Has anyone here experience with the philosophy of science?
Someone recommended me to look into it, but I'm not sure yet whether it's worth it. I'd like to hear your personal opinions. Did reading about philosophy of science change your view? How did you profit from it? Or did it turn out to be a more or less useless fedora thing?
pic unrelated
If you are talking about physics, it's mostly bullshit
Still it can be interesting and help you to view some things differently.
Physics is only interesting when the math behind the ideas is understood. But it you have trouble accepting the way you think things work (like spacetime, very small thing (quantum mechanics), it might be worth investing time in
TL;DR usually science philosophy is not substantiated and based on some logical links/no actual math
>>7911800
Philosophy is pseudo science and pseudo intellectualism. It is learning a bunch of buzzwords and then attempting to mimick the logical process of a mathematician to find 'meaning' in the buzzwords.
Completely useless. Anything that has philosophy in the title is complete shit that you can do without. Instead read a calculus book and actually become a better human being.
>>7911800
Don't listen to the angry fedoras
If by philosophy of science you mean epistemology and philosophical assumptions made by scientists then yes it's an absolute necessity if you're in stem
>>7911822
You are partially right.
It's mostly pseudo science, but things like "how to imagine the tenth dimension" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg85IH3vghA&ab_channel=10thdim) can help in the process of learning difficult math/physics problems, because it helps/learns you to view things differently
And it can help to develop the logical process of a mathematician. Just help, not fully develop
>>7911830
>absolute necessity if you're in stem
How? How is it an absolute necessity?
Science works just fine without fat neckbeards wondering about the 'philosophical assumptions' of other scientists.
I will assure you that all the scientists and engineers at NASA got there because they focused completely on their math instead of on pityful 'I have an opinion'-losophy.
>>7911822
Philosophy is not science you fucking mongloid, nor does it attempt to represent itself as such.
>>7911822
>autism: the post
>>7911822
Does it bother you tho\at your post is more like Philosophy than Science?
>>7911968
It's neither, what are you talking about?
>>7911800
It can be interesting to read what actual scientists have to say about the philosophy of their subject, but I don't really care for the work of philosophers of science.
>>7911800
>7911822
Its definitely worth it,
my first book was 'wat is this thing called science', its a pretty good , short, introduction.
It did change my view a bit, but I was never one of the pop-sci fanboys that think science is perfect and completely objective, if you are then it would chance your views completely.
It definitely also has practical value since it improves your ability to find problems in models/experiments that dont agree by showing you what the most obvious problems are people have been struggling with for centuries
also, just pirate a book and read the first 50 pages, will take you a almost no time and then you can decide for yourself.
>>7911836
>fat neckbeards
This is a meme.
>philosophical assumptions
Science and math are full of this.
>'I have an opinion'-losophy.
This is a fundamental part of human beings. Don't you take critical positions about scientific results?
You are studying STEM to be a integral human, not a fucking computer.
>>7911964
>I can't argue therefore I meme: the post
>>7911800
>dat pic
Oh boy, so much irony.
>>7911800
philosophy is trash
only waste your time with it if you are a pretentious idiot
Quine and particularly the Quine-Duhem thesis
>muh biology is a meme.
>muh philosophy is a meme.
>muh sociology is a meme
>muh art is a meme.
>muh tecnically humanities are a meme.
>muh It's subjective, It's a meme.
>muh It doesn't requiere hard maths therefore It's a meme.
Meanwhile in /sci/...
>>7912232
You forgot about the mathfags.
>muh that math isnt set theory therefore it's baby-tier math
>>7911835
This exact video is what had me become interested in thinking about abstract concepts in highschool. Now I am studying math, loving my life because of that video
>>7911822
Legitimate epistemology is a solved problem, and further work is primarily ideological.
>>7912274
This. The people who go on about PoS usually do so because they are too stupid to do real science.
>>7911836
you don't understand what epistemology is about
it's not interpreting equations in fancy ways, it's the very core of science
what allows to establish a distinction between alchemy and chemistry if you prefer
imo it's always sad to see wannabe physicists not even understanding that science is about falsifying theories
>>7912524
>science is about falsifying theories
lol
thats not what science is about
and i hate philtards who claim science for their own because muuuh epistemology
>muuh philshit isnt a waste of time because I will pretend that everything else is based on it
science has chased philosophy away just like theology (i.e. god of the gaps). and science does not rely on epistemology to work
>>7912536
i hope you are trolling, or will never have a job involving science
>>7912536
>I don't understand philosophy of science so I can talk about philosophy of science while disregarding philosophy of science as false
???
if you don't care about sci phil then don't talk about it, idiot. don't give your sihtty opinions on what "science is about" with absolutely no base
>>7912235
I kinda "hate" it
>>7911800
I took one crossover course joint taught by a working, publishing physicist and a phil. prof. Which, after reading this thread, puts me well above the curve. You'd think that pure sci/math types, even if they think phil. is garbage, would tone it down out of respect for the people that came up with the methods that began your discipline... mostly philosophers first and formost... Thales, Leucippus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.
