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Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

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Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#31

Post by lisper »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #24
lisper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Pretty much. This is a not-uncommon sentiment among philosophers. It's the only way they can cope with the shift in the societal power dynamic that has happened since Newton and Darwin and Einstein and Turing and Bell. Science has subsumed philosophy, and the philosophers really hate that.

But hasn't it always been that way? Copernicus was a revolution to philosophy. Newton was a revolution to philosophy. Is it just that we're more aware of the current philosophers, who will be forgotten in a century or two? Or is the philosophical opposition actually stronger now?

> But hasn't it always been that way? Copernicus was a revolution to philosophy. Newton was a revolution to philosophy.

Yes, that's why I specifically cited Newton. I could have cited Copernicus as well, and Galileo, and a few dozen others but I didn't want to get too long-winded.

> Is it just that we're more aware of the current philosophers, who will be forgotten in a century or two? Or is the philosophical opposition actually stronger now?

If anything I think it's weaker now than in the past because the fruits of science are so evident to everyone. It is plain to everyone that smart phones did not come out of philosophy departments. The niches in which philosophers can make meaningful contributions are getting narrower and narrower, which makes them more and more desperate and shrill. But I predict they will eventually go the way of the alchemist. Or maybe the astrologer. Astrologers figured out a way to eke out a living as charlatans. Maybe philosophers will too. (Maybe they already have.)

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#32

Post by hetman »

jerf wrote: post #16

I find myself becoming more and more sensitive to this basic mistake: We know relativity is wrong somehow. We know quantum mechanics is wrong somehow. They're both incredibly correct with their predictions but they don't go together, so they can't both be right and in the end they both have to be wrong somehow. Two of the places where they are both clearly somehow wrong are gravity (completely missing from QM, incomp…

[flagged]

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#33

Post by ajuc »

uoaei wrote: post #17
lisper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Pretty much. This is a not-uncommon sentiment among philosophers. It's the only way they can cope with the shift in the societal power dynamic that has happened since Newton and Darwin and Einstein and Turing and Bell. Science has subsumed philosophy, and the philosophers really hate that.

On the other hand, the hubris of physicists to call their trade a replacement for philosophy exposes the fatal flaw in scientism.

We've seen countless subjects on which philosophers argued for centuries solved by physicists and mathematicians.

We've yet to see one example going the other way.

At best philosophers provide interesting questions. At worst they are just paperpushers categorizing the work others did into pointless and arbitrary categories and arguing about them :)

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#34

Post by bee_rider »

uoaei wrote: post #17
lisper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Pretty much. This is a not-uncommon sentiment among philosophers. It's the only way they can cope with the shift in the societal power dynamic that has happened since Newton and Darwin and Einstein and Turing and Bell. Science has subsumed philosophy, and the philosophers really hate that.

On the other hand, the hubris of physicists to call their trade a replacement for philosophy exposes the fatal flaw in scientism.

What’s scientism?

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#35

Post by lisper »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #27
lisper wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that a fatal flaw?

Because even if you have experimental results in your favor, you still need epistemology to tell you why you can believe the results of the experiments. And you can't derive epistemology from experiments. Logical positivism tried to do this, and failed. Michael Polanyi's Personal Knowledge pretty much killed logical positivism, because he showed that no scientist is in the fully objective position that was required t…

> you still need epistemology to tell you why you can believe the results of the experiments

No, you don't. This is a common mistake. Science is not about knowledge, it's about explanations. The whole idea of "knowledge" is just part of a vast web of explanations that turn out to be exceptionally good at accounting for the data.

> logical positivism

The mistake of logical positivism is the unjustified assumption that there exists such a thing as "truth", and that this thing is accessible to us by thinking. It isn't. It's a consequence of the empirical observation that the scientific method converges towards something. "Truth" is just a label that we attach to the thing that it's converging to (or at least appears to be converging to -- we won't know if that limit actually exists until we get there).

