Does anything exist?

[Belz...]

You may as well be saying "That there are certain people who aren't doing good science doesn't mean Intelligent Design itself is worthless or unfalsifiable."

If you think the two are equivalent then you have no idea what science is. ID is not science.

(ETA: and since I know that you know what science is, your answer is perplexing.)

The fact is that the only cases where string theory makes a prediction, failing to find the predicted result can ALWAY be explained away by saying "we needed a bigger particle collider" and there is no way to know or even estimate just how large a particle collider you would need.

Would you have said that about the Higgs boson a few years back?

 

[Belz...]

It's not that we were discussing another's claim. You were refuting my assertion based on some generic other's position.

No, that's your interpretation. The point is that there are several "defenders" of philosophy in this thread, and that you can be collectively addressed by the plural "you". It's not my fault that English is a stupid language.

 

[IanS]

I've got no problem talking about whatever you want. What the other discussion (if you can call it that) on the thread boils down to is self-consistency (ones assertions agrees with themselves) and general-constancy (ones assertions agrees with demonstrable facts)

OK, well I do not particularly want to extend this thread into a discussion (or debate, or even "arguments") over what can be said about things like quantum entanglement, superposition, or as much of it actually comes down to, the double slit experiment, and the more modern more sophisticated versions of that experiment.

That's all absolutely fascinating. But it's also something that the most highly educated physicists and mathematicians have been wrestling with for nearly 100 years now, and so far without any clear agreement on the possible explanations. So I don't think we can hope to make more progress than they have already made, or in fact to say anything that we are not actually just getting from what all those theoretical physicists have told us ... ie we'd just be arguing from what we have got as ideas and explanations from all of those people.

But more than that - I don't think we need to get into anything as deep and complex as that, in order to form a decent valid opinion on the question of what value current day philosophy is providing to scientists. And I think the answer is, essentially, "none" (eg see the YouTube film linked above).

Maybe that will change in the future. Maybe philosophy will change it's direction or increase it's scope to extend more directly into science, such that it is then providing a significant contribution. Though I don't think that's really the case at present ... and it's hard to see how it would be anything other than "philosophers" becoming "scientists" (which is simply what I said many pages back about philosophers such as David Wallace).

 

[IanS]

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.


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.

I think there is a more obvious "elephant in the room" problem there (ie with trying to understand what Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg etc. saw as importance in philosophy). Namely what I've said several times here already, ie - these were all scientists of a particular type (ie mathematical explanations of fundamental "reality" of subatomic forces/structures, space, time etc.), and they were all people who grew up around the end of the 1800's and who were deeply involved in those particular esoteric mind-boggling areas of science around the early years of the 1900's ...

... that was a time when many people in science were still impressed by the great names of past philosophy, and where they regarded the subject of philosophy as something fashionably intellectual. If you read the book on the life of Paul Dirac (The Worlds Strangest Man), you can get an idea of the sort of university environment that luminaries like Bohr and Heisenberg etc. enjoyed/experienced at that time. This is not a criticism of them, but it does seem that communal senior dinners were the order-of-the-day, where senior professors and their most talented post-graduate/doctoral research students would sit around in lavish dining halls and drawing rooms with a copious supply of Port, Whisky, and Cigars, debating not just their own scientific work of the moment, but also debating the words from famous past philosophers ... it was the fashionable thing to do at the time (it was also very self indulgent of course ... but that was one of the privileges enjoyed by famous academics at the time).

Dirac himself took no interest in that and was IIRC quite critical and dismissive of any of that, inc. the philosophy interests.

But the point is – particularly at that time (though it's still also true from some theoreticians today), people in that niche of theoretical fundamental science/physics, were impressed by what they thought was great intellectualism of philosophers. And they were fond of trying to add all sorts of peculiar philosophical ideas into their explanations of the complex, and often seemingly quite mystical, ideas about what was then being discovered about just how strange quantum theory and relativity appeared to be.

