Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Sculptor1]

Sadly science has no hegemony.
Take a look at Trump's administration. He still thinks he's running The Apprentice", as he fired the most knowledgable man in the field of infectious diseases.
He can't read a graph and the people seem to honour him for his willful stupidity and anti-science on a range of topics.

[Terrapin Station]

Yes and no. Science is not applicable to metaphysics, morality or religion, for a start. That's not a shortcoming of science. No tool can address every task.

On my view metaphysics is the same thing as ontology, and ontology is simply about the nature of what exists--that's certainly what science does, it just uses a different methodology than philosophy.

Morality and religion are about certain types of human beliefs, dispositions and behavior. We can definitely study those things scientifically, too.

[Steve3007]

Science is not applicable to metaphysics, morality or religion, for a start.

You could perhaps say that it's not applicable to the practice of morality and religion, at least, but it could be applicable to the study of them if they exhibit any kinds of patterns that might be used to construct descriptive and/or predictive theories. So, for example, if we noticed that various people tend to hold similar moral views we could create theories to try to predict what moral views some other people might hold and perhaps propose underlying causes for them holding those views. i.e. we could do sociology or anthropology.

There are some scientists who have opined that a similar relationship applies between philosophy and science. i.e. that philosophy is no use to the practice of science:

Philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds

But of course ornithology is still useful. Just not to birds.

[Sculptor1]

Science is not applicable to metaphysics, morality or religion, for a start.

You could perhaps say that it's not applicable to the practice of morality and religion, at least, but it could be applicable to the study of them if they exhibit any kinds of patterns that might be used to construct descriptive and/or predictive theories. So, for example, if we noticed that various people tend to hold similar moral views we could create theories to try to predict what moral views some other people might hold and perhaps propose underlying causes for them holding those views. i.e. we could do sociology or anthropology.

There are some scientists who have opined that a similar relationship applies between philosophy and science. i.e. that philosophy is no use to the practice of science:

Philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds

But of course ornithology is still useful. Just not to birds.

Here's one quote of Feynman I do not agree with.
Any bird who understood ornithology would rule the skies.

[Terrapin Station]

Science is not applicable to metaphysics, morality or religion, for a start.

You could perhaps say that it's not applicable to the practice of morality and religion, at least, but it could be applicable to the study of them if they exhibit any kinds of patterns that might be used to construct descriptive and/or predictive theories. So, for example, if we noticed that various people tend to hold similar moral views we could create theories to try to predict what moral views some other people might hold and perhaps propose underlying causes for them holding those views. i.e. we could do sociology or anthropology.

There are some scientists who have opined that a similar relationship applies between philosophy and science. i.e. that philosophy is no use to the practice of science:

Philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds

But of course ornithology is still useful. Just not to birds.

Yeah, science is obviously not identical to every activity, but science can study everything and anything that exists, just like philosophy can.

[Hereandnow]

Gertie wrote
What the scientific method relies on is that there is a real world of stuff which our mental experience relates to, and we can know something about that stuff. Not perfectly or comprehensively, but well enough to pass the tests of inter-subjective agreement and predictability.

And that has given us an incredibly complex, coherent and useful working model of a material world we share.

But you're right to say science doesn't know how to go about explaining mental experience - which all its claims are based in. Bit of a paradox that one. And imo suggests the fundamental nature of the universe is uncertain. Philosophy of mind is coming up with all kinds of speculations about the mind-body problem, but they remain inaccessible to testing - unless you have a surefire method?

Materialism has its own untestable philosophical hypotheses about how mental experience might be reducible to material processes, including philosophical thinking. If you think you have a better philosophical case, can you lay it out as simply and clearly as poss? (Serious request)

Because it's easy to spot the flaws with the all the hypotheses, not so easy to conclusively argue which one should be accepted as correct.

It is not about testing and verification and reliability and the like. These are fundamental to all we do (put your socks on. How did you do that? A repeatedly confirmed theory about the way physical things behave, about moving the arm and hands in this way to produce a specific event. The method of science is unassailable and is simply the method of living and breathing.

And to the waste bin with mind body matters. This is a false ontological problem because it can only make sense if you can say what mind and body are such that they would be different things ontologically--but the very nature of an ontological question goes to a question of Being, what IS, and here, there are no properties to distinguish. In existence there are many different things, states, all distinguished by what we can say about them. We don't believe these differences constitute differences OF Being, just differences IN Being.

Regarding the serious request:

To establish a truly foundational ontology, one has to look where things that assume a foundation have there implicit assumptions. All science is a construct of language and logic before it is ever even gets to constructing tests tubes and telescopes, so the question then is, what is language and logic? the OP says these belong to experience, and experience has a structure, and this structure is one of time. Past, present future. Thought and its "method" has a temporal structure, the anticipating of results when specified conditions are in place (hence, the success in repeatedly tying my shoes properly). Science is, technically speaking, all about what-will-happen if there is this, or that in place, or if one does this or that. Science doesn't have a problem; we ARE the scientific method in a very real way, in every anticipation of our lives there is a history of a learned associations between what we do and what will happen. This is what cognition is.