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#36

Post by dventimi »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #27
lisper wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that a fatal flaw?

Because even if you have experimental results in your favor, you still need epistemology to tell you why you can believe the results of the experiments. And you can't derive epistemology from experiments. Logical positivism tried to do this, and failed. Michael Polanyi's Personal Knowledge pretty much killed logical positivism, because he showed that no scientist is in the fully objective position that was required t…

Explain "believe."

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#37

Post by spookthesunset »

lisper wrote: post #28
uptheroots wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Philosophy can approach many questions that currently feel out of the realm of science

Like what?

How do you believe the results you are getting? What makes such a belief justified?

What is the nature of consciousness?

What are things beautiful? What makes something ascetically pleasing.

Why any of this exists at all?

What is the purpose of this existence?

Is something ethical? Science can provide answer about consequences of an action but cannot determine if said action is moral or ethical.

… science is not a book of facts. It is merely a process for testing a hypothesis. It is not a replacement for philosophy, it is underpinned by philosophy.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#38

Post by rz2k »

lisper wrote: post #20
uoaei wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, the hubris of physicists to call their trade a replacement for philosophy exposes the fatal flaw in scientism.

Why is that a fatal flaw?

Isn’t scientism the idea that we have a set of knowledge that is conclusively known along with a heavy reliance on authority, while science is about inquiry, experimentation and searching for theories?

A physicists dismissing philosophy as out of date implies that we are already on the optimum path to discovering the remaining knowledge about the universe to be learned.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#39

Post by makeitdouble »

uptheroots wrote: post #25
lisper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Pretty much. This is a not-uncommon sentiment among philosophers. It's the only way they can cope with the shift in the societal power dynamic that has happened since Newton and Darwin and Einstein and Turing and Bell. Science has subsumed philosophy, and the philosophers really hate that.

Philosophy can approach many questions that currently feel out of the realm of science

I think this is part of why there can be such a rejection when research and experiments come knocking at philosophy's door to refute past discussions.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#40

Post by johnnyworker »

lisper wrote: post #5
theonlybutlet wrote: post #3

Perhaps it went over my head but in summary he wanted the scientific process of discovery in physics research to stop because his philosophy couldn't keep up?

Yep. Pretty much. This is a not-uncommon sentiment among philosophers. It's the only way they can cope with the shift in the societal power dynamic that has happened since Newton and Darwin and Einstein and Turing and Bell. Science has subsumed philosophy, and the philosophers really hate that.

If scientists had the slightest bit of societal power, our response to climate change wouldn't be this shameful, and climate activists wouldn't be so successfully marked for the daily sessions of "5 minutes of hate".

What did gain societal power is capitalism is brute-forcing its way into everything via "tech" that then pats the people in gold-plated cages, who allow their genius to be used for that on the back, while feeding them crumbs. Where nothing that can't be counted matters and destroying the environment -- both physical and that of society, that which minds get formed in -- is perfectly rational, as long as there is a cent of profit to be made.

Some people get really high on it, think someone's "won" (what?) and it might even be them, but let's not pretend any of the great scientists that get name-dropped so easily have anything to do with that, or haven't even spoken against it at length.

> Our entire much-praised technological progress, and civilization generally, could be compared to an axe in the hand of a pathological criminal.

-- Albert Einstein

> Let us not forget that human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the enquiring and constructive mind.

> What these blessed men have given us we must guard and try to keep alive with all our strength if humanity is not to lose its dignity, the security of its existence, and its joy in living.

-- Albert Einstein

> As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. [..] This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings.

-- Charles Darwin, "The Descent of Man" (1871)

> It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love.

-- Stephen Hawking

Science is a tool. More precisely, it's a method to make and improve and gauge tools. But those tools can't ask questions (we didn't somehow put there first), they cannot judge. They can tell you if something is fair according to your parameters and heuristics, but they know nothing of the inherent value in being fair, they can't answer "should I be fair?", and the same for everything else that actually matters.

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