Cheetah
Master Poster
Exactly.
Do clever people outsmart themselves?
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I don't think many scientists do "hold forth on reductionism, emergence, free will etc." I expect you are probably thinking of the tiny minority of scientists who are filmed on YouTube (or who write books criticising religion) where they are continually asked to respond to such philosophical ideas.
There are now (21st century) lots of very different people in the world, in very different branches of academia or industry, who are all called "scientists'. But there is a vast difference between people who work in (say) engineering or computer science, or even things like "social science" or medicine vs. people working in mathematical physics or physical/mathematical chemistry. But if you are talking about that latter group of actual research scientists working in core science areas of physics, chemistry biology and most of maths, then 99.9% of them never mention philosophical debates at all, ie such philosophical discussions are no part of that genuine cutting-edge science research.
But that's why Stephen Hawking said philosophy is dead. He did not mean that philosophy is no longer taught in universities. He meant that we no longer use philosophy as our best way of understanding and explaining the observable/detectable world of “reality” around us. At one time, before the new subject of science emerged with people like Galileo circa.1600 onwards, philosophers were claiming to explain all things in the world around us (religions were also making that claim, and claiming that all things were explained by the existence of a miraculous God). But gradually, we found through advancing science that philosophy (and religion) are not accurate, or even remotely credible, ways of discovering the correct accurate explanations for the world around us.
Does philosophy still have a place in explaining anything really important for any of us? Well if people find philosophy interesting then I suppose that's a matter for them. But although philosophers don't like it, and although philosophy supporters on forums like this often object vehemently, the fact is that scientists do not need any ancient philosophers or any philosophy courses, to tell them how to study and explain the world through science and maths …. scientists can can think of all the relevant factors for themselves.
If you want to relate that to the OP question of whether clever people “overthink” things, then if we take those scientists, or just take the most successful and well-known amongst them, as being reasonably clever (though most of what they achieve comes from a lot of hard work), then I don't see any evidence for thinking they are failing by thinking too much or thinking too deeply about their research in science.
The more deeply you think about the methods and results of your scientific research, and the more time you spend doing that to check & test things carefully, the more likely I think you are to get accurate answers.
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David Mo
Philosopher
Parable of the pipe (Johnny 23).
In truth I tell you that if you do not ask the right questions you will not have the right answers. This is like the story of a plumber, a physicist and a philosopher who went to fix a pipe that was flooding a rich man's kitchen.
The physicist was very good at explaining the origin of the universe (sic) and very bad at fixing pipes.
The plumber doesn't know how to explain the origin of the universe, but he was very good at fixing pipes.
Which is better, a physicist or a plumber?
And the philosopher said: I am not good at repairing pipes nor have I invented the Big Bang theory, but perhaps I could explain why the question posed above does not make sense.
And the man rich said, "Master, why do you do parables which are not understood?" And the Master looked at him and said, "I'd better shut up".
David Mo
Philosopher
You have shown many times that you have no idea of philosophy or the history of science: Not only Hawking (who gets into philosophical matters without having much idea) but the great theoreticians of physics were concerned about philosophy. Even if they weren't interested in religion. I could give you a list, if it weren't for the fact that it's also proven that you're "autistic". (It is not oly I that says so).
Attending to Hawking:
In one of his latest books he boasts that he has dismantled the proof of God's existence. Although I don't remember if he mentions it, he refers to the first way of Thomas Aquinas.
The first way is based on the fact that out of nothing, nothing proceeds and that the return to infinity in the series of causes is impossible. Hawking says that the physics of the Big Bang refutes this proof because before the Big Bang there was nothing and the universe comes from the Big Bang.
Only if one is not blinded by Hawking and Mlodinow's triumphal trumpets, one realizes that he has shown nothing because neither nothing is really absolute nothingness nor is the universe all possible, but the universe we know. Scholastics can get their trumpets and claim that Hawking has no idea what they're talking about and atheism is again defeat by divine reason. Those of us who can't stand the scholastics have reason to be really annoyed with Hawking. His only excuse would be that was Mlodinow who wrote this silly thing.
