Science and the Demise of Philosophy • Hacker News Board

Re: Science and the Demise of Philosophy

#41

Post by Herring » Mon, Aug 17, 2009, 11:59 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #36

Herring wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is an extremely vague statement, but is basically a statement of the logical positivist notion of the scientific method which is now universally accepted as inadequate. That's a fitting statement in a thread about the demise of philosophy. If you go to any lab, they'll tell you they're trying to come up with an accurate model, or trying to create structures with a certain known function. Your name for the proc…

>That's a fitting statement in a thread about the demise of philosophy. If you go to any lab, they'll tell you they're trying to come up with an accurate model, or trying to create structures with a certain known function. Your name for the process & opinions about it are irrelevant. It should be empirically clear what is happening. I can't make sense of any of that, or see how it is relevant to what you were quoting…

>I can't make sense of any of that, or see how it is relevant to what you were quoting from my post. Are you suggesting that logical positivism is correct, or that it's ok for scientists (and for you) to ignore the philosophy of science, or something else? Vague references to "trying to create structures with a certain known function" are just impossible for me to interpret without some explanation of what they're supposed to mean.

Structures with predictable behavior - eg drugs that will alleviate suffering, chips that will compute, etc. I take no position on whether it's ok to ignore philosopy, but as far as I can see they largely do. It doesn't matter to me whether logical positivism is correct - I'm saying people doing science clearly seek predictive knowledge. Models are predictive. If you still disagree, I'm not sure we can come to any agreement here.

> The chemists methods were (typically) scientific and rational, even though they did not reach a good understanding of chemistry using these methods for quite some time.

They're only "scientific" & "rational" in retrospect because you now know what is actually happening. When solving chemical equations, you must take into account atomic numbers, which they did long before knowing about atoms. There's no a priori reason why certain compounds must always be in certain proportions. All they knew is it worked well.

> Certainly, if our brains were different we might have different moral beliefs, but that does not imply that those beliefs would be equally correct.

So if our current brain structure is an accident of evolution what makes our present moral beliefs more correct? Geometry has real world consequences that don't change if brain structure changes. Coincidentally the only moral facts that aren't already changing (much) are those crucial in evolution.

> I am curious, though, why you are so sure that moral facts must be reducible to physical facts.

It's inconcievable to me how you can make a statement about this reality without (eventually) referring to some observation/experiment -- ie some test that argues for that outcome over other possible outcomes. If you claim moral beliefs aren't based on reality then clearly they're arbitrary.

Re: Science and the Demise of Philosophy

#42

Post by nazgulnarsil » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 12:20 AM UTC

foldr wrote: post #37

ewjordan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientists can ask me about what the experience of "red" is like, and I can tell them that it's not quite like blue or green, and can point to it, but the experience itself (like all experience) remains a completely private matter for me. Most emphatically, no. Well, I suppose yes, for now, but that's only because your complete brain state is effectively hidden from the scientist because we don't have the technology…

>Give us a decent real time high resolution scanner, and your "private" experience is just another data set on a big computer somewhere. That huge dataset still won't tell you what it's like to see red, though. It will just tell you what happens in the brain when someone sees red. >It really doesn't, though, unless you already ascribe something mystical and aphysical to this "subjective experience," begging the quest…

constantly asserting that "it just isn't" does nothing for your case. hypothesis must be differentiable via making different predictions about the world. otherwise they're not really different.

Re: Science and the Demise of Philosophy

#43

Post by christopherolah » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 3:16 AM UTC

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #42

foldr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Give us a decent real time high resolution scanner, and your "private" experience is just another data set on a big computer somewhere. That huge dataset still won't tell you what it's like to see red, though. It will just tell you what happens in the brain when someone sees red. >It really doesn't, though, unless you already ascribe something mystical and aphysical to this "subjective experience," begging the quest…

constantly asserting that "it just isn't" does nothing for your case. hypothesis must be differentiable via making different predictions about the world. otherwise they're not really different.

