What is this thing called science?

[John W. Kelly]

Well. I guess we could take a page out of Wittgenstein's book and say there is nothing knowable, save logic.

[bullwinkle]

Well. I guess we could take a page out of Wittgenstein's book and say there is nothing knowable, save logic.

Hi John, thanks. I have to admit that Wittgenstein hasn't crossed my philosophical threshold yet. Where does this come from? Could you elaborate?

The statement sounds entirely reasonable. It's at odds with Plato's definition of knowledge as "justified true belief" but I don't think that's a problem as Plato's definition seems to open up its own set of questions about truth. I notice that Gettier's criticisms of this definition have come up in the magazine recently, current issue and issue 59. I read the article in the current issue and found Gettier's examples quite flimsy, they smacked a bit of sophistry but I'm not quite sure yet if its the examples that are flimsy or my understanding of them. It's something I need to read again.

Bullwinkle

[John W. Kelly]

Wittgenstein's reliance on logic seems to stem from his dismissal of metephysics, ethics and the tradition set forth by just about everyone before him. He states that the role of philosophy is to clear up the meaning of what we claim to know, and logic is the tool of choice.

[Panos]

Bullwinkle wrote:

You say that truth is based on the logical world. I don't think that
this can be correct.

I guess we are getting deeper and deeper...

I agree with you, my statement was very big and I have to say I used it not in the sense of an absolute law (truth?) but in the sense of illuminating a certain aspect of belief versus truth.

Also, I have a difficulty capturing the finest aspects of a notion as english is not my first language.

A belief, I reckon, is a truth validated by our own personal means or logic whereas truth is proved in a universal, objective way. Maybe an example will serve me better. I believe in God and my logic tells me that he exists. If you ask me to prove it to you I will say simply that what I see around me cannot be created by a human being but only from a higher being which I call God. For me, this belief is logical and I have resulted on it in a logical way. However, the rules of logic I have applied to my reasoning are not accepted by the rest of humanity - in other words there are faults in my reasoning. However, I used my (personal) logic to derive to such a truth / belief.

Bullwinkle wrote:

I think we believe something because we think it is real

This time I agree and disagree with you. Yes we do think our belief is real but this process springs from a different agenda. This time I will quote myself:

belief is the phychological background of self confidence

I think we initially feel what is true, as far as a belief is concerned, we instinctively feel its whereabouts and then we employ our logic to feel the gaps. An example: I believe in God, most probably because I feel lonely in the world or weak against its magnitude. Instinctively, I feel God to be residing in the world of spirits - as opposed to the material world our bodies dwell. Now, I employ my reasoning to explain who and where exactly God is. (well, my "exactly" is rather a statistical approximation with a n error of 80%).

What I am trying to say is that because we need to feel confidence in an array of matters through life, we believe certain truths that may or may not be proved to ourselves logically. Another example would be "I believe in monogamy". There is a logic to it but also there is a logic to going with many women (I wish...). Because a multitude of women turned me down, I believe in monogamy. There is logic in monogamy, whether you see it socially or as a trusting agreement between two people. But I feel that I employ the logic at a later stage.

bullwinkle wrote:

I think we believe something because we think it is real

To sum up: it feels to me that we believe something and therefore make it real in our heads - or it might just be my awkward brain!

I like your last two paragraphs and I find them in accordance with John's lakonic but to the point sentence. Philosophy is called the science of all sciences and this is the reason why:

John W. Kelly wrote:

the role of philosophy is to clear up the meaning of what we claim to know

On the other hand,

Bullwinkle wrote:

Is science then a formal system describing empirical reality

there goes a definite yes. Besides, philosophy in greek means the friend (philos) of wisdom (sophia) and wisdom is basically an empirical system of knowledge.

P.S. thanks for your offered contibution on the belief - doubt issue, when we finished saving the world here and notify the scientific community of our findings, I might open that door wide open. At the moment I can only afford one topic at a time.

[bullwinkle]

Panos, congratulations on your principled stand on monogamy.

I'm sorry if I took your statement on truth being based on the logical world a bit too literally. Reading your paragraph "A belief, I reckon is a truth ... I used me (personal) logic to derive such a truth / belief.", I think we're just using slightly different terms. You talk about your personal logic where I might talk about my judgement, just because I think my judgement uses logic but also feelings and hunches. I'm not really sure that humanity rejects your personal logic because of its faults. Your personal logic is answerable only to you and your sensibilities and it fills that role well. Where you differ from others in temperament you probably differ in the kind of things that satisfy that temperament, and that will include beliefs. I don't think there is anything wrong with this.

