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Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

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Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#281

Post by FabHK »

civility wrote: post #133
FabHK wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point of science is to make a plausible conjecture and try to prove it false. FWIW, and I'm not an expert, but I'd say that the Popperian view you summarise reflects philosophy of science circa 1960's, and things have moved on since then.

I don't want to sound too snarky, but "moved on" sounds like we're talking about fashion... Has modus tollens moved on too? I haven't studied modern philosophy (or Popper), but if there is a concise explanation I'd like to hear it.

Yeah, sorry for the very short comment, and "moving on" was the wrong word. So, first, Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery is actually from 1934 (!), not the 60s.

As an introduction, Alan F. Chalmers' What Is This Thing Called Science? is good. It covers Popper in chapters 5 to 7 (Introduction & Naive Falsificationism, Sophisticated Falsificationism, Limitations). Then it moves on (as it were) to Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Imre Lakatos' Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes (great short read, btw, applying those ideas to maths: Lakatos' Proofs and Refutations), and Feyerabend's Against Method. Chalmers then covers Bayesianism, new experimentalism, the nature of scientific laws, and scientific realism.

They've all pointed out problems with Popper's demarcation criterion. Not sure there's really a good catchy replacement, though. It seems to amount to "it's complicated".

One of the problems with Popper's account is the following: an observation is never about only one hypothesis, but about it and a whole set of auxiliary hypotheses. So, if your observation does not line up with the prediction, do you throw out the theory, or some auxiliary hypothesis? (Eg, Uranus didn't move as predicted, so Newton's physics was wrong. But wait, it was not a problem with Newton's physics, but there was another planet, Neptune.) Quine's notion of a "web of belief" captures that quite nicely - you don't just take one hypothesis, test it, and drop it if falsified, but you adjust the whole edifice such that it becomes coherent again. See [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duhem–Quine_thesis

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#282

Post by garmaine »

yesenadam wrote: post #92
garmaine wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Describing the scientific method, not creating it.

I take your point. But actually, not so. 'Scientists' from the ancient Greeks until the 19th C were called natural philosophers , studying natural philosophy. The Greek philosophers all give their theories of the universe, they were the scientists of the day - maybe Socrates was the first to concern himself with just the human world. The word 'scientist' was coined only in 1834. "Modern meanings of the terms science…

Yes. But by the 19th century the scientific process was already doing quite well at advancing our understanding of the universe. The philosophers of science of that era mostly wrote down and formalized what was already happening. It’s not like scientists suddenly started doing their experiments differently because of the advent of a formal philosophy of science. There were some improvements, but they were incremental not transformative.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#283

Post by garmaine »

Ephem wrote: post #46
Ephem wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Wikipedia phrases Harry G. Frankfurt (1969): "A compatibilist can believe that a person can choose between many choices, but the choice is always determined by external factors" A bit sloppily put, a compatibilist believes a choice is free if the agent making it is not coerced or constrainted, even if the choice that the agent will make is determined. Different compatibilists approach this as either being descript…

Personally I would argue that we descriptively have different definitions of free before a choice and after. Because the future has not yet happened, all possible future choices are indeed free in a sense, even if one of them is predetermined. When we look back, I think we tend to think of free in a different way, that is, given that a choice has already been made, we can now say that it was the only choice that coul…

What does it mean for a choice to be “free” if it is predetermined?

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#284

Post by Miltnoid »

13415 wrote: post #232
superqwert wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What do you mean by "analytically true"

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#285

Post by JackFr »

canhascodez wrote: post #263
JackFr wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 metho…

I think that it's a problem when we talk about the outputs of different forms of verification as if those things shared a common identity. They may share a similar property of undeniability, but they are not the same thing, and in point of fact, they are not comparable . The phrase "freedom is better than slavery" is not better or worse than "1 + 1 = 2" or "water boils at 100 C". I think that the idea of a singular t…

So when I say "I believe freedom is better than slavery" and "I believe 1+1=2" that they are two distinct, possibly incomparable forms of belief. Maybe.

>I think that the idea of a singular thing called "truth" is actually fairly harmful.

I disagree with that.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#286

Post by canhascodez »

JackFr wrote: post #285
canhascodez wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that it's a problem when we talk about the outputs of different forms of verification as if those things shared a common identity. They may share a similar property of undeniability, but they are not the same thing, and in point of fact, they are not comparable . The phrase "freedom is better than slavery" is not better or worse than "1 + 1 = 2" or "water boils at 100 C". I think that the idea of a singular t…

So when I say "I believe freedom is better than slavery" and "I believe 1+1=2" that they are two distinct, possibly incomparable forms of belief. Maybe. >I think that the idea of a singular thing called "truth" is actually fairly harmful. I disagree with that.

> I disagree with that.

Duly noted.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#287

Post by alan-crowe »

MrScruff wrote: post #13

Could someone with better understanding explain compatibalism to me? I’m struggling to grasp how it can allow for both determinism and free will.

