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

[The Grand Nudger]

Those are all approachable by science, have been approached by science, and even philosophers in those fields refer to science.

Between you and Poly, this thing will always be a mess, even though it doesn't have to be. I feel like I'm reffing a fight between two toddlers in this regard.

[Angrboda]

The philosophy of science is basically a form of epistemology. Any time you think about why or how science discovers or outlines reality, you're doing philosophy. Science without philosophy is impotent.

(And most folks would say that physicalism is metaphysics, not something that can be tested.)

ETA: Come to think of it, if biology and chemistry can be reduced to physics, then there is only one science, physics. But then, that requires thinking about reduction, which is philosophy.

[polymath257]

OK, let's look at a very specific concept that comes up again and again.

How has modern philosophy dealt with causation? How has it integrated what we have learned about quantum mechanics?

Now, I do agree that aesthetics, ethics, etc, are good things to study and are aspects of philosophy. I just don't see them as being knowledge as opposed to refined opinion. But that is also philosophy.

[The Grand Nudger]

Realist philosophies are as much (or as little) an issue of knowledge as any scientific conclusion, and for all of the same reasons in both cases. Scientific inference is, after all, a particular kind of realist philosophy. I'll return to this down below.

If I recall correctly, there's a chapter about probability in that last book I recommended, probability as cause - the engine of causation as we understand it. Full of caveats about how things at our scale make this less apparent - more in dealing with the metaphysical ramifications of a potentially non-deterministic world on a fundamental level.

Then there's Crosby, another I'd mentioned, who wrote an article that might also be the kind of thing you're looking for, called "Probabilism, Emergentism, and Pluralism: A Natural Metaphysics of Radical Materialism". The first page of which you might find amusing as it seems as though he's speaking specifically to you, in thread. Actually, there's a quote from Crosby I'm trying to dig up that is almost verbatum a thing you mentioned before about matter, either in this thread or elsewhere. While I'm sure you'd disagree with Crosby in a great many instances, it stuck out to me that in speaking about matter - you from your background and he from his, were of the same mind.

He believes that the things modern physicicts say about the world we live in can be sound propositions, and if they are, and if sound propositions in valid inferences can yield a true conclusion (or, if you prefer, a more likely to be true conclusion) - then there would be no more opinion to his ethics or aesthetics than there is already contained within the propositions he's sourced from physicists, anthropologists, biologists, or nueroscientists.

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However, as I mentioned previously, if you were looking for hardcore analytic philosophy with contemporary physics as it's focus, you'll find that in journals. Philosophers were never going to let physicists have all the fun with all these new things we've learned. I think it's emblematic of the disconnect that people think that philosophers wouldn't devour the whole product of the premise machines efforts.

[Neo-Scholastic]

OK, let's look at a very specific concept that comes up again and again.

How has modern philosophy dealt with causation? How has it integrated what we have learned about quantum mechanics?

Now, I do agree that aesthetics, ethics, etc, are good things to study and are aspects of philosophy. I just don't see them as being knowledge as opposed to refined opinion. But that is also philosophy.

And just where do think modern physics got its theory of causation?

[Ranjr]

I dunno.  You should spell it out for us.

[vulcanlogician]

OK, let's look at a very specific concept that comes up again and again.

How has modern philosophy dealt with causation? How has it integrated what we have learned about quantum mechanics?

Now, I do agree that aesthetics, ethics, etc, are good things to study and are aspects of philosophy. I just don't see them as being knowledge as opposed to refined opinion. But that is also philosophy.

And just where do think modern physics got its theory of causation?

Modern physics doesn't have a theory of causation, does it? (Maybe I'm wrong on that. If so, what is the theory? How does it differ from what philosophers have come up with?)

Not that physics needs to or ought to have a theory of causation. Modern physics has told us many accurate things about causation that philosophers never would have  (for example, that there is a speed of causation, the speed of light, or of sound, depending on the medium). But it's like Hume says. You can't observe causation. So unless you think about what causation is, you have no intellectual connection to it besides the fact of it.

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Another point I want to make is that consistency is a weak filter for truth. But it seems to be the primary filter for philosophy.

