Is Philosophy crap?

[swansont]

And yet a driver may know nothing about engineering but is still somehow able to drive a car. Doesn't that say something about the value of engineering?

Yes. It tells me that one need not study engineering in order to drive a car. Or, one need not be constantly thinking about engineering while driving, to frame this in terms of my first post.

 

The different interpretations of QM *do* make testable predictions.

Then why do we have so many?

Consider Bell Inequalities. For those reading along that don't know, Bell's Theorem tells us that QM cannot be both a local theory and a hidden variable (read deterministic) theory.

Bell's inequalities are not considered an interpretation of QM, AFAICT.

There are explicitly non-local hidden variable interpretations like Bohmian Mechanics. As we both know, standard QFT has SR built right in, so we know from the get go that Bohmian interpretations make different predictions than QFT.

 

And both Copenhagen and MWH take the local non-deterministic route. This means telling them apart experimentally will be a bit harder. As of now, I don't know of any experiment that could tell those two apart, but that's not to say they in principle can't be distinguished experimentally.

And once they can be, we won't consider them interpretations anymore. But the point is it will require experiment to do so.

 

As someone who likes to point out that "this is a science forum ..." when discussing speculations, I'd think you'd have a higher opinion of philosophy since it is philosophy of science, not science itself, which tells us what is and is not science. There is no scienceometer to read how many kiloscienceons a conjecture is giving off. It's conceptual analysis and methodology which determine what is and is not science. And that's firmly in the domain of non-science philosophy.

 

Remember that science is a subset of philosophy both historically and taxinomically. It is just that this subset has gradually defined more and more strict rules governing what is acceptable. There's no clearcut line in history between Aristotle and Einstein where one part of the endeavor was 'scientific' and the other is not. What is 'scientific' has gradually changed over time, but the demarcation for modern science is now pretty much settled with Ruse's criteria.

Depends on how you draw the tree and what taxonomy you use, doesn't it?

It does matter when constructing new theories. There's a lot of metaphysics involved in, say, making a TOE. And experimentalists in general can lose sight of what a theory is about. They'll get caught up in Lorentz Transforms and co-ordinates and lose sight of that the theory isn't about them and doesn't need them. SR is about the geometry of spacetimes and can be formulated with nothing but simple spacetime diagrams and the Minkowski 'metric' (which really isn't a metric, btw). When you're dealing with the theory, the theory and underlying metaphysics is important. If you're dealing with experiments, all you need worry about is what the needles on the gauges say.

And, as I said, I'm an experimentalist. So it seems you agree that a scientist need not be conversant in philosophy in order to do science (or, in the parlance of the post to which I originally responded, "constantly has to be philosophical ").

While the math is indeed extremely important and it is the math that tells us what we need to know, sometimes people take the "shut up and calculate" line a bit too far and don't consider what it is the math is saying about reality.

The models claim to predict/explain the behavior of reality. Not represent reality itself.

That's such a mischaracterization of philosophy that I'm a little offended. The days of walking around in a toga talking about how your underpants are made of fire is over. Welcome to the days of mathematical and experimental philosophy.

It wasn't a characterization of philosophy, it was a characterization of QM interpretations. As I already asked, if we can experimentally determine which one is correct, why haven't we?

 

Science uses math as a tool, but it does not incorporate all of the math there is, so it's quite possible that none of the undecidable theorems have any use in science.

Yes, it's possible.

[ydoaPs]

 

 

The different interpretations of QM *do* make testable predictions. Consider Bell Inequalities. For those reading along that don't know, Bell's Theorem tells us that QM cannot be both a local theory and a hidden variable (read deterministic) theory.

 

There are explicitly non-local hidden variable interpretations like Bohmian Mechanics. As we both know, standard QFT has SR built right in, so we know from the get go that Bohmian interpretations make different predictions than QFT.

