Talk:Philosophy of science/Archive 3

Falsification
This section needs some work. (1) It begins by making several assertion about the success of falsification., e.g. "falsification neatly avoids the problem of induction." (neatly avoids? surely that makes it sound as if the avoiding is unproblematic, a hightly contentious claim.) Then it denies that falsification works. That's just confusing. (2) there is an apparent reference to the Duhem problem, but this is construed as an issue ad hoc modification, which does not capture the force of the Duhem problem. Furthermore, the conclusion that falsification always involves a value judgement is too quickly drawn. (3) This section runs together the falsification criterion for being scientific with Popper's account of method and focuses too heavily on the former. Since this section is about confirmation of theory, it should place more emphasis on repeated attempts at falsification and their role in practice. The issue is obviously hard to do, since exactly why one is supposed to adopt an unfalsified theory, given that attempts at falsification don't confer a reason to expect future success, is pretty unclear. I think the whole section would benefit from distinguishing Popper's account of science from deductive testing of theories. philosofool 12 July 2005


 * There are apparently some problems with the wording. But I find it hard to understand precisely what it is that you see as problematic.
 * 1 Are you saying that you think falsification doesinvolve induction? Surly not? Isn't the point that: falsification does not use induction, but still does not succeed in providing a certain justification for scientific statements?
 * Well, to say that there's a neat avoidance of induction makes it sound as if the theory is successful, which is contentious. philosofool 15 July 2005
 * I guess it neatly avoids induction, but fails in its claim to provide an algorithmic method. Clarification is needed. Banno 21:44, July 15, 2005 (UTC)
 * 2 Fair enough - I hope that there is sufficient detail in the main article, falsifiability?
 * 3 Again, I hope this is done in the main article - this section is intended as an introduction.
 * Please, re-write as you suggest. I'll be interested inthe result.Banno 23:24, July 12, 2005 (UTC)
 * Sometime soon I hope to. I wanted to flag this on the discussion page as a sort of FYI, and will be a good editor and make the changes, if no one else does, when I have the time. philosofool 15 July 2005
 * Look forward to reading them. Banno 21:44, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

We need a different example at the beginning. I didn't change it because I couldn't think of an alternative, but comparing astronomy vs astrology doesn't work b/c many would argue astrology can and has been shown to be false (ie compare the predictions made to events that transpire).

See Also Edits
(by the way, sorry about the edit description. I thought it would list the edited subsection with the description without my saying so....)

I alphebatized the see also list.

I removed a few see also links that were just not germane. I can see why someone reading this article might want to read about sociology of science, but frankly recursionism is too distant from philosophy of science to include it; if that's to be included, so should Newton and Einstein be included, which is just silly. While Ramsey-Lewis descriptions certainly have their role, it just doesn't need to be in here. We don't need a link to a particular book's entry either. That would create a mess at the end, with a link for every title one might consider important. The list of philosophy of science publications link is a much better way to deliver this content.

I also got rid of two external links that seemed, while somehow related to the article, not to be clearly the sort of thing a reader of the article would want to read. Well, that disinfopedia article on truth is crap.

Here's a general question: should articles linked in the main article also have links in the see also section? It seems like it might be redundant to include a link to epistemology in the first paragraph and then also in the see also links, but I'm unsure about this. philosofool 16 July 2005

If it's sociology and anthropology, why is it here?
The section on sociology and anthropology of science needs either to make clear contact with philosophy of science as discussed in this article or to be removed. Merely to say "here the approach is to study how science actually opperates" is vague. How doe this contrast with the rest of philosophy of science? Is the rest of philosophy of science concerned with how science necessarily operates, or possibly operates, or should operate, while ignoring the actual operation of science? (Answer: No, philosophy of science never intends to ignore actual operation of science.) I take it that the point of sociology and anthropology of science is that it is a descriptive account of scientific practice; but that's science of science, not philosophy of science. (I might mention, it's pretty dubious science.) This section needs to say what actual opperations have been discovered that have influenced the philosophy of science. Also the claim that this is a "major development" is misleading. I don't think that it has been a major development in the philosophy of science, though perhaps it has been a major development in anthropology and sociology. philosofool 16 July 2005

Re-working
I was going to re-visit the falsification section, to make the edits hinted at above, which gave me cause to look at the overall structure of the article.

