Understand Reality Through Science: Philosophy

Below please find a dialogue between me and one of my best Facebook friends one year ago regarding the nature of philosophy and science:

If you disagree, please tell me how to validate any philosophical claims.

Jay Feldman

We can have quite a philosophical discussion about this!

Reply
Tom Rafferty

Jay Feldman, will you take my challenge? Outside of logical syllogisms, how can any other philosophical belief be verified/justified?

Jay Feldman

Tom Rafferty the problem is you posed two quite different questions: “verifying” a belief vs. “justifying” a belief. Moreover, there’s a definitional (or semantic) issue with these terms: belief, verify, justify, and - when combined - you create an entirely new problem: i.e., what is meant by a “philosophical belief?” Until we may agree on these definitions (which can be so agreed upon as limited to the purpose of our discussion), we can’t really have a meaningful discussion…can we?

Tom Rafferty

Jay Feldman, your response is consistent with others to whom I ask a question such as this. I fail to see a distinction that makes a difference between the two words. Science has no problem with these words, but the philosopher and/or the religious apologist seems to.

Jay Feldman

Tom Rafferty I have a somewhat different question: which came first, science or philosophy? Now you would immediately advance the notion that philosophy came first (because science requires the scientific method?). I don’t agree. Observation, hypothesis and experimentation are built into our Darwinian survival process, so I suggest that science preceded philosophy. Your thoughts?

Tom Rafferty

Jay Feldman, yes, I agree. Science means "knowledge", thus, the basic search for it is science. Before modern science, philosophy was humanity's first attempt to ask questions and form hypotheses. Then science evolved from natural philosophy to develop a method to systematically actually find the answers that philosophers were asking AND TO VERIFY/JUSTIFY its findings.

Jay Feldman

Perhaps man’s first impulse toward reasoning was sentience, followed by or almost simultaneously with curiosity. Coming before those two manifestations of humanness were the basic impulses that drive all living creatures: the need for sustenance and procreation (promoted by hunger and sexual desire). Into the mix were fear and anger. Exactly when love, sharing and self-sacrifice entered the picture is a mystery. Communication among the first humans probably did not include language (although sounds would have been involved, as well as visual and olfactory cues and touching). But I see curiosity — inquisitiveness — as a primary starting point toward intellect. Certainly many other sentient creatures exhibit this trait, but it remains one of mankind’s most fundamental thinking qualities which led to our higher intellect.

Jay Feldman

Tom Rafferty the above suggests to me that indeed science came first, because the need to know, to understand, to question (curiosity) was our first step into intellectualism. Philosophy attempts to answer those questions. It is part of the process of science, whereas science is the overarching process itself. There can be no philosophy absent curiosity. Agree?

Tom Rafferty

Jay Feldman, this point (science is prime) is lost on the magical thinkers. They ONLY view science as an overreaching intellectual enterprise of the elite that is attacking society's values.

Jay Feldman

Tom Rafferty I wonder what these people think science is…

Jay Feldman

Tom Rafferty if we define “science” broadly as “the application of reason to reality,” I believe we must not omit one key ingredient: provisionality, meaning that our conclusions are always temporary and or incomplete, and we always remain prepared to modify our conclusions as new and more accurate data are presented.

Understand Reality Through Science

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Thursday, April 11, 2024

Philosophy And Science: A Dialogue

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Choose how you look at reality wisely. Yes, it is a binary choice.