Do clever people outsmart themselves?
- Thread starter Scorpion
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OK I am not going to spend my time looking through your other links/posts to what any other philosophers may have said about science (or about philosophy), or your mention of what other scientists of the past may have said about philosophy, but I just looked at the one above as the first one I noticed in your posts … what do you think that link says (from Grayling) that is a rebuttal to what you just quoted from me above? …
...in that link, where do you think Grayling was telling scientists and others at CERN to stop the science and listen to his philosophising instead? Can you quote from your link where Grayling is telling the CERN staff how to conduct the science? Because I just spent my time reading your link and I do not see where he says anything of the sort!
Grayling is simply a well known academic who has a considerable interest in, and a great admiration for, science and the achievements of science. He is also a well-known atheist who has appeared alongside various scientists in many well known YouTube debates against theists & creationists. No doubt it was in that capacity, and with that background and that deep interest, that he was able to visit the LHC and meet with some of the scientific staff there.
So what is your point in any of that? How do you think it shows Grayling making any claims of telling the staff at CERN what to do, or telling the physicists there that there are only doing “philosophy”, or telling them that they must must read ancient philosophy in order to be able to explain the results they are now getting at the LHC?
Afaik, Grayling is not so stupid as to be making any claims like that. He's just one of many academics all over the world who do take a deep interest in science (and quite right that he should!).
You seem to be doing what religious creationsits do when atheists tell them that progress in science has shown why we should no longer believe in supernatural gods ... where, the theists/creationsist then reply with a list of named scientists who are (or once were) practicing Chrsitians!
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David Mo
Philosopher
When a scientist does philosophy, at any time, he does not do it as something totally detached from his scientific task. Like the case I have just mentioned, he thinks that it is something different from doing science in the everyday sense but directly linked to science in a wider sense. Not like golf, which has nothing to do with it. The difference is notable.
By the way, do you know whose text it is?
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David Mo
Philosopher
There's no ambiguity in this case. All the people Robin and I have quoted understand that it is one thing to do science and another to interpret it or analyze its meaning. That second function is what is usually considered the philosophy of science. The philosophy of science is concerned with all the assumptions, foundations, methods, implications of science, and with the use and merit of science. Some usual problems: demarcation science and pseudoscience, objectivism, realism and instrumentalism, analysis and reductionism, etc. are usual problems of philosophy of science. Some of them had been dealt with in this thread.
MORE: "Related Entries" in "Philosophical Issues in Quantum Theory" (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-issues/
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OK, as I said above I think it's just a pure waste of time getting any further into discussion of what individuals such as Ernst Mayr (who I'd never heard of) thought about philosophy. But I just wanted to say the following, because as I mentioned above, this is exactly the sort of debate I've had before with creationist Christians here, who think that by listing numerous names of scientists (mostly long since dead ones, such as Newton or Maxwell etc.) who were self-professed Christians, that somehow refutes atheists who point out that most scientists today have far less religious belief than the non-scientists in the general population around them.
In which respect - Ernst Mayr was apparently born in 1904. That was a time just before the discovery of relativity theory and before the discovery of quantum theory, and it was also not so long after Darwin had made the world aware that humans almost certainly had evolved from earlier apes, and hence could not have been created by a Christian God (although even by 1904 many academics were still trying to ridicule Darwin for that discovery). ...
... that was a time when many young scientists (PhD and postdoctoral fellows) at the big European universities, still sat around in the evenings at university dining halls and university clubs, eating, drinking and debating the historic names in philosophy. It was a fashionable thing to do for the most educated and affluent young graduates of that era. It was the sort of lifestyle that was enjoyed by most of the younger individuals who became the great pioneers of Quantum Theory in the 1920's (you can find some of that in Graham Farmello's book on the life of Paul Dirac, although Dirac himself was far from any such privileged background and appears to have regarded that sort of philosophical indulgence as trivial nonsense unworthy of his time).
Ernst Mayr is from around that same age. So it would not surprise me if he, like many young academics of the time, had been taught about the famous ideas of much earlier philosophers, and if he regarded that as important.
But on a separate note – although your link is to something in the journal Nature, it is not actually a research paper in Nature. It is merely a letter to the editor expressing Mayr's views on things that Stephen Weinberg had apparently once said. It was also a letter from way back in 1988. And finally, Mayr is described amongst other titles as a Philosopher of Biology and a Historian of Science … and that is a million miles from people like Weinberg in theoretical physics.
HansMustermann
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I can still say the same about physicists doing standup comedy. One of them explained chain reactions and moderators (as in, the ones in a nuclear reactor) in terms of a bar brawl. Vince Ebert did a joke about light diffraction and why the sky is blue, among other things. Hell, he even has a CD out called "Big Bang" (well, in German.) Etc.
None of that was particularly detached from the actual physics. You could literally take the joke about the chain reaction and use it to explain it in a classroom, and it would be a 100% correct way of illustrating it.
BUT here's the important part: that doesn't matter.
What matters is: is he saying something based on evidence, and testable against the real world?
If yes, then that's science either way. It can be in a philosophy book, it can be in a standup comedy joke, it can even be in a SF novel or movie. It's science.