 

And both Copenhagen and MWH take the local non-deterministic route. This means telling them apart experimentally will be a bit harder. As of now, I don't know of any experiment that could tell those two apart, but that's not to say they in principle can't be distinguished experimentally.

Bell's inequalities are not considered an interpretation of QM, AFAICT.

 

And once they can be, we won't consider them interpretations anymore. But the point is it will require experiment to do so.

 

 

I've rearranged your quotes of me in your quote for flowingnessocity concerns. I never claimed that Bell Inequalities are interpretations of QM. What I claimed is that, since different interpretations take different stances on the choice Bell's Theorem gives us, they do in fact make testable predictions which can distinguish them experimentally.

 

This, however, is tangental to my overall point which is that experiment isn't the only game in town for figuring out what is or is not true. For example, I'm about to conclusively prove you wrong about a statement without outlining a single experiment to show that you're wrong. That statement being:

The models claim to predict/explain the behavior of reality. Not represent reality itself.

I'm not even going to touch the incoherence of claiming models aren't representations. Your view sounds a lot like a version of scientific anti-realism called Constructive Empiricism. Constructive Empiricism, in the words of its founder, is "Science aims to give us theories which are empirically adequate; and acceptance of a theory involves as belief only that it is empirically adequate". This is "Shut up and calculate" taken to the extreme. It is also epistemically bankrupt.

 

A theory is empirically adequate iff it explains the data better than its negation. That is, P(e|h)>P(e|~h). Let's see where that takes us. That is, let's shut up and calculate:

• [latex]P(e|h)>P(e|{\sim}h)[/latex]

• [latex]P(e|h){\times}P({\sim}h)>P(e|{\sim}h){\times}P({\sim}h)[/latex]

• [latex]P(e|h){\times}(1-P(h))>P(e|{\sim}h){\times}P({\sim}h)[/latex]

• [latex]P(e|h)-P(e|h){\times}P(h)>P(e|{\sim}h){\times}P({\sim}h)[/latex]

• [latex]P(e|h)>P(e|h){\times}P(h)+P(e|{\sim}h){\times}P({\sim}h)[/latex]

• [latex]P(e|h)>P(e)[/latex]

• [latex]P(e|h){\times}{P(h)}>P(e){\times}P(h)[/latex]

• [latex]\frac{P(e|h){\times}P(h)}{P(e)}>P(h)[/latex]

• [latex]P(h|e)>P(h)[/latex]

• If [latex]P(e|h)>P(e|{\sim}h)[/latex], then [latex]P(h|e)>P(h)[/latex]
• [latex]P(h|e)>P(h)[/latex]

• [latex]\frac{P(e|h){\times}P(h)}{P(e)}>P(h)[/latex]

• [latex]P(e|h){\times}{P(h)}>P(e){\times}P(h)[/latex]

• [latex]P(e|h)>P(e)[/latex]

• [latex]P(e|h)>P(e|h){\times}P(h)+P(e|{\sim}h){\times}P({\sim}h)[/latex]

• [latex]P(e|h)-P(e|h){\times}P(h)>P(e|{\sim}h){\times}P({\sim}h)[/latex]

• [latex]P(e|h){\times}(1-P(h))>P(e|{\sim}h){\times}P({\sim}h)[/latex]

• [latex]P(e|h){\times}P({\sim}h)>P(e|{\sim}h){\times}P({\sim}h)[/latex]

• [latex]P(e|h)>P(e|{\sim}h)[/latex]

• If [latex]P(h|e)>P(h)[/latex], then [latex]P(e|h)>P(e|{\sim}h)[/latex]
• [latex]P(e|h)>P(e|{\sim}h)[/latex] iff [latex]P(h|e)>P(h)[/latex]

So, we see that the more empirically adequate a theory is, the more likely it is to be true. That is, the better it explains the data and the more accurately it predicts the new data, the more likely it is to be true.

 

By any sensible definition of truth, that means that the more empirically adequate a theory is, the more likely the things it talks about exist and what it says about those things is accurate. You cannot rationally stop at the theory predicting with great success the positions of needles on gauges.

