Is there anything that anyone would think is useful to add to this? — MonfortS26
This is the process for establishing philosophical axioms. — MonfortS26
This seems unnecessarily complicated. Maybe it would be clearer if you can give simple examples of philosophical and scientific issues addressed by your method. — T Clark
Also - in my experience application of one of these methods does not start with a question, it starts with an observation, an issue, or a problem. If there is a question, it's "what's going on here?" — T Clark
Haven't you already relied on axiomatic assumptions in establishing your particular take on the way philosophical questioning should proceed? — Janus
If the experiment confirms your hypothesis you will develop an axiom based on observations that the rest of the system will rely on, which can be expanded if the domain of the formal system needs to be expanded. Another option, if one desires to add another level of rigor, is to test other hypotheses as well, in order to satisfy the principle of strong inference. If it doesn’t confirm the hypothesis, go back to the observations and pick the next most probable answer and repeat the process... Scientific inquiry necessary when you have enough time to conduct it and it is important that you are right the first time.
If it helps, I've worked in a few scientific research projects and am a statistician, and not once have I been asked to used Kolmogorov's axioms in a Carnap-ian quest for scientific objectivity. Much more effort is placed on designing appropriate controls and resource efficient experimental designs than anything which resembles 'applied probabilistic reasoning' in the sense you outlined it. — fdrake
In my view, good philosophy isn't there to vouchsafe the operations of scientific thought, or to ape scientific thinking in a philosophical register - scientific thinking will continue to happen without philosophy's help. Philosophy at its best is a problematiser, a composite of overlapping and sometimes contrary metaphysical, epistemic, ethical and political intuitions which allow it to ask interesting questions. — fdrake
Science bottoms out in the real world - it deals with real abstractions - in a way metaphysics and epistemology usually don't. For example, metaphysical and epistemic concepts are rarely parametrised or operationalised; they don't need to interface with reality in the same way as scientific thoughts do. Another contrastive case - what would an epistemologist specialising in Gettier do with a survey on people's responses to Gettier Cases? — fdrake
That part was more about adding structure to the abductive reasoning in hypothesis formation than it was about designing the actual experiment, but I've never actually done any real research so I probably have no idea what I'm talking about. What do you mean when you refer to much more effort?
Wouldn't that question asking and answering behaviour be required for the first few steps of the scientific method? How are you defining philosophy and science?
This is why I separated philosophical and scientific inquiry. Even in cases like normative ethics, which seem to me to be statements based on the way people think the world should be, there is no way to really ground any of the arguments in reality. — MonfortS26
When a religious person earnestly asserts that "God Exists", to doubt the factual accuracy of what he is saying is in some sense to misunderstand what he is saying. For the only meaningful scientific problem is to ascertain the environmental stimuli that upon interacting with the person's brain provokes his assertion. Thereupon identification of the environmental stimuli, we can interpret the religious person's assertion "God Exists" as his empirical measurement of said environmental stimuli. — sime
With regard to 'infinite regress' however, Agrippa's trilemma is always going to highlight faulty reasoning in an architectonic system in some way. But some 'faults of reason' are justified in a way that makes inquiry using those faults of reason irreducible to philosophical reasoning. Science bottoms out in the real world - it deals with real abstractions - in a way metaphysics and epistemology usually don't. For example, metaphysical and epistemic concepts are rarely parametrised or operationalised; they don't need to interface with reality in the same way as scientific thoughts do. Another contrastive case - what would an epistemologist specialising in Gettier do with a survey on people's responses to Gettier Cases? — fdrake
With regard to 'infinite regress' however, Agrippa's trilemma is always going to highlight faulty reasoning in an architectonic system in some way. But some 'faults of reason' are justified in a way that makes inquiry using those faults of reason irreducible to philosophical reasoning. — fdrake
Science bottoms out in the real world - it deals with real abstractions - in a way metaphysics and epistemology usually don't. For example, metaphysical and epistemic concepts are rarely parametrised or operationalised; they don't need to interface with reality in the same way as scientific thoughts do. — fdrake
Another contrastive case - what would an epistemologist specialising in Gettier do with a survey on people's responses to Gettier Cases? — fdrake
This is because: most of the time the ways you can analyse the data are fixed/induced by the experimental design and how variables are operationalised.
Will give a few examples. If you can take repeat measurements from a single person (or thing) to test something, typically you do that because it provides more precise and less confounded estimates of a treatment's main effect. EG: If you're trying to measure how hard a mental ask is to do, the difference between their pupil diameter during the task and their average pupil diameter before it is a good measurement. That kind of thing could only be observed from experimental practice, and whether it's right or wrong depends on the real world and the experimental set up more than the truth of some theory of cognitive load. — fdrake
Maybe I've misunderstood you. To me, justification of faults of reason is philosophy. Epistemology.
This isn't a logically valid argument, and importantly the moves between steps in the argument aren't done through formal logical entailment - they follow in a rough and ready way characteristic of empirical reasoning of any sort. I think it's more likely that Bonnet had a 'cloud' of concepts similar to those represented in the above list, and that cloud suggested taking the action to hypothesise (8). What would be a fault of reason in philosophy was used scientifically to draw a sensible conclusion. — fdrake
A suggestive idea might be: methodology is closer to philosophy than method. — fdrake
I think you're treating method as methodology though. Philosophical analysis of how Charles Button came to hypothesise, correctly, that hallucination was more similar to vision than mental imagery is part of philosophy, maybe part of epistemology or philosophy of science. That's methodology. — fdrake
The kind of inquiry that looks at commonalities between your list and my list is methodological. The kind of inquiry that our lists describes is application of a method. — fdrake
But, what kind of things are in scientific thinking but not philosophy and vice versa? — fdrake
Clearly philosophical but not scientific - What is the true nature of reality.
Clearly scientific but not philosophical - What is the structure of DNA.
Through the Copernican Revolution (Kant's intellectual system), philosophy is rescued of the obligation to investigate the world and now becomes a self-reflexive investigation of how the human structures the world and objects. It is in this respect that philosophy becomes a transcendental anthropology and any discussion of the objects of the world becomes, ultimately, an anthropological investigation. For the object and the world are no longer a place where humans happen to dwell, but are rather mirrors of human structuring activity. It is this that Hegel will ultimately attempt to show in The Phenomenology of Spirit with his famous “identity of identity and difference” or “identity of substance and subject”. If Hegel is able to show that the object, which appears to be so transcendent to and alien to the subject, is ultimately the subject, then this is because the object is already a reflection of the sense-bestowing activity of the subject. — Levy Bryant, Larval Subjects
There are differences in 'how do I know what I know?' in philosophical terms and scientific ones. 'is this argument I found in a biology paper valid?' is the kind of thing philosophy could give you insight on, 'is this argument sound?' is the kind of thing you'd need some philosophical chops and biological chops to answer. 'are the premises true?' are likely to be questions of biology alone. — fdrake
I'm not sure I agree with this. "How does DNA work?" has an influence on "What is the true nature of reality?", ontology in the broadest sense is the study of being - and it would be very surprising if the structure of (domains of) beings had no influence on the broadest metaphysical questions. — fdrake
I agree that it is true that every inquiry has some philosophical implications, but I don't agree that that allows us to dissolve the distinctions between philosophy and other inquiries. If too much is indexed to a particular type of inquiry, much is irrevocably lost from methodological issues. — fdrake
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