Scientific Dishonesty

[Fisherking]

It just is not in one field and it has been known and ongoing for decades.

This comes from what would normally be termed, left leaning scientist: http://quillette.com/2015/12/04/rebellious-scientist-surprising-truth-about-stereotypes/

Studies that support a preconceived agenda or the funding sources perceived leanings?

[Fragony]

Always been that way

[Beskar]

A good website on this topic - http://www.badscience.net/
If you want to look at research, I recommend tools such as CASP - http://www.casp-uk.net/

[Montmorency]

What you're thinking of is a long-standing problem in the social sciences, but the deeper truth is really much more uncomfortable: scientists in general are frequently just not good at evaluating and adapting methodologies, analyzing data, and elaborating the interconnected questions and scholarship that make single projects on very specific questions meaningful.

[rory_20_uk]

The other big problem is that journals like publishing positive findings. So often studies that fail to show anything aren't published and that information is then not available to everyone - so on a topic only 1 in 10 studies might show significance but no one will know about the other 9.

~:smoking:

[wooly_mammoth]

Psychology isn't even a science. Sciences are things like physics, chemistry or engineering. Psychology, philosophy and other such nonsense is just having some random nobodies talking willy-nilly about nothing, as is the case of everyone involved in the article above.

[Beskar]

Psychology is a science. It applies scientific methodology to human behaviour.
Pseudo-Psychology is not a science though, and it is not even Psychology.

[Fisherking]

There is little money and no glory in proving the work of others in any field.

Even larger, there is risk in disproving the established “consensus”. Not only for the researcher but also for the publisher. Personal attacks and ruining of reputation are more that order of the day than is questioning the data.

Data is often merely accepted without verification if a study or experiment renders results favourable to the established line of thinking.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Psychology isn't even a science. Sciences are things like physics, chemistry or engineering. Psychology, philosophy and other such nonsense is just having some random nobodies talking willy-nilly about nothing, as is the case of everyone involved in the article above.

Engineering is not a science, merely the application of scientific knowledge.


Psychology is a science. It applies scientific methodology to human behaviour.
Pseudo-Psychology is not a science though, and it is not even Psychology.

Errrrrr....

Going back to the other topic you created for a moment... you're both right and both wrong. In broad strokes, experiments in Physics are easier to control with fewer unknown variables than those in Psychology.

[Pannonian]

There is little money and no glory in proving the work of others in any field.

Even larger, there is risk in disproving the established “consensus”. Not only for the researcher but also for the publisher. Personal attacks and ruining of reputation are more that order of the day than is questioning the data.

Data is often merely accepted without verification if a study or experiment renders results favourable to the established line of thinking.

Funnily enough, a trip to further establish the findings of prior scientists turned out to inspire the answer to one of the most asked questions in the history of science.

[Papewaio]

There is little money and no glory in proving the work of others in any field.

Even larger, there is risk in disproving the established “consensus”. Not only for the researcher but also for the publisher. Personal attacks and ruining of reputation are more that order of the day than is questioning the data.

Data is often merely accepted without verification if a study or experiment renders results favourable to the established line of thinking.

Actually disproving theories is one of the key functions of science. People get paid and glory too for butchering the current scared cow in science.

[Fisherking]

Actually disproving theories is one of the key functions of science. People get paid and glory too for butchering the current scared cow in science.

That is what is supposed to happen, ideally. In practice, it never quite goes so smoothly. It usually has to wait until the beast is dead.
You had best be very careful who's cow you go after.
Politics and money had best be on your side.

[Pannonian]

That is what is supposed to happen, ideally. In practice, it never quite goes so smoothly. It usually has to wait until the beast is dead.
You had best be very careful who's cow you go after.
Politics and money had best be on your side.

A student in uniformitarianism, on a field trip to reinforce the doctrine, turned out to be a pioneering advocate of catastrophism. In his particular case at least, his initially derided theory is now the almost universally accepted explanation.

[wooly_mammoth]

There is little money and no glory in proving the work of others in any field.

Even larger, there is risk in disproving the established “consensus”. Not only for the researcher but also for the publisher. Personal attacks and ruining of reputation are more that order of the day than is questioning the data.

Data is often merely accepted without verification if a study or experiment renders results favourable to the established line of thinking.

These are very gross generalizations. I would say they are applicable to nonsense fields (I don't mean to offend anyone, but that's how I see it and I like to speak plainly) like psychology or social "sciences". In fields like physics, chemistry or engineering and technology development (I see technology development as much of a science as fundamental research), a peer-reviewed and reputable journal will never accept a letter dealing with empirical data unless the source of the data is specified and it is an equally reputable one. A large part of the scientific community dedicates their careers to making sure that the numbers other use in their research are correct.

When somebody does forge data they are usually caught since many independent groups must reproduce a result before it is accepted by the community. As in the famous Pons & Fleischmann cold fusion experiment, or Ninov's discovery of superheavy elements, dishonest scientists are ostracized by the community and must pretty much quit and do something else with their lives.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

There are plenty of instances of "serious" scientists who refused to accept valid research.

Sir Fred Hoyle is an excellent example - he refused to accept the theory of the "Big Bang" due to his anti-religious prejudice.

He was a hugeley respected scientist in his day but when it came down to it the "rational" atheist was unable to accept anything that threatened his established world-view.

To believe that "hard" science has no bias is to buy into the myth that because you are dealing with "pure" numbers that the Science is "pure". All Science is enquiry carried out by human beings and therefore all Science is flawed and biased.

[Fisherking]

These are very gross generalizations. I would say they are applicable to nonsense fields (I don't mean to offend anyone, but that's how I see it and I like to speak plainly) like psychology or social "sciences". In fields like physics, chemistry or engineering and technology development (I see technology development as much of a science as fundamental research), a peer-reviewed and reputable journal will never accept a letter dealing with empirical data unless the source of the data is specified and it is an equally reputable one. A large part of the scientific community dedicates their careers to making sure that the numbers other use in their research are correct.

