Remember for the USA folk "school" can mean everything from nursery up to and including university. And their approach to starting a degree is quite different from ours, they also take courses in topics outside of their degree.
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Does anything exist?
- Thread starter Scorpion
- Start date
Remember for the USA folk "school" can mean everything from nursery up to and including university. And their approach to starting a degree is quite different from ours, they also take courses in topics outside of their degree.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
I have forsaken all hope. I have recurring crank question elsewhere on the intertubes. Nobody ever gets honesty. Or an answer. Or any discussion of any sort. Because why? I would think that if one were convinced of the spagmon as real, one would happily hurl evidence aplenty. Or one might think so.
Except it has never happened. In two weeks, maybe.
Belz...
Fiend God
Also homeschooling.
Mark, I think you are obviously being genuine and trying to be reasonable and constructive in all your replies here, but the above is a misunderstanding of what science actually does. Science does not claim to to describe the objective reality of the world around us. Most scientists hope they are doing that, and most do believe that they are describing reality in a pretty accurate way (often accurate to a quite fantastic degree) ... but since we discovered QM, most physicists at least, will stop short of claiming to describe "objective reality" (in this context of “reality, the word "objective" means "factual" ie indefinite & unarguable 100% truth).
It's a vital point in science, and it derives directly from what we discovered as the heart of QM.
Also when you say that philosophy is using “evidence” … historically it did not use measured and tasted data as the evidence in the way that science began to do with “philosophers” like Galileo. Philosophy mainly used what any of us could see, hear or feel etc. as it's evidence. Now of course, since the advance of science, philosophers may indeed make arguments using experimental evidence discovered by science … but when it (philosophy) makes arguments like that, it is using the results of science … it's not creating that evidence itself … and there's really not much mileage in that for philosophy where it's trying to make arguments based on evidence and explanations already obtained from science and where the scientists are vastly more specialised and better qualified to tell us what the evidence of their own experiments and calculations mean … astronomers do not need philosophers to tell them what their data on black holes means! … geneticists do not need philosophers to try telling them what their gene research means for human evolution!
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
No-schooling, surely?
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
Dammit, you are going to say "Don't call me Shirley". I walked into it.
Belz...
Fiend God
I just want to tell you both good luck. We're all counting on you.
OK, so can you just quote my posts where I "demanded" that "we redefine the dictionary" and where I demand that people change the language ? ...
... you must be able to quote where I said that. So, do that please. Otherwise your criticism is invalid (to put it kindly ... I can put it far less kindly if you like
).What I am saying as a criticism of philosophy is that it almost always seems to boil down just to a dispute over what words are used and what anyone can point to as some defined meaning in a dictionary ... i.e. as opposed to science which is certainly not merely arguing about words, but actually discovering things and showing in rigorous detail what the explanation is for those things ... very often things that are an enormous aid to everyone on the planet! ...
... there is a huge difference between science doing that vs. philosophers making arguments and claims that end up looking as if they are really arguing only about what various words ought to mean!
Belz...
Fiend God
I love that Hans accuses you of demanding of them that they redefine the dictionary when they've ignored the actual dictionary definitions.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
ROFL.
Odd how such a daft movie is bolted into the brains of just one generation Had I a psych degree, I could probably get a peer reviewed paper or two out of it. In fact I bet someone already has. But that isn't important right now.
Belz...
Fiend God
ROFL.
Odd how such a daft movie is bolted into the brains of just one generation Had I a psych degree, I could probably get a peer reviewed paper or two out of it. In fact I bet someone already has. But that isn't important right now.
Personally I think it's the best comedy film ever made. Daft my eye. That's exactly my type of humour.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
I meant daft in a good way. Pythonesque, even. Splitter.
Larry, really, come on, this is not difficult to understand. Or rather it would not be, except for the fact that you seem to be sitting behind a vast wall of confirmation bias that you erected long long ago (e.g. 30 years ago!) ...
... science cannot say with 100% certainty whether or not things exist (or that things are "true"). And ultimately, physicists/theoreticians at least, do usually acknowledge that. Are you understanding that so far?
OK, so the next step is - scientists (including physicists & theoreticians) almost always do believe that our observations and explanations are probably true (almost certainly true in the case of established "Theories") ... but they are rarely going to make the mistake of saying that they have literally "proved" things. Are you still with me" Do you understand that?
Next step - although real scientists, e.g. in core physics research, rarely bother to get into an argument with philosophers (or anyone else who dissents from what science is saying, or who tries to argue that science is mistaken/wrong/inadequate for some philosophical type reason that actually boils down to a dispute about what words can be used to argue with) about whether or not what the scientists are detecting and explaining is in fact “real” in the sense of having any actual existence at all. The reason they usually avoid those sort of discussions is because it's simply an egotistical attempt to waste everyones time. Do you get that? Are you understanding what I am telling you?
