Is Philosophy Useless for Scientific Research?

[0xDEADBEEF]

Weinberg's “Against Philosophy”

Philosophy is useless for Scientists and the only positive thing that can be said about it, is, that it protects us from even worse philosophy. Read and comment:
http://depts.washington.edu/ssnet/Weinberg_SSN_1_14.pdf"
I hope you have heard of the author...

 

[wittgenstein]

People that believe that complicated philosophical arguments do not reveal reality are pragmatists. Pragmatism is a particular philosophy, with thousands of books filled with complicated philosophical arguments to back up its claims. So those that believe that all philosophy is rubbish are followers of a particular philosophy. Ironic, aint it!

 

[drankin]

People that believe that complicated philosophical arguments do not reveal reality are pragmatists. Pragmatism is a particular philosophy, with thousands of books filled with complicated philosophical arguments to back up its claims. So those that believe that all philosophy is rubbish are followers of a particular philosophy. Ironic, aint it!

LOL, I agree. Everyone has a philosophy.

 

[apeiron]

But if you actually read the chpt, Weinberg actually makes decent points. He stirs things up by saying "philosophy is bunk". But then shows how certain philosophies, like atomism, have proved fruitful in the history of science.

And then in self-contradicting fashion, argues that the purity of positivism (a philosophically held position of course) does not actually make for good science. Weinberg doesn't say it, but this in itself is the argument for why science needs the salt of philosophy. You need to make bold intuitive guesses as part of the evolution of knowledge.

So the kind of philosophy a scientist needs is at "the history of ideas" level. It helps to see past our prejudices if we know how those prejudices were formed.

Then as to future scientific knowledge, we should not expect contemporary philosophers to come out with specific answers to particular questions. But they could help lay the groundwork for future fruitful ideas like atomism.

 

[JoeDawg]

Science is a philosophy, with its roots mainly in the 'empiricism' of the enlightenment, which is of course based on ancient philosophies. This is a silly bigotry.

 

[humanino]

This very subforum is living for proof for an experimentalist such as me reading Weinberg's theoretical words.

 

[apeiron]

For me it is more proof that philosophy doesn't get taught enough.

 

[humanino]

This is a beautiful text, and like anything Weinberg does, I doubt anybody can improve.

 

[SixNein]

Philosophy is useless for Scientists and the only positive thing that can be said about it, is, that it protects us from even worse philosophy. Read and comment:
http://depts.washington.edu/ssnet/Weinberg_SSN_1_14.pdf"
I hope you have heard of the author...

Perhaps he just doesn't understand the usefulness of philosophy. One great uses of philosophy is paradoxes because they can give great insights into difficult problems. One of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century turned a philosophical paradox into profound mathematics.

I believe in Platonism, so I guess my opinion is tainted and jaded.

 

[JoeDawg]

This is a beautiful text, and like anything Weinberg does, I doubt anybody can improve.

That's not science or philosophy.

That's religion.

 

[humanino]

This is a beautiful text, and like anything Weinberg does, I doubt anybody can improve.

I want to elaborate. We all have our personal interpretations of the reading (I hope) we all just did. I do not think Weinberg just told me he is "against" philosophy. My understanding of what I just read, being "against" philosophy is an absurd idea, and the root of the contradiction some people may feel here. We can not be "against" philosophy because we all have ours, it is inescapable as soon as we think. This very subforum is living proof that everybody has his own.

What is useful for physics, the way science progresses, is not by ignoring philosophy, and in several places he gives examples. The way it progresses is by forming new personal philosophies which go beyond what was done by the respectful elders. The part of philosophy which claim to deal with science, which is the only part he talks about, can only try to keep up with the new genuine progress being made not by philosophers, but by physicists. Science is never written in stone, and scientists should always keep a fair balance (as everybody) when they use philosophy as an inspiration.

When we quantum physicists say "shut up and calculate" we never meant (or if somebody did, they should not have) there is nothing to discuss about, no sense of an underlying reality. We mean "we'll discuss about it when someone has something worth to discuss". So develop your own ideas, this is necessary of course, but since experiment is the ultimate judge for scientific ideas, endless discussions about unproven ideas are mostly fruitless. This is almost an empirical statement based on a few decades of experience. Every theorist has their own philosophical prejudice why their approach must be better.