As I said above, if you had gone back another 50 to 100 years (so, to say 1800-1850's), you'd also find that most famous scientists were of course also religious … they believed that a supernatural creator-God was at work as the fundemenatl force/answer to all things in the universe … ie, God and religious beliefs were also thought of as playing an important role in informing “science”.

 

[The Man]

I've already made the argument several times. You are being disingenuous. No surprises there.

Again, fine, still no surprises. Still no augmentation as to what precludes the question from being one of philosophy. Merely a, likewise unsupported, claim that such augmentation has been made here as well as an, unsurprisingly, unsupported accusation.

I've been very specific, and you dodged the question. Stop being dishonest. You can do it.

Again, no assertion of what you consider to be ‘my claim’. Also an unsupported, and rather unspecific, claim of specificity. That was apparently intended to infer some kind of specificity about ‘my claim’ without asserting what that specifically was or even what you even specifically consider to be ‘my claim’. Additionally, simply another unsupported accusation.

 

[The Man]

People here defending philosophy (and anyone else) should have a look at the link below, which is from the long running well known series Closer to Truth. It's a set of short interviews with 4 or 5 different scientists and philosophers, asking exactly this question of what use philosophy is to science today -

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

That includes an interview with Scott Aaronson who was highlighted here earlier as an example of why philosophy is important to science. See what he says there.

This is what he says there..

“The world needs good philosophers, if for no other reason than to refute the bad philosophers. Right? It’s the same reason we need soldiers, we need lawyers. Even in the age of science, you know, philosophy does play a very important role in helping to clarify concepts. I go every year or two to meetings where I talk to professional philosophers and I find that they’re, you know, often they actually listen to you much more carefully than your fellow scientists do. They’re really good at spotting imprecision in language or unstated assumptions, things of that kind."


He then gives a joking critique that philosophy doesn’t advance but goes around in circles while then noting that when it does advance sometimes what were philosophical questions can be addressed with math or science. Then go back and get more questions to address, he gives some examples.

The interview with Colin Blakemore (neuroscientist and philosopher) is particularly interesting for a rather bad reason ... where at about 13min 10 sec. Blakemore says that philosophy is important or useful because it asks certain questions that people in some fields of science, such as medicine or biology, might not think of for themselves, or where they might not understand the importance of such questions ... and there the host then asks him “what sort of questions are those?”, and Blakemore lamely replies saying “questions like what it means to say that you have proven something” …. OK, well people here should be horrified by a remark like that coming from someone who is a well known professor of neuroscience & philosophy – he's actually saying that people in fields like medicine and biology might fail to understand that they are not actually providing literal proofs! Does he really think that scientists do not know what the word “proof” means, such that they would need philosophers (of all people) to explain it to them?! (“of all people”, because philosophy is a field overflowing with claims of “proofs”, which are of course not actually “proofs” at all, or certainly not as applied to any objects & events detected as part of reality).

Though what Blakemore is inadvertently highlighting there, is exactly what I have warned about all the way through this thread (and in many previous threads); namely that medicine is not by any means part of core fundamental science … ie, whereby in medicine, and in some parts of biology, many of the professors (and we are talking about real research scientists/professors here) may indeed not clearly understand either the power of science & what it has achieved, or understand the limits of science as those limits are now almost universally understood by physicists working in core fundamental physics. But having said that, people in Blakemore's fields of neuroscience, and in fact also in philosophy, are even further outside of core fundamental science and are imho ever less likely to properly appreciate and understand what core science has achieved, what it's power is, and what it's limits are (or may be).

The exchange at ~13 min went like this.


Colin Blakemore: ”Other philosophers are playing the game and see the potential for essentially creating a new form of philosophy and certainly adding to the richness of neuroscience by posing the kind of questions that perhaps people with a biological or medical background might not think of posing.

The host: “Hmm, what are some of those?”

Colin Blakemore: “Well, of course, consciousness and how it works is a very obvious one. The nature of knowledge. What it means to say that you’ve proven something by an experiment. Can we really prove ideas”.