If that is the help that scientists are going to provide in the defense of atheism, it would be better if they left the philosophers alone.
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Robin
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And immediately after saying that he announces his own philsophic position, which is a rehash of Logical Positivism.
I can't think of any who were. Perhaps you could give some examples.
And science didn't just sprout around the 17th century, it had a much, much longer arc than that.
David Mo
Philosopher
Better still: examples of current philosophers who say such a thing.
No. You are just trying the usual claim of saying that all considered thought is "philosophy". It's not. That's why modern science is now called "science" and why it's not called "philosophy" (or Natural Philosophy) any more. Because eventually, after a few hundred years since Galileo, people realised that there is a big difference between what we now know as science vs what was historically known as formal "philosophy".
Scientists today are using the approach that is called "science" (not the approach that is called "philosophy").
You can't think of any philosophers who claimed to explain how the world around us worked? ….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy
Is science today (“modern” science) different from the historic ancient subject of “philosophy” -
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/philosophy-is-not-a-science/
http://www.differencebetween.net/mi...on/difference-between-science-and-philosophy/
David Mo
Philosopher
Your links do not correspond to what you intended and have been requested. You have no idea what you are linking to.
If all you have found is that ...
halleyscomet
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Televangelist Joyce Meyer: You Need To Be Stupid To Believe In God
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/progr...eyer-you-need-to-be-stupid-to-believe-in-god/
Foster Zygote
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And then he pooped in his pants.
halleyscomet
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That would be age-appropriate behavior for many two-year-olds.
Just regarding those three links, though obviously not for the sake of the person (or persons) who complained about them (because they are beyond help) – the first link to a simple Wiki page is just there to show that (as I said), of course in times before we had modern science (which emerged only quite gradually over the course of several centuries following Galileo) philosophers in general had, for thousands of years, believed they were explaining the observable world around us.
The other two very simple links are to articles that are, AFAIK, either by philosophers or from people sympathetic to philosophy and putting forward a defence of philosophy, but where even they admit that there is of course a clear difference between science and philosophy. So again, it's entirely untrue if people here post to say or imply that science is actually just “doing philosophy” on the basis of a claim that all attempts at constructive human thinking are the domain of academic formal philosophy … i.e. as if to claim that philosophy must take the credit for whatever science discovers and explains.
People here who try to argue like that, with philosophy taking the credit for everything, should go their nearest university and try enrolling for a science degree or doctorate (assuming they have enough qualifications to apply for any such courses), and then telling the science lecturers and admissions officers that they expected to learn about the arguments and beliefs of Kant, Wittgenstein, Plato, Socrates, Hume, Popper, or even Massimo Pigliucci or Dan Dennett or A.C. Grayling … what do you think the science academics are going to say to that? … they are going to tell you that you are in entirely the wrong department! … because the science department is definitely not the same as the philosophy dept, and what we do here in science is most definitely very different than what is taught as "philosophy" in a philosophy dept.
So just in summary for all of that – scientists today (and for a least a couple of centuries now) do not need philosophers to tell them what science does, or to tell them what the limits of science are, or what we can, or cannot investigate and explain by science. Scientists can perfectly well decide all that for themselves. Philosophy has no role left in any of that any more. If academic philosophers want to spend their time and tax payers money arguing about so-called “ethics” or about what they regard as “knowledge” or “truth”, then they can do that amongst themselves … but there is no place for philosophers trying to waste the time of scientists with debates about any of that (which is why few, if any, real scientists spend their research time (or their research papers) in such endless philosophical semantics).
The other two very simple links are to articles that are, AFAIK, either by philosophers or from people sympathetic to philosophy and putting forward a defence of philosophy, but where even they admit that there is of course a clear difference between science and philosophy. So again, it's entirely untrue if people here post to say or imply that science is actually just “doing philosophy” on the basis of a claim that all attempts at constructive human thinking are the domain of academic formal philosophy … i.e. as if to claim that philosophy must take the credit for whatever science discovers and explains.
