Should Philosophers be able to keep up with contemporary sciences? I know that philosophers of the past were also scientists and mathematicians. But science has grown so rapidly in the past few centuries. I tried reading papers on Quantum Entanglement, Combinatorics, topology, Protein folding etc. But couldn't understand anything. But to engage in philosophy, shouldn't you understand the empirical truth( science & math) first? How can you philosophize without knowing science and math? What should I do?
So basically it's all just image and the perception of coolness people have from movies, aka cope
>3 pages to tell a joke that could easily be made in 4 panels
fricking hell
What's funny is that the philosophers they're making fun of would have snapped those scientists in half and made balloon animals out of them. Those Greek philosophers were no joke.
The Greek “philosophers” include everyone from actual scientists like Hippocrates and Galen (who actually wrote tons of treatises on Plato including a well received one on the Timaeus which is now lost unfortunately) to sophists like Hippias of Elis and Protagoras, essentially a forerunner to postmodern bullshit. In short, the comic has no thought put into it because it is not satirizing any particular personality.
I noticed in hypocrites that they are often project an unconcious fear or desire they are uncomfortable with onto their opposition.
>wordswordswords
Many modern physicists are just philososhitters in disguise.
Why does dark matter and dark energy filter so many people?
redpill us
It seems like bullshit
because morons want to feel smart
Its total bullshit used to fill the gaps in their magic theories.
explain what this means to me
like what is the alternative?
just scream, " the numbers are off" and slam your head into a wall?
Lol maybe don’t pretend the modern physics system totally explains the rules of the universe if a large portion of it is complete speculation.
The laws of everyday physics are completely known, moron: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.07884.pdf
We aren't yet certain about the physics at cosmological scales and very high energies, but this isn't what you morons care about when you pretend that everyday world isn't known because of "dark matter" or whatever.
So you concede that they know nothing about space because like 70% of it is dark matter ? Keep regurgitating what professor Chang told you lmao
We literally know how all the forces act, even gravity. The only problem is at cosmoligical scale(there is modified gravity buut even that has some problems), and quantum scale(mind you, this is because gravity is a really weak force).
>We literally know how all the forces act, even gravity.
No we don't.
Sciencecels are such ignorant fools
Lmao homeboy really thought he had you by bringing up gravity
We don't know the number of dimensionless constants or how they arrive at their values. They are just numerically verified by observation and plugged in with no understanding.
Are you a first year undergrad or something?
You must have misunderstood, I was agreeing with you
Sorry, I skimmed and thought you confused me with the other anon he was speaking with.
This is just philosophical sophistry. The idea of "why something exists" can never be answered, atleast as of now. We do know "how they work", and pretending you don't know "how" just bevause you don't know "why" is ridiculous.
That's not what I'm doing though. I'm pointing out your characterization of scientific knowledge is incorrect. Not knowing the number of dimensionless constants necessary in physics AND not having an understanding as to how they came about their values are two obvious counter examples to the assertion "the laws of everyday physics are completely known." Even if you want to play semantics and stress the idea of "everyday" it should be pointed out you can formulate walking to the store in terms of relativity (people simply don't experience the world in that way and therefore don't conceptualize it). It's fair to say we've had a conceptual understanding of "everyday physics" since the advent of Newtonianism BUT the concepts we now use to understand reality are in a different language. So, did Newtonians not understand proper physics and have no scientific understanding? Of course you wouldn't want to say that because it's just as silly as vapidly regurgitating Scientism as if you've found the script of reality. Next you'll probably spout some nonsense about science being an increasing knowledge pile while remaining completely filtered as to how the idea of a "scientific law" can be examined via historiography.
>It's fair to say we've had a conceptual understanding of "everyday physics" since the advent of Newtonianism BUT the concepts we now use to understand reality are in a different language
You are being really vague here. Explain exactly where do you thing there is a problem with our understanding of physics?
>Explain exactly where do you thing there is a problem with our understanding of physics?