 

[humanino]

That's not science or philosophy.

That's religion.

No, again, that's an empirical fact. It would be religion if I read nothing else. But I do read, including your own post.

 

[humanino]

...

So yes, what I'm saying is, before you put your own interpretation in Weinberg's mouth and then think you can reproach him, you may read again.

 

[JoeDawg]

So yes, what I'm saying is, before you put your own interpretation in Weinberg's mouth and then think you can reproach him, you may read again.

I'm always open to the opinions of experts... when they are talking within their field of expertise. I do not believe this is the case here. This is reactionary, and ill-informed.
Invoking Feyerabend, and the boogeyman of 'relativism', does no one any favours.

The philosophy of science has a long and important history that is still very relevant to how scientists do science.

And, he admits he doesn't know what he is talking about, then goes on to talk authoritatively on the subject. Could it be improved upon? Uhm, yes, very much.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

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

This quote is about a particular type of philosophy. Perhaps this is what Weinberg means?

 

[humanino]

The philosophy of science has a long and important history that is still very relevant to how scientists do science.

Yes it is ! But not anymore for the particular, very specific, point of helping scientists making new theories about fundamental physics. I only wish it would be otherwise. I would rather if someone came up suddenly with a new book going really beyond established physics, including a first chapter on philosophy, ten chapters on the theory, one chapter on experimental evidence, and yet another concluding chapter on philosophy. That would be perfect. It just does not seem likely anymore.

 

[JoeDawg]

Yes it is ! But not for the particular, very specific point of making new physical theories.

Sigh.

How one evaluates, justifies and utilizes; hypotheses, laws, and theories; is all part of what the philosophy of science is.

Newton's understanding of gravity was purely observational. He described a pattern. He had no interest in what makes it work. His interest was in how it works, the rules. Einstein wanted more of an 'explanation'. These are distinctly different views of what science is for. And the distinction remains.

When a scientist is doing labwork, recording data, and such. No, the major concern is not about what his understanding of science is. But once a scientist moves beyond simply recording data, into inductive reasoning, explanation, and justification; the philosophy of science does become important. And the fact many scientists don't understand this, does impact on the science they do.

 

[JoeDawg]

This quote is about a particular type of philosophy. Perhaps this is what Weinberg means?

The quote only really applies if you believe all scientists are birdbrains. :)

 

[George Jones]

See also

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/c.../does-philosophy-make-you-a-better-scientist/.

 

[humanino]

Newton's understanding of gravity was purely observational. He described a pattern. He had no interest in what makes it work.

No that it is certainly not accurate. He was not fully satisfied with the philosophy of his own work, he was quite a metaphysical type, but he could only accept the success of his own work.

once a scientist moves beyond simply recording data, into inductive reasoning, explanation, and justification; the philosophy of science does become important.

Yes, once a scientist moves beyond doing science. And they all do.

There is one point that I would also like to emphasize. Weinberg is not even discussing cosmology. He really refers to very high energy physics. What is philosophical in coming with string theory, LQG, non-commutative geometry, or twistor methods ? All those have technical motivations and developments. Scientists understand them technically better than philosophers, and only once scientists will tell philosophers "ok now this is this one theory you should seriously study" may we expect serious efforts to come up with something interesting to say from philosophers. By this time, scientists will study something else already. It is certainly not to say that there are not very distinct philosophical prejudices behind the different approaches quoted above.

It is amusing that you quote Einstein for instance. We may evaluate the value for researchers of a few short perfectly clear books Einstein has written versus several order of magnitudes more philosophers have written about relativity.

By the same token, I may read 50 pages from Alain Connes and understand quantum mechanics even better than by reading von Neumann and certainly better that by reading thousands of books about the philosophy of quantum mechanics. Those are not useless absolutely, they are useless for working scientists today.

 

[humanino]

Let me also note, after reading George Jones' link, that european philosophers before WWI in Europe were seriously educated in science. They did have something to say about science. That was a century ago.

 

[JoeDawg]

There is one point that I would also like to emphasize. Weinberg is not even discussing cosmology. He really refers to very high energy physics. What is philosophical in coming with string theory, LQG, non-commutative geometry, or twistor methods ?