People here who try to argue like that, with philosophy taking the credit for everything, should go their nearest university and try enrolling for a science degree or doctorate (assuming they have enough qualifications to apply for any such courses), and then telling the science lecturers and admissions officers that they expected to learn about the arguments and beliefs of Kant, Wittgenstein, Plato, Socrates, Hume, Popper, or even Massimo Pigliucci or Dan Dennett or A.C. Grayling … what do you think the science academics are going to say to that? … they are going to tell you that you are in entirely the wrong department! … because the science department is definitely not the same as the philosophy dept, and what we do here in science is most definitely very different than what is taught as "philosophy" in a philosophy dept.
So just in summary for all of that – scientists today (and for a least a couple of centuries now) do not need philosophers to tell them what science does, or to tell them what the limits of science are, or what we can, or cannot investigate and explain by science. Scientists can perfectly well decide all that for themselves. Philosophy has no role left in any of that any more. If academic philosophers want to spend their time and tax payers money arguing about so-called “ethics” or about what they regard as “knowledge” or “truth”, then they can do that amongst themselves … but there is no place for philosophers trying to waste the time of scientists with debates about any of that (which is why few, if any, real scientists spend their research time (or their research papers) in such endless philosophical semantics).
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acbytesla
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Ever notice that the faith healers NEVER work their magic on an amputee?
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
A few years ago I found this CD, appropriately, in a gutter. It's not playable, thank FSM, so I can only guess how this pressing question took 6 CD's to answer. I can only hope the poor sucker who owned this CD tossed it out in fury, but fear that if he had listened already to volumes 1 and 2, he might have become too stupid to remember where he left it.
Robin
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In case anyone is actually interested, rather than just wanting to bag philosophy, here is an example.
One common criticism of the philosophy of science is that Ernst Nagel claimed that any higher level principle in physics is reducible to lower level principles. The criticism is that he claimed this without evidence.
But if you read the chapter in question (in The Structure of Science) he didn't claim this at all, didn't claim anything in fact. Rather he said "if we are to ask if higher level principles are reducible to (or derivable from) lower level principles then first we should have as clear an idea as possible about what we mean by 'reducible to'".
He begins the chapter by pointing out that many eminent physicists do not believe higher level principles are reducible to lower level principles and concludes by apologising that he has come to no conclusion.
However he has still performed a useful function in suggesting what we might mean by the phrase.
Then Jerry Fodor comes along with "The Special Sciences (Or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis)" where he provides an argument to show that it is reasonable to suppose that higher level principles are not reducible to lower level principles in the way defined by Nagel.
Note that he doesn't "assert" this, he deliberately uses the term "working hypothesis".
The next step is that Mark Bedau (in "Weak Emergence") can say, in effect, "OK, so higher level principles are not reducible to lower level principles in the Nagel sense, but can they be said to be reducible in some other, more useful, sense?"
Then he provides a definition of another kind of reduction, based on the distinction between strong and weak emergence. He also gives a practical working definition for these. He suggests (not asserts) that nothing is strongly emergent, but that every principle is weakly emergent from (and therefore reducible to) fundamental physics.
Is that useful?
I think so. Suggesting clear definitions and providing arguments supporting various positions seems a useful function to me.
For a start anyone who wants to have a discussion about this doesn't have to reinvent the wheel and it does seem as though quite a few scientists do want to talk about these subjects. Any such discussion can be a continuation, rather than a rehash.
It also provides a clear way to explain why irreducibility does not lead to any woo conclusions.
One common criticism of the philosophy of science is that Ernst Nagel claimed that any higher level principle in physics is reducible to lower level principles. The criticism is that he claimed this without evidence.
But if you read the chapter in question (in The Structure of Science) he didn't claim this at all, didn't claim anything in fact. Rather he said "if we are to ask if higher level principles are reducible to (or derivable from) lower level principles then first we should have as clear an idea as possible about what we mean by 'reducible to'".
He begins the chapter by pointing out that many eminent physicists do not believe higher level principles are reducible to lower level principles and concludes by apologising that he has come to no conclusion.
However he has still performed a useful function in suggesting what we might mean by the phrase.