 

Just as I could show you to be wrong without a single experiment, we can distinguish things which explain the data equally well in terms of how likely they are to be true without experiment.

• [latex]P(h_1|e)>P(h_2|e)[/latex] and [latex]P(e|h_1)=P(e|h_2)[/latex]

• [latex]\frac{P(e|h_1){\times}P(h_1)}{P(e)}>\frac{P(e|h_2){\times}P(h_2)}{P(e)}[/latex]

• [latex]P(e|h_1){\times}P(h_1)>P(e|h_2){\times}P(h_2)[/latex]

• [latex]P(h_1)>P(h_2)[/latex]

• If [latex]P(h_1|e)>P(h_2|e)[/latex] and [latex]P(e|h_1)=P(e|h_2)[/latex], then [latex]P(h_1)>P(h_2)[/latex]

So, we see that if two hypotheses explain the data equally well, if we want to know which is more likely to be true, we need to look at the priors. Again, we're not dealing with tests. We're talking about empirically indistinguishable things like, say, Copenhagen and MWH which are currently empirically indistinguishable. So, they explain all of the data equally well. For every observation e, P(e|h₁)=P(e|h₂). This means we look at the intrinsic priors. AFAIK, all of the things that influence the intrinsic priors reduce to two things: simplicity and coherence.

 

We know that P(A&B)<P(A) and P(A&B)<P(B) for all A and B which are not 1 or 0. So, the more things a theory says, the lower the intrinsic probability. The Copenhagen interpretation postulates only one universe, but the MWH postulates an uncountably infinitely many universes. This means Copenhagen is intrinsically more likely to be true, and since they explain all of the data equally well, it comes out on top.

Depends on how you draw the tree and what taxonomy you use, doesn't it?

No, in any reasonable taxonomy. Science is about the nature of nature, so it's a subset of Metaphysics. It's just that its epistemological (yep, more philosophy) rules are more strict than metaphysics at large. Anyway you cut it, there will always be metaphysics that you can't excise from your physics.

 

My previous example on which you didn't comment:

 

If it can't be determined by experiment, it's not science (according to you), right? Give me an experiment to show that the one-way speed of light is constant. Remember you can't assume that it is in setting up the experiment for things like syncing your distant clocks.

 

And, as I said, I'm an experimentalist. So it seems you agree that a scientist need not be conversant in philosophy in order to do science (or, in the parlance of the post to which I originally responded, "constantly has to be philosophical ").

There comes a point in the 'experimentalist' "shut up and calculate" ideology that one can cease being a scientist and become merely lab equipment.

[arjundeepakshriram]

I think that it's important for scientists to explain their work, particularly in cosmology. This now answers many questions once asked of religion.

[swansont]

ydoaPs, on 02 Jun 2013 - 02:51, said:

I never claimed that Bell Inequalities are interpretations of QM. What I claimed is that, since different interpretations take different stances on the choice Bell's Theorem gives us, they do in fact make testable predictions which can distinguish them experimentally.

As far as I understand it, Bell doesn't rule out non-local hidden variables, which is what Bohmian mechanics uses. If a QM interpretation doesn't conform to Bell, we know it's wrong.

 

ydoaPs, on 02 Jun 2013 - 02:51, said:

This, however, is tangental to my overall point which is that experiment isn't the only game in town for figuring out what is or is not true.

I seem to recall you've claimed otherwise before (when owl was around), but that's not important and could be faulty memory.

 

To the point at hand, though, you do admit that experiment is a game in town. Which is all I need to establish to rebut the point that philosophy is necessary to do science, under the view that science has split from philosophy. As I said to Villain, if you consider science to be part of philosophy then the question is moot.

 

ydoaPs, on 02 Jun 2013 - 02:51, said:

There comes a point in the 'experimentalist' "shut up and calculate" ideology that one can cease being a scientist and become merely lab equipment.

