Maybe you can say a bit more about the paper and what your take on it is?

I think its a legitimate issue that philosophy deserves an educational revival. I for one have noticed that in the public schools logic is NOT an elementary lesson, but I think that it should be.

As far a creating some new form of thought or combined form of philosophy and science, this article doesn't seem to offer much. "Bringing back natural philosophy" seems to me as to trade apples for apples. Science was considered natural philosophy for most of history.

Thanks though, I liked reading the majority of it.

It's a good parent who realizes that his/her child has matured into adulthood. Philosophy having birthed science should let it develop itself on its own instead of trying to bring it back into its fold.

I think as Newton implies, we should consider "science" as referred to in these modern times, as the experimental part of philosophy. And I think scientists should keep with their vocation and ignore the metaphysics which is clearly not a part of it. The problem is that those who advance metaphysics have forgotten about the "natural" part of philosophy. Nowadays metaphysics is synonymous with super/un-natural as if anything can be beyond nature.

I no longer think we need to reconcile or unite the two, rather, those who propagate metaphysics need to adhere to logic instead of fuelling fancies and gross mysticism. Subjects like mind and consciousness can be investigated logically and, to some degree, practically without abandoning the field of metaphysics or natural philosophy.

At one time, not too long ago (in this forum), I advocated for the union of science and philosophy but now I think to let the past go and build upon a better realised future where philosophy can earn its merits by its own work instead of relying on handouts. I believe, philosophy can go further than science since it is not as limited. However, it needs the kind of dedication and mastery we observe in science.

I'm quoting from the link in the OP:

But then science broke away from metaphysics, from philosophy, as a result of natural philosophers adopting a profound misconception about the nature of science. As a result, natural philosophy died, the great divide between science and philosophy was born, and the decline of philosophy began.

It was Newton who inadvertently killed off natural philosophy with his claim, in the third edition of his Principia, to have derived his law of gravitation from the phenomena by induction. — Nicholas Maxwell

I think the great divide between metaphysics and natural philosophy was the result of Descartes' dualism. This separation of mind from body, rationality from empiricism, physical and non-physical, was the greatest blunder in philosophy.

Science is simply metaphysical questions that have become testable with experimentation and observation. Science has begun to answer questions like, "Why are we here?", "When did the universe begin?", "How big is the universe?", etc. with credibility - which is to say that there is empirical evidence for it - so much so that religions change and adapt with new scientific knowledge. What was once the work of gods, is now understood to be the work of natural, unintentional forces.

I think that the final metaphysical question to be answered is related to the nature of the mind and its relationship with the world. Descartes exacerbated the problem with his dualism.

Maybe you can say a bit more about the paper and what your take on it is? — StreetlightX

I already did:

I found it an interesting read — Pattern-chaser

I found nothing so contentious that I would espouse, or challenge it. But the article does contain a number of interesting thoughts. I see from the little face in the corner of your icon that you are a mod, so (for the future) is it OK just to post something that's worth reading? If so, perhaps it should be in the 'lounge' or another area? For me, I think we should have a permanent topic just for people to list interesting links, with a brief summary of what they're about. :chin:

Philosophy having birthed science should let it develop itself on its own instead of trying to bring it back into its fold. — TheMadFool

Agreed. Historically, science is a tool developed by one or several schools of philosophy (the ones that include words like "analytic" and "logical" in their descriptions). But it grew up and left home some time ago, and has now successfully differentiated itself from its historical parent. I got no sense from the article that it recommended the recapture of science, did you?

In the Ontario curriculum (a province in Canada) philosophy is only offered once, as an elective high school course in grade 12 (ranked as a "U" level course, meaning the grade can be submitted to universities). I was fortunate that my teacher was phenomenal, and passionate, and the course actually offered a fantastic summary of key branches of philosophy. It also 'taught' me the word philosophy, and taught me that up until then all the other courses and subjects that I had loved (English, sociology, history, social justice) were also PHILOSOPHY.

But, that being said, philosophy is not supported or ~discussed~ beyond that one elective, which I recently found out, not all high schools even offer. The issue is, I've found that by the time children are 16-18 years old, they've developed rigid thinking patterns and most find philosophy, confusing, bullshit, or boring. Philosophy needs to be introduced younger-I always found drawing up little picture books helps with even my own understanding of philosophical concepts. Perhaps a retired philosopher should take such a task on, developing a curriculum of philosophy for younger children? I've managed to talk about philosophy with children as young as six (I worked as a summer camp counsellor) mainly simple political concepts-like the idea of 'democracy' but they ate it up. No reason philosophy can't be introduced earlier-encourage abstract, theoretical, and critical thinking.
Except-where's the $$$ in teaching children that?
Philosophy also has great subversion power-the whole point of the modern education system is to prepare children to enter the working economy and function productively. Not to ask questions that don't necessarily have answers and stir up trouble...