I told you already. We don't know the number of dimensionless constants necessary for a compete theory and we don't know how they attain(ed) their values. Further, your notion of "everyday physics" was itself vague as per the fact one can describe the event of walking to the corner store in terms of relativity (which is alien to everyday experience and, it can be added, will likely be replaced just as Newtonianism was before). It seems as though you fail to understand the development of scientific theory, you wouldn't say Newtonianism isn't science and you'd likely fail to recognize the fundemental conceptual replacement needed to change over to relativity and/or quantum mechanics, and likely assume scientific knowledge grows like shoveling fact on top of fact.
So, you are saying unless we know of theory of everything, you'd not recognise our current knowledge to be true?
No.
>Just have faith in the SCIENCE!
The liberal world religion
Ok. Explain how our current world functtions in contrary to our understandiing.
>Ok. Explain how our current world functtions in contrary to our understandiing.
Her penis.
Devastating execution, well played lad.
Lick
What are you even talking about lol. Physics is supposed to explain the phenomena we observe around us. If that “explanation” is largely based on theoretical constants and unknown “dark” substances, we should be skeptical when egghead science-men tell us that God is dead and they have solved the secrets of the universe.
You didn't even attempt to answer the question. What does some pedo apologist schizo calling himself a scientist has anything to do with it.
>You didn't even attempt to answer the question
It was a pretty dumb question, anon. Maybe if you read real philosophy instead of parroting morons like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens you'd know how to load a question without being vague.
It's a simple question. If you think our current understanding is truly wrong, and not just insufficient. Tell me where and why it is wrong?
What do you think you're gonna get, if these gays had something meaningful to say about modern physics they would've said it in the last 100 posts
Physics is stored in God's balls.
>If you think our current understanding is truly wrong, and not just insufficient.
Shifts goalposts.
Dimensionless constants.
>Shifts goalposts.
Not the anon to whom you attributed that arXiv link, but you don't get to move the goalposts and then shriek when people attempt to move them back where they were originally. Let me quote the original goalposts from the abstract of the arXiv pre-print at you:
>each EFT model comes with a built-in specification of its domain of applicability. Hence, once a model is tested within some domain (of energies and interaction strengths), we can be confident that it will continue to be accurate within that domain. Currently, the Core Theory has been tested in regimes that include all of the energy scales relevant to the physics of everyday life (biology, chemistry, technology, etc.). Therefore, we have reason to be confident that the laws of physics underlying the phenomena of everyday life are completely known.
Let me quote that quote:
>some domain (of energies and interaction strengths)
>tested in regimes that include all of the energy scales relevant to the physics of everyday life
>the laws of physics underlying the phenomena of everyday life
Let me quote that quote of the quote:
>the energy scales relevant to the physics of everyday life
Or the body of the paper:
>This is not to claim that physics is nearly finished and that we are close to obtaining a Theory of Everything, but just that one particular level in one limited regime is now understood.
You moved the goalposts from this very clear abstract, and from the entire rest of the pre-print that elaborates on exactly what is meant by "the laws of everyday physics" to be known, to some irrelevant cuckoo land about conceptual understanding and dimensionless constants. No, you don't get to move the goalposts from an EFT correctly predicting physical effects to "conceptual understanding".
Now that I put the goalposts back, feel free to argue that the empirical laws describing the effect of gravity at "everyday" (as defined in the pre-print) energy scales and interaction strengths give us wrong predictions about the world at those scales because . . . we don't know where the dimensionless constants come from?
>no you
Lol
>plays semantics over the notion of "everyday" and mischaracterizes science as a knowledge heap
Called it (
).
That's what you got to say instead of apologizing for what you tried to pull?
Yuck. Trash.
>Cause and Effect. We say it is "explanation"; but it is only in "description" that we are in advance of the older stages of knowledge and science. We describe better, we explain just as little as our predecessors. We have discovered a manifold succession where the naive man and investigator of older cultures saw only two things, "cause" and "effect," as it was said; we have perfected the conception of becoming, but have not got a knowledge of what is above and behind conception.
