Philosophy Of Science

[pood]

Against Method

 

[Shadowy Man]

Well, but this goes to the alleged “scientific method.” is there actually such a thing, or just a series of methodologies with fuzzy edge cases? Feyerabend in Against Method argues against any such “method.”

I guess I have my opinion on this but there likely is not a rigorous definition of the so-called “scientific method”.

But there are clear misapplications that I have seen. For example, simply using a high precision measuring device does not make an observation scientific. If the device is used outside of its intended parameters or in a manner not consistent with its utility then it’s not scientific. A flat earther once pointed a hand held temperature sensor at the Sun and asserted its readings pieced what scientists say about the Sun. Or when they use pseudoscientific methods to determine that moonlight cools things.

 

[pood]

Pood

What I object to is your idea of philosophy(undefined) as a kind of global outside active agent guiding science. People who do not do science presuming to guide science?

Critics can critique a play without being actors or directors. As a matter of fact, though, some philosophers are scientists, and some scientists, like Einstein, are/were philosophers.

For me paradigm is a better term than philosophy. Working groups of all kinds evolve a working paradigm that leads to success, or the group fails. The nature of our competitive culture. Science is part of it. It is driven by profit and individual success.

And this is philosophy! The paradigm concept is from Kuhn.

To me one of the most competitive occupations is classical musicians. Many qualified people, few paying potions. In the 70s my girlfriend was a ballet student and most of my friends were music and art students. Intensely competitive.

Academic and industrial science is competitive. I had to compete for the kind of projects I wanted to advance my experience.

Personal motivations are part of the advancement of science.

It is NFL Sunday and I am watching Eagles vs Rams. The Eagles ‘philosophy’ of the tush push is controversial among team owners and fans. Philosophically is it rugby or football?

Hotly debated among fans and sports commentators. Is there a philosophical guide to football?

A philosophical observed who never payed sports writing a philosophy of sports to giude football?

My infinite loop detector warning light is flashing. The last word is yours.

Yes, life is competitive. I don’t need the last word, nor presume to have it, on anything at all. This is part of the point of the philosophy of science and philosophy in general — that there is not likely to be a last word on anything.

Although I identify under my avatar as an agnostic, I think “philosophical skeptic” would be better.

 

[pood]

I propose an iidb book club in which we start with Feyerabend’s Against Method, and then proceed to Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian, in which the author makes Hemingway look like the writer of Dick and Jane books.

McCarthy is fascinating in that he did not like most prose fiction writers like himself but basically hung with scientists.

 

[Elixir]

He admits there is SOME evidence for remote viewing, but does not find the evidence compelling.

In any instance (afaik) of “evidence for remote viewing” there are infinite hypotheses equally supported by the evidence that also supports “remote viewing”.
RV is unarguably an experiential phenomenon, but is not repeatably observable even to the subject who experiences it. Allowing subjective experiences to serve as “evidence” is not a useful perversion of science.

That is not to say RV is not real, and couldn’t “possibly” be explained by some big overhaul of our understanding of the universe’s physics, but it seems hardly worth trying to explain as “remote viewing”. If I “remote view” enough stuff just by imagining it (as I am prone to do, as a lifelong daydreamer), and a few billion others do the same, eventually some truly astounding and inexplicable coincidence with reality WILL occur.

Our subjective certainty scales are weighted toward belief; better the lion in the grass turns out to be the wind, than vice versa.

^“Remote viewing” as an evolutionary mandate. Just one example.

 

[pood]

He admits there is SOME evidence for remote viewing, but does not find the evidence compelling.

In any instance (afaik) of “evidence for remote viewing” there are infinite hypotheses equally supported by the evidence that also supports “remote viewing”.
RV is unarguably an experiential phenomenon, but is not repeatably observable even to the subject who experiences it. Allowing subjective experiences to serve as “evidence” is not a useful perversion of science.