When somebody does forge data they are usually caught since many independent groups must reproduce a result before it is accepted by the community. As in the famous Pons & Fleischmann cold fusion experiment, or Ninov's discovery of superheavy elements, dishonest scientists are ostracized by the community and must pretty much quit and do something else with their lives.

In most every field there are orthodoxies which hold researchers back. These are not always in the soft sciences.

Pharmaceuticals are chemistry and we know money bias plays a role.

Conversely, many developments and discoveries receive short shrift simply because the don’t match consensus. Consensus is not science.

One of you examples “cold fusion” was declared bunk by consensus rather than experimentation, and anyone doing further work in the field is shut down, at least in the west. Yet there are enough experiments that show enough promise that it would seem further investigations are worthy.

Then again, we have the politically charged Consensus on global warming in climatology. We find deliberate manipulation of data presented to prove an agenda. Those pointing out errors in methodology are decried as shills or worse. Even at best we are left with computer modelling that can’t replicate the past, is at variance with current data but we are to believe it will predict the future.

There is a lack of openminded exploration and a number of institutional biases at play. It is in most fields. It is a human endeavour and will never be perfect.

It, to me, is better to approach all with a degree of openminded scepticism as with anything else.

[wooly_mammoth]

@PFH

Ideally, a scientist shouldn't let his own prejudice darken his judgement, but it does happen in the real world, I agree with that. Einstein is probably an even greater example of a scientist that refused to accept facts when they contradicted his beliefs. For example, even though he laid the foundations of quantum mechanics with his explanation of the photo-electric effect, he never considered it to be a valid physical theory since it contradicted with his belief that the world simply must be a fully deterministic system. While current evidence suggests otherwise, I guess it's sensible to realize that scientific inquiry will never provide ultimate answers to any questions and that our knowledge (at least in the foreseeable future) will constantly change and improve, provided we don't blow ourselves back into the Dark Ages.

Fisherking

Just to touch a bit more on the cold fusion problem. To my limited knowledge on the subject, the problem has been turned inside out for a long time by many independent groups. For it to work in the way Pons & Fleishmann suggest doesn't make sense due to the fact that in room temperature conditions, the energy and length scales at which electromagnetic and nuclear forces manifest are by many orders of magnitude different. Unless our entire background of physical knowledge is completely wrong (unlikely), I don't think that turning research down in this field is completely unjustifiable. There's no reason to waste even more resources in a direction for which you have some pretty compelling counter-arguments. At the same time, there has been some considerable progress made in the field of plasma fusion, so I guess it makes sense to fund research that at least holds some promise for useful results in the future.

[Gilrandir]

These are very gross generalizations. I would say they are applicable to nonsense fields (I don't mean to offend anyone, but that's how I see it and I like to speak plainly) like psychology or social "sciences".

Ironically, the latter (namely political science aka politology) has more influence on the modern world than some "serious" sciences, mathematics, for instance.


All Science is enquiry carried out by human beings and therefore all Science is flawed and biased.

Yet since this enquiry is FOR human beings and only about the things humans CAN EXPERIENCE, it seems to be quite adequate for all purposes humans may have in mind.

[Fisherking]

wooly_mammoth
I am not going to give you a catalog of the data proving that the effect is real. There is evidence if you choose to pursue it. The scientists were inquiring and asking for physicists to examine the phenomenon they discovered. They were chemists and could not explain what they found.
The branch of physics to which the phenomenon applies was one with little research since its discovery. Namely weak force physics.

The discovery was made by chemists asking physicists to verify. The physicists not being chemists botched the job and there were also problems replicating due to quality of the Palladium Lattice electrodes used.

There was no theory to explain what was occurring. It was a discovery that needed repetition and theory to explain what had occurred.

Instead there was a vendetta launched and the scientists were accused of fraud. It was decided by consensus.

[wooly_mammoth]

To my knowledge, the topic was given an extremely serious scientific scrutiny. The excess heat detected in some experiments (not only the original one) can easily be explained by standard solid-state heat transfer theory. Nuclear energy scales are about a million times larger than molecular & atomic energies in ordinary solids, and the length scale at which nuclear forces manifest are about a hundred thousand times smaller than the typical lattice constant in an ordinary metal (i.e., the separation distance between nuclei in the lattice). You need those energies and length scales for a reasonable chance that two nuclei will fuse. These are well established and basic facts of nuclear physics. Since there is no other experiment so far to suggest other scales at which the phenomenon takes place, it seems a bit unreasonable that they change only in this particular situation. So, as far as empirical evidence and established theories go, in order to trigger nuclear reactions you need to operate at those length & energy scales, but some people claim to be doing that indirectly from the electromagnetic scale only in this particular circumstance and no other. Which is weird. Furthermore, assuming that it is indeed nuclear fusion we are speaking about there, one simple question that comes to mind is, where is all the gamma radiation that should be emitted? We see gamma rays coming from stars when hydrogen fuses into helium over there, why don't we see it in such experiments?

These are just a few of the many very sensible questions that have been asked and to which no clear answer was ever given. For some reason, people like to assume that politics and conspiracies are involved, but I think that if you sit down and do a proper analysis of the subject, you discover that this particular phenomenon doesn't happen in this particular context, given the laws of physics in this Universe.

Gilrandir

The very unserious (to my perception at least) philosophers are actually debating if mathematics is a science or not, heh. Meanwhile, we would still be in prehistory without it (just think of your existence without having the ability to count things). Otherwise I agree with what you mean by that.

[Fisherking]

wooly_mammoth

I think you just inadvertently, proved the point I was making.



For some reason, people like to assume that politics and conspiracies are involved, but I think that if you sit down and do a proper analysis of the subject, you discover that this particular phenomenon doesn't happen in this particular context, given the laws of physics in this Universe.


The use of conspiracies is an attempt to justify your own bias an draw attention to what must be crackpot ideas.

Bias exists. Politics often intrude on world views and intrudes in to data. That was what the article showed.

Science is investigation. We are attempting to explain the laws of the Universe. They are not all known nor proven. Most of science deals in theory, not law.

Closed-mindedness and dogmatic adherence to the established order retard exploration not enhance it.

