No, we don't. We only have first-order knowledge of our perceptions of things. And quantum mechanics shows us that those perceptions can be radically different from the underlying reality.
Of course, Einstein can be forgiven for making this mistake because he didn't know about the Bell inequality and the subsequent experiments, so it is understandable that he would cling to the hope that something would come along and rescue QM from the EPR paradox by somehow extracting classical reality from the Schroedinger equation. But modern thinkers cannot be so readily absolved.
>But modern thinkers cannot be so readily absolved
No, but they can go on a 40 year goose chase trying to reconcile the many different string theories that don't have any physical evidence to substantiate.
QFT is one of the most successful theories we've created, but GR is still our best theory regarding gravity. There's still no evidence for the graviton. We probably need something else besides QFT to describe the nature of reality
QFT is too successful that experimentalists stuck for half a century with no meaningful surprise. But theoreticians got to maintain a publication streak if trying to stay in academy. Thus string theory becomes the perfect field. Most ones doing it seem to know it is a goose chase but no one dare to admit it publicly as your colleagues stripped of funding would tear you to pieces.
I feel we really should sort these papers into a category "physics in imaginary universe", so other people do not get confused.
> QFT is one of the most successful theories we've created, but GR is still our best theory regarding gravity. There's still no evidence for the graviton. We probably need something else besides QFT to describe the nature of reality
The evidence for QFT is orders of magnitude stronger than the evidence for GR, and the two are incompatible. The empirical evidence is simply the fact that gravity exists; if there's no graviton then how does gravity work? If the right model isn't one of the (obscenely many) possible string theories, then what?
I'm sceptical about string theory, but unless and until we come up with a better alternative, it's the only option. (People love to compare it with epicycles - but until you have the insight that lets you eliminate epicycles, you use them, because how else do you get on with doing science?)
> The empirical evidence is simply the fact that gravity exists; if there's no graviton then how does gravity work?
According to GR, gravity per se is a kind of illusion caused by the movement of particles in a curved space-time. The more basic effect is spacetime curving itself around mass(/energy).
Now, whether this interaction itself is quantized or not (if the curvature comes in integer multiples) remains unknown. It is very much possible that gravity/space-time curvature is a different kind of effect than the other three fundamental interactions, and that it is not in fact qunatized, so there is no graviton.
And unto string theory, the problem with it is that it doesn't explain anything new. It posits some ideas of how gravity might work in a qunatized form, but any actual tests of the correctness of those calculations requires studying a black hole up close, which won't happen very soon. And of course, it infamously does so at the cost of adding lots of new elements to physics (extra dimensions, extra particles) none of which are testable or observed. And it still doesn't fix other problems of QM/QFT, most notably the measurement problem.
Plus, there is no actual need for String Theory to say that it's the best option we've got for X. For whatever we want to model, we can use either QFT or GR.
> According to GR, gravity per se is a kind of illusion caused by the movement of particles in a curved space-time. The more basic effect is spacetime curving itself around mass(/energy).
Right, but you can't actually do physics (that is, QFT) in that model. You can model a universe made up of particles that have mass and no other properties, and, uh, that's it.
> Now, whether this interaction itself is quantized or not (if the curvature comes in integer multiples) remains unknown. It is very much possible that gravity/space-time curvature is a different kind of effect than the other three fundamental interactions, and that it is not in fact qunatized, so there is no graviton.
I mean, yes, but in that case what is it? I would love for someone to come up with a non-graviton model that describes gravity while remaining compatible with QFT. But unless and until someone actually comes up with that model, gravitons are the best we can do.
> And unto string theory, the problem with it is that it doesn't explain anything new. It posits some ideas of how gravity might work in a qunatized form, but any actual tests of the correctness of those calculations requires studying a black hole up close, which won't happen very soon.
Directly observing both mass and non-mass aspects of particles at the same time is hard, sure. But we know that particles exist and have both mass and charge (and colour and all that)! They must in fact be subject to both QFT and gravitational effects at the same time. Yes, I can't immediately show that up on my desk in the lab, but I'm deeply uncomfortable with "ignore gravity unless you're working with big stuff, and then if you're working with big stuff ignore the whole rest of known physics and use this radically different theory (that, again, fundamentally contradicts the entire rest of known physics) to model what it's doing". I mean, yes, it does work for all the experiments we can currently do. But it's not at all a satisfactory model of how the universe actually works.
And? That doesn't explain anything. What rules is the "simulation" following? If it's not following any, how come reality behaves so consistently in most respects?
Einstein knew the works of Schopenhauer quite well and for sure didn't make this mistake. Furthermore, most of the Physicists back then were most likely influenced by Kant or Mach (Einstein called himself his student in letters to him).
Einstein knew the works of Bach quite well too. That doesn't mean that Bach had anything meaningful to contribute to our understanding of the world (except insofar as figuring out how to write good music is such a contribution).
However, we are not talking about Bach, but about Einstein's knowledge of epistemology and that he certainly was well versed in that subject and didn't make such a basic mistake as you alluded to.
What I was alluding to was Einstein's belief that the EPR paradox was evidence that QM was incomplete. He was wrong about that, but can be forgiven because he didn't know about Bell and Aspect.
I find myself becoming more and more sensitive to this basic mistake: We know relativity is wrong somehow. We know quantum mechanics is wrong somehow. They're both incredibly correct with their predictions but they don't go together, so they can't both be right and in the end they both have to be wrong somehow. Two of the places where they are both clearly somehow wrong are gravity (completely missing from QM, incompatible with quantization in relativity) and time (both theories having problems with them in the extreme cases).
Therefore, grand pronouncements about how the universe is "really" a static four-dimensional object "because that's what relativity says" are just wrong, for the exact same reasons.
Perhaps even in the "not even wrong" sense, on the grounds that it is no different than taking Newtonian physics and making ground pronouncements about the nature of the universe. Newtonian physics implies things like "there can be no absolute speed limit in the universe"; not just that there isn't one, but that there can't be one for the transforms it uses to be valid. There is such a speed limit and the transforms it uses aren't valid. Declaring the universe to have this or that characteristic based on relativity is no different than declaring it must not have a speed-of-light because that's what Newtonian physics says. The only difference is that "everybody" knows the latter is wrong; the former is just as wrong.
So in general getting too worked up over what Einstein's relativity says about the universe at this level is a waste of time, no pun intended.
Science history being what it is, it is quite likely that if we ever do penetrate down to what time "really" is it'll be even more mind-blowing than a static four-dimensional universe, but that's a problem for the future. (And the current leading contenders in that theory race I'm not sure are any more disruptive than QM already was. Total chaos space/time at scales so small that they are in some sense literally microscopically microscopically microscopically microscopic may be vaguely unsettling, but to my mind doesn't seem to add anything philosophically material that QM didn't already introduce.)
> I find myself becoming more and more sensitive to this basic mistake: We know relativity is wrong somehow. We know quantum mechanics is wrong somehow.
Please don't use the word "wrong". Alchemy is wrong. Astrology is wrong. Relativity and Quantum Mechanics get many things right but are probably "incomplete" in the same way Newtonian mechanics wasn't wrong, only incomplete.
