Physics anyone?

[scspkr99]

Humanity has reached the point where we are unable to derive predictions from existing scientific theories many times. Newton's Theory of Gravity, Einstein's Relativity, Walter & Crick's Discovery of DNA all resulted in paradigm shifts. Jung's theory on human psychology changed how we approached human behaviour, and is in the process of being supplanted by newer theories.

I thought that Newtons T of G and General Relativity made predictions and that contributed to their success. Sure the T of G has been found wanting though it's still used in the domains where it's applicable but we derived predictions as to the orbits of the planets?

would be a dark day when humanity decides that it is acceptable to no longer strive towards scientific theories that aren't falsifiable. That's basically what religion is.

I keep reading this and I'm not sure whether you're saying we should always strive to theories that are falsifiable or not.

Given string theory's inability to make predicitions or multi world hypotheses that are inherently not falsifiable what does it mean for those.

[Phigure]

Humanity has reached the point where we are unable to derive predictions from existing scientific theories many times. Newton's Theory of Gravity, Einstein's Relativity, Walter & Crick's Discovery of DNA all resulted in paradigm shifts. Jung's theory on human psychology changed how we approached human behaviour, and is in the process of being supplanted by newer theories.

I thought that Newtons T of G and General Relativity made predictions and that contributed to their success. Sure the T of G has been found wanting though it's still used in the domains where it's applicable but we derived predictions as to the orbits of the planets?

I think that he meant that up until the advent of those theories, we weren't able to derive accurate predictions from the existing ones.

Given string theory's inability to make predicitions or multi world hypotheses that are inherently not falsifiable what does it mean for those.

well in regards to string theories, depending on which ones you're talking about, there are some (although not necessarily many or easy to carry out) experimental tests

[kay]

Humanity has reached the point where we are unable to derive predictions from existing scientific theories many times. Newton's Theory of Gravity, Einstein's Relativity, Walter & Crick's Discovery of DNA all resulted in paradigm shifts. Jung's theory on human psychology changed how we approached human behaviour, and is in the process of being supplanted by newer theories.

I thought that Newtons T of G and General Relativity made predictions and that contributed to their success. Sure the T of G has been found wanting though it's still used in the domains where it's applicable but we derived predictions as to the orbits of the planets?

Both T of G and General Relativity required radical paradigm shifts in thinking/envisioning how the universe was structured. Scientific conventions up till the points in time when they appeared worked sufficiently well to explain the world around us (albeit not necessarily very well). Funnily enough, assertions that "there was nothing more to be discovered in science" were also pretty common around those times. So I think it's a little bit disingenuous to think that we are at a point where we can no longer come up with theories that are unfalsifiable and find the situation acceptable.

would be a dark day when humanity decides that it is acceptable to no longer strive towards scientific theories that aren't falsifiable. That's basically what religion is.

I keep reading this and I'm not sure whether you're saying we should always strive to theories that are falsifiable or not.

Given string theory's inability to make predicitions or multi world hypotheses that are inherently not falsifiable what does it mean for those.

We should always strive to come up with theories that are falsifiable. Unfalsifiable theories are no different from religious belief, perhaps with some fancy mathematics thrown in.

Multiple branches of string theory do make predictions. Whether we have the capability of testing those predictions is another matter.

I'm not necessarily saying that unfalsifiable theories are wrong, I just think that they might be incomplete. Or that we lack understanding of certain elements of how things work to formulate them in the correct way to make them falsifiable.

[magma]

Philosophy = How to think about stuff, thinking up stuff to think of, and coming up with ideas about how things work

Science = Measuring/studying stuff to work out how it works, and putting it into a framework that will allow you to apply it elsewhere

Science = Applied Philosophy

Morality = Human construct/framework placed on top of DNA programming (both natural genetics and epigenetic modifications)

Modern notions of morality = Base morality modified by millenia of cultural norms

Thinking about morality = Philosophy

Working out the basis for morality = Science

Thanks kay. I think this is what I was trying to say but in about 40,000 too many words.

[scspkr99]

Cheers Phigure and Kay, I didn't realise that string theories had started making predictions though I'm probably confusing their lack of testable predictions with lack of predictions. The MWH are more interestign given it seems that to test something we need to be able to interact with it and we can't interact with something that's not in the Universe. I guess this will change but it seems at some point we have to take certain hypotheses on abductive reasoning or inference from the best explanation.

I don't know why science is credited with working out that basis for morality as that seems to be both. There are scientific elements, there'll be development of cognitive science which may be able to map whether moral statements are cognitive or not but establishing foundational moral claims seems explicitly philosophical

[kay]

I think it depends on what you consider "morality". That very question itself is a philosophical question. The construction of morality frameworks definitely falls, I think, into the philosophy bracket. Working out the physical causations of specific moralistic actions however would fall into the science subdivision of philosophy.

