When science broke off from philosophy, it lost all the parts of it where you could be wrong. Philosophy as it remains is about values, not facts. You can talk about truth or facts, but nothing you say will be true or a fact. This ties in with my oft repeated refrain - metaphysical propositions are not true or false, only more or less useful. — T Clark
is not correct or incorrect, it is more or less useful. — T Clark
Susan Haack (a prominent philosopher of science) suggests strongly that there is no scientific method as such. I'm paraphrasing, but for her there are just approaches used to test if something is likely and can be used by law, cooking and science.
There is no “Scientific Method,” I argue: i.e., no mode of inference or procedure of inquiry used by all and only scientists, and explaining the successes of the sciences. There are only the inferences and procedures used by all serious empirical inquirers (make an informed guess as to the explanation of some puzzling phenomenon, check how well it stands up to the evidence you have, and any further evidence you can get); these are not used only by scientists. Susan Haack — Tom Storm
I've noticed that you often come back to this point. I wonder if this is slightly evasive. Surely a scientific approach to a problem is more correct if the matter is a hospital research team trying to treat or cure cancer? — Tom Storm
We seem to go out of our way to avoid using terms like right or wrong, correct and incorrect, perhaps in an attempt to sidestep debate. — Tom Storm
Thought experiment.. Do you think that "the correct way to study cancer is using science," is true in the same sense that "the capital of France is Paris," is? — T Clark
It certainly isn't in my case. The selection is made on the basis of human value, usefulness, effectiveness. It's an important distinction. — T Clark
The scientific method. I'm not trying to be cute. She's being lazy with her argument. — T Clark
Why this question? — Tom Storm
This is not intended as a criticism or animadversion, but what's the point of elevating utility if there isn't a demonstrable correct way to arrive there relative to the issue at hand? — Tom Storm
Do you think that "the correct way to study cancer is using science," is true in the same sense that "the capital of France is Paris," is? — T Clark
"The correct answer to what is the capital of France is Paris"
The correct way to study cancer is using science."
'Correct' plays a different role in both of these ideas.
And they are provisional - If you are studying people's 'lived experience' of cancer, the answer might be different. — Tom Storm
My claim is that all of those remaining in the list do not deal with questions that have true or false answers. — T Clark
I think part of my contention you touch on when you wrestle with excluding Logic and Phil of Math (or Phil of any Science) from your list of philosophical subdisciplines. I'll stick to talking about Logic though, because I know it better than the others. — Artemis
Logic is the foundation for the other subdisciplines. You can't do the others without knowing Logic. Even if you dislike Logic and think some of it is wrong or whatever, you have to use the rules of Logic to get anywhere analytically. — Artemis
The rest of philosophy deals with facts and truth in varying degrees. I think it would be more helpful to think of it less as "either/or" and more as "both/and." Philosophy deals with, for example, values AND truth claims. Metaphysics deals generally more with claims that either are or aren't true, and Ethics less so. — Artemis
There's also the part that philosophy draws on data from the world to make claims. Ethics could, to some degree, make subject-less claims I suppose. ... But for the most part it's making value claims about the real world based on data that is either true or false. — Artemis
Modern science emerged in the seventeenth century with two fundamental ideas: planned experiments (Francis Bacon) and the mathematical representation of relations among phenomena (Galileo). This basic experimental-mathematical epistemology evolved until, in the first half of the twentieth century, it took a stringent form involving (1) a mathematical theory constituting scientific knowledge, (2) a formal operational correspondence between the theory and quantitative empirical measurements, and (3) predictions of future measurements based on the theory. The “truth” (validity) of the theory is judged based on the concordance between the predictions and the observations. While the epistemological details are subtle and require expertise relating to experimental protocol, mathematical modeling, and statistical analysis, the general notion of scientific knowledge is expressed in these three requirements. — The Real War on Science, Edward Dougherty
(The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012) illustrates is the ever present gap between theory and verification. The standard model was enormously successful in its account of the basic particles and the forces through which they interact. It was mathematically satisfying and elegantly based on notions of physical symmetry. Yet no one would ever have suggested that it must be correct regardless of any process of empirical verification. Such a process of verification lies at the heart of the scientific method. Theories are not self-verifying but always remain hypothetical constructs, subject to the next round of possible verification or falsification from the data.
This leads to a significant tension in the whole scientific project. Its drive is to seek intelligibility or patterns in the empirical data, to express these patterns in theoretical constructs, yet in the end it must deal with a brute fact of existence, which either verifies or falsifies these proposed patterns.
That reality is intelligible is the presupposition of all scientific endeavours: that the intelligibility science proposes is always subject to empirical verification means that science never actually explains existence itself but must submit itself to a reality check against the empirical data. This existential gap between scientific hypotheses and empirical verified judgment points to, in philosophical terms, the contingency of existence. There is no automatic leap from hypothesis to reality that can bypass a "reality check." — Neil Ormerod, The Metaphysical Muddle of Lawrence Krauss
You're espousing scientific antirealism - that science doesn't/shouldn't resort to making metaphysical claims which would be the case if scientists say that scientific theories are true i.e. for example a theory about quarks means that quarks actually exist. — TheMadFool
The values are vigorously argued, — Caldwell
A valid argument is what's common among these disciplines. — Caldwell
They make use of facts to support their arguments. — Caldwell
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