This conversation has moved from frustrating into funny. I'm going to leave _J_ out of this since he seems invulnerable to reason on this particular topic and instead speak in generalities. Maybe I should have done that from the beginning.
Anyway, my point with the whole damn electron thing is that--setting aside the argument about physics needing philosophy--I think it's certainly true that philosophy needs physics. For all the (often correct) epistemological arguments about science, induction, and observation, there are fundamental limits on philosophy as well. Ultimately, every philosopher since the dawn of time has been working under some of the same constraints--we all have similar brain functions, similar reasoning processes (compared to, say, an octopus), and we exist at the same basic "scale" in the universe. Space, to us, appears flat; objects have definite positions; things like velocity and simultaneity appear consistent to multiple observers. These are artifacts of the fact that, as originally as we might try to think, we're still limited to our perspectives as humans standing on Earth, thinking with brains that were shaped according to how well they kept us alive rather than how well our conclusions matched "reality".
I think physics gives us one way to push those limits. With the sciences of physics, chemistry, cosmology, etc. we can examine parts of the universe that don't obey the ready, intuitive philosophical notions that we've been kicking around for centuries. Things like the existence of absolute motion, the absolute simultaneity (even in principle) of two events, or the reality of an object having a single true position are challenged by observations made by physicists. We know now that the order in which two events occur is dependent on the observer and his relative motion, that electrons have no definite position (and can occupy two different places at once under the right circumstances), and that all motion is relative. Discoveries in physics--such as the equivalency of faster-than-light travel and time travel, or the existence of relativistic space- and time dilation--bring up new philosophical questions of their own. Most critically, I would argue, these are not questions that would have been asked, let alone answered, absent the relevant discoveries in physics.
I don't think this would have been controversial historically, either. If you ask me, the crowning achievement of philosophy is none other than General Relativity itself. Einstein's thought process was a philosophical one almost moreso than it was scientific. All the astonishing and counterintuitive truths about the universe that we have packaged up under the label "relativity" (hell, let's include special relativity here as well) were arrived at not by experiment (at least at first) but by deduction based on observations made by astronomers and physicists. The science of General Relativity came afterward as hundreds of physicists, engineers, and mathematicians worked to support or refute the system Einstein had arrived at by reason.
I guess to sum this up I'd say that, when it comes to understanding the universe, our humanity places huge limitations on us. A lot of what seems intuitively true about the universe really isn't, and short of having a chat with an extraterrestrial civilization I think the greatest progress in philosophy is going to come from a collaboration with physics.
Sweet, hook me up with a physicist that can do some moral theory with me.
Or one that can work on the sorietes paradox.
Or one that can help me work on fictional entities.
Or maybe one that can help me puzzle out trope theory, or work on universals.
I think that there are certainly extremely valuable contributions to be made by all the special sciences in relation to the progress of philosophy, such has always been the case since science was natural philosophy. But I think that you reveal a HUGE bias when you say something like that General Relativity is the crowning achievement of philosophy. Really? That's what philosophy was all about? There aren't massive questions that General Relativity just doesn't apply to? Let us appreciate physics for what it is, the science that tells us how the mechanics of the universe function, and leave it at that. It's enough for one discipline, really. Physics doesn't need to claim a spot in every philosophical problem. I think that J has made this into a contest. Like either physics or philosophy has to be better than the other, that one needs to be superior, and the other needs to serve it. There are important contributions that both disciplines can make to one another. Philosophers can analyze the assumptions of science itself and rationally justify them, and they can also theorize about the edges of physics. Physics can inform metaphysicians about just what seems to be out there, and how it all seems to work. They can tell us about time, and space, and how those things seem to fit together. It doesn't have to be that one is better, or more valuable than another, they can simply work in concert and address different issues.
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Do you have any evidence for this (rather uncharitable) claim?
Do you have any rebuttal or commentary on the primary superstition of your country, or academics like Albert using tautologies to help buoy it along?
I believe the direct quote from Albert regarding how science ought to be water-down and / or dressed-up with concessions to keep the public from burning down the libraries is in Harris's 'The Moral Landscape', but I don't have the book with me at the moment.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
Do you have any evidence for this (rather uncharitable) claim?
Do you have any rebuttal or commentary on the primary superstition of your country, or academics like Albert using tautologies to help buoy it along?
I never said America wasn't largely Christian, or that Christianity wasn't dumb--I believe both. After all, as I already pointed out, atheism is the default in academic philosophy. I am also not sure how one uses tautologies to buoy anything along, nor do I know what you mean by 'academics like Albert.'
To have rebuttal or commentary, I would need a clearer idea of what you're claiming and why. To wit:
I believe the direct quote from Albert regarding how science ought to be water-down and / or dressed-up with concessions to keep the public from burning down the libraries is in Harris's 'The Moral Landscape', but I don't have the book with me at the moment.
I haven't read that book, so I don't know what Albert is quoted as saying in it.
Finally: even if Albert, oddly, advocated a Christian facist state in that book, it would do little to detract from the fact that, on the merits, his argument in the NYT is good and Kraus' response is poor. Albert called Kraus out for what is, at best, extremely misleading presentation, and Kraus responded by getting nasty towards philosophers in interviews and public speaking engagements.
Like failing to recognize the difference (or identity) between studying the material world through observation, or merely studying your own capability to observe. Like talking about point particles in terms of how much "information" they can be "observed" to have, and how they "correlate in information" as if this is some property of reality, and not simply a description of a human mind observing things.
The human mind observing things is all we've got. I'm not sure what you think the solution is...prefacing every scientific statement with several paragraphs about the limits of observation and the human mind? We talk about the physical world as though our observations were reality because that's the best we can do. And, quite frequently, we talk about things that are obviously not actual properties of reality (like information) as if they were because reality, as far as we can tell, behaves as though they were. Particles don't have 'information' in them. It's trivially obvious. But they behave as though they did, and as though that information were a real, physical thing subject to physical law. Again: what would you prefer? A few paragraphs of lead-up about how what is being described isn't "really real", it just looks real? I don't see how this is any different from _J_'s diatribe about "is" and "appears".
Like failing to be consistent about whether absolute zero is the lowest possible temperature, or an impossible state altogether.
Nobody knows. It's not a state that we can manufacture and it's not a state that has ever been observed, but it may be a state that can exist. What's inconsistent there?
Like stating that it requires infinite energy to reach the center of an electron, without giving any due consideration to the fact that electrons don't seem to have internal structure at all, that charge is quantized and thus the math is philosophically troublesome, and that a "center" is not a material thing that exists anyway.
I don't know what this means and I don't think you do, either. I've never understood your issue with "points" and "centers" and other geometric properties, either. If I draw a circle on a piece of paper it doesn't have a physical thing in it that is the center, but it still has a center and I can still point to it.
Perhaps you're referring to localization and its limits due to the uncertainty relation? I don't know. You can wave your hand around and move through and past the centers of a fairly huge number of electrons without any energetic deficit.
Like whether or not space is quantized, and what this means for mathematics.
It doesn't mean anything for mathematics, to begin with. It would mean a lot for physics, but pure math wouldn't give a shit. There is no evidence of spatial quantization and every testable theory involving spatial quantization has been disproven. There are still holdout theories of quantum gravity that use spatial quantization, but the only ones that still exist and have any adherents are the ones that aren't testable with modern equipment. Every evidence we have indicates that space isn't quantized, so why should anyone twist their knickers about it?
Like paradoxes about time dilation and "what someone preceives" that do not take into account that a true time dilation would affect everything, including the speed at which an observer thinks and perceives.
Time dilation has no known paradoxes. People much smarter than I have directly addressed your complaints, but the long and the short of it is that speed of perception and thought have no bearing on it. Time dilation, like length contraction, is not a matter of what things look like to us -- it's a matter of how things in the universe behave. Objects moving at relativistic velocities can be -- and have been -- shown to experience human-observer-independent effects of Lorentz contraction (of which time dilation is a case).