That is not to say RV is not real, and couldn’t “possibly” be explained by some big overhaul of our understanding of the universe’s physics, but it seems hardly worth trying to explain as “remote viewing”. If I “remote view” enough stuff just by imagining it (as I am prone to do, as a lifelong daydreamer), and a few billion others do the same, eventually some truly astounding and inexplicable coincidence with reality WILL occur.

Our subjective certainty scales are weighted toward belief; better the lion in the grass turns out to be the wind, than vice versa.

^“Remote viewing” as an evolutionary mandate. Just one example.

Sure, all of the above is fine, but the point remains that we should not rule out edge ideas as false because they cannot be true, and we should realize that all of our current best theories are defeasible and likely to be disconfirmed and replaced by better theories, which themselves will also be at best approximations. The quest for a full understanding of reality is likely to be futile. Cognitive closure is the idea that we just aren’t smart enough to figure everything out, even in principle.

 

[Elixir]

Sure, all of the above is fine, but the point remains that we should not rule out edge ideas as false because they cannot be true

I agree. We should not generally waste time ruling things in or out that lack evidence that is reproducibly observable, and this is a prime example.

 

[pood]

From the intro to Against Method:

In sociology the attention to detail has led to a situation where the problem is no longer why and how 'science' changes but how it keeps together. Philosophers, philosophers of biology especially, suspected for some time that there is not one entity 'science' with clearly defined principles but that science contains a great variety of (high-level theoretical, phenomenological, experimental) approaches and that even a particular science such as physics is but a scattered collection of subjects (elasticity, hydrodynamics, rheology, thermodynamics, etc., etc.) each one containing contrary tendencies …

 

[pood]

From Against Method:

It also follows that 'non-scientific' procedures cannot be pushed aside by argument. To say: 'the procedure you used is non-scientific, therefore we cannot trust your results and cannot give you money for research' assumes that 'science' is successful and that it is successful because itn uses uniform procedures. The first part of the assertion ('science is always successful') is not true, if by 'science' we mean things done by scientists - there are lots of failures also. The second part - that successes are due to uniform procedures- is not true because there are no such procedures. Scientists are like architects who build buildings of different sizes and different shapes and who can be judged only after the event, i.e. only after they have finished their structure. It may stand up, it may fall down - nobody knows.

 

[bilby]

in the race for grants, peer acceptance and prestige, stuff Iike remote viewing and idealism must be ruled out a priori.

Okay … let’s examine what happens if you “rule it in”. What predictive benefit does that confer? If it’s MY money going to a grant, I’d want to know that before offering my support. AFAICT it would only impede and complicate any “physicalist-based” effort and would to nothing to compensate for that detriment.

This, as the author argues, holds back science.

I posit that science would be held back by embracing remote viewing, idealism and anything else that offers infinite explanatory and zero predictive value.

That isn’t the point. The author isn’t talking about “embracing” remote viewing, idealism, or anything else. He is talking about not ruling out some ideas a priori because they “can’t” be true. Specifically, he is also citing a Nature paper which perhaps offers defeasible evidence for remote viewing.

Elixir didn't rule it out a priori; Just very quickly.

He (and I, and presumably many others in the scientific community) don't rule it out because it is (we presume) impossible, but because it is useless.

We are not really "ruling it out" at all, so much as deciding it should take no further part in our epistemology because it cannot contribute to any result - that which can explain anything can explain nothing.

"It is nonsense" has the same effect on our reasoning as "It is untrue", but there is a subtle difference. Scientists are busy people, and will leave the examination of that subtlety to those who have more time on their hands.

