Yes, it is true. Have you read much on this subject? Try reading a bit of Steven Weinberg some time. He might help you out of your philosophical difficulties.
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There will always exist truth that cannot be proven, even built from any consistent set of axioms (themselves unproven). Or as I recall Hofstadter put it: “the notion of truth is stronger than the notion of proof”. Godel proved this formally within mathematics and logic itself. How much more true must this be in the much more nebulous domain of science? A lot, I strongly suppose, and even though I can’t prove it, I don’t have enough faith to think otherwise.
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Always good to learn your philosophy from a physicist…
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That would be metaphysics which forms the foundation from which people try to determine truth.
If truth can not be proven, then it comes down to “because I say so”. Not only that, but people can claim that two completely contradictory positions are equally true, both claiming to have “knowledge” that it is the truth. I tend to agree with Steven Weinberg. The only good philosophers have done is point out bad philosophy.
"The value today of philosophy to physics seems to me to be something like the value of early nation-states to their peoples. It is only a small exaggeration to say that, until the introduction of the post office, the chief service of nation-states was to protect their peoples from other nation-states. The insights of philosophers have occasionally benefited physicists, but generally in a negative fashion—by protecting them from the preconceptions of other philosophers. . .
I should acknowledge that this is understood by many of the philosophers themselves. After surveying three decades of professional writings in the philosophy of science, the philosopher George Gale concludes that “these almost arcane discussions, verging on the scholastic, could have interested only the smallest number of practicing scientists.” Wittgenstein remarked that “nothing seems to me less likely than that a scientist or mathematician who reads me should be seriously influenced in the way he works.”"–Steven Weinberg, “Dreams of a Final Theory”
http://www.pitt.edu/~mem208/courses/phph_s15/documents/weinberg_against_philosophy.pdf
Better than learning it from a philosopher:
“It is only fair to admit my limitations and biases in making this judgment. After a few years’ infatuation with philosophy as an undergraduate I became disenchanted. The insights of the philosophers I studied seemed murky and inconsequential compared with the dazzling successes of physics and mathematics. From time to time since then I have tried to read current work on the philosophy of science. Some of it I found to be written in a jargon so impenetrable that I can only think that it aimed at impressing those who confound obscurity with profundity. Some of it was good reading and even witty, like the writings of Wittgenstein and Paul Feyerabend. But only rarely did it seem to me to have anything to do with the work of science as I knew it.”–Steven Weinberg, “Dreams of a Final Theory”
That is one theory. However “Son of Man” is clearly Messianic in the book of Enoch, and this was being widely read at the time. Also, we see Jewish leaders reacting to Son of Man as if it was a blasphemous reference. I’m not NT expert, but I’m not sure if this theory holds up.
I would agree. I hope you felt differently about my contribution. I did engage Scott and Denis throughout.[quote=“T_aquaticus, post:153, topic:35961”]
Why would it be a strange requirement when positive evidence is the requirement for all scientific conclusions?
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I’m not arguing for a scientific theory. I am explaining the limits of the established scientific fact.
You seem to be trying to build everything off science. Please explain to us how you determine scientifically if genocide is wrong? Is racism wrong too? Or are these moral concerns just illusions because science cannot establish moral status.
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Not everything, only my conclusions about the objective universe.[quote=“Swamidass, post:165, topic:35961”]
Please explain to us how you determine scientifically if genocide is wrong? Is racism wrong too? Or are these moral concerns just illusions because science cannot establish moral status.
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I base those on my personal and subjective emotions, and find agreement between many of my peers. I don’t expect morality to be an objective part of the universe.
I suppose I believe that racism is objectively evil, no matter what you or my peers think of it. There are important and true things that science cannot see. A world where racism could be acceptable is a very dangerous world.
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I don’t think it’s quite so bad as that. There is the yet wider (but still limited) world of empirical evidence. It can’t reach proof, but it can make use of probability. And then this can be widened out even more to all sorts of evidence (whether empirically reproducible or not). That begins to encompass a lot more things that are objective in their own right (whether empirical or not). If I’m not mistaken you and most of us here will all agree that objective truth doesn’t cease to exist just because it may be beyond our empirical grasp. Just because two people make contradictory claims doesn’t mean one of them can’t be objectively right. It only means they both can’t be right. (that last statement itself is an unprovable assertion by the way --but I’m betting all of us here handily accept it on faith alone.)