Newton mechanics was wrong: because it didn’t account for the relativistic terms, all the equations are off by some amount. It turns out that we can ignore the error in practical contexts, but that’s still being “wrong”. Another example: the math of a geocentric solar system is often precise enough for practical purposes and so, when it’s simpler, it can be useful to use it instead of Newtonian or relativistic models.
I think this is important because physicists that popularize often make grandiose claims about how reality is when they should know better and then these claims form popular imagination in ways that shutdown thought.
I would say Newtonian mechanics is a good approximation (as it is accurate in its domain, plus easier to conceptialize and compute with than either QM or GR).
Approximations aren't "wrong", they are just simplifications of something less wrong, usually in certain corner cases. Sometimes approximations are derived from the broader theory, and sometimes the broader theory comes later. (And of course, sometimes old theories are proven plain "wrong" by evidence and new theories, but those are things more like alchemy, or mistakes in math proofs, and less like Newton's laws).
Finally, iff we follow your logic then we can say nothing is ever "right". Philosophically it may be useful to realize we may never know the ultimate truth with 100% certainty, but in everyday English "right" can simply mean "appropriate".
> Approximations aren't "wrong", they are just simplifications of something less wrong, usually in certain corner cases.
I think it’s true that wrongness is relative to the use-case. But, on the other hand, before things like the Ultraviolet Catastrophe and the Michelson-Morley experiment, a lot of physicists thought they had the big picture of the universe basically right and just had to fill in the details. The revolution of GR and QM was barely even suspected and this should give us pause when it comes to our confidence in the modern picture of the universe. Relativity and QM will always be useful as models of the spheres they model, but the worldview we’ve built on top of them could change drastically overnight (in historical terms).
I think you are partly right. Quantum mechanics and general relativity are incomplete rather than wrong. I don’t think either has been falsified, it’s more that they are just useless in specific cases.
This is in contrast with Newtonian mechanics, which implies Galilean transformation when changing reference frames, which looks right at our usual scales, but is plainly wrong in the general case.
However, the things you mention are not even wrong. As in, they are not falsifiable so you cannot say whether they are right or wrong in theory.
> I don’t think either has been falsified, it’s more that they are just useless in specific cases.
Of course they have. If you try to use SR or GR to predict how particles behave, you will get none of the quantum effects we have observed experimentally.
If you try to use QM or QFT to predict how the planets move* or at least how black holes move, you'll get predictions that don't agree with what telescopes have observed.
So yes, both of the theories have already been falsified.
* I have been told that there are some ways to account for gravity in regular QM in a way similar to GR that essentially work until you get to the kinds of strong fields near a black hole, where they break down again.
Newton was wrong if his project was about uncovering the deep workings of nature. His assumptions were wrong and don’t work. They will never work. They are not “incomplete”.
They are practical though. In that sense astrology can be said to be practical too.. hides.
Astrologers often make very falsifiable claims, such as "you'll meet the man of your dreams, because Mercury is ascending". Those claims are of course false.
I would call that something other than Newtonian physics, since that would constitute adding a term of some sort to some important equations, but I'm willing to agree this is just arguing about definitions and it doesn't really matter in the end since it still wouldn't be right. :)
Not exactly. The way physicists tried to reconcile Newtonian mechanics with the Maxwell equations was by imagining that the space between the Earth and the Sun (at least) is not a void, but that it is filled with an actual substance, the luminiferous ether. Light waves were posited to be mechanical waves in this substance, and the measured speed-of-light limit would have been a simple frame dragging effect: the moving train pulls the ether with it.
Of course, the Michelson-Morley experiment proved that even if this substance exists, it can't be dragged around, so frame dragging can't be an explanation for the constant speed of light, making the whole idea unnecessary. Future observations predicted by SR and GR would probably not have been compatible anyway.
But, getting back to your point, if this ether had existed and had been the medium through which light propagates and had been draggable by moving objects, then this would not have been a contradiction or even modification of Newtonian mechanics.
While I'm generally on board with this principle, I felt, given the nature of the conversation, this was a particularly egregious instance. Besides, sometimes new users can use a reminder. I'm generally not a fan of absolutist rules as they always tend to break down in some corner cases doing more harm than good (though of course we can disagree whether this was such a case). Either way, thank you for your reminder to my reminder :)
By my reading, a lot of it just boils down to the "all models are wrong, but some are useful" aphorism, but denigrating models' usefulness in a philosophical context, calling the implications of relativity and whatnot "a waste of time".
I think this is overly reductive. Indeed, many consequences that follow from the nonexistence or impossibility of a certain thing, event, or effect are brittle to the physical model being refined to include additional effects. But plenty of important consequences follow from existence or possibility and can be directly supported through experimental evidence.
For instance, Newtonian physics predict absolute simultaneity: if one observer measures that two events occurred at the same time, then all other observers will measure likewise, regardless of their relative position or velocity. But special relativity violates this, instead predicting relativity of simultaneity. As long as special relativity's predictions hold to any extent (which, experimentally, they do), then simultaneity is definitely relative and not absolute. There's no way to recover absolute simultaneity short of postulating a grand cosmic conspiracy. And learning that the arrow of time isn't absolute definitely isn't a waste of time!
Also, I think it's unwarranted to say that just because some consequences of nonexistence have historically been invalidated in the past, all the consequences of nonexistence in our current theories are inevitably going to fall over with further evidence. Why should we expect a priori that we haven't yet discovered a single true invariant of our universe? After all, some observed invariants, such as the conservation of energy, have withstood the numerous revisions to our physical models, and it seems odd to blithely assert that they'll be invalidated any year now. In the limit, to say that exceptions will be discovered to every principle ever is to say that the universe doesn't run on any kind of laws.
And if we do concede that at least some of our current models' invariants truly do hold in reality, then it's no longer a waste of time to study their implications, since some subset of our findings will remain just as accurate now matter how far our models are revised.
I would characterize it more as "All models are wrong, some are useful, but it is never useful to use a model in a domain it is known to be wrong in".
We are extremely confident in the wrongness of relativity and QM in this matter, so using them in that particular way for philosophy is really a waste of time.
One could sensibly write philosophy of the form "If string theory is true, then..." or "If Loop Quantum Gravity is true, then...", because while those are not proved, they are also not proved actively wrong in the relevant ways.
Yeah, this is the fundamental tension in modern physics: are best theories are not consistent with each other (so we know they’re wrong or partial) and every experiment we do to test them confirms them to within measurement error.
It’s exactly the sort of situation that precedes a paradigm shift and it’s very hard to predict exactly what will trigger one.
> After all, some observed invariants, such as the conservation of energy, have withstood the numerous revisions to our physical models, and it seems odd to blithely assert that they'll be invalidated any year now.
That's not a great example, since conservation of energy is actually violated in current cosmological models. The expansion of spacetime actually implies violation of energy conservation at the global level. It's only locally that energy is conserved.
