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: What is science, what is philosophy? Message-ID: <844@klipper.cs.vu.nl> Date: Thu, 6-Aug-87 05:16:58 EDT Article-I.D.: klipper.844 Posted: Thu Aug 6 05:16:58 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 8-Aug-87 09:56:02 EDT References: <3219@eagle.ukc.ac.uk> <825@klipper.cs.vu.nl> Reply-To: biep@cs.vu.nl (J. A. "Biep" Durieux) Distribution: world Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam Lines: 99 [Reactions to areticles of Sarge Gerbode, Frank Adams and Robin Faichney. Bob Myers, I am not forgetting you, just still busy working out my article.] To Sarge Gerbode: Does every science try to arrive at universal laws? Do you consider taxonomy (e.g. in biology) a science? Archaeology? Paleontology? I don't know quite what you hide under "empirical", but I have a feeling there is a lot of methodological stuff over there, about how to set up experiments, what logic to use, etc. E.g. I suppose it will include the rule "let rational arguments prevale over emotional ones". But then again, perhaps you catch those things with "general consensus" (so if most people preferred some sort of emotional argument, that would be scientific too, since there would be a general consensus). But then again, perhaps I am plain wrong with all this. -- To Frank Adams: I don't know how biased my view of mathematics is, having a masters in it (which might constitute a very valid cause of bias!). My teachers have always warned me not to take anything for granted without being aware of doing so. And read the start of the Principia Mathematica, where the "proofs" are not used to make the result credible, but, the result already being credible, to make the (their) notion of "proof" credible. But I yield you, that most mathematicians will most of the time take things for granted, in the sense most Christians will most of the time (outside praying, Bible studies, etc - also the math.ians outside studying the fundamentals) not think about God: they are just too busy doing other things. But if you ask them... Perhaps it's just the somewhat philosophical nature of the university (Leiden) that made me being warned. -- To Robin Faichney: [While re-reading the following I get the impression it sounds very negative and attacking. It isn't meant a such; I just try to find holes in the de- finition in the hope someone can come up with either additional clauses, or a split in the definition ("in fact there are two notions 'philosophy', one that...") or just a new definition. Of course, if you just answer "I don't consider all those things proper philosophy", then the duscussion is over, too.] >Philosophy is the activity of attempting to discover and/or propagate >conceptual truths > >where a conceptual truth is one which is true by definition (a tautology) or >whose logical premises are conceptual truths. > >Thus formal logic, when dealing only with concepts, is the `purest' form of >philosophy. Other forms of philosophy are less formal, but (hopefully) still >logical methods of juggling concepts. Before the rise of experimental >methodology, all serious thinking was philosophical. (Which is not to say >that it was good philosophy.) When a branch of philosophy began to have >(or be capable of having) its theories tested by experimentation, it became >a science. I like the part about concepts, but don't feel happy with the notion of "truth", especially in the way you link it with logics. I think in this way you cut off the more fundamental parts of philosophy. What about thinking about whether "truth" is a valid notion? What about ethics, aesthetics? Of course, logicians have tried to set up deontic and other logics, but then again, an aestheticist might view truth in terms of beauty. In a former article you accused someone of provincialism; take care of not falling into logicians' provincialism. [Is provincialism the right word? I mean the stand of seeing ones own ideas, discipline, etc. better than others'] If you succeed describing reality in terms of models and truth, and I succeed in describing it in terms of good and bad, or of ugly and beautiful, or whatever, who says your description is better? What about (Hegel-like) dialectic philosophers? Or those who try to explain why other forms of logic are better than dialectical "logic"? Or do you have a broad definition of logic that encompasses many (if not all) of these examples? >The Concise Oxford English Dictionary: [longish definition, in fact several] >This to me is an outdated and/or laymans definition of the word. I suppose the task the COED tries to fulfill is to describe what the general speaker of English means with a certain word. As such, the (deleted) defini- tion(s) may be quite OK. >My definition is (hopefully) that of a modern philosopher. >(Perhaps I should say - a British/American academic philosopher.) Is there such an agreement among them? Could I equate them (more or less) with the old logical positivists? -- Biep. (biep@cs.vu.nl via mcvax) But who said I was right??