Also, one more point (before I go read the article)-even science as we know it, is heavily butchered in the education system environment. Before we can even begin discussing 'bridging' the gap between philosophy and science, we need to repair the harm done to both fields...science as presented in the school system is based on the premise of establishing 'facts', you memorize terms from a text book and then answer the test. Or you do an "experiment" (most of which get bungled in the process) to establish said 'fact', this is repetitive, tedious, and boring. This gives science a bad first impression. I HATED science in school, HATED the stupid experiments where you had to write down your 'predictions' 'observations' ect. It makes science extremely inaccessible for most, when it doesn't have to be. Science is a whole more than what is presented to you in school.

The conclusion is inescapable: science cannot proceed without making, implicitly or explicitly, a persistent metaphysical assumption of unity – ‘metaphysical’ because it is too imprecise to be verified or falsified by evidence. The current orthodox conception of science, inherited from Newton, and still taken for granted by scientists today, that science must appeal only to evidence, and must not make metaphysical assumptions about the nature of the universe independently of evidence, is untenable, and must be rejected.

But what if the human mind/imagination can only comprehend unity? or unified theories? Does this implicit bias of de facto unity reveal more about us than it does about the Universe?

Academia needs to be transformed so that its basic task becomes to help humanity resolve those conflicts and problems of living that need to be solved if we are to make progress towards a genuinely civilised world.

Also agree with this. But academia will not be transformed until it becomesvalued in various countries and cultures, and in order to do that, it needs to be (on our current model) economically valued and more accessible. It costs too much money for people to go to school to not even ~get a job~.

Descartes also tortured dogs and seemed overall-a dismal and myopic person. Pity he devalued philosophical inquiry so entirely, that to date, it is hard to find hard refutation evidence of his theory beyond that of common sense (at least his disparage of animal sentience).

But first science (not all science, just those practitioners who make claims for the emancipation of science from philosophy) would need to know that it never left the fold, it just thinks it did because it takes a naive attitude toward the world.What science did do was emancipate itself from a certain are of philosophical thinking.

I no longer think we need to reconcile or unite the two, rather, those who propagate metaphysics need to adhere to logic instead of fuelling fancies and gross mysticism. Subjects like mind and consciousness can be investigated logically and, to some degree, practically without abandoning the field of metaphysics or natural philosophy. — BrianW

What about schools of philosophy that no longer consider themselves metaphysical in the sense of going beyond the natural?

From the article " One attempted solution was Continental philosophy, conducted mainly in Europe: it could ignore science, ignore reason, and plunge into a celebration of bombast and incoherence." Or perhaps the author doesnt have a clue how to understand contemporary continental philosophy and so derives his views of philosophy from Descartes and Locke. Let's see if we can help him out.

(shameless self-plagiarism inserted below):

"it sounds like you're saying there is a real realm of physical nature and a real realm of human subjective experience, or what we colloquially call 'phenomenological', and that the two are different in their contents and methods of study but equally primordial. We can study the nature of human experience naturalistically, using objective empirical methods of the social sciences, or phenomenologically, via non-empirical philosophical modes of inquiry.

The meaning of Husserl's phenomenology, which served as the jumping off point for Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, among others, is quite different from this colloquial understanding of phenomenological. As Dan Zahavi puts it " Husserl is not concerned with finding room for consciousness within an already well established materialistic or naturalistic framework. The attempt to do the latter assumes that consciousness is merely yet another object in the world. For Husserl, the problem of consciousness should not be addressed on the background of an unquestioned objectivism. Frequently, the assumption has been that a better understanding of the physical world will allow us to understand consciousness better and rarely, that a better understanding of consciousness might allow for a better understanding of what it means for something to be real.
The positive sciences are so absorbed in their investigation of the natural (or social/cultural) world that they do not pause to reflect upon their own presuppositions and conditions of possibility. For Husserl, natural science is (philosophically) naive. Its subject matter, nature, is simply taken for granted. Reality is assumed to be out there, waiting to be discovered and investigated. And the aim of natural science is to acquire a strict and objectively valid knowledge about this given realm. But this attitude must be contrasted with the properly philosophical attitude, which critically questions the very foundation of experience and scientific thought."

As Evan Thompson concurs "I follow the trajectory that arises in the later Husserl and continues in Merleau-Ponty, and that calls for a rethinking of the concept of “nature” in a post-physicalist way—one that doesn’t conceive of fundamental nature or physical being in a way that builds in the objectivist idea that such being is intrinsically or essentially non-experiential. We can see historically how
the concept of nature as physical being got constructed in an objectivist way, while at the same
time we can begin to conceive of the possibility of a different kind of construction that would be
post-physicalist and post-dualist–that is, beyond the divide between the “mental” (understood as
not conceptually involving the physical) and the “physical” (understood as not conceptually
involving the mental)."

So I would correct the idea that science is concerned with studying the natural world. Scientific approaches which are ensconced within a naive realist worldview believe that what they do is study the natural world. Empirical perspectives, such as 4ea(enactive, embodied, embedded extended affective), which have absorbed Husserl's lessons, do not make such claims for studying something called nature that can be thought independently of how the world appears for a subject. They don't study a natural world but an intersubjectively enacted world. And this isn't just psychologists I'm talking about but also biologists and physicists."

