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Science is based on philosophy

sealchan

Well-Known Member
Logic is part of philosophy. I hope scientists are using logic often.

Which field owns logic? Philosophy, mathematics or human experience.

Philosophies are like opinions...everyone has one and they can be applied to anything.

But which came first? Logic or philosophy of logic? Mathematics or human experience of the self-consistency of quantity?
 

sealchan

Well-Known Member
In my view, revealed religions and revealed spiritual paths are not trustworthy sources of truth and knowledge. Therefore, they are often harmful to self and society; or at least irrelevant -- about the same as art, fiction, and sports.

I agree...we can see how immensely useful and lucrative the creative arts, works of fiction and all forms of athletics are to the health and well-being of humans and their societies. As long as you are a computer or a Vulcan you can do just fine without such irrational pursuits.

Oh wait, even Vulcans do these things...
 

Audie

Veteran Member
Which field owns logic? Philosophy, mathematics or human experience.

Philosophies are like opinions...everyone has one and they can be applied to anything.

But which came first? Logic or philosophy of logic? Mathematics or human experience of the self-consistency of quantity?

If philosophy came first logic never would have
developed. Them phil. folks get so snarled in
their vocab even they cant explain what they
are saying.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Philosophical epistemological argumentation involves proof, which involves logical truth and falsity. Science uses this kind of argumentation to support their theories.

Actually no, science does not use this type of argumentation in the falsification of theories and hypothesis.

The better approach is that the tools and methods of science are developed from the schools of philosophy. Math is one of schools of logic in philosophy and part of the tool box of science. Methodological Naturalism developed as the scientific methods in the philosophy of epistemology as the 'Philosophy of Science.' Popper's work has establish that science does not use 'proofs' nor 'logical truth.'
 
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gnostic

The Lost One
There are no questions of medical ethics?

There are no ethical questions about genetic modification of humans? Eugenics? etc.
You didn’t quote the rest what I had to say, that ethics relate to social issues, and therefore would under the Social Science, not Natural Science. You are missing the following that I have highlighted in red:
I am talking about Natural Science, like Physical Science and Life Science.

Natural Science don’t deal with the questions with ethics, which I believe falls under Social Science.

Social science deal with human behaviors, human activities, human cultures, etc, so it doesn’t have to be rigorously tested like Natural Science and don’t require to follow Scientific Method specifications.

Why did you cut this part out?

Social Science include everything that relate to “human behaviors, human activities, human cultures, etc”, therefore it apply to:
  • Ethic, moral
  • Law
  • Politics
  • Economics
  • Society and cultures (eg anthropology, sociology); religion is considered a specific culture.
  • Theology
  • Psychology, psychiatry
  • History
  • Linguistics (languages, dialects, philology)
  • Communication, grammars
  • Literature
  • etc
Social science may have other mean to regulate, but none of the above required it to be Falsifiable, or meet the specifications of Scientific Method and Peer Review, like Natural Science have to.

Natural Science is broadly divided into Life Science and Physical Science.

Physical Science:
  • Physics
  • Chemistry
  • Earth science
  • Astronomy
Life Science:
  • Botany
  • Zoology
  • Biochemistry
  • Molecular biology
  • etc, there are too many different fields to list
Mathematics falls under the category of Formal Science, and it is tools that can be used in most of the above already mentioned.

Ethic isn’t Natural Science, but it may be used to govern human behaviors and actions, eg medical ethics.

Medical ethic isn’t itself “medicine”. Medical ethics are moral principles used to regulate the actions of doctors, surgeons, and related medical professionals.

To give you example of medical ethic, like -

- should a doctor morally prescribes a dangerous medicine or not, and what are the professional or legal ramifications and consequences if he or she does administer the dangerous medicine to any patients. Examples of consequences, losing license to practice medicine, being sued or face trial for malpractice.​

You really don’t understand the differences, do you?

Medicine and medical procedures are not the same things as medical ethics. If you don’t understand that, I am going explain more since I am not a medical practitioner or professional.

I used to be civil engineer, and as use know civil engineering involved design and construction, and we have to certain safety protocols and requirements included building standards and building specifications.

We have similar ethics, and if we failed to meet the safety standards and requirements, then we are liable to prosecution, should like bridge or building collapse, if we didn’t design to certain specifications. But if designs do meet all safety requirements, then the faults might fall under the construction company, who may have used cheap materials or products that weren’t specified in the design.

Those standards I talking about, are often published by specific governing bodies, and they are the one that pertain what is or isn’t ethical.
 

gnostic

The Lost One
Interesting that you make a distinction between natural science and social science. In my view, the domain of science is the physical realm, the domain of social science is the spiritual realm. Ideas, language, and etc, reside in the spiritual realm.
Read my most reply to Augustus.