For example, it seems that Newtonian physics is *internally consistent*. It even has intuitive appeal. But, we now know that it is *wrong* (although a good approximation). For that matter, even the Ptolemaic system is *internally consistent*.

Yeah. I think the correct position is internally inconsistent=false.

If somebody thinks internally consistent=true, well shit. That's wrong. I don't even think Plato made such a claim.

[polymath257]

OK, let's look at a very specific concept that comes up again and again.

How has modern philosophy dealt with causation? How has it integrated what we have learned about quantum mechanics?

Now, I do agree that aesthetics, ethics, etc, are good things to study and are aspects of philosophy. I just don't see them as being knowledge as opposed to refined opinion. But that is also philosophy.

And just where do think modern physics got its theory of causation?

And what do you think the theory of causation is in modern physics?

The *only* thing that is even remotely close is the statement that events outside of each others light cones have vanishing anti-commutators.

[Belacqua]

Ethics and aesthetics are, among other things, methods of knowing oneself.

"Know yourself" is, famously, good advice.

But knowledge of oneself, of this type, is not scientific knowledge. It is not empirical, quantifiable, or repeatable by distant researchers. It is also more than mere opinion.

Knowing everything there is to know about physics while NOT knowing oneself would be a poor choice of values.

[polymath257]

And just where do think modern physics got its theory of causation?

Modern physics doesn't have a theory of causation, does it? (Maybe I'm wrong on that. If so, what is the theory? How does it differ from what philosophers have come up with?)

Not that physics needs to or ought to have a theory of causation. Modern physics has told us many accurate things about causation that philosophers never would have  (for example, that there is a speed of causation, the speed of light, or of sound, depending on the medium). But it's like Hume says. You can't observe causation. So unless you think about what causation is, you have no intellectual connection to it besides the fact of it.

Hume got a ball rolling, by noting that we cannot *observe* causality. But he still thought causality was basic. Kant thought of it as a basic way of thinking.

Modern quantum theory is acausal. It is probabilistic in essence and there are no 'necessary causes'. Instead, the main 'theory of causation' in modern physics is in quantum field theories and, essentially, says that correlations in probabilities don't travel faster than light.

Classical examples of causality arise because macroscopic things are made of a LOT of quantum level things. The *averages* of the probabilities have a deterministic, even Newtonian, structure. The fact that Avagadro's number is big is why we can even talk about causality at the macroscopic level.

I don't see philosophers grappling with this basic set of facts. Instead, they seem to think that causality is an a priori truth that *must* hold for science to be done. But that is clearly wrong.

Instead of causality upholding the laws of physics, we now see that the laws of physics *allow* for causality in some circumstances.

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Another point I want to make is that consistency is a weak filter for truth. But it seems to be the primary filter for philosophy.

For example, it seems that Newtonian physics is *internally consistent*. It even has intuitive appeal. But, we now know that it is *wrong* (although a good approximation). For that matter, even the Ptolemaic system is *internally consistent*.

Yeah. I think the correct position is internally inconsistent=false.

If somebody thinks internally consistent=true, well shit. That's wrong. I don't even think Plato made such a claim.

[/quote]
And so what else is required above consistency? You cannot determine the truth of falsity of a consistent statement by simply sitting and thinking about it. At some point, you *need* to do some sort of observation. That is why some empiricism is required. It is an additional filter to weed out falsehoods. And it does this incredibly well, as witnessed by the advances of science once it became prominent.

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Ethics and aesthetics are, among other things, methods of knowing oneself.

"Know yourself" is, famously, good advice.

But knowledge of oneself, of this type, is not scientific knowledge. It is not empirical, quantifiable, or repeatable by distant researchers. It is also more than mere opinion.

Knowing everything there is to know about physics while NOT knowing oneself would be a poor choice of values.

Yes, this is required to 'live the good life'.

And, if philosophy limited itself to such *opinions* that can vary from person to person because of differences in personality, it would maximize its value.

Again, the main value of philosophy is in *asking questions* and *challenging assumptions*, not in finding truth or knowledge. When it comes up with grand over-reaching theories, it tends to fall on its face.