(I'm not parent, I'm the one who originally asked the question.)

Certainly, a _scientific theory_ is judged based on its predictive power. This is why I mentioned my opinion, earlier, that science is "the art of useful fiction." The goal isn't to achieve truth but to predict.

Philosophy, on the other hand, is concerned with what is _really_ true, not predictions.

Certainly, the experience of qualia has no effect demonstrable to an outside observer. That doesn't make it any more or less real. I experience, therefore it must exist. I merely can't prove it to you. The great thing is that you can prove it to yourself. All you have to do is pause for a moment and rationally examine what you feel.

If your interested in an attempt to explain it from a materialist perspective, you may wish to look at Roger Penrose _The Emperor's New Mind_. He argues that consciousness is intricately tied to QM. Or at least I think he does... It's difficult reading and I haven't read the whole thing yet!

It's on Google Books, here: http://books.google.ca/books?id=oI0grArWHUMC&dq=The+Empe...

The first chapter provides an excellent explanation of qualia.

Re: Science and the Demise of Philosophy

#44

Post by christopherolah » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 3:25 AM UTC

ewjordan wrote: post #28

321abc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the difference between describing how something works and describing what something's like to the person doing whatever it is you're describing. Science can (arguably) get at how something works, or at least make some predictions and models concerning these things, but that's not the same as getting at what something's like, from a "subjective" standpoint. Scientists can ask me about what the experience of "red"…

Scientists can ask me about what the experience of "red" is like, and I can tell them that it's not quite like blue or green, and can point to it, but the experience itself (like all experience) remains a completely private matter for me. Most emphatically, no. Well, I suppose yes, for now, but that's only because your complete brain state is effectively hidden from the scientist because we don't have the technology…

I just reread the first chapter of Penrose's _The Emperor's New Mind_ so this is based off of it.

Let's simplify the problem to just conversation, for the sake of simplicity. Suppose we have a program that can pass the Turing test... But the way it is constructing it's responses is only a more capable version of the emacs psychiatrist. Does it have consciousness?

I posted a link to ENM in another post. Maybe look at the first chapter. It hits the nail on the head, IMHO.

EDIT: Or even just read the first few pages... It seems to introduce it decently, if your short on time.

Re: Science and the Demise of Philosophy

#45

Post by christopherolah » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 4:06 AM UTC

ewjordan wrote: post #30

christopherolah wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty clear that your taking a scientific-materialist stance. So, my question to you is how do you explain qualia? Qualia is a term describing the actual _feeling_ of something as consciously perceived. Wikipedia explains it better: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia The problem is this: Consider perceiving the color red. An outside observer can explain this as photons hitting my eye and me reacting. The only…

I, for my part, was led to the conclusion that the scientific-materialist perspective was wrong, or at least grossly incomplete. It seems logical as science is essentially the art of useful fiction: we make up the simplest story that predicts the right answers and use it until it breaks (and sometimes beyond that and just avoid the points we know it breaks at). The distinction between materialist and non-materialist…

>I'd argue that it's also impossible for you to verify this fact. Who's to say that you don't just think you actually feel things >but in reality it's just your brain playing a trick on itself?

>Taking that further (and getting into the definition problem others have mentioned), who's to say there's any difference >at all between the delusion and the perception of experience?

Because to think such a thing way would be qualia in and of itself...

Re: Science and the Demise of Philosophy

#46

Post by Herring » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 8:24 AM UTC

foldr wrote: post #34

rflrob wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> According to your definition, pure untested intuition would then be "scientific". As it happens of course, intuition isn't very effective. The point is that all kinds of crazy methods might turn out to be effective, but we wouldn't therefore want to call them scientific. Maybe I'm just using circular logic here, but the only way we know whether a method is effective is by testing it. Nevertheless, I don't think the…

I wasn't trying to make a point about the use of intuition, this was just a hypothetical example. I could just as well have constructed a hypothetical scenario in which, say, asking a five year old kid turns out to be the most effective method of investigating the world. Surely, even if this turned out to be an effective method, it would not be scientific.

