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> I think that is not true. Science does not get its merit from philosophical underpinnings, but from working in practice. In the day-to-day practice of science i.e. when empirical inquiry 'works', there certainly are underpinning philosophical assumptions, whether or not they are reconsidered or appreciated with every experiment. The implicit in the act of hypothesis testing, some variant of which most scientists in day-to-day practice, are assumptions about the nature of probabilities, inference etc. The NHST framework that is typically used came about after extensive battles over philosophical considerations that apply to significance/hypothesis testing between Neyman and Pearson vs Fisher. The fact that I never write that a hypothesis is (as a research biologist) is 'proven', but some variant that of it having withstood an attempt at falsification, is loaded with Popperian critical rationalism. > Math is the precise language needed to speak about these methods and the knowledge. Except math can't map directly onto reality, or data generating processes that are studied, unless you are presupposing some kind of logical positivism (and I doubt you are). We need probabilities, statistics, and frameworks to map all of this uncertainty, and they must be underpinned by some sort of philosophical assumptions that can't be derived from science itself. > Look at the achievements of science. That is how you get convinced it gives us a grip on reality. But that in and of itself is a philosophy of science, one of instrumentalism. However, it only extends to whether science can be useful, but not whether it is accurately describing reality or is true. |
You have many good points.
Let me just say that Popper has been philosophically criticized to the point that some say it is a dead horse. Why are we still using this mixture of Fisherian and Neymar-Pearson hypothesis testing (that is if we don't use bayesian methods)? Because it practically works well, not because Popper was right or found a deep philosophical truth.
These methods just generate more often than not knowledge, as we can judge from the consequences.
I argue that nobody cares if the assumptions we put into the frameworks are philosophical true - they are possibilities, and we try some out. So far we seem to be doing pretty well, no matter what philosophers say about the truth of these assumptions.
I also think bending philosophy to apply to practical advice like "use the tool that works" will not leave much to the notion of philosophy.
But it's not that I have a fixed metaphysical position here. I really only use the tool that was most promising in the past for the task at hand. Never needed philosophy.