[memling]

> The comment advocated that scientists should profess to be philosophers.

This context is helpful, thanks.

I didn't advocate anything. I said that it bothers me is that (some) scientists profess not to be philosophers. This is because, in fact, scientists, like all people, actually are philosophers.

> It is because I saw the comment as being part of the genre of people who attempt to raise the status of their field

My field is not philosophy.

> by laying an unwarranted claim to the accomplishments of others.

Neither did I make any claims in my original comment. You seem to have extrapolated quite a lot from a single sentence.

> Philosophy and philosophers do not deserve credit for the accomplishments of science.

The origin of science is obviously philosophical; indeed, Western science is theological in origin (and so is Eastern if you want to broaden your definition of theology a bit). It is equally obvious, if perhaps a bit ironic, that modern science has distanced itself from its earlier foundations.

[btilly]

To the extent that all people are considered philosophers, the claim that person X is a philosopher is meaningless, and therefore is a statement that is not worth making. Just as I do not constantly go around identifying myself with, "human, primate, born on planet Earth, circling the star Sol, in the Milky Way galaxy..." Those statements are true but provide no useful information to anyone distinguishing me from anyone else.

To the extent that "philosopher" is identified with the practice of philosophy as discussed and practiced in philosophy departments, it is a meaningful identifier. But also *SHOULD NOT* be applied to most scientists. For similar reasons, the historical theological roots of early scientists does not make modern fields like chemistry into branches of theology.

As for science distancing itself from its earlier foundations, there is nothing ironic about it. In fact that act is essential to how science as a field operates. The purpose of a scientific education is to indoctrinate the student with the norms, values and knowledge of current scientific paradigms that will allow the student to operate within, extend, challenge, and hopefully improve those paradigms. Exposing the student to the details of outdated approaches only to explain why they became outdated is an activity of limited use, and therefore we strictly limit how many such examples students must learn. And even for those we do not explain previous ideas in detail. What purpose is there in explaining to students who must learn inertia, Aristotle's ideas that all things naturally come to rest? Why would we bother explaining the history of attempts to find mechanisms for and explanations of Noah's Flood to students who are about to learn about the Ice Ages and that Noah's Flood didn't happen?

The first clear description that I know of for this process comes from Thomas Kuhn's book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. At the time he was a physicist who had developed an interest in the history of science. He implicitly assumed a shared context with the reader. People who have mastered a hard science generally have that context. I have that context, and found the book delightful.

Unfortunately after writing that book, he spent a lot of time responding to creative misunderstandings of his work from philosophers who lacked that context. I found little value in those criticisms, or in his responses. Yet another example of how I've found a lack of value in philosophy as practiced by philosophers.

[memling]

> To the extent that all people are considered philosophers, the claim that person X is a philosopher is meaningless

If ideas had no consequences, this might be true; but since ideas do have consequences, this is probably not true.

> For similar reasons, the historical theological roots of early scientists does not make modern fields like chemistry into branches of theology.

A theologian might disagree with you about this. How would you go about demonstrating that this opinion is incorrect?

> As for science distancing itself from its earlier foundations, there is nothing ironic about it. In fact that act is essential to how science as a field operates.

Scientific progress suggests that we produce more theoretically plausible interpretations of phenomena. As we do that, we often undercut or discard the axioms that produce these new theories: that is what is ironic.

[btilly]

> If ideas had no consequences, this might be true; but since ideas do have consequences, this is probably not true.

Let's start with the idea, "If all A's are B's, then there is no information contained in 'x is a B' that is not also contained in 'x is an A'."

It's a pretty important idea. It goes back to Aristotle. Anyone who professes to think that philosophy is important should be familiar with it.

Its consequence is that if all humans are philosophers, then there is no information we can extract from the label "philosopher" that is not already contained in the label "human". And therefore calling individual humans philosophers would therefore convey no useful information.

But attempting to apply generic labels IS useful for a well-known fallacy - the fallacy of equivocation. This is where the same term is used with two different meanings in different parts of the same argument. For example an ontological argument can produce a generic definition of God, then argue for its existence. And then proceeds to argue for a Christian God on the basis of characteristics we implicitly associate with the idea of God, DESPITE those characteristics not being part of the definition just used.