A real life experiment was performed that involved synching two atomic clocks and sending one up in a high-altitude airplane. On return, the amount of time that had passed for the airplane clock was smaller than the amount of time for the on-the-ground clock. What does human speed of thought have to do with that? Every GPS satellite in existence has built-in corrections for time dilation effects, without which the entire system would almost immediately fall apart.
Like whether the speed of light is a constant, or a statistical average that doesn't actually reflect anything material.
It's the same everywhere that it's been measured. A statistical average would imply that occasionally it would be measured differently. Or perhaps you think that every measurement of it ever made, and every engineered device that relies on it for operation on a moment-to-moment basis (of which there are many) is in a statistical pocket where it's always the same? I'd really love to see the p-value on that.
Like that most of the best answers I see from phsyics experts on these things seem to point to solipsism, but no one wants to accept or admit that.
It's not that no one wants to accept it -- it's that no one cares. Solipsism is a philosophical dead-end. "I can know nothing more absolutely than what I observe, which may be wrong." Okay. Fine. Now what? You want a might-be-cookie? Why should anyone give a shit that isn't a philosopher? It has no practical bearing.
I'm fairly convinced that as physics moves forward from Uncertainty, it has trouble isolating what is a scientific theory and what is simply a philosophical description of how uncertainty affects everything we thought we knew.
I'm fairly convinced that you don't understand what Uncertainty means in physical terms. It isn't "uncertainty about X". It's a physical (or at least mathematical, since it was derived rather than measured) meta-property of certain types of physical properties. It has physical repercussions, but it doesn't mean that we should re-evaluate every measurement we take, ever, on the basis that we ought to feel uncertain about it.
It seems that there are a lot of examples of the form that "if two things display all of the same characteristics, and we've proven that we're unable to discern anything else about them, well then they are the same thing" rather than "well then we've reached a limitation of science and knowledge."
And for a physicist -- or any physical science practitioner -- what is the difference? Perhaps there is some Ultimate Reality that we are simply incapable of witnessing, where positions are absolutely determined by an Ultimate Observer and where every particle in the universe is individually labeled with its own unique ID tag...but so what? That hypothetical Ultimate Reality has no impact on the physical sciences beyond the point that we are able to interface with it. If we have reached the limits of science and knowledge, then I'd call that a very good point for science to say "Welp, that's it folks, we're done here."
Once again: what solution do you propose? A multi-paragraph preface to every scientific statement involving things like "...and with the caveat that perhaps there are laws and properties which we are incapable of observing that impact the observed behavior in a way that is entirely consistent with what we are capable of observing but may or may not be philosophically portentous in a fashion that our meager human designs are not..."?
tl;dr: What is time? Is it that which clocks measure? See any problem with defining things in terms of how they are measured? Is the fabric of spacetime merely a coordinate system; a model? If so, how does it "curve" as if it were a real thing?
All of these have answers. Some of them are more contentious answers than others, but in every instance where the answer is not near-universally-agreed-upon it's because the proposed answers are untestable. Science runs on testability. If a question cannot be answered through experimentation (i.e. "What's the difference between the 'real' world and the world we observe with our measurements") it is irrelevant to science. If a question can hypothetically be answered through experimentation but not with today's technology, the answer is going to remain up in the air until such time as that changes. I don't see why that's a problem.
Your complaints are primarily about two branches of modern physical theory:
General Relativity - the most tested scientific theory in history and fundamentally important to the operation of modern GPS and telecommunications systems; if we're wrong about it in a fashion that isn't high-order correction terms, the information infrastructure of society would collapse
Quanum Mechanics - possibly the second most tested scientific theory in history and fundamentally important to the operation of every electronic device containing an integrated circuit in the world, also the basis for LEDs and most modern signalling systems
But let's not forget that you have a (admittedly lower-grade) hate-on for Thermodynamics. Of course, if we're wrong about thermodynamics then pretty much every piece of modern machinery in existence wouldn't work and all of our chemistry would be wrong.
But who gives a shit about the fact that things keep getting proven correct over and over and over? Nobody has explained it to you in a fashion that simultaneously doesn't require you to learn anything beyond high school math and is consistent with what your preconceived notions about how the world ought to work.
I don't think this would have been controversial historically, either. If you ask me, the crowning achievement of philosophy is none other than General Relativity itself. Einstein's thought process was a philosophical one almost moreso than it was scientific. All the astonishing and counterintuitive truths about the universe that we have packaged up under the label "relativity" (hell, let's include special relativity here as well) were arrived at not by experiment (at least at first) but by deduction based on observations made by astronomers and physicists. The science of General Relativity came afterward as hundreds of physicists, engineers, and mathematicians worked to support or refute the system Einstein had arrived at by reason.
Even more impressively (I think) they were actually arrived at not based on reams of data and crunching the numbers but by stating two simple truths that Einstein believed the data indicated:
1) The speed of light is constant regardless of the observer's velocity
2) The laws of physics are the same no matter where you are in the universe or with what velocity you travel
Every aspect of relativity flowed out of those two statements, and both of them have been shown to be accurate again and again and again. You can sit down with those two statements and derive the whole of relativity from first principles and mathematical deduction, and every derivation will hold up against measurement.
Finally: even if Albert, oddly, advocated a Christian facist state in that book
He didn't advocate for that; that's not what I meant.
He suggested that if forced to choose between the empirical truth and a cherished superstition, the public would choose the latter, and so scientists / science educators should be censoring themselves accordingly. If they don't, the public may jettison science altogether (and he cites the current rejection of biological science in classrooms as an example).
That's the fundamental beef he has with the 'new atheists'. The rest of his arguments are tertiary to it.
@CptHamilton My last post was pretty lame actually, and wasn't getting at the point.
Relativity, and CycloneRanger's post, were a much better example. I wouldn't say that philosophy "needs" physics, though, but rather that physics is at the forefront of a very productive and rigorous branch of philosophy.
You say solipsism is a philosophical dead-end and pointless or whatever, and I think that's part of the problem. If you don't embrace it for what it is, you risk missing the distinction between measuring objective reality, and measuring your own mind's process of taking measurements.
Solipsism is just me wanting a might-be cookie... but Relativity, and the idea that measurements and observations depend on the observer and/or frame reference is all good. This is a philosophical dilemma. Hell, your first sentence was "the human mind observing things is all we've got." Dude, that is solipsism in a nutshell right there. If you're going to start with that, then don't knock it. In other words, I could just as easily claim that Relativity is completely pointless, because it means that measurements are totally pointless since they could be different for anyone, anytime. But of course that would be silly and missing the point.
And no, I'm not looking for a preface to every physics conclusion that says "well we don't know what's really real..." And I'm certainly not in hatred of science. I am, however looking for some recognition of the fact that as the process of observation grows increasingly significant to the observation over the actual thing being observed, then at some point we are perhaps observing nothing but our own process of observation, and not anything else at all. That when we talk about information, we are talking exclusive about a state of a human mind, and not at all about a physical reality. You say that things behave as if they contain information, I say that we behave as if things contain information. That when we talk about wave functions, we aren't mapping physical reality, we're mapping our ability or inability to observe and measure something. Because I think that, like with Relativity, there is a philosophical breakthrough waiting to happen that could advance physics. I'm looking for some recognition that you can't answer a question about material reality with a mathematical equation alone. That supposing a measurement that you believe is technically impossible is not the same thing as taking a measurement, and that neither one is anything but a simplified model of some material existence. And so on.
@CptHamilton My last post was pretty lame actually, and wasn't getting at the point.
Relativity, and CycloneRanger's post, were a much better example. I wouldn't say that philosophy "needs" physics, though, but rather that physics is at the forefront of a very productive and rigorous branch of philosophy.
