And when I distinguish an object to someone, and they ask how I am distinguishing that object (in what way am I distinguishing it, by what features or attributes), no one ever explains a process of the brain. — Antony Nickles

This happen to you a lot, someone asks you, "By what features or attributes are you distinguishing that object?"?

For one thing, "feature" in everyday life is (a) a salesman's word, (b) refers to a guest vocal by a hip-hop artist, or (c), rarely nowadays with the disappearance of shorts and doubles, a movie. But that's not how you're using it; you're using it as a bit of philosophical shop-talk. "Attribute"? "Object"? Hardly used by ordinary people at all. I've been asked whether I think a pair of pants is green or grey, but I wasn't asked what color I would attribute to them, or by what features I distinguished the pants as an object. If you have these sorts of conversations on the regular, your life is very different from mine.

The question that @NotAristotle asked was clearly a question looking for a scientific explanation that would involve processes of the brain. He could not have been clearer. The answers he received referred to gestalt principles (@Pantagruel), neural networks (@wonderer1), the predictive and inferential nature of perception (@apokrisis), the involuntariness of object perception (@L'éléphant), pattern recognition (@DingoJones), survival value so that natural selection can kick in (@litewave), and how object perception arrives very early in our lives (me). Those are all important pieces of a very complicated answer.

Only you told him, don't do that, this is a philosophical issue, and therefore a question about our ordinary criteria for objects; turning to science is just your desire for certainty, your fear of uncertainty, and an evasion of responsibility. And then @Joshs showed up to throw Husserl at me, god love him (and oddly choosing not to mention that Merleau-Ponty references early gestalt psychology).

I would've given odds that you would say that, but no one who's read any of your posts would have bet against. The odds were also pretty high that @wonderer1 was going to say something about neural networks, that I was going to say something about learning and "go read some more", that @Joshs was going to question the foundations of science, and that @apokrisis was going to say something a lot like what he did, which most of us can recognize but not reproduce (although I did know that if he answered this one, the word "crisp" would be there), showing that there is a hierarchy of issues involved and how those fit together.

We're all pretty predictable. It might all seem very interesting to @NotAristotle, but it'll seem less interesting the fourth time he asks a question and gets exactly these answers for the fourth time.

Most of the sciency posts here were more or less explicitly partial answers, with the exception of apo's, because apo doesn't do partial.

Only you and then @Joshs argued that science is more or less irrelevant here, @Joshs because science itself has foundations that are, I guess, metaphysical, you, I think, because nothing could be a 'higher court of appeal' than our practices. @Joshs accepts some sort of continuity between philosophy and psychology, but on the grounds (I guess) that psychology is more philosophical than it lets on. You do not. I'm not clear whether you have a critique of science in mind, or only of the reliance on science when doing philosophy or perhaps also in everyday conversation.

I would defend the use of science in philosophy this way: we begin in the middle, with conceptions we only know through our everyday reliance on them, scientists being just like other people; we investigate ourselves and our environment relying on those conceptions but without assuming they are the last word, that we already know everything that can be knowed. It will frequently turn out to be the case that our everyday conceptions are inadequate for understanding what we find, even misleading, but we can also come to understand why we have come to conceive of things as we ordinarily do. Why, for instance, we perceive a world of objects, to use a philosopher's word. What science helps you resist is the elevation of your everyday understanding into a theory, which is the philosopher's game. Scientists, not philosophers, "leave everything as it is": of course you perceive tables as solid, here's why, and here's why "solid" can't mean what you might reflectively think it means, but your sense that there's a difference between room-temperature wood and room-temperature water is right, and here's more why.

Philosophers used to talk about stuff like this but they don't anymore for the simple reason that science does it better. They know it. Ordinary people know it. @NotAristotle knows enough to know it's science that will answer his question, not philosophy.

Having been painted into an increasingly small corner by science, some philosophers have gotten their own paint to mark the line that science Shall Not Cross. Only Philosophers Allowed. You can keep all the territory you've conquered (an amusing gesture, considering there's no way philosophy is getting any of that back), but no more! What's left in this corner? Metaphysics? Probably not for long. Transcendental arguments? They fit the bill, apparently, but the need for the transcendental move is premised on a deeply flawed psychology, folk psychology elevated to theory. Language? The same transcendental issue. No, it's become pretty clear that philosophy is (at best) a methodology in search of a domain. (@plaque flag) Unless you're apo, and your domain is everything.