If we go back to your YouTube film with Sabine Hossenfelder, in the second clip that you posted, what she seemed to be saying was exactly the above, i.e. as far as I could see (at admittedly a quite cursory glance) she was saying that science should not get into that game of trying to claim that we know as a matter of certainty what “reality” actually is … she was saying that if philosophers want to argue about that then science should leave them to argue about it. Do you get that?
What she was not saying in the part that I watched, was that philosophy can tell us what is indeed “real” (whilst also claiming that science cannot possibly do that, or claiming that it cannot do it as well as, or better than, philosophers). Do you understand what I am saying to you?
IOW – if you, we, any of us, want to understand what is probably “real” (ie what is “reality”) in this universe, then science has certainly gone a zillion miles beyond what philosophy had ever done to answer such questions. So if you truly want to understand the actual nature & properties of everything (absolutely everything) that any of us can detect or experience in this universe, then science has shown it's credentials to be so far beyond that of traditional historic philosophy that it's not any sort of comparison at all any more … as I said before (slightly flippantly) – the score so far is Science a trillion vastly important discoveries and explanations vs philosophy precisely “Zero”!
We concurr. I've spent the last 10+ pages stating why I think scientific claims are conditional - why do you think scientific claims are conditional? BTW, all scientific claims are conditional, but specifically, we can speak of those claims where the scientific method was applied impeccably.
(note: I am not interested in a Science v Philosophy knock-down. My above question to you only references science.)
Apart from the "Briggs" description (who he??) ... scientists do not think things exist just because they explain onservations. In the case of the Higgs field (it's a force field), we/they think it does exist because in the 1960's Peter Higgs and others had shown mathematically that the Standard Model of Particle Physics (ie atomic substructure) would be incomplete (ie someting missing) unless a hitherto undiscoveed force field existed and which had a method of interacting with other particle-fields in such a way that gives them the property that we measure as "mass".
Scientists had been trying to devise ways of confirming or denying that mathematical prediction ever since. But the effect of the Higgs field was calculated to be so small that it would be almost impossible to detect by any normal experiment ... that is until the Large Hadron Colider was developed, though even then, iirc, the Higgs field was exected to be right at the limit of possible detection ... in the end a force-field was detected (and confirmed) that corresponded exactly to all the predicted properties that a Higgs Field should have ... so that's why they think it exists ... and that's why they think it has the properties and subatomic role that Peter Higgs and many other theoreticainas had by then worked out in quantum field theory.
Do you want to say that it does not exist?
OK, so where have you publised your paper showing that the field does not actually exist except as some sort of "observation effect"? (I think that's what you seem to believe). If you cannot publish any such paper, then you have no argument left ... you cannot argue that the field does not exist unless and until you show how the maths was wrong &/or that the LHC observation is wrong.
But even if we do discover that the LHC data is wrong (which is possible, since we are still at an early stage), we'd still have to find some very similar subatomic field mechanism which accounted for the observed mass.
LarryS - you claim that the question "Does anything exist?" can't be answered by "science", can philosophy answer it and if so, what is the philosophical answer?
Belz...
Fiend God
Since you admited already that you have no idea how to define "exist", why not just accept that it means "is observable"? That means the distinction you've tried to make vanishes, and simplifies the discussion.
But that's not what you want, is it?
Belz...
Fiend God
It doesn't matter. Larry doesn't even know what "exists" means; how can he possibly say who or what can answer it?
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
I'm not sure it matters how you define the word "exist" either. We can argue about the limitations of language and whatnot, but if there is anything that does not exist then it is not anything unless by "existence" we mean something other than what we customarily mean by existence. We can argue about the different sorts of existence, and whether we can detect all those different sorts, but the question "does anything exist" is inherently nonsensical. In the world where any answer but "of course" is possible, non-being is a kind of being, nothing a kind of something.
I'm entirely willing to accept. as others here do, that philosophy is a real thing, and pursuit of it can be useful and beneficial, but this fundamental question is not one of philosophy, except perhaps as a seive to strain out those who would do better to go back and learn to speak and think clearly before shouting from the stoa.
I'm entirely willing to accept. as others here do, that philosophy is a real thing, and pursuit of it can be useful and beneficial, but this fundamental question is not one of philosophy, except perhaps as a seive to strain out those who would do better to go back and learn to speak and think clearly before shouting from the stoa.
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I’m not saying science can’t answer, only that claims/answers of science are conditional-which everyone agrees with.
I’m not saying philosophy can answer the question.
I certainly can’t answer the question what it means to exist.
But I do know that claims re knowledge and existence have various patterns and degrees of conditionality, although I’m pretty damn sure about my neighbor’s dog.
And yes science is the best tool we have, but agreeing so is not the heroic identifier that people here seem to think it is.