Understanding what a valid scientific theory is, IS PHILOSOPHY.

It is amusing that you quote Einstein for instance. We may evaluate the value for researchers of a few short perfectly clear books Einstein has written versus several order of magnitudes more philosophers have written about relativity.

You are missing the point entirely.

What a philosopher thinks about the validity of relativity or any other individual theory is not what the philosophy of science is even about. The philosophy of science is about how science is done, and how one ought to do it. Not the value of any particular theory.

 

[humanino]

Understanding what a valid scientific theory is, IS PHILOSOPHY.

Yes and when I'm building my own philosophy it's much more efficient by reading the scientists who made them than by reading professional philosophers.

 

[humanino]

What a philosopher thinks about the validity of relativity or any other individual theory is not what the philosophy of science is even about.

I never said that. Thinking about the validity of a scientific theory is the profession of scientists by definition.

 

[JoeDawg]

I never said that. Thinking about the validity of a scientific theory is the profession of scientists by definition.

And what makes a scientific theory valid?

 

[humanino]

And what makes a scientific theory valid?

Experimental evidence.

 

[JoeDawg]

Experimental evidence.

Experimental evidence that supports, falsifies or verifies the theory?

 

[humanino]

Experimental evidence that supports, falsifies or verifies the theory?

What do you mean by "verify" ? There is no such thing. Verify means "to make true" (unfortunately for you argument, I originally speak french where the etymology is obvious). Unless you have a point, trying to discredit me will not make this thread go away.

 

[JoeDawg]

What do you mean by "verify" ? There is no such thing. Verify means "to make true" (unfortunately for you argument, I originally speak french where the etymology is obvious). Unless you have a point, trying to discredit me will not make this thread go away.

Verification has a very simple meaning. If I say, the ball is round, and then if I observe the ball is round, I have verified it is true. Unfortunately, many different theories can be supported by the same evidence, so verification, except on a very simple level is not always useful in science.

Falsifiability relies on the premise that a theory is valid if it could be shown to be false by observation. Many theories however are still considered valid even after being falsified, in many cases because there is no comparable theory that does the work the falsified theory does.

Apart from that, many accepted scientific theories have been based on logical deductions, mathematical relationships, and indirect observations, long before they were ever subjected to experiment.

 

[humanino]

This thread is about Weinberg's book on unification of fundamental laws, which deals with high energy physics.

Many theories however are still considered valid even after being falsified

Such as ?

 

[JoeDawg]

This thread is about Weinberg's book on unification of fundamental laws, which deals with high energy physics.

I gave you exactly what you asked for, and now you're evading the issue, and wasting my time.

 

[humanino]

I gave you exactly what you asked for, and now you're evading the issue, and wasting my time.

I did not ask for anything. I came here to clarify that all criticisms posted here about Weinberg are only based on misunderstanding. Your claim of "falsified theories still considered valid" is misinformed. I'm not evading anything as I'm addressing your own messages which from the beginning have brought nothing to the topic of this thread.

 

[apeiron]

This batting back and forth rather illustrates the problem. The relationship between current science and current philosophy is not very functional. And in the past, the two were part of the same intellectual exercise - getting to know the world better. So the interesting discussion is about what has happened and how to fix it.

The correct way to view this is as levels of modelling. You have the meta-level and then the application-level (with as many grades as you like inbetween). So some think and some think about thinking. And the levels should not be in conflict but productive interaction.

And it could be that one person works at several levels in their career. And also that there are academic divisions to enable specialism.

What has generally happened is that academic philosophy has spun off into its own little world, lost the prestige it has once had, and you get some reactions like the extremes of post-modernism. Science then needs to create its own philosophical grounding - set up the places and journals where meta- level stuff takes place. I've had a foot in both camps and I can see things are not functioning well. The good stuff exists but you have to go digging for it because the present cultural dynamics plays against it getting airtime. When you apparently have scientists saying philosophy is bunk and philosophers returning the compliment.

The kind of dialog that regularly breaks out here just perpetuates the unhelpful divide.

Perhaps if once in a while people cracked open a modern work of scientific philosophy and discusses some actual ideas...