As for the short shrift you give philosophy, it was philosophy that gave us the principals of reason and the scientific method of research. It is also, to an extent, ignoring the philosophy behind it that helps introduce the very bias we are discussing.

[wooly_mammoth]

So, if you investigate something thoroughly and it doesn't work, it doesn't work because it doesn't work or because politicians are scheming behind our backs day & night? I mean, in the particular example we are discussing, having the thing work would mean that pretty much everything that is currently known about electromagnetism, atomic & molecular physics and nuclear forces is completely and utterly wrong. Which isn't impossible, mind you, but it sounds reasonably unlikely.

[Gilrandir]

As for the short shrift you give philosophy, it was philosophy that gave us the principals of reason and the scientific method of research.

I'm afraid this is all credit philosophy can claim. In 2500 years it is too little a harvest. So it is as good as extinct.

[Fisherking]

So, if you investigate something thoroughly and it doesn't work, it doesn't work because it doesn't work or because politicians are scheming behind our backs day & night? I mean, in the particular example we are discussing, having the thing work would mean that pretty much everything that is currently known about electromagnetism, atomic & molecular physics and nuclear forces is completely and utterly wrong. Which isn't impossible, mind you, but it sounds reasonably unlikely.

This is a red herring. As you well know.

There are any number of variables to consider. If you are still speaking of Pons and Fleischmann, the effect has been replicated and there is more than one method of achieving results.

It was not the fact that several labs failed to reproduce the effect. As I said there was no theory attached to what they reported. I do recall at least on lab reporting a reaction but of much lesser significance to the original.

It was more the reaction. They were held up to ridicule. To what scientific purpose?
Show me where ridicule fits into the scientific method. Show me where votes of consensus fits into the scientific method.

It is not the only example, naturally. There are any number of once suppressed theories which are today in the mainstream. Yet even so, some may yet be miss-proven or revised and other theories take their place. To think otherwise is to arrest development.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Judging from the first few replies, I initially just wanted a quick post so I could get thanked by Papewaio. But then I read everything...


Psychology isn't even a science. Sciences are things like physics, chemistry or engineering. Psychology, philosophy and other such nonsense is just having some random nobodies talking willy-nilly about nothing, as is the case of everyone involved in the article above.

Engineering isn't a science. The vast majority of engineering "knowledge" has been and probably continues to be, haphazard trial and error where something goes wrong, bridges collapse, people die and we find some fix that ends up getting explained in detail by physicists.

The entire United States electrical system is built off of the bodies of civilians, electrical workers and dogs who ended up being inadvertent test subjects on how to make a safe electrical system. Today's comfort is possible because of completely uncontrolled "experiments" performed when some poor Irishman in 1880s New York touched the wrong wire and 1,000 New Yorkers watched his skin fry before their very eyes.

Also, you don't understand what Philosophy does at all.


These are very gross generalizations. I would say they are applicable to nonsense fields (I don't mean to offend anyone, but that's how I see it and I like to speak plainly) like psychology or social "sciences". In fields like physics, chemistry or engineering and technology development (I see technology development as much of a science as fundamental research), a peer-reviewed and reputable journal will never accept a letter dealing with empirical data unless the source of the data is specified and it is an equally reputable one. A large part of the scientific community dedicates their careers to making sure that the numbers other use in their research are correct.

What the above article describes about Psychology, is not that much different from science. Peer Review in science fails much more often then you would expect...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLlA1w4OZWQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcIUhHWsqlE


I'm afraid this is all credit philosophy can claim. In 2500 years it is too little a harvest. So it is as good as extinct.

Again, how much philosophy have you read? What distinguishes between science and pseudo-science? Is String Theory science? Is multi-verse theory? Why does a sizable portion of the scientific community seem to trust either of these ideas, when at this juncture they cannot be empirically tested and thus are completely unfalsifiable? If String Theory can be derived mathematically (but not seen empirically) as an branch of the Standard Model, which does have empirical evidence to support it, does that lend a lot, a little or no credibility to the notion of strings?

I don't know why I get so upset when people trash Philosophy. It just seems to Orwellian to be a champion of TRUTH THRU SCIENCE and then lead this anti-intellectual campaign against philosophy. Science rests on assumed answers to philosophical questions that are actually still open, and somehow it has deluded itself into thinking it has done away with philosophy entirely.

[Husar]

Science rests on assumed answers to philosophical questions that are actually still open, and somehow it has deluded itself into thinking it has done away with philosophy entirely.

That seems correct to me.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Ironically, the latter (namely political science aka politology) has more influence on the modern world than some "serious" sciences, mathematics, for instance.

Yet since this enquiry is FOR human beings and only about the things humans CAN EXPERIENCE, it seems to be quite adequate for all purposes humans may have in mind.

Yes, Scientific Enquiry is eminently useful, as is logic. However, so is Newtonian Physics.

Newtonian Physics is also, technically, wrong.


I'm afraid this is all credit philosophy can claim. In 2500 years it is too little a harvest. So it is as good as extinct.

Philosophy is there to give you an answer late at night when you finally realise you can't prove that 1+1 =2.

Actual example.

Now, with my tongue entirely out of my cheekpad, I would say that the actual purpose of philosophy is to guard against the Socratic fallacy - the belief being an expert in something gives you the right or qualifications to speak on any and every topic.

[Montmorency]

Philosophy is there to give you an answer late at night when you finally realise you can't prove that 1+1 =2.

Moreover, you can't demonstrate the necessity of proof, or even the possibility of proof in itself.


Now, with my tongue entirely out of my cheekpad, I would say that the actual purpose of philosophy is to guard against the Socratic fallacy

Of course, to give a purpose for philosophy is to saddle down with a number of philosophical premises. For example, Ray Brassier takes a similar position to yours by determining that the purpose of philosophy is to "impede stupidity".

[Gilrandir]

Again, how much philosophy have you read?