Well, I haven’t read Weinberg, so I don’t know what he does or doesn’t have on offer. But if physicists generally have that attitude toward all philosophy, then that might explain the woeful state of philosophical understanding that so many physicists are languishing in. I guess Weinberg and/or his colleagues have fallen down on the job getting them philosophically educated, then. The result of such physicists dismissing philosophy is not that they then don’t have one. It’s that they then are duped into defending an embarrassingly bad one – one that is easily dismissed by even those of us outside the profession who nevertheless prefer to keep our eyes open and not bury our heads in the philosophical sand.
I’ll borrow the words (and Myers quote) from a blogger “The OFloinn” in this particular blog who shows this better than I ever could…
Myers: Whoa. Scientists everywhere are doing a spit-take at those words. Philosophers, sweet as they may be, are most definitely not the “arbiters” of the cognitive structure of science. They are more like interested spectators, running alongside the locomotive of science, playing catch-up in order to figure out what it is doing, and occasionally shouting words of advice to the engineer, who might sometimes nod in interested agreement but is more likely to shrug and ignore the wacky academics with all the longwinded discourses. Personally, I think the philosophy of science is interesting stuff, and can surprise me with insights, but science is a much more pragmatic operation that doesn’t do a lot of self-reflection. [Emph. added] [[end of Myers quote]]
Socrates once said that the unexamined life is not worth living; but Myers seems to brag about the limited mental horizons he ascribes to scientists. IOW, Myers is a technician not a thinker. How do we know? Because if he had thought about it he would never have used that locomotive-of-science metaphor. If the locomotive is science, we should remember that locomotives run down tracks laid by someone else and can only go to those places to which the tracks already run. Bad, metaphor, bad! Go to your room.
But who are these philosophers Myers sees huffing and puffing alongside the engine telling its puissant Baconian engineer that facts and theories are distinct? Mere nithings, like Poincare, Mach, Einstein, and the like, who are not fit to drive P.Z. Myers’ choo-choo.
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How do you know they are true if they can’t be seen, detected, or tested for?
In all fairness, (I’m going to critique some of what I quoted above from a blogger) – he is a bit sloppy with his own language as he is having fun with his point. He equivocates (in the blip that I pasted) between “science” and “scientists”, the former being a thing, and the latter being human beings. I think even Myers himself makes commendable allowance for the “philosophy of science” even within the bit of quote I pasted. But to the extent that anyone pushes some monolithic entity of “science” as being all-encompassing even of its practitioners, they would fall squarely afoul of the very criticisms bandied about above, and would only be demonstrating their “limited mental horizons”. I think it quite possible that the soulless entity “science” does indeed have limited horizons, as indeed it has no mental horizons at all, not being a person or a mind. But I’m nearly certain that much more could be said for a great many of its enthusiasts and practitioners both historic and contemporary.
What do you think is the difference between opinion and evidence?
“It may seem to the reader (especially if the reader is a professional philosopher) that a scientist who is as out of tune with the philosophy of science as I am should tiptoe gracefully past the subject and leave it to experts. I know how philosophers feel about attempts by scientists at amateur philosophy. But I do not aim here to play the role of a philosopher, but rather that of a specimen, an unregenerate working scientist who finds no help in professional philosophy. I am not alone in this; I know of no one who has participated actively in the advance of physics in the postwar period whose research has been significantly helped by the work of philosophers.”–Steven Weinberg, “Dreams of a Final Theory”
Is Dr. Weinberg wrong? If not, then physicists aren’t languishing. They are thriving, and thriving without the input of philosophers. The stunning achievements that physicists have made in the last 150 years has been done with a reliance on empirical evidence and testable claims, not philosophical navel gazing.
The thing is that those who complain that people won’t listen to philosophers can’t point to how we would be better off listening to philosophers. All people seem to do is clutch their pearls when people discard philosophy.
