Does anything exist?

[The Man]

Now you're downright trolling.



And now you're downright lying.



I have. You couldn't meet it. It's plain for everyone to see.



You philosophiles simply don't understand that mirroring someone's words doesn't constitute an argument or a win. Your had plenty of opportunities to get to the core of the matter and prove your point. Instead you focus on wording, silly games, and characterisations. It's all you have.



My position is that it is axiomatic and that it couldn't be otherwise. Ergo it is outside the purview of philosophy. You have claimed otherwise but folded at the critical moment. Now you're trying real hard to make the discussion about something else.

Yeah, yeah, I know: "what discussion?"

There you go some actual claims about the subject. I knew you could do it. That an axiom of a system would be, well, axiomatic in that system is tautological. A different axiom or just not holding it as an axiom is another question though. So what form need, or can, such a question, about what axioms to use or not use, take? Don’t forget the law of excluded middle was an axiom of just logic in general, and still is for classical consistent logic. Though not for other forms of logic these days.

Certainly historically the law of non-contradiction was ascribed as a axiom of logic by philosophy and philosophers, being attributed to Aristotle. Even currently its modification in the philosophical position of dialethism was by philosophy and philosophers. Again this is why I said you might have been a bit better off going with the law of excluded middle instead. The move away from that axiom does not appear to have been driven by philosophy and philosophers.


Actually what happen in our discussion of axioms is that I gave you the modification for the law of contradiction by the philosophical position of dialethism

The strongest paraconsistent logics are multivalued as TRUE, FALSE and BOTH. In them the law of non-contradiction [NOT (A & NOT A)] becomes a contradiction itself as 'Always NOT (A & NOT A) but sometimes A & NOT A'.

and your response was simply..

None of which have anything to do with philosophy.

To which I responded..

Oh, I’m certain that the Professor of Philosophy Graham Priest and the philosopher, logician, and environmentalist Richard Routley, who both coined the term 'dialetheism', will be dissuaded from their careers by your opinion (though Routley died in 1996). The former, Priest, being the one that formalized that defining attribute of a dialetheistic approach, mentioned before and that you remark to.

At which point you neither bet, raised or even called. The only hand that folded in that exchange was yours. If you’d like to ante up again, then let’s hear your augment for why a question about what axioms to use or not use for a system “is outside the purview of philosophy”.

 

[Thermal]

Once again you've manage to communicate through frustration what I struggle to get across intellectually.

The absurdity of that frustration remains: philosophy is not trying to answer the same questions science is. They are not in competition. Apples and oranges.

The "frustration" is the equivalent of shrieking "these oranges make the worst apple pies! Useless! You say all oranges are pies so it has no meaning!"

Yeah, I'd be frustrated too.

 

[JoeMorgue]

The absurdity of that frustration remains: philosophy is not trying to answer the same questions science is. They are not in competition. Apples and oranges.

The "frustration" is the equivalent of shrieking "these oranges make the worst apple pies! Useless! You say all oranges are pies so it has no meaning!"

Yeah, I'd be frustrated too.

And we're almost at 40 pages and despite returning to this same argument multiple times, what questions philosophy answers and how remained unanswered.

Will you answer it now or get distracted by washing the dog and return to the thread in another week to fringe reset back to "Philosophy and science don't answer the same questions!"

Name one question philosophy has answered and describe the method in which philosophy actually provided a meaningful answer using a process that is functionally different from science or base curiosity.

 

[Belz...]

There you go some actual claims about the subject. I knew you could do it.

I've been saying exactly that since the beginning. If you had been more focused on the argument than the arguer you might've noticed that weeks ago.

That an axiom of a system would be, well, axiomatic in that system is tautological.

Oh, scratch that, you have no idea what I'm saying.

(lots of words)

Wow, none of that demonstrates your claim in any way. Can't say I'm surprised.

 

[Belz...]

The absurdity of that frustration remains: philosophy is not trying to answer the same questions science is.

Of course it is. Otherwise you wouldn't present it as an alternative.

Either philosophy tries to answer factual questions, in which case science can do it better (that is to say, better than nothing is always better), or it doesn't, in which case it's just mental masturbation.

As a tool for developing and applying rigorous thought, it's a different matter.

 

[The Man]

OK, thanks for checking all that stuff.

No problem, having to sort though crap loads of cross-referenced, poorly indexed, and scattered all over the place documentation just to get to the little bit of information I need, comes with this job.

I'll be more brief this time -

- looking at the 5 papers cited, they all seem to be in medicine. That's fine, and of course medical studies are extremely important for all of us. But as I've said many times ;- in threads like this when I talk about "science", I am really talking specifically about core fundamental science (by which I mean all branches of physics and chemistry, most parts of biology and most of maths). In the paper that I discussed by Laplane & Solary, their title was “Philosophy of Biology: Towards a classification of stem cells” … but the paper, and those citations seem to be more specifically commenting on the medical aspects of what can be said about Stem Cells.

