Tfw every time you explain the scientific method...

the holy (and very gay) trinity of British Empiricists

chapter 1, locke meets hume while fucking berkeley

I'm saying that there has been a huge shift from "These models are probably right" to "These models are right."

Data has become a marketing tool and attempts to understand underlying mechanisms has stalled because of it.

I have been looking into AI research and this has the same problem. The research is predominantly data driven but I think the best you can get from that is a model that can predict what a human can do but you can not make a human because there is a lack of understanding of what constitutes humanity.

>I'm saying that there has been a huge shift from "These models are probably right" to "These models are right."

that's false. not only that people are aware that no model generalises to 100% accuracy, but there's a lot of work done into building confidence levels for modern systems

>The research is predominantly data driven but I think the best you can get from that is a model that can predict what a human can do but you can not make a human because there is a lack of understanding of what constitutes humanity.
that's just wishy washy nothingness bs. you can exceed human accuracy in many tasks, and you don't need to understand "what constitutes humanity" when it's simply used as a benchmark.

Science = "This reaction between ether and Hydrogen Sulfide evolved an energy of 3.421 Joules"

Philosophy = "There are things you know, things you don't know, and things you don't know you don't know."

Philosophy minus Science = "I've been unemployed for several years"

Philosophy plus Science= "I've been sleeping with many women for several years"

Modern empiricism is untenable without statistics.

>Empiricism asserts that there are fundamental truths but that experiments and statistics can not find the truth, only reasoning.

you sure thats what empiricism means?

Your criticism of science is quite immature and naive. I think you can only substantiate this if you offer alternative. Also depends what you think science is and why it is or what it does. And this. I think you misunderstand what scientists think theyre doing when they present these models.
Overall my conclusion is that you don't know what you're talking about.

> cannot escape philosophy
It's not like philosophy is a being that's chasing me. I can dodge quite effectively if I just ignore retards like you unlike right now.

Except you can't. Any time you defend science, or claim something is right or wrong, or make a claim about the justice of something, you are engaging in philosophy.

jokes on you im a mathematician.

>tfw getting into mathematical philosophy

if you want to define all human reasoning as philosophy like that then pointing out that science is philosophy is redundant and doesn't really mean anything.

A more sensible question is whether a scientist gains anything by reading the essays and books of philosophers, or whether they gain anything by pursuing and undergraduate degree in philosophy.

And the answer is no.

Basically all the philosophy a scientist needs to presuppose can be summarised in this simple roadmap

I know that I exist in at least some form because I know that I am experiencing thought -> I can't be certain that the stimuli i am experiencing is accurate but I am able to increase my happiness and decrease my suffering if I assume that my experience of stimuli is mostly accurate so that I can use my sense organs to try and find out how my environment works and hence change that environment to my benefit -> to find out about my environment I will test hypotheses against data I gather in a systematic way and use probability and statistics where appropriate

That is virtually all the philosophy in science.

pretty sad how some people spend years studying something that can be understood within a minute and that most people intuitively appreciate through common sense anyway.

What a waste of life.

Obviously not all human reasoning is philosophy lol. Nobody claimed that. But metaphysical reasoning is philosophy, by definition. You may think you are not involved in metaphysical reasoning, but I bet that at some point in your life you have claimed that something is right or wrong. In doing so, whether you like it or not, you implied that you know what "right" or "wrong" means, that you understand what it's nature entails, and that you are able to identify instances of it. In doing so you have constructed a metaphysical argument -- you cannot see or touch "right," but you still claimed to have knowledge of its nature and examples.

>there is an infinite amount of untenable assertions

...

A little too simplistic but yeah.

1.There is a given (experience)
2. Given the given, what must be in place for the given to be true
3. The categories and the a priori forms of intuition (space-time)

The Transcendental argument is innovative in its form.

Ayyy OP what science? I'm majoring in physics and philosophy.

>I can increase my happiness
>Is
>Ought

You assumed that you ought to increase your happiness. You assumed that science is the only way to change your environment. You assume benefit = pleasure. You didn't elaborate on the "systematic way".

Also
>Is
>Ought

Either you accept what I said, or you refute it by then doing philosophy not defined in your system this defeating your claimed "complete" system. You can't win.

>every assertion is fundamentally untenable
>except those in this list

Architectural engineering, actually, so I guess I'm really not much of a scientist. But I will at least use the sciences.

Science + Stirner is end game philosophy.

Veeky Forums without Veeky Forums (and by extension, without Veeky Forums) is like a meal without dessert.

But it's all shit

>You assumed that you ought to increase your happiness.

I didn't.
being happy and comfortable is what I prefer and wish for, and most other people as well, so that's what we do.