The truth is limited. The truth isn’t whatever you want it to be.
I think “opinion” is a conjecture held (allowing for widely varying degrees of certitude) by a person.
I think “evidence” is (to that person) what he or she would offer in support of said opinion.
None of us has that luxury. You can’t not have a philosophy. All you can do is (through neglect) wind up with a default (maybe poor, maybe good) one that you un-reflectively inherited from … parents or culture or who knows where. Are you feeling lucky?
I propose that Weinberg is just plain wrong here. (or maybe not even that?) I don’t doubt that he is correct that he can’t think of any significant help, and he probably is crafty enough to define “help” in such a way that nobody else would be able to produce a name to gainsay his narrow opinion. My objection is against his entire premise that philosophy is somehow excluded (at least in any helpful way) from the professional work of the scientist. Life just doesn’t compartmentalize like that (another opinion from me – I’m full of them today!) It’s a huge (and quite unwarranted!) leap of faith that scientists have not pursued their entire lives and professions according to various philosophies that would have variously helped or hindered them. Those philosophies affect everything and history is littered with the detritus from bad philosophies/religions and of course has some shining fruits from some of the (now recognized as such) good ones. Just for the record, I note here that the jury will always be out on some of these as to whether they were good or not. But just jumping into the (apparently non self-reflective) boots of any physicist right now who is willing to blindly call any new knowledge good, then yes, they would then admire any philosophy that undergirded (indeed made possible) that particular knowledge gain.
As to whether physicists are languishing or thriving … the jury is apparently still out on that too. Those who are so inept outside of their own profession that they can’t even see or make connections between their work and a world of beauty and love and all manner of non-scientific yet thoroughly objectively existing treasures, then it seems to me that they may come up short of evidence for the “thriving” part of that. They may turn out notable work (though that probably not for long in the absence of any broader good life), but in what direction did they help push the aim of the whole profession? Is their philosophy attempting to steer the profession into needless rivalry and conflict with all other humanities/philosophies/religions? Or do they have a more science-friendly philosophy that is helping push their profession toward science in whatever contexts it can be found? The answers to those questions are not trivial ones and the existence of a web site like this one is testimony to the fact that a lot of people (including scientists) have been the victims of some very shoddy philosophy.
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Regarding the 2nd sentence: very much agreed!
Also agree on your first sentence too provided that by it you really mean your 2nd sentence. Beyond that, though, regarding how much truth there is to be discovered … who would know of any limits on that?
Quoting myself --isn’t that horrible!? But I wanted to add an extra thought to this one.
Some scientists might (and apparently do) object that no philosophy enters into their actual professional papers/work. They have no need of it, never mention it or appeal to it in any way. To me this is like a train engineer announcing that the only things that help move his/her train along are the train engine itself and the tracks that the engine rests on. Planet that allegedly supports the tracks? What planet? Don’t have any use for any stinking planet! And it’s never once mentioned in the manual that helps me run my train.
That is what it sounds like to me when scientists try to pretend that they are somehow “above” philosophy.
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So you are saying that evidence is relative, and can itself be an opinion?[quote=“Mervin_Bitikofer, post:173, topic:35961”]
I propose that Weinberg is just plain wrong here. (or maybe not even that?) I don’t doubt that he is correct that he can’t think of any significant help, and he probably is crafty enough to define “help” in such a way that nobody else would be able to produce a name to gainsay his narrow opinion. My objection is against his entire premise that philosophy is somehow excluded (at least in any helpful way) from the professional work of the scientist.
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If you disagree then you should be able to point to counterexamples. If you can’t think of a physicist in the postwar era that has been helped significantly by philosophy, then why do you think Weinberg is wrong?[quote=“Mervin_Bitikofer, post:173, topic:35961”]
As to whether physicists are languishing or thriving … the jury is apparently still out on that too.