Then Jerry Fodor comes along with "The Special Sciences (Or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis)" where he provides an argument to show that it is reasonable to suppose that higher level principles are not reducible to lower level principles in the way defined by Nagel.
Note that he doesn't "assert" this, he deliberately uses the term "working hypothesis".
The next step is that Mark Bedau (in "Weak Emergence") can say, in effect, "OK, so higher level principles are not reducible to lower level principles in the Nagel sense, but can they be said to be reducible in some other, more useful, sense?"
Then he provides a definition of another kind of reduction, based on the distinction between strong and weak emergence. He also gives a practical working definition for these. He suggests (not asserts) that nothing is strongly emergent, but that every principle is weakly emergent from (and therefore reducible to) fundamental physics.
Is that useful?
I think so. Suggesting clear definitions and providing arguments supporting various positions seems a useful function to me.
For a start anyone who wants to have a discussion about this doesn't have to reinvent the wheel and it does seem as though quite a few scientists do want to talk about these subjects. Any such discussion can be a continuation, rather than a rehash.
It also provides a clear way to explain why irreducibility does not lead to any woo conclusions.
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Why should any of us (or any research scientists) spend their time dissecting whatever is meant by what has apparently been a subject of debate or argument or interest amongst a number of philosophers (some named above) who apparently want to publish papers, or write chapters in books, or give lectures on degree courses or exchange countless pieces of correspondence with other philosophers arguing about whether or not "principles" in physics (do they mean "Theories"?) can be reduced to a set of simpler "principles" (do they mean "explanations" or "observations") ...
... do you really think that if you go to the LHC in Geneva (for example), and call all the hundreds of scientists, mathematicians, technicians & engineers there to a meeting, and tell them "OK, I want all of you stop the science now, stop all the experiments and the calculations and the research, because we must now spend an indefinite time into the future debating this essential philosophical question of whether or not certain of your "principles" are reducible to other principles!", do you really think anyone there is going to take any notice of you or that anyone should take any notice of you?
If philosophers want to spend their time in such debates, and if they can continue to persuade governments to pay them academic salaries from the public taxes, then nobody is stoping them doing that. But their ideas in philosophy really have no place any more, and no value any more, in science.
And that's important. Because the way that we decide what is likely to be true in this world is now through science, and no longer through philosophy (or religion). So that, for example, what now happens in all legal trials and court cases all over the educated democratic world, is that scientific expert witnesses and scientific evidence plays a huge part in almost all such legal cases … but where in contrast, philosophers are never called as experts to give any accurate or useful assistance to either defence, prosecution, judge, or jury. IOW – philosophy no longer has any any useful role in determining what is likely to be true (or even, in that case, any role in determining what points need to be debated, clarified, or investigated).
HansMustermann
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And I'm saying that without going science on its ass, how would you even know which of those philosophers were right? "Something out of nothing" is one of the domains you brought up, and I've already produced two examples of famous dead men who were spectacularly wrong about it, and one of them exactly relevant to Darat's question at that. And I can give you a few more if you want.
But it's not even only on that domain. Even if you want to believe that everything useful on a bunch of domains has already been said, the problem is that so has a whole bunch of horse manure. You have whole Augean stables worth of contradictory manure, with the occasional gem buried somewhere six foot deep in that manure. Without some form of testing it against hard evidence, and trying to falsify it, how would you even know which is which?
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And what did all these bods come up with for Planck time?
HansMustermann
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Yes, but there are your operative words: "working hypothesis". It will then be tested against evidence and see how that fits. It's a scientific process, not navel gazing.
That's what you seem to miss in all this: when scientists discuss what, say, "gravity" means or what is the nature of empty space, they don't mean it in some empty navel-gazing way about what do words really mean. It's about explaining the evidence at hand, and then trying to falsify it against other evidence and see where it breaks.
Ditto for reductibility or not. The observed phenomena and theories explaining them are the evidence there. Any claim that stuff is reducible or not, will have to fit that evidence. And then we'll try and see if we find other evidence that fits or doesn't fit the hypothesis.
It's a scientific process by any other name. Because it's the only process that gives you answers worth anything.