You say solipsism is a philosophical dead-end and pointless or whatever, and I think that's part of the problem. If you don't embrace it for what it is, you risk missing the distinction between measuring objective reality, and measuring your own mind's process of taking measurements.
Solipsism is just me wanting a might-be cookie... but Relativity, and the idea that measurements and observations depend on the observer and/or frame reference is all good. This is a philosophical dilemma. Hell, your first sentence was "the human mind observing things is all we've got." Dude, that is solipsism in a nutshell right there. If you're going to start with that, then don't knock it. In other words, I could just as easily claim that Relativity is completely pointless, because it means that measurements are totally pointless since they could be different for anyone, anytime. But of course that would be silly and missing the point.
And no, I'm not looking for a preface to every physics conclusion that says "well we don't know what's really real..." And I'm certainly not in hatred of science. I am, however looking for some recognition of the fact that as the process of observation grows increasingly significant to the observation over the actual thing being observed, then at some point we are perhaps observing nothing but our own process of observation, and not anything else at all. That when we talk about information, we are talking exclusive about a state of a human mind, and not at all about a physical reality. You say that things behave as if they contain information, I say that we behave as if things contain information. That when we talk about wave functions, we aren't mapping physical reality, we're mapping our ability or inability to observe and measure something. Because I think that, like with Relativity, there is a philosophical breakthrough waiting to happen that could advance physics. I'm looking for some recognition that you can't answer a question about material reality with a mathematical equation alone. That supposing a measurement that you believe is technically impossible is not the same thing as taking a measurement, and that neither one is anything but a simplified model of some material existence. And so on.
The bolded is what science is. The only way to "model" a situation with absolute accuracy is to actually make it happen and see what the outcome is. The products of scientific investigation are, and always will be, imperfect models. This - like ignoring the possibility of a solopsistic demon mucking up our observations - are ingrained in the bones of science. Scientists don't talk about them all the time because 1) they're 'problems' that have been around science people started making models to describe the physical world and 2) because they don't lead to anything productive. Nobody sane thinks that writing down a mathematical formula conjures things into being, or that by doing some math you can influence the real world, but dwelling on the fact that even a perfectly accurate predictive model is inherently imprecise doesn't actually do anyone any good or lead to any better science being done.
With regard to information (and similar things): whether 'the universe' behaves as though (insert X thing here) or humans behave as though it did is a matter of semantics. When I say that the distance traveled by an object initially at rest under acceleration a in a time t is equal to 1/2at^2, I don't think there's some universal computer calculating the value and putting the thing in the right place. It's a formula that accurately predicts the behavior of a system; it's not literally the system itself. Nobody thinks otherwise. The difference between "the universe acts as though this equation determines the motion of bodies" or some tortured piece of prose amounting to "it looks to me like that's what happens" is semantic unless you believe that there is some unobservable super-reality. Which goes right back to "should we be solipsists? and, if so, to what end?"
The behavior of systems is accurately predictable using models that deal with things like information conservation and quasi-particles (phonons and holes, for example; neither are 'real', but models using them accurately predict the behavior of systems where the concepts arise and they get labeled quasi-particles because of it). That predictive accuracy is what science cares about. If someone were to start on a research project intending to capture an isolated hole in vacuum, that would be the kind of philosophical error you've mentioned. It's treating something that is inherent non-real as if it were, without regard for the boundaries at which treating it as being real ceases to be useful. But the scientist in question would discover his error pretty quickly, and would be roundly taunted by his peers for being a dumbass. Not ignoring the limitations of models is a fairly fundamental part of doing good science and doesn't require someone from the philosophy department swinging by the lab to point it out.
I'm just not seeing where any of your "physicsists ignore philosophy...at their peril!" arguments are differentiated from a mixture of "But what if the universe isn't really what it looks like?" and "But shouldn't we talk about how models aren't reality?" To which I respond, again, "So what?" and "Duh. It's right there in the name. A model is, by definition, not the thing being modeled. But they're all we've got, and not being reality doesn't stop them being useful."
This conversation has moved from frustrating into funny. I'm going to leave _J_ out of this since he seems invulnerable to reason on this particular topic and instead speak in generalities. Maybe I should have done that from the beginning.
Anyway, my point with the whole damn electron thing is that--setting aside the argument about physics needing philosophy--I think it's certainly true that philosophy needs physics. For all the (often correct) epistemological arguments about science, induction, and observation, there are fundamental limits on philosophy as well. Ultimately, every philosopher since the dawn of time has been working under some of the same constraints--we all have similar brain functions, similar reasoning processes (compared to, say, an octopus), and we exist at the same basic "scale" in the universe. Space, to us, appears flat; objects have definite positions; things like velocity and simultaneity appear consistent to multiple observers. These are artifacts of the fact that, as originally as we might try to think, we're still limited to our perspectives as humans standing on Earth, thinking with brains that were shaped according to how well they kept us alive rather than how well our conclusions matched "reality".
I think physics gives us one way to push those limits. With the sciences of physics, chemistry, cosmology, etc. we can examine parts of the universe that don't obey the ready, intuitive philosophical notions that we've been kicking around for centuries. Things like the existence of absolute motion, the absolute simultaneity (even in principle) of two events, or the reality of an object having a single true position are challenged by observations made by physicists. We know now that the order in which two events occur is dependent on the observer and his relative motion, that electrons have no definite position (and can occupy two different places at once under the right circumstances), and that all motion is relative. Discoveries in physics--such as the equivalency of faster-than-light travel and time travel, or the existence of relativistic space- and time dilation--bring up new philosophical questions of their own. Most critically, I would argue, these are not questions that would have been asked, let alone answered, absent the relevant discoveries in physics.
I don't think this would have been controversial historically, either. If you ask me, the crowning achievement of philosophy is none other than General Relativity itself. Einstein's thought process was a philosophical one almost moreso than it was scientific. All the astonishing and counterintuitive truths about the universe that we have packaged up under the label "relativity" (hell, let's include special relativity here as well) were arrived at not by experiment (at least at first) but by deduction based on observations made by astronomers and physicists. The science of General Relativity came afterward as hundreds of physicists, engineers, and mathematicians worked to support or refute the system Einstein had arrived at by reason.
I guess to sum this up I'd say that, when it comes to understanding the universe, our humanity places huge limitations on us. A lot of what seems intuitively true about the universe really isn't, and short of having a chat with an extraterrestrial civilization I think the greatest progress in philosophy is going to come from a collaboration with physics.
Sweet, hook me up with a physicist that can do some moral theory with me.
Or one that can work on the sorietes paradox.
Or one that can help me work on fictional entities.
Or maybe one that can help me puzzle out trope theory, or work on universals.
I think that there are certainly extremely valuable contributions to be made by all the special sciences in relation to the progress of philosophy, such has always been the case since science was natural philosophy. But I think that you reveal a HUGE bias when you say something like that General Relativity is the crowning achievement of philosophy.
Of course I'm biased. General Relativity is the part that's meaningful to me. I don't give a damn about fictional entities or moral theory. Hence, I'd consider the greatest philosophical achievement to be GR. I don't see what the mystery is here.
Really? That's what philosophy was all about? There aren't massive questions that General Relativity just doesn't apply to?
I'm starting to feel like we're just not speaking the same language, because I said nothing remotely like this. I don't even know how you can conceive of a "crowning achievement in philosophy" that is anything but a personal value judgment. That sentence simply doesn't mean anything any other way, even if you disregard the opening clause.
Let us appreciate physics for what it is, the science that tells us how the mechanics of the universe function, and leave it at that. It's enough for one discipline, really. Physics doesn't need to claim a spot in every philosophical problem. I think that J has made this into a contest. Like either physics or philosophy has to be better than the other, that one needs to be superior, and the other needs to serve it. There are important contributions that both disciplines can make to one another. Philosophers can analyze the assumptions of science itself and rationally justify them, and they can also theorize about the edges of physics. Physics can inform metaphysicians about just what seems to be out there, and how it all seems to work. They can tell us about time, and space, and how those things seem to fit together. It doesn't have to be that one is better, or more valuable than another, they can simply work in concert and address different issues.
