Is Philosophy Undergoing a Revival?....

[Zinjanthropos]

....or is it status quo? Appears to me since more and more of the universe we live in is now understood, that science is slowly taking a back seat to a philosophy revival of sorts. I think what's pushing it is the quantum world. Philosophers have jumped on this because QM contains many mysteries, some that suggest there's more to reality than our observational limits permit. Hell it's even got me wondering and for a long time I never envisioned that happening.

So I'm asking, does not scientifically understanding certain physical properties of the universe lead to more philosophical thinking and are those thoughts similar to early man's, prior to his interest into how things actually work? It's one thing to make tools and another to know why they work IMHO. Likewise it's one thing to know there's four seasons and another to know why.  

What will happen should QM become understood? Will philosophy interest wane as knowledge of the universe increases, and slowly drift back towards the basics, so to speak? Thus taking a backseat to a new technological revolution.

[Syne]

Philosophy has always dealt with questions science cannot, by its own estimation, ever answer. Resurging interest in philosophy seems to come as progress in science (as opposed to technology) seems to wane.

[Ostronomos]

....or is it status quo? Appears to me since more and more of the universe we live in is now understood, that science is slowly taking a back seat to a philosophy revival of sorts. I think what's pushing it is the quantum world. Philosophers have jumped on this because QM contains many mysteries, some that suggest there's more to reality than our observational limits permit. Hell it's even got me wondering and for a long time I never envisioned that happening.

So I'm asking, does not scientifically understanding certain physical properties of the universe lead to more philosophical thinking and are those thoughts similar to early man's, prior to his interest into how things actually work? It's one thing to make tools and another to know why they work IMHO. Likewise it's one thing to know there's four seasons and another to know why.  

What will happen should QM become understood? Will philosophy interest wane as knowledge of the universe increases, and slowly drift back towards the basics, so to speak? Thus taking a backseat to a new technological revolution.

Interestingly enough, Philosophy would evolve into new questions seeking to explore new concepts. It would not fall on the wayside. The question of "why?" is a neverending way to instigate discussion..

[C C]

What will happen should QM become understood?

QM is of course usable or pragmatic regardless of which metaphysical understandings are in vogue ("shut and calculate"). Those variable portrayals of it and other physics pursuits (like quantum gravity) will probably persist in the future, to be superficially explored after the following quotes.

The Nature of Space and Time ... Stephen Hawking & Roger Penrose

Stephen Hawking (p 3-4): Although I'm regarded as a dangerous radical by particle physicists for proposing that there may be loss of quantum coherence, I'm definitely a conservative compared to Roger. I take the positivist viewpoint that a physical theory is just a mathematical model and that it is meaningless to ask whether it corresponds to reality. All that one can ask is that its predictions should be in agreement with observation. I think Roger is a Platonist at heart but he must answer for himself.

Roger Penrose (p 134-135): At the beginning of this debate Stephen said that he thinks that he is a positivist, whereas I am a Platonist. I am happy with him being a positivist, but I think that the crucial point here is, rather, that I am a realist. Also, if one compares this debate with the famous debate of Bohr and Einstein, some seventy years ago, I should think that Stephen plays the role of Bohr, whereas I play Einstein's role! For Einstein argued that there should exist something like a real world, not necessarily represented by a wave function, whereas Bohr stressed that the wave function doesn't describe a "real" microworld but only "knowledge" that is useful for making predictions.

There are two "external worlds".

The first is the phenomenal one given by the outer orientation of experience, which commonsense takes to be "real" because of its immediate and unavoidable manifested presence. But according to its own internal story that world is circularly a product of some of its own lesser content (the body's sensory / nervous system and brain processing of information). Although parsimonious solipsism can be derived from that "cosmos residing within a skull / mind", such isn't native to or an inevitable consequence of that version when coupled with indirect realism.

The second is the abstract external world inferred by reason, a rational object elevated to being the actual "real" one by the same. (IOW, what is contended to not be a representation, to not be mediated by the filter of human cognition and qualitative sensations.) It's arguably also championed by moral impulses which want to avoid solipsism, and which society (or group administration) believes it requires so as to be existentially independent of and magisterially prior in rank to the individual. (Despite the fact that the latter's will in and of itself demonstrates no capacity to be able to control events in the outer half of experience, barring hallucinogenic agents and lucid dreams.)

In between is "scientific realism", which has a foot in both. That type of realist projects the theoretical affairs and difficult-to-observe entities of physics upon the rational version of the external world. But nevertheless has to critically "keep alive" the original empirical world because of science's dependence upon observation and experiment to provide either validation or warranted belief in such constructs.

What the situation is with regard to a "mind-independent world" will probably continue to be variably realized in multiple ways (vulnerable to our interpretations of its influences). That's because it requires a mind to produce evidence in the first place -- whether of the manifested "given" kind or the intellectually maintained and defended kind. A literal mind-independent world would even be without reason, so the ancient idea that intellect provides a hotline to an ultimate reality that sense cannot present is fatally flawed. (But its more complex conceptions can still be useful, just as the appearances of everyday sensation were useful prior to philosophy and science.) To say the world is "independent of us" is to say it is independent of brute will, desires, control over it. But not independent of our ability to give it manifestation and conceptual understanding.