I have divided science into natural science (which is divided into physical sciences and life science), formal science (eg mathematics, logic) and social science.

If you want more, then look them up in google or Wikipedia, to see the distinctions.
 
You didn’t quote the rest what I had to say, that ethics relate to social issues, and therefore would under the Social Science, not Natural Science. You are missing the following that I have highlighted in red:

I missed it out because it was wrong and largely irrelevant. You are focusing on your misrepresentation of a small detail while ignoring pretty much every point I made, including quotes from eminent scientists.

Ethics is philosophy not social science (moral philosophy), and if you are saying "philosophy is useless" then you are saying ethics is useless.

If you are saying there are ethical questions that are relevant regarding biochemistry, you are saying philosophy is of value for natural science and scientists.

As a, mostly irrelevant, aside, going back to the Ancient Greeks, 'science'/natural philosophy was tied closely to ethics as the purpose of knowledge was not simply 'to know' but to aid one in living the good life. 'Scientific' knowledge doesn't exist in a vacuum.


Why did you cut this part out?

Social Science include everything that relate to “human behaviors, human activities, human cultures, etc”, therefore it apply to:
  • Ethic, moral
  • Law
  • Politics
  • Economics
  • Society and cultures (eg anthropology, sociology); religion is considered a specific culture.
  • Theology
  • Psychology, psychiatry
  • History
  • Linguistics (languages, dialects, philology)
  • Communication, grammars
  • Literature
  • etc
Social science may have other mean to regulate, but none of the above required it to be Falsifiable, or meet the specifications of Scientific Method and Peer Review, like Natural Science have to.

Again this is full of misunderstanding. Numerous of these are humanities, not social sciences, and are thus very different. The main problem is that your understanding of the concepts in question is not very accurate. You think philosophy is useless because you are arguing against a strawman version of philosophy as has been pointed out (and completely ignored by you so you could focus on misrepresenting a single point of my argument: ethics)

Anyway, Social sciences are (often) supposed to follow scientific methods, hence the name: social sciences. The difference between social and natural sciences is a question of philosophy (as is the difference between humanities and social sciences).

The reason why social sciences are far less reliable than the natural sciences is a question that relates to philosophy. Understanding the replication crisis in social sciences is a question of philosophy.
Improving social scientific methodologies is a question of philosophy.
Etc. etc.

Ethic isn’t Natural Science, but it may be used to govern human behaviors and actions, eg medical ethics.

You really don’t understand the differences, do you?

Nobody is saying 'ethics is a natural science', this is just your misrepresentation.

As well as not understanding what philosophy, social science and the humanities are, you also haven't quite grasped what topic we are discussing yet either.

What I quoted and highlighted in bold when I first replied to you:

all philosophies, include those so called "philosophy of science", do nothing but talk on pointless things, which have no real values,

I was arguing for the value of ethics re: the sciences as you naively said there is no value in philosophy.

Do you agree that ethics is philosophy and that ethics is of value to the sciences? (i.e. should scientists care about scientific ethics?)

Do you agree that the following have value re: the sciences?

Questions regarding the foundations, methods, and implications of science
Questions regarding the difference between science and 'not science'
Questions regarding the validity of knowledge
Questions regarding how we should utilise imperfect scientific information to guide real world decisions
Questions about how simple and complex domains differ and how this impacts scientific understanding

If so, congratulations, you agree that philosophy does indeed have real value, including regarding the sciences

Gnostic: philosophy is useless
Einstein:

I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today—and even professional scientists—seem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is—in my opinion—the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth.

Why do believe that Einstein was so misguided that he believed philosophical understanding was essential for great scientists, and not simply "talking on pointless things"?
 

sooda

Veteran Member
What is Scientism? | American Association for the ...
https://www.aaas.org/programs/dialogue-science-ethics-and-religion/what-scientism
A scientist, my dear friends, is a man who foresees; it is because science provides the means to predict that it is useful, and the scientists are superior to all other men. –Henri de Saint-Simon Scientism is a rather strange word, but for reasons that we shall see, a useful one. Though this term ...


EXCERPT:

The Scientific Revolution
The roots of scientism extend as far back as early 17th century Europe, an era that came to be known as the Scientific Revolution.

Up to that point, most scholars had been highly deferent to intellectual tradition, largely a combination of Judeo-Christian scripture and ancient Greek philosophy.

But a torrent of new learning during the late Renaissance began to challenge the authority of the ancients, and long-established intellectual foundations began to crack.

The Englishman Francis Bacon, the Frenchman Rene Descartes, and the Italian Galileo Galilei spearheaded an international movement proclaiming a new foundation for learning, one that involved careful scrutiny of nature instead of analysis of ancient texts.
 

sooda

Veteran Member
I missed it out because it was wrong and largely irrelevant. You are focusing on your misrepresentation of a small detail while ignoring pretty much every point I made, including quotes from eminent scientists.