Philosophy also has great subversion power-the whole point of the modern education system is to prepare children to enter the working economy and function productively. Not to ask questions that don't necessarily have answers and stir up trouble... — Grre

Exactly. So there's maybe always something a little bogus about teaching philosophy to children. It's the same with 'critical thinking.' The medium betrays the message. A very cool teacher could minimize this effect, but these days schools are probably especially afraid of any exciting debate.

But then I also think that some people just really don't like the level of abstraction or detachment. Most people can get into politics, but this is safer and more concrete. To wrestle with subversive philosophy is to endure something like fear and trembling. And of course it requires thinking beyond the soundbite or the bumper sticker. I'd say that some people just have a sufficient passion to push through. I like the idea of children being exposed. The few of them who are ready for it may benefit. The others can just barf up what they learned from flash cards.

I see it as a great mistake to think that science is or can be separate at all from philosophy. Those who claim science has grown separate from philosophy simply don't see the philosophical assumptions/beliefs within which scientists work. And unfortunately, most scientists are themselves not aware of their philosophical assumptions/beliefs, thus claiming that what they do has nothing to do with philosophy, and that what philosophers do has nothing to do with what they do.

The split is in the mind of the scientists and their followers. And if they philosophized more about what they do, they would realize that a lot of what they say is not as certain as they claim to be, and they would explore or allow others to explore paths that seem to contradict the mainstream ones.

When we have scientists making claims such as that the heat death of the universe in the far future is a certainty, that it is a certainty that at some point all life will become impossible in the universe, and when their claims are unexamined because they are scientists and supposedly scientists know better and they are to be believed, then we know that modern science has entered a philosophical void where belief trumps reason.

What about schools of philosophy that no longer consider themselves metaphysical in the sense of going beyond the natural? — Joshs

I believe everything is within the purview of nature (reality's mode of operation), otherwise we wouldn't be able to recognise them. Also, if logic is adhered to, nothing should be beyond nature, just beyond our understanding or appreciation of it, and therefore any new information is an opportunity to learn.

"it sounds like you're saying there is a real realm of physical nature and a real realm of human subjective experience, or what we colloquially call 'phenomenological', and that the two are different in their contents and methods of study but equally primordial. We can study the nature of human experience naturalistically, using objective empirical methods of the social sciences, or phenomenologically, via non-empirical philosophical modes of inquiry. — Joshs

I believe there's a subjective experience which is the domain of all that we know, understand, believe, etc. However, through reason which adheres to logic, it is also clear that we can deduce and/or conceive of an objective relation of which we are a part of. So, for me, philosophy is about the relation between the two domains and empiricism is fundamentally about how much influence we can exert, operate and appreciate in relation to both. We have the capacity to interact with reality regardless of whether it is from a subjective/objective, abstract/practical, point of view. Our knowledge can never be absolute but it can be expansive, so it's about developing/unfolding more connections.

Science has developed its limits, its sphere of operation - empiricism - and we should respect that. However, there's more to our processes of knowledge than that. For those who need a dimension of knowledge that goes further, they should look to that which goes as far as they need. So far, philosophy is not as limited as science and should not sacrifice its integrity just for a mere moments popularity. Right now, in this age (moment in time) scientists are working harder and smarter than philosophers and that is why they seem to be achieving more even though the methods employed by both have a great many points of similarity.

And I think scientists should keep with their vocation and ignore the metaphysics which is clearly not a part of it. — BrianW

On the assumption you're correct (I think you're dead wrong), where and how do you draw the boundary between them? Depending on that, we may find grounds for agreement! Of course it will help if you offer a sentence or two or three on what you take science and metaphysics to be.

I mean in the sense that scientists have determined to do away with metaphysics (the "un/super-natural" kind) in present-day science. This is because everything that science deals with, is considered to be part of natural phenomena. At least, that's what I think.

Metaphysics - a branch of philosophy - is roughly and broadly understood as thinking about thinking. It is not an observation original with me that the man who does not think about - reflect on, consider - how he is doing what he is doing, has not achieved a mature understanding of his craft. I agree that may scientists, notable among them Feynman, have contempt for "philosophy" - the kind you reference - but a reading of any of them shows them first-rate thinkers and philosophers. I think, then, the separation is between science and a kind of nonsense wrongly called metaphysics. Real metaphysics, on the other hand, is a critical partner of the sciences.

Small point: most of us take "natural" as naturally natural and a posteriori naturally simple. But these guys - real scientists and metaphysicians - know it's not that simple.

Ya of course, exposure over indoctrination. I don't think everyone is able to/wants to be a philosopher, but I think that philosophy can be useful for everyone. I'm getting really tired of defending that thesis though, to my friends, my family, my boyfriend, my coworkers, everyone just thinks I'm weird-and should be interested in something that will make $$ or be cool. Like playing lacrosse or something.

Like playing lacrosse or something. — Grre

Playing lacrosse is very cool.