If no, then how would you know he's right? It seems to me like then what still applies is Hitchens's Razor: "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. "
David Mo
Philosopher
Even you will be able to realize that making jokes about the Big Bang or comparing my girlfriend to a space rocket is not the same as discussing instrumentalism in science. I won't insist on this. It would be futile.
Our knowledge doesn't end with evidence. If so, you wouldn't be able to go out on the street.
David Mo
Philosopher
You have written a comment complaining about the principle of authority by resorting to the principle of authority. Weinberg is a true scientist, while Einstein is not. A rather strange argument of authority, where a scientist like many others is placed above a genius.
However, you have been given the reasons for one and the other. Those of your idol (Weinberg) have been criticized. And you have been unable to discuss either one or the other. You prefer to dismiss the reasoned opinions of the top scientists of the 20th century scientific revolution with the vague claim that "they were other times". What kind of reason is that? His reason is not reason: it is idolatry.
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HansMustermann
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I'm curious now. Exactly which activity you do on the street that is not relying on at least prima facie evidence?
Because when I go out, even crossing the street starts with gathering real world data about whether a car is coming or not, and making a prediction about whether the time I need to get to the other side is shorter than the time it needs to cover the distance from where the nearest car is. And then I test that prediction when I actually cross. If I falsified that prediction, well, I guess that's what medical insurance is for
Err... I mean, I'll adjust my theory a bit for next time.
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Cue some meaningless variation on "CAN YOUR PRECIOUS SCIENCE TELL YOU IF A PAINTING IS BEAUTIFUL?" or just straight up solipsism.
Cheetah
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That wouldn't work.
What you find beautiful is obviously a function of human esthetics, shaped by evolution, expressed by your personal genetics and refined by the sum total of your life experiences. It's science.
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I didn't say it would work, I said that would be the argument followed by the "Sticking fingers in ears and going LALALALALAL I can't hear you" when anyone tried to explain it.
HansMustermann
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Well, technically it does fit under 'life experiences', but just for completeness sake, a large part seems to also be learned from others, e.g., via inculturation.
HansMustermann
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To be fair, though, that seems to be more like the domain of other posters. David, I may not agree with his reasoning or argument style most of the time, but he doesn't really do solipsism.
David Mo
Philosopher
I beg your pardon, I believe we are speaking of scientific evidence. I don't know what "prima facie" evidence is.
Anyway:
I have no evidence that the woman in bed with me loves me. I have some clues and a great deal of confidence in her. This is love. This is not evidence. Maybe she put poison in my coffee to marry the milkman. I don't have any evidence that's not true.
I have no evidence that the shiny disc I see through the window is a large incandescent sphere. Scientists say it and I believe them by the principle of authority.
I have no evidence that my car will run in the morning. I have four ideas that I have read about how the engine is that are not evidence of anything and a series of machine gestures and intuitions that allow me to start it.
Driving is a series of habits, intuitions and reflexes. If I were to search for evidence of uniformly accelerated movements and trajectories while driving, I would cause a monumental traffic jam at least and I would not get to the office in time.
I have no evidence that the President is the one in the photo. Newspapers say so and I believe them. They say he is in Somalia. I have no evidence of that.
I've been up for two hours and I don't have much evidence. And I haven't started working.
As soon as they give me the first report from the Area of Goods, of whose author I have no evidence, I will dedicate myself to analyzing the data. But to analyze is not to have any evidence.
Etc., etc.
How have I functioned during these two or three hours? With hints, habits, intuitions and a good amount of credulity. Evidence, rather few. And a little of analysis!
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JesseCuster
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No evidence? Not even her behaviour toward you is evidence that she loves you? If you actually have no evidence at all that she loves you then then why do you think she loves you (assuming for the sake of argument that she does in fact love you)?
The "prove love really exists" or "prove your loved ones really love you" is a very silly argument. Whatever its trying to prove.
Dave Rogers
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I think you're confusing evidence with proof. The way my wife has behaved towards me for the last thirty-five years falls short of proof that she loves me, but I find it very convincing evidence.
Dave
Chanakya
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That's probably a comment on the nature of specific kinds of evidence, and what is good evidence and what isn't; and not on having or not having evidence.
HansMustermann
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Right. So basically your argument boils down to your not knowing what science is, so you just make something up instead. Bonus points for suddenly not understanding a common expression either.
Well, science is nothing more than applying the scientific method. It doesn't mean... whatever you imagine it to be, if you think that the fact that the car turned on when you turned the key to be anything else than evidence you can apply that method to.
Or to quote Vince Ebert, the physicist turned comedian I mentioned before, "The Scientific Method is, simply put, just a way to test suppositions. If I supposed for example 'there might be beer in the fridge' and go look in the fridge, I'm already doing science. Big difference from Theology. There they don't usually test suppositions. If I just assume 'There is beer in the fridge' then I'm a theologian. If I go look, I'm a scientist. And if I go look, find nothing inside, and still insist that there's beer in the fridge, that's esoteric."
And that's really it. That's really all there is to it.
So if you're telling me that you're applying anything else when starting your car, well, maybe you should start doing it like the rest of the world then
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