Even if that were true, there is a certain "environmental load" to maintaining any greenhouse-gas involved process. If scale of cattle-farming were reduced, the "environmental load" would also be reduced. Which is part of the goal, I think.

One thing that I suggested was that the value of philosophy lies both in the academic body of knowledge, and in the quality of the minds and personae produced by exposure to the philosophical milieu. Aristotle was the tutor of Alexander and may have contributed to the shape of history significantly in that way. The sophists were highly regarded as teachers and probably exerted much influence independent of the content of their philosophies.

the situation is already stabilized. The current number of cows won't cause any additional global warming. The total methane level from cows is already constant in the atmosphere. — Agree to Disagree

There isn't a shred of logic in these statements. Even if it were true that output was stabile, that doesn't imply that the situation to which the output is a contributing factor is stabile. And the fact that the current number of cows won't cause "any additional" global warming just means that the ongoing amount of their ecological impact isn't decreasing. Which is the point.

Ignoring metaphysics and invalidating it aren't the same thing though. Same thing for teleology. As Nicolai Hartmann says, it is an error to believe that the reasons for an illusion are themselves illusory.

You can't get "ought" from science, so philosophy will always be around. — RogueAI

Yes, ethics is a pretty strong contender for 'practical philosophy', I agree.

It seems that what we mean by philosophy might be the glue that holds together all of the other formalizations of human understanding. For example, suppose we try to make scientific knowledge the gold standard of meaning. Even in the days when it was possible for one person to achieve a comprehensive scientific understanding (renaissance man), features of human life continued to be evident that defied scientific explanation (art, love, spirit, etc.). Today, scientific understanding is simultaneously so broad and detailed that even the most gifted scientists only really understand certain aspects of it. Even if your area of specialization is quantum cosmology, you could not claim to have a privileged ontological understanding, because dark matter and dark energy form explicit lacunae in that field of knowledge. Hence philosophy exists to constantly challenge simplistic reductions and to chart the boundaries of the unknown, relative to the project of human existence. If it were abolished as a discipline, people would still attempt to make sense of life. String theory, proven, would not help a single person make a more-informed moral decision.

But most people seem to refuse to accept personal responsibility for the problem. They claim that it is all the fault of the oil companies. Climate change will not be solved with that attitude. — Agree to Disagree

Neither will it be solved by doing nothing. Humanity should be trying every reasonable approach consistent with good ecological practice to counteract what it knows to be contributing factors to climate change. It may well be that some types of remediation are more effective than others. That's why they need to be tried. Now is not the time for quietism. The will to effect change is essential. As solutions are tried our understanding of the mechanics of the problem will grow, leading to new, better solutions. That's how it works.

Today there seems to be no "first philosophy," and therefore we have philosophies rather than philosophy. — Leontiskos

That's funny. Hartmann laments that he cannot "reclaim" the use of the term "first philosophy" in his major work on ontology which I am just reading.

"Why should we really return to ontology at all? Wasn't the foundation of the whole of philosophy at one time ontology? And hasn't this foundation crumbled beneath it, leading everything that depended on it to a state of utter collapse along with it?"
~Nicolai Hartmann, Ontology: Laying the Foundations. Opening paragraph.

The Decameron
by Giovanni Boccaccio

One way to get at this is to consider that no epistemology can be installed without appeals to the nature of the subject. We might talk of the entanglement of epistemology and ontology, because the ontologist has to make a case for claims, and the form of such a case will presumably imply or manifest an epistemology. — plaque flag

Yes. Hartmann goes further and talks about something which encompasses both the object of ontology and the subject of epistemology. Now you could get sticky and say, well, that more comprehensive reality is itself what is ontologically primary. But Hartmann elects to maintain the posture of separation, which allows for further investigation into their unique natures. His dyad of Dasein (the ontological ) existence and Sosein (the epistemological) essence are linked together through a kind of pragmatics of primitive action. Sosein and Dasein are related in almost systems theoretical terms, where the Sosein of a specific individual tree (its unique essence) has its Dasein in its place in the forest.

The knowledge that people have of reality is itself a part of reality, as an event among other events

This I firmly believe.

Interesting that my new read, Nicolai Hartmann, contests this fundamental dyad of object and subject, saying it is a hypostatization of the relational nature of consciousness (i.e. an unfounded metaphysical assumption) and that there is an avenue to pure being through some kind of pre-reflective 'natural attitude.' This smacks of Collingwood's 'absolute presuppositions.'