Granted, the scope of human knowledge has
become so large that the disciplines have had to be divided, then further subdivided for scholars to keep up in their fields, but that does not imply that the fields are unrelated..
taking the short view its useless, and kind of fedora like, but taking the long view, human knowledge will eventually expand by people incorporating recent scientific findings into philosophy, at least insofar as a certain amount of philosophy is needed to guide the path of science
>>7912608
>a certain amount of philosophy is needed to guide the path of science
how so?
>>7912617
first example that comes to mind, - many worlds interpretation of QM. Multiple universe's is a philosophical postulation, sprung from experimental data that then inspired further experiment. This is true to whatever extent the theory is eventually disproved or verified.
It is a metaphysical speculation of a philosophic nature. 100% data driven science will get us only more data, which is fine in many applications, but to better understand our universe, interpretation is needed at some point
>>7912628
why is interpretation needed? for what?
>>7912617
The assertion that the scientific method is a valid is a philosophical assertion. Implicit in it is, for instance, the philosophical assertion that induction is valid.
>>7912635
>The assertion that the scientific method is a valid is a philosophical assertion
the scientific method is valid, what do you mean by that
and why does induction need philosophical approval, or do I misunderstand you
>>7912643
Science assumes the scientific method is a valid means of ascertaining approximations to universal truth.
The assertion that the scientific method is valid is a philosophical assertion.
Induction in philosophy is different from induction in mathematics. Inductive reasoning is "Every time we have done this experiment, the outcome was X. Therefore, the outcome will be X if we do the experiment again." Science cannot prove the legitimacy of inductive reasoning, because it assumes the legitimacy of inductive reasoning.
>>7912634
I'm not saying there's an unqualified reason, but IF we want to gain understanding of our universe as efficiently as possible, then interpretation becomes a mechanism. Einstein did not reveal an absolut truth by reconceptualizing space time. But he reinterpreted data, which helped astrophysics progress at a much faster rate.
Its why theoretical physics is a respected discipline even to hardcore applied physicists
>>7911822
I thought Positivism died a long time ago but here we are again with faggots like you
>>7912634
So that humanities tards can feel good about themselves and call it "knowledge".
>>7912655
Things like interpretations of quantum mechanics are pointless unless an interpretation explains some previously-unknown phenomena with a novel prediction. Things like MWI don't do this, it's just empty philosophizing.
>>7912651
>Science ... assumes the legitimacy of inductive reasoning.
hmmm... I understand what you mean but I don't think that's true, or rather, my perspective on science is different
>>7912655
>interpretation becomes a mechanism
with a statement like this you have to be careful, especially regarding the meaning of the word "interpretation"
>>7912235
I had exactly the same thing!
After really thinking a lot about the concepts he talks about (I even wrote a paper on it in highschool for physics; got an A+) I really got interested in math and physics. It motivated me to understand math and use math to describe physics
Now I study math and physics (2 studies) and an loving it. Even though his videos aren't mathematical representations of reality, I still consider it as a physics theory.
>>7912662
This has nothing to do with "positivism", you dogmatic fool.
>>7911800
here is the bombshell: reflexivity permits us to see that the belief in rationality, induction/generalization/categorization, imagination, intellect, reason does not lead us to the good life.
animals are rational just like us, but they lack reflexivity since they fail to see that the faith in abstraction to reach knowledge/truth/objectivity/reality/universality is sterile since it brings only conventions which are, thus, always fluctuating through, at least, time and space... what rationality, the Normative reason brings is disappointment.
Most rationalists, especially scientists wondering about what they are doing, know more or less this and they choose to support Popper : that the induction is useful for disproving thesis [=if it does not work once, it never works]
Most scientists do not care about what they do, because they do not know anyway. Nobody on earth knows what the scientific activity is useful for, beyond easing our lives, aka for hedonism. Nobody on earth knows what inferences ''are correct'', what ''are not, or less correct''.
the point of reflexivity is to notice the failure of ANY rationalism, to embrace PURE empiricism, that is to say, to stop fantasizing about a collective reality [fantasized through induction through space, time and comparison of what we perceive, in order to identify things or in order to separate things, then to infer explicit statements about these identification and separations], but rather to stick to personal phenomena in analyzing them.
the point of reflexivity is to make us wonder what do we want.
>>7914179
Do you want to create norms, conventions in order to claim that you create norms and that these norms are truths that you try to impose on others, until some people will come to you and claim that their conventions are the truths and yours are lies ?
