Pood, pood, pood whatever am I going to do with you?
Science reduces to quantifiable measurements, mathematical theories, and tests of theories.
Philosophy does not, the boundary between areas of philosophy and science.
That someone with science credentials philosophizes does not add credence to the philosophizing.
AI among other issues is a moral issue.
There was mention in the news about a conference on AI in part discussion rights for AI. To me utterly bizarre.
Free will versus determinism is not decidable by science, it is relegated to a never ending debate in philosophy generation after generation.
I recall in the intro to Durant's overview of philosophy he says that which is quantifiable is science, the rest is religion and philosophy.
One of my favorite quotes is from Kelvin.
“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarely, in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science.”
And 'In god we trust, all else bring data'
Morality regarding AI and deciding if an AI is a person, I dread the day, is subjective philosophy not science.
You can arbitrarily say science is philosophy, but in actual practice they are two different things.
Great post, Steve.
I agree with everything you wrote. I also love the reference to Durant. The simplicity and clarity of his work is brilliant and a joy to read.
The last sentence of your post comes close to rejecting the notion that science is philosophy, but you do not quite say so expressly. I agree with "in actual practice they are two different things" -- the operative words being "in practice." Plainly, the act of engaging in philosophical debate and the act of engaging in scientific inquiry are fundamentally different in their methods -- although I would argue that the best philosophy tends to create the best hypotheses that can then be tested by the scientific method (if the hypotheses are not too metaphysical to be subject to proof or falsification). In that same vein, engaging in philosophical debate also is fundamentally different than the act of performing arithmetic operations -- although, the use of logic to engage in philosophical debate is arguably a form of verbal mathematics, and can even include the use if symbolic logic and even math, itself, to advance the philosophical debate.
Where we possibly come apart is if you are suggesting that the branch of knowledge we call science has any greater claim to truth than does philosophy or even theology or eastern mysticism for that matter. As I understand it, the philosophical or metaphysical foundation of Science (with a capital "S") is the belief (faith?) that (i) there is an objective reality that exists independent of the observer (although some, but not all, quantum physicists might disagree), (ii) the objective reality is capable of being discerned / observed, measured, tested and verified in some manner or another, and (iii) that which is empirically demonstrable one day is likely to be empirically demonstrable thereafter in the absence of some material change in circumstances (other than the mere passage of time -- to the extent that time actually exists and does, in fact, pass).
One of the best discussions of this subject that I have read is included in a paper titled “Exploring the Philosophical Underpinnings of Research: Relating Ontology and Epistemology to the Methodology and Methods of the Scientific, Interpretive, and Critical Research Paradigms,” which can be viewed at
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f24f/1d16645e. There also is an excellent a book titled “Myths, Models and Paradigms” by Ian Barbour, who has the rare distinction of having both (i) a PhD in physics from the University of Chicago (where he was a teaching assistant to Enrico Fermi) and (ii) a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Yale’s University of Divinity School. For anyone who has the time and inclination to read the article and book, I highly commend them.
The foregoing is not a criticism of Science. It may well be the case that there is a discernable objective reality that is capable of being mapped by Science. It also may be the case that Science is simply modern mythology.
In the grand scheme of things, physics (and quantum physics, in particular) is accepted by many as the latest and greatest paradigm for explaining the universe. It is a modern mythology that tells a story that aligns with what we believe to understand about the universe – as discovered through application of math and science. But, no paradigm is right or wrong. By definition, a paradigm is a metaphor, which most closely aligns with our understanding of reality (if such a thing exists). When someone says that a paradigm has been proven wrong, they simply mean that the acquisition of greater knowledge (or what appears to be knowledge) has caused the paradigm to be expanded or abandoned in favor of a new paradigm.
As I see things, there are no true “laws” of physics. There are simply principles that the authors of the story of physics find sufficiently robust to be compelling based on the current state of knowledge. New knowledge that is consistent with the paradigm, but somewhat different from some aspect of the paradigm, causes the paradigm to be revised to accommodate the new knowledge. Other new knowledge is so inconsistent with an existing paradigm so as to require its abandonment in favor of a new paradigm that accounts for all that is known.
