The scope of science includes more th[an] nature? — ucarr

AFAIK: no, it cannot.

The scope of nature includes more than material things and their attendant physics?

Yes (e.g. facts, subjects).

I argue for the vanishing point of difference between science and philosophy through the essential linkage connecting brain and mind.

I agree, but for a different reason: reality itself is the negation of impossibility (e.g. facts in contradiction to one another or to themselves; things with inconsistent properties), or that the Principle of Non-Contradiction (PNC) is the coin of the real(m) with complementary faces: Philosophy (roots, heads) and Science (branches, tails).

NB: 'religion', however, is only an 'IOU' (fiat money).

“I argue for the vanishing point of difference between science and philosophy through the essential linkage connecting brain and mind.” -Ucarr

I agree, but for a different reason: reality itself is the negation of impossibility (e.g. facts in contradiction to one another or to themselves; things with inconsistent properties), or that the Principle of Non-Contradiction (PNC) is the coin of the real(m) with complementary faces: Philosophy (roots, heads) and Science (branches, tails). — 180 Proof

I agree. It makes sense to me that empirical science was later distinguished from philosophy which came first. They are more essentially connected as involving the application of mind and its logical processes to sense or to conceptual objects or to experience. The philosopher is the scientist taking the broadest view, having the blankest slate, and having everything at his or her disposal to use for hypothesis and experiment.

I would say the two sides of the coin include science and philosophy together on the one side, keep the coin as the connector logic, but put everything else on the other side as the objects of science/philosophy.

So I think I agree with you both but for a third reason.

I wonder if you'e thinking philosophy is always an instance of Chinese boxes? — ucarr

In what sense? That the philosopher doesn’t understand the symbols but can use a manual to create responses that work but have no understanding behind them? Or that the philosopher understands that the symbols are meaningless, and so, when philosophizing, is conducting a meta process while processing the meaningless symbols? — Fire Ologist

Both senses hover close to what I'm trying to say. The symbols are always only partially understood; if they're completely understood, they're signs, not symbols. Also, the symbols aren't quite meaningless. Rather, they're meaning-deficient in the moment.

All of this is to say that living things always need a "What next?" Reality always obliges. Being alive means nothing ever ends. In life we've never not been alive and we'll never be dead. Beginnings and endings are limits living things oscillate inside of. We're bounded infinities and reality challenges us by making every thing ultimately a road map to somewhere else.

Humans are obsessive storytellers because stories are road maps to another reality. We like them because they're good at creating the illusion of coming from somewhere definite and going somewhere likewise. The salesman makes a living because he persuades us satisfaction is just around the next curve. What's money? It's not the gold in your palm; it's the exchange that's ultimately neither here nor there.

I hope the T.O.E. fails. Reality should never run out of "What nexts?"

Beginnings and endings are limits living things oscillate inside of.

Humans are obsessive storytellers because stories are road maps to another reality. — ucarr

I like it. The oscillation of living human beings is to tell stories that attempt to map paths to beginnings and endings.

Do you count philosophy and even science as modes of storytelling? Philosophy seeking the first beginning of everything and its final end, and the particular sciences drawing shorter/narrower starting points and more precise ends?

Do you count philosophy and even science as modes of storytelling? Philosophy seeking the first beginning of everything and its final end, and the particular sciences drawing shorter/narrower starting points and more precise ends? — Fire Ologist

Well said. Every language writes a narrative. Math and logic, like the verbal forms, are languages with stories to tell.

Once upon a time everything was philosophy. After all, it didn't make much sense to say that separate things existed as several disciplines, logic, politics and astronomy all studied the same world, and educated people could be experts on everything.

Then came the scientific revolution during the 17th century and our knowledge of the world drastically increased, to such an extent that in little over a century, a person went from being well versed in everything to being primarily a chemist, historian or an economist, etc.

Today things are so specialized that you can dedicate your life on focusing on one specific sub-section of a subsection of a subsection, say, studying one type of mushroom, or the cells of jellyfish or specializing on a single video game or a type of whisky or a genre of literature on YouTube.