He suggested that if forced to choose between the empirical truth and a cherished superstition, the public would choose the latter, and so scientists / science educators should be censoring themselves accordingly. If they don't, the public may jettison science altogether (and he cites the current rejection of biological science in classrooms as an example).
That's the fundamental beef he has with the 'new atheists'. The rest of his arguments are tertiary to it.
That seems silly (and, indeed, I also thought that the way he ended his NYT review was silly). But it doesn't seem to detract from his argument against Kraus, which is sound regardless of what other silly things he believes or doesn't believe.
This conversation has moved from frustrating into funny. I'm going to leave _J_ out of this since he seems invulnerable to reason on this particular topic and instead speak in generalities. Maybe I should have done that from the beginning.
Anyway, my point with the whole damn electron thing is that--setting aside the argument about physics needing philosophy--I think it's certainly true that philosophy needs physics. For all the (often correct) epistemological arguments about science, induction, and observation, there are fundamental limits on philosophy as well. Ultimately, every philosopher since the dawn of time has been working under some of the same constraints--we all have similar brain functions, similar reasoning processes (compared to, say, an octopus), and we exist at the same basic "scale" in the universe. Space, to us, appears flat; objects have definite positions; things like velocity and simultaneity appear consistent to multiple observers. These are artifacts of the fact that, as originally as we might try to think, we're still limited to our perspectives as humans standing on Earth, thinking with brains that were shaped according to how well they kept us alive rather than how well our conclusions matched "reality".
I think physics gives us one way to push those limits. With the sciences of physics, chemistry, cosmology, etc. we can examine parts of the universe that don't obey the ready, intuitive philosophical notions that we've been kicking around for centuries. Things like the existence of absolute motion, the absolute simultaneity (even in principle) of two events, or the reality of an object having a single true position are challenged by observations made by physicists. We know now that the order in which two events occur is dependent on the observer and his relative motion, that electrons have no definite position (and can occupy two different places at once under the right circumstances), and that all motion is relative. Discoveries in physics--such as the equivalency of faster-than-light travel and time travel, or the existence of relativistic space- and time dilation--bring up new philosophical questions of their own. Most critically, I would argue, these are not questions that would have been asked, let alone answered, absent the relevant discoveries in physics.
I don't think this would have been controversial historically, either. If you ask me, the crowning achievement of philosophy is none other than General Relativity itself. Einstein's thought process was a philosophical one almost moreso than it was scientific. All the astonishing and counterintuitive truths about the universe that we have packaged up under the label "relativity" (hell, let's include special relativity here as well) were arrived at not by experiment (at least at first) but by deduction based on observations made by astronomers and physicists. The science of General Relativity came afterward as hundreds of physicists, engineers, and mathematicians worked to support or refute the system Einstein had arrived at by reason.
I guess to sum this up I'd say that, when it comes to understanding the universe, our humanity places huge limitations on us. A lot of what seems intuitively true about the universe really isn't, and short of having a chat with an extraterrestrial civilization I think the greatest progress in philosophy is going to come from a collaboration with physics.
Sweet, hook me up with a physicist that can do some moral theory with me.
Or one that can work on the sorietes paradox.
Or one that can help me work on fictional entities.
Or maybe one that can help me puzzle out trope theory, or work on universals.
I think that there are certainly extremely valuable contributions to be made by all the special sciences in relation to the progress of philosophy, such has always been the case since science was natural philosophy. But I think that you reveal a HUGE bias when you say something like that General Relativity is the crowning achievement of philosophy.
Of course I'm biased. General Relativity is the part that's meaningful to me. I don't give a damn about fictional entities or moral theory. Hence, I'd consider the greatest philosophical achievement to be GR. I don't see what the mystery is here.
Really? That's what philosophy was all about? There aren't massive questions that General Relativity just doesn't apply to?
I'm starting to feel like we're just not speaking the same language, because I said nothing remotely like this. I don't even know how you can conceive of a "crowning achievement in philosophy" that is anything but a personal value judgment. That sentence simply doesn't mean anything any other way, even if you disregard the opening clause.
Let us appreciate physics for what it is, the science that tells us how the mechanics of the universe function, and leave it at that. It's enough for one discipline, really. Physics doesn't need to claim a spot in every philosophical problem. I think that J has made this into a contest. Like either physics or philosophy has to be better than the other, that one needs to be superior, and the other needs to serve it. There are important contributions that both disciplines can make to one another. Philosophers can analyze the assumptions of science itself and rationally justify them, and they can also theorize about the edges of physics. Physics can inform metaphysicians about just what seems to be out there, and how it all seems to work. They can tell us about time, and space, and how those things seem to fit together. It doesn't have to be that one is better, or more valuable than another, they can simply work in concert and address different issues.
I don't think that any of this is controversial.
You ought not consider General Relativity to be the crowning achievement in Philosophy. As it has narrow application. I also don't think any of this is controversial. However, there is a tendency to lump "philosophy" in with J, which isn't always a good thing. Not that I have anything against J, I just happen to disagree with some of his implied points.
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
I'm starting to feel like we're just not speaking the same language, because I said nothing remotely like this. I don't even know how you can conceive of a "crowning achievement in philosophy" that is anything but a personal value judgment. That sentence simply doesn't mean anything any other way, even if you disregard the opening clause.
Many philosophers think that there are objective facts about what is or is not valuable, and hence about what may or many not be a crowning achievement of a discipline. Also, we like to argue. If you meant it just as a term of personal appreciation, though, we're all probably on the same page.
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
This conversation has moved from frustrating into funny. I'm going to leave _J_ out of this since he seems invulnerable to reason on this particular topic and instead speak in generalities. Maybe I should have done that from the beginning.
Anyway, my point with the whole damn electron thing is that--setting aside the argument about physics needing philosophy--I think it's certainly true that philosophy needs physics. For all the (often correct) epistemological arguments about science, induction, and observation, there are fundamental limits on philosophy as well. Ultimately, every philosopher since the dawn of time has been working under some of the same constraints--we all have similar brain functions, similar reasoning processes (compared to, say, an octopus), and we exist at the same basic "scale" in the universe. Space, to us, appears flat; objects have definite positions; things like velocity and simultaneity appear consistent to multiple observers. These are artifacts of the fact that, as originally as we might try to think, we're still limited to our perspectives as humans standing on Earth, thinking with brains that were shaped according to how well they kept us alive rather than how well our conclusions matched "reality".
I think physics gives us one way to push those limits. With the sciences of physics, chemistry, cosmology, etc. we can examine parts of the universe that don't obey the ready, intuitive philosophical notions that we've been kicking around for centuries. Things like the existence of absolute motion, the absolute simultaneity (even in principle) of two events, or the reality of an object having a single true position are challenged by observations made by physicists. We know now that the order in which two events occur is dependent on the observer and his relative motion, that electrons have no definite position (and can occupy two different places at once under the right circumstances), and that all motion is relative. Discoveries in physics--such as the equivalency of faster-than-light travel and time travel, or the existence of relativistic space- and time dilation--bring up new philosophical questions of their own. Most critically, I would argue, these are not questions that would have been asked, let alone answered, absent the relevant discoveries in physics.
I don't think this would have been controversial historically, either. If you ask me, the crowning achievement of philosophy is none other than General Relativity itself. Einstein's thought process was a philosophical one almost moreso than it was scientific. All the astonishing and counterintuitive truths about the universe that we have packaged up under the label "relativity" (hell, let's include special relativity here as well) were arrived at not by experiment (at least at first) but by deduction based on observations made by astronomers and physicists. The science of General Relativity came afterward as hundreds of physicists, engineers, and mathematicians worked to support or refute the system Einstein had arrived at by reason.