Ethics is philosophy not social science (moral philosophy), and if you are saying "philosophy is useless" then you are saying ethics is useless.

If you are saying there are ethical questions that are relevant regarding biochemistry, you are saying philosophy is of value for natural science and scientists.

As a, mostly irrelevant, aside, going back to the Ancient Greeks, 'science'/natural philosophy was tied closely to ethics as the purpose of knowledge was not simply 'to know' but to aid one in living the good life. 'Scientific' knowledge doesn't exist in a vacuum.




Again this is full of misunderstanding. Numerous of these are humanities, not social sciences, and are thus very different. The main problem is that your understanding of the concepts in question is not very accurate. You think philosophy is useless because you are arguing against a strawman version of philosophy as has been pointed out (and completely ignored by you so you could focus on misrepresenting a single point of my argument: ethics)

Anyway, Social sciences are (often) supposed to follow scientific methods, hence the name: social sciences. The difference between social and natural sciences is a question of philosophy (as is the difference between humanities and social sciences).

The reason why social sciences are far less reliable than the natural sciences is a question that relates to philosophy. Understanding the replication crisis in social sciences is a question of philosophy.
Improving social scientific methodologies is a question of philosophy.
Etc. etc.



Nobody is saying 'ethics is a natural science', this is just your misrepresentation.

As well as not understanding what philosophy, social science and the humanities are, you also haven't quite grasped what topic we are discussing yet either.

What I quoted and highlighted in bold when I first replied to you:



I was arguing for the value of ethics re: the sciences as you naively said there is no value in philosophy.

Do you agree that ethics is philosophy and that ethics is of value to the sciences? (i.e. should scientists care about scientific ethics?)

Do you agree that the following have value re: the sciences?

Questions regarding the foundations, methods, and implications of science
Questions regarding the difference between science and 'not science'
Questions regarding the validity of knowledge
Questions regarding how we should utilise imperfect scientific information to guide real world decisions
Questions about how simple and complex domains differ and how this impacts scientific understanding

If so, congratulations, you agree that philosophy does indeed have real value, including regarding the sciences



Why do believe that Einstein was so misguided that he believed philosophical understanding was essential for great scientists, and not simply "talking on pointless things"?


Scientism....

Descartes and Bacon used particularly strong rhetoric to carve out space for their new methods.

They claimed that by learning how the physical world worked, we could become “masters and possessors of nature.”(4) In doing so, humans could overcome hunger through innovations in agriculture, eliminate disease through medical research, and dramatically improve overall quality of life through technology and industry. Ultimately, science would save humans from unnecessary suffering and their self-destructive tendencies.

And it promised to achieve these goals in this world, not the afterlife. It was a bold, prophetic vision.

What is Scientism?
 

sealchan

Well-Known Member
If philosophy came first logic never would have
developed. Them phil. folks get so snarled in
their vocab even they cant explain what they
are saying.

I suspect it was numbers that rescued us from only having language.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Science is based on philosophy

The scientific method assumes certain philosophical premises such as skepticism (received "truth" should be questioned : How do you know?), empiricism (nature is best understood by studying it), and falsifiability. Its success affirms the validity of these assumptions.

Science claims that proof is necessary

Does science claim anything other than its research output? My understanding is that science doesn't prove anything, but rather, identifies regularities in nature that allows one to predict future outcomes.

There may be idiots who claim that science is all that is needed for truth and knowledge.

Science in the broadest sense of the word - collecting data and drawing conclusions from it - is all we really have for determining what is true about our world. Notice that this description includes the activities of daily life, such as looking both ways before crossing the street, the hypothesis being that there may be dangerous traffic, the collected data being that the street is clear, and the scientific conclusion being that it is safe to cross, which will be followed by a test to confirm the results of the study.

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved.

I've always thought of philosophy as thought about thought. Philosophy examines basic mental faculties such as a sense of what it true, what is right, what does reality entail, what are we experiencing when we have a sense of beauty or value, and the like.

because we take great pride in our ability to reason, we think that we can improve upon the work of our master teacher (conscience) so we create moral rules and laws that serve only to make the topic of morality a confused mess.

Isn't that what we should do? My conscience tells me that the highest good is a society where the most people have the most opportunity to pursue and hopefully find happiness as they envision it. Others seem to agree. How do we accomplish that? We suggest rules that facilitate that goal, and tweak them to have them better approximate it. Prohibition was such an effort, enacted in the best interest of society at large, but it had unintended and unforeseen consequences, and so it was reversed.

Likewise with our individual lives. We have moral impulses, and look for ways to render them. We want to be kind, but discover that a particular behavior is paradoxically counterproductive and produces an opposite result to that intended, so we tweak our private rules to produce outcomes that conform more with our heart;s desire.

usfan makes a lot better sense and arguments than you do. He is convincing, articulate, and much better spiritually acclimated to the truths of Christ than his Biblically-challenged detractors.