The whole point of the philosophy of science is to study the various rationalismS which speculate on ''what would be a empirical proof?, why is it nice to have this concept of empirical truth/proof ? why should we pay people who demand pay for applying this concept ?''.
In liberal societies, universities are split into the scientific part and the literary part.
Both these part led to the climax of scientific positivism and of the structuralism and both these fields saw that positivism and structuralism failed.
On the scientific side, you have now academics who study ''philosophy of mind/consciousnesses'' as well as the ''philosophy of languages'', but this ''philosophy of languages'' was shaken by the fall of the structuralism.
As said , scientists have given up the quest to answer the question ''why is the scientific endeavor worthy ?'', more so since they are now paid to just to whatever they do in their labs. the less they question what they do, the more they are paid. Nicely done. They have mathematics to save their asses when people ask them questions: ''whatever I do, I do not care it is works ''empirically'', my maths are valid so I deserve a pay, and my pay is not lost''.
Of course, the new question is ''why mathematics is relevant to our life?'' and again, nobody has a clue, beyond formalizing our speculations for a better hedonism.
On the literary side, they do not have math, so the part is in dereliction. they try to to save their salaries in forming ''soft sciences'', as usual, in putting more math into their speculations.
>>7914199
Again, the first question is ''what do you expect form your inferences? why do you think that it is worthy to speculates and try to formalize them, and try to communicate them ?''
No rationalist answers this for instance.
you can spend your life learning about the hundreds of rationalismS that we have so far, which shows how much the humanity clings to the abstraction of certainty in a desperate attempt to refuse the contingency of the events [and it is a choice, in the first place, to think in such terms of contingency-necessity of life, events].
So far, not a single rationalist can show the object of his quest: a truth, a universality, an objectivity.
Any rationalist has faith in his inductions, but each rationalists refuses to apply the principle of induction to his sterility of getting truth and proofs, not even in deductive reasoning.
>>7914202
what happens in the side of the philosophy of science ?
The philosophers of science say, that ''okay guys, logic is kind of rubbish, totally manufactured by us, but we have no idea on how to spend our day, so we might has well take logic seriously and say that logic describes the world and spout models after models, speculations after speculations.
And, for Quine and Godel, it is the classical logic which is the best logic to talk about ''truth'' [classical logic is the typical formalization of what a few people think how truth behaves].
Anew, so far, no rationalism has showed the gain of any knowledge.
The good news is that empiricism gives knowledge. But of course, no matter what say the rationalists, empiricism is the exact opposite of dwelling in your inferences, in your inductions, in your abstractions, in your manufactured certainties.
In fact, most rationalists, in science, try to be as empirical as possible, but they always refuse to cross the frontier and be full on empirical.
Since the failure of positivism, they talk about paradigms, myths, posits and all they want, but they continue to cling to take their speculations seriously.
>>7914215
>Since the failure of positivism
Positivism did never fail.
>>7914215
>discover a continent
>name it America
>-I have invented America
Logic is the least manufactured I can ever think of. The laws of physics may change, and logic stays the same; that is how hard logic is.
Empiricism is itself inside of Rationalism. To realize the importance of being empirical is contained in Rationalism. By. Definition.
Fucking brainlet plebeian, get the fuck out of here, you limp wristed parrot
bump for references. Is Quine outdated ?
>>7911836
You're a failure of a scientist if you don't care at all about why science works.
>>7911830
I agree with this completely. A basic course on the philosophy of science should be required to get a STEM major. If you don't think the philosophy of science is at all important, there are only two possibilities:
1. You just mindlessly accept all of the foundations of science and the scientific method because it seems to work and is what you were taught.
or
2. You accept it not BECAUSE it works and because it's what you were taught but because it's obviously the reasonable, rational way to go about investigating the world.
Both possibilities are pretty good evidence that you're stupid.
I'm a mathematician who used to be interested in philosophy but left at an early age because I do think that the majority of modern philosophical papers are in fact bullshit (even analytic philosophy, don't even get me started about how bullshit modern continental philosophy is). But, I think that you need to at least KNOW the ideas in philosophy and have thought deeply about them before coming to the point where you feel like you don't need to think about it any more to be a scientist. I know plenty of tenured professors in the sciences who have honestly never even thought about these philosophical questions. That, in my mind, is inexcusable. They will definitely shape the way you look at science and mathematics.
>>7915930
You give too much credit to justifying a methodology that isn't even well defined. Science works for many reasons and it is much more different than just plain inductive reasoning. But it doesn't need some other justification because the results say everything you need to know.
bamp
Do electrons exist?
>>7918229
no, chemistry is witchcraft
>>7918229
Never been observed :^)
>>7918345
B-but we use them for microscopy!! TEMs...
