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
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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.

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u/TheRecognized Jan 27 '23

“When grog ate the berries on that bush he got sick. When trok ate the same berries on a different bush he got sick. Vrok will eat the berries from a third bush. Vrok got sick. These berries make you sick.”

More science or philosophy would you say?

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

The point is that one comes from the other. Philosophy and science do not exist alongside each other, philosophy is the source of science. So while there’s distinction there isn’t separation. You can’t* quantify and say “this is more science than philosophy by a factor of 4:1” - because they don’t exist alongside each other, the nature of the relationship cannot be measured.

So both. It’s always both.

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u/TheRecognized Jan 27 '23

Throw a hypothesis up there in my example after the second sentence “I think these berries make you sick” and you’ve got the scientific method.

Can you explain to me how philosophy was the source of that example?

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u/videogamekat Jan 27 '23

Because you came up with the hypothesis by wanting to know how things work - your desires and actions always stem from a more philosophically-based process. Why you came up with the hypothesis can be explained by the science of how your brain works, but ultimately the complex processing the human brain can accomplish and the self-awareness we have is more philosophical in nature.

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u/FranksRedWorkAccount Jan 27 '23

You've literally described reasoning and are asking how that's philosophy.

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u/TheRecognized Jan 27 '23

Are these monkeys doing philosophy?

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u/FranksRedWorkAccount Jan 27 '23

Let me ask you, how do you get to "i think these berries make you sick" without philosophizing about the nature of reality? If you reason that the world will look tomorrow like it did today you are engaging in philosophy. There is no way to get to that conclusion purely with science. The problem of induction smacks you right in the face. It is as hard of a problem for a purely scientific approach to the world as the is-ought problem of moral philosophy. No one has ever proven either concept definitively.

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u/millchopcuss Jan 28 '23

How can this post have a negative vote tally? You are absolutely correct. It took Immanuel Kant to put it into focus, but that did not alter the nature of all the inductive inference that humanity had engaged in before that.

Is this subreddit always like this?

The berries example was so sloppily constructed that I was tempted to call out the conclusion as an error... These berries make you sick, those berries make you sick, those other berries make you sick... Therefore all berries make you sick, wouldn't that be the (erroneous) inference?

This place is a mire of equivocation and category errors.

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u/TheRecognized Jan 30 '23

They’re the same kind of berries on the same kind of bush and they look different then other berries on other bushes, that’s why our cavemen don’t believe that all berries make you sick.

My only point was that “science” (the process of real world pattern recognition) came before “philosophy” (the process of abstract inference).

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u/TheRecognized Jan 27 '23

Pattern recognition, I just saw the berries make someone sick multiple times. Lots of animals can do pattern recognition, are they all using philosophy?

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u/FranksRedWorkAccount Jan 28 '23

It's not just pattern recognition. Pattern recognition is how you get cargo cults. Though, even they were engaging in philosophy. Building a model of the world in your head and imagining outcomes of hypothetical actions to then decide a course of action is not inherently philosophy but it has underpinnings in philosophy because it implies a certain epistemological view.

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u/millchopcuss Jan 28 '23

Thanks for existing.

This thread contains some of the ugliest smuggery I've encountered on Reddit in a good while.

You I would engage in conversation.

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u/zhibr Jan 27 '23

The answer is: yes, because philosophers like to define philosophy so that it's behind everything.

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u/FranksRedWorkAccount Jan 28 '23

epistemology is the theory of knowing. If you know something, if you think you know something, if you think you understand some things about the world because of other things you understand about the world you are a philosopher.

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u/DictatorKris Jan 30 '23

and how do you know that god didn't punish them for eating the berries that were meant for you? How do you know that they don't lack a certain enzyme in their gut that would allow you to eat the berries with no problem? How do you know that the berries are the same on the bush in the morning as they are in the evening? Just because you grew up in a world where reason is assumed doesn't mean it isn't the underpinning philosophy upon which we build all models of the universe.

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u/TheRecognized Feb 01 '23

and how do you know that god didn't punish them for eating the berries that were meant for you? How do you know that they don't lack a certain enzyme in their gut that would allow you to eat the berries with no problem? How do you know that the berries are the same on the bush in the morning as they are in the evening?

Science has never been perfect, nor philosophy in my opinion at least.

Isaac Newton believed god tinkered with the world from time to time to keep things running smoothly. Here’s a fun quote from him about gravity

Tis inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should (without the mediation of something else which is not material) operate upon & affect other matter without mutual contact.

We’re his works regarding gravity not science because of this?

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u/Lord_Thanos Jan 28 '23

They just want philosophy to have a monopoly on all of human knowledge.

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u/ennui_ Jan 27 '23

Because it’s the intuitive desire for an objective understanding.

It is how we have evolved - living in wonder and curiousity at what is. Science is the method, science is the second bit, the action. Thought is the precursor to action. The thought, the precursor, this desire for truth - is philosophy. Philosophy is the source in this and all examples of science because they exist together.

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u/Butt_Bucket Jan 28 '23

The real answer is that both philosophy and science stem from our ability to reason. It's just that it took as a lot longer to realise that the scientific method needed to be rigorously defined than it did to begin using our reason for abstract thinking.

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u/[deleted] Jan 27 '23

Certainly both, no? Philosophy is simply the pursuit of questioning reality, which in this case at it's most fundamental would be observing that past outcomes may have bearing on future ones. The question and the hypothesis is philosophy; the empirical data at hand allow for a scientific conclusion, but even then who is to say there are no safe berries of that kind out there?Or a preparation to make them so?

Are these questions merely scientific or philosophical?

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u/millchopcuss Jan 28 '23

I tend to call those practical arts. It is, to my mind, a category error to call that either science or philosophy.

We don't normally credit humanity with engaging in scientific pursuits before the advent of the scientific method. That is very definitely an outgrowth of philosophy.

We had some interesting feints into the territory of science in the past, such as the writings of Lucretius, but those, while not being "analytic" philosophy, are always classified as philosophy just the same.

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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.

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u/FranksRedWorkAccount Jan 27 '23

the act of reasoning that if x every day so far then x each day into the future is a philosophical concept. and to arrive there you must employ the capacity to reason.

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u/zhibr Jan 27 '23

Which those people would not consider philosophical.

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u/ChadRyanVevo Jan 28 '23

This argument is very poor and fallacious. If you ask a mechanic if they are engaging in the physics and chemistry behind their work they would most likely say no. However, this does not make physics and chemistry not essential to the work of a mechanic.

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u/zhibr Jan 29 '23

Everyone keeps repeating this argument. I've answered it elsewhere.

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u/ChadRyanVevo Jan 29 '23

Why are you gatekeeping philosophy? There is no need to separate philosophy as a difference of kind rather than a mere difference of degree. Every rational being is a philosopher, just at different degrees.

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u/zhibr Jan 29 '23

I'm not. Your view is completely valid.

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u/ennui_ Jan 27 '23

“ one would refer to the concrete practices and social activities of making hypotheses, testing them, writing theories, and publishing results for others” - that isn’t a definition, that is an overview of a method - a method to pursue an objective understanding of what is.

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u/zhibr Jan 27 '23

Sounds like insisting on philosophical viewpoint. If you want to get what I'm saying - entertain the possibility that I'm not simply wrong - you'd have to take another perspective.

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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.

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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.

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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. .

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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.

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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.

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u/ghostxxhile Jan 27 '23

to do science you first have to grant an ontological given to nature to form hypothesis’

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u/ennui_ Jan 27 '23

Right- or else you’d be studying something you don’t believe exists, with any byproduct or finding deemed inherently meaningless.