Therefore the attempt to apply unnecessary labels can lead us into logical fallacies. Such as arguing that everyone should be called a philosopher, then arguing about how philosophers should behave, then arguing that everyone should behave that way. And failing to note that the definition of "philosopher" changed between the first and second parts of the argument.

Given that the most likely consequence of calling everyone a philosopher is falling into logical fallacies, we should not assert a trivial definition of philosopher such that everyone is a philosopher.

> A theologian might disagree with you about this. How would you go about demonstrating that this opinion is incorrect?

I would argue from the meaning of the words used.

Theology is the study of the nature of the divine. To the extent that a scientist believes that they are revealing the nature of the divine from their study of the natural world, they are engaged in theology. However to the extent that the scientist makes no attempt to draw conclusions of the nature of the divine from their studies of the natural world, they are NOT engaged in theology.

Modern chemists seldom try to draw any conclusions either way about the nature of the divine from their work. Therefore the study of modern chemistry is not a branch of theology.

To the extent that theologians attempt to draw conclusions of the nature of the divine from chemistry, those theologians must be engaged in theology. But modern chemists will generally agree that those attempts are not part of the field of chemistry. And so, again, modern chemistry and theology are separated.

> Scientific progress suggests that we produce more theoretically plausible interpretations of phenomena. As we do that, we often undercut or discard the axioms that produce these new theories: that is what is ironic.

And what axioms would those be?

Science did not begin to become science until it threw away a lot of Aristotle's bad ideas. Other ideas of his were not thrown out, but have generally proven to be irrelevant. The logic used in practice by science owes rather more to people like George Boole, Thomas Bayes and Ronald Fisher than Aristotle. And students are more likely to encounter said logic in a mathematics course than a philosophy one.

That said, it is trivially true that the way that science is carried out demonstrates that they have adopted an implicit philosophy. But that philosophy was mostly developed by scientists themselves, and I've never seen it accurately described by philosophers.

This is not to say that philosophers have not tried. For example Karl Popper attempted to opine on how science must be done, and came up with his famous falsifiability criterion. This theory is laughably wrong. Scientists have known for many decades that one or both of currently accepted theories about general relativity and quantum mechanics must be false. And yet neither has been thrown out.

Nor is this merely a comment about how scientists fail to operate as Popper would like. POPPER HIMSELF attempted to do scientific work, and POPPER failed to behave as Popper claimed that scientists should. Very specifically, Popper to the end of his life refused to accept evidence that quantum mechanical particles do not have a precise position or momentum. And contributed decades of papers about experiments that he hoped would prove quantum mechanics wrong, and his ideas right. Eventually the experiments were done and, as was generally expected, Popper was wrong.

This was no surprise. By this point mainstream physics had long accepted not just uncertain position and momentum, but were happily using Feynman diagrams to organize calculations that included virtual particles with possible (but uncertain) temporary existence.

Even today, philosophers continue to opine on falsification despite the fact that falsification has long been falsified as a description of science. They are not alone. Some scientists like to muse on this and related topics. But when they return to their real work, they mostly ignore the giant contradictions between the theory and practice of science. So the best thing that I can say about it is that little harm is done.

[memling]

> Let's start with the idea, "If all A's are B's, then there is no information contained in 'x is a B' that is not also contained in 'x is an A'."

All humans are primates, but not all primates are human: the two ideas are not interchangeable. I'm not equivocating; I'm simply saying that it bothers me when people who implicitly philosophize think or say that they are not.

> That said, it is trivially true that the way that science is carried out demonstrates that they have adopted an implicit philosophy. But that philosophy was mostly developed by scientists themselves, and I've never seen it accurately described by philosophers.

That a truth is trivial does not make it self-evident.

Methodological naturalism is not the same thing as philosophical naturalism, but many people (scientists and otherwise) conflate the two. Whether the philosophy is true or not is a metaphysical question, not a scientific one.

[btilly]

What exactly bothers you?

That someone who implicitly philosophizes says that they are not philosophers? To me that is no more bothersome than someone who speaks English telling me that they are not English majors.