I guess to sum this up I'd say that, when it comes to understanding the universe, our humanity places huge limitations on us. A lot of what seems intuitively true about the universe really isn't, and short of having a chat with an extraterrestrial civilization I think the greatest progress in philosophy is going to come from a collaboration with physics.
Sweet, hook me up with a physicist that can do some moral theory with me.
Or one that can work on the sorietes paradox.
Or one that can help me work on fictional entities.
Or maybe one that can help me puzzle out trope theory, or work on universals.
I think that there are certainly extremely valuable contributions to be made by all the special sciences in relation to the progress of philosophy, such has always been the case since science was natural philosophy. But I think that you reveal a HUGE bias when you say something like that General Relativity is the crowning achievement of philosophy.
Of course I'm biased. General Relativity is the part that's meaningful to me. I don't give a damn about fictional entities or moral theory. Hence, I'd consider the greatest philosophical achievement to be GR. I don't see what the mystery is here.
Really? That's what philosophy was all about? There aren't massive questions that General Relativity just doesn't apply to?
I'm starting to feel like we're just not speaking the same language, because I said nothing remotely like this. I don't even know how you can conceive of a "crowning achievement in philosophy" that is anything but a personal value judgment. That sentence simply doesn't mean anything any other way, even if you disregard the opening clause.
Let us appreciate physics for what it is, the science that tells us how the mechanics of the universe function, and leave it at that. It's enough for one discipline, really. Physics doesn't need to claim a spot in every philosophical problem. I think that J has made this into a contest. Like either physics or philosophy has to be better than the other, that one needs to be superior, and the other needs to serve it. There are important contributions that both disciplines can make to one another. Philosophers can analyze the assumptions of science itself and rationally justify them, and they can also theorize about the edges of physics. Physics can inform metaphysicians about just what seems to be out there, and how it all seems to work. They can tell us about time, and space, and how those things seem to fit together. It doesn't have to be that one is better, or more valuable than another, they can simply work in concert and address different issues.
I don't think that any of this is controversial.
You ought not consider General Relativity to be the crowning achievement in Philosophy. As it has narrow application. I also don't think any of this is controversial. However, there is a tendency to lump "philosophy" in with J, which isn't always a good thing. Not that I have anything against J, I just happen to disagree with some of his implied points.
I consider the sandwich the crowning achievement in philosophy. Because I really like sandwiches.
The reaction to this book suggests your assessment is incorrect.
I think that you overestimate just what the crossover between physics and philosophy is. The impact of physics on philosophy is great. But I think that you would be amazed how much there aren't "frankly embarrassing inroads." This is because physics applies to things like metaphysics (though not to all problems in metaphysics), and philosophy of science. It isn't making ANY inroads into ethics, epistemology (any more than science in general has stuff to say), philosophy of mind, history of philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of mathematics, bioethics.
Have you studied philosophy? I don't mean that as a "you don't know what you're talking about" and more of a "do you know what you're talking about?" Because I've never really been in a philosophy class where I've learned any physics, because it didn't apply. It seems like a lot of people talking about physics in here seem to be thinking about philosophy as it was 200 years ago. Yes, physics has made inroads into the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. But that's not where philosophy is these days. So what exactly are these embarrassing inroads that physics is making?
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
I think that you overestimate just what the crossover between physics and philosophy is. The impact of physics on philosophy is great. But I think that you would be amazed how much there aren't "frankly embarrassing inroads." This is because physics applies to things like metaphysics (though not to all problems in metaphysics), and philosophy of science. It isn't making ANY inroads into ethics, epistemology (any more than science in general has stuff to say), philosophy of mind, history of philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of mathematics, bioethics.
...
So what exactly are these embarrassing inroads that physics is making?
I think this is a little quick.
So: examples. Neither of these concerns physics per se, but they do involve scientific encroachment. To pick two off your list: ethics and mind. First, there is a definite tendency in some sectors to try to naturalize ethics in terms of some pseudo-evolutionary story about altruism or group selection. And second, some want to replace the traditional philosophical vocabulary of mind (belief, intention, desire, sensation, etc.) with some naturalized neurophysiological descriptions; they think only questions stated in the latter are actually true. Of course, it is not just scientists that hold these positions, but some philosophers as well (Philip Kitcher for the first and, famously, the Churchlands for the second).
Of these, I think the first is frankly embarrassing even when espoused by philosophers. The second is more difficult to evaluate one way or the other, but I think its prospects are in the end dubious (because the mental is normative, and in a specific sense not naturally reducible). But regardless of whether philosophers can avoid making asses of themselves while espousing these views in their twisty and professionally adroit ways, I find that non-philosophers are almost always embarrassingly inept when making these arguments (this is not an insult to non-philosophers; I am sure I would be embarrassingly inept if called up to discuss, say, pre-Rafaelite painters; I am a philosopher not an art historian). So I would take these to be cases of frankly embarrassing inroads, and would categorize them as spiritual cousins to Kraus's treatment of the question of something from nothing.
It seems a little quirky that "what do we think, given what we think we know about biology, civilization, and other things" is chosen as a guide to what we do, in fact, think over introspection, but I suspect that should the day come when manipulating one's state of mind becomes physically tenable, philosophers are not going to seriously dispute the expert identification of mental with given physical states. e.g., it is already the case that there is no a priori reason to believe that one's depression is like another's on the mere basis of similarly self-described symptoms, but we are quite willing to assert that both are the one and the same neurochemical phenomenon. We might not say that we subscribe to a wholly unfounded and aggressive kind of reductive and physicalist materialism, but we certainly seem to behave as if we do.
ronya on
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
It seems a little quirky that "what do we think, given what we think we know about biology, civilization, and other things" is chosen as a guide to what we do, in fact, think over introspection, but I suspect that should the day come when manipulating one's state of mind becomes physically tenable, philosophers are not going to seriously dispute the expert identification of mental with given physical states. e.g., it is already the case that there is no a priori reason to believe that one's depression is like another's on the mere basis of similarly self-described symptoms, but we are quite willing to assert that both are the one and the same neurochemical phenomenon. We might not say that we subscribe to a wholly unfounded and aggressive kind of reductive and physicalist materialism, but we certainly seem to behave as if we do.
I wondered if I might get called out for claiming the irreducibility of the mental. What I mean by that, though, is something fairly complicated (which I myself have not fully worked out). The schematic version is something like: first, to be a thinker at all requires one to meet some minimum threshold of rationality. One could not even have the thoughts 'chairs have four legs' and 'that is a chair' without being prepared to infer 'that has four legs;' part of what it is for your thoughts to have those contents is that one has that disposition to infer the right consequences, at least ceteris paribus. Second, this form of rationality is best spelled out in terms of responsiveness to some order of objective facts about what follows from what, what's evidence for what, etc.--aka, facts about what one ought to think in various circumstances. So, mental states are, in their essence, intimately related to 'ought' facts, and 'ought' facts are non-natural on most ways of drawing the distinction.
This is not to deny that there are neurophysical correlates that are interesting objects of study; there clearly are. It's not even to deny that those neurophysical correlates are, in fact, instantiations of the mental states we're interested in (in the way that MS Word is instantiated in individual states of a computer). I'm not even sure I deny that those neurophysical correlates are identical to the mental states we're interested in. But if the mental is related to the normative in the way I've claimed, although the states might be physical, their existence conditions and the ways that we pick them out involve responsiveness to an irreducible order of non-natural facts. This is already enough to jeopardize a naive vision of purely descriptive neuroscience as providing a complete, naturalistic picture of the mind. Neuroscientists need to already be employing non-naturally specifiable notions of what justifies what, what beliefs are reasonable, and so on, in order to even know where to look for a mind.
