Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

blogs.scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 338 posts

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#231

Post by gjm11 »

blueprint wrote: post #173
salmonfamine wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) It’s hard to say “no” to this because it’s not clear what you mean. Do you mean to say that I’m painting religion in the guise of religion? 2) here are several definitions: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science

1. Him means the person you're replying to. Your argument is clearly to paint him in a religious light. You need something more substantial than "other theists say similar things". You need concrete proof to draw a conclusion. 2. The question is whether you can show that what the person you're replying to is arguing in favor of is not science. Pasting some definitions proves neither that you understand them nor that…

The person salmonfamine was replying to already painted himself (or herself) in a religious light. I see no justification for characterizing salmonfamine's argument as "to paint him in a religious light" -- and since salmonfamine explicitly said "I am not an atheist or an agnostic", it seems you're arguing that one religious person is trying to stigmatize another by labelling them as religious. Not very likely.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#232

Post by 13415 »

superqwert wrote: post #123
cyborgx7 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've explained this to people a couple of times who make the "faith in science" argument. The difference is that you -can- verify it, not that you did verify it. Your terminology of trust vs. faith is great. I will incorporate it into my arguments in the future.

I think you may have a different understanding of "faith in science" than brobdingnagians. It could mean anything, such as: 1. A belief that the scientific method will definitely approach reality (a realist/pragmatist claim) 2. A belief that the current consensus is right - (but it could be disclaimed) 3. A belief that science will explain everything, so one could discard other studies, such as philosophy or theology…

Position 1 is analytically true.

No scientist believes position 2 in general. Regarding particular subject matters and well-confirmed theories, on the other hand, it's pretty much uncontroversial. No cell phone would work and no plane would fly if the underlying physical theories were flat-out false.

Position 3 is probably analytically true, too. The idea that there is something that can in principle not be explained by taking a close scientific (=skeptic, methodical, experimental, precise) look at it hardly makes any sense.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#233

Post by gjm11 »

3pt14159 wrote: post #148
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Faith in science is not an unreasonable assumption—says me who holds that assumption—but it's faith nonetheless. Faith is when one acts on a belief without having any rational reason for it. My rational reason for believing in science is simply: it works!

Look, I don't want to get all in the weeds here because it would complicate things unnecessarily, but if it's really that simple to you then you should know that this argument contains a logical falacy: Argumentum ad consequentiam or appeal to consequences . Once you let go of thinking that truth is knowable you'll realize that there is some faith that you have. It's not in science per-se; but it might be faith that…

"I believe in science because it works" is not an argumentum ad consequentiam.

What characterizes an AaC is the following structure: if X were true then the consequences would be good/bad; therefore X is (probably) true/false.

So if eli_gottlieb were saying "I believe in science because it would be lovely if science were right", that would be an AaC. But that's not at all what he's saying.

The form of his argument is more like this: "by assuming X we can arrive at a bunch of conclusions, and they consistently seem to be correct ones; therefore X is probably true". And that is (a rough sketch of) a pretty good argument.

(There are nits to pick -- more with my paraphrase than with Eli's original. For instance, science isn't a bunch of propositions so much as it's a way of trying to find truths, so "believing in science" isn't so much "believing that X" as "endorsing X as a method". And "... therefore X is probably true" isn't quite the right thing; "... and this constitutes evidence for X" is better. Etc.)

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#234

Post by nyc111 »

geoka9 wrote: post #179
nyc111 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems a qoute from the Introduction of his History of western philosophy [1]. But I think the next sentence is important too: Almost all the questions of most interest to speculative minds are such as science cannot answer, and the confident answers of theologians no longer seem so convincing as they did in former centuries. [...] To such questions no answer can be found in the laboratory. Theologies have profes…

> physics .. accept that their type of knowledge is ... not definite I think it's definite as long as the horse is spherical and in a vacuum. I mean a scientific theory that's built on such an assumption is definite knowledge, right?

I think you are being sarcastic, but I happen to agree with you that there are lots of physics theories based on spherical cow assumption.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#235

Post by camelNotation »

ripsawridge wrote: post #222

The only thing our world needs now is a reorientation away from growth at all costs into a mode of life that values the simple, the close by, the cheap. I don't see this guy giving a damn about that problem. Instead he tosses off bon mots about Popper and Gödel, and intones comfortably that in his view his peers have the right idea because they converge on atheism/agnosticism. Wow. The world is saved. There is a clas…

I like you.

