Philosophy Versus Science

[Paleophyte]

I just had a look at the code, and it looks to me like it contains all the work required for analysis, including what you have been asking about.

Exactly, if it's there you have to go digging through an appendix or reverse engineer it from their R code. Their methods should be much more obvious and much more clearly stated. I'd think that would be particularly opaque to an audience that's mostly philosophers.

[Sheldon]

I don’t understand what you mean by “failing to show any of their work”? The data has been linked to (though you may have to pay to access some of it, like they did), the methodology is described in Sections 4 and 5, the code they used for analysis is linked to, results are reported and analysed, and there are tables and diagrams and an appendix.

I mean, sure, they don’t show the statistical tests in full detail, but that’s standard, and there may be some word limit imposed anyway.

Again, any researcher who is suspicious can test their findings using the same data and details they have provided.

they do things that science can't do and can't criticize. 

Science is a collection of methods designed to remove as much subjective bias as possible, in order to better understand objective reality. It cannot examine claims that provide no empirical data, and it cannot examine what does not exist. 

Philosophy can do both those things of course, but to what end? 

I'd say the Nicomachean Ethics is certainly one of them. Though the ethics it describes are certainly different from our own, one of the great benefits of the book is to get a clear idea of what an alternative ethics would look like. 

One need never have read that book to understand that human morality and ethics are relative of course, nor does one need to have studied philosophy. Perhaps it is quicker to help people understand weak or poorly reasoned arguments if they have a structured education that achieves this, but learning and understanding common logical fallacies, to avoid using them, and discard arguments that contain them, would probably be the quickest root to achieving that. 

I have encountered people who claim to have a degree in philosophy who use such fallacies in their arguments. Religious philosophers in particular seem to indulge them. 

So in this context, it is clear philosophy is not as useful as science, as the latter is exponentially better at understanding objective reality.

[Belacqua]

It's not about the scores themselves, it's what those scores represent.

That makes sense. Obviously, if the number is meaningful at all, it's referring to some significant quality.

And how would you define wisdom if not in terms of such dispositions as intellectual humility and open-mindedness?

I am skeptical that any standardized test can assign a number score to a person's intellectual humility or open-mindedness. These are things (as Aristotle points out) that are developed over a lifetime, and manifest themselves in ways that are individual and unpredictable. 

I would certainly hope that reading good books would help a person become aware of these virtues, and help think about how we can live them in the real world. This seems to work for some people, and not for others. 

And what is exactly the goal of philosophy? I don't agree there is this one ultimate goal of philosophy that philosophers all/mostly agree on.

You're certainly right that there is not just one goal. Unless we state the goal so broadly as to be almost meaningless -- like "to understand our world better so that we can be better people." 

I've been thinking about philosophers I've read who don't contradict science in any way, don't encroach on scientists' territory, and don't attempt to do what science does better. Without looking over my notebooks, I'd say these criteria apply to (in no particular order):

Guy deBord, Slavoj Zizek, Pierre Bourdieu, Iris Murdoch, Alain Badiou, Richard Rorty, Robert Pippen, Andrew Bowie, Jean Baudrillard

If any of our anti-philosophy colleagues would like to take a page from any one of these writers' books and explain to me why it shouldn't be read, or why scientists are doing the same thing better, that would be very interesting to me.

[Sheldon]

The idea that it is good to be useful is of course a philosophical idea. 

(etc.)

Like so many other philosophers, you seem to be over-thinking this.  I meant useful in terms of priorities, not in terms of good versus evil.  

I studied "wisdom" literature for a long time in my life.  I concluded that most of it depended on the idea that God exists, which was left unsupported.

Good seems like a subjective term here, what the Nazis viewed as good, or ISIS, wouldn't mesh with my own subjective world view. A degree in philosophy focusing on morality and ethics, wouldn't change that I suspect. 

Ironically an understanding of evolution might, understanding how alike even the most disparate humans are, how little we differ. Though of course one would first have to care more about what is objectively true, over subjective ideology, but that's how science is designed to work.

[Alan V]

Good seems like a subjective term here, what the Nazis viewed as good, or ISIS, wouldn't mesh with my own subjective world view. A degree in philosophy focusing on morality and ethics, wouldn't change that I suspect. 