[Genevieve]

Ok, I'll do the legwork for you.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... thical-dog

I mean, you can be condescending even though I've been perfectly civil to you. You can stay on your throne and I'll just ignore that you didn't.. do any "legwork" either and that you're just pulling out a completely different point out of the blue, changing the conversation mid argument because you didn't have a rebuttal to my previous point. Making me feel like such a big ol' dummie! I didn't know it was my job to Google evidence for a point you supported by equating human infants to animals, by looking for articles about canines.

Anyway, you're using evidence that we bred a social animal into being a suitable companion for humans (who instinctly recognize baring teeth as a sign of aggression, but we've bred into viewing humans baring teeth as a sign of affection) that animals are moral? No they're social and our morality is, influenced, among other things, by us being social animals because we evolved social animals. But that's not what you were saying.

Before you backpaddle and change the conversation again or pretending that you were saying this all along, this was your point:

I'm fairly comfortable that some morality is naturally occurring and that a lot is influenced by experience of society, but that doesn't stop it being a scientific phenomenon. Everything any brain does is a scientific phenomenon. All I was disagreeing with was alphacat's assertion that philosophy was different to science - I say it's just one of the silos.

You took a logical leap equating that 'some morality is natural'. This is different from the (shitty) article's claim that our morality is rooted in us being social animals (not that the article was wrong, but their approach was faulty).

Animals are only moral if you judge them to be moral. If you don't, they're not.

The machine's doing the philosophy for you. I don't see the difference?

The machine would be spitting out a literally endless stream of arguments, deductions, rebuttals and so forth. What it would be reproducing is a process, not an empricially testable and reproducable result. Which is what science is about.

That doesn't say anything about whether it's a science or not. You could find plenty of examples of scientists who don't ever expect to find a definitive "answer" to their questions too. Try any cosmologist of the last 100 years... or a quantum theorist.... one of the fundamental truths we have to accept about quantum mechanics is that there are some things even nature doesn't have an "answer" to.

No, it doesn't say that and that wasn't the point. I liked the phrasing of that quote.

Off to Prague. BYE DSF!

[magma]

That doesn't say anything about whether it's a science or not. You could find plenty of examples of scientists who don't ever expect to find a definitive "answer" to their questions too. Try any cosmologist of the last 100 years... or a quantum theorist.... one of the fundamental truths we have to accept about quantum mechanics is that there are some things even nature doesn't have an "answer" to.

No, it doesn't say that and that wasn't the point. I liked the phrasing of that quote.

Off to Prague. BYE DSF!

Which was the only thing I was ever trying to debate. The original post of mine you took issue with was a reply to alphacat disagreeing that science and philosophy were separate pursuits. You've tried to divert the subject at every possible moment so you still have something to write about.

I'm bored to tears of this, Genevieve. So I give up. Call that a win if you want to. You've sapped every last calorie of energy I have for this discussion with semantic bullshit of the highest order. I hope you enjoyed it.

[scspkr99]

I think it depends on what you consider "morality". That very question itself is a philosophical question. The construction of morality frameworks definitely falls, I think, into the philosophy bracket. Working out the physical causations of specific moralistic actions however would fall into the science subdivision of philosophy.

yeah this I agree with, as soon as we introduce an empirical element to our grounding morality then it's the remit of science to help gather and interpret that it's ethics that ultimately answers the question though. There's descriptive and normative morality, descriptive telling us how the world is belongs to the special sciences, telling us how the world should be, normative morality, the remit primarily of philosophy.

I tend to agree with magma in principle and while I think philosophy is distinct from science it's distinct in the same way that the heads is distinct from tails.

[magma]

while I think philosophy is distinct from science it's distinct in the same way that the heads is distinct from tails.

Nice.

[magma]

ITT: People use words much more effectively than I can.

[rickyarbino]

Science without philosophy has no conscience.

Philosophy only explains and interrogates conscience, it doesn't create it. Our biology creates our conscience.

Philosophy is one of the sciences. It used to be all of them.

Nature < Nurture though.

[Genevieve]

Philosophy = How to think about stuff, thinking up stuff to think of, and coming up with ideas about how things work

Science = Measuring/studying stuff to work out how it works, and putting it into a framework that will allow you to apply it elsewhere

Science = Applied Philosophy

Morality = Human construct/framework placed on top of DNA programming (both natural genetics and epigenetic modifications)

Modern notions of morality = Base morality modified by millenia of cultural norms

Thinking about morality = Philosophy

Working out the basis for morality = Science

Thanks kay. I think this is what I was trying to say but in about 40,000 too many words.

No, it wasn't.

This is what you were saying:

Philosophy is one of the sciences. It used to be all of them.