You quoted yourself (very stylish), so I will quote your re-quote:

belief is the phychological background of self confidence

and you also said:

What I am trying to say is that because we need to feel confidence in an array of matters through life, we believe certain truths that may or may not be proved to ourselves logically.

I think there is something in this but something about the way you're putting it together unsettles me. Perhaps I am making too much of words but in your second quote I have a sense of fear and weakness reaching out for confidence by believing things that can't be logically proved. I'm sure this happens with some people but how would you feel about a slightly different idea? What about a person claiming to be able to know and letting logic catch up when it can. I'm suggesting something a little more confident/arrogant. I'll re-quote myself here:

... belief is based on judging things against our idea of what reality is, claiming this ability and following our own judgement.

I'm saying that belief runs ahead of logic because we're capable of judging what's real. I don't see how science can work without claiming this ability. I'm not saying that we always get it right or even that we get it right more times than we get it wrong but when science discovers something new I think it’s because someone took a step beyond logic and believed that they had seen something new about reality. Out of all this I might alter one of your statements. How would you feel if I said 'self-confidence is the psychological background of belief'?

A couple of other things you said:

I think we initially feel what is true, as far as a belief is concerned, we instinctively feel its whereabouts and then we employ our logic to feel the gaps.

But I feel that I employ the logic at a later stage.

I have a few quotes to back you up:

When you have satisfied yourself that the theorem is true, you start proving it.

I have had my solutions for a long time but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.

... every time we discover what we believe to be the solution to a problem. At that moment we have the vision of a solution which looks right and which we are therefore confident to prove right.

Polanyi has a great analogy for discovery in science or maths. We look for solutions to problems and are guided by our own judgement in the search and when we meet the solution we recognise it. He describes it as being like the search for an object you have mislaid. I sometimes think about looking for a missing jigsaw piece, I've never seen it before but I've an idea of its shape and colour and I'll know it when I see it because it will match my expectation.

Wittgenstein's reliance on logic seems to stem from his dismissal of metephysics, ethics and the tradition set forth by just about everyone before him. He states that the role of philosophy is to clear up the meaning of what we claim to know, and logic is the tool of choice.

Rather inconsiderately, the people who I work for have expected me to concentrate on working for them this week but I have had time to look at my 'Pimlico History of Western Philosophy'. From what you say of Wittgenstein's elimination of metaphysics from philosophy I presume he must have removed any claims philosophy makes to discovering truth or reality. This seems like a shame. I can see how logic could help us discover the consequences and what follows from what we claim to know but am doubtful it could help us on questions of meaning.

Bullwinkle

[Panos]

I am sorry it took me so long to post a reply, unfortunately I was one of the main agents involved in a secret operation in the depths of Africa. We went undercover for a week and I am telling you it was rough. I suppose, everything will come out in 30 years from now, if you still wonder what happened down there, look for an operation called "Daniel", codename "teething". I am telling you, it was rough!

I suppose that is a wrap, as far as our journey into this thing called science was concerned. I see what you mean about this sense of fear, maybe it has to do more like uneasiness when not feeling that I am stepping on a rock, rather than a trembling pebble.

In addition,

(and I quote your reversal of my quote):

How would you feel if I said 'self-confidence is the psychological background of belief'?

strangely enough this sentence makes sense to me, even though the reversal of your reversal makes sense as well. I reckon that' ll be my homework.

So, it was nice talking to you, may we meet on the next topic

Panos

[bullwinkle]

Hi Panos,

Glad you made it back from your secret mission intact. I hope you’re managing to get plenty of sleep to recover. My sleep is still disturbed by questions calling out for answers. It’s like a scene from Dante’s Inferno.

Perhaps our exchange of ideas about self-confidence and belief describe 2 different kinds of people following different motivations. I don’t know but I don’t feel that I’m at the end of this journey yet. If you are pausing for rest here then it has been nice discussing this with you but for myself I thought that now would be a good time to look back at my original questions and see if I felt I was any further forward and if any avenues of enquiry had opened up.

So, I started off with 5 questions:

• 1) What characterises science as science?
  2) Is science based on anything?
  3) Does science make progress?
  4) Are scientific theories true?
  5) What is the relationship between science and other disciplines?