Similarly, while there is definitely something special about the speed of light, it may or may not be a limit in the sense we typically use. That is, GR and QFT are consistent with the existence particles to have speeds greater than C, it only prevents any particle from accelerating from below C to C or above. It also puts certain limits on observations of those particles. However, it's hard to say what overall implications there would be for all of our models if such particles were actually found to exist, or if there is some modification possible for those theories that would entirely prevent the existence of those particles.
> Bergson emphasised the cultural and technological context in which Einstein formulated relativity and argued that a theory of time that relies on clocks but doesn’t understand their history and significance, is incomplete
This is hard to get on board with. A theory of time is incomplete without a history of clocks? Have I misunderstood?
I think most people can relate to sometimes feeling like their experience of time is incongruent with objective clock time. We're educated and socialized to believe that it is our perception that is incorrect, because the clock is right.
Some philosophers and other types of scholars would question whether we should cede all sense of reality to that which can be objectively measured. You might say that there's no one "real" time. Perceptual time is real because it matters to the person experiencing it.
I don't think the point is to deny objective time or physics, but just to say that it is incomplete as a way describing lived reality. And probably also that we'll never have an understanding of neurology that's complete enough to let us even fully characterize perceptual time scientifically.
So, we should accept that there is more to time than what physics can tell us.
This is like claiming that there is no physical temperature because "hot" water for a bathtub is different from "hot" water for a tea (and different from "hot" air during a summer day).
Perhaps we should use two different word for the "perceived time" and for the "clock time". The good days, when I go to sleep all the night appears to go away in an instant, but it isn't. It's more useful to have a physical defined "clock time" and then explain why the brain is bad estimating durations using the "perceived time".
Yeah, I think his point is just to argue against scientific supremacy. Using different terms for the scientific and perceptual aspects of time would be one way of meeting his goal.
It is incomplete in that it cannot replace older ideas of time in all contexts. It is perfectly valid/complete for use in scientific contexts. But the general population's use the idea of time for other purposes as well where Einsteins purely Relativistic formulation cannot be a stand in replacement is how I read it.
> It is incomplete in that it cannot replace older ideas of time in all contexts. It is perfectly valid/complete for use in scientific contexts.
It seems to just be saying: your theory uses clocks to illustrate it but doesn't include the history of clocks. I don't think that's quite what you're describing.
There is a distance-free notion of time which predates, and necessarily predates, all experimental theories of time. This is (loosely after Kant):
* Every thing that happens, happens at a time. Let's call those things "events" from now on. It's nonsense to claim that a thing happened, but never (at any point in time) happened.
* Every event happens in a place. It's nonsense to say that a thing happened, but nowhere happened.
* Every event MAY be related to one or more events, called its causes.
* There is an ordering on points in time, so that an event's time-point comes after the time-point of all its causes.
Without these assumptions, how are you going to do experiments, or draw any conclusions about the world? In fact you pretty much need one more, which is that every event has at least one cause (otherwise there's not much point in scientifically investigating it). These basic categories are certainly no replacement for physics. They're just the bare minimum to start an investigation into physics. But if the way you describe your physics contradicts it, then at best there's a communication problem.
Cause or pre-condition? It's simple to state the pre-condition for quantum tunnelling to occur, but as a probabilistic event the cause seems hard to define...
No, none of these points are contradicted by SR or GR.
They perfectly match the idea of events as 4D points in Minkowsky space time. Points 1 and 2 are matched by describing any event by its (x, y, z, t) coordinates in some reference frame. Point 4 is matched by the fact that the Lorrentz transform preserves the ordering by t of events which are timelike separated.
Many seem to forget that even in relativity, all observers agree on the order of events that are close enough together in space. For example, any possible observer agrees that the pyramids are older than Hacker News (though they will disagree on how much older).
What the GP is saying is that this framework definition of time is in fact a series of requirements that any physical theory of time must fulfill to be recognizable as talking about time. That is, any theory that doesn't match those criteria is not talking about the same thing we are when we say time.
The points do not imply Newtonian physics, or any kind of physics at all, because they assert only a ordering relation on events. They put no measure on those things, and certainly no absolute measure.
You clearly also did not understand the problem of trying to do experiments, or even to learn from experience at all without assuming these things.
Really, how much clearer could I have made those things?
What is a "time"? Is it a number? A string like "uyeuhwydyjghafjhbhsjahsgg"? Some opaque object? Is it possible to compre the "time" of two different events? If there are two different events, did they happen at the same "time" or at different "time"?
Come on! I make a serious effort to be precise here, and you just don't seem to give a damn.
Time is a word, and I'm trying to establish the absolute minimum common sense rules for using that word. Obviously we have to use other words to do that, words like "event", "cause" and "order" (note, not "object"). But that's OK, the point is to explain what we mean by these words in relation to each other.
To answer your questions explicitly:
* Time, in this philosophical, pre-experimental sense, is not a number. It does not have anything like a unit or scale. It's certainly not a gobbeldygook string.
* You can only order the time of two events, and only if one is in the set of causes of the other (or the causes of causes etc. Talking about an ordering implies that, I hope you agree.) If an event A has two causes B and C, all we can say for sure is that the times of B and C are ordered before the time of A, because that's what we mean by these words, time, cause and event.
* No, you can never say for sure that something happened at the same time. You can maybe order the times, if they are in a causal chain - in that case it makes no sense to say they're equal. If they are not in a causal chain with each other, you can say nothing about their order (or equality). We know nothing about the order of B and C.
So the idea is to assign a different "time" to each event. It's very different from physics, because physics assigns the "same" time to multiple events.
In Newtonian Mechanics, everyone agree to assign the same time to the same collection of events.
In Special Relativity, the same time is assigned to different collections of events by different observers.
In General Relativity, it's more complicated.
Back to your original comment
>>> *Every event happens in a place.
Does each event get a different place, of places can be shared between events?
I agree. In Classic Mechanic "time" an be just t (or an opaque container with t), but in Special Relativity you "time" as defined by the G...P must be (t,x,y,z) (or an opaque container with (t,x,y,z)).
> Why is this even a question?
It's very strange that two events can not share the same "time". This is not the usual definition of time in physics [1]. So it's a natural question if the same strange property apply to "place".
Also, the definition of "time" in a world with special relativity makes it necessary to include (x,y,z) so "time" includes all the information included in "place". Why is it necessary to have both concepts?
[1] I think it gets more complicated in General Relativity, but I never took that course :( .
Relativity isn't even about clocks, and is practically difficult to verify with any but the absolute best... its most common applications are related to radiation physics. The only conflict science has with philosophers is its role as a stumbling block for people with high verbal abilities and a belief that they don't have to know anything about the subject they're writing about. If they had the same attitude towards glassblowing or archeology they would have the same results.
> Q: In one of your talks you mention that the correct way to understand Einstein’s revolution is not as a theoretical, but as a technological revolution. Can you explain what you mean by that?
> A: ...A very interesting question is why and how Einstein’s work was able to shed its mundane origins and parade itself as theoretical, cosmological and universal.