You can set yourself on fire or never move from the spot you are located now if you wish. neither is objectively "wrong" in a moral sense, neither is what you "ought" to do.

>You assumed that science is the only way to change your environment.
It's the most effective way yet discovered to find out how the environment works, and when you find out how it works you can effectively change it.
If some method more effective than the scientific method were to arise, it would make sense to use that.

>You assume benefit = pleasure.
And ?
You're welcome to adopt a personal value system where you do not value comfort , shelter, food, minimising your suffering , etc. I'm not telling you not to.
However most people including myself have overlapping value systems that agree it is valuable to minimise our material pain and suffering, and so this is what we do.

>You didn't elaborate on the "systematic way".
That's because different systems require investigating in different ways and I'm not going to try and summarise experimental design here because that would be impossible.

>is
>ought
is this meant to mean something?

none of your refutations were valid and I haven't had to appeal to the work of anyphilosopher in order to demonstrate so.

if you're saying that any time something is asserted to be the case or not the case that you're doing philosophy then again you're defining philosophy so broadly that it is almost meaningless.

humans possess the ability to use logical reasoning and make assertions without ever studying philosophy or reading the works of philosophers.

Then all you're saying is that you "can" increase happiness. You're saying nothing of value that has nothing to do with you argument.

>I can't be certain that the stimuli i am experiencing is accurate but I am able to increase my happiness and decrease my suffering if I assume that my experience of stimuli is mostly

You might as well say:

>I can't be certain that the stimuli i am experiencing is accurate but I am able to TO SAY THAT THE SKY IS BLUE if I assume that my experience of stimuli is mostly

Listing facts says nothing about your argument being what we ought to do.

>It's the most effective way
You have such a narrow notion of "changing your environment." The only thing you have on mind is stuff like making microchips and building cars. But what about starting a revolution? Or making a change in a culture? Or literally any social action that isn't "building a ship"

Has the invention of the car changed our environment? Sure. But so has the Communist Manifesto. Unless you want to attribute all of social changes to the printing press you're forced to admit other big factors at play besides science.

>You're welcome to adopt a personal value system where you do not value comfort , shelter, food, minimising your suffering , etc.

Or maybe your idea of benefit isn't complete. Is it "beneficial" if more pleasure comes out of enslaving a small population than the pain that is caused by it? Or maybe "benefit" also includes things like maintaining some form of justice.

For the is/ought thing, it was a reiteration of my first point. You're saying that because we do value pleasure (is) that we ought to do things related to pleasure. Anytime you say that we should abandon philosophy because of fact X, Y or Z. You're implicitly saying that we "ought" to abandon philosophy because of these "is" claims.

Philosophy is like shitting
Everyone does it

cont.

>I haven't had to appeal to the work of anyphilosopher
But you did. You were espousing ideas many famous philosophers have defended from 1000s of years ago to today (obviously done much better).

On pleasure you borrowed ideas from: Epicurus, Bentham, Mill, and Sidgwick

On Science: Locke, Hume and Popper.

Even if you didn't use their ideas and you somehow, with a stroke of brilliance, had a new idea that actually made sense, you're still doing philosophy.

In your original post you made the claim that essentially all philosophy not in your argument was useless because it was a self contained line of reasoning. Then you go on to add more philosophy by defending your holes against assumptions I very casually brought up. Thus your system is not self contained and at the very least *some* more philosophy is necessary.

But then you'll be hard pressed to, after all the dust has settled, draw a line in the sand and say "okay, THIS is all the philosophy we need." And then someone brings up a further objection thus invalidating your claim yet again.

Science without religion = stagnant machine-like outcast
Religion without science = Blind sheep following blind goats

You dont need religion for scientific progress

A snail is still stagnant.
Also, religion=!standarized teachings

Dude weed lmao: the post

Resulting to direct insults and strawmans when you run out of shit to say: the post.

>Feels good to be a scientist and philosopher.

Yeah, but the matrix argument has literally ZERO practical application.

>built on assumptions
>nonetheless yields innumerable applications

thank goodness for assumptions. also the last sentence of your post is just a weak conjecture. do you really think scientists don't "question where the data comes from" when doing an experiment?

Does democracy have any practical applications?

>humans possess the ability to use logical reasoning and make assertions without ever studying philosophy or reading the works of philosophers.

Don't you see, though? Humans can also perform the scientific method all by themselves without ever studying science reading the work of scientists, but if they told you about it you would let them know they were doing science. Similarly, I am letting you know that by making metaphysical arguments you are doing philosophy. It doesn't matter if you like it or not, it is true by definition.