I don't think anyone has been claiming that medicine and biology are "part of core fundamental science". However, much like one might not expect biologists and medical researchers to know "the power of science & what it has achieved" you'd also not expect them to know the philosophy of science and just that of knowledge in general, that Blakemore remarks to and you then castigate.

OK, well there are all sorts of things in that short YouTube film that I think those who are defending philosophy here, should take a good look at, listen to, & think, about.

Sure, one of them sorts of things is the interview with the polymath scientist Paul Davies. Asserting that he thinks a claim that philosophy has no place at the cutting edges of science is a bit unfair. Noting that most of the things that occupy scientists today were once philosophy. Like the nature of space and time, now part of relativity. The nature of matter, now particle physics. Further noting that there are such things now in philosophy that it is preparing the ground for the next generation of science to look at. Citing the mind/body problem, the nature of mind and it’s relation to matter. Later explaining how the philosophical approach to time changed his own views on the nature of time. Asserting how our perception of the flow of time often gets confused with the asymmetry or arrow of time. The former being an aspect of neuroscience in his opinion and not inherently one of physics, while the latter is a matter of physics.

My position is more-or-less what all of them have said, but closer I suppose to Steven Weinberg who IMHO is saying what the others were also saying, but just being a bit more honest & open about it, to say that philosophy today does not really appear to have anything left to contribute to what is now the very different, and let's be honest, the very much further advanced subject than “Philosophy” (capital and quotes because I'm talking about what is taught as “Philosophy” in university courses and has been said or claimed by all the famous named philosophers of the past … i.e. I'm not talking about what any of us might do in merely trying to think of as reasoned explanations for anything in the world of “reality” around us).

Actually what he says, in the part of his interview near the end is “It took a while to understand that science is different from philosophy that perhaps I should say philosophy is different than science. They both can proceed and perhaps both have legitimate functions, but they’re not the same. Now it may be that there is some deep philosophical truth, which in the future will turn out to be the key to advance in physics. But I haven’t seen it in my time and I’m skeptical.

Personally I found it generally well balanced but fundamentally uninformative.

 

[Belz...]

Again, fine, still no surprises. Still no augmentation as to what precludes the question from being one of philosophy. Merely a, likewise unsupported, claim that such augmentation has been made here as well as an, unsurprisingly, unsupported accusation.

What the hell is "augmentation" supposed to mean? This is the third time you say that.

You cannot argue that I haven't made my point clear: because it's an axiom that exists prior to all philosophy, and thus it must be taken as true (because nothing else makes sense anyway) it's not open for philosophical debate or discussion. Your argument was that certain philosophies don't take it as an axiom but was unable to provide a practical example; when you switched to quantum physics, you ran away as soon as I probed your claim.

And now you're occasionally dropping into the thread to have the last word. Meanwhile your claim is still unsupported. And it will surely continue to be.

Again, no assertion of what you consider to be ‘my claim’.

Oh, another poster with anterograde amnesia. Damn, that's spreading pretty fast.

 

[The Man]

OK, well I do not particularly want to extend this thread into a discussion (or debate, or even "arguments") over what can be said about things like quantum entanglement, superposition, or as much of it actually comes down to, the double slit experiment, and the more modern more sophisticated versions of that experiment.

While I'm not looking to bog down the thread either. If you are going to harp on the cutting edge and the power of science & what it has achieved. Well that's where it leads.

That's all absolutely fascinating. But it's also something that the most highly educated physicists and mathematicians have been wrestling with for nearly 100 years now, and so far without any clear agreement on the possible explanations. So I don't think we can hope to make more progress than they have already made, or in fact to say anything that we are not actually just getting from what all those theoretical physicists have told us ... ie we'd just be arguing from what we have got as ideas and explanations from all of those people.