I've been on the other side of this argument as @Isaac could attest. I've tried defending the specialness of philosophy. I think there's still some room for stuff that science isn't quite suited to or that it doesn't bother with, but I'm through chasing science off my lawn. I think it's a betrayal of the spirit of philosophy and resentment of the success of science.

What's your take? I'm asking.

I've been on the other side of this argument as Isaac could attest. I've tried defending the specialness of philosophy. I think there's still some room for stuff that science isn't quite suited to or that it doesn't bother with, but I'm through chasing science off my lawn. I think it's a betrayal of the spirit of philosophy and resentment of the success of science. — Srap Tasmaner

As I tried to point out in my previous comment, I don’t think the issue that Antony is touching on has to do with a limitation of science with respect to philosophy, but the limitation of a certain set of philosophical assumptions that inform specific approaches in the sciences. Antony may or may not be aware of them, but all one has to do is search for those theorists contributing to research in cognitive neuroscience and other domains of psychology who cite the later Wittgenstein as a key inspiration. Such a search will reveal philosophically reformulated notions of brain, body , language and culture that are much more compatible with Wittgenstein than the ones that Antony has in mind.

Such a search will reveal philosophically reformulated notions of brain, body , language and culture that are much more compatible with Wittgenstein — Joshs

I'm right now reading a book of psychology that I would argue is in some clear ways compatible with the later Wittgenstein.

On the other hand, who cares? Wittgenstein is interesting, but aligning your theory with Wittgenstein or with any philosopher really should not be a goal of any scientific research program.

Inspiration taken from Wittgenstein? Absolutely. But inspiration can come from absolutely anywhere and ought not guide you toward a particular result.

m

I'm right now reading a book of psychology that I would argue is in some clear ways compatible with the later Wittgenstein.

On the other hand, who cares? Wittgenstein is interesting, but aligning your theory with Wittgenstein or with any philosopher really should not be a goal of any scientific research program.

Inspiration taken from Wittgenstein? Absolutely. But inspiration can come from absolutely anywhere and ought not guide you toward a particular result — Srap Tasmaner

Inspiration ought not guide you toward a particular result? Would you prefer lack of inspiration as your guide?
Inspiration can in theory come from anywhere. In practice, it often comes from a handful of prophetic thinkers who had to wait decades before the larger culture was ready to embrace their ideas. One example is the eventual embrace of the ideas of American Pragmatists and Phenomenology within psychology. It s not a question of artificially ‘aligning’ your scientific work with a philosopher, but of enriching your ideas by interlacing them with giants who preceded you.
Most empirical research is drudge work that aligns itself with myriad references from the field. Breaking with an accepted theoretical orientation means turning your back on those conventional references and finding new sources of inspiration. Heisenberg and Bohr understood this, delving deep into the philosophical literature for guidance.
For my money , any empirical psychology which hasn’t absorbed Wittgenstein’s insights(or those of the pragmatists and phenomenologists) is not a very interesting psychology.

We know what picking the results of research ahead of time looks like, and it's not the same thing as working within an existing paradigm.

Inspiration can in theory come from anywhere. In practice, it often comes from a handful of prophetic thinkers who had to wait decades before the larger culture was ready to embrace their ideas. — Joshs

I wouldn't even describe Darwin this way, so we're just not talking about the same world. Lots of people have interesting ideas, it's the research that matters. It's the research supporting and extending Darwin's insights that makes his ideas matter. Picking ideas you like -- well, we all do that, but that's not science.

One example is the eventual embrace of the ideas of American Pragmatists and Phenomenology within psychology. — Joshs

But wasn’t the pragmatism a reflection of early psychological research - the work of Helmholtz, Wundt, Donders, Fechner and the rest? Psychology started off enactive and embodied with its emphasis on habits, psychophysics, anticipation, etc - the practical how of modelling a world - and then got lost in the wilderness of Freudianism, Behaviourism, Cognitivism, Personality testing, etc, for a long time.

In my reading of the history, you have Cartesian representationalism and British empiricism creating the familiar disembodied notion of mind as a clutter of sense impressions and ideas. The justification of phenomenology as the method of inquiry.

You then have pragmatism arising out of the new scientific spirit of inquiry where the mind is all about modelling, habits and judgements - constrained by the fact of being in the world rather than being remarkable for standing apart from that world.

After that, psychology swings back to a confusion of approaches that speak to the old Dualistic concerns with representation and sense data. The “problem” for psychology becomes again the contents of the private individual head rather than the more general one of how organisms relate to worlds in meaning constructing fashion.