There's been a total over-correction away from religion and we've lost sight of why it evolved in the first place. Social scientists have long known that there is nothing rational about the decisions we make, and certainly not in groups. Religion may have led us to quite a bit of violence in the past and might not have given us self-driving cars, but simply understanding the universe is not going to be enough to save the world when we are all still driven moment to moment by our emotional predispositions. We need a way to engineer and shape our emotions and and our collective psyche - something religion evolved to do. Science is a valuable tool for good, but it is limited by our own lack of virtue in how we use it.

I think a lot of people dislike that idea because religion, unlike science, doesn't offer us any certainty. We're addicted to an illusion of certainty in a world where our actual lived reality is always uncertain. We need to get over that. Certainty is a lie.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#236

Post by YorkshireSeason »

mbrock wrote: post #99
YorkshireSeason wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience when philosophers say something about those things, they say it in natural language (typically English), and that is not precise enough for measurement. All problems can be handwaved away with ad-hoc modification. The difference between philosophers 'doing' AI and what e.g. DeepMind do is that the latter are precise enough (indeed as precise as possible -- pace the Church-Turing thesis) about their r…

How do you see the influence of the Heideggerian critique of cognitivism, via Hubert Dreyfus, on the "Heideggerian AI" movement which preceded the shift away from classical symbolic AI towards connectionism and embodied learning? Here's from the introduction to his paper Why Heideggerian AI failed and how fixing it would require making it more Heideggerian : > When I was teaching at MIT in the early sixties, students…

I'm not familiar with the Heideggerian critique of cognitivism, or of Hubert Dreyfus' work, but some of your quotes sound agreeable. I am not convinced however that the frame problem and related issues are unsolvable. The way forward is to program, measure and improve.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#237

Post by Retric »

mitchty wrote: post #221
Retric wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a recursive definition. Methodology that works is science, that which fails is not. Things like peer review are accepted practice, but practice changes over time based on research. People simplify things like to use hypothesis > experiment loop as Science. But, in practice simple observation is often used for things like Botany. Ex: Philosophy is not science becase it does not work. You can’t argue from first pr…

> Philosophy is not science becase it does not work. I'm slightly amused by this statement, as modern science is descended directly from philosophy. Indeed without philosophy, I could easily argue there is no science as we know it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy

Language changes over time, you can’t use an outdated 18th century term to refer to the modern linguistic meaning of a term.

Now days we call the useless bits philosophy, 200 years ago back when people took Phrenology as a real thing that was not true.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#238

Post by AgentME »

gbustomtv5 wrote: post #131

Interesting that he brings up the story of Er. Plato made all the arguments when it comes to philosophy’s why and how. The story of Er is the comprehension test at the end of the book. Sadly, Tim did not pass the Er’s test.

What is the intended interpretation of Er?

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#239

Post by JackFr »

mfoy_ wrote: post #195
JackFr wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Science is merely a set of tools and processes, nothing more. Seriously, NOTHING more. Nonsense - that ignores that fundamentally science is a human activity. Because it is a human activity it is open to the same biases, self-deceptions, fads, groupthink and political pressures as any other human activity. Apart from that, implicit in your defense of science and attack on religion is a belief that true knowledge ca…

I'm not saying humans are infallible, but trying to argue that "the scientific method isn't perfect because people aren't perfect" is nonsense, especially if the conclusion you want to draw is that "therefore we should respect faith as an alternative means of determining truth". The scientific method IS the best tool our species has when it comes to determining truths about the laws of nature. In fact, it's practical…

> The scientific method IS the best tool our species has when it comes to determining truths about the laws of nature.

I agree.

But I also believe freedom is better than slavery. I value wisdom over ignorance. And I believe those things without any proof. The scientific method cannot prove to me that murder is wrong, and yet I hold it to be true.

So despite the fact that I agree with the power of the scientific method, I'll cop to truths that I believe without proof.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#240

Post by sheepmullet »

mfoy_ wrote: post #195
JackFr wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Science is merely a set of tools and processes, nothing more. Seriously, NOTHING more. Nonsense - that ignores that fundamentally science is a human activity. Because it is a human activity it is open to the same biases, self-deceptions, fads, groupthink and political pressures as any other human activity. Apart from that, implicit in your defense of science and attack on religion is a belief that true knowledge ca…

I'm not saying humans are infallible, but trying to argue that "the scientific method isn't perfect because people aren't perfect" is nonsense, especially if the conclusion you want to draw is that "therefore we should respect faith as an alternative means of determining truth". The scientific method IS the best tool our species has when it comes to determining truths about the laws of nature. In fact, it's practical…

> Almost every major advancement our species has made has been because someone had a theory, figured out a way to test it, and came to a conclusion with some degree of confidence that they were then able to act upon and share with others.

Citation please.

Post reply on HN