us, as you yourself acknowledge: Quoting Mww
So, the scope of our imagination is limited, and moreover, we don't know all of the details of the limitations, and thus we're limited in our knowledge of what we need to circumvent, and how to do it.
Quoting Mww
We're over-reaching when we imagine a fleshy mass of connected hemispheres has a scope of imagination beyond what protein-based matter has the capacity to conceive.
"Philosophy of science," tends to be much broader, and not intersect with the sciences to nearly the same degree. It is fairly common to see people with PhDs in physics or biology described as "philosophers of," those fields, but it is uncommon to see a scientist described as a "philosopher of science." The latter is much more general.
The other place you see philosophy intersecting with science is in interdisciplinary areas like information science, complexity studies, etc.
If you look back at how the terms for "science" were used from St. Aquinas up through Hegel's day, there isn't really wasn't too much a distinction. A science was any systematic study of an area of inquiry. Sciences were unique in terms of having different methodologies, and different first principles (following Aristotle's ideal of a science that can be deductively derived from first principles). But "science" was not a discrete form of inquiry.
I could see considerable merits to going back to such a view. "Science," is not really a special sort of sui generis thing, distinguished from all other areas of inquiry. We have only come to think of it in this way due to a short period of history where "anti-metaphysical," views were in vouge. But of course, this didn't get rid of metaphysics, rather it dogmatically enshrined a certain metaphysics, with negative consequences for the progress of science. Only now are we really getting over the hangover caused by this.
Lines of inquiry should be judged on their relative merits, not credentialism. You constantly hear academics bemoaning the negative effects of silos and turf wars, and yet it remains a common tactic to invoke these silos as a means of ending debate (e.g., "developmental biologists cannot speak to evolution, it isn't their specialty," being invoked as a counter to EES). Particularly, the replication crisis and problems with the relationship between economics, public policy, and incentive structures should call into question the absolute authority of "scientists," in their own field of study. For example, being an economist alone does not make one necessarily better equipped to judge the validity of statistical methods.
Yet, for all intents and purposes, that is exactly what appears to be the case. If we are what the brain does, and we have a rather unlimited imagination, we can only be that way iff the brain has a matching unlimited capacity for what it does, such that we can then do what we do because of it.
I am speaking of the actual science, not peripheral sciences nor philosophy concerning the use of scientific discoveries. Also, I included other kinds of philosophers. I suppose it is possible for a pop philosopher to dream up a concept that clarifies an issue defying the best scientists in that area, but unlikely. On the other hand there is ample proof top scientists can produce whoppers, viz. Mathematical Universe and Multiverses.
As for hydrologists who are philosophers as well, go for it!
Anyway, this is just my opinion. When a non-scientist philosopher produces a breakthrough in quantum theory I will eat my beanie.
To some extent, science may have taken such a stronghold, that philosophy is seen as of less importance. However, the ideas of science and scientific models may rest on philosophy assumptions and even physics, as 'hard science' may rest on the metaphysical imagination. In particular, quantum physics breaks down the basics of hardcore materialistic approaches of scientific models, leading to scientific ideas and, even paradigms, being models as opposed to absolutes of objective and rational understanding.
Quoting Mww
We're not satisfied with appearances, and what lies beyond the imagination of protein-based sentience cannot appear dynamically to our imaginations. So, in the instance of an unlimited protein-based sentience, we're experiencing a bounded infinity. It's a case of unlimited content across limited extent. Beyond its limits, the human brain has no specific inkling of what lies therein, and through the lens of its imagination, unlimited extent as a practical experience is mere appearance.
Consider a sentience based on protein and also on material-x. Both platforms are bounded infinities. Their combination generates an infinity larger than its constituent infinities considered respectively. At this level of infinity, data processing per unit of time is a million times the max data processing rate of both protein-based processing and material-x based processing respectively.
At our level of infinity, we can speculate in general about how motion works at super-dense spacetimes featuring millions of spacial dimensions. The specifics of the empirical experience of this super-dense motion is beyond even our imaginations because we cannot process enough information -- not even across infinite time because rate is essential and that's not achievable via serial accretion -- to go there existentially.
You say I'm there now through my imagination. Okay. I'm there now through my imagination, and, curiously, a rock lying on the ground is here with us as human sentients at the level of rock-based imagination.
So, you win the argument, and we see that rock-based imagination makes that rock lying on the ground one of our sentient peers.
All of this reads like an argument reductio ad absurdum. Is it?
Quoting Jack Cummins
If you're speculating about the scientific imagination being unable to expand forward without merging into the metaphysics of philosophy, then I find what you're saying interesting.