Time is the foundation of Being, but it is not Einstein's time (an empirical concept based on observation) but structural time, the structure of Being itself in the experience that produces existence, OUR existence, that is, which is a temporal one. time that structures our experience is not beyond experience and Einstein conceived of relativity in the temporally structured world of experience. Outside of this structure this time does not exist (unless it is in some other such experientially structured time, as with God, but this is an arbitrary idea).

Science's failure to be sufficient for philosophical thinking is not in the method, but in the content. I mean, even if I went full subjective into the deep recesses of my interiority and actually found God and the soul, this would be IN time, in an ability to anticipate the next moment, bring up memories, see that the usual is not the case here in order to have a contextual setting that I can recognize God as God. The rub lies with science's paradigms that are exclusively specialized and empirical and ignore the phenomenon of experience as it is. It takes parts of experience and reifies them into being-foundations. To me this is akin to taking knitting, a specialized "part" as well, and defining the existence in terms of the yarn and needle.

Philosophy is supposed to take the most basic and inclusive perspective in which one has pulled away from the "parts" and attempts to be about the whole, and the whole is experience structured in time, and then the matter turns to WHAT is there. Everything. Nothing excluded: love affairs, hatreds, our anxieties, our ethics, tragedies, and so on: all conceived structurally in time and as the WHAT of existence. All is, to use a strange term, equiprimorlial, meaning no one is reducible to any other. Our affairs are not reducible to physical realities, but physical realities belong to a specialized language scientists use, or we all use in a casual way. Evolution is not in any way held suspect, to give an example. It is a very compelling theory. But other actualities are not reducible to this, do not have their explanatory basis in this.

It is science's hegemony that leads us to a position that denies the world's "parts" their rightful ontological status. And if any hegemony should rise, it should be based on what it IS, its "presence" as an irreducible actuality. Of course, this is the presence of affectivity (affect), the very essence of meaning itself.

[Hereandnow]

Terrapin Station wrote

As we suddenly dismiss a huge percentage of philosophers, haha.

It's only to say that philosophers don't sit in labs studying empirical data. Remember, Richard Dawkins is not a philosopher, not that I disagree with what that he says; I'm just saying what he does say is not philosophy. This does, I am aware, make the question of what philosophy is an issue. Oh well.

[Hereandnow]

Pattern-chaser wrote

I can't disagree with you, but I fear the analytical/science/objective crew will object. They don't like it when anyone even implies that there are areas of knowledge that science cannot address. I wish you luck!

I don't disagree with the power of the scienctific method. I told Gertie this is not something one can dismiss. It is their theoretical paradigms are absurdly overreaching.

[Hereandnow]

Terrapin Station wrote
What an a priori approach can tell you about is how the philosopher in question happens to think. The mental dispositions they have. It makes it like autobiographical psychological analysis.

Oh, no, no. Logic itself is apriori inferred from experience and judgment.

[Terrapin Station]

All science is a construct of language and logic before it is ever even gets to constructing tests tubes and telescopes

How would we provisionally verify versus falsify a claim like that?

[Pattern-chaser]

I think you might want to direct that to the person who opened the thread.

I thought the OP aimed at the way science is practised, not at science itself, as you suggested. I responded to you.

[Pattern-chaser]

All science is a construct of language and logic before it is ever even gets to constructing tests tubes and telescopes

How would we provisionally verify versus falsify a claim like that?

If we were being constructive, maybe we wouldn't bother trying to prove it right or prove it wrong, but simply discuss the claim made. Is it a useful cvlaim? Does it advance the discussion? And so on.

Just a thought.

[Terrapin Station]

How would we provisionally verify versus falsify a claim like that?

If we were being constructive, maybe we wouldn't bother trying to prove it right or prove it wrong, but simply discuss the claim made. Is it a useful cvlaim? Does it advance the discussion? And so on.

Just a thought.

As always, it's not about proof, because we can't prove any empirical claim period. It's about why we'd believe it rather than alternatives. It's possible that All science is a construct of language and logic before it is ever even gets to constructing tests tubes and telescopes, and it's possible that NOT all science is a construct of language and logic before it is ever even gets to constructing tests tubes and telescopes. So then the question is "Why would we believe one of those claims over the other?" And then what's the answer to that? That's what I'm looking for. That's the sort of thing we should be doing if we're doing philosophy. Not just making claims with no support. We should be supporting them by talking about the reasons that we'd believe a claim over the contradictory claim.

[Terrapin Station]

I should add that the reason I'm interested in this is that when I read something like, "All science is a construct of language and logic before it is ever even gets to constructing tests tubes and telescopes," I think, "Hmm . . . that doesn't seem to be very clearly the case. So why would I believe it?" I'm certainly not going to believe that it's the case just because someone is saying that it is. They need to have better reasons to believe the claim than that.

If I didn't think this way, I'd have zero interest in philosophy in the first place.

[Sculptor1]

I think you might want to direct that to the person who opened the thread.

I thought the OP aimed at the way science is practised, not at science itself, as you suggested. I responded to you.

I think it would be worthwhile for him to respond to your points, which I am basically in agreement with.
As far as your distinction; not sure there is one since science is a practice, its practice defines what it is.
My basic objection is that it in no way forms an hegenomy; would that it did.
We would have a more rational world being based on verifuable truth rather than rumour or faith.