 

[0xDEADBEEF]

[...]
Perhaps if once in a while people cracked open a modern work of scientific philosophy and discusses some actual ideas...

Didn't Weinberg say he tried that and that it didn't help.

 

[Civilized]

Yes and when I'm building my own philosophy it's much more efficient by reading the scientists who made them than by reading professional philosophers.

This statement is just as absurd to me as its image under the morphism {"philosophy" |-> "physics", "scientist" |-> "philosophers"}, viz:

Yes and when I'm building my own physics it's much more efficient by reading the philosophers who made them than by reading professional physicists.

Anyone who thinks they can make progress in a 2000 year old subject without building on the great thinkers who came before them, is arrogant and destind to fail inevitably.

Perhaps if once in a while people cracked open a modern work of scientific philosophy and discusses some actual ideas...

The problem is that the philosophically uneducated cannot jump straight into contemporary philosophy without getting frustrated and confused, this would be like studying modern differential geometry in terms of axiomatic category theory without learning calculus 1.

 

[humanino]

Anyone who thinks they can make progress in a 2000 year old subject without building on the great thinkers who came before them, is arrogant and destind to fail inevitably.

That is not what I said

 

[Civilized]

That is not what I said

:yawn:

All I'm saying is that anyone who is building their own philosophy without consulting the established philosophical literature is as much of a crackpot as someone who thinks that they are building their own physics without studying the establihed physics literature.

 

[JoeDawg]

Didn't Weinberg say he tried that and that it didn't help.

Understanding the philosophy behind science is like understanding the physics behind baseball. You can pitch a winning game without having a PHD, but that doesn't mean a pitcher couldn't improve by learning a little physics. On the other hand, overthinking the pitch might even be bad for some pitchers... and the physics might simply be confusing.

Being good at one thing doesn't imply one will be good at something else. Some people excel at the theoretical, others are better at more applied subjects.

 

[Fra]

Thanks for the link to Weinbergs paper! Interesting. I will read it properly later.

I just skimmed random parts and I think it says quite a lot of about Weinberg himself and his way of reasoning :) I see revealing patterns of reasoning that think signs a strong realist view of science.

Anyone know what the date is of that text?

/Fredrik

 

[Fra]

I read it yesterday and it was at any rate interesting to hear Weinbergs ideas.

The paper mixes some historical descriptions and selected reasoning of others, apparently to back up his on message.

I don't however really understand in what context this published, and what his motivation was. Perhaps there is a reason for it. It seems implicit in the paper that Weinberg feels the need to "defend science"?

Part of the point refer to "professional philosophers", and maybe he has a point there. I've always been philosophically and fundamentally inclined, however I never ever studied "philosophy" formally. I would not a priori count on say a philosophy professor to solve physics problems, but OTOH I don't know if anyone ever suggested that, no more than we ask pure mathematicians to solve physics problems. The best philosophical arguments I have seen, have been from scientists making philosophical arguments.

As I see it, physics as a science contains a lot of mathematics simply because it's required by quantiative predictions, and science to me is about predicting the future given the past, for the benefit of self presrevation - it's not sterile bookkeeping. But in order to generate the hypothesis to be tested, elements of rational reasoning mixed with creativity is needed. This is different from deductive logic. The takes us right into the philosophy of science, and the problem of induction. Relevant here is that also probability theory so important today has it's root in the philosophy of opinon and belief. However, I think some extent of sterlization has taken place when we consider the pure mathematical point of view or axiomatic probability theory. This isn't physics.

This is partly exemplified by the problem of making sense of probability theory and statistics when it comes to stuff that really happen only once. Mathematically, in absurdum, there is no problem. But anyone that has made the most modest philosophical reflection of this in the context of observable elements probably smell something is at best awkard.

But the fact that pure philosophy and pure math is not physics, doesn't anywhere near mean that these aren't both important parts of physical sciences.

I get the feeling that Weinberg for some reason tries to separate objective scientific knowledge, from the scientific process, which is usually subject to essentially the problem om induction.