The "mundane origins" here are Einstein's uses of the mostly then-relatively-new technologies of clocks, trains, bullets and rulers. I feel that the view Canales is setting out here is a mistaken reading of the history, and that Einstein was addressing "theoretical, cosmological and universal" concepts from the beginning, only referring to mundane entities for pedagogical purposes. By the late 1880's it was becoming clear that some of the further implications of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory were at odds with cosmological assumptions, a tension made more pointed by Michelson and Morley's 1887 aether-wind experiment.
Science doesn't have a conflict with philosophy, knowledge in any form has a conflict with people who can write an entire book without learning anything about their subject.
> It has become a dominant view in the philosophy of time that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity showed that the passage of time is an illusion, and that in fact the past, present, and future all coexist.
The first paragraph is already troubling for me, the "fact the past, present, and future all coexist" is a gross misinterpretation of general relativity, a borderline esoteric atrology-type view, and I can't believe that such mistaken view grew to be the "dominant view in the philosophy".
I don’t think it’s a gross misinterpretation. General relativity does show that what one observer would consider the future can exists as the present of another observer, and vice versa.
As time is part of the 4 dimensional Minkowski space, saying that the future, past and present don’t coexist would be like saying left doesn’t exists when you’re going right.
> General relativity does show that what one observer would consider the future can exists as the present of another observer, and vice versa.
Not in any way that is inconsistent with an evolving universe, actually. Sure, an observer may exist at some coordinates in 4D spacetime where they are detecting light from Sagittarius A that in our frame is 1000 years old, but also light from the Sun that in our frame is 1000 years from now. But that observer cannot be meaningfully said to be either in our present nor in our past. And if we ever "meet" to discuss our observarions, it is guaranteed that it will be no less than 1000 years from now, after we also see the sun evolving. We'll essentially only disagree about how old the light from Sagittarius A was.
Most importantly, SR is not consistent with any ordering of events that breaks causality. If I drop a mug and it shatters, no observer can see the mug shatter and then see me dropping it. So, there is no reason to believe that the shattered mug already existed somewhere in space time when I dropped it, though there is also no reason to believe that it didn't.
Yes I agree, it’s true that causally connected events maintain their ordering. However, there is no sense where one can say definitively that some set of spatially separated events happened simultaneously. And as each reference frame is valid it’s impossible to say that there is a correct “present”. If two events happens at the same time in one reference frame, you can’t then declare that they happened at the same time “in reality” as that’s not valid. The events also happened at different times “in reality” in other reference frames. And in fact, the two observers could meet and discuss that the events happened at different times.
The result is that some reference frames have other frames future and past events, so to the grandparent posts point, there is a real sense in which the future exists along with the past. No reference frame gets to say what the official “future” is, so it must already exist.
My point is that, while there isn't a single universally defined future, for every observer there exist events that haven't happened yet, and no observer is ever going to communicate with some other observer and disagree about whether an event has happened yet or not. They can only disagree about the order in which events in their shared past happened.
Additionally, there are events that are in the future for any observer in any reference frame anywhere in the universe (except for those already caught beyond the event horizon of a black hole, but their future consists exclusively of the black hole so it's not that interesting to the discussion). For a simple example, present day on Earth was in the future for any observer anywhere in the universe 5 seconds after the big bang, regardless of their speed. So, there is no reason to say that present day Earth must have already existed 5 seconds after the Big Bang.
Of course, the block universe model is self-consistent, so it's possible it's correct. All I'm claiming is that an evolving universe is also consistent with relativity, though the way it evolves is more complex than a single universal arrow of time.
It’s a misinterpretation because it uses phrases like “the future” and “the past”, when the whole insight of relativity theory is that neither term has much useful meaning.
"The future" and "the past" have very useful and well defined meanings in SR. The key insight is that they are only meaningful locally, not at the level of the entire universe as it is assumed in Newtonian mechanics.
Every possible observer has a clear view of their own past and their own future. As long as two observers are a long distance from each other, they may disagree on the order in which events that happen far away from each of them happen.
But, they will never disagree on the order in which events that are close to either of them happened. And, if they ever meet, they will have a shared notion of what is in the past and what is in the future compared to the moment of their meeting (that is, any event that is in the future compared to their meeting for one of them is also in the future after their meeting for the other).
It is very hard to read philosophy in this phenomenological/continental tradition. There is a real resistance in that tradition to plainly stating a core thesis. There may well be defensible reasons for this - maybe it preserves the subtleties, peculiar texture; the holistic, or even contradictory nature of thought or consciousness or what have you. But I think a lot of the time these philosophers won't come right out and say what they mean because they don't really know what they mean, and any sufficiently plain statement of their views would reveal itself as either trivially correct, or obviously wrong. Here is an example:
> Bergson seems to argue that even Einstein’s concept of time, as what’s measured by a clock, is based on some more fundamental, more real, non-mathematical view of time, time as we perceive it, which might defy exact mathematical expression. What sense of time does Bergson have in mind here?
> Consider, for example, how different pre-modern notions of time are from ours. When I write about the history of time in contemporary times, I always have in the back of my mind the image of Saturn devouring his son. In it, the passage, keeping and telling of time occurs be reference to love, violence, anthropophagy and reproduction. Throughout time, it is clear that we are dealing with radically different beasts. Bergson did not draw such stark distinctions, but in Duration and Simultaneity he asked us not to forget how time was a precondition for effective action. “Le temps est pour moi ce qu'il y a de plus réel et de plus nécessaire ; c'est la condition fondamentale de l'action ; – que dis-je ? c'est l'action même.”
> Einstein’s definition of time has none of these radical elements and might even be responsible for leading us to forget about them.
This question gets at the heart of the matter: what exactly is the disagreement between Bergson and Einstein? And we get a non-answer as far as I can tell. I have no idea what "radical elements" she is referencing. There some notion about ideas like "violence" or "reproduction" being stand-ins for the concept of time? and something about time being a precondition for, or even identical to, action? Violence and reproduction and action per se all take a non-zero amount of clock time, so I don't what the conflict is here.
---
Ok, enough rambling. If anyone has a reaction similar to mine, they might find a more relatable exploration of this subject in Wilfrid Sellars' concepts of the the (naive, common-sensical, person-centric) "manifest image" and the "scientific image", and the role of philosophy in reconciling them.
“Our entire belief in objects,” [Bergson] wrote in Creative Evolution (1907), “indeed rests upon the idea that time does not bite into them."
The only "objects" I know of that time does not "bite into" are mathematical abstractions such as integers, or God existing outside of time. No physical entity (Einstein was concerned, after all, with physics) escapes being embedded in time. Can love transcend time? Only to the degree it, like mathematics, transcends physics.
> Of course, one of the most successful aspects of science has been to describe the world in a sense that is true without relying on appearances. For example, Descartes very successfully describes the moon illusion (why it appears larger closer to the horizon) in his book on optics. As science progressed, it continued to correct for more and more illusions that were not limited to the realm of the visual. Thus Laplace corrected illusions of a mathematical nature, such as the commonly held belief that if a coin had landed heads many times in a row it will have a greater probability to land tails. Einstein was part if this tradition, taking it to a new level.
