Has Philosophy Lost Its Mind?

[Marvin_Edwards]

When I was growing up, science was empirical. Empirical meant that it was based upon objective observation, rather than mere subjective opinions. Its facts were derived inductively, by observing reliable patterns of behavior in its objects of study. Scientific theories were tested by practical experiments that confirmed or denied their correspondence with empirical reality.

But I hadn't seen the word empirical used in a while by others in philosophical discussions. So I thought I'd look it up in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. And where did I find it?

Well there were several articles, but the one that caught my eye was called "Scientific Realism". That seemed like the logical place to find what I was looking for, because that sounded like the very essence of empiricism. Scientific realism would surely be what empiricism was all about.

But where did empiricism show up? Under the section heading "4. Antirealism: Foils for Scientific Realism", "4.1 Empiricism"!

So I went back to the top of the article to find out what the philosophical notion of "scientific realism" is. And the article starts out with this all too common caveat in the SEP:

"It is perhaps only a slight exaggeration to say that scientific realism is characterized differently by every author who discusses it, and this presents a challenge to anyone hoping to learn what it is."

Has philosophy lost its mind?

[Terrapin Station]

Two principles of philosophy:

(1) For every philosopher there is an equal and opposite philosopher.
(2) They're both wrong.

That's one of my favorite philosophy jokes because it's so spot-on.

One thing it's important to remember is that philosophy encyclopedia entries--and Stanford seems to be particularly subject to this--tend to be written from the point of view of the particular author in question rather than attempting to be something like "objective overviews" of thought about the topic. One reason for that is the difficulty and complexity of attempting to do objective surveys because there are typically so many different approaches to any given topic, which will all have followers. Providing a survey of all of the different popular approaches to something through history would amount to each entry being book length, and it would be confusing to people trying to gain a relatively quick understanding of at least one popular approach, because there are so many aspects to different approaches that are incompatible.

[Marvin_Edwards]

By the way, I'm still reading the article. Apparently scientific realism asserts the validity of scientific assertions based on observable evidence as well as those based upon reasonable scientific theories.

Empiricism would fall under the "observable evidence" half of scientific realism.

Empiricism could never reasonably fall under any version of anti-realism.

[hegel]

When I was growing up, science was empirical. Empirical meant that it was based upon objective observation, rather than mere subjective opinions. Its facts were derived inductively, by observing reliable patterns of behavior in its objects of study. Scientific theories were tested by practical experiments that confirmed or denied their correspondence with empirical reality.

But I hadn't seen the word empirical used in a while by others in philosophical discussions. So I thought I'd look it up in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. And where did I find it?

Well there were several articles, but the one that caught my eye was called "Scientific Realism". That seemed like the logical place to find what I was looking for, because that sounded like the very essence of empiricism. Scientific realism would surely be what empiricism was all about.

But where did empiricism show up? Under the section heading "4. Antirealism: Foils for Scientific Realism", "4.1 Empiricism"!

So I went back to the top of the article to find out what the philosophical notion of "scientific realism" is. And the article starts out with this all too common caveat in the SEP:

"It is perhaps only a slight exaggeration to say that scientific realism is characterized differently by every author who discusses it, and this presents a challenge to anyone hoping to learn what it is."

Has philosophy lost its mind?

Why do you come to a philosophy forum to bash philosophy? Serious question. What is your point?

[Pattern-chaser]

When I was growing up, science was empirical. [...] But I hadn't seen the word empirical used in a while by others in philosophical discussions. [...] Has philosophy lost its mind?

Why would we be surprised that one area of study - science - regularly uses terms and concepts that another area - philosophy - uses only occasionally? Science is a tool that emerged from several schools of analytically-based philosophy, but it long ago left home, and forged an independent life for itself. It cherry-picks the easy topics, the only ones it is able to address, leaving the difficult ones for philosophers. The topics that require more than simple binary decisions; the topics that cannot be framed in precise, falsifiable, terms; the topics where little or no evidence is available; the topics for which no evidence will/can ever be available, where only considered speculation is possible; and so on. These are the topics that philosophy addresses. For many of them, empirical corroboration or investigation is not even possible.

Science and philosophy are distinct. Why would we be surprised to discover that one does not use all of the concepts that the other finds useful?

[Terrapin Station]

Scientific realism is opposed to scientific instrumentalism, by the way (instrumentalism being a sort of arealism--I wouldn't say antirealism in that case so much, as it's not really taking a stance on the ontological validity of anything).

Instrumentalism involves empiricism. Empiricism simply refers to a posteriori knowledge as opposed to a priori knowledge (and also as opposed to necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori knowledge). It's just that with a posteriori/empirical knowledge under instrumentalism, there's no commitment to the ontological reality of it. That's seen as an unimportant philosophical matter--something that's not an issue for doing science in any practical manner.

[Syamsu]

The story is, science screwed up with social darwinism, eugenics, the holocaust. The main feature of social darwinism is that it asserts matters of opinion about what is good and bad, as if it were scientific fact. Then, realizing the error, intellectuals came up with postmodernism. Postmodernism asserts that opinions are inherent in statements of fact. And this worked, the hard edged judgement of social darwinism became softened.

The memory of the holocaust is basicly a major secular religion, with lots of influence, and that is what is keeping down empiricism. Which is a good thing, because social darwinism is actually still a major problem.

The solution would be to separate matters of fact from matters of opinion. But empericists hate that. Seperation of opinion from fact requires the 2 domains of creator and creation, spiritual and material. Empiricists have all but banned creationism from academics.