>Then all you're saying is that you "can" increase happiness. You're saying nothing of value that has nothing to do with you argument.

Hahaha, what?

What do you think I'm setting out to do?
Here is what I originally said.

>Basically all the philosophy a scientist needs to presuppose can be summarised in this simple roadmap
>[...]

If you disagree with something there then say what specifically you are contradicting.
At the moment it seems like you're trying to disagree with statements I didn't make.

Same with these objections
>Listing facts says nothing about your argument being what we ought to do.
>But what about starting a revolution?
>Or maybe "benefit" also includes things like maintaining some form of justice.

You have to explain how any of these statements contradict what I originally said.

Try to stay on topic. I know it is difficult for you arty, essay-writing types to think in a precise way and stay on topic, but do try.

>You're saying that because we do value pleasure (is) that we ought to do things related to pleasure.

By the definition of a goal or a value system, it is beneficial if you achieve that goal or that thing which you value.

If you tell me "what I value most is to live to an old age"
then it is correct for me to say to you "then you shouldn't swallow the contents of that cyanide bottle on the table"

lmao. it sounds like you read some philosophical argument you didn't really understand and tried to apply it in a situation that was not appropriate at all.

>Anytime you say that we should abandon philosophy because of fact X, Y or Z. You're implicitly saying that we "ought" to abandon philosophy because of these "is" claims.

again strawmanning. yawn. I'm not sure whether this is conscious intellectual dishonesty or the result of fuzzy, imprecise thinking where you read words that I say then imagine that I've said different words instead.

I haven't added anything actually.

what I have done since my original post is refute your bogus claims (strawmen essentially) and invalid arguments.

If I had needed to add anything then I'd say "you're right , I forgot about that" and add it to the road map. which has not been necessary because non of your objections and arguments and claims have been valid.

The road map is the same as it was before.

furthermore , completeness isn't a particularly important aspect of It does say "basically all".
I know I'm missing out some of popper's contributions like falsifiability. I did so for brevity, but it is a useful contribution as well.

The point is that nearly all of medical science, engineering, chemistry, physics research can be completed with that kernal of philosophy .

>you made the claim that essentially all philosophy not in your argument was useless
hahaha yet more imprecise, fuzzy thinking from the artistic type.
I said >Basically all the philosophy a scientist needs to presuppose can be summarised in this simple roadmap
followed by
>pretty sad how some people spend years studying something (the road map) that can be understood within a minute and that most people intuitively appreciate through common sense anyway.
>what a waste of life

obviously it would be a much more difficult claim to demonstrate that the rest of philosophy not in the roadmap was useless to everything.

and I never did so.

artistic types in general are very bad at understanding things and thinking about things in a precise way.

philosophy , at least hte parts that rely on logic and precise reasoning, is too hard for philosophy students. It's probably best left to mathematicians and scientists.

>if you disagree with something there then say what specifically you are contradicting

Please read my comments more carefully next time. Anyways, I was showing you that your argument as to what science needs to presuppose from philosophy is actually a prescription of what actions we ought to do. So you list the facts "we desire happiness", and "we can change our environment best through science" My issue with the first statement is that saying we desire happiness as a fact means nothing in regards to saying we *should* (or ought, same thing) act with the aim of happiness on mind. My issue with the second fact is that I don't actually believe its a fact. The reason I listen starting a revolution, the benefits of just institutions etc is because those are instances of not-science changing our environment in a significant way. It's very on topic, you just need to think more critically when you read an argument.

>By the definition of a goal or a value system, it is beneficial if you achieve that goal or that thing which you value

What you're assuming that the value you selected (just happiness/pleasure) is the value that we *should* have. Again, a normative claim with no support.

So in regards to your old age example: if we ought to value old age then we ought not to drink the poison. Sure. But you presuppose living to old age is what we ought to value. This doesn't seem controversial to you, I know, so let me use a different example.

I value killing jews. Therefore, I ought to round them up in concentration camps. The "ought" statement follows from the value. But ought we hold that value?

>I haven't added anything actually.

Yes. You're entire defense is an addition to the argument.

cont.

>The point is that nearly all of medical science, engineering, chemistry, physics research can be completed with that kernal of philosophy .

If you're only concern was establishing only the philosophy you needed to *do* science, I would mostly agree with you (except for your glaring absence of Popper which you conveniently added to your "complete" road map by saying it's a "useful addition", so much for complete).

The issue is that you're assuming any further investigation of the methods of science is a waste of time and ultimately useless. Philosophers understanding the idea of falsifiability, the limitations of induction, what science is actually telling us, etc etc is not meant to be practical. They're very real questions that don't have clear answers (especially not answer in your argument) but the lack of application doesn't matter. Why not argue against pure mathematics while we're at it?