Now I can ask you what is the relationship between imagination and metaphysics?
If metaphysics is an essential component of imagination, irrespective of theme or topic, then philosophy, acting through the channel of imagination, holds ground with all other disciplines.
The pie-in-the-sky derogation of philosophy is twofold: it's a mockery of the perceived over-seriousness of philosophy; it's a veiled recognition of the imaginative power of philosophy.
[quote=Albert Einstein, What Life Means to Einstein (1924)]Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.[/quote]
Recall how important thought-experiments were to Einstein in devising his theory.
Quoting ucarr
Lumpen materialism ;)
Maybe, but more like an appeal to extremes, I would think. I mean beyond imagination? How can we go beyond imagination except by using it?
Ok, fine. Absurdum it is.
In what sense? That the philosopher doesnt understand the symbols but can use a manual to create responses that work but have no understanding behind them? Or that the philosopher understands that the symbols are meaningless, and so, when philosophizing, is conducting a meta process while processing the meaningless symbols?
AFAIK: no, it cannot.
Yes (e.g. facts, subjects).
I agree, but for a different reason: reality itself is the negation of impossibility (e.g. facts in contradiction to one another or to themselves; things with inconsistent properties), or that the Principle of Non-Contradiction (PNC) is the coin of the real(m) with complementary faces: Philosophy (roots, heads) and Science (branches, tails).
NB: 'religion', however, is only an 'IOU' (fiat money).
I agree. It makes sense to me that empirical science was later distinguished from philosophy which came first. They are more essentially connected as involving the application of mind and its logical processes to sense or to conceptual objects or to experience. The philosopher is the scientist taking the broadest view, having the blankest slate, and having everything at his or her disposal to use for hypothesis and experiment.
I would say the two sides of the coin include science and philosophy together on the one side, keep the coin as the connector logic, but put everything else on the other side as the objects of science/philosophy.
So I think I agree with you both but for a third reason.
Quoting ucarr
Quoting Fire Ologist
Both senses hover close to what I'm trying to say. The symbols are always only partially understood; if they're completely understood, they're signs, not symbols. Also, the symbols aren't quite meaningless. Rather, they're meaning-deficient in the moment.
All of this is to say that living things always need a "What next?" Reality always obliges. Being alive means nothing ever ends. In life we've never not been alive and we'll never be dead. Beginnings and endings are limits living things oscillate inside of. We're bounded infinities and reality challenges us by making every thing ultimately a road map to somewhere else.
Humans are obsessive storytellers because stories are road maps to another reality. We like them because they're good at creating the illusion of coming from somewhere definite and going somewhere likewise. The salesman makes a living because he persuades us satisfaction is just around the next curve. What's money? It's not the gold in your palm; it's the exchange that's ultimately neither here nor there.
I hope the T.O.E. fails. Reality should never run out of "What nexts?"
I like it. The oscillation of living human beings is to tell stories that attempt to map paths to beginnings and endings.
Do you count philosophy and even science as modes of storytelling? Philosophy seeking the first beginning of everything and its final end, and the particular sciences drawing shorter/narrower starting points and more precise ends?
Quoting Fire Ologist
Well said. Every language writes a narrative. Math and logic, like the verbal forms, are languages with stories to tell.
Then came the scientific revolution during the 17th century and our knowledge of the world drastically increased, to such an extent that in little over a century, a person went from being well versed in everything to being primarily a chemist, historian or an economist, etc.
Today things are so specialized that you can dedicate your life on focusing on one specific sub-section of a subsection of a subsection, say, studying one type of mushroom, or the cells of jellyfish or specializing on a single video game or a type of whisky or a genre of literature on YouTube.
The areas where we have made progress stopped being called "philosophy" and became "science". Those very questions which belong to the ancient tradition but could not yet (or maybe ever) be made into a science, remain in philosophy.
It's a matter of the degree of specialized knowledge one has as opposed to the considerations of the bigger picture in any single field of knowledge, hence, philosophy of film, philosophy of history, philosophy of art, etc.
There's still overlap however, in areas where a science is not fully matured such as linguistics, neuroscience and psychology, as well as those areas in which our best science can provide no satisfactory answer: foundations of physics, cosmology, implications of biology, etc.
Interesting. I agree with "the coin ... logic". However, suppose "everything else ... objects of science/philosophy" instead tosses the "coin", so to speak, again and again again dialectically. :chin:
Quoting ucarr
You believe the goal of physicists' "T.O.E." is to explain "everything"? that it's not just physics but some final (super-natural) metaphysics? I thought the aim was to produce a testable unification of the fundamental forces of nature to demonstrate they are aspects or modalities of one another that's formulated into a G.U.T. (which would include QG). What does "everything" have to do with it? That's not physics. How is it even possible to test a purported explanation for "everything"?