He is convincing nobody. Those that agree with him, which I believe is only you, already agreed with him before he began posting his opinions, which are a series of unsupported claims. "Spiritually acclimated" is a meaningless phrase. There is nothing spiritual about believing in spirits. It's simply the willingness to think uncritically, which is not a virtue.

I agree that science is limited to the physical realm; and that there is, in addition, a spiritual realm in which everything nonphysical resides (consciousness and its contents, reason, mathematics, emotions, thinking, intuition, God if there is one).

Traditionally, these are thought of as mind and matter, and four possible relationships between them have been proposed, none of which can be ruled in or out at this time, meaning that we have no basis upon which to choose one.

The four logical possibilities for the most fundamental aspect of nature from which all other manifestations derive are materialism, idealism, neutral monism, and dualism. These suggest that mind is an epiphenomenon of matter, matter of mind, both od some more fundamental substance, and that they are radically different and unrelated things as Descartes suggested.

Matter is a derivative of energy, and energy may be derivative of something more fundamental, the way that space and time are actually derivative of a prior "substance." space-time, or electricity and magnetism from the electromagnetic force. Neutral monism proposes that mind and material substance both derive from a prior substance that is both and neither.

We have no way to rule any of these four possibilities in or out at this time, and there is no need to choose one, so agnosticism is the reasonable position. We don't know what aspect of reality is most fundamental. We do not know that there is a spiritual realm. Nor is such a term clearly defined.

This is basic philosophy, which a few here have condemned as useless. I find it useful. I find this kind of thinking clarifying.
 

sealchan

Well-Known Member
Hmm, how so? Unless you mean "only language with
which to do logic".

I mean that as great as language is for expressing anything and everything, it is also a tricky and strappy thing that we all get mired and befuddled in.

Numbers and mathematics provide a perspective (as do the arts, particularly music or the visual arts) apart from language for experiencing the world. I suspect that the experience of quantity consistently taught us the true power of logic through the experience of physical reality as measurable quantity.

But when compared with mathematics, language seems a poor choice for the expression of logic. Just think of how many syllogisms one can craft that are logical but non-sense. While numbers wont stand for the same because they seem to have their logic built into them.
 

joe1776

Well-Known Member
Isn't that what we should do? My conscience tells me that the highest good is a society where the most people have the most opportunity to pursue and hopefully find happiness as they envision it. Others seem to agree. How do we accomplish that? We suggest rules that facilitate that goal, and tweak them to have them better approximate it. Prohibition was such an effort, enacted in the best interest of society at large, but it had unintended and unforeseen consequences, and so it was reversed.
As I have it, your conscience didn't tell you that. What you wrote was a product of your reasoning mind. I don't mean that what you wrote was irrational. I mean that conscience (intuition) doesn't enable us to draw rational conclusions as you did.

If you read about a case of cold-blooded murder, your conscience will immediately signal you with a feeling of moral outrage which will be followed by a desire to see the offender punished. If you read about a clear case of self-defense, you will feel nothing so you will assume the killing was justified.

Our laws on killing are attempts by legislators, mostly men long dead, to micro-manage decisions well into the future in cases that will happen in an almost infinite variety. In the USA, whether a killing is justifiable self-defense under the law or not will depend on the state where it happens.
 
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IndigoChild5559

Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
Science is based on philosophy, therefore, philosophy is essential in determining truth and knowledge. People often claim that all that is needed is science.

The scientific method of science is a philosophical construct, using epistemology to determine the nature of truth and knowledge, and how to prove things.

Other aspects of reality (or of claimed reality) fall under the category of religion and spirituality; but these should be evaluated via philosophy. Usually, these are considered as revealed knowledge from God. But revealed religions and revealed spiritual paths are untrustworthy sources of truth and knowledge: they require philosophical evidence to back them up. (And also, they should not contradict science.)
Science is certainly a philosophy.

However, it is set apart from all other philosophies in that it has delivered the goods. It has given us things like modern medicine which has reduced suffering and significantly increased life span, and technology which has made life easier and much more pleasant.

Because of science, I don't need to have 10 kids so that two will survive to give me grandchildren. My workweek is probably only 40 hours long and I have more toys to play with during my leisure time. Many diseases just don't exist anymore, and those that do are almost none of them deadly. In fact, I am likely to die from the ill health of eating a diet of over-indulgence, sugary processed foods, tobacco, alcohol, and lack of exercise. Worldwide obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are collectively a bigger problem than starvation.

No other philosophy has given the world so much measurable benefit. Has positivism put a man on the moon? Has existentialism produced a vaccination for polio? Has nihilism given us the cell phone? I didn't think so.
 
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