Sumários
Preparação de ensaios
10 Janeiro 2025, 13:30 • David Yates
Sem aulas esta semana, preparação dos trabalhos finais
Preparação de ensaios
8 Janeiro 2025, 13:30 • David Yates
Sem aulas esta semana, preparação dos trabalhos finais
Revisão
20 Dezembro 2024, 13:30 • David Yates
Sessão de esclarecimento de dúvidas para ajudar na preparação dos trabalhos finais
Revisão
18 Dezembro 2024, 13:30 • David Yates
Sessão de esclarecimento de dúvidas para ajudar na preparação dos trabalhos finais
Philosophy and Science - Discussion
13 Dezembro 2024, 13:30 • David Yates
- Following on from W. V. O. Quine's work, naturalists typically reject the possibility of a priori knowledge and conclude on that basis that the only true source of knowledge and justification is science. This thesis is known as "scientism" and its defenders argue, in addition to rejecting the a priori, that the natural sciences now address all questions that were traditionally considered to be philosophical (the origin of the universe, the nature of matter, the nature of mind, life, etc.). They conclude that there is no place for philosophy in a modern, scientific society.
- However, there is another way of looking at Quine's naturalism. In his classic paper "Two dogmas of empiricism", Quine does indeed argue that all knowledge is empirical - there is no a priori, necessary knowledge, because every proposition is revisable in the light of experience. But does that undermine philosophy? Only if we hold that philosophy is necessarily a priori! The alternative is to say that what Quine really shows is that disciplines traditionally thought of as a priori, such as logic, mathematics, and philsoophy, are really empirical and continuous with the sciences.
- So far so good. But if philosophy is continous with the sciences, why doesn't it make more progress? In logic and mathematics, there has been a huge amount of progress (by which we mean internal progress, e.g. in the formulation of new logical systems or new mathematical proofs). Can we say the same thing about philosophy?
- The "Aristotle goes to college" thought experiment is designed to show that there has been no serious progress in philosophy at all. Does it?
- One way of defending philosophy is to argue that it has been extremely important in the history of science, with even great scientists such as Einstein admitting that the inspiration for their revolutionary theories came from philosophy. But what if someone then argues that the work of philosophy (the "midwife of the sciences") is now done? We might respond that every new science raises new philosophical problems, which in turn require new sciences to answer them. If this is correct, then philosophical reflection may always be at the heart of scientific progress.
- A completely different way of defending philosophy is to say that it aims not at factual knowledge but at understanding. That is my own view, as I said in the lectures. I think that philosophy does indeed have a very important role to play in the development of new scientific theories, and that this role comes from trying to understand the world and our place in it. On this view, philosophy can help the sciences by doing what it does best: trying to figure out what it all means!
- One advantage of the view just described is that while disciplines such as metaphysics seem very closely related to physical science, disciplines such as aesthetics, political philosophy, phenomenology, etc., do not. One thing we might say is that all these disciplines try to make sense of the world, in their own ways, and that sometimes philosophical theories that aim at this kind of understanding can help to inspire scientists. But the fact that we can sometimes help scientsits to construct new theories does not entail that we must always do this in order to justify our existence!