I had divided the article into three sections. The first dealt with the nature of scientific statements, and corresponded roughly to the demarcation problem. The second dealt with the justification of scientific statements, corresponding roughly with theories of method. The third dealt with social accountability, corresponding roughly with the ethical implications of scientific practice. So the article managed to link to the major areas of philosophy of science, while hopefully presenting the progression of the arguments in each area.

This is highlighted by the recent edits to the falsifiability section. It once took its historical and logical place, following induction. The uncritical edits now fail to link it with induction at all, rendering the section on justification a directionless ramble.

The structure I imposed has all but dissolved in the numerous edits that have occurred in the past year of so. That may be no bad thing; provided that there is still some overall progression in the article. But I can see none.

This is an introductory article. It should:


 * Use minimal technical language
 * Explain any jargon as soon as it occurs
 * Describe key arguments briefly and link to their main article rather than presenting them in detail in the body of the article
 * Introduce the views of key philosophers and link to their main article rather than describing their work in detail.

The details should be kept for the "child" articles. But there needs to be some sort of arc that both makes the article interesting to the reader and provides a feel for the sort of discussion that has and is occurring in the field.

So, I'd like to see some discussion of the sort of structure that we can enforce. Should it be written as an historical sequence? Should the re-introduce the structure demarcation/method/ethics? should we work towards some other overall structure?

Ideas needed. Banno 09:22, August 22, 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree with much of what you are saying. I wrote above that I'm going to revamp this page and I still intend to do it. I've been very busy lately.  As far as enforcing article structure, I think that the most important thing is to watch edits and judiciously revert wherer the edit is better made a part of another article.  I disagree that this article should introduce the views of key philosophers.  Rather, it should introduce key views and link to the proponents of those views, where the details of the views should be treated separately.  There are few positions in the philosophy of science that are owned by any one. (Imagine a political philosophy article that went into the details of Scanlon's contractualism in the contractualism section, rather than saying "one important contempory contractualist is T. M. Scanlon, who modifies the ordinary contractualism by..." and linking to articles on that subject.  Entering the details of particular philosophers views that results in the proliferation of adding a little bit about everything into an article that should be hiting highlights. Basically, i think presenting philosophers rather than philosophies in an article like this that results in not creating appropriate "child" articles.

Impact on other issues and pages
I want to draw attention to the way in which this page is vital to several other discussions on the Wiki, and so to the way in which its present state is detrimental. take a look at talk:pseudoscience, talk:creation science and Requests for comment/Bensaccount.

A well-crafted article here would be a powerful tool in such discussions. Banno 23:37, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

Categorization
This page was taken out of Category:Philosophy today, but I think the page should remain in the top level, because it is a major topic in philospohy in general. Policy (WP:CLS) allows for inclusion in categories and their subcategories in such cases. What do others think about it? Karol 00:04, September 12, 2005 (UTC)


 * Please generalise this issue by taking it to Category talk:Philosophy. The philosophy categories are in a mess, and we need some general guidelines as to what should be at the top level. Banno 00:33, September 12, 2005 (UTC)


 * OK. Maybe the first step would be to quickly sort through Category:Philosophy and put as many pages in more specific categories as possible. Then we can see what's left and it will be clear what needs to be there. That's more or less how we proceeded in cleaning up Category:Physics half a year ago. Karol 00:53, September 12, 2005 (UTC)

Philosophizing about science => Philosophizing about math

 * JA: I'm not sure, but we seem to agree that the outlines of college course catalogs are "data for" but not "definitive of" what constitutes the relationships between varieties of inquiry. The reason that we have anthologies and coursepacks and so on is to point us to the activities of formal and natural and nurtural scientific researchers, ultimately to primary sources of scientific thought, to the bodies of provisional knowledge that they produce, and to incite philosophical reflection on these real-world phenomena.  So let us ask the question:  Does reflection on science necessarily involve reflection on mathematics?  And in answering that, shall we take a hint from what primary sources say about the question, or just make it up?  Jon Awbrey 17:34, 19 January 2006 (UTC)