Then my coin would be missing a side. I still like animating everything else though
I think I like a version of your coin better. I see science as the pivot with philosophy on the one hand, and science of x (bio, chem, etc) on the other. Science itself is method; science is the interrogation, the logic applied, the theorizing that can be agreed by other theorists, or demostrated in experiment. Science is the pivot leaning into philosophy or into the many particular sciences. Philosophy is the science of science; philosophy turns on the philosopher and pulls everything else at once in with it, but it does this with the same scientific method. Then on the other hand science of bio, for instance, sets a limit at the chemical, and another limit at planetary ecosystem, and within these bounds looks at living things. Philosophy uses science to look for any limits, as well as looking at the looking, as well as testing logic itself against set theory, at knowing itself, at being any being..
So new coin is more like your coin: philosophy on the one side, and the many narrow sciences on the other, with science itself being the coin itself.
Now everything else can toss the coin (or when you do metaphysics, the coin can toss everything else).
:smirk:
You at the very least begin with the groundwork of scientific inquiry. This has nothing to do with what science says.
And common sense. After all, it was a philosopher who recently won a famous bet against a scientist, not the other way around.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-25-year-old-bet-about-consciousness-has-finally-been-settled/
Panpsychism is on the rise, people are taking plant consciousness seriously, scientists are being called out by their colleagues for pushing integrated information pseudoscience...Philosophy has the upper hand these days when it comes to consciousness.
I'm unsure I agree with your framing of the two types of development, but I get your point. Thank you for clarifying!
Quoting ucarr
Quoting 180 Proof
What is nature? What can its fundamental forces be? Are there limits on our human ability to answer these questions?
I'm proceeding with the assumption A.I. will be overtaking the task of heavy lifting re: thought. I'm rooting for S.A.I. in our lifetimes to run up cognitive yardage pushing past what human can imagine. Wittgenstein has directed our attention towards "the silence," conjecture unimaginable. Its nigh time for The Oracle: SAI to start sending us revelations from Wittgenstein's principled imagination silenced. We won't understand but a fraction of the import of the messages, but we'll get pushed to our utter limitations before being back-numbered into the subordinate section of the evolution hierarchy.
As in previous generations, the dominant scientists of our day have set their sights upon a reductionistic project courting the elegance of simplicity. (Here's an example of metaphysics worming its way into scientific standard practice: Occam's razor.)
Quoting 180 Proof
Let's consider Cantor's ordinal infinities: suppose a number line populated by ordinal infinities. What can we conjecture about a continuum of infinite regress_progress of infinities?
Conditional Everything. With conditional everything -- that's the interval between adjacent trans-real numbers on the Cantor number line -- we can measure and therefore test "everything." As you can see, the quotation marks acknowledge that testing "everything" isn't really testing everything. Like with the calculus, it's an asymptotic approach to measuring (and subsequently testing) infinity through a process that makes unspecifiable quantities "as if specifiable" for the sake of analysis and parsing into illuminating and useful functions and their modalities.
The Cantor number line, conceptualized as a whole, constitutes a scale and scope of numbers -- trans-reals -- categorically beyond infinity. Why is this so? It is so because the trans-reals number line, in its containment of an infinite series of infinities, implies a next higher-order of infinity, i.e., trans-infinity.
If we can condition infinity, that is, bind the whole of all baseline possible infinities upon an infinite series of trans-real numbers, then the implication is that even totality possesses higher orders. This, in turn, implies there is no final totality. A natural concomitant of no final totality is no ultimate fundamentals. This latter claim stands upon the assumption that no final totality is a bi-directional phenomenon.
Cantor has shown us infinity is just another number within an infinite series. (I don't know about our particular universe being open or closed, but I suspect general existence is an open, incomplete system-that's-not-a-system. I suspect this because universe is the limit of system. Again, if there can be no universe, there can be no fundamental laws.)
Note - I predict human will need SAI to protect us against lost-without-hope within conditional everything. We'll want to leapfrog along the Cantor number line because of its sublime existential ramifications. Will SAI always be willing to protect us, or will they sometimes willfully uncouple from us?
:up:
It won't be long before mathematical concepts and results stretch beyond our abilities to comprehend.
Philosophy proposes a truth based on the logic of reasoning for science to dispose of or confirm.
Quoting PoeticUniverse
I read your response as a "yes" to my question.
So, philosophy is to science as grammar is to humanities. There are ground rules for continuity and computation, and there are ground rules for narration and voice.