The areas where we have made progress stopped being called "philosophy" and became "science". Those very questions which belong to the ancient tradition but could not yet (or maybe ever) be made into a science, remain in philosophy.

It's a matter of the degree of specialized knowledge one has as opposed to the considerations of the bigger picture in any single field of knowledge, hence, philosophy of film, philosophy of history, philosophy of art, etc.

There's still overlap however, in areas where a science is not fully matured such as linguistics, neuroscience and psychology, as well as those areas in which our best science can provide no satisfactory answer: foundations of physics, cosmology, implications of biology, etc.

I would say the two sides of the coin include science and philosophy together on the one side, keep the coin as the connector logic, but put everything else on the other side as the objects of science/philosophy. — Fire Ologist

Interesting. I agree with "the coin ... logic". However, suppose "everything else ... objects of science/philosophy" instead tosses the "coin", so to speak, again and again again dialectically. :chin:

I hope the T.O.E. fails. — ucarr

You believe goal of physicists' "T.O.E." is to explain "everything"? that it's not just physics but some final (super-natural) metaphysics? I thought the aim was to produce a testable unification of the fundamental forces of nature – to demonstrate they are aspects or modalities of one another – that's formulated into a G.U.T. (which would include QG). What does "everything" have to do with it? That's not physics. How is it even possible to test a purported explanation for "everything"?

Interesting. I agree with "the coin ... logic". However, suppose "everything else ... objects of science/philosophy" instead tosses the "coin", so to speak, again and again again dialectically. — 180 Proof

Then my coin would be missing a side. I still like animating everything else though…

I think I like a version of your coin better. I see science as the pivot with philosophy on the one hand, and science of x (bio, chem, etc) on the other. Science itself is method; science is the interrogation, the logic applied, the theorizing that can be agreed by other theorists, or demostrated in experiment. Science is the pivot leaning into philosophy or into the many particular sciences. Philosophy is the science of science; philosophy turns on the philosopher and pulls everything else at once in with it, but it does this with the same scientific method. Then on the other hand science of bio, for instance, sets a limit at the chemical, and another limit at planetary ecosystem, and within these bounds looks at living things. Philosophy uses science to look for any limits, as well as looking at the looking, as well as testing logic itself against set theory, at knowing itself, at being any being..

So new coin is more like your coin: philosophy on the one side, and the many narrow sciences on the other, with science itself being the coin itself.

Now everything else can toss the coin (or when you do metaphysics, the coin can toss everything else).

Now everything else can toss the coin (or when you do metaphysics, the coin can toss everything else). — Fire Ologist

:smirk:

You believe goal of physicists' "T.O.E." is to explain "everything"? that it's not just physics but some final (super-natural) metaphysics? I thought the aim was to produce a testable unification of the fundamental forces of nature – to demonstrate they are aspects or modalities of one another – that's formulated into a G.U.T. (which would include QG). What does "everything" have to do with it? That's not physics. How is it even possible to test a purported explanation for "everything"? — 180 Proof

You at the very least begin with the groundwork of scientific inquiry. This has nothing to do with what science says.

Does philosophy hold aloof from science within an academic fortress of abstract math and logic? — ucarr

And common sense. After all, it was a philosopher who recently won a famous bet against a scientist, not the other way around.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-25-year-old-bet-about-consciousness-has-finally-been-settled/

Panpsychism is on the rise, people are taking plant consciousness seriously, scientists are being called out by their colleagues for pushing integrated information pseudoscience...Philosophy has the upper hand these days when it comes to consciousness.

Anyway, this is just my opinion. When a non-scientist philosopher produces a breakthrough in quantum theory I will eat my beanie. — jgill

I'm unsure I agree with your framing of the two types of development, but I get your point. Thank you for clarifying!