 * If math is taken to include logic, then I would say that Phil of Science would have to include Phil about math, as would many other branches of philosophy. Whether it is actually philosophizing about the logic, or merely using logic would be an important question.  After all, chemistry uses physics.  But this does not (usually) mean that chemistry is part of physics.  To me, this seems to be a similar question.  In addition, I think that if math is taken to include probability, then Phil of Science would have to include Phil about math, since arguments about quantum physics frequently hinge around probabilistic prediction of individual atoms.  Either that or hidden variables and determinism.  Anyway, that is my $0.02 for now.  WhiteC 22:50, 20 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm going to throw in my $.02 here as well. I think that it's possible to distinguish between the nature of math and the nature of science quite clearly. A theory in math (a conjecture, a speculation, ...) is not tied to, falsifiable by, or in any other way affected by data from the real world. There are, for instance, solutions to equations which apply in some circumstances to motion in a gravitational field which have no relevance to real objects, yet those same solutions are perfectly acceptable mathematically. On the other hand, it's possible to prove things in mathematics (eg, Euclid's proof there is no largest prime number), but it is not possible to prove anything at all in science, as some further data might show that some very firmly believed science is in fact wrong.
 * This happened very notably in the case of Newtonian motion -- this is true (within experimental / observational limits) *only* at low speeds and outside of intense gravitational fields. Mercury's motion is thus not accountable in Newtonian terms, and was noticed to be so eventually. Einstein proposed a revision which does account for motion at high speeds and in intense gravitational fields. And which converges to the Newtonian values (within experimental / observational limits) at low speeds and not so intense gravitational fields.
 * This difference seems to me to be the crux of the difference between mathematics and science. And indeed between science and anything else we humans do (eg, religion, literary theory (deconstructionist, post-modern, or otherwise), art criticism, politics, economics, ...). I think that this difference is the primary issue a philosophy of science must deal with. And since it's absent in any philosophy of mathematics, we see that there is chasm between the two -- philosophy of math =/= philosophy of science.
 * That there is a connection, apparently deep, between mathematics (even unworldly mathematics, such as group theory or imaginary numbers) and the real world dealt with by science is puzzling. So puzzling that Wigner wrote a paper about it, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics. Still no explanation. But this is, for the moment I think, merely an obscuration, some dastardly trick for the gullible and insistent on neatness. Perhaps in future it may be explicable, but for the moment... ww 19:38, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for Revamping this page
We've had some discussion of edits that I made (see Edits by 68.228.52.33 below). I think we all agree that this page would be assisted by restructuring the discussion. But before I sit down to try to write a neater page on the philosophy of science, I want to say what my general outline looks like and here back about what people think about it. I'd hate to spend several hours writing an article to have several people find fault with it's basic structure so that they felt it prefereable to revert to an earlier version.

I think that the article should be pared down in terms of total content, while being unaffected siginificantly regarding scope. Basically, rather than including every other issue that arises, the article should link where possible to other articles. So, falsificationism and constructive empiricism should be briefly described, but should refer the reader to independent articles for substantive discussion. This has the nice advantage of reducing incongruencies within wikipedia articles. It also reduces the task of editing the encycolpedia when a particular topic needs editing. In each case where I say "discuss suptopic x" I mean only about a paragraph discussion.

Here's the outline (by the way, this outline is more jargon-laden than any article should be; in writing any article, I would try to avoid such jargon-heavy description. Here I'm presuming that the reader knows enough about philosophy of science to comment on whether it's a good approach to the article; hence I am leaning on jargon for convenience):

I. Introduction

II. History of philosophy of science. Covering Bacon and breifly covering epistemology and metaphysics before the twentieth century, when phil science was not it's own sub-discipline of philosophy. Discussion of Comte and Mach. Discussion of Logical Positivism, including the influence of Frege's and Russell's projects in mathematical logic and philosophy of mathematics. Popper. Kuhn.

III. Pure Philosophy of Science Questions: divides between "is science successful", "what does success of science invovle" and "how does science thus succeed". Basically this divides between questions of method and justification and questions of aims and meanings of scientific theory.
 * A. Does science succeed? Points out that a number of human acheivements (nearly destroying polio, walking on the moon) appear to depend on scientific theories. Distinguishes between practical success and theoretical success.  Discusses views of science which seem to claim that science is not specially successful, such as social constructivism.
 * B. What does the success of science involve. Distinguishes the epistemic, semantic and metaphysical components of theories of scientific success. Breif descriptions of scientific realism, instrumentalism, constructive empiricism, logical positivism.
 * C. How does science succeed in being thus successful? Discusses accounts of scientific method: hypothetico-deductivism; enumertaive inductivism (aka naive empiricism); inference to the best explanation; anti-method accounts (Kuhn, Feyerabend).