The intuition of conflict comes from the two person case. The slave is in chains, the master wields his bloody whip. The master determines that the slave will pick cotton. The slave is not free to refuse.

The single person case has two descriptions of the person. The chatty, social person, who tells us of his thoughts and feelings and why he chose tea instead of coffee. Contrast that with the account in terms of atoms and molecules. Neurons fire, muscles contract, etc.

Where have we seen this before? In the kinetic theory of gasses. The pressure of the hot gas in a heat engine pushes the piston down. Alternatively the molecules bounce off the top of the piston, hammering it down with countless tiny hammer blows. Which account is true? Why not both?

In the single person case the differences between the two accounts are so large that we are sucked into seeing them as rival accounts. But philosophers have never managed to clarify why the accounts are incompatible. Both accounts run out of steam. We don't really know the secrets of our own hearts and often resort to rationalizing the choices that we freely make, after the event. The atoms and molecules account asserts that those choices are in principal determined, and offers a wonderful excuse, in the exponential sensitivity to initial conditions, for why determinists cannot be expected to make predictions.

Sure, we can say that our free choices are determined by atoms and molecules following the laws of physics. But take the prediction problem more seriously. Imagine that I have a gadget that predicts whether you will chose tea or coffee. If I tell you in advance, you can chose the other way, defeating the prediction. The philosophical problem arises due to viewing the atoms and molecules that make up your body as the gadget that predicts your choices. You cannot escape their power over your actions. On the other hand the point seems fatuous. Those atoms and molecules are you. "You cannot do other than what you do" is just a triviality because the two accounts are two accounts of a single underlying reality. They are bound to be compatible, no matter how much the customary language jars and creates the appearance of conflict.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#288

Post by naasking »

akkartik wrote: post #277
naasking wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're unnecessarily dismissive of pilot waves and people who accept them. There are plenty of compelling properties of pilot wave theories, like a proper accounting of measurement. Even John Bell of Bell's theorem suggested that the greatest problem facing physics was integrating the non-locality of QM with relativity, and the fact that pilot waves place this non-locality front and centre is a feature not a…

A recent experiment actually seems to disprove pilot wave theories once and for all: https://www.quantamagazine.org/famous-experiment-dooms-pilot... (discussed a few weeks ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18198811 )

You can see my comment about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18201035

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#289

Post by salmonfamine »

sheepmullet wrote: post #246
salmonfamine wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to actually address this comment since it's such a ramble, but I think you make some disingenuous rhetorical moves that deserve to be addressed. You employ a rhetorical move that some theists have used in the past -- namely, casting doubt on the veracity of scientific beliefs by painting them in the guise of religion. This is also a convenient move that lets you characterize huge swaths of academia that dis…

> namely, casting doubt on the veracity of scientific beliefs by painting them in the guise of religion. You think he is commenting on the scientific method but he is really commenting on human nature. People really are treating Science as a kind of religion. Understanding this motivation is important because it shows the precarious position we are in - any event which causes a loss of faith in “Science” the religion…

I agree that, subjectively, it seems like the popular discourse surrounding the nature of science is not exactly philosophically rigorous. And I agree that some people seem to hold quasi-religious views of science.

Maybe I totally misunderstood OP, but it seemed like they were conflating the state of popular discourse with the state of academic philosophy.

As an aside, I don’t think that people are likely to stop trusting in science or the scientific community because of the state of discourse surrounding science. I think that people are much likely to distrust science simply because they don’t like certain findings or it’s not politically aligned with them, imho. At least in America.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#290

Post by brownbat »

FabHK wrote: post #199
brownbat wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he cites a consensus in personal belief in atheism and agnostics among philosophers... as a good reason for philosophy not accepting the existence of God... It seems incredibly unlikely someone would cite the popularity of agnosticism to establish the certainty of atheism, so I am fairly confident that was not the move he was making. Looking back at the prompt: > "Your colleague David Chalmers has fretted that “the…

> I'm not even sure whether he considers himself an atheist or agnostic. Presumably he wouldn't cite the convergence towards atheism as an example of convergence to the truth if he'd consider it mistaken. So that assumption is safe, I'd think.

> Presumably he wouldn't cite the convergence towards atheism if he'd consider it mistaken.

Same could be said of agnosticism, which he also specifically mentions.

Probably an atheist if you're just listing that as a more probable position things could "converge" towards-- I was really just surprised at brobdingnagians' confidence in Maudlin's religious views, based on a passing reference to the entire body of philosophers, from which inference brobdingnagians later levels a charge of hypocrisy, because elsewhere Maudlin discloses an unevidenced belief when pressed on another (nonreligious) matter without even indicating how strongly he holds that possible hunch.

Thought it was worth an aside that brob might not have perfectly pinned Maudlin down.

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