Actually, it is even to the point in the field of quantum mechanics that all current interpretations just basically differ in aspects of ontology. What parts of the interaction are considered real or physical and what are considered just mathematical tools. There's also the aspects of what other assumptions in science they have to give up, local realism, counterfactual definiteness and time asymmetry. In order that they can all explain the very same experimental results. How far the cutting edge of science has fallen when it just comes done to basically matters of philosophy, ontology (what we consider real or not) and what assumptions to retain of cast aside?

But more than that - I don't think we need to get into anything as deep and complex as that, in order to form a decent valid opinion on the question of what value current day philosophy is providing to scientists. And I think the answer is, essentially, "none" (eg see the YouTube film linked above).

Of course we don't and we didn't. We reviewed a single paper, not deep at all. Finding instead, not "essentially, "none"", but specifically some. even such that that paper was cited in works of that scientific field.

Maybe that will change in the future. Maybe philosophy will change it's direction or increase it's scope to extend more directly into science, such that it is then providing a significant contribution. Though I don't think that's really the case at present ... and it's hard to see how it would be anything other than "philosophers" becoming "scientists" (which is simply what I said many pages back about philosophers such as David Wallace).

Or in the case of quantum mechanical interpretations, scientists becoming more like philosophers. I expect that may be why Steven Weinberg changed his wording around a bit in that last part. about "science is different from philosophy that perhaps I should say philosophy is different than science". Because he knew dang well that the fundamental differences in those quantum mechanical interpretations is no different than just philosophical.

 

[The Man]

As I said above, if you had gone back another 50 to 100 years (so, to say 1800-1850's), you'd also find that most famous scientists were of course also religious … they believed that a supernatural creator-God was at work as the fundemenatl force/answer to all things in the universe … ie, God and religious beliefs were also thought of as playing an important role in informing “science”.

You'll find that today. Some of those quantum mechanical interpretations put consciousness as the cause of the superposition of states resulting in one state. A bit problematic since the universe existed and got along for billions of years until some consciousness formed. Unless their was already one, like god, or somehow the universe was striving for one, like say us. I've never been a fan of those consciousness causes collapse theories.

 

[The Man]

What the hell is "augmentation" supposed to mean? This is the third time you say that.

Sorry, bad auto correct i expect.

You cannot argue that I haven't made my point clear: because it's an axiom that exists prior to all philosophy, and thus it must be taken as true (because nothing else makes sense anyway) it's not open for philosophical debate or discussion. Your argument was that certain philosophies don't take it as an axiom but was unable to provide a practical example; when you switched to quantum physics, you ran away as soon as I probed your claim.

And now you're occasionally dropping into the thread to have the last word. Meanwhile your claim is still unsupported. And it will surely continue to be.


Oh, another poster with anterograde amnesia. Damn, that's spreading pretty fast.

Again, it was philosophers who made it an axiom of classical consistent logic. Again, that it is an axiom means it can be philosophically debated. How are you defining "makes sense"? If you simply mean adhering to classical consistent logic then that is just tautological. When have not "making sense" and lack of practicality ever been exclusionary to philosophy. Heck, based on your own assertions they almost appear as defining features of philosophy.

Heck, if you want the practicality for illogic just look to people. They use it practically (both way pun intended) all the time. Generally, because of incomplete or inconsistent information or just a lack of time, desire, knowledge and/or ability to accurately assess all the logical ramifications. Even when I was holding our conversation to a strict consistent classical logic your response was to ask if I had ever spoken to a human before and characterized me as part of the Matrix. Which was exactly the point, it's not even your expectation that people hold to such a strict consistent classical logic. So what good are all your axiomatic, undebatable, makes sense and practicality assertion if it just isn't something you strictly adhere to, or just even expect, yourself? If one makes the claim that only things that do not contradict themselves exist then a logically valid argument can be made (under classical consistent logic) that therefore people don't exist.

Well, at least you got part of that right. Yep, my claim has been that it is a philosophical question and I gave you an example immediately, dialethism. lomiller first brought up a possible practical real world example of a contradiction (superposition) then I did the same with reflective cancelation. Sure, they are interpretations and I even said one can argue about those interpretations. That's exactly what makes it questionable, assumptions (axioms) and interpretations that are arguable.

