[Serious] Generally speaking, is philosophy a worthwhile subject of study?

[John 6IX Breezy]

Polymath has a point in that there is a descriptive element to Popper's work.

Are you sure he was being descriptive on this point? Falsification isn't an intuitive idea. And modern science is still not set up this way—you're insensitivised to discover something new not falsify something old.

[Belacqua]

Polymath has a point in that there is a descriptive element to Popper's work.

Are you sure he was being descriptive on this point? Falsification isn't an intuitive idea. And modern science is still not set up this way—you're insensitivised to discover something new not falsify something old.

[incentivized?]

I wonder if what Popper says should be thought of more like a recommendation -- how science would work best, or how it would work if it were behaving properly.

I'm no scientist, but I've read criticism from scientists about how research actually happens these days. Nearly all of it is sponsored by the Pentagon or for-profit corporations, which have their thumbs on the scale of what the results will be. Researchers are often employed on a publish-or-perish basis, which motivates them to do research that is more likely to get published in the journals, which are also for-profit and prefer to publish the more sexy results. 

Some say this has led to a crisis of reproducibility, with not enough people willing to do the unglamorous work of falsification.

[John 6IX Breezy]

Some say this has led to a crisis of reproducibility, with not enough people willing to do the unglamorous work of falsification.

Right, it's as if there are two sciences. There's the romanticized and idealized science. And then there's the science that scientists actually do. The replication crisis is an example of that. People think scientists sit around replicating each other's results. But the crisis, ironically, only emerged because somebody finally started to replicate something.

It's a hard pitch to make to whoever is sponsoring your research: "Hey, I'm going to do exactly what this other person did in their research, and by the way I want you to pay me for it."

[Macoleco]

As a career, no.
As personal study, yes

[vulcanlogician]

Polymath has a point in that there is a descriptive element to Popper's work.

Are you sure he was being descriptive on this point? Falsification isn't an intuitive idea.

I think Popper was being descriptive. He wasn't telling scientists what to do. He was analyzing what they do and came up with falsification. But falsification DOES describe what science was already doing prior to Popper's thinking about the matter.

And modern science is still not set up this way—you're insensitivised to discover something new not falsify something old.

We should start a thread on this topic. As I understand it was first discovered in psychology and (maybe) it is especially problematic in that field (?)

[John 6IX Breezy]

We should start a thread on this topic. As I understand it was first discovered in psychology and (maybe) it is especially problematic in that field (?)

Hmm I would say that psychology has taken up the mantle to examine replicability and methodological problems in ways that other branches have not. The Center for Open Science was founded by psychologists for this purpose and they're the ones that began to do the famous replication studies.

In my opinion, given that psychologist are the ones equipped to study biases and human errors, it makes sense that critiques on scientific practices begin with psychologist. For example, one of my professors researches the way interdisciplinary science teams solves problems. That's not something a physicist can study, and yet has implications for how physicists collaborate.

I'm not an expert on the topic. But it's my understanding that the crisis has since spread to other fields. And I see no reason why physics and chemistry are immune to such problems when humans are still doing the science.

[GrandizerII]

polymath seems to be under the impression that philosophy is in competition with science, but philosophers aren't (generally speaking) trying to use philosophy to do the same sorts of stuff that science can effectively do. And of course metaphysics has its uses, as it can guide and further expand upon what the sciences say, thus hopefully leading us in the right directions when seeking further answers via science.

Can you give a recent (within the last couple of centuries) where that has happened? When has metaphysics pointed a direction to solving a problem in the sciences?

Well, for example, philosophers re-contemplating views on the nature of time in light of the findings of special and general relativity, perhaps suggesting more credence in views that are more in alignment with relativity (such as eternalism or B-theory of time) as opposed to those not backed up by the current science (such as presentism or A-theory of time), or maybe instead suggesting that we not fully discard what our intuitions say and go with a more moderate view of time (like a hybrid of eternalism and presentism).

Another example, what does each interpretation of quantum mechanics say about such things as possibility, probability, randomness, agency, etc. Where to go next with this? How can we get science to confirm any of these interpretations exactly?

[GrandizerII]

I realize now I did not answer your question the way you worded it, though the examples I provided are in line with what I actually said earlier.

For an example that actually led to successful scientific outcomes, see this (from the mouth of Einstein himself):

https://aeon.co/essays/what-albert-einst...on-of-time

Then he went on to express his intellectual debt to ‘Hume, whose Treatise of Human Nature I had studied avidly and with admiration shortly before discovering the theory of relativity. It is very possible that without these philosophical studies I would not have arrived at the solution.’

[polymath257]

Can you give a recent (within the last couple of centuries) where that has happened? When has metaphysics pointed a direction to solving a problem in the sciences?

Well, for example, philosophers re-contemplating views on the nature of time in light of the findings of special and general relativity, perhaps suggesting more credence in views that are more in alignment with relativity (such as eternalism or B-theory of time) as opposed to those not backed up by the current science (such as presentism or A-theory of time), or maybe instead suggesting that we not fully discard what our intuitions say and go with a more moderate view of time (like a hybrid of eternalism and presentism).

And, again, is there any case where this has actually impacted the science?

Another example, what does each interpretation of quantum mechanics say about such things as possibility, probability, randomness, agency, etc. Where to go next with this? How can we get science to confirm any of these interpretations exactly?

And, once again, each of these interpretation is *exactly* the same basic theory: quantum mechanics. They all give the same predictions, the same observations, etc. And because of that, they have *no* impact on the actual science.

Once again, the discussion of these interpretations is primarily a philosophical exercise and has had essentially no impact on the science (as fun as it is). Plus, in practice, the physicists do the philosophy better than the philosophers because they actually understand the science and math.. So even as philosophers, the philosophers fail.

[GrandizerII]

Considerations of these interpretations may have an impact on future findings, though.

Refer to the Aeon essay I posted earlier for an example of what you actually requested.

---

Once again, the discussion of these interpretations is primarily a philosophical exercise and has had essentially no impact on the science (as fun as it is). Plus, in practice, the physicists do the philosophy better than the philosophers because they actually understand the science and math.. So even as philosophers, the philosophers fail.

Depends on the specialty of the philosopher. Those who specialize in mathematics and in science are expected to be as good as physicists in understanding the science and math. It's part of their expertise ...

By the way, it's physicists (not mere philosophers) who came up with many of the interpretations for quantum mechanics. Ironically.