However Hartmann's method is also aporetic, embracing the antinomian nature of the development of philosophical thought and its key problems. So I can see this challenge to my fundamental intuitions about the inextricability of objectivity and subjectivity as part of an overall dialectical progress.

Ontology: Laying the Foundations
by Nicolai Hartmann

"Hartmann developed a pluralistic, humanistic realism that attempted to do justice to both the sciences and the humanities. Hartmann may be regarded as the first genuine ontological pluralist of the twentieth century."

Philosophy, in my opinion, should instead recover its ancient roots of being a human experience, a spiritual activity, — Angelo Cannata

I'd agree that it should be 'animated' by this spirit.

I think philosophy can be different by taking on the task that traditionally was held by religion — Angelo Cannata

Yes, I think talking about spirituality as something metaphysical takes away the hocus pocus from the former, rather than introducing it to the latter. I would say 'in spirit' I agree with you.

Our lack of knowledge of knowledge is at the heart of the problem of knowledge. — Fooloso4

Among the paradoxes of the figure of Socrates...is that we cannot classify him as belonging either to the theoretical or the practical world. Every attempt at such a classification immediately turns dialectically into its opposite....Our "knowledge" is transformed into "ignorance" (Cassirer, PSF4, "Basis Phenomena")

This accords with my perspective on the ongoing dialectical tension of antinomies.

already contains within its relational dynamics the precursors of language, consciousness and thought — Joshs

Is it animism? Is it panpsychism? Something else? I know lots of people would draw the line of consciousness at homo sapiens. I prefer the bio-evolutionary perspective that can discern intelligent behaviours in coral colonies. That is more the type of awareness that interests me. People like to draw a certain line in different places.

There cannot be an infinite regress in which what is recollected was not a some time first learned. — Fooloso4

That's certainly the logical conclusion. :up:

This all may be, but my understanding is that the theory of anamnesis is a species of innate knowledge theory. Do you have citations pertaining specifically to the fact that this knowledge had to have at some time been gained directly?

In the Charmides Socrates suggests that wisdom is knowledge of what you know and don't know. — Fooloso4

But Socrates' belief in anamnesis implies the things you don't know you have in some sense forgotten (hence the Platonic strategy of evoking knowledge through dialogue). Unfortunately this creates a nasty circularity.

In other words, the current state of philosophy is not the whole of the story of what philosophy is and will be — Fooloso4

Exactly. And this is exactly the nature of consciousness itself, its present experience is a living amalgam of the past and future, per Cassirer: this monadic being is therefore not contained in the simple present....but rather encompasses the totality of all aspects of life, the present, past, and future...

As I suggested on another thread (all things being related) this can be comprehended as a kind of "experimentalism," a metaphysical conception that is realized through and as the scientific method. Again to quote Cassirer (sorry but it is what I'm currently reading): We experience ourselves as having an influence...[an] essential, constitutive aspect in all our "consciousness of reality."

In other words, I guess, we are engaged and implicated in constructing reality, and reality is what is engaged by the construction thereof.

:ok:

Whereas we’re discussing the metaphysical implications of science. Do you see any difference between biological adaptation and intellectual interpretation, or do you see the latter on a continuum with the former? — Quixodian

Am I biologizing intellect, or intellectualizing biology? Yes, absolutely I'd say we are on a continuum which stretches from the poles of pure objectivity (which is an abstraction) and pure subjectivity (which is also an abstraction). It is in the nature of these antinomies that they are dyadic. There is no subject without object, no object without subject. The Copenhagen interpretation supports this.

Are we pieces of matter that learned to think? Or has thought learned to cloak itself in matter? Is one of those options inherently less improbable than the other?

Yeah but that’s biology. The parameters of what we’re discussing are no longer determined by that, and I think rationalising science, or any other human activities, in those terms is inherently reductionist. And there are better things than simply being well-adapted. — Quixodian

That's a non sequitur. The human enterprise is and always will be a human enterprise. As I pointed out, the nature of the environment to which we are adapting evolves based on our understanding. The only thing reductionistic is your characterization. Evolution can be as open-ended as it apparently is.

No. I mean they’re used to smooth over annoying inconsistencies in current models. Like I said, Everett devised many worlds to avoid the spooky implication that the measurement problem was mind-dependent. Hidden variables theories to make spooky action-at-a-distance go away. The multiverse is routinely invoked to explain away the anthropic cosmological principle. And so on. Examples could be multiplied. — Quixodian

Then they are elements of whatever theories happen to have practical application. Life is on a voyage of discovery wherein it inter-evolves with an environment. At an abstract level, organisms adapt to different types of information in their environments, producing forms that are specialized in various ways to interact with that information. For me, this is what differentiates science from pseudo-science. Science is definitively involved in this process.