I had philosophy at the University and studied it for a year after which had an exam. Plus I took an exam in philosophy manadatory as a part of post-graduate studies (the so-called candidate's minimum - since a person who gets his first post-graduate degree in Ukraine is called a candidate of sciences). So I have read some. Of course, it wasn't my major, nor my field of further studies (or interests), yet I may conclude that philosophers of yore posed some questions and then they (and all generations of others after them up till nowadays) tried to answer. They did offer the answers, but all of them were unproved (or indeed unprovable), so it is just chewing the same gum for two and a half millenia.




What distinguishes between science and pseudo-science?


I have given my vision of the difference, but I can reiterate: the absence of palpable results of the age-long studies which "the science" may offer urbi et orbi.



Is String Theory science? Is multi-verse theory?


Being unaware of either I would refrain from making any statement.




Philosophy is there to give you an answer late at night when you finally realise you can't prove that 1+1 =2.

The best proof of anything is practice. You don't have to wait until late at night to put one apple beside another and start counting them together. If one starts ruminating about it for so long, he must be drunk. A supposition: could the first philosophers have been toss pots?



Now, with my tongue entirely out of my cheekpad, I would say that the actual purpose of philosophy is to guard against the Socratic fallacy - the belief being an expert in something gives you the right or qualifications to speak on any and every topic.

If you mean me - well, could be an appropriate warning. But most people (including - or especially - the ones on these boards) indulge in doing what philosophy is so vehemently against. So it kind of becomes one more proof that it is a science (almost) no one has a use for.

If yours is a universal statement, then a sceptic would remark: "Ok, I will try to bear it in mind, but is this all philosophy is there for - to tell the people to mind their Ps and Qs? One doesn't need a whole science to teach others just a most general tenet."

[Montmorency]

I'll reprint part of a relevant piece (https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2015/12/20/the-lingering-of-philosophy/) that basically organizes the confusion of the various perspectives presented here:


The ‘Death of Philosophy’ is something that circulates through arterial underbelly of culture with quite some regularity, a theme periodically goosed whenever high-profile scientific figures bother to express their attitudes on the subject. Scholars in the humanities react the same way stakeholders in any institution react when their authority and privilege are called into question: they muster rationalizations, counterarguments, and pejoratives. They rally troops with whooping war-cries of “positivism” or “scientism,” list all the fields of inquiry where science holds no sway, and within short order the whole question of whether philosophy is dead begins to look very philosophical, and the debate itself becomes evidence that philosophy is alive and well—in some respects at least.

The problem with this pattern, of course, is that the terms like ‘philosophy’ or ‘science’ are so overdetermined that no one ends up talking about the same thing. For physicists like Stephen Hawking or Lawrence Krauss or Neil deGrasse Tyson, the death of philosophy is obvious insofar as the institution has become almost entirely irrelevant to their debates. There are other debates, they understand, debates where scientists are the hapless ones, but they see the process of science as an inexorable, and yes, imperialistic one. More and more debates fall within its purview as the technical capacities of science improve. They presume the institution of philosophy will become irrelevant to more and more debates as this process continues. For them, philosophy has always been something to chase away. Since the presence of philosophers in a given domain of inquiry reliably indicates scientific ignorance to important features of that domain, the relevance of philosophers is directly related to the maturity of a science.

They have history on their side.

There will always be speculation—science is our only reliable provender of theoretical cognition, after all. The question of the death of philosophy cannot be the question of the death of theoretical speculation. The death of philosophy as I see it is the death of a particular institution, a discourse anchored in the tradition of using intentional idioms and metacognitive deliverances to provide theoretical solutions. I think science is killing that philosophy as we speak.

[Fisherking]

Philosophy could be said to have reached a temporary impasse, much as medical science did up until germ theory and refinements in other fields.

Science, on the other hand, is playing fast and loose with ethics and strictest adherence to the philosophy of science. Without that philosophical grounding we only have charlatans working pretend science to defraud the public and their pretended infallibility.

[HopAlongBunny]

Philosophy, Science, Philosophy of Science.
Like everything in society there are interesting only so far as their relationship to power.
A tautology perhaps, insofar as everything has meaning in consequence of its relationship to the power dynamic within a society.
"Follow the Money!"; sure but that only gets you so far; what about the silence, what about the exclusions, what about the masks that say one thing and do another.
The term Science, like any puppet show, hides as much as it reveals...

:soapbox:

[Tuuvi]

These are very gross generalizations. I would say they are applicable to nonsense fields (I don't mean to offend anyone, but that's how I see it and I like to speak plainly) like psychology or social "sciences".

Why do you think the social sciences are nonsense fields?

[Gilrandir]

Philosophy could be said to have reached a temporary impasse, much as medical science did up until germ theory and refinements in other fields.



Philosophy never left that impasse.

Any science is developing by way of changing paradigms. A paradigm consists of a problem/question scientists confront, a hypothesis (a preliminary answer to this question) and the verification of the hypothesis (encompassing data and methods) which brings some results. The paradigm changes when either the question or the hypothesis changes. For example, in astronomy the first hypothesis was that the sun circles the earth, later it was changed into the modern one (the earth circles the sun).

Now philosophy from the very outset posed one question (what is primary - the mind or the matter) and offered two evident preliminary answers which have been in the state of verification ever since, yielding no results. Generations of philosophers joined this or that point of view being unable to prove it with their opponents being unable to prove the opposite. So it it is not a temporary impasse, it is embalmed lethargy or fossilization. Pick one to your liking.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Philosophy killed logical positivism for good in the late 20th century. Progress is slow but it happens.

[Husar]

Now philosophy from the very outset posed one question (what is primary - the mind or the matter) and offered two evident preliminary answers which have been in the state of verification ever since, yielding no results. Generations of philosophers joined this or that point of view being unable to prove it with their opponents being unable to prove the opposite. So it it is not a temporary impasse, it is embalmed lethargy or fossilization. Pick one to your liking.

Physics and medicine also still do not have answers to their founding questions of how does the world work and how to make people live forever (or how to make them healthy again).

Your view is overly simplistic and makes little sense. Most sciences were spawned by philosophical questions, how can you then say that sciences achieved a lot and philosophy is not yielding results?

