uwot wrote: ↑Thu Aug 03, 2017 8:45 amSome of us do. https://philosophynow.org/issues/104/Ph ... d_Branchesseeds wrote: ↑Wed Aug 02, 2017 1:52 amHi Noax,
It is unfortunate, but in light of your reference to how threads often degenerate on this site, I think it is wishful thinking on your part to assume that Dr. McQueen (or any other contributor to the magazine) is monitoring anything in this discussion forum.
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It has always seemed to me that, broadly speaking, the ultimate goal of science ought to be to establish what’s true — insofar as we can do that. We may not be able to do that because of practical limitations (no physical way to test string theory, for example) or cognitive closure (we’re not smart enough, just as dog sniffing a book isn’t smart enough to figure what the book really is).Purely empirical science doesn’t need such stories – it doesn’t need philosophy.
In any case, scientists like Einstein certainly wanted to do more than “shut up and calculate.”
A few years ago Stephen Hawking wrote a book about the nature of reality in which he claimed, on the very first page, “Philosophy is dead.” Then he proceeded to write an entire book on philosophy, specifically mooting a concept he called “model-dependent realism." Such a model is pre-eminently a philosophical idea.
Taking the "shut up and calculate" route leads to agnosticism about Ptolemy v. Copernicus. The church did not want to prevent Galileo from espousing Copernicus as a calculational tool. The church just didn't want him to espouse that it was true.
As the philosopher Norman Swartz, who wrote extensively on the philosophy of science, has noted: Scientists who say philosophy is of no use to them simply don’t understand that science itself is shot through with philosophical presuppositions, many of which cannot be scientifically tested!
As to so-called reality, another possibility is that because of evolution, Organisms tuned to fitness drive those tuned to truth to extinction, and veridical knowledge is not possible. On this account the outside world, if it exists at all apart from our mental states, is nothing at all like what we perceive it to be.