Is Philosophy Viewed as Lesser in Scientific Forums?

[hypnagogue]

It depends on the area of psychology one studies. There has been a strong shift over the past few decades of psychology research into a more biological emphasis. It's a field still in transition to more rigorous science, but it's definitely heading that way. It's not easy turning something fairly subjective such as people's thoughts, emotions, sensations, and perceptions, into something objectively quantifiable, but psychologists have been working hard to move in that direction.

Of course, plenty of scientific psychology outside the field of cognitive neuroscience has been done as well. Skinner didn't need a biological approach to empirically discover something about how animals learn, for example. The way arildno speaks, one would think that the lineage of psychology went straight from Freud to Dr. Phil. That's about as accurate as thinking of physics as a lineage extending straight from Aristotle to Deepak Chopra.

 

[SpaceTiger]

Or perhaps we will find that variations exist of which we're not yet aware -like discovering dark energy, for example.

I don't see how that's even in the same ballpark. The fact that we don't yet know what dark energy is doesn't mean that the scientific method is struggling with it.

Perhaps we will drift though a region of space in which something important changes that we don't understand. But as I said, and whether scientists like to talk about it or not, it is an assumption that exists, but it wasn't my point.

There's a distinct difference between a universe that's unpredictable and one with mysteries. Drifting through a region of space with "something" in it does not, in of itself, pose any philosophical quandaries for science.

Einstein worked on the unified theory for the last half of his life. Was he operating outside of the domain of applicability of physics, or was he taking it on faith that such a theory is possible in the first place?

Must everything you do rest on faith that it will work out in your favor? Even if Einstein believed that he could find the final theory, he didn't necessarily have religious faith in the workings of science. Perhaps he did, I'm not familiar enough with the man to speak for him, but I know that I don't and I know that many of my colleagues don't.

And throughout the sixties and seventies the results strongly favored the standard model as the final theory, and this was clearly a frontline discussion. To say this has not been a focus of modern physics seems absurd to me.

I really don't see where you're going with this. Physicists always try to understand more and more about how the universe works, so in a sense, they are always pushing towards the final theory. This fact alone, however, doesn't prove your statement about faith. You seem to be resting on the assumption that nobody is motivated to achieve unless they have religious faith in the outcome.

I have seen a physical working model that was made before Kepler and used to predict the position of Mars at any time, so someone was trying to model the motion of Mars based on observations. Isn't that what scientists do?

Yes. The problem was that the model was failing. They kept adding epicycles every time Mars deviated from the predicted path. Had they been able to accept the possibility of non-circular motion, this wouldn't have been necessary.

But the original point is that right answers don't necessarily speak to underlying truths, so apparently we agree on the main point.

Yes, I agree with that; in fact, science is not even obligated to address the existence of underlying truth. Some scientists do attempt to address this, but almost entirely in private or through the popular media. You usually won't see such discussion in academic papers.

That is the assumption that I'm talking about. We don't know this to be true but we implicity assume that it is.

My statement was referring only to the current state of things -- we know that our theories aren't the final ones, so the equations must be models. In general, however, I wouldn't say we make any assumptions as to whether or not a particular theory is the most fundamental. You said yourself that there was much discussion about the possibility the Standard Model being the final theory (in the 60s and 70s).

 

[arildno]

Of course, plenty of scientific psychology outside the field of cognitive neuroscience has been done as well. Skinner didn't need a biological approach to empirically discover something about how animals learn, for example. The way arildno speaks, one would think that the lineage of psychology went straight from Freud to Dr. Phil. That's about as accurate as thinking of physics as a lineage extending straight from Aristotle to Deepak Chopra.

Okay, sorry for not referring explicitly to CLINICAL psychology.
That is still not a science.

EDIT:
Just to add yet another qualification:
I regard the therapeutic use of psycho-pharmaka (do you use that word in English??) as part of psychiatry, rather than psychology.

 

[Moonbear]

Okay, sorry for not referring explicitly to CLINICAL psychology.
That is still not a science.

Clinical anything is not a science unto itself, it's the applied field. It's not unlike building a house. The architects and engineers designing it need to apply their knowledge of physics, but they do not need to be physicists, and the people actually building the house don't need to know anything about the science, just the practical, applied knowledge such as when you hit the head of a nail with a hammer, it will drive it into the wood. And, just because there are practitioners who do not apply the science well does not mean the research done in the field is not science. If a support in a building fails because an engineer didn't account for all the forces involved, that doesn't mean physics is not a science. Likewise, if a psychologist's patient dies of a brain tumor because they weren't referred to a neurologist when presenting with unusual behavioral symptoms, that doesn't mean psychology is not a science. Crackpots also exist in all fields, those who self-proclaim their skills as a therapist or psychologist based on nothing more than extensive reading of Frued's books are no more an indicator of where psychology research stands than are those who have read a few pop-sci books about physics, and proclaim themselves a physicist ready to present a TOE, an indicator of where physics research stands.

 

[Moonbear]

EDIT:
Just to add yet another qualification:
I regard the therapeutic use of psycho-pharmaka (do you use that word in English??) as part of psychiatry, rather than psychology.

