31–40 of 52 posts
Bit blown away that he's finally published the second part.
"where Socrates postulates an ideal world of which our own reality is but a shadow" I think he means Plato.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's been a while since I took a philosophy of science course myself, so I can't point you to any specific resources, except to encourage you to take a course in the subject yourself if you are interested. Just to give you a taste of what to expect though: imagine a lot of very smart people considering the sorts of issues Feynman is raising, but devoting whole books to them, trying to cover these issues from every co…
In "Cargo Cult Science" Feynman showed a lot of insight into the current replication crisis decades before it blew up -- at least, that's how it looks to me as an outsider. Did any philosopher do better? (Ahead of time, again.) It wouldn't surprise me, and I'd like to check out their work, but from my own reading I can't think of anyone. By "do better" I mean in an equivalent few pages to advise a new graduate about…
Philosophy of science is less about telling scientists how to behave than trying to understand what actually happens when scientists do what they do, what science accomplishes on a theoretical level, what the difference between science and non-science is, etc.
It's less of "here's how to get to the truth" and more of "can science get at the truth at all?" or "to what degree can science get at the truth?" or (much like Feynman's essay) "what makes these particular actions or beliefs 'scientific'?"
Karl Popper's criterion of "falsifiability"[1] was once a popular one, in regards to what makes something 'scientific'. But that's fallen out of fashion[2]:
"Sir Karl Popper is not really a participant in the contemporary professional philosophical dialogue; quite the contrary, he has ruined that dialogue. If he is on the right track, then the majority of professional philosophers the world over have wasted or are wasting their intellectual careers. The gulf between Popper's way of doing philosophy and that of the bulk of contemporary professional philosophers is as great as that between astronomy and astrology."
And so the debate continues...
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability#Criticisms
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>But in what way does science in the 21st century continue to advance and preserve human enlightenment? It isn't difficult to acknowledge the opposite effect -- that science has led to a certain disenchantment with the world and our place in it. I think that the regression of human enlightenment comes more from your insistence about how science destroys magic, which never actually existed , than from science itself.…
This isn't true. The majority of contemporary philosophers do not believe in anything supernatural, but plenty of scientists still dismiss their work. I say nothing supernatural, because the precise meaning of "naturalism" is contested in philosophy. For rather complex reasons, you can accept evolution, accept that modern physics is essentially accurate (only inaccurate so far as we're still discovering things and re…
As far as I can tell, it's not a majority position, and that's a damn shame upon philosophers. They still want to cling to their Platonic Forms, even while claiming not to be Cartesians.
Well, it doesn't work that way. We scientists are going to keep asking to see the Form of the Power-Set, the Form of the Good (oh boy does that one ever cause fights!), and of course the Form of "Materialism" (scare-quoted because the "materialism" so pilloried by philosophers tends to bear little resemblance to the content of any science post-Newton). If you can't show them to us, we're not going to accept that they exist in the same sense as books, chairs, and alpha particles.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In "Cargo Cult Science" Feynman showed a lot of insight into the current replication crisis decades before it blew up -- at least, that's how it looks to me as an outsider. Did any philosopher do better? (Ahead of time, again.) It wouldn't surprise me, and I'd like to check out their work, but from my own reading I can't think of anyone. By "do better" I mean in an equivalent few pages to advise a new graduate about…
"Did any philosopher do better? ... By "do better" I mean in an equivalent few pages to advise a new graduate about how to discover things that are true" Philosophy of science is less about telling scientists how to behave than trying to understand what actually happens when scientists do what they do, what science accomplishes on a theoretical level, what the difference between science and non-science is, etc. It's…
That doesn't really mean Popper is wrong.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't true. The majority of contemporary philosophers do not believe in anything supernatural, but plenty of scientists still dismiss their work. I say nothing supernatural, because the precise meaning of "naturalism" is contested in philosophy. For rather complex reasons, you can accept evolution, accept that modern physics is essentially accurate (only inaccurate so far as we're still discovering things and re…
>I say nothing supernatural, because the precise meaning of "naturalism" is contested in philosophy. For rather complex reasons, you can accept evolution, accept that modern physics is essentially accurate (only inaccurate so far as we're still discovering things and refining theory, etc), deny that there are immaterial souls or Cartesian dualism, yet not count as a naturalist. I am not sure if naturalism is necessar…
Most scientists believe in plenty of things they can't see, such as magnetism, viruses, gravity, etc.