 

[pood]

More from Against Method, and PLEASE NOTE that I am not necessarily endorsing these views, but just offering them as fodder for discussion:

People survived millennia before Western science arose; to do this they had to know their surroundings up to and including elements of astronomy. 'Several thousand Cuahuila Indians never exhausted the natural resources of a desert region in South California, in which today only a handful of white families manage to subsist. They lived in a land of plenty, for in this apparently completely barren territory, they were familiar with no less than sixty kinds of edible plants and twenty-eight others of narcotic kinds of science. People starting from different social background will approach the world in different ways and learn different things about it. People survived millennia before Western science arose; to do this they had to know their surroundings up to and including elements of astronomy. /Several thousand Cuahuila Indians never exhausted the natural resources of a desert region in South California, in which today only a handful of white families manage to subsist. They lived in a land of plenty, for in this apparently completely barren territory, they were familiar with no less than sixty kinds of edible plants and twenty-eight other kinds of narcotic, stimulant or medical properties. The knowledge that preserves the lifestyles of nomads was acquired and is preserved in a non-scientific way ('science' now being modemn natural science). Chinese technology for a long time lacked any Western-scientific underpinning and yet it was far ahead of contemporary Western technology. It is true that Western science now reigns supreme all over the globe; however, the reason was not insight in its 'inherent rationality' but power play (the colonizing nations imposed their ways of living) and the need for weapons: Western science so far has created the most efficient instruments of death.

 

[bilby]

IF remote viewing were true (of course a huge IF), it would seem to thoroughly overhaul our presumed understanding of the world.

Which creates a problem for the weak (but not zero) evidence of it - any idea that "would seem to thoroughly overhaul our presumed understanding of the world" demands evidence that is copious and compelling.

As Sagan remarked, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

We should not throw out well evidenced understandings in favor of weakly evidenced contradictory understandings. Which does not imply that we should entirely reject even the most fleeting consideration of those weakly evidenced hypothetical phenomena - just that the time spent on them should be proportionate to the strength of the evidence, and to the predictive value they can bring.

I have seen a paper* from the British Army's Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME), which described a series of very carefully conducted and designed experiments, testing the claimed ability of dowsers to detect buried landmines. Such research is (IMO) worth pursuing, because the military benefits, if such an ability were to exist, would be huge; Sadly, the dowsers in that program were unable to perform any better than a control group of civilians from similar backgrounds. Neither group were able to find a useful proportion of the mines, either by remote methods using maps, or while walking the ground.






* That paper was, and I suspect still is, classified; I was not supposed to see it, but somebody failed to secure it adequately when it was sent to a university for peer review.

 

[bilby]

It could make a lot of difference, Kastrup, in his analytic idealism essays, argues that the universe is made of mind and that individual minds are “dissociate alters” that might (note the “might”) re-emerge with the universal mind after death.

Assuming ad argumentum that "could" and "might" were both "does", what would that "lot of difference" be?

The universe is made of mind; My mind will re-emerge with the universal mind after my death. What is the action item for me here? What need I do differently, given these previously unknown facts?

 

[bilby]

But I grant that I haven’t given it too much thought.

Then I think that you will not be given too many grants...

 

[Elixir]

If you read this thread, you will have already seen the numerous problems with falsification as a marker of science.

If you remove falsification as a marker - whatever a marker is - when does one reject ANY fantastic pseudo-explanation for anything? When does one simply not pass judgment of the merits of the explanation for evidence that cannot be examined?

I see falsification as a necessary hurdle for that Ketchup guy or anyone else to clear when they present an hypothesis and challenge “science” for not considering it. If they can’t clear the falsifiability hurdle, they may freely pursue whatever thing they think they are chasing, e.g. remote viewing. If there is merit to their feeling maybe they can come up with a way to contribute something useful in the real world. Certainly the some of the so called soft sciences (psychology for instance) could possibly harness their insights to someone’s benefit, or so I’d surmise.

I’m sorry science can’t help them, but that’s not a shortcoming of science.

 

[bilby]

More from Against Method, and PLEASE NOTE that I am not necessarily endorsing these views, but just offering them as fodder for discussion:

... It is true that Western science now reigns supreme all over the globe; however, the reason was not insight in its 'inherent rationality' but power play (the colonizing nations imposed their ways of living) and the need for weapons: Western science so far has created the most efficient instruments of death.

Whatever the merits of the preceeding text, which I have snipped, this final sentence is manifestly biased. It is true, but omits the fact that Western science has also created the most efficient instruments of life.

