Science and metaphysics must work together

[C C]

https://aeon.co/essays/science-and-metap...-questions

EXCERPT: If philosophy is a tree, metaphysics and epistemology are its two main branches. Epistemology asks how we can know about the world; metaphysics tries to figure out what the world is, at its most fundamental level. If our tree fell down in a forest and no one was around, the epistemologist would set about examining the quality of the evidence for what happened; meanwhile, the metaphysician would wonder if it made a sound.

Philosophers of science (like me) usually take the existence of things and events for granted. We do epistemology: we focus on knowledge, not the thing itself. We ask ourselves questions such as: why is science so successful at finding stuff out, if indeed it is? Is there a method that underlies this success? How do values shape scientific enquiry? Mainstream metaphysics keeps us in our place, generally saying that the scientific endeavour is just too narrow to address profound questions about existence, being and reality.

But I’d argue science is precisely where we should start to answer these questions – in particular, with the weirdness and complexity of biology and biochemistry. From the origins of cancer to the nature of personal identity, the life sciences do not merely provide us with ever-greater numbers of disconnected facts. They also offer us the best data for putting together a broader picture of what the world is really like, a picture that confounds many common assumptions about what things are and where they come from. When we first pull a fish out of the sea, we might wisely remain agnostic about how such an unusual entity got to be there. After thousands of fish of many different kinds, we are entitled to infer that there is a whole strange, living world down there under the waves. Similarly, since science aims to discover truths about the world, surely it should tell us something about the very deepest levels of our reality, which is to say, metaphysics.

This project of science-based metaphysics, sometimes referred to as ‘naturalistic metaphysics’, has been surprisingly controversial. The philosophers James Ladyman at the University of Bristol and Don Ross at the University of Cape Town offered a forceful defence in their book Every Thing Must Go (2007). As that book illustrates, the debate can be technical and vitriolic. Consequently, I won’t defend naturalistic metaphysics from its critics so much as show you how it helps us inch towards an answer to one of the oldest chestnuts in the history of philosophy: is reality made up of things that somehow change over time, or are things just temporary shapes that our perception plucks out from a flux of unruly, unfolding processes?

MORE: https://aeon.co/essays/science-and-metap...-questions

[Syne]

Really? Biology is going to answer metaphysical questions?  

Sounds like simple eliminativism.

[FluidSpaceMan]

https://aeon.co/essays/science-and-metap...-questions

EXCERPT: If philosophy is a tree, metaphysics and epistemology are its two main branches. Epistemology asks how we can know about the world; metaphysics tries to figure out what the world is, at its most fundamental level. If our tree fell down in a forest and no one was around, the epistemologist would set about examining the quality of the evidence for what happened; meanwhile, the metaphysician would wonder if it made a sound.

Philosophers of science (like me) usually take the existence of things and events for granted. We do epistemology: we focus on knowledge, not the thing itself. We ask ourselves questions such as: why is science so successful at finding stuff out, if indeed it is? Is there a method that underlies this success? How do values shape scientific enquiry? Mainstream metaphysics keeps us in our place, generally saying that the scientific endeavour is just too narrow to address profound questions about existence, being and reality.

But I’d argue science is precisely where we should start to answer these questions – in particular, with the weirdness and complexity of biology and biochemistry. From the origins of cancer to the nature of personal identity, the life sciences do not merely provide us with ever-greater numbers of disconnected facts. They also offer us the best data for putting together a broader picture of what the world is really like, a picture that confounds many common assumptions about what things are and where they come from. When we first pull a fish out of the sea, we might wisely remain agnostic about how such an unusual entity got to be there. After thousands of fish of many different kinds, we are entitled to infer that there is a whole strange, living world down there under the waves. Similarly, since science aims to discover truths about the world, surely it should tell us something about the very deepest levels of our reality, which is to say, metaphysics.

This project of science-based metaphysics, sometimes referred to as ‘naturalistic metaphysics’, has been surprisingly controversial. The philosophers James Ladyman at the University of Bristol and Don Ross at the University of Cape Town offered a forceful defence in their book Every Thing Must Go (2007). As that book illustrates, the debate can be technical and vitriolic. Consequently, I won’t defend naturalistic metaphysics from its critics so much as show you how it helps us inch towards an answer to one of the oldest chestnuts in the history of philosophy: is reality made up of things that somehow change over time, or are things just temporary shapes that our perception plucks out from a flux of unruly, unfolding processes?

MORE: https://aeon.co/essays/science-and-metap...-questions

I think the physical sciences will come closer to answering metaphysical questions than the natural sciences.  One of my favorite books is "The Tao of Physics" which outlines parallels between modern physics and eastern mysticism.

Theoretical physicists are seeking origins, and while math and observation are important tools, logic and philosophy are also in the tool box.  I remember a conference I attended, when discussing virtual reality, a guy said "I want to know that I am not just a brain in a box."  Which made me laugh, "dude, we are all just brains in boxes, they just happen to be human shaped boxes." Our only reality is an internal one created by our minds based on sensory input.  But this reality should never be used to infer that there is no external reality.  Don't mistake the map for the territory.

At www.fluidspacetheory.com/fluidspacetheory/ an alternative vision of the cosmos is sketched out where everything we know and observe is made of just time, space, and energy.  It is worth reading, especially if you don't always follow the crowd.

[Syne]

I remember a conference I attended, when discussing virtual reality, a guy said "I want to know that I am not just a brain in a box."  Which made me laugh, "dude, we are all just brains in boxes, they just happen to be human shaped boxes."

Actually, you can know you're not a brain in a vat, you just can't know if you are.

[Yazata]

Science and Metaphysics Must Work Together

I couldn't agree more. In fact, I don't think that science, metaphysics and epistemology can be cleanly separated.

