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Science and the Demise of Philosophy

18 points by 321abc 17y ago

joe_the_user 17y ago
Wow, This certainly gives a powerful overview of the quandary of human beings in our modern world. Bit heavy for hacker news but I welcome it. The problem is, humanity won't go back to the world whose loss Priddy describes. So how do we solve these problems going forward?
- billswift 17y ago
  Since the "problems" in that chapter don't actually exist, we ignore them, how else?
antaeos 17y ago
I call shenanigans. Wholly oriented towards investigating and changing the material world, science rejects anything related to practical self-discovery or spiritual truth. In this lies the crisis of the widespread modern intellectualism that swears itself to science; it is incapable of investigating, understanding or dealing with human purposes, eternal values, spiritual realities or the challenges of the meaning of life. On the contrary, science relativises values and makes a private matter of them, thereby undermining them and consequently a moral and good society too. Discovery of new truths about the human soul and destiny will remain beyond its scope until the extent of ignorance about this is better appreciated and much wrong physicalistic thinking about the constitution of the human being is more widely discredited. Only when science is put firmly in its place for what it really is, a study of physical reality by physical means chiefly for material and economic ends, will the crisis be overcome. As far as I can tell, Priddy isn't saying anything the deconstructivists haven't already; and by that I mean the same hollow self-justifying outcries that have dominated the humanistic part of C.P. Snow's Two Cultures since, well, since Wordsworth. If Priddy and his ilk could ever dream up an alternative which would "put science in its place," I'd be happy to hear it, but so far, science makes progress regardless of whether or not we have the words to describe its journey. It's a simple fact that the humanistic vanguards apparently have a very hard time coming to terms with.
- philwelch 17y ago
  I think there's a use for studying and investigating, in philosophy, what we call "the good life". That's the one thing philosophy has been negligent of, although analytic philosophy (other than that) has been a positive triumph.
- prodigal_erik 17y ago
  I do think "Einstein's famous breakthrough was one of reason advancing well beyond the facts" bears thinking on. It took years before we could try to falsify relativity empirically, so in the meantime how did we avoid filtering him out as just another crackpot? But it's hard not to dismiss "even investigative and creative reason have largely been blinkered so as to concentrate it overwhelmingly upon the observable world" as whining that people care more about learning from reality than from nonsense made up on the spot.
  - ajdecon 17y ago
    Several things about Einstein's work made it plausible and not obviously the work of a crackpot, despite its initial non-falsifiability: * It was consistent with most observations and experiments done thus far. * It offered an explanation for known issues which were being grappled with at the time, i.e. the observation of speed of light in moving reference frames. * It built on existing work and showed Einstein's familiarity with the state of physics at that point. * It was possible to understand how the theory could be tested, even if the technical skills of the time were inadequate. Compare this to most crackpot theories we see today: they may be inconsistent with previous observations. They claim to debunk "establishment" theories rather than attempting to grapple with new problems. And they are often constructed so they cannot be falsified, even postulating improved experimental techniques. So if you see a new theory which claims to explain something like high-Tc superconductivity but requires advances in technology to be testable, it is probably a good-faith effort. But if you see a theory which claims to revolutionize physics by means of an unobservable energy field with no plausible experiments, you're probably looking at a crackpot. Bonus points if the author says "Einstein is WRONG!" in a press release.
    - 17y ago
aidenn0 17y ago
Is this worth my time to read? My bogo-sensor was going off like crazy after reading the first couple of paragraphs.
teeja 17y ago
The fact that this chapter doesn't bother to mention Kuhn, Popper, Feyerabend, etc. tells me this is axe-grinding. "The resulting weak role of 'handmaidens' who applaud progress as scientific" were Feyerabend's favorite targets.
brg 17y ago
Philosophy, as it is taught and developed in academia today, is in no way "essential in the further understanding of the nature of humanity and the cosmos." Science and philosophy were once one. Aristotle, and Descartes where all hailed as both great scientists and great philosophers. But during the renaissance, critical thinking, creativity, and logic separated and became science. Everything that was left retained the name of philosophy. To look at it another way, science has lead directly to a downfall in philosophy, in that it has provided a way for one to test theories and build upon ideas. In contrast to the progress of science, one sees that philosophy has developed into a useless branch of linguistic games ("What time is it on the sun?") and esoteric navel gazing ("Essence in this its self-movement is reflection"). Anything that can be tested or verified has been removed from the field called philosophy by the philosophers, who have today reverted to Platonists by abanding experimentation in lieu of problems of "pure" thought. Consider any philosopher of the period since Descartes. Lets say Immanuel Kant. Now what is Kant's philosophy? What of Kant's philosphy has been accepted as true by the community. What of Kant's philosophical theory has been rejected as false by the community. How has the community settled these question of Kant's philosophy? The answer is that there is no philosophical community. There are only philosophical camps. The only thing relating each camp to another is that they all at war with each other in a grand popularity contest. The community that gets the most air time is in the lead. There is no progress in philosophy, only novel ideas which supplantt the old due to the boredom inherent in parroting nonsense.
- foldr 17y ago
  > But during the renaissance, critical thinking, creativity, and logic separated and became science. But modern logic was developed by philosophers in the late 19th and early 20th century. Frege, Tarski and Russell weren't scientists. And it's surely absurd to suggest that there isn't any critical thinking or creativity in the entire philosophical literature since Descartes. > There is no progress in philosophy, That's clearly false in some areas. To stick with the same example, our understanding of paradoxes has been greatly increased by the development of modern mathematical logic, which is largely the work of philosophers. To take another, we now have a much better understanding of the possible ways in which the mind might relate to the brain, thanks to the development of behaviorism, functionalism, etc. in the mid 20th century. In some areas, such as moral philosophy, it's true that there has been no progress if you define progress as consensus. But so what? Would you rather no-one ever thought seriously about moral questions? Just because it is difficult to reach a consensus on some topic doesn't mean that there's no value in thinking hard about it.