Yes, neuroscientists and neuro x-phi-ists need to invoke assumptions on what and where to identify as parts of minds. My claim is that this is an unvoiced implicit epistemology at work here that philosophers in practice seem to accept for daily life, that they rely on to be 'real', even if they discard it as unjustified as an intellectual allegiance to a concept.
The mental might be irreducible, or it might not; regardless one seems to behave as if it is not only reducible but miraculously so. It is well more than neuroscientists who 'need to be' employing these notions.
One could attempt to explicitly outline this epistemology, and I think doing so is fairly identified as the philosophy of science. By the same token, divergence from the unvoiced implicit standard does however constitute an intellectual exploration away from the well-trod path of jointly perceived scientific knowledge of the 'real' and nothing more. It is not enough to point and say "this is unfounded". What of it? Many things are unfounded. Our priorities are different.
I think that you overestimate just what the crossover between physics and philosophy is. The impact of physics on philosophy is great. But I think that you would be amazed how much there aren't "frankly embarrassing inroads." This is because physics applies to things like metaphysics (though not to all problems in metaphysics), and philosophy of science. It isn't making ANY inroads into ethics, epistemology (any more than science in general has stuff to say), philosophy of mind, history of philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of mathematics, bioethics.
...
So what exactly are these embarrassing inroads that physics is making?
I think this is a little quick.
So: examples. Neither of these concerns physics per se, but they do involve scientific encroachment. To pick two off your list: ethics and mind. First, there is a definite tendency in some sectors to try to naturalize ethics in terms of some pseudo-evolutionary story about altruism or group selection. And second, some want to replace the traditional philosophical vocabulary of mind (belief, intention, desire, sensation, etc.) with some naturalized neurophysiological descriptions; they think only questions stated in the latter are actually true. Of course, it is not just scientists that hold these positions, but some philosophers as well (Philip Kitcher for the first and, famously, the Churchlands for the second).
Of these, I think the first is frankly embarrassing even when espoused by philosophers. The second is more difficult to evaluate one way or the other, but I think its prospects are in the end dubious (because the mental is normative, and in a specific sense not naturally reducible). But regardless of whether philosophers can avoid making asses of themselves while espousing these views in their twisty and professionally adroit ways, I find that non-philosophers are almost always embarrassingly inept when making these arguments (this is not an insult to non-philosophers; I am sure I would be embarrassingly inept if called up to discuss, say, pre-Rafaelite painters; I am a philosopher not an art historian). So I would take these to be cases of frankly embarrassing inroads, and would categorize them as spiritual cousins to Kraus's treatment of the question of something from nothing.
I take you point to heart.
However, I think that the problem was that physicists are making inroads into philosophy. And that their inroads are embarrassing to philosophers. Which is not correct.
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Yes, neuroscientists and neuro x-phi-ists need to invoke assumptions on what and where to identify as parts of minds. My claim is that this is an unvoiced implicit epistemology at work here that philosophers in practice seem to accept for daily life, that they rely on to be 'real', even if they discard it as unjustified as an intellectual allegiance to a concept.
The mental might be irreducible, or it might not; regardless one seems to behave as if it is not only reducible but miraculously so. It is well more than neuroscientists who 'need to be' employing these notions.
It isn't required that the mind is reducible in order for us to believe that neurochemical drugs are going to affect us. Hell, I take drugs, and I don't believe that my mind is reducible to physical states. There is obviously a causal story to be told, but it doesn't have to be one of reduction.
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
On what basis besides reduction to fundamental and universal principles (whatever those may be, and even if you don't know them) would you assert that someone's self-described mental and neurochemical state can be identified with anyone else's, e.g., your own? You cannot possibly access their qualia to identify their mental state with their neurochemical state, never mind identify their mental state with your mental state.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
There are a lot of issues in this neighborhood. But I am not sure that we are using reduction in the same way. For instance, functionalism does reduce mentality to fundamental principles concerning the functional organization of the entity, so is reductive in the sense you seem to be using in your last post, but can also take a non-reductive form insofar as the quantifiers used to specify functional roles can in principle just as well range over non-physical entities and properties. Furthermore, skepticism about other minds, at least in the form you specified, can equally well be a problem for reductive physicalist theories. After all, your mind and my mind share certain gross features, but are most certainly not physically identical. My C-fibers are not the same as your C-fibers, so how is my pain the same as your pain?
In any case, I think that most of these problems can be avoided by the particular form of non-reductivism I prefer. But it's complicated.
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Sweet, hook me up with a physicist that can do some moral theory with me.
Or one that can work on the sorietes paradox.
Or one that can help me work on fictional entities.
Or maybe one that can help me puzzle out trope theory, or work on universals.
I think that there are certainly extremely valuable contributions to be made by all the special sciences in relation to the progress of philosophy, such has always been the case since science was natural philosophy. But I think that you reveal a HUGE bias when you say something like that General Relativity is the crowning achievement of philosophy. Really? That's what philosophy was all about? There aren't massive questions that General Relativity just doesn't apply to? Let us appreciate physics for what it is, the science that tells us how the mechanics of the universe function, and leave it at that. It's enough for one discipline, really. Physics doesn't need to claim a spot in every philosophical problem. I think that J has made this into a contest. Like either physics or philosophy has to be better than the other, that one needs to be superior, and the other needs to serve it. There are important contributions that both disciplines can make to one another. Philosophers can analyze the assumptions of science itself and rationally justify them, and they can also theorize about the edges of physics. Physics can inform metaphysicians about just what seems to be out there, and how it all seems to work. They can tell us about time, and space, and how those things seem to fit together. It doesn't have to be that one is better, or more valuable than another, they can simply work in concert and address different issues.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Do you have any rebuttal or commentary on the primary superstition of your country, or academics like Albert using tautologies to help buoy it along?
I believe the direct quote from Albert regarding how science ought to be water-down and / or dressed-up with concessions to keep the public from burning down the libraries is in Harris's 'The Moral Landscape', but I don't have the book with me at the moment.
I never said America wasn't largely Christian, or that Christianity wasn't dumb--I believe both. After all, as I already pointed out, atheism is the default in academic philosophy. I am also not sure how one uses tautologies to buoy anything along, nor do I know what you mean by 'academics like Albert.'
To have rebuttal or commentary, I would need a clearer idea of what you're claiming and why. To wit:
I haven't read that book, so I don't know what Albert is quoted as saying in it.
Finally: even if Albert, oddly, advocated a Christian facist state in that book, it would do little to detract from the fact that, on the merits, his argument in the NYT is good and Kraus' response is poor. Albert called Kraus out for what is, at best, extremely misleading presentation, and Kraus responded by getting nasty towards philosophers in interviews and public speaking engagements.
The human mind observing things is all we've got. I'm not sure what you think the solution is...prefacing every scientific statement with several paragraphs about the limits of observation and the human mind? We talk about the physical world as though our observations were reality because that's the best we can do. And, quite frequently, we talk about things that are obviously not actual properties of reality (like information) as if they were because reality, as far as we can tell, behaves as though they were. Particles don't have 'information' in them. It's trivially obvious. But they behave as though they did, and as though that information were a real, physical thing subject to physical law. Again: what would you prefer? A few paragraphs of lead-up about how what is being described isn't "really real", it just looks real? I don't see how this is any different from _J_'s diatribe about "is" and "appears".
Nobody knows. It's not a state that we can manufacture and it's not a state that has ever been observed, but it may be a state that can exist. What's inconsistent there?
I don't know what this means and I don't think you do, either. I've never understood your issue with "points" and "centers" and other geometric properties, either. If I draw a circle on a piece of paper it doesn't have a physical thing in it that is the center, but it still has a center and I can still point to it.
Perhaps you're referring to localization and its limits due to the uncertainty relation? I don't know. You can wave your hand around and move through and past the centers of a fairly huge number of electrons without any energetic deficit.