Given that all observation (perception) is theory-laden, in essence, learning new knowledge can be like opening a door that lets you peer into a completely new dimension of reality. Since organisms adapt to their environments, expanding its environment through the integration of new knowledge creates the possibility of entirely novel types of adaptations. And as the type of information to which we adapt grows more abstract, the brain becomes more and more the organ of adaption. This is the import I see in the scientific method, cum experimentalism.

What if they solve problems of cognitive dissonance? You know, are used to keep challenged paradigms immune from criticism? — Quixodian

If you mean the theories function in some holistic sense by deepening the coherence of an overall theoretical framework then that would be an application, but it seems a stretch.

But the point of the critiques of speculative physics and cosmology is that they might never be testable at all. — Quixodian

In which case what are they? If they don't have any kind of practical application their value is purely aesthetic.

Ok. The focus on the instruments threw me off. There are norms governing the driving of cars on public roads. — plaque flag

I guess those can be in some sense be formulated in terms of heuristic rules governing systems flow. So while it seems arbitrary and artificial that traffic flow is conventionalized, it can have symbolic meaning relative to something that is actually happening, some kind of functioning circulatory feature. I think that the scientific method only makes sense in terms of experimentalism. I think the most accurate general description of existence is that it is experimental in nature.

I was generalizing the sense in which applying a concept is a commitment to a type of task. Similarly, scientific laws are instantiated by and through human instrumental actions. Hearkening back to the OP theme of the scientific method.

The responsibility one undertakes by applying a concept is a task responsibility: a commitment to do something.

You could say that when we act, we realize the law or principle which guides our actions. Indeed, the scientific method is essentially that, the instantiation (formal codification and social adoption) of some law that coincides with a certain type of human action (experimentalism). If scientific laws can be socially instantiated with tangible physical elements that are enhancements of fundamental human abilities (instruments, tools, symbols), why should not other types of laws (logical, moral) be similarly encapsulable?

By 'free' do you mean normative reason-giving entities like us ? I'm a fan of Brandom. I tend to understand freedom in terms of timebinding responsibility for the coherence of deeds which include speech acts. The responsible subject ( the rational agent ) is very much temporally stretched. Did you ever look at Flatland ? The author used space, but it occurs to me now how eerily temporal humans are relative to other creatures we're aware of. We are spheres among circles if time is spatialized. — plaque flag

Yes, precisely that meaning of free. Regarding our 'eerie temporality', I have lately been speculating on the forum whether consciousness might not actually exist - ie. have a "size" - in the temporal dimension, versus just traversing time.

(edit, just reading this: This monadic being is therefore not contained in the simple present....but rather encompasses the totality of all aspects of life, the present, past, and future... Cassirer, Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms)

I haven't heard of Brandom. I have a rather love-hate relationship with linguistics. I think it has its place, but more as a supporting player, something which can be usefully invoked to clarify particular issues with particular inquiries. But I find it becomes unwieldy as a primary theme. Probably just a matter of personal taste.

I like to think that the transcendent subject is basically just the human species. No humans means no world in any way that we can talk about without confusion. But any particular human is dispensable. Like data moving from server to serve, timebinding flame from candle to candle. But we can't say that the species-subject simply creates the world, for this would not be a subject and (in my view) we wouldn't know what we were talking about. Hence an irreducible entanglement. — plaque flag

Nicely put. I'd say the species itself is similarly entangled with the biosphere, etc. ie. That there is tiered entanglement from most to least animate (correlating with the conditions of being law-governed versus free).

Well, if fits the model of the "new science" which I describe as emerging, ie. it is theoretical modeling. Certainly a complex-cohesive model that can exist and be used to model dynamic systems is, in a sense, a kind of empirical entity. But it needs to be reaching towards points of actual correspondence (empirical verification), otherwise its just poeisis, art. If you've seen my other thread on science as metaphysics you know I think these mutually condition. I would say, per Pigliucci per Popper, string theory is more of the nature of a "metaphysical research project" that may become fully scientific eventually.

edit: I did a little digging into quantum computer simulations of string theory and this popped out to me:

Here we comment on possible implications from this work, combined with quantum
Church-Turing Thesis. The quantum Church-Turing Thesis states that any physical
process that happens in the real world could be simulated in a quantum computer. We
could write it in a more formal way: Any calculation that cannot be done efficiently by
a quantum circuit cannot be done efficiently by any physical system consistent with the
laws of physics.