>The series of "causes" stands before us much more complete in every case; we conclude that this and that must first precede in order that that other may follow but we have not grasped anything thereby. The peculiarity, for example, in every chemical process seems a "miracle," the same as before, just like all locomotion; nobody has "explained" impulse. How could we ever explain! We operate only with things which do not exist, with lines, surfaces, bodies, atoms, divisible times, divisible spaces how can explanation ever be possible when we first make everything a conception, our conception!
(Nietzsche)
We don't even know all the effects so I doubt we know "the" laws.
These comics are way too fricking real
Why do stemdorks pretend they go to the gym?
Cope from being bullied in high school.
It's the same thing as when the ex-theater kids that dominate liberal arts academia try to pretend they're tough guys online because they live in the gentrified part of a dangerous city.
Philosophers should have some understanding of math and science, since they are relevant to discussions of epistemology. You don't need to be research level, just pick up a book on
1) basic applied math (calc, linear algebra, others)
2) foundational topics (set theory, logic, metamathematics, etc)
Neither have any real prereqs. After that you can just read about the methods by which theories are formed, and you'll have the math knowledge to pick up any introductory science book if you feel so inclined.
t. IQfy refugee
Rec some books on those
If you're lacking in HS math knowledge, any book will do. Same for calc and linear algebra, unless you're interested in getting into the logical weeds of it. If so, then I would recommend picking up a book on proofs and going through the two Apostol books. Difficult but rewarding.
For foundations, I would recommend Enderton's books on logic and set theory. I don't know the best books on metamathematics.
But then any philosophical question would require in-depth knowledge of science. For instance, things are "free will" and "is reality real" would require complete understanding of Quantum Physics to even make a statement.
Reality would by definition be real.
There's the quote: "nobody understand quantum mechanics completely". Crunching the numbers are beyond me but I can grasp the abstracts. "The Self-Aware Universe" is a book with decent yet broad opinions on the matter; fewer paradoxes, more reason.
Wasn't there a whole debate between rationalists and empiricists throughout centuries, which eventually lead to empiricists winning through conducted tests on blind people who were cured of blindness. After which rationalists couldn't hold the same position and had to admit defeat. It seems to me that modern science plays a really important role in philosophy, especially to find out truth. Hence, understanding od science seems really important?
No. What quite literally happened is the empiricists just insisted they won and the masses of people just accepted this. In reality, empiricism was always contradictory and so was rationalism for that matter but less so. If you actually engage with philosophy it should be almost immediately obvious what a joke I into is that the empiricists could prove anything philosophically via empirical experimentation. It literally defies logic. Science is downstream of philosophy. The scientists just need to accept that.
But those blind people couldn't pick the shapes through sight alone.
Not necessarily. Philosophers are not given the task of understanding the physical causes of human will necessarily, but the consequences thereof. And I was thinking more in the direction of the place of science in human knowledge, rather than such puzzles of perception.
Wait, so is it;
>You cannot speak on what you don't know
or
>You can't sapeak on what you aren't verified to know
If there is a linguist in the house, save this man.
What if I told you that the basic fundamental principles of quantum physics were already known to literal ayahuasca smoking tribesmen wearing tusks through their nostrils for thousands of years and the material element of these principles is the only thing being exposed by quantum physics
Still and impressive step for mankind to now have more and more actual proof, but the point stands: men accurately deduced how reality is now being proved to work, literally by sitting and thinking for a long time about it.
So, you may need a total knowledge of quantum physics to prove it, but you don't need any of that infer that reality is vibrational and energetic.
Saying reality is vibrational is a far cry from a complex mathematical formula for predicting the states of physical objects
It doesn't matter. They were still correct and for thousands of years scientists said they were wrong.
In my opinion, science has destroyed itself. First of all, if you’re interested in science generally, what you’re really interested in is the philosophy of science. Hence, you’re really interested in philosophy. If you’re interested in any particular science then you run into the problem of what science has become and in some sense always has been. It’s about application and power. These days, a biologist doesn’t really study biology in order to know. He studies in order to be able to achieve some result in a lab. At the same time where that has become just more and more obvious, that “knowing” part is more in doubt that ever. The sciences can’t really validate themselves even when they can produce concrete results. So in my opinion, studying the sciences beyond maybe the philosophy and history of them is pointless for a person who is not interested in their strictly practical application. Of course, there are things to learn but you are always at risk of missing the forest for the trees, and frankly, even the act is pointless once you’ve started to question the reality of the forest and the trees, which basically all sciences do now.
