Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!mcvax!botter!klipper!biep From: biep@cs.vu.nl (J. A. "Biep" Durieux) Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech Subject: Re: Do philosophers need defending? Message-ID: <831@klipper.cs.vu.nl> Date: Tue, 28-Jul-87 14:19:19 EDT Article-I.D.: klipper.831 Posted: Tue Jul 28 14:19:19 1987 Date-Received: Thu, 30-Jul-87 06:50:23 EDT References: <3219@eagle.ukc.ac.uk> <825@klipper.cs.vu.nl> <3227@eagle.ukc.ac.uk> Reply-To: biep@cs.vu.nl (J. A. "Biep" Durieux) Distribution: world Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam Lines: 129 In article <3227@eagle.ukc.ac.uk> rjf@ukc.ac.uk (Robin Faichney) writes: >In article <825@klipper.cs.vu.nl> I wrote: >>Now I would wish more people dug into the philosophical basis >>of that methodology, so that they would become a little less confident in >>yelling "it's scientifically proven!". >Does this mean 'significantly less confident in a significant number of >cases'? If so, it seems to me obviously false. I don't know what "significantly less confident" means. Do you have a confidence metric? Anyway, I did mean the significant number of cases, and I did mean "clearly less confident, I would be happy with every bit". Can you explain what you think is false and why you think so? Generally, Bob Myers catched what I meant, I got the impression. >If not, why say it? I didn't say it. I said what I said, and I didn't say what *you* said. Or didn't you mean "it" to refer to your paraphrase? If it refers to my original statement, it reduces to: I: you: Do you mean ? If not, why say ? In short: I think I don't grasp you here. >>reflecting (is that the right word?) >I hope that is not the right word. OK, then it is not the right word. Let me try to explain (something to which I start feeling utterly incapable): In an "ideal" world, where methodology for every science is complete, scientific work is just applying the rules of the methodology for that realm of science: which experiments to perform, which hypotheses to consider, all is prescribed by the rules. I called this "when philosophy is ready" (as far as methodology is considered, that is...). So, ultimately, scientific work is not creative (I hope I now have found the word..). Of course at the moment it is, since philosophers aren't ready yet constructing methodologies, and aren't even sure some "final" methodology is possible at all (it may very well not be). Philosophy, however, must be creative, since it has to *find* the very rules by which to abide when thinking and doing. >>there is no philosophical methodology (there can't be: how would >>that methodology be justified? By itself?).. > >Your assumption here is that philosophy is some sort of monolithic precursor >to everything else. Nothing monolithic, but in my first article I restricted myself, when saying "philosophy", to purely those parts of it that formed the fundament of science. (Remember: I listed: (1) Does anything at all (God?) exist; (2) Do I exist; (3) Does an "outside" exist, etc., and made some remarks about changing the order of the first two.) So by definition philosophy became a precursor to science. Remember also that my first note was directed to some people having trouble with the word "science", not to philosophers. And if I say philosophy has no methodology: a scientist cannot challenge the methodology of his discipline without leaving science (not just his disci- pline) and becoming a philosopher. A scientist can (and has to) take the dictate of his methodology as the last word. A philosopher may have rules he obeys in his work, but he cannot take them for granted, he has to support them (if only by saying "aren't they convincing?"). A scientist may take an empirical fact, apply some mathematical theorem on it, and say "well, that theorem is *proven*". A mathematician has to challenge the proof, to look for the presuppositions, and to convince himself, to persuade himself (no rules) it is true (or not). For a mathematician nothing is ever proven, the proofs can only become more convincing. Of course a mathematician can consider the axioms of (some) logic very convincing (I don't really, by the way, but that's another problem), but he cannot use the fact that logicians have proven something as an absolute (most do, however, even if they say they shouldn't. The same way as most mathematical theorems aren't ever proven, only convincing outlines of proofs are given. A proof in the logical sense would be too long, dull and fatiguing). [I guess I should have put quotation marks around "proof" in the above.] Then again, whenever I say "a philosopher should(n't)", some philosopher will come and say "I don't think so". If I say philosophy has no methodology, I mean that in the sense mathematics has no methodology. Of course there are methods and rules, but as Goedel showed for mathematics) a philosophical field may "turn over itself", in a sense (I don't know how to say this), and show itself wrong. Compare this with the way physics showed the deterministic world view wrong with QM. >Some things are essentially practical. (I'd say one of these is >science, but I'm not going to argue that here.) We could start a discussion on what "practical" means (to a philosopher), but I propose that in that case we should start it under another header, and completely separated from this one. (Might be interesting, by the way.) >The fact that that methodology cannot be completely and precisely defined, >(and more to the point: is not familiar to the layman) does not mean it >does not exist. Then what is your definition of methodology? To me, if a methodology cannot be stated, it is none. Indeed, most (I suspect all) sciences only have partial methodologies, but in as far as they exist they can be stated precisely. >I repeat: make sure you know about something before attempting to enlighten >us all about it. What exactly did I misdo you, that you fell so heavily over me? :-) What was triggering you in my first two messages? That I attributed methodology (and mathematics) to philosophy, and not to science? That I showed otherwise paradoxes like the Occams razor one would occur? That I admitted (I don't know to whom any more) that philosophy was more prone to paradoxes than science? That I said this was because philosophers were working "below the line"? I think long point-by-point rebuttals of long point-by-point rebuttals of ... will only bore the readers of s.p.t., and detract from whatever it was that caused you to react in the first place. I propose that if we decide to continue on that, we'll do it by email, and that an explication on the original point of disagreement (whatever it was) can be done in this newsgroup. Our rebuttals move too fast, there is no static topic. BTW, where I just skipped some of your points, unless I missed the intent I agreed. -- Biep. (biep@cs.vu.nl via mcvax) General-purpose hardware is great! Now I can change my mind without changing my brain!