But if the point I was trying to rebut is true, then it wouldn't be "there comes a point". It would be "experimentalists who follow "shut up and calculate" are merely lab equipment"

[PeterJ]

Drat. I leave the disussion and immediately it gets much better.

 

I have not disagreed with a single point made by ydoaPs so far. I cannot see anything to disagree with. Good sense from start to finish.

 

Of course philosophy is not necessary to do science - if by 'science' we mean operating a bunson burner. I can concede this to Swansont. But 'Science' here is supposed to mean all of science. It is possible to drive a car without eyesight, so one can argue that driving does not require the ability to see. Rather a silly argument though. Nor would it be necesssary to have an IQ above 25 to do science, and so intelligence is not necessary for science either. So yes, philosophy is not necessary to all the things that scientists do, especially if they do it badly, and nor is eyesight or intelligence. But this is irrelevant to the wider point.

 

When people say something is necessary to science they usually mean necessary to science in its fullest sense, done properly and well, and not just some particular sub-set of routine activities done any old how.

 

Without philosophy wouldn't we have to measure the trajectory of every falling apple in the world to be sure they all fall down? Induction saves a lot of bother. So does Ockham's razor. So does the idea that theories containing logical contradictions are implausible. Yet the absence of true contradictions from the world is a philosophical theory, as is the principle of least hypothesis. I would certainly hate to see science abandon Aristotle's laws of thought on the grounds that they're untestable.

[swansont]

It occurs to me that I had not been active in the thread until it was resurrected, so going back through it I find that my position has already been put forth, pretty much.

 

All you've stated is that we need empiricism and logic to discover the truth about our world. Good job. We agree. Except I call it science.

I'm with Villain and Math on this, and I struggle to see any need for an argument. Maybe sometimes scientists do not realise how much philosophy they're doing.

 

That's a fair point, and one which I think iNow commented on: nobody has really defined what they mean by philosophy. I think much of the argument has been because of this.

 

As I have already conceded, if you consider science to be a subset of philosophy then the argument is moot: science is philosophy by definition. However, if you take the philosophy and add in empiricism and call it science, and say that science and philosophy are different subjects that share some of the same tools, then it becomes a different argument. And while scientists may not acknowledge how many of the tools they might share, it seems to me that your position is that they need to add more tools — more philosophy. But the argument ends up sounding like scientists cannot proceed without this additional tool set, despite the fact that science is actually happening without it. There are posts earlier in the thread decrying the fact that science tends to ignore a certain philosophical position. Well, QED. If you can ignore that position and still do science, it's not necessary.

[ydoaPs]

As far as I understand it, Bell doesn't rule out non-local hidden variables, which is what Bohmian mechanics uses. If a QM interpretation doesn't conform to Bell, we know it's wrong.

That's what I thought I said. And since there are local non-deterministic 'interpretations' and non-local deterministic 'interpretations', we do have grounds to tell them apart experimentally.

 

As far as Copenhagen vs MWH, I actually may have been wrong when I said there wasn't, to my knowledge, any way to discriminate experimentally. I remember reading something recently of evidence of multiple universes in the CMBR, but it was popsci, so it's hard to tell if "universe" means universe or if "universe" means Hubble sphere. Regardless, it stands that MWH is intrinsically less likely than Copenhagen, so given such evidence we need to ask if it is enough to put them equal or even make MWH take the lead.

To the point at hand, though, you do admit that experiment is a game in town.

It sure is and philosophers often utilize experiments.

Which is all I need to establish to rebut the point that philosophy is necessary to do science, under the view that science has split from philosophy.

No. There are several things that you'd need to do. Off the top of my head:

• Show what exactly it is that causes science to be split off entirely from philosophy. Hint: it can't be experiment, because non-science philosophers to experiments too.
• Show conceptually how it has distanced itself from Metaphysics (keeping in mind I've just proven mathematically that Constructive Empiricism and the like are incorrect).
• Completely discharge all non-testable metaphysical assumptions from science. How's that one-way speed of light thing coming?