So it is inevitable that science must live with postmodernism. And people just have to wing it with common sense understanding of fact and opinion, which is inherent in common discourse.

[Terrapin Station]

The memory of the holocaust is basicly a major secular religion, with lots of influence, and that is what is keeping down empiricism.

Say what?

[Count Lucanor]

When I was growing up, science was empirical. Empirical meant that it was based upon objective observation, rather than mere subjective opinions. Its facts were derived inductively, by observing reliable patterns of behavior in its objects of study. Scientific theories were tested by practical experiments that confirmed or denied their correspondence with empirical reality.

But I hadn't seen the word empirical used in a while by others in philosophical discussions. So I thought I'd look it up in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. And where did I find it?

Well there were several articles, but the one that caught my eye was called "Scientific Realism". That seemed like the logical place to find what I was looking for, because that sounded like the very essence of empiricism. Scientific realism would surely be what empiricism was all about.

But where did empiricism show up? Under the section heading "4. Antirealism: Foils for Scientific Realism", "4.1 Empiricism"!

So I went back to the top of the article to find out what the philosophical notion of "scientific realism" is. And the article starts out with this all too common caveat in the SEP:

"It is perhaps only a slight exaggeration to say that scientific realism is characterized differently by every author who discusses it, and this presents a challenge to anyone hoping to learn what it is."

Has philosophy lost its mind?

I'm not surprised by this. Realism can be about matters of existence and matters of mind-independency. If something is mind-dependent, then many times it is said that it doesn't really exist. Interestingly, Plato was a realist, because he believed that abstract universal existed independently of the human mind. If you look at the British Empiricists (Locke, Berkeley and Hume) they are mostly antirealists. What makes them antirealists is their idealism, so even though knowledge is obtained from the subject's experience (which is what empiricism entails), a mind-independent world is either unknowable or simply impossible (as in Berkeley's position, also known as empirical idealism). And there are modern versions of this, for example in logical empiricism (aka logical positivism). I think that the section of SEP you refer to is dealing with this type of antirealist empiricism.

[Count Lucanor]

The story is, science screwed up with social darwinism, eugenics, the holocaust. The main feature of social darwinism is that it asserts matters of opinion about what is good and bad, as if it were scientific fact.

Social darwinism was never a scientific theory or a scientific research program. It was simply a political ideology.

[Steve3007]

The main feature of social darwinism is that it asserts matters of opinion about what is good and bad, as if it were scientific fact.

Welcome back Syamsu.

For the uninitiated: Syamsu is a member of that category of posters whose every post is, one way or another, on a single issue, about which he is obsessed. In Syamsu's case, that issue is roughly summarized by the bolded section in the quote above. He has been coming here for about 9 years to tell everybody about "choosing" and to state that science treats matters of opinion/choice as if they were matters of fact. I don't think he has written any post that is not, one way or another, about that subject.

I think we skipped a couple of years:
viewtopic.php?p=321764#p321764
2018:

Anyway, Syamsu: Always fun. Same time next year?

[Steve3007]

Terrapin Station, given your recent conversations with creation (who now seems to have gone) I suspect you might enjoy a pleasantly futile couple of months talking to Syamsu about "choosing".

---

Well there were several articles, but the one that caught my eye was called "Scientific Realism". That seemed like the logical place to find what I was looking for, because that sounded like the very essence of empiricism. Scientific realism would surely be what empiricism was all about.

But where did empiricism show up? Under the section heading "4. Antirealism: Foils for Scientific Realism", "4.1 Empiricism"!

My own view tends towards Scientific Antirealism (at least as I understand that term). I think this view is forced on Science by the way that Nature is observed to behave.

[Syamsu]

The main feature of social darwinism is that it asserts matters of opinion about what is good and bad, as if it were scientific fact.

Welcome back Syamsu.

For the uninitiated: Syamsu is a member of that category of posters whose every post is, one way or another, on a single issue, about which he is obsessed. In Syamsu's case, that issue is roughly summarized by the bolded section in the quote above. He has been coming here for about 9 years to tell everybody about "choosing" and to state that science treats matters of opinion/choice as if they were matters of fact. I don't think he has written any post that is not, one way or another, about that subject.

I think we skipped a couple of years:
viewtopic.php?p=321764#p321764
2018:

Anyway, Syamsu: Always fun. Same time next year?

Yeah I am a real expert on a particular issue. So why don't you let experts post huh?

[Steve3007]

So why don't you let experts post huh?

I have no power to stop anyone from posting, nor do I seek it. I know my place.

[Terrapin Station]

The main feature of social darwinism is that it asserts matters of opinion about what is good and bad, as if it were scientific fact.

Welcome back Syamsu.

For the uninitiated: Syamsu is a member of that category of posters whose every post is, one way or another, on a single issue, about which he is obsessed. In Syamsu's case, that issue is roughly summarized by the bolded section in the quote above. He has been coming here for about 9 years to tell everybody about "choosing" and to state that science treats matters of opinion/choice as if they were matters of fact. I don't think he has written any post that is not, one way or another, about that subject.

I think we skipped a couple of years:
viewtopic.php?p=321764#p321764
2018:

Anyway, Syamsu: Always fun. Same time next year?

I was more intrigued by the bizarre holocaust comment.

Re the social darwinism stuff, I was wondering if Syamsu wasn't maybe a time-traveler from the Edwardian era. Talking about social darwinism is about as timely as talking about the Whig party.