[Gilrandir]

Physics and medicine also still do not have answers to their founding questions of how does the world work and how to make people live forever (or how to make them healthy again).

As for physics, the question of how the world works is too general. It is specified in the branches of physics (statics, dynamics, electricity, thermodynamics, quantum physics and so on). Each of them can boast of some results, i.e. laws that were discovered by scientists (Ohm's law, Joule Lenz law, Boyle Mariotte law, Newton laws, Faraday's law etc.). What about philosophy? Any laws to boast of? "All things come to pass, so no man ever steps in the same river twice"? One surely has to be a hell of a scientist to make such a conclusion.
The problem with philosophy is in asking too general questions and making too general conclusions. Such questions can't be answered and such conclusions don't require preliminary training, being an old and wise man will suffice.

As for medicine, compare its current achievements with those of the time of, say, Ibn Sina, and compare the "achievements" of philosophy of corresponding epochs.



Most sciences were spawned by philosophical questions, how can you then say that sciences achieved a lot and philosophy is not yielding results?

So the only achievemnet of philosophy is in begetting all sciences? Then we should probably speak of philosophy as the first stage of all sciences' development. When special sciences stemmed from philosophy, the latter has fulfilled its purpose and has run its course. By now it "is tired and needs a nap".



Your view is overly simplistic and makes little sense.

I offered arguments to support my view (which, i.e. arguments, you so far failed to refute), you offer a description of my view. Discussions don't work in this way.

[Husar]

As for physics, the question of how the world works is too general. It is specified in the branches of physics (statics, dynamics, electricity, thermodynamics, quantum physics and so on). Each of them can boast of some results, i.e. laws that were discovered by scientists (Ohm's law, Joule Lenz law, Boyle Mariotte law, Newton laws, Faraday's law etc.). What about philosophy? Any laws to boast of? "All things come to pass, so no man ever steps in the same river twice"? One surely has to be a hell of a scientist to make such a conclusion.
The problem with philosophy is in asking too general questions and making too general conclusions. Such questions can't be answered and such conclusions don't require preliminary training, being an old and wise man will suffice.

As for medicine, compare its current achievements with those of the time of, say, Ibn Sina, and compare the "achievements" of philosophy of corresponding epochs.

Oh, it was too general? You mean just like your view of philosophy? Why does something have to produce a law in order to be useful? Are lawmakers and dictators the most useful people on earth? You seem to be stuck in wanting results, but as the great philosopher Confucius said, "the way is the goal"...


So the only achievemnet of philosophy is in begetting all sciences? Then we should probably speak of philosophy as the first stage of all sciences' development. When special sciences stemmed from philosophy, the latter has fulfilled its purpose and has run its course. By now it "is tired and needs a nap".

You are entitled to that opinion, but in my opinion you fundamentally miss the "purpose" of philosophy. The purpose of philosophy lies in the name itself, in a way that is a very personal thing and just because you may think wisdom is not needed anymore now that we have data and information everywhere that does not mean everyone has to agree.


I offered arguments to support my view (which, i.e. arguments, you so far failed to refute), you offer a description of my view. Discussions don't work in this way.

That's your philosophy, I have a different one which is superior.
As for your agrguments, you have proven none of them so they're purely philosophical and therefore do not provide an answer according to you.

I would say the lower significance of philosophy today, if it is even lower at all, is due to the changes in society, but then again people already said 2500 years ago that philosophers were all crazy and the thing still stuck around. Therefore I see little need to engage your arguments as history may just repeat itself anyway.

[Gilrandir]

Oh, it was too general? You mean just like your view of philosophy?

My generalization is prompted by the very nature of philosophy - the most general "science" aspiring to discover most general laws. One can't be specific about it unlike physics or medicine.



Why does something have to produce a law in order to be useful? Are lawmakers and dictators the most useful people on earth?


According to you it seems that philosophers are. And laws are just a sample of what a science produces. More important, though, is the production of discoveries and inventions. Philosophy didn't produce either.



You seem to be stuck in wanting results, but as the great philosopher Confucius said, "the way is the goal"...
You are entitled to that opinion, but in my opinion you fundamentally miss the "purpose" of philosophy. The purpose of philosophy lies in the name itself,

I see. Art for art's sake.
- Why do you need a car?
- Just to have it.
- But you never drive it!
- The use of the car is in having one.



you may think wisdom is not needed anymore now that we have data and information everywhere that does not mean everyone has to agree.


I believe that wisdom is still in great demand, but it is born by life experience. Idle theoretization aka philosophy is but the ape of wisdom.



That's your philosophy, I have a different one which is superior.

A very wise approach - to pronounce a different opinion inferior. Shows a philosopher at once.



As for your agrguments, you have proven none of them so they're purely philosophical and therefore do not provide an answer according to you.


My argument (which I repeat for the third time) is the premise of the abscence of any palpable results of philosophical studies in 2500 years. I challenged anyone to refute it. You couldn't provide any facts that my opinion is wrong. You just pronounce it simplistic, senseless and inferior. A very philosophical dodge.



I would say the lower significance of philosophy today, if it is even lower at all, is due to the changes in society

You mean like no one uses VCRs or beepers any more? So, again, philosophy has fulfilled its purpose by raising some questions and defaulting on answering them. Let it rest in peace. Amen.

[rory_20_uk]

Physics and medicine also still do not have answers to their founding questions of how does the world work and how to make people live forever (or how to make them healthy again).

Your view is overly simplistic and makes little sense. Most sciences were spawned by philosophical questions, how can you then say that sciences achieved a lot and philosophy is not yielding results?

Medicine is based on making people better - it was never started on philosophy, but on tribal healers. Medicine continues to have an iterative approach rather than worry about people living for ever.

~:smoking:

[Fisherking]

As for physics, the question of how the world works is too general. It is specified in the branches of physics (statics, dynamics, electricity, thermodynamics, quantum physics and so on). Each of them can boast of some results, i.e. laws that were discovered by scientists (Ohm's law, Joule Lenz law, Boyle Mariotte law, Newton laws, Faraday's law etc.). What about philosophy? Any laws to boast of? "All things come to pass, so no man ever steps in the same river twice"? One surely has to be a hell of a scientist to make such a conclusion.
The problem with philosophy is in asking too general questions and making too general conclusions. Such questions can't be answered and such conclusions don't require preliminary training, being an old and wise man will suffice.

