Can there be any intelligent science pursued without any philosophy?

[grannymh]

To shift this discussion a bit to a particular situation.

Was talking with a philosophy department chair who is worried that some of his philosophy courses will be eliminated from the liberal arts curriculum and replaced by science ones.

Going by the title of this thread, what kind of advice or solid reasons can one give this beleaguered professor?

Blessings,
granny

The quest for truth needs the foundation of philosophy.

 

[reggieM]

I’m sorry. i didn’t mean to insult you.

Thank you.

 

[reggieM]

Going by the title of this thread, what kind of advice or solid reasons can one give this beleaguered professor?

Good question and I don’t really have a good answer.

But one thing I’d like to imagine is a debate between the philosophy students and science students. Each would be required to stay within their own discipline and argue for the value of each.

Any science students using philosophy to defend science would be disqualified (or would lose). They could only prove the value of science using scientific and non-philosophical arguments.

The philosophy students would use philosophical arguments to defend the value of philosophy.

 

[grannymh]

Good question and I don’t really have a good answer.

A poor answer will do.

How would you account for the materialistic philosophy of natural science?
Does any philosophy limit science’s explorations?

 

[sinnerdexter]

Can science be done without philosophy being involved? That depends on if you think robotscan do philosophy.

 

[sinnerdexter]

Good question and I don’t really have a good answer.

But one thing I’d like to imagine is a debate between the philosophy students and science students. Each would be required to stay within their own discipline and argue for the value of each.

Any science students using philosophy to defend science would be disqualified (or would lose). They could only prove the value of science using scientific and non-philosophical arguments.

The philosophy students would use philosophical arguments to defend the value of philosophy.

Science was called Natural Philosophy, so science is actually a branch of philosophy. Because of this, either science can use any philosophy, or not be able to use any argument. :blackeye:

ALso, by not allowing one side to argue using the other side’s framework, it is then possible to construct an argument that predictates the only counter argument as being wihtin that side’s domain, thus negating the ability of either side to counter argume. As both sides can do this, it ends up being a deadlock and the debate is utterly pointless as ther can be no resolution. :blackeye:

 

[reggieM]

…science is actually a branch of philosophy.

In order to engage in the argument you have to concede this point, as you’ve done.

 

[sinnerdexter]

The scientist: a scientific experiment showing the power of science at finding scientific truth.

The philosopher: pointing out that philosophy is the discipline dealing with finding absolute truth, as opposed to scientific truth which depends on some assumptions and yet is still probabilistic. (But they epic fail at finding any of these absolute truths.)

But there really isn’t any conflict between the two: the philosophers are more anal about proof, the scientists get more done, both use the other in their regular doings.

Usually what is more interesting is for people to use a different discipline other than their own, to argue in favor of their own. This would actually convince others rather than show your own system self-consistent. For science and philosophy this would not be any problem. The more noisy one is the conflict between religion and science. Quite often we have religious people using religious arguments to try to convince amused scientists, and scientists using scientific arguments to try to convince the religious who for some reason just don’t accept those arguments.