There is no room for ambiguity or misunderstanding in scientific publications because you have to place your work in an extremely large and rigid context. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, and I was never talking about papers, which is why I said, in my first post :

When it comes to publishing papers, I have the feeling that the boundaries are much clearer. Each discipline has its own rules, so in that sense, they are easy to distinguish from each other. However, to me, science could use a bit more of philosophy of science (as in the study of its method), to set the boundaries straight, even in texts that are not papers. — Avema

All I want to say is that scientists are so rigorous and rational when it comes to concepts that are close to experiments, but when it's about a more global concept (that is often studied in philosophy), they often lose all the rationality and don't define concepts anymore, and of course, these are never published as scientific papers. If we have a part of science that focuses on that, it won't have the same rules as for publishing papers but I don’t see why it couldn't be a part of science.

Right, I guess I shoud have been more specific : what in the quote is the opposite of consensus ?

Do you think what I said is wrong, like scientists don't say things like "we can measure welfare" ?

Or do you think that defining such concepts in a scientific way wouldn't lead to consensus ?

This seems to be the opposite of consensus — Kenosha Kid

Can you please point out what part of my text is the opposite of consensus ?

I am not sure I understand what you have in mind. Can you elaborate a little further, give a more specific example? — SophistiCat

What I mean is that science sometimes goes off limits and gives fast conclusions like "we can measure welfare, time dilatation,..., without investigating further the meaning of these words. And if you don't do that, how can you know exactly what you're talking about ? It ends up being in the field of philosophy, because it can be subject to much more interpretations that science can deal with.

But if they would define it clearly, it could stay within the limits of science. They could say something like “if we define welfare this way, it involves these scientific concepts that can be measured through these other notions”, and then you clearly see all the uncertainties on the language itself, because what science is actually “sure” about is these notions that can be directly related to observations/measurements.

And it would be hard for philosophers to do that, because they don't know as much as scientists on these scientific concepts and measurements. And it is hard for scientists to do that because they're only used to defining notions that are quite directly related to experiments.

Do you know what I mean ?

Philosophy is the pursuit of knowledge and truth. Science (like theoretical physics) was born of philosophy. Whereas philosophy is a system of logical thought processes, science is grounded in physical experiments that are reproduceable and verifiable. — Neuron420

Thank you for bringing clarity into this headache of a debate ! I feel like the topic became : “should metaphysics be a part of physics ?” but I’ll go back to the main question.

From my experience with scientists and philosophers : Science has strayed close into philosophy, yet so far… Some physicists do make a lot of assumptions that are purely metaphysical. Some biologists talk about ethics and politics as if they were part of science. And some philosophers talk about philosophy as if it were science. But then they’re people, not the discipline itself.

When it comes to publishing papers, I have the feeling that the boundaries are much clearer. Each discipline has its own rules, so in that sense, they are easy to distinguish from each other. However, to me, science could use a bit more of philosophy of science (as in the study of its method), to set the boundaries straight, even in texts that are not papers. People would thus know exactly what kind of knowledge they can get out of science, and wouldn’t confuse it with another discipline anymore.

Science could also use a bit more focus on a global understanding, instead of leaving it to the realm of philosophy. It feels so frustrating to me, all the knowledge is there, but we don’t use it for that purpose. We only focus on getting more knowledge from experiments, instead of trying to put together, in a rational way, the knowledge that we already have. And I’m not talking about theoretical sciences, but about thinking of the best way to explain the world with the current scientific knowledge, trying to come out with the explanation that takes the most theories as possible into account, while staying within the limits of science. For example, scientists could try to explain very global concepts such as life, intelligence, welfare, and expose the limits of science in understanding (or measuring, defining) these concepts. But that was never part of a discipline. Some scientists do have opinions on these concepts but they’re not knowledge, it stays at a personal level. And when philosophers try to think on scientific knowledge, well, they often lack the scientific background to do it right.

Does anyone think it would be a good idea to create such a discipline ? Or does anyone know such a thing ?
(And it would exclude metaphysics as it would be based on experiments only).