It doesn't mean anything for mathematics, to begin with. It would mean a lot for physics, but pure math wouldn't give a shit. There is no evidence of spatial quantization and every testable theory involving spatial quantization has been disproven. There are still holdout theories of quantum gravity that use spatial quantization, but the only ones that still exist and have any adherents are the ones that aren't testable with modern equipment. Every evidence we have indicates that space isn't quantized, so why should anyone twist their knickers about it?
Time dilation has no known paradoxes. People much smarter than I have directly addressed your complaints, but the long and the short of it is that speed of perception and thought have no bearing on it. Time dilation, like length contraction, is not a matter of what things look like to us -- it's a matter of how things in the universe behave. Objects moving at relativistic velocities can be -- and have been -- shown to experience human-observer-independent effects of Lorentz contraction (of which time dilation is a case).
A real life experiment was performed that involved synching two atomic clocks and sending one up in a high-altitude airplane. On return, the amount of time that had passed for the airplane clock was smaller than the amount of time for the on-the-ground clock. What does human speed of thought have to do with that? Every GPS satellite in existence has built-in corrections for time dilation effects, without which the entire system would almost immediately fall apart.
It's the same everywhere that it's been measured. A statistical average would imply that occasionally it would be measured differently. Or perhaps you think that every measurement of it ever made, and every engineered device that relies on it for operation on a moment-to-moment basis (of which there are many) is in a statistical pocket where it's always the same? I'd really love to see the p-value on that.
It's not that no one wants to accept it -- it's that no one cares. Solipsism is a philosophical dead-end. "I can know nothing more absolutely than what I observe, which may be wrong." Okay. Fine. Now what? You want a might-be-cookie? Why should anyone give a shit that isn't a philosopher? It has no practical bearing.
I'm fairly convinced that you don't understand what Uncertainty means in physical terms. It isn't "uncertainty about X". It's a physical (or at least mathematical, since it was derived rather than measured) meta-property of certain types of physical properties. It has physical repercussions, but it doesn't mean that we should re-evaluate every measurement we take, ever, on the basis that we ought to feel uncertain about it.
And for a physicist -- or any physical science practitioner -- what is the difference? Perhaps there is some Ultimate Reality that we are simply incapable of witnessing, where positions are absolutely determined by an Ultimate Observer and where every particle in the universe is individually labeled with its own unique ID tag...but so what? That hypothetical Ultimate Reality has no impact on the physical sciences beyond the point that we are able to interface with it. If we have reached the limits of science and knowledge, then I'd call that a very good point for science to say "Welp, that's it folks, we're done here."
Once again: what solution do you propose? A multi-paragraph preface to every scientific statement involving things like "...and with the caveat that perhaps there are laws and properties which we are incapable of observing that impact the observed behavior in a way that is entirely consistent with what we are capable of observing but may or may not be philosophically portentous in a fashion that our meager human designs are not..."?
All of these have answers. Some of them are more contentious answers than others, but in every instance where the answer is not near-universally-agreed-upon it's because the proposed answers are untestable. Science runs on testability. If a question cannot be answered through experimentation (i.e. "What's the difference between the 'real' world and the world we observe with our measurements") it is irrelevant to science. If a question can hypothetically be answered through experimentation but not with today's technology, the answer is going to remain up in the air until such time as that changes. I don't see why that's a problem.
Your complaints are primarily about two branches of modern physical theory:
General Relativity - the most tested scientific theory in history and fundamentally important to the operation of modern GPS and telecommunications systems; if we're wrong about it in a fashion that isn't high-order correction terms, the information infrastructure of society would collapse
Quanum Mechanics - possibly the second most tested scientific theory in history and fundamentally important to the operation of every electronic device containing an integrated circuit in the world, also the basis for LEDs and most modern signalling systems
But let's not forget that you have a (admittedly lower-grade) hate-on for Thermodynamics. Of course, if we're wrong about thermodynamics then pretty much every piece of modern machinery in existence wouldn't work and all of our chemistry would be wrong.
But who gives a shit about the fact that things keep getting proven correct over and over and over? Nobody has explained it to you in a fashion that simultaneously doesn't require you to learn anything beyond high school math and is consistent with what your preconceived notions about how the world ought to work.
Even more impressively (I think) they were actually arrived at not based on reams of data and crunching the numbers but by stating two simple truths that Einstein believed the data indicated:
1) The speed of light is constant regardless of the observer's velocity
2) The laws of physics are the same no matter where you are in the universe or with what velocity you travel
Every aspect of relativity flowed out of those two statements, and both of them have been shown to be accurate again and again and again. You can sit down with those two statements and derive the whole of relativity from first principles and mathematical deduction, and every derivation will hold up against measurement.
He didn't advocate for that; that's not what I meant.
He suggested that if forced to choose between the empirical truth and a cherished superstition, the public would choose the latter, and so scientists / science educators should be censoring themselves accordingly. If they don't, the public may jettison science altogether (and he cites the current rejection of biological science in classrooms as an example).
That's the fundamental beef he has with the 'new atheists'. The rest of his arguments are tertiary to it.
Relativity, and CycloneRanger's post, were a much better example. I wouldn't say that philosophy "needs" physics, though, but rather that physics is at the forefront of a very productive and rigorous branch of philosophy.
You say solipsism is a philosophical dead-end and pointless or whatever, and I think that's part of the problem. If you don't embrace it for what it is, you risk missing the distinction between measuring objective reality, and measuring your own mind's process of taking measurements.
Solipsism is just me wanting a might-be cookie... but Relativity, and the idea that measurements and observations depend on the observer and/or frame reference is all good. This is a philosophical dilemma. Hell, your first sentence was "the human mind observing things is all we've got." Dude, that is solipsism in a nutshell right there. If you're going to start with that, then don't knock it. In other words, I could just as easily claim that Relativity is completely pointless, because it means that measurements are totally pointless since they could be different for anyone, anytime. But of course that would be silly and missing the point.
And no, I'm not looking for a preface to every physics conclusion that says "well we don't know what's really real..." And I'm certainly not in hatred of science. I am, however looking for some recognition of the fact that as the process of observation grows increasingly significant to the observation over the actual thing being observed, then at some point we are perhaps observing nothing but our own process of observation, and not anything else at all. That when we talk about information, we are talking exclusive about a state of a human mind, and not at all about a physical reality. You say that things behave as if they contain information, I say that we behave as if things contain information. That when we talk about wave functions, we aren't mapping physical reality, we're mapping our ability or inability to observe and measure something. Because I think that, like with Relativity, there is a philosophical breakthrough waiting to happen that could advance physics. I'm looking for some recognition that you can't answer a question about material reality with a mathematical equation alone. That supposing a measurement that you believe is technically impossible is not the same thing as taking a measurement, and that neither one is anything but a simplified model of some material existence. And so on.
The bolded is what science is. The only way to "model" a situation with absolute accuracy is to actually make it happen and see what the outcome is. The products of scientific investigation are, and always will be, imperfect models. This - like ignoring the possibility of a solopsistic demon mucking up our observations - are ingrained in the bones of science. Scientists don't talk about them all the time because 1) they're 'problems' that have been around science people started making models to describe the physical world and 2) because they don't lead to anything productive. Nobody sane thinks that writing down a mathematical formula conjures things into being, or that by doing some math you can influence the real world, but dwelling on the fact that even a perfectly accurate predictive model is inherently imprecise doesn't actually do anyone any good or lead to any better science being done.
With regard to information (and similar things): whether 'the universe' behaves as though (insert X thing here) or humans behave as though it did is a matter of semantics. When I say that the distance traveled by an object initially at rest under acceleration a in a time t is equal to 1/2at^2, I don't think there's some universal computer calculating the value and putting the thing in the right place. It's a formula that accurately predicts the behavior of a system; it's not literally the system itself. Nobody thinks otherwise. The difference between "the universe acts as though this equation determines the motion of bodies" or some tortured piece of prose amounting to "it looks to me like that's what happens" is semantic unless you believe that there is some unobservable super-reality. Which goes right back to "should we be solipsists? and, if so, to what end?"
