The relationship between Science and Philosophy

[Testy Calibrate]

I would just like to point out that these 4 works largely define this science that needs no philosophy:

Francis Bacon's Novum Organum
David Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Karl Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery
Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

And
Henri Poincare's The Value of Science
is one of the most profound works of philosophy I've ever encountered and as a bonus it's eminently readable.

So, to answer the OP. Yes.

 

[Togo]

Indeed I'd suggest that great strides have been taken in tightening up scientific practice in the last 50 or so years, from the treatment of patient accounts of symptoms, particularly in mental health and clinical psychology, to the operationalisation of experimental models that fromderinside regards as so vital, to the proper accounting for of computer models that appear to mimic human behaviour or neural patterns, to the abandoning of the 'black box' approach in favour of modelling cognitive functions on a modular basis. There have been huge advances, not just in theory and technical equipment, but also in the practice and process of behavioural science.

Regarding behaviourism (the 'black box' approach) I don't think it was science to begin with.

You seem to be talking about the fact that the pseudo-science psychology of 50 years ago or more is changing into a science.
EB

It was considered science at the time. If you don't consider it science, can you give a definition of science that it fails to fulfil?

 

[Speakpigeon]

Obviously they must have used scientific methods, up to a point. Perhaps they were even good at it, I don't know, but that wouldn't be enough and they didn't prove the basic idea of behaviourism. The basic idea of behaviourism that human behaviour could be explained not relying on anything in the brain or in the mind was a non-starter. It was a very bad idea and they didn't need to think too long about it to see it could never work. So I have to assume it was essentially an ideological premise or just bad philosophy used to justify bad science, and bad science is not science.
EB

 

[Togo]

Obviously they must have used scientific methods, up to a point. Perhaps they were even good at it, I don't know, but that wouldn't be enough and they didn't prove the basic idea of behaviourism. The basic idea of behaviourism that human behaviour could be explained not relying on anything in the brain or in the mind was a non-starter.

It's the idea that you can investigate and model something without relying on unknowable internal structure. Behaviourism is still used today, it's just that the conclusions drawn from it are very different.

It was a very bad idea and they didn't need to think too long about it to see it could never work.

They needed about 15 years.

So I have to assume it was essentially an ideological premise or just bad philosophy used to justify bad science, and bad science is not science.

So the fact that it was the dominant scientific paradigm in psychology, and was brought down by the humanist movement in psychology (featuring scientists working with philosophers), in no way influences you on the topic of whether philosophy has a role to play in stopping science descending into pseudoscience. And the reason you're giving is because it wasn't really science, it was pseudoscience.

Are you sure you've thought this through in the context of the OP?

If we are looking for a role that philosophy plays in science of 'stopping it descending into pseudoscience', then surely an example of science that had descended into pseudoscience, being stopped in part by philosophy, is exactly what we should expect to see?

 

[Speakpigeon]

It's the idea that you can investigate and model something without relying on unknowable internal structure.

That would be good if it made sense to say they had, or believed they had, some a priori knowledge that this something was unknowable. Absurd.

They just claimed studying behaviour would be enough. They could get away with that because the alternative route was too fuzzy at the time. It probably also looked to many researchers methodologically simple enough to start doing real science. It was a position by default: if you can't do science properly, just claim you can, start simple enough experiments, and hope some breakthrough will come to save your ass.

Behaviourism is still used today, it's just that the conclusions drawn from it are very different.

And today's behaviourism is just not the behaviourism I was talking about.

The behavioursim I was talking about was the idea that psychology should be understood as the study of behaviour. Why did they insist on calling it "psychology" though? Beats me.

And it's wasn't just a methodological angle, it was the theoretical claim that human behaviour could be understood and predicted by studying the behaviour of human beings, without looking into the mind. The notion that human beings had a mind was simply rejected. Thinking was just some sort of linguistic behaviour!

It was a very bad idea and they didn't need to think too long about it to see it could never work.

They needed about 15 years.

I mean, a month should have been enough.

So I have to assume it was essentially an ideological premise or just bad philosophy used to justify bad science, and bad science is not science.

So the fact that it was the dominant scientific paradigm in psychology, and was brought down by the humanist movement in psychology (featuring scientists working with philosophers), in no way influences you on the topic of whether philosophy has a role to play in stopping science descending into pseudoscience. And the reason you're giving is because it wasn't really science, it was pseudoscience.

In the case of behaviourism yes. As I said already, the question considered here is not whether philosophers could help or not bringing about science or particular sciences. The question is whether philosophers could help (in a significant way) an existing science from falling into pseudo-science. Behaviourism (the one I was talking about) never qualified as a science in my view.

Still, that was just a logical argument in this case. The response I gave to the OP is that science and philosophy are part of a broader social process and that this process sets the conditions for scientists and philosophers. And, as I put it, philosophy could "play a role but merely as a modality of the social process":

I don't believe that they (scientists doing philosophical work), or philosophers, could prevent science from falling into pseudo-science. Rather, science should be seen as a social process which will be as good as the social fabric it appears in will be effective at motivating good science. It's been argued that science didn't appear in the 17th century so much as a result of some philosophically induced Enlightenment but just because the economic and social conditions at the time had changed dramatically and become favourable to science as well as all sorts of intellectual and technical endeavours. Philosophy would have played a role but merely as a modality of the social process underway at that time.

So, not quite how you just framed my position.

If we are looking for a role that philosophy plays in science of 'stopping it descending into pseudoscience', then surely an example of science that had descended into pseudoscience, being stopped in part by philosophy, is exactly what we should expect to see?

And as I explained, behaviourism is just not such an example.
EB

 

[Trodon]

Science begins with philosophy. Nevertheless, I do not see how philosophers who have lived and written since the Renaissance have influenced the experimental sciences.

Karl Marx was both a political philosopher and an economist. His writings have influenced the thinking of twentieth century economists, even when those economists did not consider themselves to be Marxists.