See this quick intro to Peirce’s theory of object recognition as a shift from the representationalism of sense data to the enaction of perceptual judgements.

https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/9037/NZAP%28Dec2014%29.pdf?sequence=6&isAllowed=y

So enactivism was alive and well in 19th C experimental psychology. And Pragmatism arose in that context. Both were informed by the holism of German naturphilosophie.

But then the reductionist Anglo world came crashing in and claimed psychology as its science of the mind. The story of a container with its private content. The whole field got metaphysically screwed for another century.

Lots of people have interesting ideas, it's the research that matters. It's the research supporting and extending Darwin's insights that makes his ideas matter. Picking ideas you like -- well, we all do that, but that's not science. — Srap Tasmaner

It sounds like science to you is tied to a notion of correspondence between scientific observer and observed reality wherein the evident world that appears to the scientist’s instruments of measure can be partitioned off from entanglement with cultural influences. So science as research means a certain.l purity with respect to such outside influences, including the influence of philosophy. After all, philosophical research doesnt have its eye on the mathematically measurable and testable facts, does it? Science’s method thereby gives it a privileged access to, or at least privileged ability to measure and verify, the real, so the traditional thinking about science goes. Wittgenstein’s insights appear irrelevant to what science is about, according to this thinking.

But wasn’t the pragmatism a reflection of early psychological research - the work of Helmholtz, Wundt, Donders, Fechner and the rest? — apokrisis

My understanding is that Helmholtz et al were under the sway of neo-Kantianism. Dan Zahavi writes:

“Helmholtz took Johannes Müller's theory and the evidence he presented as a scientific confirmation of Kant's basic claim in Kritik der reinen Vernunft concerning the extent to which “we can have cognition of no object as a thing in itself, but only […] as an appearance” (Kant 1998: B xxvi), and he argued that contemporary science on the basis of physiological evidence were reaching the same kind of insights as Kant had reached by a priori considerations. Our knowledge concerns reality as it is represented within ourselves, and not mind-independent reality as it is in itself, which remains unknowable.”

James, Dewey and Mead were heirs of Hegel rather than Kant.

In my reading of the history, you have Cartesian representationalism and British empiricism creating the familiar disembodied notion of mind as a clutter of sense impressions and ideas. The justification of phenomenology as the method of inquiry. — apokrisis

The above justified Husserl’s phenomenological method as an alternative to the above, an attempt to navigate between empiricism and idealism, relativism and skepticism.

As Derrida writes:

“Husserl, thus, ceaselessly attempts to reconcile the structuralist demand (which leads to the
comprehensive description of a totality, of a form or a function organized according to an internal legality in which elements have meaning only in the solidarity of their correlation or their opposition), with the genetic demand (that is the search for the origin and foundation of the structure). One could show, perhaps, that the phenomenological project itself is born of an initial failure of this attempt.”

It sounds like science to you is tied to a notion of correspondence between scientific observer and observed reality — Joshs

Nope. You got all of that just out of me using the word "research"? Geez.

You then have pragmatism arising out of the new scientific spirit of inquiry where the mind is all about modelling, habits and judgements - constrained by the fact of being in the world rather than being remarkable for standing apart from that world. — apokrisis

Exactly. I can't speak to Peirce, but it takes no more than a page of Dewey or James to see this. I mean, James literally wrote the book on psychology. His career is physiology > psychology > philosophy. I don't how much more obvious this can be.

And a quick reminder that the full title of Hume's book is A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects.

The pragmatists I'm reading may differ from Hume in where they land on particular issues, but it's the same spirit, and I see no reason for work undertaken in the spirit of science to be discontinuous from other work undertaken in that spirit.

We could argue the toss about who was informed by the mechanistic holism of Kant, who by the idealistic holism of Hegel. But it is still the same thing of taking the developmental perspective seriously. Perception as an embodied habit rather than a disembodied display.

As Derrida writes: — Joshs

I don’t speak gibberish. Perhaps you could translate into plain language?

It sounds like science to you is tied to a notion of correspondence between scientific observer and observed reality
— Joshs

Nope. You got all of that just out of me using the word "research"? Geez. — Srap Tasmaner

Oh, there’s correspondence there all right. It may be in the form of indirect modeling, but there is something in your notion of scientific observation and measurement that keeps science apart from the humanities and other areas of cultural creativity, and I think it has to do with how science gets a grip on the real.