Physics, itself, was born out of an informational revolution that caused many people to abandon prior mythology. In relatively recent past, physicists have taken a quantum leap in their beliefs, causing the physics paradigm to be reshaped. Some physicists, however, are unpersuaded by the new story and remain attached to Newtonian physics.
As we continue to evolve, we develop new and greater information (or, possibly, build on our grand illusion). If the evolution of new information is sufficiently great it leads to revolution in which the most robust current paradigm is abandoned and relegated to the history books. In that regard, it seems more likely than not that there will come a time when today's modern physics will be viewed as a step between ancient mythology and some yet-to-be written story of the universe, which will, in turn, yield to yet a new and broader story.
While many respected philosophers, including Carl Popper, have written about the philosophical underpinnings of science, one of the most direct discussions appears in the work of Paul Feyerabend. As explained in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (the “SEP”) (at
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/):
Feyerabend saw himself as having undermined the arguments for science’s privileged position within culture, and much of his later work was a critique of the position of science within Western societies. Because there is no scientific method, we can’t justify science as the best way of acquiring knowledge. And the results of science don’t prove its excellence, since these results have often depended on the presence of non-scientific elements, science prevails only because “the show has been rigged in its favour” (SFS, p. 102), and other traditions, despite their achievements, have never been given a chance. The truth, he suggests, is that science is much closer to myth than a scientific philosophy is prepared to admit. It is one of the many forms of thought that have been developed by man, and not necessarily the best. It is conspicuous, noisy, and impudent, but it is inherently superior only for those who have already decided in favour of a certain ideology, or who have accepted it without ever having examined its advantages and its limits (AM, p. 295).
A discussion of Feyerabend on Wikipedea (at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science) similarly explains:
Feyerabend said that science started as a liberating movement, but that over time it had become increasingly dogmatic and rigid and had some oppressive features, and thus had become increasingly an
ideology. Because of this, he said it was impossible to come up with an unambiguous way to distinguish science from
religion,
magic, or
mythology. He saw the exclusive dominance of science as a means of directing society as
authoritarian and ungrounded. Promulgation of this epistemological anarchism earned Feyerabend the title of “the worst enemy of science” from his detractors.
A good article about Feyerabend also appears at
https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...paul-feyerabend-really-science-s-worst-enemy/.
Another entry in the SEP discusses the sociological underpinnings of Science:
An even more fundamental kind of criticism was offered by several sociologists of science from the 1970s onwards who dismissed what they saw as a false distinction between philosophical accounts of the rational development of science and sociological accounts of the irrational mistakes. Instead, they adhered to a symmetry thesis on which any causal explanation of how scientific knowledge is established needs to be symmetrical in explaining truth and falsity, rationality and irrationality, success and mistakes by the same causal factors (see, e.g., Barnes and Bloor 1982, Bloor 1991). Movements in the Sociology of Science, like the Strong Programme, or in the social dimensions and causes of knowledge more generally led to extended and close examination of detailed case studies in contemporary science and its history. (See the entries on
the social dimensions of scientific knowledge and
social epistemology.) Well-known examinations by Latour and Woolgar (1979/1986), Knorr-Cetina (1981), Pickering (1984), Shapin and Schaffer (1985) seemed to bear out that it was social ideologies (on a macro-scale) or individual interactions and circumstances (on a micro-scale) which were the primary causal factors in determining which beliefs gained the status of scientific knowledge. As they saw it, in other words, explanatory appeals to scientific method were not empirically well grounded.
The following is also interesting: (i) “Scientific Proof Is A Myth” (at
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/11/22/scientific-proof-is-a-myth/#35fa34282fb1; (ii) “What Thomas Kuhn Really Thought About Scientific ‘Truth’” (at
https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...s-kuhn-really-thought-about-scientific-truth/; “The Mythology of Science” (at
https://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2007/08/the-mythology-o.html);
Again, I wholly agree with your statement that "in actual practice [philosophy and science] are two different things." But, that is simply a practical distinction about the way in which people engage in philosophy and science -- just as "in actual practice, baseball and football, are two different things." They both have different rules and look very different in their operation. They are, however, both games of sport. Perhaps, the same is true of philosophy and science.