Philosophy used to encompass all manners of study. Physics and governance was viewed in a similar manner under the original "Logos." As certain disciplines pushed from theory to technology they became their own field of study. With a clear cause and effect they detached from high-minded speculation - backed by rhetorical stances - associated with philosophy.
So philosophy is the father of all scientific disciplines, but the grandfather is mysticism from the secret schools
Everything that contributed to human development is part of one continuous tradition. Goebekli Tepe is a Christian/Buddhist/Muslim temple to science.
Astrology is the precursor to idealism which is a precursor to all organized religions. Astronomy + idealism = science. The motion of the planets is dictated by ideas that can be grasped by humans, this is an appeal to the third plane or heaven. The act of observing and modelling the planets unites the three planes and embodies the cross.
I think philosophers should rather keep up with theology and mathematics. They’re the primary weaknesses of modern philosophy. If you think of the -ologies as the topic and philosophy the method of engaging with the topic, it’s obvious that theology has been ignored in favor of the scientific -ologies. And furthermore, it seems obvious to me that the scientific -ologies owe an enormous intellectual debt to theology. Frankly, I think the questions that philosophers of the future will have to grapple with are at the intersection of theology and history, not science. Honestly, history might be worth studying than all of them.
Yes. The problem is that intellectual departments today are far too insular. Philosophers get their own department and clear and thick lines are drawn between them and others.
For one example: Archaeology and reconstructive linguistics go hand in hand but admittedly (from Horse, Wheel, and Language guy) there's only one or two qualified linguistic experts that actually do field work as well. Few people have the drive to become and expert and fewer still have the drive to branch out and become top scholars in multiple disciplines.
I like mathematicians because they train discrete mathematics which is at it's core logical reasoning. People are lazy and if they find their corner they sit in it.
Wasn't it around the 1600s, when someone could conceivable learn all human knowledge? When the books were freely available to learn from, but the breadth of knowledge hadn't deepened excessively?
>philosophers should rather keep up with theology
Mediaeval Christendom largely revolved around religion. Most formal writing, most any throwaway ditty, any social custom would reflect deeply religious pre-modern cognition. The world, to them, was inhabited by demons lurking in shadows, the Sun obscured by the Christian deity casting heavenly light; they passed their whole lives awaiting the imminent eschaton. It is in this context that, going into early modernity, people wished to get closer to divine creation, and practiced the most recent common ancestor of philosophy and science.
In like manner to evolutionary lineages, this MRCA was neither modern science — nor modern philosophy, in spite of being named "philosophy" also. The former is obvious yet the latter is seldom recognized, especially by a particular kind of people who instinctively treat words as reality. The MRCA was a heavily scriptural approach to divine mysteries, intertwined with numerology, hermeneutics, and similar language games. By late modernity, speciation took place, giving rise to present-day philosophy and science. People began to practice either one or the other in accord with their personalities and affinities. Scientists have shed the religious cruft, streamlined their practice and, unburdened, marched ahead at seven leagues per stride. Philosophers, meanwhile, carried on much the same, except without the belief and without the science. What they held on past the split was hermeneutics and similar language games.
Religious practices supervene on features of our cognition that arose in deep evolutionary time — cf. Pascal Boyer, "Religion Explained" or Scott Atran, "In Gods We Trust" — collectivism, hyperactive agent detection, conspiratorial thinking (as produced by hyperactive agent detection together with high sociality), and so on. And so, no deities or spirits need be involved for behaviors recognizably to fit the religious mold, as was the case in many socialist states. By the same token, the divine need not be involved for a cognitive style recognizably to be theology, as it supervenes on fundamental, heritable personality traits.
(Did you know that, like most psychological traits, political attitudes and party affiliation are moderately heritable? Naturally, political parties and their platforms are not encoded in the genes, but the underlying personality traits are.)