↪Joshs

As Derrida writes:
— Joshs

I don’t speak gibberish. Perhaps you could translate into plain language? — apokrisis

You mean you arent familiar with the philosophical history of structuralism, the class of approaches which unify elements on the basis of a shared logic. Structuralists like Levi-Strauss posited a structuralist semiotics for describing anthropological systems, but didn’t give an adequate account of the origin of such wholes. Piaget’s little book Structuralism deals with the attempt by various kinds of structuralist accounts to integrate genesis and structure.His own genetic epistemology was one such attempt , and he saw Husserl as a kindred spirit. Derrida recognized that Husserl’s melding of genesis and structure avoided both the temptations of Historicism, which would posit an a priori dialectical organizing principle to unify historical development , and empiricism, which would produce a skepticism of facts of the matter.

You mean you arent familiar with the philosophical history of structuralism — Joshs

I meant that I don't do gibberish. And I certainly don't regard the PoMo version of "structuralism" as a solid foundation for a proper structuralist metaphysics.

I'm a systems scientist/holist/Aristotelean when it comes to a structuralist causality. Kant and Hegel, along with Schelling and whoever, were the heirs to that tradition.

And where I depart is in recognising that organisms have their root in the physics of dissipative structure, but their intentionality in the mechanics of semiosis.

So nature wants to self-organise entropically. And life and mind can arise as further informational structure that lives off that dynamics.

The philosophical history of structuralism continues to be written. By science now.

Oh, there’s correspondence there all right. — Joshs

I mean, I get that "correspondence" is like a swear word for you, but you're just making stuff up.

It may be in the form of indirect modeling, but there is something in your notion of scientific observation and measurement that keeps science apart from the humanities and other areas of cultural creativity, and I think it has to do with how science gets a grip on the real. — Joshs

What notions? Where did I talk about observation and measurement? You're just projecting, which -- it's just weird. Do you need me for this conversation?

Here's the thing. I could explain what my actual conception of science is (communal, pragmatic, predictive, sensitive to feedback, self updating, blah blah blah), thus defending myself against your charge of philosophical sin. But I don't have to.

What does your "correspondence" charge amount to? Suppose it's true and "correspondence" is inscribed in the Great Book of How to Do Science and What It Really Means. Then you could object that correspondence to the real is -- what? Is refuted? Is bad? Is a discredited metaphysics? Is problematic? Should science care? If it works, it works. You can stand outside all day shouting, "This whole enterprise is a farce! They believe in correspondence to the real, those scientists!" No scientist will care. No one else will either. You will maintain your philosophical purity, as you understand it, but so what? Science will go on doing what it does.

Which is of course the point. Science is successful. Art is also successful. Literature is successful. History is successful. All of them in different ways, and it's no knock on art or literature or history that they are not science. Science is also only what it is. Is philosophy successful? I think most people feel it's a little harder to say whether it is -- but it's easy if you count spawning the natural sciences as part of the history of philosophy, because philosophy ought to be proud of that.

I still don't see any good reason for philosophy to be ashamed to be seen in the company of science.

It will frequently turn out to be the case that our everyday conceptions are inadequate for understanding what we find, even misleading, but we can also come to understand why we have come to conceive of things as we ordinarily do. — Srap Tasmaner

And this is the story philosophy has told itself, that ordinary criteria for judgment are “inadequate” and/or “misleading”, thus the advent of “appearances” and that philosophy’s job was to understand objects directly or actually or completely. And now science has taken the bait to really tell us how things are, as if the answer was the missing part and not the first step of turning our human condition into an intellectual problem. Science here is trying to answer a rigged question that is not about knowledge. Philosophy does not have the success of science, with its sturdy, repeatable, dependable conclusions; it’s meant to transform people. A moral discussion can always end without agreement, but that is not a reason to retreat to only what we can know (say, about the brain).

What notions? Where did I talk about observation and measurement? You're just projecting, which -- it's just weird. Do you need me for this conversation? — Antony Nickles

Yes, and I don’t seem to be getting much help from you.

Here's the thing. I could explain what my actual conception of science is (communal, pragmatic, predictive, sensitive to feedback, self updating, blah blah blah), thus defending myself against your charge of philosophical sin. But I don't have to. — Antony Nickles

I’ll tell ya, a bit more explanation from you would help a lot. Or you could just continue expressing bemused exasperation at my projecting and not getting you.

What does your "correspondence" charge amount to? Suppose it's true and "correspondence" is inscribed in the Great Book of How to Do Science and What It Really Means. Then you could object that correspondence to the real is -- what? Is refuted? Is bad? Is a discredited metaphysics? Is problematic? — Antony Nickles

Is this a version of “If pomo claims there is no objective truth, isnt that claim itself an attempt to locate truth?”