The behavior of systems is accurately predictable using models that deal with things like information conservation and quasi-particles (phonons and holes, for example; neither are 'real', but models using them accurately predict the behavior of systems where the concepts arise and they get labeled quasi-particles because of it). That predictive accuracy is what science cares about. If someone were to start on a research project intending to capture an isolated hole in vacuum, that would be the kind of philosophical error you've mentioned. It's treating something that is inherent non-real as if it were, without regard for the boundaries at which treating it as being real ceases to be useful. But the scientist in question would discover his error pretty quickly, and would be roundly taunted by his peers for being a dumbass. Not ignoring the limitations of models is a fairly fundamental part of doing good science and doesn't require someone from the philosophy department swinging by the lab to point it out.
I'm just not seeing where any of your "physicsists ignore philosophy...at their peril!" arguments are differentiated from a mixture of "But what if the universe isn't really what it looks like?" and "But shouldn't we talk about how models aren't reality?" To which I respond, again, "So what?" and "Duh. It's right there in the name. A model is, by definition, not the thing being modeled. But they're all we've got, and not being reality doesn't stop them being useful."
Of course I'm biased. General Relativity is the part that's meaningful to me. I don't give a damn about fictional entities or moral theory. Hence, I'd consider the greatest philosophical achievement to be GR. I don't see what the mystery is here. I'm starting to feel like we're just not speaking the same language, because I said nothing remotely like this. I don't even know how you can conceive of a "crowning achievement in philosophy" that is anything but a personal value judgment. That sentence simply doesn't mean anything any other way, even if you disregard the opening clause.
I don't think that any of this is controversial.
Well, considering that a lot of great physicists are doing frankly embarassing inroads into philosophy, I believe you're wrong.
That seems silly (and, indeed, I also thought that the way he ended his NYT review was silly). But it doesn't seem to detract from his argument against Kraus, which is sound regardless of what other silly things he believes or doesn't believe.
You ought not consider General Relativity to be the crowning achievement in Philosophy. As it has narrow application. I also don't think any of this is controversial. However, there is a tendency to lump "philosophy" in with J, which isn't always a good thing. Not that I have anything against J, I just happen to disagree with some of his implied points.
@Lolken They really aren't.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Many philosophers think that there are objective facts about what is or is not valuable, and hence about what may or many not be a crowning achievement of a discipline. Also, we like to argue. If you meant it just as a term of personal appreciation, though, we're all probably on the same page.
I consider the sandwich the crowning achievement in philosophy. Because I really like sandwiches.
The reaction to this book suggests your assessment is incorrect.
I think that you overestimate just what the crossover between physics and philosophy is. The impact of physics on philosophy is great. But I think that you would be amazed how much there aren't "frankly embarrassing inroads." This is because physics applies to things like metaphysics (though not to all problems in metaphysics), and philosophy of science. It isn't making ANY inroads into ethics, epistemology (any more than science in general has stuff to say), philosophy of mind, history of philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of mathematics, bioethics.
Have you studied philosophy? I don't mean that as a "you don't know what you're talking about" and more of a "do you know what you're talking about?" Because I've never really been in a philosophy class where I've learned any physics, because it didn't apply. It seems like a lot of people talking about physics in here seem to be thinking about philosophy as it was 200 years ago. Yes, physics has made inroads into the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. But that's not where philosophy is these days. So what exactly are these embarrassing inroads that physics is making?
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
I think this is a little quick.
So: examples. Neither of these concerns physics per se, but they do involve scientific encroachment. To pick two off your list: ethics and mind. First, there is a definite tendency in some sectors to try to naturalize ethics in terms of some pseudo-evolutionary story about altruism or group selection. And second, some want to replace the traditional philosophical vocabulary of mind (belief, intention, desire, sensation, etc.) with some naturalized neurophysiological descriptions; they think only questions stated in the latter are actually true. Of course, it is not just scientists that hold these positions, but some philosophers as well (Philip Kitcher for the first and, famously, the Churchlands for the second).
Of these, I think the first is frankly embarrassing even when espoused by philosophers. The second is more difficult to evaluate one way or the other, but I think its prospects are in the end dubious (because the mental is normative, and in a specific sense not naturally reducible). But regardless of whether philosophers can avoid making asses of themselves while espousing these views in their twisty and professionally adroit ways, I find that non-philosophers are almost always embarrassingly inept when making these arguments (this is not an insult to non-philosophers; I am sure I would be embarrassingly inept if called up to discuss, say, pre-Rafaelite painters; I am a philosopher not an art historian). So I would take these to be cases of frankly embarrassing inroads, and would categorize them as spiritual cousins to Kraus's treatment of the question of something from nothing.
I wondered if I might get called out for claiming the irreducibility of the mental. What I mean by that, though, is something fairly complicated (which I myself have not fully worked out). The schematic version is something like: first, to be a thinker at all requires one to meet some minimum threshold of rationality. One could not even have the thoughts 'chairs have four legs' and 'that is a chair' without being prepared to infer 'that has four legs;' part of what it is for your thoughts to have those contents is that one has that disposition to infer the right consequences, at least ceteris paribus. Second, this form of rationality is best spelled out in terms of responsiveness to some order of objective facts about what follows from what, what's evidence for what, etc.--aka, facts about what one ought to think in various circumstances. So, mental states are, in their essence, intimately related to 'ought' facts, and 'ought' facts are non-natural on most ways of drawing the distinction.
This is not to deny that there are neurophysical correlates that are interesting objects of study; there clearly are. It's not even to deny that those neurophysical correlates are, in fact, instantiations of the mental states we're interested in (in the way that MS Word is instantiated in individual states of a computer). I'm not even sure I deny that those neurophysical correlates are identical to the mental states we're interested in. But if the mental is related to the normative in the way I've claimed, although the states might be physical, their existence conditions and the ways that we pick them out involve responsiveness to an irreducible order of non-natural facts. This is already enough to jeopardize a naive vision of purely descriptive neuroscience as providing a complete, naturalistic picture of the mind. Neuroscientists need to already be employing non-naturally specifiable notions of what justifies what, what beliefs are reasonable, and so on, in order to even know where to look for a mind.
The mental might be irreducible, or it might not; regardless one seems to behave as if it is not only reducible but miraculously so. It is well more than neuroscientists who 'need to be' employing these notions.
One could attempt to explicitly outline this epistemology, and I think doing so is fairly identified as the philosophy of science. By the same token, divergence from the unvoiced implicit standard does however constitute an intellectual exploration away from the well-trod path of jointly perceived scientific knowledge of the 'real' and nothing more. It is not enough to point and say "this is unfounded". What of it? Many things are unfounded. Our priorities are different.
I take you point to heart.
However, I think that the problem was that physicists are making inroads into philosophy. And that their inroads are embarrassing to philosophers. Which is not correct.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
It isn't required that the mind is reducible in order for us to believe that neurochemical drugs are going to affect us. Hell, I take drugs, and I don't believe that my mind is reducible to physical states. There is obviously a causal story to be told, but it doesn't have to be one of reduction.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
okay it looks like we agreed all along
@ronya
There are a lot of issues in this neighborhood. But I am not sure that we are using reduction in the same way. For instance, functionalism does reduce mentality to fundamental principles concerning the functional organization of the entity, so is reductive in the sense you seem to be using in your last post, but can also take a non-reductive form insofar as the quantifiers used to specify functional roles can in principle just as well range over non-physical entities and properties. Furthermore, skepticism about other minds, at least in the form you specified, can equally well be a problem for reductive physicalist theories. After all, your mind and my mind share certain gross features, but are most certainly not physically identical. My C-fibers are not the same as your C-fibers, so how is my pain the same as your pain?
In any case, I think that most of these problems can be avoided by the particular form of non-reductivism I prefer. But it's complicated.