Scientists should not be philosophers

I've been reading some of the threads in the philosophy section of this forum, and although there are a few intelligent posts, most of the content is seriously lacking in any serious philosophical rigor. I see assertions casually stated all over the place without any supporting argument. I see long winded diatribes filled with imprecise terminology, chaotic logical structures, and unconnected ideas that deal with topics far too broad for any adequate investigation.

Real, academic philosophy is very different from science in that philosophers are dealing with worlds of thought. Whereas the empirical world presents itself with consistency from person to person, individual ideas and thoughts exist solely isolated and subjective. Because words and language are the only tools we have to present our unique ideas to each other, the clarity of our language and the precision of our logic are absolutely necessary elements of a quality philosophical presentation.

Similarly, quality philosophical investigation lives and dies with the logic that supports it. There are no experiments or empirical observations required for a philosophical position to be supported. Instead, the evidence proceeds by argument alone, and arguments are either valid or invalid, depending on the logical inferences made. An adequate representation of a philosophical position should proceed according to the logical order that the argument makes, i.e. premise, premise, conclusion. Arguments that jump all over the place are just confusing and not worth reading.

If I am perceived as a "philosophy nazi", or some other disparaging epithet because of my remarks, keep in mind that no one would ever criticize a scientist for being thorough and unrelenting. On the contrary, scientists who present their ideas without adhering to proper scientific methods are at best ignored and at worst ridiculed.

 

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I disagree that the empirical world presents itself with consistency from person to person. You are making an unwarranted assumption.

 

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I don't consider it an assumption. I consider an assumption to be a belief held for arguments sake, supported by a cursory consideration. This is neither. For one, it is not merely an assumption when all scientists agree that the empirical world presents itself with a relevant degree of consistency. They must, otherwise they could not hold scientific laws to be uniformly true. Second, although I withheld further support for that premise, it was not due to any absence of such evidence, but simply because I wanted to concentrate on my main points and not provide arguments for what I thought to be relatively uncontroversial premises. Out of concern for brevity, some premises must go undefended.

Regardless, you have illustrated my main point exactly. My position may require further explanation and clarity. Perhaps I should have said something like "the empirical world presents itself relatively consistently from person to person and place to place.". My lack of precision has caused a misunderstanding, which has prevented a sufficient initial analysis.

Although I stated what good philosophy is, I never said I was capable of fully achieving it. That doesn't, however, invalidate my argument.

 

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It's true that most people here are less than rigorous at philosophy. We are amateurs after all.

 

There have been some exciting breakthroughs in philosophy lately.

 

Few of the people here are really scientists anyway.

Should Pascal or Descartes not have been philosophers?

 

I am in complete agreement with you.

The only thing I can fault you on is the title of your thread.

As DJ Erock has noted, without philosophers, there would be no scientists.

This of course, doesn't invalidate your position, but suffice it to say that when science becomes lost, philosophy can lead one back to the path.

 

Can you provide an example of science becoming lost and philosophy leading it back to the path. If you can come up with more than one , so much the better.

 

How about Descartes work on geometry? This returned geometry back from the depths that resulted from the Dark Ages.

How about Aristotle's naturalism? Rejecting previous essentialist positions, Aristotle, for all intents and purposes, created the scientific method of investigation.


And on, and on,.....

 

In what sense did Descartes philosophy inform his mathematics. ?

Can you provide me with a few examples based on modern science, say the last 200 years ,where input from philosophers helped put science back on the rails ?

 

He didn't 'inform' any mathematics.
He returned geometry back to its previous track, which was lost during the Dark Ages. Previous to that time, geometry was developing quite nicely,built for the most part on Arabic and Egyptian work, but was lost.

All modern science.
You've missed the point.
There is a methodology to science in general. You're looking for a particular application, but philosophy's work is not that specific herein. Scientific progress is not simply a concatenation of discoveries, but rather an evolving process.

 

Of course there is a methodology in science but science has long since become independent of philosophy. Descartes' philosophy did not inform his mathematics, so why did you mention him in the first instance. You are confusing Descartes, the philosopher, ( Meditations) .with Descartes the mathmatician.

What contribution has the philosophy of mind made to our understanding of mental processes that has not been bettered by neuroscience, without reference to philosophy ?Of course there are blind alleys and cockups, as with any human endeavour but I am not aware of philosophy coming to the rescue, which is what was being suggested.

 

I disagree.
Perhaps in a case-by-case analysis, but definitely not from an architectural point of view.

I've already noted why I mentioned him.

I am not confused, you are.
The two are one and the same.

Was Feynman a physicist sometimes and a philosopher at other times??

Without reference to philosophy??? No such thing exists.
Neuroscience would never be where it is today if it were not for Dawkins or Chomsky.

 

Maybe you can teach us ? <- Not being sarcastic.

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I completely disagree. Philosophy can and does exist as a natural mechanism of thought. And since thought is equivalent to everything we know of, then this must require science. :bawl:

 

I doubt this is true and certainly falls short as a rule. To the extent it is true there is a problem because its metaphysics and epistemology then become implicit and unconscious. Also once any scientist begins to discuss the relevence or implications of his or her work without some good grounding in the philosophy of language, all sorts of naivte and misinformation can take place. For example a lot of 'This is the truth and that is not the truth' can seem real and verifiable without the kind of sophistication that some background in the philosophy of language - or a strong intuitive equivalent - can give one, especially in cases where different ways of describing phenomena are overlapping, or may be overlapping.

 

One can't be a good scientist without being a philosopher. It's impossible.

Although, especially here on SciForums, there are plenty of bad so-called "scientists" who are Sophists and enemies of wisdom.

 

Or to put it another way. We are all philosophers. We all have a metaphysics, an epistemology. We all have positions in philosophy on a range of issues. We may not be aware of these positions or be able to articulate them or defend them. But we have them. The less investigated our philosophies are - both in relation to our own psychologies and in questioning their logic, application, range of use, their rationality, that is - the more they seem given. A matter of course. The more we are bound to culture, the historical period, our own psychological needs, etc.

I think actually a good scientist could be a poor philosopher. But they are unlikely to make a huge breakthrough. They may choose good lines of research and set another block in place in useful ways. While at the same time perhaps being very naive about what the implications of their work are or what it says is true and not true about the universe. They will have ended up with the ability to show that doing this and that will cause this or that phenomenon to repeat in these circumstances. And they may do this very well.

I think any major scientist who truly makes a breakthrough must be a philosopher in temperment and outlook. They have generally sensed a pattern by non-empirical methods - afterall they did not choose their line of research or thought experiments randomly - and in this choice we can see their sense that common sense (which is a powerful but often incorrect philosophy) is limited in some way.