As for medicine, compare its current achievements with those of the time of, say, Ibn Sina, and compare the "achievements" of philosophy of corresponding epochs.



So the only achievemnet of philosophy is in begetting all sciences? Then we should probably speak of philosophy as the first stage of all sciences' development. When special sciences stemmed from philosophy, the latter has fulfilled its purpose and has run its course. By now it "is tired and needs a nap".


I offered arguments to support my view (which, i.e. arguments, you so far failed to refute), you offer a description of my view. Discussions don't work in this way.

Philosophy is the study of the general and fundamental nature of reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.

It too has many branches. Each of your cited discoveries owe as much to philosophy as to any other branch of study.

Philosophy has only given us logic, reason, ethics, scientific methodology, all political persuasions, and all areas of study.

Those who say philosophy is useless have obviously failed in their critical thinking, in the same way a student fails when he says he has no possible use for algebra as it has no use in the real world.

Unknowingly they have adopted a personal philosophy lacking in judgement and reason.:crazy:

[Montmorency]

I'll reprint part of a relevant piece (https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2015/12/20/the-lingering-of-philosophy/) that basically organizes the confusion of the various perspectives presented here:


The ‘Death of Philosophy’ is something that circulates through arterial underbelly of culture with quite some regularity, a theme periodically goosed whenever high-profile scientific figures bother to express their attitudes on the subject. Scholars in the humanities react the same way stakeholders in any institution react when their authority and privilege are called into question: they muster rationalizations, counterarguments, and pejoratives. They rally troops with whooping war-cries of “positivism” or “scientism,” list all the fields of inquiry where science holds no sway, and within short order the whole question of whether philosophy is dead begins to look very philosophical, and the debate itself becomes evidence that philosophy is alive and well—in some respects at least.

The problem with this pattern, of course, is that the terms like ‘philosophy’ or ‘science’ are so overdetermined that no one ends up talking about the same thing. For physicists like Stephen Hawking or Lawrence Krauss or Neil deGrasse Tyson, the death of philosophy is obvious insofar as the institution has become almost entirely irrelevant to their debates. There are other debates, they understand, debates where scientists are the hapless ones, but they see the process of science as an inexorable, and yes, imperialistic one. More and more debates fall within its purview as the technical capacities of science improve. They presume the institution of philosophy will become irrelevant to more and more debates as this process continues. For them, philosophy has always been something to chase away. Since the presence of philosophers in a given domain of inquiry reliably indicates scientific ignorance to important features of that domain, the relevance of philosophers is directly related to the maturity of a science.

They have history on their side.

There will always be speculation—science is our only reliable provender of theoretical cognition, after all. The question of the death of philosophy cannot be the question of the death of theoretical speculation. The death of philosophy as I see it is the death of a particular institution, a discourse anchored in the tradition of using intentional idioms and metacognitive deliverances to provide theoretical solutions. I think science is killing that philosophy as we speak.

[Fisherking]

I'll reprint part of a relevant piece (https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2015/12/20/the-lingering-of-philosophy/) that basically organizes the confusion of the various perspectives presented here:

It's great. BUT They just don't understand irony.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Behold an unprovable (and therefore metaphysical) claim:

"science is our only reliable provender of theoretical cognition"

The author should have written

"science is our only currently available method of analysis of theoretical cognition"

Failure to understand the difference is the result of a lack of philosophical training - the inappropriate use of archaic words is just facile - provender is just an alternative for provider.

I'm sorry, but it was pitifully easy to kick the legs out from under that. The author is just engaging in philosophical masturbation, he's at least decades behind the argument.

[Montmorency]

The question of the death of philosophy cannot be the question of the death of theoretical speculation. The death of philosophy as I see it is the death of a particular institution, a discourse anchored in the tradition of using intentional idioms and metacognitive deliverances to provide theoretical solutions. I think science is killing that philosophy as we speak.

Would it kill you to read more than one sentence, PVC? And as a matter of fact, if he sounds "decades behind the argument" it is because he is a sort of neo-Nietzschean. Sadly for post-modernists and traditionalists alike, Nietzsche's use of metaphysics to destroy metaphysics has never been defeated - only disregarded.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Would it kill you to read more than one sentence, PVC? And as a matter of fact, if he sounds "decades behind the argument" it is because he is a sort of neo-Nietzschean. Sadly for post-modernists and traditionalists alike, Nietzsche's use of metaphysics to destroy metaphysics has never been defeated - only disregarded.

I read the whole thing - I only needed to quote one sentence to demonstrate how flawed his argument was.

Oh - incidentally that's insulting - and the sentence is near the end so I would have had to have read at least the entire preceding paragraphs.

This look over half an hour to write, so I expect a response of equal length:

Phille-Sophie

Love of Wisdom/Knowledge.

As I have repeatedly pointed out, in this thread and elsewhere over the last decade, what is today considered "philosophy" is actually a very small subset of philosophy concerned with Ethics and Metaphysics.

the writer is a Sophist, you can see that by the way he uses language. For example, "metacognitive" means "after thinking", it's a term that has been invented recently (I had to look it up) to describe the metaphysics of thought, and is supposed to mean "thinking about thinking" but that's not how he uses the term. He's using the term to mean "thinking about metaphysics" or thinking about metaphysical problems.

He's wrong on both ends because the question of how we know what we know is an important one to be aware of - and other metaphysical questions about the existence of the universe which extend from it are also important in ethics.

The person who wrote that peace is appealing to a system of thought that only encompasses enquiry of mechanical processes, i.e. Science.

Again I refer you to Ethics, Ethics is unlikely to be something which will "fall" to this "Imperialist" Science because it doesn't deal with quantifiable questions.

Look at his "argument" at the end.