 

[Belz...]

Again, it was philosophers who made it an axiom of classical consistent logic.

Again, you are confusing "logic" as the discipline of analysing stuff and "logic" as the stuff it's being analysed against, which is what I was discussing. This is not the first time I have to correct you on this.

Well, at least you got part of that right. Yep, my claim has been that it is a philosophical question and I gave you an example immediately, dialethism. lomiller first brought up a possible practical real world example of a contradiction (superposition) then I did the same with reflective cancelation.

No such real-world examples were given.

 

[IanS]

.... repeat post (see below)

 

[IanS]

While I'm not looking to bog down the thread either. If you are going to harp on the cutting edge and the power of science & what it has achieved. Well that's where it leads.



Actually, it is even to the point in the field of quantum mechanics that all current interpretations just basically differ in aspects of ontology. What parts of the interaction are considered real or physical and what are considered just mathematical tools. There's also the aspects of what other assumptions in science they have to give up, local realism, counterfactual definiteness and time asymmetry. In order that they can all explain the very same experimental results. How far the cutting edge of science has fallen when it just comes done to basically matters of philosophy, ontology (what we consider real or not) and what assumptions to retain of cast aside?




Of course we don't and we didn't. We reviewed a single paper, not deep at all. Finding instead, not "essentially, "none"", but specifically some. even such that that paper was cited in works of that scientific field.



Or in the case of quantum mechanical interpretations, scientists becoming more like philosophers. I expect that may be why Steven Weinberg changed his wording around a bit in that last part. about "science is different from philosophy that perhaps I should say philosophy is different than science". Because he knew dang well that the fundamental differences in those quantum mechanical interpretations is no different than just philosophical.

I don't think there is anything left to discuss …

… you are talking about a paper which you say illustrates how philosophy is indeed contributing to science …

… I have said (at least 25 times) that I am talking only about “core fundamental science” (and I have explained why that is), and that paper is not about core fundamental science (it's a suggestion of a way in which a branch of philosophy might help medical stem cell research with a classification of what constitutes a “stem cell”).

But further than that (to repeat, probably 10 times now) – in core fundamental science there must be around 10,000 papers published every year. Out of those what %-age do you think are actually from philosophers giving philosophy explanations for particle physics, cosmology, quantum theory and relativity etc (or even evolution, or any of the so-called "Laws" of chemistry)? I'd suggest that the number is so negligibly tiny as to be not a credible argument here for philosophy making a significant contribution to science. And that's really what Weinberg was saying in the film clip.

I am simply agreeing with physicists such as Weinberg, Hawking and others who say that philosophy no longer really contributes to any of that.

Philosophers might like discussing and thinking about things like the seemingly strange predictions/conclusions from quantum theory (any of us might find that fascinating and interesting to discuss). But they do not really have anything to contribute that has not already been abundantly commented upon and published by scientists in that field. That has to be true IF, as I have claimed, that out of the 10,000 or so papers published each year, almost all of them are published in science research journals, by people employed as “scientists”.

What I've said would not be true, IFF there is actually a signifiant %-age of the total publications actually coming from philosophers publishing in the science journals with their own new explanations of those aspects of quantum theory, big bang cosmology & universe formation, relativity effects, evolution etc., ie all together what we more broadly call all of “Reality” … but that would NOT include philosophers publishing such ideas in their own philosophy journals where their papers are not subject to the rigours of scientific examination.

 

[The Man]

Again, you are confusing "logic" as the discipline of analysing stuff and "logic" as the stuff it's being analysed against, which is what I was discussing. This is not the first time I have to correct you on this.

Well, if you had brought this up before, I would have addressed it then.

“stuff”?

Wait, so “logic” is “the discipline of analysing stuff” as well as “the stuff it's being analysed against”? Sounds like just analyzing “stuff” against itself with itself as the, well, discipline.

For most people, logic is a formal language and hence a formal science. It’s “stuff” are axioms, connectives and/or operators, propositions (or symbolic representations thereof), syntax and semantics.

