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Was Paul Feyerabend Really Science's "Worst Enemy"? (2016)

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Re: Was Paul Feyerabend Really Science's "Worst Enemy"? (2016)

#31

Post by pjc50 »

lidHanteyk wrote: post #22
pjc50 wrote: post #12

> "I have no position!" he cried. "If you have a position, it is always something screwed down." He twisted an invisible screwdriver into the table. "I have opinions that I defend rather vigorously, and then I find out how silly they are, and I give them up!" By modern social convention this is "trolling". > If he was not anti-science, I asked, what did he mean by his statement in Who's Who that intellectuals are cri…

This has helped me understand why folks think that I'm so often trolling: I wish for my opinion to be shown silly, because I'm so confident that it is a stupid opinion, because all of my opinions are stupid silly opinions. I would much rather have everything laid out, examined, and shown not to be what it is not, than to suffer under political rhetoric. It is possible to be intellectually curious and also not a tanki…

There's a lot to be said for the benefits of dialectic, but there's also a time and a place for it and the participants need to be on the same page and not threatened by it. You shouldn't take the "I'd just like to know what's so silly about race science of Aryanism" position with a Jewish person, for example, because they're going to interpret it as a death threat.

Less importantly (but still a matter of social grace) you need to know whether your interlocutor gets this all the time. Failing to do basic research will get your question closed on stackoverflow; engaging in dialectic to go over "settled" questions again and again is frustrating, and many of the people on the other side have got fed up with insincere timewasters.

> It is possible to be intellectually curious and also not a tankie.

To me those are mutually exclusive - "tankies" (and many other ideological factions) are people who've become tidally locked to a position and are no longer intellectually curious, but only interested in shooting down other ideological positions.

Re: Was Paul Feyerabend Really Science's "Worst Enemy"? (2016)

#32

Post by pjc50 »

vageli wrote: post #15
pjc50 wrote: post #12

> "I have no position!" he cried. "If you have a position, it is always something screwed down." He twisted an invisible screwdriver into the table. "I have opinions that I defend rather vigorously, and then I find out how silly they are, and I give them up!" By modern social convention this is "trolling". > If he was not anti-science, I asked, what did he mean by his statement in Who's Who that intellectuals are cri…

> > "I have no position!" he cried. "If you have a position, it is always something screwed down." He twisted an invisible screwdriver into the table. "I have opinions that I defend rather vigorously, and then I find out how silly they are, and I give them up!" > By modern social convention this is "trolling". Can you expand on this? That hardly sounds like trolling and more like "Strong opinions loosely held" which…

See my reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22127853

Re: Was Paul Feyerabend Really Science's "Worst Enemy"? (2016)

#33

Post by gmueckl »

ngcc_hk wrote: post #2

You need an alternative view. He provided one. A good deal. Philosophy is never about convenience. The real question - is philosophy of science helped science or human. I am not sure.

Philosophy of science is more helpful than people give it credit for. For example, Ernst Mach basically laid a lot of groundwork for the General Theory of Relativity with his philosophical work about the nature of physical theories.

I have also personally had a couple of discussions with philosophers who worked on understanding scientific simulation and trying to approach an abstract, but accurate definition of its nature. Even just the attempt to do that forced a lot of introspection onto the scientists they talked to about their work. My takeaway was that these discussions uncovered a lot of implicit assumptions that were unknowingly made. So even if the results the philosophers wanted - a generic definition of what a scientific simulation is - might not be very useful in themselves, the mere process of getting there helped everybody develop a better understanding.

Re: Was Paul Feyerabend Really Science's "Worst Enemy"? (2016)

#35

Post by Rochus »

claudiawerner wrote: post #28
Rochus wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we hear the name Adorno, we have to tremble with awe, don't we? >> A school of thought[0] specifically denotes a commitment to a particular method or set of principles Agree, but this does not improve the quality of the sentences uttered by the members of this "school" (sorry if I'm hurting the feelings of any Marxists here). >> Besides, the Frankfurt School never claimed to be carrying out science. Well, in Ger…

>Agree, but this does not improve the quality of the sentences uttered by the members of this "school" I agree, and nobody has claimed otherwise. Ideas that come from a school are not necessarily more or less valid than any others. There are some schools of thought I agree with, and others I disagree with, and I think that's the same for many lay people like me and many philosophers too. >Well, in German language the…

By the end of the day, "philosopher" is nothing more than a more fashionable word for "writer". And like "film critic", "philosopher" is an unprotected, self-appointed title. In principle, philosophers (apart from having to compete for an audience like writers) have a pretty simple life. They can simply claim something without ever providing any proof. And with a bit of luck and charisma, they find disciples who continue to represent their doctrine and help their master to gain social prestige. And as you correctly say: this concept predates science and enlightenment. My original statement was that I am skeptical of knowledge whose origins are a specific person or group of persons ("schools"). I hope to have clarified my point after this excursion. In the case of traditional philosophy of science there is even a contradiction in terms: the statements are dogmas that defy falsification. So according to the own criteria of the philosophy of science of that time they do not differ from religion.