I'll try to be brief but no guaranties. You're touching on some broad reaching subjects.

What would you expect from a Philosophy of Biology Department? As for "most parts of biology" stems cells are probably one of the broadest reaching aspects of biology, from reproduction to development, immunology, healing of the skin and blood vessels from wounds, regulating angiogenesis (growth of new blood vessels), even the progression of cancer. Heck, even plants and insects have stem cells.

Seriously? "(by which I mean all branches of physics and chemistry, most parts of biology and most of maths)" does it have to do your laundry for you too?

Kidding aside though, what typical scientist is doing all that. Why ask more of philosophers of biology than, well, just biologists or philosophy and philosophers as a whole than just science and scientists as a whole?

Near as I can recall the only scientific developments with such broad reacting aspects were general relativity and quantum field theory. While they didn't involve most of maths they did require new aspects of and approaches in math to be created.

GR was published in 1916. What's considered the basic start of QFT (QED) was published in 1927. However, it took decades and a crap load of people and work to get to what is QFT and The Standard Model (linking all forces but gravity and relating all know particles). The finial aspect was considered the development of Quantum Chromodynamics (a strong nuclear force analogy of the quantum electrodynamics, QED, for electromagnetism) in around 1973.

Such broad reaching developments don't come around often and get harder ever time.

Again, that's all OK. And all sorts of academics can comment on what has been published in previous papers covering various areas of science or medicine. But I still don't see that philosophy has much to add that any of us could not similarly add, however, I was really talking about (and I thought the thread was talking about) whether or not philosophy had an important role in questioning or holding to account science in general, or more specifically questioning areas like quantum physics & the nature of particles, fields, and what we think of as the “reality” of the this universe.

Again its not a matter of "that any of us could not similarly add" its simply who did add it and how.

But I did say many pages back that I am well aware that there are some philosophers who also have an extensive background in maths and science, and who have written extensively about some of the most puzzling aspects of quantum theory (things like entanglement and superposition). And I mentioned there the recent book by David Wallace (1) which looks very interesting … but as I sad then, I think philosophers like Wallace should probably be in the theoretical physics dept rather than a philosophy dept LoL . Anyway I've so far resisted buying his book, because I already have a small library of books on quantum field theory, most of which I have barely read (barely tried to read lol) … anyway you can see him talking about it here in the well known YouTube series called Closer To Truth -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK9JE1HjPi8


1. David Wallace, The Emergent Multiverse: Quantum Theory According To The Everett Interpretation, Oxford Univ. Press, 2014

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Emergent-M...e+the+emergent+universe&qid=1626766423&sr=8-1

Certainly, if your field is the philosophy of science or the philosophy of math then knowing science and /or math is just part of the job. Why shouldn't Wallace's actual career choices and position be the delineating factor rather than simply your preference?

For the aspects of reality thing, that comes back to the Wigner's friend experiment I linked some pages ago. Now Wigner had intended the thought experiment to show the dependence on consciousness for the for superposition of states to result in a single state, either A or B. However, in the experiment preformed quantum particles stood in for winger and his friend, eliminating that consideration of a dependence on consciousness at least for this experiment, but still shows both can get different results that are both true.

Article linked below

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...ox-has-major-implications-for-quantum-theory/

Sorry, running out of time.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

Name one question philosophy has answered and describe the method in which philosophy actually provided a meaningful answer using a process that is functionally different from science or base curiosity.

How are you defining science? In other words, if I offer a question that philosophy has answered, what's stopping you from just saying "that's science"? What criterion or criteria are you using to determine whether or not something is science?

And of course, a phrase like "base curiosity" can be used to mean just about anything, no?

 

[JoeMorgue]

How are you defining science? In other words, if I offer a question that philosophy has answered, what's stopping you from just saying "that's science"? What criterion or criteria are you using to determine whether or not something is science?

I've broken down my distinction a dozen times in this thread alone. Go find them so you can forget them and ask again in 10 more pages.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

I've broken down my distinction a dozen times in this thread alone. Go find them so you can forget them and ask again in 10 more pages.

You haven't really explained what "base curiosity" means and how it's different from philosophy, at least according to the search function on the forum.

If you'd rather not state what you consider to be the difference between science and non-science, that's fine. It's a tough question for many.

 

[JoeMorgue]

You haven't really explained what "base curiosity" means and how it's different from philosophy, at least according to the search function on the forum.

If you'd rather not state what you consider to be the difference between science and non-science, that's fine. It's a tough question for many.

Don't play games.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

Tough question for many.