Very interesting quote, and I think in a sense that even hard sciences like physics are not only a study of the "external world", but also the "internal world" that our mind creates to represent it. So much of the conversation around quantum mechanics isn't really about the math or science, which really isn't that complicated, but around how it can be that what is _really_ happening is so different from what we perceive to be happening in our minds.
I think every break through in theoretical physics is sort of inextricably tied with a breakthrough in the study of consciousness. You have to understand both how the world works and also how the mind translates that to conscious experience of the world to really have something that most people will see as an explanation.
An understanding of light, for example, is not just an explanation of the math underlying electromagnetic waves, but also how the eye perceives those waves and translates that into vision.
Science is about explaining the data, and "the data" includes our perceptions of the world. In fact, that is all that we have direct access to. So... our perceptions of the world include a constant stream of overwhelming evidence that the world is classical, a 3-D space inhabited by objects that exist in particular places at particular times. So when evidence comes along that this isn't actually true, it can cause some pretty severe cognitive dissonance, and at best it demands an explanation of why the world appears classical even though it isn't. That has nothing to do with science being "about the internal world as well as the external world." Science is about explaining the data. The (hypothetical) existence of internal and external worlds is part of one possible explanation.
> So... our perceptions of the world include a constant stream of overwhelming evidence that the world is classical, a 3-D space inhabited by objects that exist in particular places at particular times. So when evidence comes along that this isn't actually true, it can cause some pretty severe cognitive dissonance, and at best it demands an explanation of why the world appears classical even though it isn't.
It would be extremely difficult for anybody to accept the evidence provided by quantum mechanics without some additional explanation for how our mind constructs a "classical" reality to go along with it. Modern physics happened along with a materialistic explanation of the origin of mind to go along with it, I don't think either could have advanced without the other.
> It would be extremely difficult for anybody to accept the evidence provided by quantum mechanics without some additional explanation for how our mind constructs a "classical" reality to go along with it.
No, that's not true. For a very long time an explanation of how classical reality emerges from quantum mechanics was lacking, and the prevailing view was essentially "a miracle happens" (a.k.a. the wave function "collapses", whatever that might actually mean). Quantum mechanics was accepted as an explanation nonetheless simply because it explained the data better than any available alternative, and it still does.
well said. It might seem like semantics but I think getting people to think of science using the way you defined it would resolve a lot of these debates (plus many other other fashionably nonsensical ideas)
Thanks. Just to give credit where it's due, this characterization of the scientific method as being about seeking explanations of data is not my idea, it's due to Karl Popper. The best accessible exposition of Popper's position IMHO is by David Deutsch in The Fabric of Reality, chapter 7. Well worth a read.
Whilst it definitely helps being able to understand it I don't think it's a prerequisite, you only have to look to what we know of the quantum world to see that.
Well history doesn't belong to historians, people can believe any fan fic happened, as is tradition. Medicine doesn't belong to biology, there's a long traditional culture of alternatives. Art doesn't belong to artists, because anything is subjectively art. Philosophy doesn't belong to philosophers, who is to say some published philosophy is better than some drunken rant?
We know time and space are the same fabric, because different relativistic speeds let us see the same regions of space-time with different space-time coordinates.
The “angle” of time vs space is different based on perspective. Each perspective sees a different direction of time through the 4D space-time.
Yet from any perspective, the space time regions coordinates are still best represented with three real values and one imaginary value.
This is the form of coordinates in the space time interval equation, and reflects time dilation and space contraction.
So space and time are identical stuff, but from any vantage point you will see “your” time dimension acting differently than 3 spatial dimensions.
On the contrary, I would say that the Lorrentz transforms prove that time is fundamentally different from space. They form a continuum in some sense, but they are not the same at all: you have to flip the sign of the "time" coordinate compared to the three space coordinates to get the right results.
Additionally, events in 4D spacetime can be either space-like separated or time-like separated, and this difference is the same for all (inertial) observers.
This is especially relevant in discussions about the arrow of time since all inertial observers agree on the order in which time-like separated events happen. So even though in the 4D spacetime model there isn't an absolute ordering of events, there exists a partial order that all (inertial) observers agree on.
Yes, there is always a 1D time aspect, which is always different than a 3D space aspect.
But relative to two observers traveling in different directions at relativistic speeds, the way time is observed to be oriented in a space time region (where the two observers directions of motions are not parallel) is different.
Different to the point that orders of events (their observed direction of time) can be completely flipped.
Upon smoothly changing the angle of one observer A’s motion, from parallel to the other observer B, to orthogonal, to reverse parallel, the observed order (observed time) changes.
A initially sees the ordering as identical to B’s, then simultaneous (no time between events, I.e. time is orthogonal to the space-time vector between events: space-time delta vector of all space, no time), then in reverse order (negative time orientation, relative to A’s observation of time).
They both see time, different than space, but its direction through space-time is observed to be in a different direction in space-time relative to each other’s observations of the same space-time position’s of events.
The orientation of time through space-time, the space-time basis vectors, change based on observation.
Between observers, space & time get traded off with each other.
But only upto some limit. Events that are timelike separated are always perceived to happen in the same order by any two observers. It's only events that happen farther away in space than in time from each other that can be perceived in different orders.
So, I don't think the relativity of simultaneity hurts the notion of an arrow of time that much. You don't get a single universal arrow of time, but there are still local arrows of time all over the place, ones that all observers agree on.
We know - how do we know? From experiments. And did we have to assume things about time in order to make experiments? You bet we did. We wouldn't get very far with experiments if we didn't take as axiomatic that causes precede their effect in time, for instance.
I haven't got into the depths of Bergson's argument, but I think I see the point in the headline that time belongs in philosophy, and I can easily imagine he was right that Einstein was smuggling in philosophical assumptions in the particular choice of words he used to describe the implications of his findings.
Interviewee: Jimena Canales | Historian of science and author of The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time (2015) as well as Bedeviled: A Shadow History of Demons in Science (2020).
Interviewer: Alexis Papazoglou | Senior editor for IAI News, the online magazine of the Institute of Art and Ideas, and former philosophy lecturer at Cambridge and Royal Holloway.
Perhaps it went over my head but in summary he wanted the scientific process of discovery in physics research to stop because his philosophy couldn't keep up?
Yep. Pretty much. This is a not-uncommon sentiment among philosophers. It's the only way they can cope with the shift in the societal power dynamic that has happened since Newton and Darwin and Einstein and Turing and Bell. Science has subsumed philosophy, and the philosophers really hate that.
But hasn't it always been that way? Copernicus was a revolution to philosophy. Newton was a revolution to philosophy.
Is it just that we're more aware of the current philosophers, who will be forgotten in a century or two? Or is the philosophical opposition actually stronger now?
> But hasn't it always been that way? Copernicus was a revolution to philosophy. Newton was a revolution to philosophy.
Yes, that's why I specifically cited Newton. I could have cited Copernicus as well, and Galileo, and a few dozen others but I didn't want to get too long-winded.
> Is it just that we're more aware of the current philosophers, who will be forgotten in a century or two? Or is the philosophical opposition actually stronger now?