>All a scientist needs to know is the applied parts of math (stat, prob, calc, linear, abstract algebra, group theory etc). Dweling on the rest of math is a waste of a life.

Again, practicality does not define importance.

>philosophy , at least hte parts that rely on logic and precise reasoning, is too hard for philosophy students

Goodness, you're not even trying anymore. Your STEM-elitism is showing. Logic is a branch of philosophy... Branches of philosophy like meta ethics, metaphysics, epistemology and...logic all heavily use logic. You're talking with such certainty on a topic that you clearly don't understand.

There is no such thing as ought without underlying assertion. GTFO.

>What you're assuming that the value you selected (just happiness/pleasure) is the value that we *should* have. Again, a normative claim with no support.
He's not assuming that. He's just saying if you do hold those values, science helps you achieve them.

>philosophers describe what scientists do
>"haha! this means they are dependant on us and science would literally not work without philosophers!"
>in reality no scientist has ever needed to refer to philosophical papers in their work and get along fine without them

>if we ought to value old age then we ought not to drink the poison. Sure. But you presuppose living to old age is what we ought to value
Again, he doesn't. The argument isn't meant to convince those who don't want to live to old age.

>But ought we hold that value

Depends on if it is consistent with your other values. There are a few mistakes we can make making moral statements. We can mistakenly support a course of action that would satisfy one value in our moral schema but act against one higher in our hierarchy of values with more priority. Or we can be mistaken in believing that an action will indeed satisfy our values by making error in description. All moral discourse is the process of 'feeling out' another's values, in making known to them and us their hierarchy of values. Then, to achieve a mutually satisfactory solution, one shows how what they propose fails to satisfy a value more dear to them than the original one under consideration to get them to support what we wish to do.

But thinking about what you "ought" to do at the basic level without appealing to some other more basic value is just ludicrous. We assert at the most basic level.

It's just negotiation.

So with the Jew situation, one would have to explore their hierarchy of values and explain how concentration camps would satisfy a value/preference of theirs but contradict one higher in priority, or explain to them that whatever value they were originally hoping to satisfy would not in fact be satisfied with concentration camps.

If this fails, and you do not have enough values in common to induce them into not putting Jews into concentration camps, you will simply have to change the incentives with the threat of violence, and if this fails, go to war to enforce your preferences, entering the anomic state.

>Does democracy have any practical applications?

yeah, picking leaders.

And you're right. But you can't go from an is to an ought. That doesn't mean you can't use assumptions. Not all assumptions are is statements.

Fair enough. But my overarching issue isn't with the proposition that a scientist doesn't need extensive background in philosophy to do science. My issue is with the proposition that people are wasting their lives trying to understand philosophy of science from every angle. Lack of applicability != waste of time.

>The argument isn't meant to convince those who don't want to live to old age.

But what I'm saying is that that question can be asked and is not a meaningless question. Do scientists need the answer to this question to do science? Again, no. But my issue isn't with the assertion that science doesn't need these answers, but rather, that answering these questions is a waste of time.

>Depends on if it is consistent with your other values.
You're assuming that consistency with other values is what determines if we ought to hold another value. This doesn't really make sense because why should we hold those first values in the first place? What if all my values are things like harming others or subjugation? So if we ask the question, "ought this man value justice?" we're not asking "is this value consistent with his other values?" We're asking "is the value of justice one that he ought to have regardless?" If that's not clear, basically what I'm saying is that if you base "ought" on previously held values then you can just keep asking the question, "but ought we value those values?" It doesn't really answer the question. Let me know if that wasn't clear.

So the above comment relates to the jew example. Fitting one value in with currently held values doesn't answer the question as to whether we ought to hold all those values in the first place.

Right. So it does change our environment significantly. And the concept of democracy (and justice, and other stuff too) isn't from science.

This is common knowledge isn't it? We trust empiricism because it's proven to work. The universe is weird. It's not unreasonable to assume that empiricism itself may be flawed, but until a better system presents itself it's all we have.

I don't believe we can answer the question "whether we ought to hold some value", except with reference to some other value itself an assertion. I believe at the root of things is a forceful imposition of your values, whether you are conscious of it or not.

>You're assuming that consistency with other values is what determines if we ought to hold another value.
I view it as a prioritization of goals. In considering an actions which satisfy one preference while violating another, one needs to choose which preference is higher in their hierarchy. It's just understanding and making explicit what it is exactly that you and your interlocutor want, so you can determine whether cooperation is possible.