Having re-read all the posts I now realise there was more I agreed with in Gabriel’s Asimov quote than I at first thought. You Panos at one point queried my description of truth as a ‘quality possessed by something’. I think you were right to query this because it shows up an important point. What I see more clearly now is that I’m saying that science is about making claims. So your query is justified because truth is a particular kind of claim rather than a quality. I have noticed that at some point most thinking systems seem to forget that they are making claims and start to see what they claim as something objectively possessed. At that point the objects start to make claims on us and we are judged against them. I think this is the point where a system become dogmatic and it loses its creative life. I would put fundamentalism and totalitarianism into this category.

My way of looking at things is problematic though because it could reduce science to psychology and relativism which I don’t want to do. The way I get out of this is to maintain that science is a series of claims but that these claims aren’t subjective. This is hard.

I’ve said that I think we can make valid judgements about the world. I’m using the fact that we evolved to bolster this: our ancestors didn’t walk off cliffs, leap into fires or attempt to cuddle sabre-tooth tigers. We’re part of a world we are capable of understanding. The making of scientific claims implies to me that we think there is something to be understood and that we can understand it. I think it is the keeping in mind of this ‘something to be understood’ that saves us from subjectivity because it makes us responsible to an ideal that is greater than ourselves, (Incidentally this is one of Viktor Frankl’s 3 ways to live a meaningful life.)

You described ‘truth’ at one point as the holy grail. I think this is a great analogy. We seek the truth and the quest, when followed faithfully, stops us from being subjective. Like the holy-grail, truth is never found (forget Galahad) but it generates a passion to understand which drives science and is never lost. If we believe we have found truth the search ends and we fall into dogma.

I’m suggesting that science is an un-ending passionate quest for understanding. Truth is never reached but passionate new claims are made. The commitment to truth frees us from subjectivity by looking beyond our person but this is only a partial freeing. To do science we must claim that we are capable of understanding the world. This means accepting our reason as guide and arbiter in our quest. Our commitment then leads us to inhibit the personal motivations that may distort this reason. So we are not really objective we just try to be faithful to the guidance of our reason regardless of other personal desires. As I have previously said I think that the scientific world usefully stops at the boundaries of consciousness (?). In that sense its claims are impersonal.

So back to the questions:

1) What characterises science as science?

Panos, you commented that science is characterised by its methods but I think that if you compare different sciences you’ll see different methods dictated by different subject matter. I think Mary Midgley had something to say about this in ‘The Myths We Live By’. My current answer to this question is that science is characterised by the commitment to the truth I have just described along with the subject matter of the impersonal world. My answer requires both because I think that the commitment to understanding and truth is the mark of all sincere thought, not just science. It’s the application of this to the subject-matter of science that makes it science.

2) Is science based on anything?

Yes, curiosity and our ability to understand the world. The interaction between us and the world is important here and forms a bit of a chicken and egg situation. I think our understanding is inspired by our transactions with the world and then filtered by our attempts to re-use what we have understood. I’m resistant to more simplistic ‘objective’, ‘factual’ explanations which seem to downplay the attempt to understand.

3) Does science make progress?

Yes, if science is a set of claims then it makes progress in the same way that philosophy does. The claims are refined through the filtering process of application that I mentioned above. We become clearer about what we’re claiming - this is progress.

4) Are scientific theories true?

The holy-grail that inspires the project. The claim is often made but rarely lasts. I don’t think we can ever know. I think the claim can be characterised as the absence of reasons to doubt and the demand for acceptance by all. I’d say the claim marks a staging-post on the quest. I find this the hardest of the 5 questions and I’m still not happy with my answer. How do you avoid confusing the noumenal and phenomenal worlds in this kind of talk?

5) The relationship between disciplines?

Science reigns supreme in the empirical world, it’s the best tool but science doesn‘t have an inter-personal dimension and we look to other tools in these arenas. Personally I think a totally scientific worldview would lead to misanthropy because there would be no room in it for ‘people’.

These are my current answers and they’re here to be shot at!

Another question is “what is the point of a philosophy of science?” If science s a tool then it’s probably best to let those who use it well get on with it. I think the role of the philosophy of science is to examine the way that people talk about it and use it. This is important because it affects the relationship between science and people.

Bullwinkle

[bullwinkle]

The gods did not reveal, from the beginning,
All things to us; but in the course of time,
Through seeking we may learn, and know things better.

But as for certain truth, no man has known it,
Nor will he know it; neither of the gods,
Nor yet of all the things of which I speak.
And even if by chance he were to utter
The perfect truth, he would himself not know it;
For all is but a woven web of guesses.

Bullwinkle