Science used to be known as, 'Natural Philosophy'. The only difference today is that some scientists no longer acknowledge their own ancestry. Given what people like Hegel and the German idealists did to the reputation of metaphysics, and the tireless attempts by the logical positivists to banish it entirely from scientific (and all other) thinking, that isn't surprising.

Nevertheless, scientists still end up employing ideas like 'substance', 'property', 'experiment', 'confirmation' and 'model', without thinking very deeply about what they are doing. They just assume that they know what mathematics and logic are and what the relationship of both is to physical reality. They talk blithely about 'possibility and necessity'. They think that whatever it is that they are doing somehow brings them closer than other people to the truth.

But having said that, philosophy needs to take more cognizance of science too. Historically, philosophy has been the application of the powers of reason to common sense. But at the very least, science expands on the scope of common sense tremendously. It even points to areas where common sense seems to break down. (Quantum mechanics perhaps.)

So while science needs to be more cognizant of its own concepts and methods, philosophy needs to be better informed about science as well, more prepared to incorporate the findings of science into its own theorizing.

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Really? Biology is going to answer metaphysical questions?  

I don't think that sort of idea is outrageous.

There are questions of the applicability of scientific law to biology. Are there any specifically biological laws? Does biological explanation really involve subsuming biological phenomena to physics-style law-like regularities? What's the role and function of all the mechanistic explanations in biology? (Explaining something by elucidating a biochemical mechanism.)

What is the nature and role of evolutionary theory and evolutionary explanation in biology? How might evolutionary hypotheses be confirmed?

What is the ontological status of individuals, species and populations? What is the relationship between these and higher taxonomic categories? Are there really biological kinds?

What role do probability and parsimony play in biological theorizing?

What role do functions play in biology? Biological explanations and theorizing seem to be hugely teleological. Is it possible to banish teleology from biology entirely?   

And underlying it all, there are the obvious questions regarding mereology (whole-part relations), reduction and various sorts of emergence that the spectacle of tremendously complicated systems arising from simple precursors raises. The origin of life, biological evolution... Something interesting is happening there that in my opinion displays a fundamental truth about how the universe itself behaves and what it is capable of spawning.

Here's a very readable recent (2014) account of the history of botanical systematics up through the introduction of cladistics. It illustrates the philosophical nature of many of the controversies.

http://ib.berkeley.edu/courses/ib200/rea...story).pdf

[FluidSpaceMan]

I remember a conference I attended, when discussing virtual reality, a guy said "I want to know that I am not just a brain in a box."  Which made me laugh, "dude, we are all just brains in boxes, they just happen to be human shaped boxes."

Actually, you can know you're not a brain in a vat, you just can't know if you are.

I'm not so sure.  What other state could there be for a thinking, self aware organism?  A processor, (brain), that can store information (internal map of the world) housed in a material body that moves it around and transmits information to it from the outside world (the box).  I suppose you could draw a distinction between getting direct input from the outside or getting simulated input that mimics the outside world.

[Syne]

I remember a conference I attended, when discussing virtual reality, a guy said "I want to know that I am not just a brain in a box."  Which made me laugh, "dude, we are all just brains in boxes, they just happen to be human shaped boxes."

Actually, you can know you're not a brain in a vat, you just can't know if you are.

I'm not so sure.  What other state could there be for a thinking, self aware organism?  A processor, (brain), that can store information (internal map of the world) housed in a material body that moves it around and transmits information to it from the outside world (the box).  I suppose you could draw a distinction between getting direct input from the outside or getting simulated input that mimics the outside world.

The whole point of the brain in a vat thought experiment is questioning the epistemology of "real" and "simulated". "Real" being sense impressions from the actual body you perceive them to come from, with "simulated" being those same impressions from a source other than that perceived.

[FluidSpaceMan]

A vat is a chamber filled with liquid that supports the brain and provides nutrients etc. to keep it functioning. The skull is also a chamber filled with liquid that supports the brain and the body provides the nutrients to keep it functioning. The simulation presented in the artificial vat would have to be good enough to make it feel like being in an actual body, as in the matrix ( I guess their brains were still in their actual bodies).

I like to believe that I get sensory input directly from the cosmos or Tao. Theories have been advanced that the universe is one vast simulation. (If so, why would it need so many galaxies?). Many seem comforted that the universe springs from the actions of a vast external intelligence. In the end, we all have to create our own reality, and inevitably, these will all be flawed in some way.

[Syne]

A vat is a chamber filled with liquid that supports the brain and provides nutrients etc. to keep it functioning.  The skull is also a chamber filled with liquid that supports the brain and the body provides the nutrients to keep it functioning.  The simulation presented in the artificial vat would have to be good enough to make it feel like being in an actual body, as in the matrix ( I guess their brains were still in their actual bodies).

That's the whole point. Such a simulation would have to be indistinguishable from your perceived natural state. Hence why you can know you're not a brain in a vat, but cannot know you are.

I like to believe that I get sensory input directly from the cosmos or Tao.  

I suspected you would believe such things. (Any thoughts, SS?)

Theories have been advanced that the universe is one vast simulation. (If so, why would it need so many galaxies?).  Many seem comforted that the universe springs from the actions of a vast external intelligence.  

If the universe were a seamless simulation, it would necessarily be designed so that no inhabitant could ever find its boundary...hence many galaxies and the limit of the observable universe, defined by the finite speed of light. The consistency necessary to keep the simulation undetected, would require such a universe. Otherwise, the simulation could adapt to our growing knowledge, actually changing from geocentric to heliocentric for example, but with the liability of inconsistent observations possibly betraying its simulated nature.

In the end, we all have to create our own reality, and inevitably, these will all be flawed in some way.

Skeptical solipsism?