No such real-world examples were given.

That you don’t agree with the interpretations given, in no way negates the examples noted having been given, in the real world.

 

[Belz...]

Well, if you had brought this up before, I would have addressed it then.

It's impossible that you missed it?

Wait, so “logic” is “the discipline of analysing stuff” as well as “the stuff it's being analysed against”?

As with many things, there is more than one definition. Again, I've explained all this before. Maybe you were too busy talking about irrelevancies.

For most people, logic is a formal language and hence a formal science.

Most people are morons. Logic isn't a science.

That you don’t agree with the interpretations given, in no way negates the examples noted having been given, in the real world.

I didn't say I disagreed with them. I said none were provided. Address what I say, not what you wish I said to make it easier for yourself.

 

[The Man]

I don't think there is anything left to discuss …

… you are talking about a paper which you say illustrates how philosophy is indeed contributing to science …

… I have said (at least 25 times) that I am talking only about “core fundamental science” (and I have explained why that is), and that paper is not about core fundamental science (it's a suggestion of a way in which a branch of philosophy might help medical stem cell research with a classification of what constitutes a “stem cell”).

If by you’ve explained you mean “fundamental answers to the nature of the universe around us” That’s actually oncology a branch of metaphysics and thus philosophy. That scientists do aspects of philosophy shouldn’t come as any surprise to you particularly after the YouTube video you linked. That philosophers also consider aspects of science should also come as no surprise to you, given your assertions like this.

Sorry, but I assume you are just making a silly remark/joke now. Look – I am saying that when people who work in university philosophy departments, make it their life's work to study the maths of quantum theory and quantum cosmology, then it seems to me they should be in a physics or maths department rather than in a department labelled “philosophy”. It's not a complaint, I am just saying that Wallace (and doubtless some others) seem to be wrestling with the same problems that theoretical physicists have been wrestling with ever since the discovery of QM.

Math (like logic) is one of the formal sciences, not restricted by or particularly concerned with empirical methods. So philosophy of math and just math are more closely related than philosophers of the empirical fields of science and those scientists themselves. That philosophers of say biology or physics need to know biology or physics does not, in and of itself make, them biologist or physicists. The latter being more generally concerned with empirical methods and testing while the former, not. While scientists can tend to engage in aspects of philosophy, philosophers, on the other hand, generally don’t engage in the empirical testing that scientists do..

But further than that (to repeat, probably 10 times now) – in core fundamental science there must be around 10,000 papers published every year. Out of those what %-age do you think are actually from philosophers giving philosophy explanations for particle physics, cosmology, quantum theory and relativity etc (or even evolution, or any of the so-called "Laws" of chemistry)? I'd suggest that the number is so negligibly tiny as to be not a credible argument here for philosophy making a significant contribution to science. And that's really what Weinberg was saying in the film clip.

By your own geusstimation of 10,000 papers on “core fundamental science” annually. That would only be about 0.56% of the estimated 1.8 million papers in some some 28,000 journals each year. Just over one tenth the number needed just to even be considered statistically significant. Even most scientists aren’t doing “core fundamental science”. Also, what’s more fundamental to an aspect of a subfield of science than how we define or classify that aspect?

I am simply agreeing with physicists such as Weinberg, Hawking and others who say that philosophy no longer really contributes to any of that.

Philosophers might like discussing and thinking about things like the seemingly strange predictions/conclusions from quantum theory (any of us might find that fascinating and interesting to discuss). But they do not really have anything to contribute that has not already been abundantly commented upon and published by scientists in that field. That has to be true IF, as I have claimed, that out of the 10,000 or so papers published each year, almost all of them are published in science research journals, by people employed as “scientists”.

What I've said would not be true, IFF there is actually a signifiant %-age of the total publications actually coming from philosophers publishing in the science journals with their own new explanations of those aspects of quantum theory, big bang cosmology & universe formation, relativity effects, evolution etc., ie all together what we more broadly call all of “Reality” … but that would NOT include philosophers publishing such ideas in their own philosophy journals where their papers are not subject to the rigours of scientific examination.