You can boil it down to this paraphrase -

1. All thought processes are essentially the same, including self-reflective thought (meta congnition).

2. The mechanical structure of the world is largely inaccessible.

Here he's already made one redundant statement and one mistaken one - the mistake is to believe that the physical world's "mechanical structure" is accessible, it isn't. Moving on.

3. Cognition exploits systematic correlations—‘cues’—between those effects that can be accessed and the systems engaged to solve for those systems.

Errr.... Human being look for patterns. I confess I don't understand the second part "systems engaged to solve for those systems" I can't help but feel he's missed a clause here.

4. Cognition is heuristic.

​This simply means that humans solve problems by the most efficient method that achieves an answer, even if the answer is an approximation. Given that all our investigate methods are flawed this is another redundant statement. I think he's relating this to point three - which means that he's saying that human being look for patterns and then use the most expedient and efficiant method to explain those patterns.

So far so redundant.

5. Metacognition is the product of adventitious adaptations exploiting onboard information in various reproductively decisive ways.

OK, I think this is where he really lost me because Metacognition is self reflection. I suppose it has an advantage, evolutionarily speaking, it's the faculty that causes us to ask "If I'm this drunk is she really that hot or is the ale making he boobs look bigger". That being said this is not a provable statement, it's a side-swipe at organised religion and all self-reflective thought. He's attempting to reduce man's self reflection and his curiosity to a mechanical evolutionary advantage. That may be true, but you can't prove it.

so the argument falls here also.

6. The applicability of that ancestral information to second order questions regarding the nature of experience is highly unlikely.

​Self-reflection is not relevant to the question of the nature of experience. This is, remember, what "metacognition" actually mean - out self reflective ability. Any question of the "nature of experience" is necessarily purely self-reflective because it cannot be tested Scientifically. If I stop trusting my senses I cannot before any Scientific experiment where the results are read by sense.

You may argue that is not what he meant but that's his problem, he used these words in the formulation of his proof. Again, a lack of an understanding of metaphysics is the fault here.

7. The inability of intentionalism to agree on formulations, let alone resolve issues, evidences as much.

He has lost me completely - I need an explanation of "Intentionalism" as it relates to philosophy and metaphysics as opposed to literary criticism. In literature "Intentionalism" means that Shakespeare wrote Richard the III as a villain and therefore he should be read as one.

Leaving that aside though, the argument is full mangled words being all bent out of shape to conceal what I would say is a lack of an actual argument.

That's fine, it's in the best tradition of Sophistic arguments on Metaphysics but that doesn't change the fact that Protagoras killed Metaphysics with a single sentence over two and a half millenai ago and all we do now if pick over the corpse.

The sentence was "Man is the measure of all things, of things that are, that they are, of things that are not, that they are not."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protagoras

The point, essentially, is that human experience is universally variable and Science has been able to demonstrate evidence of this - we do not even perceive colours in the same way.

[Gilrandir]

Philosophy is the study of the general and fundamental nature of reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.

I like it!!!! Colors do enliven this too vague and abstract a thread.



It too has many branches. Each of your cited discoveries owe as much to philosophy as to any other branch of study.

Philosophy has only given us logic, reason, ethics, scientific methodology, all political persuasions, and all areas of study.

This is what I have said. The beginnings of theoretical thought aiming to answer the most general question "What is the world and what is the place of the human in it?" were called philosophy. It was an umbrella science and all scientists of that time were philosophers. When more specific questions about the world and the human were asked a number of specialized sciences branched from philosophy. They dug deeper and deeper into the nature of the objects they studied while philosophy, bereft of the applicability which was relegated to the offspring, was left with the initial question which it failed to answer, it being too general and vague. So it is now but an embalmed corpse whose past gave prodigious progeny and was therefore glorious but whose present is just pondering on the old glory.



Those who say philosophy is useless have obviously failed in their critical thinking, in the same way a student fails when he says he has no possible use for algebra as it has no use in the real world.

Unknowingly they have adopted a personal philosophy lacking in judgement and reason.:crazy:

Modern scientists get paid for:
1) doing research;
2) teaching their science.
Roughly speaking, a modern physicist discovers something in his lab, comes into the classroom and says: "Faraday said it was impossible, but look what I have done".
If modern philosophers can teach about the glory of the past, what research can they be doing? Will they discover anything new? They are only able to say: "Plato said it was impossible. Could be, or could be not".

So in my view, one studies philosophy to get to know what others claimed (without being able to prove or refute anything) and see how abstact human thought can be. To broaden one's outlook and enrich one's knowledge. The only use I can see in it.

As for the uselessness of algebra - ALL sciences may appear useful or useless depending on one's future plans. It is useless for a high school student who is going to be a linguist, but is useful for the one whose future major is physics or chemistry.

[Montmorency]

the writer is a Sophist, you can see that by the way he uses language. For example, "metacognitive" means "after thinking", it's a term that has been invented recently (I had to look it up) to describe the metaphysics of thought, and is supposed to mean "thinking about thinking" but that's not how he uses the term. He's using the term to mean "thinking about metaphysics" or thinking about metaphysical problems.

No, he does not. He uses it in the cognitive science sense, namely 'the cognition of cognition'. While for you that may sound like 'thinking about thinking', the author simply identifies metacognition as being the cognition taking itself as sensory input, to produce among other things the "experience" of consciousness.


He's wrong on both ends because the question of how we know what we know is an important one to be aware of - and other metaphysical questions about the existence of the universe which extend from it are also important in ethics.

The person who wrote that peace is appealing to a system of thought that only encompasses enquiry of mechanical processes, i.e. Science.

Again I refer you to Ethics, Ethics is unlikely to be something which will "fall" to this "Imperialist" Science because it doesn't deal with quantifiable questions.

You haven't even begun to grasp his position, so you complain that you can't understand the words that the author uses and from there circle around your self-regard to conclude that this must all be sophistry. Ethics is precisely what will be eliminated, and not because science will provide an alternative, but because science will obviate the human premises and conditions that give rise to it. His argument is strongly predicated around the very epistemological question you name.

Here's something you can read about "intention" (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intention/).