There is something in Weinbergs reasoning that smellls Popperian. I suspect Popper had a dream to describe the scientific process as an deduction, but he didn't succeed. The problem is that popper ignored one of the more important problems, which is how to deform the falsified hypothesis into a new candidate. Falsification or corroboration is the simple part. The other parts (the important part) was tactically not well analyzed by popper.

I sense that Weinberg has a somewhat smilarly sounding reasoning, which goes well with my impression that he belives in the reality of law and objectivity of science. The problem is that the objectivity of science is dangerously close to objectivity of information, and information is the fundament of quantum theory. But the observer, alsoing beeing a key in there, is undoubtedly not objective.

It's paradoxal, that most moderna physicists who have abandoned the mechanical style realism, in favour of the accepted quantum weirdness, still without knowing it, maintain a realism about the objective reality of physical law. Weinberg sounds like one of them?

/Fredrik

 

[octelcogopod]

Can't we say that philosophy deals with things that can't be directly observed or calculated, while science does?
Philosophy could be said to be our grasp of reality until a scientifically valid explanation comes along and replaces it. Until we have science for everything philosophy is a valid method. In theory if we have science for everything, there is nothing more to debate. Everything will be clearly understood, explained and observed, and philosophy would be useless.

Of course this brings up a lot of other questions, but I'm keeping it simple for now.

 

[JoeDawg]

Can't we say that philosophy deals with things that can't be directly observed or calculated, while science does?

No, because that would be completely misrepresenting the situation.

Philosophy is about knowledge.
Philosophy is what we use when we define what science is and what it does.

I can observe the planets and calculate my horoscope. But that doesn't make it science.
I can't directly observe or calculate evolution. But we do have quite a lot of indirect evidence for it.

Philosophy is not 'everything else' when it comes to science. Science is a part of philosophy.

 

[octelcogopod]

Okay, so philosophy is about knowledge, and science is a way to acquire knowledge.
Therefore science is part of philosophy.

That's fine but I feel it lacks some detail.
There is still a vast difference between philosophy and science.
Science is about observation and empirical evidence, so if something new were to come along to stir this, we would have to change our philosophy on science to find the truth.
Science is a universal thing, to me it is based on the most fundamental thing we have - observation and that there exists an empirical world.

Once you break out of the observation part you can still acquire knowledge, but it is not science, it will then become philosophy.
My earlier post posited that maybe one day we will have an empirical, measured and observered form of every phenomena and event in the universe, in which case there would be no philosophy left.

Right now, science is pretty limited, there are many things it cannot explain, that only philosophy can describe, but this does not mean that science as a method is not flawless.
Maybe in thousands of years someone will discover some ultimate way to perceive everything, and by then all questions have been answered and there is just facts left.

Is that too far fetched or>?

 

[mal4mac]

Okay, so philosophy is about knowledge, and science is a way to acquire knowledge.

One branch of philosophy is - epistemology. But what about morality, aesthetics,...?

Therefore science is part of philosophy.

How does that follow? Measuring the beaks of penguins is part of biological science but no way is it part of philosophy (*justifying* such measurements may be!)

Science is a universal thing, to me it is based on the most fundamental thing we have - observation and that there exists an empirical world.

There are other things that one might claim to be fundamental - happiness, pleasure, justice, consciousness...

How do you know that there is a world, or that it is empirical?

Once you break out of the observation part you can still acquire knowledge, but it is not science, it will then become philosophy.

Is 'that music sounds good' a scientific or philosophical observation? Surely neither? It's a statement of musical taste, that is, a musical/personal observation.

My earlier post posited that maybe one day we will have an empirical, measured and observered form of every phenomena and event in the universe, in which case there would be no philosophy left.

That's a philosophical position, and one very difficult to justify!

 

[octelcogopod]

1. What about them? When I say knowledge I don't just mean epistemology.
2. I meant science could be seen as a philosophical branch, or at least that's how I understood Jay.
3. Even with the subjective, we still must base science on the premise that there is an external empirical world. Science is all about exploring that world.
4. It's philosophical I guess.
5. Yeah it may be, but if we could ever close the gap between subjective and objective, it may not be.

 

[Fra]

Now the discussion diverged to ponder of "what is science", "what is philosophy" both of leads to traditional philosophical discussions.