I could probably come up with more, but that's just off the top of my head and I've not had my coffee yet. The problem is that physics still has the same scope as metaphysics, its tools are an entire branch of philosophy (called Epistemology), and it still is saturated with non-testable metaphysical assumptions.

But if the point I was trying to rebut is true, then it wouldn't be "there comes a point". It would be "experimentalists who follow "shut up and calculate" are merely lab equipment"

In a rare display of humility, I was trying to be nice. If you're fine being lab equipment rather than a scientist, that's great. Keep calm and carry on.

However, if you take the philosophy and add in empiricism and call it science, and say that science and philosophy are different subjects that share some of the same tools, then it becomes a different argument.

ADD Empiricism? I hate to break it to you, but Empiricism is philosophy and has been the law of the land since, say, Russell. As for the tools, the tools are an entire branch of philosophy called 'Epistemology'. That math I did above proving that what appears to be your view of the fundamental aim of science is wrong is inductive logic based (reasoning using rules that are proven to be isomorphic to the probability calculus). Hell, math in general is still philosophy. And logic too, Modus Tollens, totally philosophy. Unless you want to give us an experiment to show that Modus Tollens is scientific. Good luck, though, since it's a transcendental principle and as such is immune to observation without induction.

But the argument ends up sounding like scientists cannot proceed without this additional tool set, despite the fact that science is actually happening without it.

It's not happening without it. If you're in a lab and not using the theory, you're not a scientist doing science; you're lab equipment running tests for the scientists. As I've pointed out several times, scientific theory is saturated with metaphysical assumptions.

[proximity1]

RE N° 3 : "How is mathematics philosophy?"

 

Reading Russell's "Sceptical Essays" and, from "The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell" the relevant chapters--

 

PART 4: The Logician and Philosopher of Mathematics 13. Symbolic Logic 14. On Induction 15. Preface to Principia Mathematica 16. Introduction to Principia Mathematica. 17. Summary of Part III, Principia Mathematica 18. Summary of Part IV, Principia Mathematica 19. Summary of Part V, Principia Mathematica 20. Summary of Part VI Principia Mathematica 21. Introduction to the Second Edition, Principia Mathematica 22. Mathematics and Logic 23. The Validity of Inference 24. Dewey’s New Logic 25. John Dewey PART 5: The Epistemologist 26. Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description 27. Theory of Knowledge 28. Epistemological Premisses PART 6: The Metaphysician 29 Materialism, Past and Present 30.Language and Metaphysics 31. The Retreat from Pythagoras PART 7: History of Philosophy 32. Philosophy in the Twentieth Century 33. Aristotle's Logic 34. St Thomas Aquinas 35. Currents of Thought in the Nineteenth Century 36. The Philosophy of Logical Analysis PART 8: The Psychologist 37. Psychological and Physical Causal Laws 38. Truth and Falsehood 39. Knowledge Behaviouristically Considered

 

you'll find an explanation of how it is--and a good deal of other insights into how and why philosophy is not only not "crap" but is essential to any science.

[PeterJ]

I once came on this forum and asked how we knew that gravity was an attractive rather than repulsive force. I gained the impression there is no experiment that can decide this. If not, then to wonder which it is is a philosophical speculation.

 

Swansont - you say 'There are posts earlier in the thread decrying the fact that science tends to ignore a certain philosophical position. Well, QED. If you can ignore that position and still do science, it's not necessary.'

 

I agree. But is this the kind of science we should be doing? It would seem more like a recipe for irrationality to me. Yes, we could still do science, but who would want to do it on this basis, and what use would it be? Nobody has ever taken this approach to either disciplne as far as I know. We can cut science free from metaphysics, and we can cut metaphysics free from science, and then we'd have two useless disciplines.

 

But I do see the point. We can drive while being blind. Ergo, sight is not necessary for driving. .