I hope the T.O.E. fails. — ucarr

You believe goal of physicists' "T.O.E." is to explain "everything"? that it's not just physics but some final (super-natural) metaphysics? I thought the aim was to produce a testable unification of the fundamental forces of nature – to demonstrate they are aspects or modalities of one another – that's formulated into a G.U.T. (which would include QG). What does "everything" have to do with it? That's not physics. How is it even possible to test a purported explanation for "everything"? — 180 Proof

What is nature? What can its fundamental forces be? Are there limits on our human ability to answer these questions?

I'm proceeding with the assumption A.I. will be overtaking the task of heavy lifting re: thought. I'm rooting for S.A.I. in our lifetimes to run up cognitive yardage pushing past what human can imagine. Wittgenstein has directed our attention towards "the silence," conjecture unimaginable. Its nigh time for The Oracle: SAI to start sending us revelations from Wittgenstein's principled imagination silenced. We won't understand but a fraction of the import of the messages, but we'll get pushed to our utter limitations before being back-numbered into the subordinate section of the evolution hierarchy.

As in previous generations, the dominant scientists of our day have set their sights upon a reductionistic project courting the elegance of simplicity. (Here's an example of metaphysics worming its way into scientific standard practice: Occam's razor.)

...How is it even possible to test a purported explanation for "everything"? — 180 Proof

Let's consider Cantor's ordinal infinities: suppose a number line populated by ordinal infinities. What can we conjecture about a continuum of infinite regress_progress of infinities?

Conditional Everything. With conditional everything -- that's the interval between adjacent trans-real numbers on the Cantor number line -- we can measure and therefore test "everything." As you can see, the quotation marks acknowledge that testing "everything" isn't really testing everything. Like with the calculus, it's an asymptotic approach to measuring (and subsequently testing) infinity through a process that makes unspecifiable quantities "as if specifiable" for the sake of analysis and parsing into illuminating and useful functions and their modalities.

The Cantor number line, conceptualized as a whole, constitutes a scale and scope of numbers -- trans-reals -- categorically beyond infinity. Why is this so? It is so because the trans-reals number line, in its containment of an infinite series of infinities, implies a next higher-order of infinity, i.e., trans-infinity.

If we can condition infinity, that is, bind the whole of all baseline possible infinities upon an infinite series of trans-real numbers, then the implication is that even totality possesses higher orders. This, in turn, implies there is no final totality. A natural concomitant of no final totality is no ultimate fundamentals. This latter claim stands upon the assumption that no final totality is a bi-directional phenomenon.

Cantor has shown us infinity is just another number within an infinite series. (I don't know about our particular universe being open or closed, but I suspect general existence is an open, incomplete system-that's-not-a-system. I suspect this because universe is the limit of system. Again, if there can be no universe, there can be no fundamental laws.)

Note - I predict human will need SAI to protect us against lost-without-hope within conditional everything. We'll want to leapfrog along the Cantor number line because of its sublime existential ramifications. Will SAI always be willing to protect us, or will they sometimes willfully uncouple from us?

I'm proceeding with the assumption A.I. will be overtaking the task of heavy lifting re: thought. I'm rooting for S.A.I. in our lifetimes to run up cognitive yardage pushing past what human can imagine. Wittgenstein has directed our attention towards "the silence," conjecture unimaginable. Its nigh time for The Oracle: SAI to start sending us revelations from Wittgenstein's principled imagination silenced. We won't understand but a fraction of the import of the messages, but we'll get pushed to our utter limitations before being back-numbered into the subordinate section of the evolution hierarchy. — ucarr

:up:

It won't be long before mathematical concepts and results stretch beyond our abilities to comprehend.

Is every category of philosophy a type of metaphysics? — ucarr

Philosophy proposes a truth based on the logic of reasoning for science to dispose of or confirm.

Philosophy proposes a truth based on the logic of reasoning for science to dispose of or confirm. — PoeticUniverse

I read your response as a "yes" to my question.

So, philosophy is to science as grammar is to humanities. There are ground rules for continuity and computation, and there are ground rules for narration and voice.

What's the difference between a loaf of bread and a slice of bread?