Feb 21, 2015 06:41 AM
http://iainews.iai.tv/articles/are-you-a...n-auid-400
EXCERPT: Mary Midgley, a moral philosopher and author, has been described as “the UK’s foremost scourge of scientific pretension”. At the venerable age of 94, she has published a new book, Are You an Illusion?, which examines contemporary approaches to the question of consciousness. As in previous books, such as Science as Salvation and The Solitary Self, Midgley seeks to challenge what she sees as the materialist dogmatism that dominates much of modern scientific thinking. [...]
What does it mean to say that science is a form of metaphysics?
MM: I take it that `science’ here means `physical science’, not just systematic thinking in general? If so, then saying that it is a "a form of metaphysics" seems to be just a mistake. The speaker’s idea is probably that `science’ on its own can supply its own conceptual background – the set of assumptions needed for its work – so that no philosophical thinking is needed here.
This can’t be true, since concepts – structural ideas such as mind and body, force, time, life and causal necessity – are not physical items.
What is involved here is not just a tribal dispute between two sets of academics. Reflection about these background assumptions is philosophical work whoever does it. The many great scientists, from Newton to Einstein, who have always dealt with philosophical questions have known this well. It is only lately that scientific training has become so one-sided that the crucial function of philosophy within it has been forgotten.
This close link between science and philosophy is not exceptional. Every discipline – history, mathematics, language, whatever – raises philosophical problems whenever the discussions within it become very general...
EXCERPT: Mary Midgley, a moral philosopher and author, has been described as “the UK’s foremost scourge of scientific pretension”. At the venerable age of 94, she has published a new book, Are You an Illusion?, which examines contemporary approaches to the question of consciousness. As in previous books, such as Science as Salvation and The Solitary Self, Midgley seeks to challenge what she sees as the materialist dogmatism that dominates much of modern scientific thinking. [...]
What does it mean to say that science is a form of metaphysics?
MM: I take it that `science’ here means `physical science’, not just systematic thinking in general? If so, then saying that it is a "a form of metaphysics" seems to be just a mistake. The speaker’s idea is probably that `science’ on its own can supply its own conceptual background – the set of assumptions needed for its work – so that no philosophical thinking is needed here.
This can’t be true, since concepts – structural ideas such as mind and body, force, time, life and causal necessity – are not physical items.
What is involved here is not just a tribal dispute between two sets of academics. Reflection about these background assumptions is philosophical work whoever does it. The many great scientists, from Newton to Einstein, who have always dealt with philosophical questions have known this well. It is only lately that scientific training has become so one-sided that the crucial function of philosophy within it has been forgotten.
This close link between science and philosophy is not exceptional. Every discipline – history, mathematics, language, whatever – raises philosophical problems whenever the discussions within it become very general...