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That jury gave its verdict a long time ago, and the verdict is that it is thriving. Physicists 200 years ago would be absolutely stunned at what has occurred in the field over those 200 years. The knowledge gained just over the last 60 years is more than we learned in the previous 200,000 years.[quote=“Mervin_Bitikofer, post:173, topic:35961”]
Those who are so inept outside of their own profession that they can’t even see or make connections between their work and a world of beauty and love and all manner of non-scientific yet thoroughly objectively existing treasures, then it seems to me that they may come up short of evidence for the “thriving” part of that.
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Scientists see beauty as well, they just don’t confuse the subjective with the objective.[quote=“Mervin_Bitikofer, post:173, topic:35961”]
They may turn out notable work (though that probably not for long in the absence of any broader good life), but in what direction did they help push the aim of the whole profession? Is their philosophy attempting to steer the profession into needless rivalry and conflict with all other humanities/philosophies/religions? Or do they have a more science-friendly philosophy that is helping push their profession toward science in whatever contexts it can be found?
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I would say that the overall attitude among scientists is that the objective truth is what is important, no matter what beliefs or philosophies it may conflict with. There is even a cavalier attitude that scientists should ask the dangerous questions if it means discovering a truth.
What philosophy does a train engineer have to use? Does the train stop if the train engineer follows Kierkegaard instead of Nietzschte? What philosophy does the train engineer need to follow in order to understand the planet below him if physics is so woefully lacking?[quote=“Mervin_Bitikofer, post:175, topic:35961”]
That is what it sounds like to me when scientists try to pretend that they are somehow “above” philosophy.
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It is philosophers who pretend that they are somehow “above” scientists.
yes and yes. We can’t escape the opinion part. Like I said and opinion can be everything from “well, I think it may be so” to “Of course it is.”
I’ll qualify my yes answers above by adding that I don’t doubt the objectivity of a well-crafted conjecture. It will either be objectively right or wrong quite independently of belief or even evidence. Evidence just helps us try to bring probability into it. But in the end, it is still an opinion as to how we rate that evidence too. Objectivity is not in question. Our opinions may be, and science can help some with this. I’m sure you would agree though you would state it more strongly and remove the word some. [quote=“T_aquaticus, post:176, topic:35961”]
If you disagree then you should be able to point to counterexamples. If you can’t think of a physicist in the postwar era that has been helped significantly by philosophy, then why do you think Weinberg is wrong?
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Your slip is showing! [by that I mean ‘philosophy’]. Have you been reading what I wrote? I would have to labor hard (and fail) to find any scientist who has not been heavily influenced by philosophy. Maybe not the formal “arcane” details they so love to deride. I’m talking about real philosophy where the rubber meets the road.
Good. I do suspect, though, that they have a rather tunnel-visioned view of their own work in this regard.
Amen to that! And the subjectively apprehended truths may [I argue: do] include a few important objective truths too, such as one that Joshua brought up above. We just have a much harder time convincing each other over these since they aren’t amenable to empirical testing. That doesn’t make them any less potentially true or less potentially important.
You do understand that the whole train thing is a metaphor, right? Would I be right in guessing that you don’t have much use for metaphors? I was trying – am still – to help bridge two concepts: By limiting our vision to one aspect of one thing we can convince ourselves we have no use for anything outside our vision. To the extent that the train engineer can make the train go down the tracks without knowing a thing about any planets, or Kierkegaard, or Nietzschte – Weinberg would be right. To the extent that the train will do nothing of the sort, and would never have existed at all without the planet – Weinberg is dreadfully wrong. Philosophy (in my analogy) is the planet.
Your excitement over two centuries of astonishing discovery is echoed and affirmed by me. I don’t stop there, though. I go on to ask … now what? Where does this get us and what are we doing with it? One might say I just don’t see the end of the story yet. An engineer may get excited about their success in getting a certain computer chip and mechanical system to function within the specified parameters. He/she gets excited about a good day’s work. MLK Jr., though, with his ever broader view observes: “today we have guided missiles and misguided men”. He was not as easily impressed after seeing a wider context in which all the “accomplishments” exist. I’m following him in that much needed cultural self-reflection (with all its gloriously attendant philosophies). And I invite others to the same. There are disconcertingly many things where “the jury is still out”.