 

Maybe an argument for metaphysics can sometimess seem like an argument against science, and this would raise some natural opposition. But I haven't seen anyone here arguing against science. Afaik, I have never seen a prominent scientist arguing that science should exclude metaphysics, or even suggesting that it would be possible. Maybe there are one or two, but I'd need a reference to be convinced.

 

Nice point Proximity. I really cannot see how this topic can turn into an argument when the facts are so clear.

Edited June 2, 2013 by PeterJ

[ydoaPs]

It's also odd to me that Tom is crying out about distinguishing between interpretations of QM when the same issue applies to scientific theory choice in general. For example, the Ptolemaic system and the Copernican system explain the data equally well. When the shift was made from one to the other, it wasn't on experimental grounds.

[PeterJ]

I forgot that one. One physicist on my bookshelf comments, 'with enough circles we can explain anything'.

 

I think maybe it is all too easy to find oneself trapped in an entrenched position that one didn't quite mean to fall into. I'm going to assume we're all fed up with arguing about this issue.

 

How about we take a more practical approach and pick a more difficult target.

 

Can it be demonstrated, and not just argued about, that paying proper attention to the results of metaphysics would shed light on important problems in the natural sciences and help us understand Nature? This is asking whether metaphysics is not only necessary to the activity of science, but necessary to a proper understanding of Nature.

 

To me the answer is trivially yes. I will demonstrate it if necessary. But how much light? I'm not a good enough physicist to follow up the details so find it hard to tell. It's not usually possible to discuss the issues with scientists.

Edited June 2, 2013 by PeterJ

[iNow]

If I burn my hand in a fire, I learn something about nature. I learned that fire burns me. How has metaphysics played a role here? According to your post above, it must have. My understanding of nature is very clearly increased (hand in fire makes ouch), yet it happened all without metaphysics ever coming into the picture.

 

IMO, this is a rather critical flaw in your premise and reasoning.

[ydoaPs]

If I burn my hand in a fire, I learn something about nature. I learned that fire burns me. How has metaphysics played a role here? According to your post above, it must have. My understanding of nature is very clearly increased (hand in fire makes ouch), yet it happened all without metaphysics ever coming into the picture.

 

IMO, this is a rather critical flaw in your premise and reasoning.

Quick question before a fuller response: am I to take "hand in fire makes ouch" to mean "hand in fire causes me to feel pain"?

[swansont]

I once came on this forum and asked how we knew that gravity was an attractive rather than repulsive force. I gained the impression there is no experiment that can decide this. If not, then to wonder which it is is a philosophical speculation.

 

Swansont - you say 'There are posts earlier in the thread decrying the fact that science tends to ignore a certain philosophical position. Well, QED. If you can ignore that position and still do science, it's not necessary.'

 

I agree. But is this the kind of science we should be doing? It would seem more like a recipe for irrationality to me. Yes, we could still do science, but who would want to do it on this basis, and what use would it be? Nobody has ever taken this approach to either disciplne as far as I know. We can cut science free from metaphysics, and we can cut metaphysics free from science, and then we'd have two useless disciplines.

 

But I do see the point. We can drive while being blind. Ergo, sight is not necessary for driving. .

 

I continue to see straw man rebuttals, like the analogy above, so I will try again to explain what I'm saying before quitting.

 

There were a few statements that contended that scientists must continually use philosophy. I have said, FOUR F***ING TIMES NOW, that if one is considering science as a subset of philosophy, then yes, this is true. We do it all the time. By definition. So really, if the continued rebuttal is gong to be that science is part of philosophy, can we just stop already? Do I have to agree to the point five times, or is ten required?

 

However, nobody has really defined the problem that way. I take the view that science is not a subset, and that the philosophy that gave rise to science is part of science, and you have non-science philosophy as a separate endeavor, which is what is sounds like to me when I hear these arguments about how science is ignoring philosophy, especially about how science must investigate metaphysics, etc.