What my charge would amount to is an invitation to see how the intrinsic CONTENT of scientific theory changes, including how the RESEARCH is conducted and interpreted, as a direct result of a shift in metaphysics or philosophy of science. For instance, phenomenologically informed enactivist and autopoietic approaches in cognitive psychology are based on such a conceptual shift, and new materialism ( which is different than pomo) interprets the results of quantum field theory through a different metaphysics than older materialisms.

Should science care? If it works, it works. You can stand outside all day shouting, "This whole enterprise is a farce! They believe in correspondence to the real, those scientists!" No scientist will care. No one else will either. You will maintain your philosophical purity, as you understand it, but so what? Science will go on doing what it does. — Antony Nickles

All accepted science works, but changes in the metaphysics of science leads to changes in our understanding of HOW it works, and as a consequence de leads to fresh concepts. It matters much to physicists that Quantum field theory works differently than Newtonian mechanics, even if they don’t realize this is due to a shift in their own metaphysics. The same goes with the shift from behaviorism and positivism in psychology to Cognitivism to embodied, enactive approaches.

Which is of course the point. Science is successful. Art is also successful. Literature is successful. History is successful. All of them in different ways, and it's no knock on art or literature or history that they are not science. Science is also only what it is. Is philosophy successful? I think most people feel it's a little harder to say whether it is -- but it's easy if you count spawning the natural sciences as part of the history of philosophy, because philosophy ought to be proud of that.

I still don't see any good reason for philosophy to be ashamed to be seen in the company of science. — Antony Nickles

It shouldn’t be ashamed since they are intertwined aspects of the same company. My point is the ways philosophy and science are different is much less significant than you think they are, such that it is silly to even try to distinguish the domain of philosophy proper from science proper, other than as a matter of the conventionality and generality of the vocabulary.

To the extent that we can talk about a progress in science it is due not to successful theory per se, but to its ability (which it shares with philosophy, the arts and other cultural domains) to undergo revolutionary shifts in the way it understands the criteria of success, and those shifts are metaphysical revolutions.

What my charge would amount to is an invitation to see how the intrinsic CONTENT of scientific theory changes, including how the RESEARCH is conducted and interpreted, as a direct result of a shift in metaphysics or philosophy of science. — Joshs

Agreed! Though if I said this I would probably have only said "theoretical framework" instead of metaphysics.

All accepted science works, but changes in the metaphysics of science leads to changes in our understanding of HOW it works, and as a consequence de leads to fresh concepts. — Joshs

Also agreed, though again I wouldn't have reached for metaphysics.

So let's talk about that. I think we are both committed to a view of science evolving and changing, and I that's roughly why I think of pragmatism as most clearly expressing the spirit of science. There's some confusion possible because there's presumably a hierarchy here, with the predictions of research down near the bottom, very changeable, theoretical frameworks above that, somewhat less changeable, and maybe way up at the top something like metaphysics.

Some of the constraints from above on what happens below are clear enough, as in the way theory guides experiment design. But those aren't absolute, because theory doesn't get to determine the experimental result, that's what the lab and the field are for.

But to some degree what's above theory does determine the result, in the sense that it guides interpretation, and that in the two ways I think you were referring to: something like metaphysics which guides the interpretation of any theory-and-research program, what it all amounts to, what sort of thing you learn when you learn something by doing science; and something like philosophy of science, which guides decisions about whether and how experimental results count as evidence for theories.

It's clear enough how the latter can constrain practice, or not, but I'm not as clear on how the 'metaphysical' arm does. If it doesn't cash out as a change in methodology, or in how theories are judged, then it seems like it might be possible to swap out the metaphysics without too much change in practice. BUT, as you point out, how research already done is understood, and how research to be done is undertaken might change considerably.

The important thing to me is that change at the various levels here is always a live option, and I think this is the pattern that pragmatism spots, so there's no reason to be wedded even to your top-level constraints of the moment.

What threw me about the way you were putting this earlier was that it sounded to me like the important thing to you was picking the right metaphysics, the one that jibes with your philosophical views, which is why I referenced Lysenkoism. I don't see it that way, obviously.

I doubt my little sketch here is perfectly satisfactory to you, but I still think there's broad agreement.