Clearly mankind thrives on accurate knowledge in the sense of having an advantage over the competitive environment. Ultimately we need to be able to predict, act, and respond - at some level - to our environment in order to survive.

The level of sophisitication todo this varies from animals with complex brains, to simple cellular or molecular level information and responses.

The question for knowledge has been evolving throughout human history, at some point we start to realize that sometimes information we based our actions on turn out to be wrong. So one started to question the validity of information, and the quest for a rational method to acquire knowledge originated. Here is also a thread of reasoning, coming from an ancient notion of "probable opinon" meaning simply the opinon of someone educated and respected. This was found unsatisfactory so it evolved into precursors of probabilty theory where questions of "how to count and rate evidence" emerged.

The basic problem of science, is how to defend, that the knowledge we have is correct. Ie. is there a method that leads to true universal knowledge? And how do you know when it's true?

I guess one of the more common abstractions of what the scientific method is, is Poppers idea of hypothesis testing, resulting in corroboration or sometimes falsification.

He noted that it's not possible to produce certain knowledge by induction (or abduction). Ie. its' not deductive. Instead he tried to invert it, and instead suggest that falsification is deductive. And that the scientific process is described as a selection among hypothesis, by deductive falsification, and corroboration of the non-falsified theories.

However Poppers abstraction leaves still a lot to desire. He completely ignores the origin of hypothesis. Popper dismissed it into human pshychology and was content.

The basic idea that science, is knowledge produce by a scientific method, with is some rational method for acquiring knowledge, by means of feedback from the environment (experiment, hypothesis testing etc) is I think something no one disagrees upon.

But wether there is value in further refining this method is what I think weinberg talked about. It seems to me he feels the current mainstream poppian abstraction is perfect and that the scientific method itself, needs no update. I don't quite agree there, and I don't agree that it has no bearing on fundamental physics. In particular does the view of science as in the nature of physical law, reflects back on the way we tend to come up with hypothesis, and theories, which might impact the effiency of scientific development.

/Fredrik

 

[apeiron]

To see how philosophy and science are connected in the business of knowing the world, it is perhaps more instructive to see them as two ends of a spectrum. So the general dichotomy in operation here is that between generals (or universals) and specifics (or measurements). In more psychological terms, the difference between our ideas and our impressions.

So drawing back towards the most general ideas is philosophising, zeroing in on concrete details is "science" - the making of precise observation.

The two activities are obviously both necessary and feed each other.

We derive general ideas by what we learn from many accurate observations. And we can frame more accurate observation when we are guided by "truer" general ideas.

Science as a method was just a more rigorous approach to tieing the modelling to the observations - the philosophising to the measuring.

The kind of philosophy we rejected was the one that pretended that pure reason could solve all problems - no need for observation of the world. But even this was an idea more preached than practiced as all philosophers derived much from their experiences of the world - their impressions.

So philosophy = generalisation of our ideas. Science = making specific measurements. Then move the debate on to how the two aspects of knowing can be effectively put into action in modern academia.

 

[JoeDawg]

So philosophy = generalisation of our ideas. Science = making specific measurements. Then move the debate on to how the two aspects of knowing can be effectively put into action in modern academia.

While I don't disagree with the idea that philosophy and science operate along a spectrum, I think you're oversimplifiying here, and in a problematic way. One of the big problems in the philosophy of science is called the 'demarcation' problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem

If philosophy is about generalizations and science is about specific measurments, then categorizing species in biology, categorizing stars in astronomy, quite a lot of archeology, paleontology, and geology; are philosophy.

Add to that, measuring the positions of stars, in order to create a horoscope, is science.

I don't think most scientists would agree with that.

 

[apeiron]

One of the big problems in the philosophy of science is called the 'demarcation' problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem

If philosophy is about generalizations and science is about specific measurments, then categorizing species in biology, categorizing stars in astronomy, quite a lot of archeology, paleontology, and geology; are philosophy.

Add to that, measuring the positions of stars, in order to create a horoscope, is science.

I don't think most scientists would agree with that.

Demarcation problem is really about finding reasons to put science on a pedestal which is quite the wrong kind of defence I believe.

The better approach (and here I adhere most closely to Rosen's Modelling Relations epistemology) is to see modelling as a democratic exercise. Sit back, let the models compete, and the most effective (for their purposes) will emerge from the fray.