If anything I think it's weaker now than in the past because the fruits of science are so evident to everyone. It is plain to everyone that smart phones did not come out of philosophy departments. The niches in which philosophers can make meaningful contributions are getting narrower and narrower, which makes them more and more desperate and shrill. But I predict they will eventually go the way of the alchemist. Or maybe the astrologer. Astrologers figured out a way to eke out a living as charlatans. Maybe philosophers will too. (Maybe they already have.)
Actual philosophers are not as bad at the false answers thing as some people who rise to public attention, instead they serve the useful purpose of making people realize their preconceived notions about their own thoughts and their relationship to reality are not as sound as they may have thought, by virtue of the many different ways others have self-consistently answered the same questions.
I think you'll need some sense of metaphysics and epistemology and maybe even ethics to function, most people have one (they know what they think the word "reality," means, they can distinguish between thoughts and observations, they wouldn't kill unless they were seriously threatened) but when that is extended into a "let me tell you how the world works" thing it becomes philosophy done bad, which can only be resisted by knowing philosophy done right (the impassive if frustrating collection of a lot of possible solutions). It is a universal human trait to want to answer these questions, even the so-called "rationalists" have a web page with a list of doctrines. The only way to do it wrong is to come up with one answer and think that it is the answer because it's the only answer you know and that is what learning philosophy is for.
There’s still a lot of value in philosophy when we use it to think about how we structure and rationalize the world.
Even if science gives us ever better models of the underlying reality of the universe, there’s still the understanding of how we conceptualize that reality and what it means to us. Specifically in ways that don’t require religion or supernatural beings, nor in purely psychological means of perception or physiology.
I think of it as the study of the emergent properties of complex information processing. It can do things like help us talk about the minds of others, for example future AI, potential extraterrestrial intelligences, or even other terrestrial intelligences (dolphins, octopus, etc)
How do you believe the results you are getting? What makes such a belief justified?
What is the nature of consciousness?
What are things beautiful? What makes something ascetically pleasing.
Why any of this exists at all?
What is the purpose of this existence?
Is something ethical? Science can provide answer about consequences of an action but cannot determine if said action is moral or ethical.
… science is not a book of facts. It is merely a process for testing a hypothesis. It is not a replacement for philosophy, it is underpinned by philosophy.
A scientist follows the scientific method, i.e. they advance testable hypotheses and compare their predictions with the data. A philosopher writes deep-sounding but ultimately meaningless drivel like this:
It's not lost on me that Tractatus was warmly received by philosophers, but Investigations got a frostier reception from the same group. I especially enjoyed Russell's snippy quote. Ol Ludwig struck a nerve, did he, Bert?
On your last question ethics in particular is rather interesting. I think it's the field where the decline of philosophy is most obvious.
Ethics is supposed to answer real-life questions, like "How do I live a moral life?".
Yet philosophical movements, that actually tired to answer such questions, like the stoics and the epicureans are long gone. When you read on the actual writings of contemporary philosophers you'd see impossible moral standards - "It takes 5 dollars to save a starving African child, a night out with friends is the equivalent to abandoning a bus of drowning children to their deaths"[1]
It's impossible to live by such philosophy, except for those that think of themselves as some sort of creature of pure evil who cares nothing of right and wrong.
Because philosophy is useless as a guidance to life, right and wrong are now decided by the encyclical, the fatwa and the resolutions at the party congress, depending on your religion.
Ohh, it's not just the rich world that's guilty. Do you think there are no bars in Haiti? Do you think they don't waste stuff on "personal luxuries" in Bangladesh? Do you think they don't waste their time and resources on shopping malls in Ethiopia? They waste resources that could have gone to the malnourished children of their own country!
Monsters, the lot of them, just as bad as the rich-worlders. Ethics demands we all live joyless lives of endless toil until every child is fed.
Rich people living in third world countries would definitely be included in that especially because rather than some vague "foreign policy" being the causal link for culpability they can often be the corrupt individuals creating the problem themselves. Saying "people who live in penthouses next to Indian slums might be living their life wrong too" is not exactly an expression of disagreement.
Perhaps I was unclear. I wasn't talking about rich people. Poor people need to enjoy life just as much as rich people, if not more. Who spends more time at bars, the rich or the poor?
Do you think an Ethiopian community is immoral because it puts effort into having enjoyable festivals, dignified funerals and large weddings? Think of all the effort that could have gone to the starving children!
Here's a more practical question for you. There's a homeless guy who hangs around my place. He's definitely not malnourished, in fact he's somewhat fat. If I give him a dollar, should he return it to me with instructions to give it to African children instead?
Having a party when there are people starving outside may actually be immoral, yes, even in Ethiopia. I'm not basing my argument on "Americans bad" so much as admitting there could be something to this whole "how are you so able to ignore the extreme suffering of others?" question... Maybe we would be better if none of us could do that.
> "It takes 5 dollars to save a starving African child, a night out with friends is the equivalent to abandoning a bus of drowning children to their deaths".
These philosophical thought experiments are too simplistic to offer any guidance. Five dollars does not save any starving child; he will need food for the rest of his childhood. And they also neglect the social aspect of the problem. What if the whole neighborhood or country is poor? It is more sensible to attack this problem using the tools of developmental economics; how can we alleviate the problem for everyone over time?
I completely agree. Funnily enough, the first published work of economics Glasgow professor of moral philosophy wrote a book about systemic issues. Before that, philosophers from Aristotle to Hume dealt with matters like credit and currency as ethical issues.
The only think I'd have to add is I don't think the thought experiment is merely "too simplistic". It's an evil sophistry designed to make people believe ethical conduct is unattainable.
And what are the answers from philosophy? Last I looked, all that philosophy could offer to questions like that was an enumeration of multiple conflicting answers.
If scientists had the slightest bit of societal power, our response to climate change wouldn't be this shameful, and climate activists wouldn't be so successfully marked for the daily sessions of "5 minutes of hate".
What did gain societal power is capitalism is brute-forcing its way into everything via "tech" that then pats the people in gold-plated cages, who allow their genius to be used for that on the back, while feeding them crumbs. Where nothing that can't be counted matters and destroying the environment -- both physical and that of society, that which minds get formed in -- is perfectly rational, as long as there is a cent of profit to be made.
Some people get really high on it, think someone's "won" (what?) and it might even be them, but let's not pretend any of the great scientists that get name-dropped so easily have anything to do with that, or haven't even spoken against it at length.
> Our entire much-praised technological progress, and civilization generally, could be compared to an axe in the hand of a pathological criminal.
-- Albert Einstein
> Let us not forget that human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the enquiring and constructive mind.
> What these blessed men have given us we must guard and try to keep alive with all our strength if humanity is not to lose its dignity, the security of its existence, and its joy in living.
-- Albert Einstein
> As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. [..] This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings.
-- Charles Darwin, "The Descent of Man" (1871)
> It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love.
-- Stephen Hawking
Science is a tool. More precisely, it's a method to make and improve and gauge tools. But those tools can't ask questions (we didn't somehow put there first), they cannot judge. They can tell you if something is fair according to your parameters and heuristics, but they know nothing of the inherent value in being fair, they can't answer "should I be fair?", and the same for everything else that actually matters.