Ironically an understanding of evolution might, understanding how alike even the most disparate humans are, how little we differ. Though of course one would first have to care more about what is objectively true, over subjective ideology, but that's how science is designed to work.

My working assumption is that people, including philosophers, can argue over subjectivities forever. Subjectivities, from my perspective, include questions about values, ethics, and aesthetics.

As you say, we humans might overcome our tribalism and emotionalism if everyone understood themselves from an evolutionary point of view. However, I have given up on the idea that most people will "transcend" themselves in any meaningful way, even if the means are readily available. I now believe that our evolutionary psychology has made us much too opportunistic for that to happen.

I hope I am wrong about this, since climate change is such a pressing problem.

[Sheldon]

It's not about the scores themselves, it's what those scores represent.

I've been thinking about philosophers I've read who don't contradict science in any way, don't encroach on scientists' territory, and don't attempt to do what science does better. Without looking over my notebooks, I'd say these criteria apply to (in no particular order):

Guy deBord, Slavoj Zizek, Pierre Bourdieu, Iris Murdoch, Alain Badiou, Richard Rorty, Robert Pippen, Andrew Bowie, Jean Baudrillard

If any of our anti-philosophy colleagues would like to take a page from any one of these writers' books and explain to me why it shouldn't be read, or why scientists are doing the same thing better, that would be very interesting to me.

You made a broad anecdotal claim, then asked everyone to prove it wrong, you know this a fallacy right?

[Deesse23]

Ya'll keep asking Bel for answers.  He is only going to regurgitate something he read somewhere so that he can do some name-droppping.

Guy deBord, Slavoj Zizek, Pierre Bourdieu, Iris Murdoch, Alain Badiou, Richard Rorty, Robert Pippen, Andrew Bowie, Jean Baudrillard

[The Grand Nudger]

Shes a witch!

[The Grand Nudger]

Descriptive emotivism, subjectivity, and objectivity all have an empirical basis in cognitive neuroscience.  We engage different parts of our brains when asked moral questions and presented with moral dilemmas, and might engage different parts of the brain when asked the same question in a different rhetorical arrangement of the principals.  Likewise, descriptive moralities (of any kind ) are a piled up mess of disparate propositions.  

Philosophy is great at creating questions, science is great at generating explanations.

[GrandizerII]

I am skeptical that any standardized test can assign a number score to a person's intellectual humility or open-mindedness. These are things (as Aristotle points out) that are developed over a lifetime, and manifest themselves in ways that are individual and unpredictable.

To be clear, the researchers of this study didn't just rely on standardized tests assessing various forms of reasoning abilities, but also on two scales for measuring intellectual dispositions/virtues. Even if these scales may not be the best measures of what they were designed to capture, the researchers had limited options and could only go with what scales had been used among the sample of interest.

That said, you may still be right to be skeptical here. However, in such fields as experimental psychology, it is assumed that these (and other psychological constructs) can be somewhat captured by scales, provided these scales have been tested properly and shown to be both reliable and valid. As for predicting future states/outcomes, some of these measures may also be backed up by studies demonstrating their predictive powers.

And honestly, we do have pretty good measures for such things as open-mindedness anyway. In fact, open-mindedness is one of the five main factors in the OCEAN model of measuring personality.

I would certainly hope that reading good books would help a person become aware of these virtues, and help think about how we can live them in the real world. This seems to work for some people, and not for others.

Well, as you know, philosophy students don't just read books, they are taught how to critically analyze arguments and justify their views in a systematic manner. They are also trained to write really well and advised to think about HOW and WHY they think what they think. It should come as no surprise then that majoring in philosophy helps boost one's logical and verbal reasoning AND various intellectual virtues.

As to the rest of what you said, I think I made my stance clear on this pages ago and not really sure what else I can say on the matter. For me, philosophy is the parent of all sciences and continues to be a guiding parent. Parents don't just rear their children until these children become adults, and then they are let go. Parents may continue to lend support to their children even when these children are working and living independent lives and financially supporting their parents. It's sort of like this with philosophy and science. There is constant interaction between philosophy and science, so that philosophy has it uses for science and science has its uses for philosophy. There is no versus going on here.