The scripture is gone from the non-science descendant of the MRCA but the hermeneutics are not. "Monadology", "The Tractatus" and "Critique of Pure Reason" have taken the place of scripture, and unobservable entities are presupposed just as much. Modern philosophy is a branch of theology.
>like most psychological traits, political attitudes and party affiliation are moderately heritable
This should be drilled into anyone attempting to do any thinking about human behaviors and practices. People don't just pick occupations or hobbies or political affiliations willy-nilly. They cluster by heritable personality traits and by intelligence in particular, the most heritable psychological trait of them all. It's not the fault of a theologian or philosopher that language games are a superstimulus to them — they were pretty much born that way. Some mandatory reading:
- "Top 10 Replicated Findings from Behavioral Genetics": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4739500/
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-021-01027-y
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-022-01016-z
When sciences broke away from philosophy the adherents generally adopted stricter methods and more of what we would nowadays call scientific rigor, which is to say an emphasis on hard evidence. This was a necessary and vital undertaking on the part of the sciences, I am saying this explicitly because without this higher standard much of what science has been able to achieve would likely not have been possible. So to address some of what your comics are speaking to I will say that if a philosopher (hereafter used with a connotation of what we would nowadays call a philosopher) and someone like a physicist want to have an in-field discussion then the discussion will inevitably skew to one side based on what is being discussed, if physics is being discussed then the philosopher is going to find themselves using the same epistemic methods the physicist is using, and if philosophy is being discussed then the physicist is going to find themselves using the same epistemic methods the philosopher is using. Perhaps not in every scenario but at least in my experience this is usually how it plays out, and as you can see in the comics if neither side is willing to move to the other then there is no actual discussion. They can similarly choose to split the difference and talk about mathematics and logic which would roughly put them on equal ground and also open this discussion to the possibility that they are actually no longer really talking about physics or philosophy by doing this but I am not going to fully explicate this since it is already something you have alluded to in your post. Based on what modern standards dictate a practioner of the hard sciences is going to likely have a much more rigorous mathematical background than what an average philosopher is likely to have, and depending on the philosopher they will likely have a much more rigorous logic background than the scientist is likely to have. Once again, this is mostly based on my experiences, so conversations that choose to go this route will likely result in mostly logical or mathematical subject matter, and both scientists and philosophers tend to find math and logic quite boring respectively in my experience so there is usually not as much interest these sorts of things. I would advocate learning math and logic regardless, as to how far you want to pursue this in philosophy and science it will depend on your interest in doing so. You will likely not be able to read higher level primary source science papers without at least some means of understanding the math. You can read primary philosophy sources without having this requisite. You can read primary logic and math sources and then read primary scientific and philosophical sources as well. The easiest method is to stick to philosophy if that is what interests you. The hardest method is to learn "all" of them so to speak. The intermediate option is to learn the math and science.
To tell you the truth, nobody from any of those fields knows anything about the other ones. Someone who's educated in nuclear physics knows absolutely nothing about protein folding, at least nothing more than highschool biology. Whenever someone like Sabine Hosenfelder or Bill Nye talks about some topic, it's either statements from people with infinitely more knowledge on the topic they simply cite or some pretty basic stuff anyone could understand.
"Science" to a redditor = getting B's in calculus until you can barely perform a tech industry job, and having weirdly strong opinions about things like free will and the existence of God for a guy who hasn't read a real book in 10 years
This
Why did you suddenly bring up reddit? It has nothing to with the thread.
newbie
What exactly are they supposed to do, everyone tells them that's the road to science, obviously they are going to believe what their credentials imply unless they are skeptical of the whole thing
The republic is like a crash course in math
They are different disciplines, but most serious philosophers try to keep up and actively engage in science and math, and not just in the analytic sphere.
You can know it at the level of like, an first year grad student but it's impossible to keep up with the frontiers
Here's a book by a philosopher that is an intro to the math you should know for contemporary philosophy.
https://archive.org/details/eric-steinhart-more-precisely-the-math-you-need-to-do-philosophy/mode/2up
Obviously if you want to do other things like philosophy of physics, which I would consider a good sub-field to understand for metaphysical thought, then you are going to also have to learn the math that physicists learn. So algebra, trigonometry, calculus, linear algebra etc. As others have said, you are not going to master everything and be at the forefront of all these fields, but getting a decent grip is possible.