IV. "Applied" Philosophy of Science: (I dislike the term applied but I'm too lazy to have a better one right now--perhaps just "science and society.) issues of ethics and science, accountability. I think the demarcation question belongs here, since the real issue of demarcating science from non-science is a matter of authority, as in the creationism-evolutionary theory debate. Anyway, I'm not stuck to that. V. Philosophies of Particular sciences. While broadly philosophy of science, philosophy of physics, biology, economics, psyhology and so forth deal with a different set of questions, and questions which arise as a result of particular sciences.  That there are such philosophies of particular sciences merits mention.

VI. (this is really several sections) the obvious stuff of references, external links, important figures, see also, and the like.

Looking forward to comments. By the way, to help keep this outline readable, please comment below rather than within the outline. philosofool July 16 2005

Comments on Revamp proposal
It's certainly a good start. I would only quibble with placing a disproportionate emphasis on the success of science business, which I think gives the article too much of an instrumentalist slant. It seems to me that one of the first things we ought to know is what constitutes a scientific proposition, and what makes scientific judgements different from other kinds. Certainly related to this and your success question is what constitutes a scientific explanation... e.g., deductive-nomological (Hempel) vs. statistical relevance (W. Salmon) vs. causal mechanical models, etc. Perhaps something on the epistemology of unification (P. Kitcher, et al), as well. In any case, I look forward to seeing your work, though, I regret that shall not be an active participant due to time constraints. I agree that you don't want to go to a lot of work only to be reverted. Many of us have learned the hard way! The talk page is a good place to introduce others to your ideas and get their input before major overhauls, just as you've done, here. All the best. icut4u

I agree, there should be some bit about the Demarcation problem and explanation. In addition it might be nice to add something about Carnap and Reichenbach. I know a bit about Reichenbach and can maybe add something. In addition it might be good to have something about the modern development of naturalism from Quine to more modern varieties, since these positions have the effect of making all of philosophy the philosophy of science (sort of). Thanks for starting this big project I think its great! best, Kzollman 22:45, July 24, 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree that wikipedia should include information on issues of explanation and demarcation, but I think that the encyclopedia would be better if the main section on philosophy of science tried to handle these issues less, and left it to main articles on these topics to fill in the details. I'm still struggling with how exactly to present the philosophy of science in a way that make it feel like a coherent discipline.  It's really easy to do it in a sort of "here's a topic, here's a topic, here's a topic" kind of way, but that doesn't capture philosophy of science in a big picture.  Demarcation is certainly far less on the map than it was sixty years ago.  I think that philosophers of science are pretty skeptical that a neat demarcation of scientific theory from other theory can be given.  Explantion is another tricky subject to handle because it gets involved in at least three ways: (1) science is supposed by many people to provide explanations; (2) there's a question about what sorts of things explanations are (Hemple-Oppenheim vs. causal vs. pragmatic vs. unification) and (3) some people have argued that scientific realism provides an explanation of scientific success. I really think that the way this article should go is to say that an important area of research in philosophy of science is to figure out what an explanation is and another is to figure out what sorts of things science (if at all) explains and to what degree that is a goal of science.  Note that the latter involves claims about the aims and achievements of science and the former is basically about the structure of explanations whatever they are. Anyway, the whole topic of explanation comes up in several ways and it's tricky to figure out how to raise those issues while making clear that they are distinct. Philosofool 27 July 2005


 * "Is science successful"? Successful at what?  This is a vague question, especially a vague question to ask in philosophy/science.--Knucmo2 14:57, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
 * The question certainly is vague. Vagueness is unobjectionable when clarification is offered: the point of the section is to outline sense in which one can take science to be a successful enterprise. --Philosofool
 * Now you're talking in riddles. Vagueness is an antonym of clarity.  I think what you mean to say is that question can be general and offer scope for clarity.--Knucmo2 15:19, 30 August 2005 (UTC)


