From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!christo Thu Feb 20 15:20:52 EST 1992
Article 3741 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: MUST Philosopy be a Waste of Time?
Message-ID: <1992Feb14.175653.13010@psych.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <403@tdatirv.UUCP> <1992Feb11.190201.20670@psych.toronto.edu> <409@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1992 17:56:53 GMT

In article <409@tdatirv.UUCP> sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>In article <1992Feb11.190201.20670@psych.toronto.edu> christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green) writes:
>|In article <403@tdatirv.UUCP> sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>|>
>|>This is why I do not accept *anything* said by a philosopher that does not
>|>have at least *some* observational basis.
>|>
>|Poor guy. Then you must not believe in modus ponens, or the law of 
>|contradiction. It's astounding that you survive the day. :-)
>
>I would consider those as being more in the way of mathematics than pure
>philosophy.
>
You would be wrong. The tradition has been to attempt to understand math
as a branch of logic (e.g., Frege), not the other way around. In any case,
mathematics is certainly closer to philosophy
than it is to science (by virtue of its rationalist basis).

>Besides, I only 'believe' them when I am doing classical bimodal logic,
>when I am reasoning using real-valued logic (also called fuzzy logic) they
>are *not* true.

Irrelevant. Pick your "one true logic" as you see fit. In any case its
theorem will be necessary, and necessity cannot be observed.  
>
>
>|>I would pay more attention to one scientist than any number of philosophers.
>|
>|And tell me, How did that scientist get his theory of knowledge, or his
>|theory of truth? Or is he, like most scientists, pretty fuzzy on both
>|concepts.
>
>Probably, since in actual practice neither really contribute much to how
>science is actually done.
>
Come now. Surely the scientist has ontological and epistemological commitments
going in. If now, how would s/he know what to look for or how to find it.
Implicit comitments I'll buy. No commitments I won't. Those commitments
are the beginning of philosophy. What philosophers do that scientists
don't is they try to make their commitments explicit so that they can be
examined and criticized. 

>Most decent scientists are essentially pragmatists, they go with what works,
>and the scientific method has an excellent track record in that regard,
>independent of any philosphical bases.
>
I think history's against you here. Certainly Copernicus, Galileo, Newton,
and Einstein were anything but pragmatists. Moreover, pragmatism is a 
philosophy (see Peirce, James, Dewey, and Mead).

>Or you might say that most scientists have a theory of truth rather like:
>"If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, it must
>be a duck".  In short, if a model works, act like its true until it doesn't.
>
This is a lousy epistemology (atoms looked like solar systems to Bohr,
but he, you, and I knew that weren't). Besides, I don't think anyone
since Ayer has been this complete an instrumentalist. Scientists, rightly
or wrongly, believe their theories to be true, not just convenient fictions
or inference tickets. What they often don't have, is the philosophical
tools necesssary to analyse and criticize this position, and that's what
they need, and to get that you need philosophy. 
 
>| Does he have any ethics?
> Most do, I think.

And how do they (you) get them. Through reflection and thought,
i.e., philosophy.

>|Does he wonder about his conceptual
>|distinctions (like between matter and non-matter)?
>
>Why is this even relevant to science?  What matters is observables.

Wrongorooney! What matter is theories. Without theories observable are
just socks in you drawer. Theories are built of terms, which express concepts.
Wrong concepts: wrong thoery: wrong science.
>
>The bottom line is, I trust a scientific result because the scientific approach
>has shown itself to be reliable in the past.
>
Astrology could (and does) say the same thing. So does scientology. And
a host of other gobbledegook. In order to assess these claims we need
critical faculties. These are developed in philsophy. They are, in fact,
the basis of philosophy. You will claim that scientists are critical
and rational as well. Fine. That's because science is really no more
than applied empirical philosophy. Its important to keep in mind, however,
that empiricism IS a philosophy.

>I do not trust pure reason because it has so often lead to useless results.
>It is too easily mislead by incorrect asumptions or isolated false data.
>Science, because it is self-correcting, is not so gullible.

Philosophy's not self-correcting? Science hasn't made egreious errors in
the past. To use Dave Chalmer's favorite phrase, I think we're dealing
with someone in the grip of an ideaology here.


-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
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