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knightoffaith | 1 year ago
I'm sure a lot of them are.
>I'm just saying that the historical trend has been for science to solve philosophical problems at a much faster rate than new philosophical problems arise, and so the remaining pool of philosophical problems is shrinking monotonically, and I see no reason to believe that this trend will not continue.
Surely a large part of why this is is because what is now science used to be natural philosophy.
And I think there are many philosophical issues today that can be traced back to Plato that science hasn't resolved, and moreover, cannot resolve alone.
(Though, if you think trying to hash out definitions and the meanings of words is science, a lot of what is going on in Plato's dialogues is science, and the continued discussion of these issues in philosophy departments is also science.)
>I make it a point to engage with ideas that I vehemently disagree with. I put a lot of effort into studying young-earth creationism, to the point where I can channel their arguments pretty effectively. I even gave a public talk entitled "What I learned from young-earth creationists." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ohY9ALuEfw) So I am not quite so closed-minded as you think.
I'm happy to hear that!
>I also recognize that the actual practice of science in the real world often strays from the ideal. But that doesn't mean that an ideal does not exist.
I think that the practice of science strays from the ideal so much is evidence that we shouldn't be too concerned about meeting this ideal, precisely because the practice of science has worked out so marvelously.
>I'm going to go out on a limb and guess from your user name, as well as the arguments that you are advancing, that you're a Christian?
Somehow I feel like I shouldn't give a response to this question here; I'll just say that the viewpoints that I'm defending---that there are domains of discourse over which philosophy rather than science must be our primary tool to adjudicate disputes and there aren't good grounds to abolish philosophy as an academic institution any more there are grounds to abolish, say, the literature department or the music department (and I guess, now, that Popperian falsificationism is not the best characterization of science or its ideal.)---aren't religious commitments and don't require religious commitments, as I'd think you'd agree.
>Happy to hear that. The impression I remember having when I read Feyerabend many decades ago is that his message was that the whole scientific enterprise was bankrupt and needed to be replaced with something radically different.
Oh no, far from it. What Feyerabend thinks is that the scientific enterprise shouldn't be constrained by methodological rules. His hero is Galileo, who in his eyes, is an archetypal methodological rule-breaker, who was originally thought to be advancing views that didn't explain the data any better than former views but still turns out to be right. If there's any radical change Feyerabend thinks should be made to the scientific enterprise, it would be something like being more open-minded to theories even if they don't seem satisfactory based on methodological rules---which isn't really that much of a radical departure from the practice of science anyways, as he argues.
>Yes, but you left out a crucial detail: it's not just that things can be shown to be wrong, it's that they can be shown to be wrong by experimental data. This is far from universally accepted. Many Christians, for example, believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God and so cannot be shown to be wrong. Muslims believe the same about the Quran. If experimental data conflicts with the Bible or the Quran, it is the data (or the interpretation of the data) that must be wrong, not the Bible or the Quran.
Well, for the conversation about philosophers of science, I think it's universally accepted by philosophers of science (most of which wouldn't subscribe to Popperian falsificationism) that things can be shown to be wrong by experimental data. Like, sure, if we see a black swan, we can show that "all swans are white" is false, nobody's disagreeing with this kind of reasoning.
>Many Christians, for example, believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God and so cannot be shown to be wrong. Muslims believe the same about the Quran. If experimental data conflicts with the Bible or the Quran, it is the data (or the interpretation of the data) that must be wrong, not the Bible or the Quran.
Well, one thing is that these people would probably actually agree that things can be shown to be wrong by experimental data---it's just that the Bible or the Quran or what have you cannot be shown to be wrong. For what it's worth, serious Christian or Muslim thinkers will agree that there are interpretations of these texts that can be shown to be incorrect through data---those just are not the right interpretations of these texts.
>What matters is that we agree that science is effective, and so we can apply the scientific method to itself and ask why it is effective.
I don't see how the latter follows from the former.
>And the answer is (I claim) because it uses experiment rather than intuition or divine revelation as its ultimate arbiter of truth.
That seems right.
And I would agree that science makes progress; I don't think many (sensible) people dispute that.
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