In the clinical setting, psychiatrists are the only ones legally permitted to prescribe pharmaceuticals in the US. However, in the research setting, the research being conducted and applied to psychiatry is done within psychology departments (and pharmacology, and physiology, and neuroscience, etc). For example, a pharmacologist might develop a novel drug that they think will treat depression based on its actions on specific neurotransmitter receptors, but it's the psychologist (researcher in a psychology department) who is developing the assessment criteria for determining when someone is depressed, and which behaviors are affected by treatment with that drug. In other words, the psychologist determines if the patient is depressed to an extent that requires medication (or just sad over something that will pass without medication), and if the new drug really does treat depression in people, or just affects the function of a receptor in the lab rats the pharmacologist tested it on. Then, it is the clinical practitioner (psychiatrist or psychologist) who decides, ultimately, to listen to or ignore the research findings and prescribe treatment for their patient, either using the medication or a purely behavioral approach, or refer them to someone else, or ignore them and send them away, or decide they don't need anything more than just someone to talk to and are willing to provide that for $200/session, and of course there are quacks in the field.

 

[Gokul43201]

On PF? You do original research on PF?

Nobody "does" original research on an internet forum. I don't even see how that is logically possible.

You "do" original reasearch in your lab (where you have your equipment) or in your office (where your notebooks, refernce material and computers are), or adopting a more liberal interpretation of that sentence, you do research in your head.

So, are you telling us that philosophers do original research on PF?

 

[Smurf]

So, are you telling us that philosophers do original research on PF?

Yeah kinda, that was my point. People go onto the philosophy forum and are like "Hmm, I'm a moral subjectivist (or whatever) and am going to prove I'm right to everyone with a clever analogy I came up with just now". Crackpottery ensues. Then the universe turns to Philosophy forum and says "Your reputation just decreased 2 points".

Like I said before. People ask questions in the Math forum. People try to prove they know all the answers in the philosophy forums.

If people went onto the philosophy forums and said "I often hear people say Nietszche's famous "God is dead" quote as if it's a big affront to christianity. But to me I interpreted it more as zarathustra proclaiming that the belief in god was dead rather than the actual personification. blah blah blah" then instead the universe would turn to Philosophy forum and say "Your reputation just increased 1 point" instead of the first one.

 

[loseyourname]

So, are you telling us that philosophers do original research on PF?

I still don't think he's articulating it very well, but philosophical research (aside from scholasticism) is a process of reasoned discourse, meaning that an internet forum is an appropriate medium through which to conduct such research. Scientific research, on the other hand, is experimental in nature and cannot really be conducted online by talking to other people. You can talk about your research, but that is not actually research. You can't do science online, but you can do philosophy online.

There are examples of members here that advance philosophical systems and hypotheses using this forum, some (like Les Sleeth, for example) that are very well thought-out and articulated, and that even result from personal empirical research (autophenomenological, but still empirical in the broadest sense). One may or may not feel this is a worthwhile pursuit, or may even think that these members are full of it, but the point is that it can be done. This is an appropriate medium through which to do philosophy.

The only problem I personally have is that people seem to think you don't need a philosophy education or philosophical training to do this well. So even though this may be a legit medium, we end up largely with what would be the equivalent of a 4th grade science fair. That's fine, but the members don't seem to always realize this. The point of a science fair is education, training, but it seems that many people come here to pound a personal philosophical idea into everyone else's head, rather than to hone their philosophy skills.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

There's a distinct difference between a universe that's unpredictable and one with mysteries. Drifting through a region of space with "something" in it does not, in of itself, pose any philosophical quandaries for science.

I did a really poor job of trying to make my point [working long hours and not thinking well anymore]. I guess what I was trying to say was that we don't know that everything that affects our measurements can itself be part of a grand theory. For example, and this is not a theory or suggestion but only an example taken from the aether... Say for example that at the deepest level, mathematics is somehow fundamentally inconsistent with physical reality. Maybe that would be a better way to imagine the sort of paradox that I have in mind.

As for the rest, we really got off track. What I originally said was this:

Considering that we don't have a unified theory, isn't it ultimately a faith statement that physics is not a philosophy?

Must everything you do rest on faith that it will work out in your favor? Even if Einstein believed that he could find the final theory, he didn't necessarily have religious faith in the workings of science. Perhaps he did, I'm not familiar enough with the man to speak for him, but I know that I don't and I know that many of my colleagues don't.

Is physics a philosophy? In the end, mathematics is based on assumptions. Isn't math, hence physics a philosophy based on assumptions and defintions. I have always understood [perhaps assumed] that a grand theory would be evidence of our most basic assumptions.

 

[Pythagorean]

philo - sophy
to love - wisdom

I really think it boils down to the fact that this is an internet forum. Somebody used the math forums to compare, but I don't think it's a fair comparison, because untrained people hardly ever try to come up with crackpot math theories.

Physics and philosophy, on the other hand, leave room for a lot of creative visualization, so on an internet forum (where any joe can walk in and say something) it's no surprise that there's a lot of 'reaching' by the untrained, and (in most cases) the never-planning-to-train.

Other than that, I think both professional philosophers and physicists are just as prone to making the same foolish assertions as they are to discovering some sort of bridge between reality and consciousness.

I just think it's ironic how many scientists confuse their models of reality with reality itself, then point fingers at the philosophers for making the same mistake. To me, physics is no closer to 'reality' than mysticism; science is just the view that I personally like to superimpose over my picture of reality.

edit: Additionally, as mentioned before, and as the great Fang Lizhi (a Chinese Physicist, who had philosophies imposed on him from his government) once said, math and philosophy are merely tools of physics, neither should be held too high nor given too much neglect.

 

[Evo]

The internet really has given a bad name to philosophy. The number of airheads that think any flaky idea that popped into their head after having a few too many beers is of profound philosophical merit is mind boggling, and unfortunately the internet gives them a place to share.

 

[AO eye 5]

I also agree with the "black sheep" representation to philosophy unforunately.
Personally, I am waiting for some quality discussion in this PF division which is inclusive,(I am not a philosopher, and have not taken a course) interesting, important and not too "esoteric."