~

[Zinjanthropos]

There are no minds, no abstracts, no concepts, no philosophy and the list goes on, without a universe containing coalescing matter forming stars and planets. I don't think philosophy or the scientific understanding of QM means anything until we know how the universe began. When I start thinking metaphysical, and I've been doing that lately, I forget that the physical is still being studied & learned. A lot of shit had to happen just to get to the thinking/philosophical stage.

[Syne]

The problem is that modern science predicts that it cannot discover how the universe began. Since early cosmic inflation expanded faster than the speed of light, there's no way information from the beginning could reach us.

[Zinjanthropos]

The problem is that modern science predicts that it cannot discover how the universe began. Since early cosmic inflation expanded faster than the speed of light, there's no way information from the beginning could reach us.

I guess it's philosophy by default when it comes to origins. At least we can do that. Don't worry, be happy.... seems to apply here.

[Ostronomos]

There are no minds, no abstracts, no concepts, no philosophy and the list goes on, without a universe containing coalescing matter forming stars and planets. I don't think philosophy or the scientific understanding of QM means anything until we know how the universe began. When I start thinking metaphysical, and I've been doing that lately, I forget that the physical is still being studied & learned.  A lot of shit had to happen just to get to the thinking/philosophical stage.

A lot of the probing into Philosophy involves metaphysical questions. But we sometimes forget that the physical plays a major role in deciphering our existence. Regarding stars coalescing - this is a fact yes, but you are forgetting there is more to us than that. We also have a Quantum mind and essence which means we are not 100% body.

[Zinjanthropos]

probing into Philosophy

I thought probe meant a physical exploration/examination. Sounds like science to me.

[C C]

There are no minds, no abstracts, no concepts, no philosophy and the list goes on, without a universe containing coalescing matter forming stars and planets. I don't think philosophy or the scientific understanding of QM means anything until we know how the universe began.

We might call that one of the "operating presuppositions" (necessary principles prescribed for the possibility of _X_) derived from the coherence and objective lawfulness of the "internal story" (of outer experience). Which anti-metaphysics stances like positivism, phenomenalism, and later variants of such can replace the need of reason's version of the external world with. Also, the fact that other people report and react to inter-subjectively sharing the same exteroceptive environment is part of that internal coherence.

Unlike what Penrose suggested in that prior quote, positivists like Hawking (or what Hawking said he was back then) do not deny the obvious slash original external world (the one presented by perception / consciousness, when treated as "real"). But instead either deny or merely suspend belief about the metaphysical version (which the mathematician Roger Penrose was a realist about in especially abstract terms). Or they at least doubt any claims of validation / certainty regarding the latter's nature, which would be the epistemological pessimism of Humean and Kantian tradition.[*]

When I start thinking metaphysical, and I've been doing that lately, I forget that the physical is still being studied & learned. A lot of shit had to happen just to get to the thinking/philosophical stage.

Yah, you're grokking the need for metaphysics. Or at the least the need for the majority of people who aren't of some positivism or anti-realism persuasion (anti-metaphysical).

Physicalism itself, though, is a philosophical thought orientation varying from ontological to an explanatory approach (or the latter can just be "physical", with the -ism left off). IOW, it was outputted slash formulated by intellect rather than given by observation in a non-reflective and non-experimental way (like contingently finding a cricket under a rock). Treating it instead as fundamentally intuitive could be figuratively expressed as: "We gradually climbed up to the roof of the building and then kicked the ladder away, as if to pretend that we had always been on the roof and never got there by the ladder".

Physicalism is usually not to be confused with older "materialism" though. Since some versions of materialism are arguably compatible with phenomenalism. There were some thinkers and scientists in the 19th-century who were called "materialists" but were actually phenomenalists. Or what Lenin called the corruption of Ernst Mach's "empiro-criticism". Materialism can also refer to a mechanistic relationships in space approach to explaining events and circumstances, rather than a matter-substance ontology (or inventing a metaphysics from physics). Which as aforementioned, is also somewhat interchangeable with the likewise explanatory-approach alternative meaning of current "physicalism" or what can be implied practice-wise by "physical".

- - - footnote - - -

[*] Positivism isn't directly descended from those, since it's said that Auguste Comte wasn't much aware of Kant's philosophy and accordingly perhaps not Hume, either. Ernst Mach did read both, however, and that arguably influenced his tweaks to positivism and phenomenalism. If it can be said he introduced any at all, since the following passage seems pretty much in line with anti-metaphysics orthodoxy.

ERNST MACH: This happens, for example, when all experiences are regarded as "effects" of an external world extending into consciousness. This conception gives us a tangle of metaphysical difficulties which it seems impossible to unravel. But the spectre vanishes at once when we look at the matter as it were in a mathematical light, and make it clear to ourselves that all that is valuable to us is the discovery of functional relations, and that what we want to know is merely the dependence of experiences or one another. It then becomes obvious that the reference to unknown fundamental variables which are not given (things-in-themselves) is purely fictitious and superfluous. But even when we allow this fiction, uneconomical though it be, to stand at first, we can still easily distinguish different classes of the mutual dependence of the elements of "the facts of consciousnes "; and this alone is important for us. --The Analysis of Sensations

Mach both half-misunderstood and rejected Kant's "things-in-themselves", but was influenced by Kant's pessimism that specific knowledge about a meta-phenomenal archetype of the sensible world could ever be obtained. Since by definition if something lacks empirical properties it can never be verified by observation (made "real" in an immediate, given or "picture" respect), only supported by arguments and inferences of rational activity (language, manipulation of symbols, rules, etc).

~