You cannot name a single effective technique that's been shunned because it smells bad to a philosopher. Coincidence? Frankly if anyone tries that in any competitive field they'll lose market share, won't be able to publish, etc.

Re: Science and the Demise of Philosophy

#47

Post by nazgulnarsil » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 10:08 AM UTC

christopherolah wrote: post #43

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

constantly asserting that "it just isn't" does nothing for your case. hypothesis must be differentiable via making different predictions about the world. otherwise they're not really different.

(I'm not parent, I'm the one who originally asked the question.) Certainly, a _scientific theory_ is judged based on its predictive power. This is why I mentioned my opinion, earlier, that science is "the art of useful fiction." The goal isn't to achieve truth but to predict. Philosophy, on the other hand, is concerned with what is _really_ true, not predictions. Certainly, the experience of qualia has no effect demo…

what is _really_ true IS what makes the best predictions. Otherwise in what sense is it true? Qualia has no effect demonstrable to an inside observer because you have no other data points to compare to. You have only one data point: your own consciousness.

Re: Science and the Demise of Philosophy

#48

Post by foldr » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 6:37 PM UTC

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #42

foldr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Give us a decent real time high resolution scanner, and your "private" experience is just another data set on a big computer somewhere. That huge dataset still won't tell you what it's like to see red, though. It will just tell you what happens in the brain when someone sees red. >It really doesn't, though, unless you already ascribe something mystical and aphysical to this "subjective experience," begging the quest…

constantly asserting that "it just isn't" does nothing for your case. hypothesis must be differentiable via making different predictions about the world. otherwise they're not really different.

Neither will saying "it just does." How do you think that seeing a detailed brain scan would tell you what it is like to see red? It's extraordinary that you think the burden of proof is on those who simply deny the near-inconceivable possibility that it would.

The problem is precisely one of predictions. Physicalism doesn't predict the existence of conscious experience. (And if you really think its necessary to give an argument for the existence of these experiences other than "we all have them and know that we have them," I am not sure what to say -- you are simply in denial.)

Re: Science and the Demise of Philosophy

#49

Post by foldr » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 6:40 PM UTC

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #47

christopherolah wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I'm not parent, I'm the one who originally asked the question.) Certainly, a _scientific theory_ is judged based on its predictive power. This is why I mentioned my opinion, earlier, that science is "the art of useful fiction." The goal isn't to achieve truth but to predict. Philosophy, on the other hand, is concerned with what is _really_ true, not predictions. Certainly, the experience of qualia has no effect demo…

what is _really_ true IS what makes the best predictions. Otherwise in what sense is it true? Qualia has no effect demonstrable to an inside observer because you have no other data points to compare to. You have only one data point: your own consciousness.

>what is _really_ true IS what makes the best predictions. Otherwise in what sense is it true?

That is the anti-realist position, but it could be true in the sense that it corresponds to the actual nature of reality, if you are a realist.

> You have only one data point: your own consciousness.

Yep, and that is the data point that physicalism doesn't seem to be able to account for.

Re: Science and the Demise of Philosophy

#50

Post by foldr » Tue, Aug 18, 2009, 6:41 PM UTC

Herring wrote: post #46

foldr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't trying to make a point about the use of intuition, this was just a hypothetical example. I could just as well have constructed a hypothetical scenario in which, say, asking a five year old kid turns out to be the most effective method of investigating the world. Surely, even if this turned out to be an effective method, it would not be scientific.

You cannot name a single effective technique that's been shunned because it smells bad to a philosopher. Coincidence? Frankly if anyone tries that in any competitive field they'll lose market share, won't be able to publish, etc.

>You cannot name a single effective technique that's been shunned because it smells bad to a philosopher.

I'm not sure why I should need to do that, since I'm discussing a hypothetical scenario where a crazy method turns out to be effective. Are you saying that it /would/ be scientific to ask a five year old kid if it turned out to be effective? Or what?