I rarely ever see you stand on your own two feet when it comes to your views. Originally you were arguing that philosophy was a science and made a number of points where you directly tried to equate it to science (based on empirical data, where logic was empirical, etc etc). Now you're just copying other people's arguments and trying to pass them off as your own.
I argued from the beginning that philosophy is a distinct animal that underpins everything. Religion, politics, morality, culture and yeah, science. Now, I am wrong for saying that philosophy and science are different... but now.. you're... saying.. the same.. but...

Prague will be good for me.

[magma]

Yes, I think it will.

As I've said a few times, my language hasn't been perfect in this thread, but kay said exactly what I was trying to say. I haven't backed away from anything from what I can tell. I certainly know my own mind... it may well be that my language was lacking at times, but I honestly can't work out why you're determined to disagree about something, anything here. From your last paragraph you seem to agree with what I posted to alphacat in the first place.... why did you feel the need to find something to disagree about at all costs?

I still believe that Philosophy and Science are two sides of the same pursuit (the quest for knowledge), the term "Philosophy" used to cover ALL the scientific pursuits, but as we've gained knowledge, vast specialisation and are able to produce physical experiments and data it has come to represent the areas of mystery that can't be proven with data, only logical thought. Still, the rules of proper philosophy are the same as the rules of proper science. Pythagoras was a philosopher, but Newton was a scientist and these definitions shouldn't be thought of too distinctly. That's all I was ever trying to say in my reply to alphacat which you decided you wanted to take issue with.

It really is kind of tiring, tbh.

[rickyarbino]

Was he though?
What Newton did was analyse "areas of mystery that couldn't be proven with data". Same as Much of Einstein's and Lorentz's work.


I see Theoretical Physics as Philosophy mixed with Mathematics.

[scspkr99]

Newton was a scientist in amongst being a mathematician a philosopher and an alchemist.

So I've been thinking about this and I'm revising my earlier position. In stating that philosophy is distinct from, albeit related to, science I've been using a particularly narrow definition of science.

Science from the Latin scientia means knowledge
Philosophy from the Greek philosophia means love of wisdom
Wisdom can be defined as the correct application of knowledge

There's a reason a PhD can be awarded in subjects including sciences and a physicist with a PhD is a Doctor of Philosophy. It's a remnant of us previously aggregating now distinct fields of study as philosophy. As our knowledge of the world has increased it's become necessary to distinguish between domains of investigation and philosophy has become understood as specific branches of inquiry rather than as per it's original meaning. So while magma is right historically, it's no longer appropriate to consider all science philosophy. But I don't think that's relevant to whether or not philosophy is a science.

There are good reasons for the splitting of wider areas of study into discrete subjects and I don't have a problem with it but magma has a point philosophy at it's best is bound by constraints just as any science is, it contains logic, observes rules of deductive / inductive reasoning and, most importantly, seeks to tell us something about the world.

It seems if we afford scientific status to economics, sociology, semantics and linguistics then philosophy has to be included in a broader definition of science that contains these formal and social sciences. The ambiguity, I think, resides in the breadth of topics that philosophy covers. Genevieve is right in that philosophy underpins a broad range of subjects but if it doesn't improve our understanding of the world it's bad philosophy and if it does it's science. Scientific in a much weaker sense than physics and often bad philosophy is dressed up as pseudo science but we should define philosophy by it's best.

[kay]

Philosophy is the subject of thinking, and that includes thinking about thinking. It's broader than science because you can think about things that don't necessarily require quantification.

[scspkr99]

So philosophy relies on reasoning? So does science. Metaphilosophy still has to talk about the world. Epistemology provides a framework for how we can know stuff,. Ontology maps that which exists.

If we are taking a strict view of quantification as counting or measuring then then sure but that rules out the formal sciences of linguistics and logic and those endeavours are in a weak sense still science.

Like I've revised a position that distinguishes the two and I'm okay with either depending on how science is defined but I think the available definitions of both science and philosophy preclude a particularly strong position being taken. It's a discussion around the margins.

[rickyarbino]

Philosophy isn't science though. That was my point about Newton, there is a distinct difference. Yes, the two areas rely on logic and reasoning, but the purpose is what separates them, much like the difference between mathematics and physics. Both subjects rely on Philosophy and analysis of Real or Mathematical truths. Which again in Newton's case says to me that he was more of a Philosopher and Mathematician than purely a Physicist. After all, his golden moment came about when he validated the theories set by Johannes Kepler. The reason that Philosophy seems more applicable to me in this case is that the thought fuelled the science. It was the shocking realization that necessitated the mathematical outlook. And furthermore, there is more to Philosophy than Physical Science.
I'm just saying that there's a difference between the two/three things.

[scspkr99]

physical science does not equal science