Are you bothered that people like me do not value studying philosophers for the purpose of philosophizing better? But you have not made a case for why I should value it. I have made a case for why I don't value it, but you have not responded to or acknowledged much of it.

However I'll try again.

I maintain that the single most influential work of Greek ethical philosophy is Aesop's Fables. It is more read, more quoted, and its advice is more followed than everything else from ancient Greece, combined. Aesop, if he actually lived, could not have studied Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the other famous philosophers for the simple reason that he predated them. But imagine that Aesop had the opportunity to study and cite them. Would Aesop have been more effective and influential had he done so? Instead of telling relatable stories about animals?

Obviously not! Aesop's philosophizing was made more effective BY his lack of concern for the norms of classical philosophy!

I do not think that this is an isolated example. Norms of behavior are more easily established and absorbed through practical stories than abstract debate. This is as applicable whether it is Aesop instilling a moral about hard work with a story about ants and a grasshopper, or Feynman instilling a moral about the necessity of careful replication experiments with a story about a cargo cult whose planes don't land.

It is too bad that few in psychology paid any attention to Feynman. They could have saved themselves decades of wasted work. But in time the replication crisis brought home the point that their failure to absorb scientific norms was resulting in fraudulent fields which followed the forms of scientific research while producing results that nobody should trust. But I digress.

> That a truth is trivial does not make it self-evident.

This comment is hilariously true when it comes to how mathematicians use the word "trivial".

That said, I believe that you understand and agree with my point that scientists have adopted an implicit philosophy.

> Whether the philosophy is true or not is a metaphysical question, not a scientific one.

And here I have to violently agree. If, in fact, you're concerned with Truth with a capital T, then science really isn't the field for you. Because science has learned the hard way not to try to answer that question. So go off and debate it with the philosophers.

But if you wish to understand the world, science has a lot to commend it. There is a necessary chunk of implicit philosophizing that you must absorb to learn it. But you will not find it taught in philosophy courses, nor will studying philosophy help you to absorb it.

[memling]

> That said, I believe that you understand and agree with my point that scientists have adopted an implicit philosophy.

Before getting to the main body, this was precisely the point I was making in my original response. That is exactly the point. The rest of this is probably wasted electrons, but they're relatively cheap and I've spent them already.

> What exactly bothers you?

That's a good question with which I've wrestled. A couple introductory notes:

Despite the terseness of my replies, I do try to make them thoughtful. My time is limited, and I have found that less is more when writing. I have read what you wrote, but yes, I'm a bit choosy in responding because the content easily spreads well beyond the original intent of my response and my time boundaries. Apologies to Pascal, but I'd have written you a shorter comment if I had the time.

My intent was to correct a few assumptions that you made about me based on the comment—not to convince you that my perspective is correct or to argue that the term philosopher should not be restricted to those who are educated in the field, or even that scientists should be trained in philosophy (although I think the basics of how we approach the human condition would be useful).

None of the following may apply to you personally; I don't assume that they do, and indeed given our conversation suppose that most of them don't.

So, why would it bother me that scientists profess not to be philosophers?

1. Because all people are philosophers (or theologians, or both). That this is trivially true does not mean that people recognize this fact about themselves; scientists are no exception.

2. The scientific method is not a neutral approach to acquiring knowledge; some people suppose that it is, and in so doing they're making a philosophical statement, not a scientific one.

3. The application of that knowledge is obviously not always neutral, and it can have profound consequences.

4. We should generally be more aware of our own lack of neutrality.

5. Science is gradually (or not-so-gradually) replacing our myths and today serves much the same role in answering our questions about who we are, where we came from, where we're doing, and how we're getting there. In other words, science for many people is becoming philosophy (or theology, or both).

6. When scientists fail to recognize this, they may exacerbate the problems we face trying to answer those questions. They could help avoid this, perhaps, by understanding that they are the modern equivalent of high priests (whether they will or no).

This is not to say that science has no role in answering life's big questions; indeed, it does and probably should. But we cannot go from is to ought, or at least history teaches us that doing so is not conducive to human flourishing. Neither is the transition from knowledge to wisdom immediate or obvious. I know you agree with these statements.

The difficulty I have is that many people elide these distinctions with upturned nose, not realizing that they are turning science into scientism. This might be an avoidable outcome.