> Science is a tool. More precisely, it's a method to make and improve and gauge tools. But those tools can't ask questions (we didn't somehow put there first), they cannot judge. They can tell you if something is fair according to your parameters and heuristics, but they know nothing of the inherent value in being fair, they can't answer "should I be fair?", and the same for everything else that actually matters.
And do you think that philosophy has shed any light on the answer to the question, "Should I be fair?" Or indeed on what the word "fair" actually means?
You're not wrong that science can't answer these questions, but what science can do is demonstrate that, for example, different people want different things, and have different ideas of what words like "fair" mean. We can then go one to (say) devise systems that maximize value according to some quality metric, but that's the best we can do. We cannot somehow derive some universal standard of "fairness" because no such thing exists. And we don't need philosophers to tell us that.
> We cannot somehow derive some universal standard of "fairness" because no such thing exists. And we don't need philosophers to tell us that.
But you're doing it right now? I agree and would like to subscribe to your philosophy newsletter ^^ Kidding aside, I have to think of this talk by Erich Fromm, "Psychology for non-psychologists", where he starts off with saying there everybody is a bit of a psychologist, otherwise we wouldn't be able to even navigate and survive infancy. The same with what you just said and philosophy in general, I think. The only difference between a hot take on a forum (which is grounded in your experience and thoughts you had previously about it) and "a philosopher" would be doing it full time and for money I guess, or being known for your claims, but that's secondary IMO.
Sorry, what exactly is the "it" that am I doing right now (or was doing right then)?
> everybody is a bit of a psychologist
Sure. So?
> The same with what you just said and philosophy in general
Sure. So? Everyone is a bit of an amateur everything. That doesn't mean that everything that people do can be meaningfully elevated to the level of a profession.
> "a philosopher" would be doing it full time and for money
Yes, exactly. Everyone is an amateur philosopher just as everyone is (say) an amateur thumb-sucker at some point in their lives. That doesn't mean that there ought to be an elite cadre of thumb suckers who get paid to do it.
Sure, many scientists work for PR firms of the fossil fuel industry, or worse. But they rarely make a public fuss about how awesome that is and how there should be more of that, right? That is what societal power would mean IMO, having respect and attention -- not working on evil shit in the "basement" of a corporation you can only talk about in layers of rationalizations and jargon in public, if even that. They may rake in the cash and then get respect for the things that buys, but not directly for who they are and what they do.
Whereas scientists that are alarmed by things like biodiversity loss and climate change really are pounding at our door, and have societal power in some circles but not on the whole, not enough, which is made clear by the outcomes.
We've seen countless subjects on which philosophers argued for centuries solved by physicists and mathematicians.
We've yet to see one example going the other way.
At best philosophers provide interesting questions. At worst they are just paperpushers categorizing the work others did into pointless and arbitrary categories and arguing about them :)
It's also worth adding that the scientific method is fundamentally based on unprovable axiomatic assumptions. In other words it's still philosophy all the way down. To be clear, I don't think all philosophical ideas are equally valid and this particular set of axioms has proven quite useful in practice, but at best all we can really say is that it provides a user window for examining reality. We don't know how wide that window happens to be and how much of reality we can see through it.
We don't even know if the scientific method is the best it could be in what we use it for. After all, it was only expanded with the idea of falsification in the 20th century yet we were still doing useful science before than.
In practice, science is, and has been, rather flexible about its assumptions, and, ironically, has been criticized for that by philosophers - and yet it has been remarkably successful, arguably because it gives a lot of weight to empiricism and not so much to debating axioms.
> We don't know how wide that window happens to be and how much of reality we can see through it... We don't even know if the scientific method is the best it could be in what we use it for.
It is telling that these sentiments are not followed by something beginning "analytical philosophy, in contrast..."
> [Science] was only expanded with the idea of falsification in the 20th century yet we were still doing useful science before than.
It was doing de facto, though somewhat ad hoc, falsification long before Popper focused his attention it. The philosophy of science is much more descriptive than prescriptive.
Having said this, you may be surprised to learn that I spend a some of my free time reading and thinking about various aspects of philosophy. I must say, however, that I feel that western metaphysics lost its way in its attempt to address fundamental questions through the analysis of language.
> It's also worth adding that the scientific method is fundamentally based on unprovable axiomatic assumptions.
No, it isn't. This is a very common myth, but it is in fact a myth. Science has no axioms.
> We don't even know if the scientific method is the best it could be in what we use it for.
That's true. But what we do know is that the scientific method is vastly more effective than anything else humans have come up with in helping us navigate our existence and exercise some degree of control over our destiny.
> After all, it was only expanded with the idea of falsification in the 20th century yet we were still doing useful science before than.
That is also true, and that is one of the reasons to believe that the scientific method is special and unlikely to be improved upon. It's not just an arbitrary choice. It is privileged, and there is actually reason to believe that this privileged status is a reflection of some underlying reality. But this is not an axiom, it's a result.
Isn’t scientism the idea that we have a set of knowledge that is conclusively known along with a heavy reliance on authority, while science is about inquiry, experimentation and searching for theories?
A physicists dismissing philosophy as out of date implies that we are already on the optimum path to discovering the remaining knowledge about the universe to be learned.
> A physicists dismissing philosophy as out of date implies that we are already on the optimum path to discovering the remaining knowledge about the universe to be learned.
It implies they believe that. Which is ultimately a dogmatic ideology. That is why I call it scientism and not science. Obviously we cannot know if that is the case or not because of the nature of time (the future holds answers that the past cannot, yet remains inaccessible to beings such as us). There is no good reason to believe that our theories aren't missing some crucial aspects which were already understood and subsequently lost. The cultural narrative of progress is so strongly asserted, yet what we know of as "history" is such a narrow and skewed perspective.
I myself am a physicist. I once had the confidence to assert that physics is the One True Way to understand life, the universe, and everything and that progress is inevitable (Newton's "shoulders of giants"). I no longer believe this is the case because of my explorations through the traditions of thought present in philosophy. For sure I can cram the lines of discourse that most interest me into quasi-physics-based theories (post-structuralism is especially interesting as a systems person) but that's not to say that physics can represent everything there is to know. Physics is a language just like any other and there are some ideas that physics simply cannot express.
No, scientism is simply the belief that the scientific method is applicable to all areas of intellectual inquiry, and that it's the most productive such method. The dismissal of philosophy is a straightforward corollary to that belief.
Note that the scientific method is self-correcting even in this regard: if someone can demonstrate a more productive method of inquiry, someone following the scientific method would accept that new method, just as they would accept any hypothesis that is demonstrably superior to the current state of the art.
> A physicists dismissing philosophy as out of date implies that we are already on the optimum path to discovering the remaining knowledge about the universe to be learned.
Does not follow. It suffices that such a physicist thinks philosophy isn't going to improve on science (like it hasn't so far).
It might turn out alchemy will become useful, but it's unlikely. And bear in mind alchemy provided more results than philosophy so far.
There might be something else, even better than science, that's an independent question. But why people assume philosophy will necessarily be involved in any way?