Finally and again, even the current “explanations of those aspects of quantum theory” only differ in philosophical aspects. Again, oncology and what (generally long standing) assumptions to use or abandon. As big bang cosmology & universe formation are themselves based primarily on current particle physics and quantum mechanics they fall under those explanations as well. With some relativity in the form of the metric expansion of space. Evolution would fall under the category of biology which is based on chemistry and again quantum particle theory with some relativistic corrections. Relativity and quantum mechanics differ in that one is continuous and one is discrete. That could be simply an artifact of our descriptions and formulization of them (as most expect) or it could just be how things are. Dark energy and dark matter would tend to fall under both. Dark energy under relativity (believed to be cause of the increasing metric expansion of space) and dark matter, to particle physics, being considered, well a type of matter. However, as it only couples via gravitation, there are GR aspects there as well.

Can philosophy help, who can say? However, the current questions, what is the nature of dark energy and darks matter, QM interpretations, is space time discrete or continuous, perhaps, in a way, both. [For example in QFT the fields are continuous (because the space time they encompasses is considered to be) but the excitations and perturbations (the particles, both real and virtual, respectively) are discrete. Modeled as harmonic oscillators over ever point in the space] Are questions of our definitions and classifications. Again why Weinberg evidently changed his wording, because science can be just like philosophy, dealing with such subjective questions (particularly in medicine). However, philosophy isn’t like science, as it deals with subjective question. Even though those subjective questions it deals with can and do have objective implications and ramifications.

 

[The Man]

It's impossible that you missed it?

Evidently not impossible.

As with many things, there is more than one definition. Again, I've explained all this before. Maybe you were too busy talking about irrelevancies.

Maybe, you never brought it up, before.

Most people are morons.

Well, putting it at "most" would be setting the moronic bar kind of high.

Logic isn't a science.

Hey, no need to set the bar that low.

I didn't say I disagreed with them. I said none were provided. Address what I say, not what you wish I said to make it easier for yourself.

They were provided and you did disagree with them when they were provided.

 

[Belz...]

Maybe, you never brought it up, before.

There's no maybe about it. I did bring it up. As I said you were way too busy being confused by the concept of follow up questions to follow the argument.

Hey, no need to set the bar that low.

Do you really believe that logic is a science? Do you even know what a science is?

They were provided and you did disagree with them when they were provided.

I disagree that they were examples. Don't play with words. You made no effort to demonstrate any actual real-world contradictions, or indeed any theoretical ones. You can claim to have done so until you're blue in the face but the fact of the matter is you never did.

 

[The Man]

There's no maybe about it. I did bring it up. As I said you were way too busy being confused by the concept of follow up questions to follow the argument.

As I said, had it been brought up I would have addressed it then.

"Pardon me sir, "stuff"?"

https://youtu.be/WzTBlMA1DgY?t=32

Do you really believe that logic is a science? Do you even know what a science is?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branches_of_science

Formal sciences: the study of formal systems, such as those under the branches of logic and mathematics, which use an a priori, as opposed to empirical, methodology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branches_of_science#/media/File:The_Scientific_Universe.png

I disagree that they were examples. Don't play with words. You made no effort to demonstrate any actual real-world contradictions, or indeed any theoretical ones. You can claim to have done so until you're blue in the face but the fact of the matter is you never did.

Again, simply because you disagreed with the interpretations.

 

[IanS]

If by you’ve explained you mean “fundamental answers to the nature of the universe around us” That’s actually oncology a branch of metaphysics and thus philosophy. That scientists do aspects of philosophy shouldn’t come as any surprise to you particularly after the YouTube video you linked. That philosophers also consider aspects of science should also come as no surprise to you, given your assertions like this.