 

[Roboramma]

"Is there Dark Matter?" and "What happens if an unstoppable force meets an unmovable object" are nowhere near intellectually equal. One is unprovable at this moment with our current tools and describes an actual concept that is either factually correct or factually incorrect, the other is unfalsifiable and only exists as a surface linguistic paradox that doesn't actually describe anything.

Valid post and only a nitpick: we have very good evidence that dark matter exists. We don't know exactly what it is, but that there is dark matter is pretty much settled these days. Modified gravity was an interesting idea, but it didn't pan out and there's separate lines of evidence that all converge on the fact that dark matter is out there.

This probably supports your point.

 

[Roboramma]

But that's only true some of the time. Depending on the mood, posters here will insist that whatever we're doing is phlosophy, leaving not much without.

Well, while I think some philosophy has value, I'm probably less of a fan of philosophy in general than a lot of people. I think that kind of broad definition is probably useless.

Such as what, specifically? What specific philosophical utterance or realisation has led to a major scientific breakthrough?

Valid question. I'll try go beyond my vague impressions (based on what other people who ought to know have said) and give you something more concrete. Recently I was reading some Lee Smolin stuff and he was describing the influence of logical positivism on Einstein and his work on relativity, as well as a later rejection of logical positivism by him (but embracing on of it by people like Bohr, and again an influence on his work, and that of his circle). Smolin thinks this both helped bring on those breakthroughs (like relativity, and also Bohr's initial model of the atom) and, later, to negative outcomes for modern physics.

But is he right? Either about the influence or the outcome? It'd be more useful if I had some direct quote from Einstein (or Bohr) themselves here. I'll see what I can dig up.

I've also got an impression from my reading that people like Heisenberg and Schrodinger were strongly influenced by philosophy. But again, your question is valid: what specific philosophical insights actually contributed to their work? I can only say that my current prior is relatively high that those things had a strong impact, but if we're trying to have a conversation something specific is necessary to convince you.

Sadly, I'm stuck behind the great firewall, but I've got a bunch of books that I think have something meaningful in them somewhere. Reading through my library will take more time than doing some google searches, but I'll see what I dig up.

 

[Belz...]

How are you defining science?

Depends on what you mean "how" and "you".

 

[Thermal]

And we're almost at 40 pages and despite returning to this same argument multiple times, what questions philosophy answers and how remained unanswered.

Will you answer it now or get distracted by washing the dog and return to the thread in another week to fringe reset back to "Philosophy and science don't answer the same questions!"

Name one question philosophy has answered and describe the method in which philosophy actually provided a meaningful answer using a process that is functionally different from science or base curiosity.

Was getting ready to answer when I stumbled across this:

I've broken down my distinction a dozen times in this thread alone. Go find them so you can forget them and ask again in 10 more pages.

Seriously man, how many times does the same thing need to be explained and expounded and elaborated on, only for you to pull a Sarah Palin and respond to something you made up in your head?

Apples and oranges. Now do your own ******* homework.

 

[Thermal]

Of course it is. Otherwise you wouldn't present it as an alternative.

I do not. Quite militantly do not, in fact.

Either philosophy tries to answer factual questions

It does not.

As a tool for developing and applying rigorous thought, it's a different matter.

Now you've got it. Just broaden it slightly from a tool to a discipline and I believe there's no argument.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

What specific philosophical utterance or realisation has led to a major scientific breakthrough?

Democritus' philosophical utterance that everything was made of atoms and the void and that things such as colors, etc. were only apparent.

 

[Belz...]

I do not. Quite militantly do not, in fact.

General you. There are some here who did.

Now you've got it. Just broaden it slightly from a tool to a discipline and I believe there's no argument.

I love that you snipped the part of my post that specifically addressed your own post and then replied to the rest as if we're either in agreement or you've somehow convinced me of something. Let me repeat:

The absurdity of that frustration remains: philosophy is not trying to answer the same questions science is.

Either philosophy tries to answer factual questions, in which case science can do it better (that is to say, better than nothing is always better), or it doesn't, in which case it's just mental masturbation.

You said that it answers questions, and then denied that it answers factual ones. You've yet to address the bolded part, which then follows from your answer.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

General you. There are some here who did.

There are? Who? And why not take it up with them?

 

[Thermal]

General you. There are some here who did.

Ok, but since I quite adamantly do not...doesn't really apply, does it?

I love that you snipped the part of my post that specifically addressed your own post and then replied to the rest as if we're either in agreement or you've somehow convinced me of something. Let me repeat:



You said that it answers questions, and then denied that it answers factual ones. You've yet to address the bolded part, which then follows from your answer.

You're misreading. Or more accurately, reading in.

Philosophy can answer some subjective questions. For objective answers, look elsewhere.

And that's the thread's grand conflation in a sentence.