This is the trick that philosophy and religion uses that frustrates me the most. They claim all the territory we don't know anything about as if their own it and shout "scientism" and "dogmatism" when people protest :)
Because even if you have experimental results in your favor, you still need epistemology to tell you why you can believe the results of the experiments. And you can't derive epistemology from experiments.
Logical positivism tried to do this, and failed. Michael Polanyi's Personal Knowledge pretty much killed logical positivism, because he showed that no scientist is in the fully objective position that was required to set up and evaluate the experiments.
> you still need epistemology to tell you why you can believe the results of the experiments
No, you don't. This is a common mistake. Science is not about knowledge, it's about explanations. The whole idea of "knowledge" is just part of a vast web of explanations that turn out to be exceptionally good at accounting for the data.
> logical positivism
The mistake of logical positivism is the unjustified assumption that there exists such a thing as "truth", and that this thing is accessible to us by thinking. It isn't. It's a consequence of the empirical observation that the scientific method converges towards something. "Truth" is just a label that we attach to the thing that it's converging to (or at least appears to be converging to -- we won't know if that limit actually exists until we get there).
Yes, that's true. Many people, including scientists, don't actually understand how the scientific method works.
However, there is also another possibility, and that is that the word "knowledge" is being used in two different ways. "Knowledge" in science is often used as a shorthand for "The best explanation we currently have in hand, one which has so far withstood all attempts to falsify it." This is different from the kind of knowledge studied by epistemology, but it is a not-entirely-unreasonable use of the word.
> Michael Polanyi's _Personal Knowledge_ pretty much killed logical positivism, because he showed that no scientist is in the fully objective position that was required to set up and evaluate the experiments.
That's an unusual claim. It's typically attributed to the criticisms of Popper and Quine, after which the foundations were undermined.
Why is that flaw fatal? Just borrow epistemology from the philosophers of whatever. Purity and inter-field spats are stupid, scientists just want the results.
What I'm willing to do is very personal. Personally, I don't need epistemology to judge whether I'm willing to consider some results for my next deduction, and no philosopher is in a position to tell me otherwise.
Seriously, philosophy is a personal endeavor. You derive your own, make your own deductions, and you believe in them. That makes it valid for you.
But ... if your philosophy is about how the world works, about some aspects of reality, and you want to ensure that both your philosophy and reality agree, then you can choose to do science:
Not to me, it doesn't. To me, philosophy is a profession inhabited by trained professionals working in academic departments, teaching students, and publishing in journals. That's not me. I'm just a human doing human things. We've existed for millions of years before philosophers and their departments and their journals came along.
More important, following this thread upward we see:
1. The urge of some scientists to offer science as a replacement for philosophy was scored as a fatal flaw
2. The question was asked, "Why is this a fatal flaw?"
3. That question was answered with the claim that something called "epistemology" is needed in order to make decisions based on experiences. Evidently, "epistemology" is an essential ingredient to human decisions which would be lost if we tried to replace philosophy with science.
4. But I said, no, I personally don't need "epistemology"--whatever that is--to make decisions.
5. Then it was claimed that whatever I'm doing to make decisions is inherently "philosophy." Yet, I'm not doing anything special, so if I'm doing philosophy then I guess everyone is doing philosophy, even scientists.
6. If that's true then what happened to "epistemology" and the fatal flaw of omitting it in the vain attempt to substitute science for philosophy?
Professional philosophers do essentially the same thing we do, they derive a set of personal beliefs that they see as trustworthy. The difference is that they go out and try to sell their philosophies to the public as if they were universal, but they aren't, so they almost always fail. Their books and publications tend to be filed under the heading "OPINIONS".
The second topic you mention is about the role of epistemology, in theory the study of knowledge but in practice an amalgam of (once again) opinions from different philosophers. It's difficult to explain epistemology without referring to those opinions, and those may be wrong anyway. Several pieces of the puzzle are still missing.
I mentioned two different topics because two different topics were brought up in this thread by other people. That tends to happen in threads.
On the topic of philosophy, if there's two kinds, the kind which comprises opinions sold by professional philosophers to the public as if they're universal but aren't, and the kind which comprises the activities we all do in life, then I'm pretty sure the former is the one being held up to scrutiny as Bergson and Canales try to elbow onto the podium alongside science.
On the topic of epistemology, I don't know a thing about it and I don't think I need to in order to believe the results of experiments or go about life, which pretty much is what also was claimed further up the thread.
Yes, I agree with you. These debates, controversies and confusion are a consequence of trying to discredit some philosophies and to advance others as "the true ones".
It's nearly always a strawman, waiting for someone to come along and rescue it with a steelman. And that seems to be what Bergson is trying to do.
I mean yes, of course, the undergraduate Physics student is being handed a packet of metaphysics when they get the Einstein lectures on SR and GR. And it's very seductive, if you can crack through enough of the math to hear the music in it. The idea that Einstein is a "continuator of Descartes" just means you can learn all that stuff, get A's in every single class at Cal Tech or someplace else, and in the end you are still left with the exact same Dualism.
That might be a valid critique of Science in general, but I don't see how it attacks Einstein. There is also a more subtle point about the history of measurement. We started to depend on accurate measurement of time when we needed it to circumnavigate the planet. Even without Einstein we still needed the Lorentz and Fitzgerald corrections to the classic Newton equations. It would have happened without Einstein, and maybe we'd have different metaphysics in that case. That idea is more interesting to me than what Bergson seems to be offering.
It has a couple of definitions but the relevant one here is a blinkered, complacent over-confident belief in the power of science to explain everything, often accompanied by an ignorant dismissal of philosophy.
Well, that seems like a very silly belief system to have.
That said I can’t imagine having a good faith discussion about it; there’s nobody to defend the idea, because obviously nobody believes that they have a blinkered, over-confident belief in anything. They just think the domain of problems that their method can address is larger than the domain you think it has, I guess.
I guess I can’t imagine the mindset that would “see how the sausage is made” in science, and think that method was going to solve the universe. Everyone is aware that we’re becoming increasingly over-focused on tiny little niches.
Thankfully, "making my case" for a standard definition is not something I need to do.
It's very basic stuff.
If you are unable to work it out from the original link and description I gave or the previous reply, I think any more effort on my part will be a pointless time sink.
No, you do need to make your case--i.e. mount an argument based on evidence and reason--if you want me to believe "scientism" is real. That it has a "standard definition" is not enough. After all, you can look up in any dictionary the standard definitions for other things that are also not real, like clairvoyance, telekinesis, and palmistry. Until you or someone else does make a case, I'm going to continue believing scientism is little more than a cry from charlatans who lost the attention of their audience.
No, we don't. We only have first-order knowledge of our perceptions of things. And quantum mechanics shows us that those perceptions can be radically different from the underlying reality.
Of course, Einstein can be forgiven for making this mistake because he didn't know about the Bell inequality and the subsequent experiments, so it is understandable that he would cling to the hope that something would come along and rescue QM from the EPR paradox by somehow extracting classical reality from the Schroedinger equation. But modern thinkers cannot be so readily absolved.