>>7912544
It's important to understand the assumptions made behind a field like science that allow it to work.
If you don't know/understand those assumptions, then there are situations you will falsely believe to be within or outside the realm of science.
Usually, it's a good idea to know what led us down a path.
Epistemology and Empiricism both deal in skepticism and questioning assumptions/presumptions.
Where Empiricism deals in questioning hypothesis via testing and weeding things out with double blind trials, controls, variables, etc...
Epistemological Socratic inquiry ["The Socratic Method"] deal with challenge every assumption until you are only left with axioms, evidence and relationships.
They [Empiricism and Socraticism] pair quite nicely because they're both about weeding out negatives or false positives.
For the SCI crowd:
If you went down the Fallacy and Bias Master List, you'd probably see how beneficial philosophy is for weeding out presumptions.
I think the concept is only irritating for egotists and people with personality disorders.
Examples
>>7911800
Scientists are famous for being quite stupid outside their office.
Anyway, here is a paper by another man pretending to have discovered some ''truth about the universe'' through mathematics.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0708.1362
>I show that physical devices that perform observation, prediction, or recollection share an underlying mathematical structure. I call devices with that structure "inference devices". I present a set of existence and impossibility results concerning inference devices. These results hold independent of the precise physical laws governing our universe. In a limited sense, the impossibility results establish that Laplace was wrong to claim that even in a classical, non-chaotic universe the future can be unerringly predicted, given sufficient knowledge of the present. Alternatively, these impossibility results can be viewed as a non-quantum mechanical "uncertainty principle". Next I explore the close connections between the mathematics of inference devices and of Turing Machines. In particular, the impossibility results for inference devices are similar to the Halting theorem for TM's. Furthermore, one can define an analog of Universal TM's (UTM's) for inference devices. I call those analogs "strong inference devices". I use strong inference devices to define the "inference complexity" of an inference task, which is the analog of the Kolmogorov complexity of computing a string. However no universe can contain more than one strong inference device. So whereas the Kolmogorov complexity of a string is arbitrary up to specification of the UTM, there is no such arbitrariness in the inference complexity of an inference task. I end by discussing the philosophical implications of these results, e.g., for whether the universe "is" a computer.
The undergraduates here are positivists, like most of the scientists.
>>7918476
This is not stupid, this is a very real potential and unique application in quantum mechanics; just because you can't conceive of process existing beyond the universes parameters for operation doesn't mean that they don't have effect on how it operates- is the jist of how what you said triggered me to give you heck on what you think has the possibility to define the pretenses of reality, before I deleted it and wrote this polite little giblet
The truth of the matter is this paper lays down some rather scary addendums to what >can< be the innate responses on non-locality in and by information processes that could cause a rift in the built social parameters of the human mind as a thing that retrieves data from every conceivable outlet and defines it in willy-nilly scapes from self manifest to nihilism and not just in-between but outlandishly blended beyond seeing the scale of one or the other, and this is dangerous in the frame of what the paper says as it means that the very softwear you're playing with has the hardware magnitization output ampliying pixel glow's output to a point of programming the back of the brain and the parts surrounding the optic nerve to become so reliant on the very fast, very elegant, performance of the pace of circuits and their limited frame sets that tap the huge portion of your brain that still has the many conditions of what makes you you built in those first few years of life and puts those systems into relapse; there's studies that say screens makes you stupider, some say they 'can' make you smarter- it's really just about what you adapted to over your life that gives you the limit of your constitution, as in to say resilience, in dealing with the platforms that computer, and related devices, bring with them as you deign yourself in equal standing with said platforms derivement conditions
... continued
>>7918476
The fact of their 'control' is simply the math of what action does to reaction.
if you really can't consider the potential validity of the paper then you really have no idea of the scale of the environment you live in and how much 'inference' has the upper hand in literally everything you do and that you would criticize someone who wants to point out that when something has more linear processing power than most posters on /sci/, has the potential to be an apex predator to the n'th degree, not by inception, but by the ferocity and cunning of things like black holes and the need to be apex orderers in an existance that literally fulls the definition of itself on chaos; then you really must have a view of the world typical of someone in todays world, which although pleasant, could us some work
[/rant]
What I do not understand is why still debate about science.
>>7920774
>not using vector graphics
>>7911800
Popular book "The sleepwalkers" by Koestler is very good.
Also 'Probability theory the logic of science" (E T Jaynes) is quite insightful.
Mostly philosophers have little idea. If you must read the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles. http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html#s
>>7912651
>[science] assumes the legitimacy of inductive reasoning
Maybe some scientists merely believe it gets them *close* to the truth, the more experiments are done the closer.
>tfw there are better philosophical discussions on /sci/ than /lit/