In other words, if a theoretical model can not be efficiently simulated via quantum computer then it cannot be efficiently realized in the real world. One hypothesis then could be that, the more efficiently a theoretical model can be quantum-computer simulated, the more likely that model is to be reflective of reality. If we are dealing with "large scale theories" whose points of correspondence are nothing less than the parameters of reality, establishing what counts as confirmatory evidence might be...complicated. Perhaps the model is its own best evidence, based on this hypothesis?

Simulating Superstring Theory on a Quantum Computer

Very nice presentation. Metaphysics in the sciences goes on all the time, although most come from actual scientists. — jgill

I second that. Nicely stated. :clap:

Interesting bit of terminology - advocates for string theory and related multi-verse conjectures are often scornful of the insistence that speculative science ought to be subject in principle to validation or falsification by observation or experiment. They devised a slang word for those insisting on such criteria - the popperazi :grin: — Quixodian

I like Pigliucci's description "mathematically informed metaphysics." Suggesting the intimate relationship between science and metaphysics, as I've considered elsewhere. I think the description is a propos.

↪Pantagruel But what exactly are the pseudo science interests and how do they differ from science interest? And does the answer to that not also answer to a demarcation of science?

Am I correct in saying you are:
1) Unsure about the limits of science
2) Sure that there is pseudo-science
3) Pseudo science is not science

It seems that if 2) and 3) are true, then you are sure of at least some of the limits of science.

If I say theory X is pseudo-science because of a and b, then I am saying a and b are indicators that something is not science. — PhilosophyRunner

I think that pseudo-science is perpetrated intentionally by people for material ends. Most of that stuff educated people can ignore, but if I cared to pay attention to some of the absolute twaddle that some people pay attention to I'm sure I could draw a line pretty easily.

This may serve as a good starting point to understand the demarcation of science - what makes one theory science and another pseudo-science? Is it in the method used?
— PhilosophyRunner

I don’t think sweeping, abstract claims can be made. You have to look at specific, real world examples. So, are horoscopes pseudoscience? Yes. Is chiropractic a pseudoscience? It depends - but mostly, yes. Is creation “Science” pseudoscience? Yes. And so on. You can demonstrate each fairly easily. — Mikie

More generally, lets consider quantum physics. Essentially, Einstein's General and Special Relativity remains the best version of an empirically validated theory. While string theory has been highly productive, all of that productivity has been in the domain of the construction of theoretical models. There is no empirical evidence for string theory. This unverified-but-not-unverifiable direction of research begs for abuse by pseudo-scientific interests.

Knowledge brings change. This acknowledgement is at the root of our hybrid culture. This hybrid is not the culture of either of its roots. Technology changes culture. In doing so it some of the old culture is destroyed, but I don't think that means the end of culture. — Fooloso4

But isn't the essence of culture its values? It used to be called crass materialism. It is no less crass because it wears a shiny technological garb. It's all style, no substance. Lots of studies have looked at the correlation between the rise of technology and the decline of human intelligence, and the dangers that entails.

The question then is whether in determining the whither and why of mankind the philosophers would pull in the same or different directions. — Fooloso4

But the celebration of pluralism essentially defines universal consensus as an archaic concept. There is no longer any interest in an "overarching truth".

As I've mentioned before, I think that the boundaries of our scientific understanding have expanded beyond the limits of convenient observability in space and time. Hence experimentalism has been replaced by modeling and simulation. Science has become much more of an architectonic pursuit. However this is itself a danger, because pseudo-science can also cloak itself in the garb of architectonic. Hence the confusion of the modern world.

How philosophy is thought of today, as one academic subject of many, taught by those with Ph.D.s, who mainly discuss the history of the great thinkers and great books…yeah, this professionalization is basically irrelevant today. May it die out sooner than later — Mikie

But isn't this what keeps philosophy alive as an independent discipline? Without that, doesn't it become just a theme?

No. We haven't outgrown yet religion, politics or science, all of which require critical analyses and reflective interpretations. — 180 Proof

Yes, they require it. Will there be disciplined minds there to supply it? I do feel philosophical studies form part of the balanced project of the advancement of human knowledge, but that has to be ratified on an ongoing basis by collective will and consensus. What hope is there in a shattered milieu of alternative facts?