#scientific philosophy

[gyrrakavian]

Does this count as leaning on the 4th wall?

[setbabiesonfire]

Hey, any of y'all post psychology/philosophy content on your blog? If so I most definitely need to be following you so like shoot me a message or something.

[pinealperspective]

Energy/matter vibrate on specific frequencies.

This is just my thoughts (+ a few scientifically proven facts). Feel free to think for yourself.

[marklakshmanan]

We Are Light-Eaters

The language we share with plants—and all life under the sun.

Scientific philosophy. A great short read on our nourishment but physical and metaphysical.

[brainjuicy]

Beyond the armchair: must philosophy become experimental? – Stephanie Wykstra | Aeon Essays

A growing number of philosophers are conducting experiments to test their arguments. Is this the future for philosophy?

an interesting look at the history and future of experimental philosophy. the distinction between “positive programme” and “negative programme” stands out to me (as both a neuroscientist and philosophy B. A.) as markedly unscientific, something which within the sciences would be regarded with skepticism and disdain as a clear sign of bias which could influence the balance of experimental design. it’s worth asking if philosophy is necessarily compatible with the scientific method of experimentation, in this sense. in the sciences, one ought not set out to prove or disprove their hypothesis—of course we all want them to be proven right, if only because it increases chances of publication—but should approach the experiment giving equal weight and credence to the possibility of the null hypothesis. this is wholeheartedly disregarded by most practitioners of x-phi, which makes sense within the context of philosophy as something ultimately centered on argumentation rather than discovery per se (although this is technically arguable depending on what you believe knowledge is, fundamentally). is it even possible to be empirical and argumentative at the same time, or does true empiricism necessitate the absence of an agenda? science has traditionally assumed the latter, but it’s still a question worth pondering, i think.

[eren-without-powers]

GUYS GUYS GUYS! AND GIRLS TOO, AND EVERYONE!

A common assumption of the word "universe" when used is that you're talking about the observable universe. The observable universe is defined by all the space from which light could have been emitted such that it can reach the observer. The speed of light in a vacuum defines the distance from which which light could no longer have been emitted such that it would have reached the observer. By this statement, the complete potentially observable universe is spherical, with the observer being the center. If you're the observer, YOU ARE THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE!!!

[project-sharius]

I find it greatly amusing that if we prove that the world is indeed a computer simulation, we have will have also just proved the existence of not only a god, but multiple gods, or at least people who fit the criteria of an all-powerful creator.

[geopolicraticus]

Nietzsche: Scientist of Thought

Nietzsche was the most scientific of philosophers.

Many if not most of my readers will find this to be an odd, if not indefensible, assertion. Why would I say such a thing? In what sense was Nietzsche a scientific philosopher?

Today when we think of "scientific philosophy" we usually think of the rise of logical and linguistic analytical philosophy and its post-positivist progeny. Maybe we think of Quine, who said that, "Philosophy of science is philosophy enough." Maybe we think of Husserl's insistence that philosophy must become a "rigorous science." Perhaps some among us will think of Marx's effort to make philosophy and history scientific, however far Marx fell short of contemporary scientific rigor. All of these forms of "scientific philosophy" are, I might point out, paradigm cases of institutionalized philosophy.

Since the scientific revolution, science as a way of understanding the world has enjoyed a meteoric rise while philosophy has fallen into disrepute. Philosophers have been stung by their loss of status, and in an attempt to regain lost ground they have sought to imitate the sciences by making philosophy appear more scientific But, as philosophers should know, the appearance and the reality of science are two different matters.

The success of science does not lie in the discovery of scientific truths or the growth of scientific knowledge; the success of science lies in the application of the scientific method. Philosophers have many methods for understanding the world; the scientific method of methodological naturalism is (I have argued) one philosophical method among many others, and the one that has proved the most successful in the exposition of nature.

As long as scientists pursue the scientific method, knowledge will increase, and as knowledge increases it will change. Some have found in the change of scientific knowledge an excuse for skepticism or even cynicism. Those whose traditional religious beliefs are threatened by scientific discoveries lash out at science and take every opportunity to point out that scientists hold different views at different times. The very idea that unchanging dogma should be the standard of truth and knowledge points to the gulf between traditional world views and the scientific world view.

The scientific method, too, has evolved and changed. Nevertheless, for all the discontinuities and revolutions in scientific knowledge, the method itself has exhibited not revolutionary change but incremental and cumulative refinement. It is to be expected that as science continues to grow, its method will experience both further refinements and diversification.

Aping the appearance of science has been no boon for philosophy. Philosophy, in trying to mimic the success of the sciences and in the attempt to make itself institutionally acceptable, has forfeited its soul, which is the Socratic imperative to ask questions. Gadflies do not come from within institutions, they come from outside institutions. Socrates was a gadfly in classical antiquity; Nietzsche was a gadfly of the nineteenth century. He called himself the "first born of the twentieth century" (as well as saying that some are born posthumously), and now in the twenty-first century he has not yet been relegated to antiquarian historiography; he remains a living figure for us.

Nietzsche is a scientific philosopher because he does not give us answers. He asks questions that are intentionally provocative and which are intended to make the reader uncomfortable, so that the reader will be forced, possibly against his will, to think through his own ideas critically. Nietzsche was a methodologist of the mind, a scientist of thought, who gave us not truths of the mind nor a body of knowledge delineating thought, but a body of questions. 

It has become something of a platitude to say that, "life is not about the destination, but the journey." For Nietzsche, this was not a mere platitude, but a philosophical methodology: thought is not about the answers, but about the inquiry. Even today, more than a hundred years after Nietzsche wrote, we continue to investigate the questions he raised, and the more we try to "answer back" Nietzsche the more we realize the experimental nature of truly scientific philosophy.