Math (like logic) is one of the formal sciences, not restricted by or particularly concerned with empirical methods. So philosophy of math and just math are more closely related than philosophers of the empirical fields of science and those scientists themselves. That philosophers of say biology or physics need to know biology or physics does not, in and of itself make, them biologist or physicists. The latter being more generally concerned with empirical methods and testing while the former, not. While scientists can tend to engage in aspects of philosophy, philosophers, on the other hand, generally don’t engage in the empirical testing that scientists do..



By your own geusstimation of 10,000 papers on “core fundamental science” annually. That would only be about 0.56% of the estimated 1.8 million papers in some some 28,000 journals each year. Just over one tenth the number needed just to even be considered statistically significant. Even most scientists aren’t doing “core fundamental science”. Also, what’s more fundamental to an aspect of a subfield of science than how we define or classify that aspect?



Finally and again, even the current “explanations of those aspects of quantum theory” only differ in philosophical aspects. Again, oncology and what (generally long standing) assumptions to use or abandon. As big bang cosmology & universe formation are themselves based primarily on current particle physics and quantum mechanics they fall under those explanations as well. With some relativity in the form of the metric expansion of space. Evolution would fall under the category of biology which is based on chemistry and again quantum particle theory with some relativistic corrections. Relativity and quantum mechanics differ in that one is continuous and one is discrete. That could be simply an artifact of our descriptions and formulization of them (as most expect) or it could just be how things are. Dark energy and dark matter would tend to fall under both. Dark energy under relativity (believed to be cause of the increasing metric expansion of space) and dark matter, to particle physics, being considered, well a type of matter. However, as it only couples via gravitation, there are GR aspects there as well.

Can philosophy help, who can say? However, the current questions, what is the nature of dark energy and darks matter, QM interpretations, is space time discrete or continuous, perhaps, in a way, both. [For example in QFT the fields are continuous (because the space time they encompasses is considered to be) but the excitations and perturbations (the particles, both real and virtual, respectively) are discrete. Modeled as harmonic oscillators over ever point in the space] Are questions of our definitions and classifications. Again why Weinberg evidently changed his wording, because science can be just like philosophy, dealing with such subjective questions (particularly in medicine). However, philosophy isn’t like science, as it deals with subjective question. Even though those subjective questions it deals with can and do have objective implications and ramifications.

I'm not sure what your purpose is in this thread any more. It just seems to be the same old attempt from philosophy fans to argue indefinitely.

10,000 papers, or however many it may be, is certainly a significant number. It does not matter how many more are published in the much wider field of subject areas that now have the word "science" in their title. The question was - what percentage of those papers in core fundamental science do you think (or claim) are from philosophers showing how they have obtained new results that are important to science?

It has to to be new" results, otherwise you would not normally get the paper accepted for publication. So what's your answer? ... what is the percentage? ... afaik the percentage is miniscule. In which case philosophy is not making a significant contribution to that central fundamental area of science.


Then you said that fundamental areas of science such as QM, Relativity, Evolution, Big Bang and Universe formation/existence are actually an area of philosophy that you just said was "Oncology"!!?? What ??? .... I suppose you meant "ontology" .... but the explanations that we have for all of that, has all come from science ... and it's all published in the science research literature, published by people named as & employed as "scientists" ... NOT philosophers.

The explanations that we have discovered and explained in the detailed way we have it all today, are from science, not from any ancient philosophy. If you dispute that, then you must produce all the papers from philosophers showing how in fact they discovered and described things like QM, Relativity, Big Bang, Evolution etc., and showing how no scientists discovered any of that. Please produce the philosophy papers that explained all of that before any scientists did.

If you cannot produce all the supposed philosophy research papers which showed philosophers discovering and explaining all of those areas of core fundamental science, then you have no case at all to argue that philosophy made a significant contribution to our accurate understanding of any of that.

Where are all these philosophy papers please?

Do not bother telling me anything else. Just produce the papers which show that philosophers not scientists, actually discovered and explained the “reality” of the universe as we now understand it from discoveries like QM, Realtivity, Big Bang, Evolution etc.