>What if all my values are things like harming others or subjugation?
Discarding the question of whether such a universal sadist is possible, then, I say, "Continue to harm others, and my allies and I will put a sword through your heart." and hope you value staying alive more than hurting others. If this is not the case, we will simply end you, so you can no longer harm others without reason. We would not look for God out there, somewhere, to justify our actions.

>basically what I'm saying is that if you base "ought" on previously held values then you can just keep asking the question, "but ought we value those values?" It doesn't really answer the question
I don't believe there is an answer to that question. At the end of the chain there is an assertion, whatever smoke and mirrors are used to obscure that.

his statement is that we have no accurate model for human behaviour because are simply using it as a benchmark. it's like people just used numerical data as weighted means for a function, instead of actually making a function that fits said data. science has hit a dead end with people doing this more and more. it's now just an incremental race for approximations and at some point, we are going to just endlessly polish these only when someone else discovers a better model a thousand years later rather than a hundred, all because of this.

Good points.

For me ought is just a command or duty which switches an aim we already have to some other aim. But I see no reason to switch our aim from one aim to another if we all already share the same aim to begin with (pleasure). So I agree in that I think ought is useless term as its purpose (convincing us to change our aims) is a purpose that we don't need.

So I would agree with you and the other guy in the sense that I think actions which try and maximize pleasure are the good actions to do in the end. But my issue was the assumption that this conclusion was implicit.

Sure empiricism works. But the point is not about How to find the truth, but Where people are looking for it. In the fancy "reputable" magazines and holy books, now as always.

not him but i think that "ought" is weighted and changes over time; the closer you try to reach it the more it changes and fundamentally, it is impossible to get to the end of the chain. so perhaps it does exist, but you can never reach it because you are constantly providing more links to said chain.

is there any sense to this or am i crazy?

You will only go crazy if you let yourself be bothered by the misconceptions of your communication.

but i want to properly understand my own internal motives and ego so i can polish myself as a person. i don't want to have myself be impulsively, rationally or not. i want my actions to be based on a core unfixed ought.

No one remotely smart would openly say they hold values saying their goal is to harm others. They would of course try and twist it around to make it look like they are trying to protect something.

This is a noble goal. Probably no end to how much "normal" people would mock you for it though...

I think oughts can be established if you start from other oughts. But that presupposes oughts in general exist. That may be the case, idk, but honestly I'm not too concerned about them. For me ought is just assigning a certain kind of weight to an action with the hope of convincing others to adopt that sort of action. I personally don't think anyone needs any convincing specifically in regards to what we should aim our actions at. We already have a common aim of happiness, no convincing necessary.

You're getting caught up in the weeds. It's a tough experiment. An argument must be able to be held up in all possible words in order to test the theory.

It's like when people say: "act utilitarianism actually justifies enslaving a small group of people for the benefit of everyone else just as long as there's more pleasure that comes out of it". This is a valid critique. You shouldn't respond with "oh, that'll never happen." It misses the point. If the theory is true, it must hold always.

i do care about my social appearance and stature, but not enough to compromise my own intellectual pursuits.

I would more argue that it's incomprehensible, but not strictly untenable.

>scientists decide what engineers do
>"haha! this means they are dependant on us and engineering would literally not work without science!"
>in reality no engineer has ever needed to refer to scientific papers in their work and get along fine without them

Yes, that is seriously how ignorant you make yourself out to be.

>in reality no engineer has ever needed to refer to scientific papers in their work and get along fine without them

Engineer here. This is completely wrong.

If it could happen is relevant. If maximizing happiness is relevant (which a utilitarianist would believe) then arguing what-if in hypothetic scenarios almost sure to never happen would not be time efficient in the pursuit to maximize happiness ( compared to other things one could argue about which could have an impact on happiness ).

It's a bit like keep spending resources on testing things that you know are almost sure to not fail when there are other more critical parts to test - Not an efficient use of the resources. Assuming failure would lead to less happiness for the user it is a relevant comparison.

That's not an argument.

Yes. I think he meant that the other guy's post sounded like he meant that which would sound wrong. If such a provocational response would be caught on tape it would be a journalistic win.

Not at all. The point of finding out which theory is correct is not just to apply it. It's also to learn more. I doubt any theoretical physicists care about the applications of string theory. You don't see people saying, "we're almost never likely to apply this."

You're missing the point with that train of thought. Just like a theoretical physicist, and a pure mathematician, a normative ethical theorist isn't concerned solely with applications. Seeking the truth is motivation enough.

Also, if a theory melts down in one possible world, there's no reason not to suspect it'll melt down in other possible worlds. So if utilitarianism melts down in even just one thought experiment, then we have established that it can melt down in general. So who's the say it won't melt down in other more practical examples?

That's the point, doofus.