 

In that view, the choice is either that no science can be done without this outside philosophy, or that some can, i.e. it is possible to do some science without outside philosophy. I shouldn't have to point out to those so well-versed in the topic that the converse of my statement is NOT that all science can be done without philosophy, but that's what I seem to be reading.

 

I don't understad the logical consistency of claiming that philosophy is being ignored and "Yes, we could still do science, but who would want to do it on this basis, and what use would it be?" Well, what use has been all of the science that has been happening while philosophy has been ignored, and who is doing it?

 

As for an experiment that would distinguish between pulling and pushing gravity: give me a model of pushing gravity to test. Same with Ptolemy vs Copernicus; there's no mechanism. It's simply ad-hoc.

 

If you're in a lab and not using the theory, you're not a scientist doing science; you're lab equipment running tests for the scientists. As I've pointed out several times, scientific theory is saturated with metaphysical assumptions.

 

In the view I've defined, those assumptions, and the theories, are part of science already. If this is in context of the other view, as it seems to be, I refer you to my opening remarks.

 

It sure is and philosophers often utilize experiments.

 

I think A Tripolation asked for examples of philosophy using empiricism and coming up with truths about the world and never got a response. Maybe you have some?

[iNow]

Quick question before a fuller response: am I to take "hand in fire makes ouch" to mean "hand in fire causes me to feel pain"?

Not necessarily, no.

[A Tripolation]

That's what I thought I said. And since there are local non-deterministic 'interpretations' and non-local deterministic 'interpretations', we do have grounds to tell them apart experimentally.

 

As far as Copenhagen vs MWH, I actually may have been wrong when I said there wasn't, to my knowledge, any way to discriminate experimentally. I remember reading something recently of evidence of multiple universes in the CMBR, but it was popsci, so it's hard to tell if "universe" means universe or if "universe" means Hubble sphere. Regardless, it stands that MWH is intrinsically less likely than Copenhagen, so given such evidence we need to ask if it is enough to put them equal or even make MWH take the lead.It sure is and philosophers often utilize experiments.

 

There are no ways to tell if our universe behaves locally or nonlocally. The interpretations of quantum vary from deterministic to indeterministic, but they all predict the same things and there is no way to tell them apart using empiricism. It comes down to your own personal aesthetics. So, basically, it comes down to some metaphysics. And guess what? There is no way to know if you are right since you can't construct an experiment, leading me back to my main question -- if the philosophy isn't being used in a way that the scientific method uses philosophy (epistemology, mathematics, logic, etc), is it useful, or is it crap?

 

To me, it seems like a circlejerk that's been going on for centuries with no end in sight.

 

If you have an experiment, or know of one, that is being constructed to test the locality parameters of our universe, please link it to me.

 

edit: The copenhagen interpretation is cursed with an infinitely fast waveform collapse. To some, this is more unappealing than infinitely many universes. While the CI is more economic, the MWI doesn't have infinitely fast communication mechanisms.

Edited June 2, 2013 by A Tripolation

[swansont]

The copenhagen interpretation is cursed with an infinitely fast waveform collapse. To some, this is more unappealing than infinitely many universes. While the CI is more economic, the MWI doesn't have infinitely fast communication mechanisms.

I'm not sure that's the case. Since it's OT here, I started a new thread on it.

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/75272-does-the-many-worlds-interpretation-avoid-the-copenhagen-instantaneous-collapse-problem/

[PeterJ]

If I burn my hand in a fire, I learn something about nature. I learned that fire burns me. How has metaphysics played a role here? According to your post above, it must have. My understanding of nature is very clearly increased (hand in fire makes ouch), yet it happened all without metaphysics ever coming into the picture.

 

IMO, this is a rather critical flaw in your premise and reasoning.

 

This is an ill-thought out objection, and objection for the sake of it. The example proves nothing at all. It would work if all the was required for science is to put our hand in a fire. In that case it would be good objection.

