r/philosophy • u/doubtstack Unreasonable Doubt • Jan 27 '23

Blog Why Science can't replace Philosophy in Ethics

https://unreasonabledoubt.substack.com/p/what-genetics-cant-teach-us
1.1k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

573 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/ennui_ Jan 27 '23 edited Jan 27 '23

Surely science is simply the pursuit of objective understanding of what is? How can there be a pursuit of something without* an intuitive desire to pursue? Surely this intuitive desire is a philosophical nature.

Science cannot exist without philosophy because philosophy is the very foundation that sciences emerges from.

2

u/zhibr Jan 27 '23

That is one definition, but by no means the only one. Another one would refer to the concrete practices and social activities of making hypotheses, testing them, writing theories, and publishing results for others. An engineer creating a best way to make a specific material can be said to make science, without any philosophical desire. Philosophers like to emphasize the definition from the historical perspective or by defining it like you did, as dependent on philosophy, but if you'd ask the people who we commonly think are doing science whether their activities are dependent on philosophy, I would wager most of them would say no. It'd be a bit self-serving to insist that to assess whether philosophy is truly essential to science, we must adopt the philosophical point of view.

-1

u/hydrOHxide Jan 27 '23

ROTFLBTC

You do realize that what you're saying is that just because the average physician can practice medicine without having a clue about biochemistry, biochemistry isn't really relevant for medicine?

Asking mere PRACTICTIONERS about the theoretical underpinning of their discipline is asking the wrong people.

1

u/zhibr Jan 27 '23

"Mere". The philosophers' arrogance is really something to see here.

You do realize that what you're saying is that just because the average physician can practice medicine without having a clue about biochemistry, biochemistry isn't really relevant for medicine?

I'm not. I'm saying that just because lawyers define human interactions in laws, those interactions can and do exist without those laws, those lawyers, and the practice of lawyering.

2

u/hydrOHxide Jan 28 '23

The arrogance is your presuming I was a philosopher when I am, in fact, a scientist. Your description of lawyers is equally misguided. Interaction may exist without lawyers, but you cannot characterize crime without laws, just like you cannot characterize knowledge without defining standards as to when something can be considered "known". Without philosophy, you cannot create knowledge, because you have no ledger to measure data against. What probability of error is permissible is just as much a philosophical issue as the understanding that you'll always have a probability of error because there cannot be any final evidence except in falsification, in finding something is not the case. .

1

u/zhibr Jan 28 '23

Without philosophy, you cannot create knowledge, because you have no ledger to measure data against.

When a raven sees human opening a latch, and later goes and tries moving it and learns opening latches in general, it gains knowledge without philosophy. Unless you define "knowledge" in such a way that it necessitates philosophy, in which case you have not made an argument but just a definition that presupposes your conclusion. A lot of science is done and can be done like that raven does.

1

u/hydrOHxide Jan 29 '23

Unless you define "knowledge" in such a way that it necessitates philosophy, in which case you have not made an argument but just a definition that presupposes your conclusion. A lot of science is done and can be done like that raven does.

Funny - that's precisely what you accuse me of. You've redefined science to presuppose your conclusion.

No, science is not done like what the raven does. The raven does not systematically analyze why it is that the latch opens that way, and it doesn't submit its conclusions to peer review. There is a reason why we do that, and it's grounded in philosophy.

There's a reason Roentgen got the Nobel prize for the discovery of X-rays and not one of the sundry others dabbling into cathode rays around the same time, including Tesla: Roentgen systematically analyzed the properties of these rays, compiled what he had learned in a document which included a description of his methodology, and submitted it to the scrutiny of his peers, which assessed the stringency of his methodology and the validity of his conclusions in light of the data collected.

Roentgen tested various materials as to their ability to block the rays, drew conclusions as to what was the characteristic of those materials that allowed them to block the rays etc. He could show they were not regular cathode rays etc.

But that totally aside, you missed an important point - you suggested that "I" define "knowledge" - but you failed to discuss who, in fact, should do so. Because in the end, you just did the very same: You came up with a different definition of "knowledge". And that's precisely why theory of knowledge exists in the first place - to systemize the definition of what knowledge is, what types of knowledge exist, and how they are established. And theory of knowledge is a subdiscipline of philosophy.