Weapons development has occurred alongside the development of antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals, medical techniques and machines, modern farming methods, machines, and materials (fertilisers, pesticides, hebicides)...

The benefits, in terms of both longer lives, and better quality of life, that Western science brought us along with (and sometimes as a consequence of) weapons and military development, are so huge and so ubiquitous that many people wrongly assume that these are just how things are, and that having food, clothing, and healthcare provided with barely an effort is somehow unrelated to the science that "created the most efficient instruments of death".

This is, essentially, a failure to grasp our own recent history. Up until only a couple of centuries ago, only the hyper wealthy could sleep at night secure in the expectation that they would be able to feed their children next year. Famine has effectively ceased to exist since the late 1980s, outside of active war zones.

A crop failure in Europe nowadays doesn't kill Europeans in their millions, or even thousands - our Western science, with its advances in communications and logistics (both inspired by war) have eliminated famine; And with its advances in pharmaceuticals and healthcare (also both inspired by war) have made a serious assault on pestilence.

Until the middle of the C20th, a small cut that became septic could lead to the loss of a limb - or a life. Children died like flies, or were permanently disfigured or blinded, by diseases such as smallpox and measles.

Today people are so well protected - by Western science - that many (foolishly) no longer consider measles a threat. And smallpox has been eradicated from the face of the Earth.

To look at this and deride science for failing to eliminate war or death seems unfair in the extreme.

 

[Elixir]

It could make a lot of difference, Kastrup, in his analytic idealism essays, argues that the universe is made of mind and that individual minds are “dissociate alters” that might (note the “might”) re-emerge with the universal mind after death.

Assuming ad argumentum that "could" and "might" were both "does", what would that "lot of difference" be?

The universe is made of mind; My mind will re-emerge with the universal mind after my death. What is the action item for me here? What need I do differently, given these previously unknown facts?

Feel good?
Nothing wrong with that.

 

[Elixir]

Elixir didn't rule it out a priori; Just very quickly.

He (and I, and presumably many others in the scientific community) don't rule it out because it is (we presume) impossible, but because it is useless.

We are not really "ruling it out" at all, so much as deciding it should take no further part in our epistemology because it cannot contribute to any result - that which can explain anything can explain nothing.
“It is nonsense" has the same effect on our reasoning as "It is untrue", but there is a subtle difference. Scientists are busy people, and will leave the examination of that subtlety to those who have more time on their hands.

Spot on, well said.
Philosophers have a lot of time on their hands. So do I but I’m mentally lazier than they are, and it’s easier to be a critic than be creative. I see them as well intended but little more effective than say, standup comics. They’re often the same thing in fact.

 

[Shadowy Man]

But I grant that I haven’t given it too much thought.

Then I think that you will not be given too many grants...

I’m out of the grant requesting business. It’s been a little over a decade now.

 

[steve_bank]

What constitutes science?

Modern sciince based in mathematical models is relatively new.

Science and technology began with creating and controlling fire, controlled hast. Con tiled heat is still the basis for modern civilization. Nuclear power is a form of controlled heat.

Edged metal tools and metallurgy are as important today as it was thousands of years ago.

Romans developed a water proof concrete without what we call chemistry,. Important in building ports. till important today.

Today we say STEM science, technology, engineering, math. Those boundaries are new. Sceice was alwayss exploited for utility and profit. Archimedes' screw to raise water.

Romans, Egyptians, Mayans, Incas were great engineers.

Today thermodynamics is a foundation. It arose in the 19th century from competition to improve steam engines.

Necessity not philosophy is the mother of invention. There were thousands of years of development without philosophy and math and science as we have it today.

It is all human imagination in the brain.


I watched a show about chimps who make tools. They make tools to crack nuts.

They have a specific quarry area where thy pick stones. They carry them to a work area whee they chip them into a form. No language or speech, it is passed on by observation and mimic.

To me that is essentially science.