 

A critical flaw indeed.

 

 

Edited June 3, 2013 by PeterJ

[iNow]

This is an ill-thought objection. The example proves nothing at all.

Except, of course, that nature can, in fact, be better understood even absent any involvement from metaphysics whatsoever.

[PeterJ]

Okay. Now I really do give up. I think the world had gone mad.

 

How does one respnd to a proposals stating that the philosophy that gave rise to science is part of science, such that science gave rise to science and philosophy had nothing to do with it. I have no idea.

Except, of course, that nature can, in fact, be better understood even absent any involvement from metaphysics whatsoever.

 

What an idiotic remark, Unbelievable. What is the word ;'even' doing in this sentence, How does it function? It is a poorly constructed sentence not informed by any careful thought.

 

I am very sure that you do not even know what the results of metaphysics actually are, so you can have no view on the matter.

Edited June 3, 2013 by PeterJ

[John]

At the risk of putting words in certain people's mouths, I think the claim is more accurately expressed as, "Science has adopted the methods from philosophy that provide a firm grounding for scientific investigation, and is now self-sustaining in that regard." This is not the same as ignoring the contributions philosophy has made or will continue to make.

 

Despite the constant miscommunication and creeping anger, I for one am enjoying this discussion immensely. I hope you all won't get totally frustrated and give up on it just yet. It's a shame that these discussions so easily put all involved on the defensive. It leads to misunderstandings and rather personal jabs that detract from an otherwise interesting debate.

 

As for my own take on the OP's question, I don't see how anyone can claim that philosophy is "crap" after learning much about the field. However, the layman's understanding seems to be that philosophy essentially amounts to arbitrary claims about the world that hold barely more water than religion, and if philosophy were just that (and let me reiterate that it quite clearly is not), then calling it "crap" would probably be justified.

 

But then, I'm just a math student. What do I know?

Edited June 3, 2013 by John

[iNow]

I really do give up. I think the world had gone mad. <snip> I have no idea. <snip> What an idiotic remark, Unbelievable. <snip> It is a poorly constructed sentence not informed by any careful thought.

 

Perhaps you have something relevant to say, instead of just lashing out at me personally? I know that's not too much to ask of most people, but is it too much to ask of you, perhaps?

[PeterJ]

Thanks for that post, John. Sensible stuff.

 

 

Perhaps you have something relevant to say, instead of just lashing out at me personally? I know that's not too much to ask of most people, but is it too much to ask of you, perhaps?

 

I've said it all already. And yet you come in with objections that have been met a dozen times already. This does not encourage me to take any time responding.

 

I suggested that you do not know the results of metaphysics and you did not disagree, So on what basis do you claim that metaphysics is useless to science? How could you know this?

 

Do you not see that you have no idea whether metaphysics is or could be useful in the sciences? Only someone who studies metaphysics and physics could know this, and clearly you are not a student of one of these.

 

So why not ask questions rather than argue for a dogmatic position.

 

Here's the thing.

 

No doubt most people here are in the same position as Feynman, and find that the way they have to describe Nature is incomprehensible to them. So why would they argue that metaphysics cannot help solve this problem before investigating whether it is actually the case? It seems to be hubris and arrogance, and exactly the same sort of close-minded protectionism that plagues religion. It works against scientific progress, and I am all for such progress being a great fan of the scientific approach.

 

The problem here, it seems to me, is that people who argue against metaphysics are not motivated to try and understand it.

 

 

 

 

.

[swansont]

Do you not see that you have no idea whether metaphysics is or could be useful in the sciences?

 

Could be useful is not the same as necessary.

 

The problem here, it seems to me, is that people who argue against metaphysics are not motivated to try and understand it.

 

Or the problem could be that people are arguing different points than the one you are trying to rebut.

[John Cuthber]

"So why would they argue that metaphysics cannot help solve this problem..."

What problems has metaphysics solved so far?