Not in my opinion because not everything needs to be reasoned from positivism.
Without understanding modern physics and math the best you can achieve in philosophy is writing papers about postcolonial transfeminism.
*funny comedy theme* You suck guy. *pre-recorded laughter*
Why do we need this gay STEM vs humanities dick measuring contest?
Isn't it beautiful we can explore out universe and existence trough a wide variety of lenses that we can mix and match to get a deeper understanding of anything?
they're all equally useless
Define "useful" then
i.. cant....
Anything that increases your ability to store and release potential energy is useful.
If life is a potential energy maximiser a nuke is an obvious example of something very desirable but when you compare it to other methods it's actually not that powerful. It just releases the energy very fast.
Influencing other people, especially in a cooperative way that they actively want to participate in can direct way more energy over way more time.
Media control is more powerful and "useful" than having infinite nukes.
We can release potential energy by nuking the yellowstone caldera and instituting a global catastrophe lmao. These are the kinds of moronic universal rules written by moronic computer scientists and eventually adopted by AI that will end us.
>We can release potential energy by nuking the yellowstone caldera and instituting a global catastrophe lmao.
You negate all future potential. If you only go by this dumb formula this would be one of the worst things you could possibly do. In reality americans have already dismissed the formula to threaten to destroy the entire world unless everyone obeys.
Future potential for humans not ai that can self assemble.
that's much too complicated for me
now i know what's in your pipe.
that gives me an idea
Science gives no shits about philosophy beyond the basic drill of
>if you can't show other people how to get the result every time, frick off
that's a very bigoted, exclusionary, Eurocentric view of science anon
Math is muscle memory, it takes time getting used to the syntax and there are patterns in different fields which return again and again. Off course a quantum entanglememt paper will look like the Rosseta stone to you, because you haven't done your classical mechanics. And you haven't done electrodynamics or fluid dynamics etc. Physics is a whole field of study in itself, if you want a overview of physics that is still deeper then popsci garbage I would recommend the feynman lectures on physics. I don't believe that you need physics to be a philosopher though. Mathematics closely related to philosophy would be logic, set theory and topology studied in that order (though i would recommend doing some calculus as well to get used to mathematical thinking). Logic in particular feels like the purest philosophy and is a very gratifying experience to study once the aha moments start to kick in.
>Mathematics closely related to philosophy would be logic, set theory and topology
>t. undergrad
>tried reading papers on Quantum Entanglement, Combinatorics, topology, Protein folding etc. But couldn't understand anything
Yeah, if only there was this whole system of institutions in place where people could spend ~7-10 years of their life getting up to speed on the current state of the art in mathematics and the hard sciences. As is, scientists and mathematicians are just born with an innate understanding of these things.
Are you born into a rich prestigious family or something?
Any smart person can understand complex topics of science with enough dedication and time. Continentals often get filtered and distracted by "muh structures of power" and "chud science" tho
You are moron. It's not enough to know the concepts. In-depth formulae and calculations are required. That is why people are gettting filtered by Dark matter and Dark energy in this thread.
I do ok
None of you gays have even attempted to explain any physics itt
No one is interested in discussing fake systems. That would be like studying Vulcan or Klingon lmao
Thats literally all you've been doing for 90 posts, you just suck at it!
We're gonna start brainstorming on how to make a time machine. Go back to the past and make sure your mom uses latex.
Learning about basic orbits you might assume the moon is slowly falling toward the earth like all things in orbit but it's held in a stable orbit by energy from gravitationally interacting with the tides of the ocean on earth.
The first model, despite working as a rule of thumb for all things in orbit doesn't predict observations about the moon. The second model does.
We make up these models then adjust them by testing them against observations like we're covering a form in clay to get an impression of the shape. The clay is not the thing it's modelling, there are always properties of the thing itself that can never be imprinted in the clay.
You can't solve all of philosophies problems with just math and science but yeah you should at least be familiar with how things like logic work