Re: Was Paul Feyerabend Really Science's "Worst Enemy"? (2016)

#36

Post by morango »

jhbadger wrote: post #14
osullivj wrote: post #11

His insistence that there is no scientific method is pro-science. Science’s only method is “opportunism,” he said. “You need a toolbox full of different kinds of tools. Not only a hammer and pins and nothing else." This is what he meant by his much-maligned phrase "anything goes" (and not, as is commonly thought, that one scientific theory is as good as any other). Restricting science to a particular methodology--suc…

Well, it's true that the cliched "scientific method" taught in high schools is a gross oversimplification, and many discoveries are made by accident rather than deliberately trying to test a clearly defined hypothesis. But in the 1980s-1990s "Science Wars", there was a movement by postmodernists to try to claim that science is just an ideology no better than religion or magic. This movement liked to quote Feyerabend…

Many working scientists are also not very well versed in social sciences and humanities and tend to just get angry when anything outside of their fields get mentioned.

Re: Was Paul Feyerabend Really Science's "Worst Enemy"? (2016)

#37

Post by claudiawerner »

Rochus wrote: post #35
claudiawerner wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Agree, but this does not improve the quality of the sentences uttered by the members of this "school" I agree, and nobody has claimed otherwise. Ideas that come from a school are not necessarily more or less valid than any others. There are some schools of thought I agree with, and others I disagree with, and I think that's the same for many lay people like me and many philosophers too. >Well, in German language the…

By the end of the day, "philosopher" is nothing more than a more fashionable word for "writer". And like "film critic", "philosopher" is an unprotected, self-appointed title. In principle, philosophers (apart from having to compete for an audience like writers) have a pretty simple life. They can simply claim something without ever providing any proof. And with a bit of luck and charisma, they find disciples who cont…

>By the end of the day, "philosopher" is nothing more than a more fashionable word for "writer". And like "film critic", "philosopher" is an unprotected, self-appointed title.

Scientists also write; writing isn't the point, the point is logically consistent arguments (or arguments for a particular logical system), which philosophers attempt to make. "Mathematician", "programmer", "logician" and in many cases "engineer" are also self-appointed titles, yet in both cases we must say that a mathematician and engineer's work could reasonably be said to be confined to writing and designing. The fact of the matter is that logical claims do not require "proof", but the relevance of theories to the world as observed by science does require support from the scientific method. This is why philosophers strive for their systems to be consistent with the current state of science (whether physics, biology or sociology, etc.)

>And as you correctly say: this concept predates science and enlightenment.

It not only predates, it is ontologically prior, meaning that for science to be carried out, there must be a justified philosophy of science for it to have any basis. For instance, we might ask, "why falsification?" - a question that, if unanswered, renders science without a logical basis. You may reply that science is useful whether or not we have a logical basis, but usefulness in turn requires some justification; after all, many things are useful but we do not carry them out for other reasons.

>In the case of traditional philosophy of science there is even a contradiction in terms: the statements are dogmas that defy falsification

This is not a contradiction in terms, since most philosophers of science are not pure falsificationists. Falsification is not the only way to gain knowledge generally (logical arguments and mathematics are unfalsifiable; even the statement "science must be falsifiable" is unfalsifiable), but after Popper there are very few pure falsificationists in the philosophy of science, for various good reasons[0].

>So according to the own criteria of the philosophy of science of that time they do not differ from religion.

Philosophy of science is very much the equivalent of atheism, or agnosticism when we're talking about dogmas such as falsificationism or positivism or any other popular way of doing science that is unjustified.

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/

Re: Was Paul Feyerabend Really Science's "Worst Enemy"? (2016)

#38

Post by Rochus »

claudiawerner wrote: post #37
Rochus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the end of the day, "philosopher" is nothing more than a more fashionable word for "writer". And like "film critic", "philosopher" is an unprotected, self-appointed title. In principle, philosophers (apart from having to compete for an audience like writers) have a pretty simple life. They can simply claim something without ever providing any proof. And with a bit of luck and charisma, they find disciples who cont…

>By the end of the day, "philosopher" is nothing more than a more fashionable word for "writer". And like "film critic", "philosopher" is an unprotected, self-appointed title. Scientists also write; writing isn't the point, the point is logically consistent arguments (or arguments for a particular logical system), which philosophers attempt to make. "Mathematician", "programmer", "logician" and in many cases "enginee…

I can't really add more than I already said. I assume that you know the difference between physicists, mathematicians and engineers or how these titles are protected in Germany, for example, and that there is no need to discuss this. I have already referred (see links above) to the direction in which, in my view, the philosophy of science should usefully develop. And regardless how you call it: hypothesis, prediction and experiment are still the essential steps of todays generally accepted scientific method.

Re: Was Paul Feyerabend Really Science's "Worst Enemy"? (2016)

#39

Post by LanguageGamer »

osullivj wrote: post #11

His insistence that there is no scientific method is pro-science. Science’s only method is “opportunism,” he said. “You need a toolbox full of different kinds of tools. Not only a hammer and pins and nothing else." This is what he meant by his much-maligned phrase "anything goes" (and not, as is commonly thought, that one scientific theory is as good as any other). Restricting science to a particular methodology--suc…

Perhaps worth noting that Kuhn wasn't attempting to lay out a methodology - he wasn't saying "this is how you should do science". Rather, he was a historian making generalizations about how different sciences developed.

Re: Was Paul Feyerabend Really Science's "Worst Enemy"? (2016)

#40

Post by dang »

iron0013 wrote: post #34

“Feyerabend, who defended astrology and creationism...” go ahead and stop right there, that’s all anyone needs to know, frankly.

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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