What they can see of these are, arguably, their effects or the behavior of instruments that can detect them.
But many scientists also believe in plenty of things that can neither be seen nor (again, arguably) measured, like love, freedom, happiness, and even God.
I am reminded of this anecdote about a dedicated neurophisiologist writing to his wife:
My dear.
I Have long thought of myself as an acute and well-informed
interpreter of your behaviour. I think I have been able to identify
nearly every thought that has made you smile! My research has even
made such a progress that I no longer need to understand you IN THIS
WAY. I'm happy to say I'm now in a position, with the aid of an
apparatus which I shall promptly attach you, to assign to each body
movement you make a specific antecedent condition in your cortex.
In the meantime, perhaps you would have dinner with me tonight.
I trust you will not resist if I bring along this apparatus then to
help me determine, as quickly as possible, the physiological
idiosyncracies which obtain in your system.Earlier quoted context omitted.
In "Cargo Cult Science" Feynman showed a lot of insight into the current replication crisis decades before it blew up -- at least, that's how it looks to me as an outsider. Did any philosopher do better? (Ahead of time, again.) It wouldn't surprise me, and I'd like to check out their work, but from my own reading I can't think of anyone. By "do better" I mean in an equivalent few pages to advise a new graduate about…
"Did any philosopher do better? ... By "do better" I mean in an equivalent few pages to advise a new graduate about how to discover things that are true" Philosophy of science is less about telling scientists how to behave than trying to understand what actually happens when scientists do what they do, what science accomplishes on a theoretical level, what the difference between science and non-science is, etc. It's…
I think that may have been Feynman's point.
Whether, or to what extent, Popper's falsifiability criterion is a good description of science is not a problem for scientists.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Did any philosopher do better? ... By "do better" I mean in an equivalent few pages to advise a new graduate about how to discover things that are true" Philosophy of science is less about telling scientists how to behave than trying to understand what actually happens when scientists do what they do, what science accomplishes on a theoretical level, what the difference between science and non-science is, etc. It's…
>Sir Karl Popper is not really a participant in the contemporary professional philosophical dialogue; quite the contrary, he has ruined that dialogue. If he is on the right track, then the majority of professional philosophers the world over have wasted or are wasting their intellectual careers. That doesn't really mean Popper is wrong.
If it can't then by its own measure, it's not "scientific". Further, if one scorns anything "unscientific" as valueless, then the principle of falsifiability must also be valueless.
The only lasting source of enlightenment seems to come from science, and “The philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.” -Feynman
As far as quotes are concerned, here's one from Feyerabend that explicitly names Feynman:
"The withdrawal of philosophy into a 'professional' shell of its own has had disastrous consequences. The younger generation of physicists, the Feynmans, the Schwingers, etc., may be very bright; they may be more intelligent than their predecessors, than Bohr, Einstein, Schrödinger, Boltzmann, Mach and so on. But they are uncivilized savages, they lack in philosophical depth"
In other words, the ignorance of philosophy so prevalent among scientists has rendered them a class of boorish technicians. And it seems to be getting worse. Just look at Lawrence Krauss and friends.
I haven't read these books, but if the article is correct, then I find the grandiose claims that everyone's gotten all of these major philosophers wrong over the lat 2500 years (not just one or two) and that Gottlieb has properly comprehended all of them is suspect, at the very least. Worth noting is that people debate over what a given philosopher means by X all the time. While it's fine to say that a philosopher has been misunderstood in some way for centuries (and here, Aquinas stands as an example; the existential Thomists of the early 20th century made just that claim about the so-called principle of existence), the kind of broad claims being made here raise eyebrows. To understand just one philosopher thoroughly (not counting the research that goes into expanding their theories) can occupy a philosopher for a lifetime. There was one quite well known philosopher who said that he only truly "got" Aristotle in his 50s.