I'll help out by annotating the author's points (note however that these points refer to his broader theses and not to the linked article per se):

1) Human cognition only has access to the effects of the systems cognized.

In other words, we do not know how we know, but more specifically in the beginning we do not sense processes as such but rather disconnected 'pings'.

2) The mechanical structure of our environments is largely inaccessible.

He isn't talking about science, but what you might call "perception" and the "mental" construction of etiologies. If, per the previous point, we only sense isolated effects, then the mechanics (tantamount to causality) of environments is sensed not at all or negligibly.

3) Cognition exploits systematic correlations—‘cues’—between those effects that can be accessed and the systems engaged to solve for those systems.

Sensory information is integrated to form causal judgements.

4) Cognition is heuristic.

There is signal attenuation; causal judgment is frugal in formulation.

5) Metacognition is a form of cognition.

6) Metacognition also exploits systematic correlations—‘cues’—between those effects that can be accessed and the systems engaged to solve for those systems.

7) Metacognition is also heuristic.

(1)-(4) applied to metacognition, in the sense that where cognition "solves" for environmental (i.e. non-nervous) systems, metacognition "solves" for cognitive (i.e. nervous) systems.

8) Metacognition is the product of adventitious adaptations exploiting onboard information in various reproductively decisive ways.

9) The applicability of that ancestral information to second order questions regarding the nature of experience is highly unlikely.

If cognition cannot "answer a question regarding the nature of experience", then how could metacognition (which intrinsically has less information to go off of)?

10) The inability of intentionalism to agree on formulations, let alone resolve issues, evidences as much.

See: Protagoras.

11) Intentional cognition is a form of cognition.

12) Intentional cognition also exploits systematic correlations—‘cues’—between those effects that can be accessed and the systems engaged to solve for those systems.

13) Intentional cognition is also heuristic.

14) Intentional cognition is the product of adventitious adaptations exploiting available onboard information in various reproductively decisive ways.

15) The applicability of that ancestral information to second order questions regarding the nature of meaning is highly unlikely.

16) The inability of intentionalism to agree on formulations, let alone resolve issues, evidences as much.

Getting clearer?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

No, not at all.

It's entirely possible that my own philosophical lens is so far out of line with his that I simply can't make the imaginative leap to be able to understand his point, or I may lack the empathy necessary to make the leap.

The philosophical grounding for Ethics was eliminated millennia ago - the only arguments for Ethics today are "faith" and "benefit".

On the one hand you have the argument that God is Good etc. On the other hand you have the argument that an ethical system is the one that produces the most benefit for the greatest number of people.

Intellectually I don't think either argument holds up - on the one hand you don't know what God wants from you and on the other it's very difficult to find a "benefit" that is generally applicable.

The way you explain it makes it look like a complicated way of saying "I know I know nothing".

In any case I maintain he is engaging in Sophisty when he uses words like "provender" instead of "source".

Perhaps an example would help.

Sticking with Ethics for the moment - how will Science make it irrelevant?

[Montmorency]

I've gone into the broader topic of this author's philosophy before here and between his writing and my elaborations most people gave up pretty fast.

To make it narrow and simple for


how will Science make it irrelevant?

By his thesis of a "Semantic Apocalypse", science will increasingly discredit human self-understanding, while producing the technology able to fundamentally alter or replace the physiological processes that lead us into this discussion, while fostering economic and political conditions in which such technology become widespread and the Anthropic Principle brought to obsolescence. If I had to write a mock-tagline for a movie, I might say:


THE DIALECTICAL DIALECTIC OF THE POSTHUMAN

In the beginning, there was nothing new under the sun. In the end, there will be nothing old.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Ah, Hell.

Not a fan - and I don't call it "Hell" to be flippant either.

I also don't think it's possible - the post-human utopia is just that, it's not human and it's not anywhere you'll ever find on a map.

I also don't see why this would be desirable.

I could write more but you might as well just read "Brave New World" or "Forever Free".

[Montmorency]

No no no, the point is not a specific social or political outcome, but a passing of Human civilization and experience.

Here (https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/alien-philosophy-2/):


The highest species concept may be that of a terrestrial rational being; however, we shall not be able to name its character because we have no knowledge of non-terrestrial rational beings that would enable us to indicate their characteristic property and so to characterize this terrestrial being among rational beings in general. It seems, therefore, that the problem of indicating the character of the human species is absolutely insoluble, because the solution would have to be made through experience by means of the comparison of two species of rational being, but experience does not offer us this. (Kant: Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, 225)

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

You think the End of Humanity isn't Hell?

A rather obvious answer to his question would be the way we treat Whales, we're fairly certain they're sentient but we still kill and eat them. It's unlikely we'll even recognise or acknowledge alien sentience if we encounter it unless it's so similar to our own that it doesn't fundamentally challenge our modes of thought.

[HopAlongBunny]

You think the End of Humanity isn't Hell?

A rather obvious answer to his question would be the way we treat Whales, we're fairly certain they're sentient but we still kill and eat them. It's unlikely we'll even recognise or acknowledge alien sentience if we encounter it unless it's so similar to our own that it doesn't fundamentally challenge our modes of thought.

Nice but you didn't go far enough. Whales? Why not just the poor. To be excluded from ethical thought (in a practical not abstract context) it is enough that we do not belong to the same "tribe" within society.
I think Nietzsche had something to say on this point.

[a completely inoffensive name]

The beauty of philosophy is partly because of seemingly intractable questions.

It's a constant exercise in assessing the limitations of our knowledge and the assumptions we use when we make value judgments.

This pop-sci "IT WORKS BITCHES" garbage is going to self detonate eventually and real science will unfairly be caught in the cross-fire.

[Greyblades]

The things discussed in this thread both confuse and scare me.

[Gilrandir]

As for the uselessness of algebra - ALL sciences may appear useful or useless depending on one's future plans. It is useless for a high school student who is going to be a linguist, but is useful for the one whose future major is physics or chemistry.

I would like to take my words on the useleseness of mathematics back:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a18899/mathematicians-create-new-models-perfectly-slice-pizza/