Philosopher's Task is to Equip the Scientist

[The Voice of Time]

As title says. Don't you think that if anything our task is to give the scientist his tools of reason?

I was thinking especially considering such things as how hers or his situation in politics, judiciary, ontology and ethics concerns.

The scientist her- or himself is like a worker, a person performing procedures, the philosopher is left with the task for the equipments of the scientist to transcend their actual value. The computer, for instance, may at some point have undergone all scientific frameworks of procedure, and in undergoing all that it has maximized its potentials. However, in the act of being completed as a scientific object, there is yet the unproven to speak of, the theories outside the frameworks. Here however, there pits are easy to fall in, leaving you trying to create sciences that are by nature useless, illogical or unreasonable. I think if anywhere in science this is where our place belongs, on the front-lines of contested territory, smashing and bashing our way through the first lines of defence created by nature to leave the land of prospectable future open for the pillaging of the scientific method and its followers.

What say you to this? Are we really useful for much else? Does it even make sense for a philosopher to actually defy science that is already within the self-justifying frameworks when we have no "proofs" but argue against evidence?

[ala1993]

It sounds to me as though you're claiming that the status of philosophy is one of 'meta-functionality' in that it determines the content and procedure of science, which is functional but also answers directly to 'the empirical world'. Perhaps this is the case. However, I think that if you are going to take up this stance then you must also accept that the causality is multidirectional. Without the material provided through scientific enquiry, philosophy is little more than a float through the sky of metaphysics.

All this being said, I think that the relationship is more complex. For starters, is it philosophical or scientific enquiry that determines what is to be called 'philosophical' and 'scientific'? Alongside this, there is a philosophical stance - radical skepticism - which, if adopted by a scientific approach, would inhibit any inquisitive attempts on the part of the latter. Doubt must be suspended in order for science to begin. If it is the task of philosophical activity to equip science with its tools of reason then what is to be done about the doubts within philosophy regarding the truth of these tools?

[The Voice of Time]

Doubt must be suspended in order for science to begin. If it is the task of philosophical activity to equip science with its tools of reason then what is to be done about the doubts within philosophy regarding the truth of these tools?

Like all else we have to start somewhere. But in a sense I think that anything that works is in the end left accepted even if philosophically problematic.

Philosophy deals with its own problems, but there is of course the prospect of diverging frameworks of science producing multiple options for belief in truth. A classic example is the relationship between psychology (notably a softer science) and neurology (hard science), where one of them could attempt to exclude the possibility of the other. Or where sciences such as chemistry and physics telling us that things we philosopher's didn't of reasons believe to be possible as actually being possible, in that respect we'll have to question our own countability, and I think the tendency will be that we bend in general whereas a few of us stay stubborn.

But the mastery for which we have and science does not, is the ability to prove by pure reason that things are absurd before we've even looked at it. And whereas this may sometimes be absurd itself (according to some epistemologists I would think), it gives us a weapon to fend off people who tries to create a science of, for instance, the way we make our signatures. As there are people who think they can determine our psychological health by such means, and to avoid such claims to reach recognition we would have to point out the absurdity in such isolated things as handwriting to be a probable reflection of our psyche and not just a randomity.

[lancek4]

As title says. Don't you think that if anything our task is to give the scientist his tools of reason?

I was thinking especially considering such things as how hers or his situation in politics, judiciary, ontology and ethics concerns.

The scientist her- or himself is like a worker, a person performing procedures, the philosopher is left with the task for the equipments of the scientist to transcend their actual value. The computer, for instance, may at some point have undergone all scientific frameworks of procedure, and in undergoing all that it has maximized its potentials. However, in the act of being completed as a scientific object, there is yet the unproven to speak of, the theories outside the frameworks. Here however, there pits are easy to fall in, leaving you trying to create sciences that are by nature useless, illogical or unreasonable. I think if anywhere in science this is where our place belongs, on the front-lines of contested territory, smashing and bashing our way through the first lines of defence created by nature to leave the land of prospectable future open for the pillaging of the scientific method and its followers.

What say you to this? Are we really useful for much else? Does it even make sense for a philosopher to actually defy science that is already within the self-justifying frameworks when we have no "proofs" but argue against evidence?

Uh. What? Sounds like a religious question.

[lancek4]

Doubt must be suspended in order for science to begin. If it is the task of philosophical activity to equip science with its tools of reason then what is to be done about the doubts within philosophy regarding the truth of these tools?

Like all else we have to start somewhere. But in a sense I think that anything that works is in the end left accepted even if philosophically problematic.

Philosophy deals with its own problems, but there is of course the prospect of diverging frameworks of science producing multiple options for belief in truth. A classic example is the relationship between psychology (notably a softer science) and neurology (hard science), where one of them could attempt to exclude the possibility of the other. Or where sciences such as chemistry and physics telling us that things we philosopher's didn't of reasons believe to be possible as actually being possible, in that respect we'll have to question our own countability, and I think the tendency will be that we bend in general whereas a few of us stay stubborn.

But the mastery for which we have and science does not, is the ability to prove by pure reason that things are absurd before we've even looked at it. And whereas this may sometimes be absurd itself (according to some epistemologists I would think), it gives us a weapon to fend off people who tries to create a science of, for instance, the way we make our signatures. As there are people who think they can determine our psychological health by such means, and to avoid such claims to reach recognition we would have to point out the absurdity in such isolated things as handwriting to be a probable reflection of our psyche and not just a randomity.

Ah- I should have read on.
Science is interesting. If the plight of philosophy is, after rejecting the more difficult tasks, to temper what aims science asserts, well that's a methodological question; no ? I have difficulty with such methodologies. It is interesting though. Carry on.

[Bernard]

If philosophies end is the function of science then we are lost men. I would have thought that the proper functioning of reason is the first step from which a philosopher sets out on his journey. By proper I mean commensensical, base reasoning.

[The Voice of Time]

If philosophies end is the function of science then we are lost men. I would have thought that the proper functioning of reason is the first step from which a philosopher sets out on his journey. By proper I mean commensensical, base reasoning.

Yes but have reasons ever alone done much without the aid of its champions of truth (scientists)? Science is a machine which ploughs our fields, shelters our homes and prolonges our lives. Reason does in the first instance give us strength to carry on with the luck provided by nature, but reason has its limits. Its limit is the person who inhabits it, and his circle of communicators. In the face of machinized knowledge acquisition and transformation he/she is defenceless.

A thousand philosophers will get some way but they will ultimately end up asking very many of the same questions, spend a lot of time doing so, and probably be malnutritioned and defenceless against their enemies. Think of a 333 philosophers, 333 workers and 333 scientists however. 333 philosopher still ask a lot of the same questions but here they can get further with their machinery of knowledge acquisitioners (scientists) and be stronger with their workers (more food production and more defence). You don't need many philosophers to get further, but many scientists since a single sentence of philosophy can be researched a thousand times by men measuring and analysing nature in accordance with it, and many workers gives the philosophers more time off to transcend their personal limits.