18 points by 321abc 17y ago

Wow, This certainly gives a powerful overview of the quandary of human beings in our modern world. Bit heavy for hacker news but I welcome it. The problem is, humanity won't go back to the world whose loss Priddy describes. So how do we solve these problems going forward?

billswift 17y ago
Since the "problems" in that chapter don't actually exist, we ignore them, how else?

antaeos 17y ago

I call shenanigans. Wholly oriented towards investigating and changing the material world, science rejects anything related to practical self-discovery or spiritual truth. In this lies the crisis of the widespread modern intellectualism that swears itself to science; it is incapable of investigating, understanding or dealing with human purposes, eternal values, spiritual realities or the challenges of the meaning of life. On the contrary, science relativises values and makes a private matter of them, thereby undermining them and consequently a moral and good society too. Discovery of new truths about the human soul and destiny will remain beyond its scope until the extent of ignorance about this is better appreciated and much wrong physicalistic thinking about the constitution of the human being is more widely discredited. Only when science is put firmly in its place for what it really is, a study of physical reality by physical means chiefly for material and economic ends, will the crisis be overcome. As far as I can tell, Priddy isn't saying anything the deconstructivists haven't already; and by that I mean the same hollow self-justifying outcries that have dominated the humanistic part of C.P. Snow's Two Cultures since, well, since Wordsworth. If Priddy and his ilk could ever dream up an alternative which would "put science in its place," I'd be happy to hear it, but so far, science makes progress regardless of whether or not we have the words to describe its journey. It's a simple fact that the humanistic vanguards apparently have a very hard time coming to terms with.