So astrology to the point that it models the world in some accurate sense is doing the job we would want of any "science". And yes, it is a modelling approach that attempts to extract general principles and then relies on measurements to drive the "equations". It relies on local inputs such as your birth date.

Where astrology falls down in the modelling relations view is that while the models make predictions, there is a lack of feedback about the observed outcome. As a field, it is not systematic in closing the measurement loop so that the model - the generalisation - is subject to learning.

So when I say science is measurement, I mean precisely the kind of predict and test loop that we expect of science.

Of course, this is not just how good modelling works, it is how brains work. Our minds anticipate the next moment's sensory input and then responds to the errors in prediction, paying attention to what was not expected, what was surprising, and then updating a running model of the world. When everything is being smoothly predicted, they call it the flow experience.

The point I was making is that - as modelling relations, a modern approach to epistemology, says - the business of modelling is naturally dichotomous. It divides strongly into formalised ideas and informal measurements. Generals and particulars. And then having divided, the two different aspects are better able to interact. The more clearly we can say this is our model that makes the guesses (the anticipations) the more clearly we can say well here is a prediction that didn't work out and so perhaps the model needs more work.

For some reason, philosophy and science have become disjointed activities in the sociology of human knowing. I am explaining why a division would emerge, but then also why the two have to work together.

We have similar divides at lower levels of course. In particle physics, there are the theory groups and the experimental groups. Once you get a big gang like at Cern, it seems natural to divide. But academic philosophy and science have floated right apart.

So forget the current disfunctional academic scene. I am saying look at how minds know worlds, look at some sophisticated epistemology like modelling relations. Then you can understand both the value of a divide, and also the way the divided are meant to interact.

And probably I am not making myself clear on what is meant by generals and particulars. In biology for example, darwinian selection would be a general, the categorisation of species would be closer to a particularisation activity. Evolution gives us the general idea that all species would be related like branches of a common tree. Then we would predict and measure to place all observable species on such a tree.

Or just using a straight cognitive example, you will have a general idea of what is a cat. It may include lions, Sylvester or Garfield, etc. Then you will also have specific cat impressions. You will have things come into your field of view and make some kind of concrete local act of interpretation. A prediction that may be confounded if the cat starts barking.

 

[JoeDawg]

Demarcation problem is really about finding reasons to put science on a pedestal which is quite the wrong kind of defence I believe.

I agree, but it is quite a common thing to do.

The better approach (and here I adhere most closely to Rosen's Modelling Relations epistemology) is to see modelling as a democratic exercise. Sit back, let the models compete, and the most effective (for their purposes) will emerge from the fray.

I don't think this is always the case. The emergence of the 'most effective' seems very haphazard, and historically, unusual. The last 300 years has been very 'unusual'. I do like your use of 'democratic', although many defenders of science would cringe at such a description. It's objective, don't you know, not something you vote on. I, however, think democratic and scientific ideas are integrally linked, for good and bad.

As a field, it is not systematic in closing the measurement loop so that the model - the generalisation - is subject to learning.

Predicting the weather could be said to suffer from the same problematic complexity, however. I think we give it more cache because it fits better into our modern mechanistic view of the universe, I'm not sure that's anything more than prejudice though.

Of course, this is not just how good modelling works, it is how brains work. Our minds anticipate the next moment's sensory input and then responds to the errors in prediction, paying attention to what was not expected, what was surprising, and then updating a running model of the world. When everything is being smoothly predicted, they call it the flow experience.

I think we do this sometimes, but I think we are also very prone to erroneous feedback loops, our minds are suckers for superstition, instinct, habit, tradition; patterning errors.
Our ignorance, and overspecialization, can also hamper the process you describe.

For some reason, philosophy and science have become disjointed activities in the sociology of human knowing. I am explaining why a division would emerge, but then also why the two have to work together.

Reductionism - not seeing the forest for all the trees.

So forget the current disfunctional academic scene.

Many people who specialize, anyone with a serious career, can get caught up in their own version of reality, and literally can't understand the language of others. Our brains can only handle so many models, and usually not at the same time. The paradigm shift idea.