It shouldn’t be ashamed since they are intertwined aspects of the same company. My point is the ways philosophy and science are different is much less significant than you think they are, such that it is silly to even try to distinguish the domain of philosophy proper from science proper, other than as a matter of the conventionality and generality of the vocabulary. — Joshs

Ah, okay, that's a funny thing, because I have been exactly questioning that sort of boundary policing. I think they should be taken as continuous. So here again you and I are on the same page, or same enough we can talk.

I've been trying to undermine @Antony Nickles's claim that science should get off philosophy's lawn. My talking up the virtue of science was not to cordon off philosophy as its unworthy cousin, but to convince philosophy to accept science as kin.

And this is the story philosophy has told itself, that ordinary criteria for judgment are “inadequate” and/or “misleading” — Antony Nickles

It really doesn't take philosophy, just an Ames Window or an Abelson square, a 'gorilla' walking past some kids bouncing a ball, an estimate of how many countries are in Africa. We have an everyday theory about how we perceive and think, and that theory is, you know, wrong. That's hyperbole, of course.

And now science has taken the bait to really tell us how things are — Antony Nickles

"Taken the bait" -- I love that. I'll say instead that modern science has stepped up to continue doing what philosophy used to do but barely does at all anymore, for reasons that are less and less relevant. I think most philosophers from throughout the Western tradition would be thrilled by what science has achieved. Can you even imagine Aristotle's reaction!

But you think almost all Western philosophy is a train-wreck anyway, and you're among the special few who understand how most philosophy and almost all science is based on a colossal mistake.

For instance, phenomenologically informed enactivist and autopoietic approaches in cognitive psychology are based on such a conceptual shift, and new materialism ( which is different than pomo) interprets the results of quantum field theory through a different metaphysics than older materialisms. — Joshs

Interesting. Do you have a handy link to this?

Interesting. Do you have a handy link to this? — apokrisis

Sure. Here’s a good place to start.

https://smartnightreadingroom.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/meeting-the-universe-halfway.pdf

Thanks. :up:

We have an everyday theory about how we perceive and think, and that theory is, you know, wrong. — Srap Tasmaner

I didn’t say “theory”, because philosophy is not explaining vision or whatever the mechanism is for self-reflection or internal dialogue. And I’m not saying science doesn’t correct the lay-understanding of the world with definitive knowledge. But our ordinary criteria for judging that something is seen, or what is a thought, are, however, sufficient and precise enough to allow us to resolve our failings and misunderstandings, without abandoning them for the certainty and generality historically desired by philosophy and hoped for by a scientific explanation of the fantasy that this is all handled by cognitive processes (although not without cognitive processes, but only to say they don’t come into it here, with our ordinary criteria).

modern science has stepped up to continue doing what philosophy used to do — Srap Tasmaner

We used to call philosophy what science does now—the pursuit of knowledge—however, our relation to the world is not entirely by way of knowledge. I’m not speaking of belief or opinion, but of activities, practices, and even self-determination at times. How we “perceive” (let’s say see) or are “aware”, as @NotAristotle says, of objects as objects is based on our criteria for what an object is (rather than an illusion, or a gas, or something like peace or anger) and what counts as those activities in relation to them (what counts as seeing an object rather than another’s point of view, becoming aware of a distinct object rather than of a sneaking suspicion). Usually we don’t reflect on these issues until we are having a problem, in a specific context; we don’t use them rationally to do a thing (usually, unless Machiavellian) nor as reasons for doing something (though depending on the activity, having a motive or interest would be a integral part or requirement—say, applying for a job, but not, throwing a stick).

But you think almost all Western philosophy is a train-wreck anyway, and you're among the special few who understand how most philosophy and almost all science is based on a colossal mistake. — Srap Tasmaner

I’ve never said science is a mistake (though I do claim science is confused about this issue, as philosophy has been). And I take your comment that I am special in understanding this issue as sarcasm, which would be disrespectful and inappropriate here, so, unless I am mistaken, I’ll leave you to it.

I do claim science is confused — Antony Nickles

It looks to me, reading this thread, that your disagreement with @Srap Tasmaner is curiously founded on a mutual reification of 'science' — an ironic mis-recognition of an object. Is it a method, is it an ethic, is it a philosophy, is it a practice, is it an ethnicity, a social institution, a tradition, a cult? No it's Superscience! Faster than a speeding bullet.

What is being defended and attacked is nothing more than a hand, waving in the general direction of vague habits of thought and attitudes of 'suck it and see', that have proven fruitful in the past in producing material conveniences. We tried the power of prayer, but found horsepower more reliable.

If it had happened to be the other way, scientists would be busy researching which prayers to which gods were the most efficacious, and we would be calling them priests.