philwelch 17y ago
I think there's a use for studying and investigating, in philosophy, what we call "the good life". That's the one thing philosophy has been negligent of, although analytic philosophy (other than that) has been a positive triumph.
prodigal_erik 17y ago
I do think "Einstein's famous breakthrough was one of reason advancing well beyond the facts" bears thinking on. It took years before we could try to falsify relativity empirically, so in the meantime how did we avoid filtering him out as just another crackpot? But it's hard not to dismiss "even investigative and creative reason have largely been blinkered so as to concentrate it overwhelmingly upon the observable world" as whining that people care more about learning from reality than from nonsense made up on the spot.
- ajdecon 17y ago
  Several things about Einstein's work made it plausible and not obviously the work of a crackpot, despite its initial non-falsifiability: * It was consistent with most observations and experiments done thus far. * It offered an explanation for known issues which were being grappled with at the time, i.e. the observation of speed of light in moving reference frames. * It built on existing work and showed Einstein's familiarity with the state of physics at that point. * It was possible to understand how the theory could be tested, even if the technical skills of the time were inadequate. Compare this to most crackpot theories we see today: they may be inconsistent with previous observations. They claim to debunk "establishment" theories rather than attempting to grapple with new problems. And they are often constructed so they cannot be falsified, even postulating improved experimental techniques. So if you see a new theory which claims to explain something like high-Tc superconductivity but requires advances in technology to be testable, it is probably a good-faith effort. But if you see a theory which claims to revolutionize physics by means of an unobservable energy field with no plausible experiments, you're probably looking at a crackpot. Bonus points if the author says "Einstein is WRONG!" in a press release.
  - 17y ago

aidenn0 17y ago

Is this worth my time to read? My bogo-sensor was going off like crazy after reading the first couple of paragraphs.

teeja 17y ago

The fact that this chapter doesn't bother to mention Kuhn, Popper, Feyerabend, etc. tells me this is axe-grinding. "The resulting weak role of 'handmaidens' who applaud progress as scientific" were Feyerabend's favorite targets.

brg 17y ago

Philosophy, as it is taught and developed in academia today, is in no way "essential in the further understanding of the nature of humanity and the cosmos." Science and philosophy were once one. Aristotle, and Descartes where all hailed as both great scientists and great philosophers. But during the renaissance, critical thinking, creativity, and logic separated and became science. Everything that was left retained the name of philosophy. To look at it another way, science has lead directly to a downfall in philosophy, in that it has provided a way for one to test theories and build upon ideas. In contrast to the progress of science, one sees that philosophy has developed into a useless branch of linguistic games ("What time is it on the sun?") and esoteric navel gazing ("Essence in this its self-movement is reflection"). Anything that can be tested or verified has been removed from the field called philosophy by the philosophers, who have today reverted to Platonists by abanding experimentation in lieu of problems of "pure" thought. Consider any philosopher of the period since Descartes. Lets say Immanuel Kant. Now what is Kant's philosophy? What of Kant's philosphy has been accepted as true by the community. What of Kant's philosophical theory has been rejected as false by the community. How has the community settled these question of Kant's philosophy? The answer is that there is no philosophical community. There are only philosophical camps. The only thing relating each camp to another is that they all at war with each other in a grand popularity contest. The community that gets the most air time is in the lead. There is no progress in philosophy, only novel ideas which supplantt the old due to the boredom inherent in parroting nonsense.

foldr 17y ago
> But during the renaissance, critical thinking, creativity, and logic separated and became science. But modern logic was developed by philosophers in the late 19th and early 20th century. Frege, Tarski and Russell weren't scientists. And it's surely absurd to suggest that there isn't any critical thinking or creativity in the entire philosophical literature since Descartes. > There is no progress in philosophy, That's clearly false in some areas. To stick with the same example, our understanding of paradoxes has been greatly increased by the development of modern mathematical logic, which is largely the work of philosophers. To take another, we now have a much better understanding of the possible ways in which the mind might relate to the brain, thanks to the development of behaviorism, functionalism, etc. in the mid 20th century. In some areas, such as moral philosophy, it's true that there has been no progress if you define progress as consensus. But so what? Would you rather no-one ever thought seriously about moral questions? Just because it is difficult to reach a consensus on some topic doesn't mean that there's no value in thinking hard about it.