 * In addition to the discussions on realism, instrumentalism, there needs to be discussion of Eddington's ultimate observer and phenomenalism (Berkeley).
 * Phenomenalism is pretty off the map in current discussions of philosophy of science. Phenomenalism is a thesis about the reducibility of the external world to mental (phenomenal) states, and thus a thesis in metaphysics. While several early versions of positivism were phenomenalist theories, it is inessential to their verificationism, which is what played the major role in their philosophy of science (as opposed to their putatively non-metaphysical metaphysics.) At best, this article should link to phenomenalism, but i think it would be better to link phenomenalism from the page on positivism, rather than clutter this article with stuff that's not germane to central debates in current philosophy of science. --Philosofool
 * I disagree with this being 'off the map'. This is an encyclopedia, not a 'current debates' site.  Yes, while there should be a section on contemporary thinking on PoS, I think you are being presumptuous to suggest that its 'not germane' and 'clutter'.  This is akin to saying that in a piece on Descartes, we should only include Simon Blackburn's opinion on him.  Complete phenomenalism concerns itself with propositions about observed phenomena.  Thus, science concerns itself with observation, classification and the relations between phenomena.  Patricius wrote on science and its methods in the 1500's, as did Berkeley in the 1700's.  Patricius if I remember said that, according to his theory of phenomenalism, that we should only try to discern what things seem to do, rather than what they actually do.  Then, coming up to date, Ernst Mach, Brodie, Eddington and Bridgman postulated theories about the PoS from a phenomenalist standpoint.  Mach stated that phenomena are sensory elements and only become sensations in respect to a person's point of view.  Bridgman furthered a previous idea that science should include manipulative operations, but simply saw the results of these operations as being numbers, thus Bridgman stated that theoretical concepts should be eradicated in favour of generating theories from the sets of numbers produced by instruments (]]instrumentalism]] - definitely worth a mention in the recension of this article).  Eddington, with quite a different angle from the others, elucidated that facts produced in science are just sequences of numbers bearing simple numerical relations to each other.  His 'ultimate observer' theory of science was that the observer in an experiment forms only a mental picture of the world.  I have put the above contributions very succinctly, but it alone demonstrates the contribution of phenomenalists to debates in philosophy of science.--Knucmo2 15:19, 30 August 2005 (UTC)


 * The relations of science to epistemology, metaphysics and logic need to be implemented. Discussion of Mill's Canons, deductivism, falsificationism and positivism must be discussed in a section probably entitled "Scientific Reasoning" or forms of reasoning.  Critiques of each I can include.--Knucmo2 14:57, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Firstly my apologies for not responding sooner. I've been distracted by truth.

I'd best be honest and say that I like the present structure - probably because it is for the main part my work. But I'll do my best to be impartial. I can see plenty of room for improvement, although I must admit that I had thought the push might be in a different direction - that someone might come along with a social constructivist agenda and set to the article. I would like to see some more material here on Phil of Science in European (as opposed to English-speaking) philosophy.


 * By european philosophy of science, I take it you refer to postmodern, social constructivist and similar views. While I admit that many of these philosophies talk about science, many of them also assimilate science within a rather global philosophical position.  Within these views, science is portrayed as much the same as the rest of the "world views" people have.  Thus, it is hard to see these positions as philosophy of science proper rather than philosophy that makes no special place for science. Philosofool 27 July 2005

A section on the history of the philosophy of science would be a good addition, focusing on material from before the last century. We might consider writing the whole article in this fashion - placing the various ideas in historical rather then logical order. This works well for some more controversial issues.


 * I think going for a straight historical account gets really tricky. For one, it creates issues of deciding "what's historically accurate?" and "what gets to the heart of the philosophical issues?" One of the reason for having a separate section on the history is that it allows one to treat the historical stuff while worrying a little less about which philosophical issues are the ones to highlight. Philosofool 27 July 2005

I have a real problem with the idea of writing the main section on the presumption that science works. While I do agree that science does indeed work, and indeed that most philosophers of science would agree with that statement, I think that structuring the article in this fashion would be inherently POV.


 * It's not intended to be written on the assumption that science works. rather, it's written to present the research in philosophy of science that operates under that claim. The majority of anglo-american philosophy of science operates under the claim that science works (i would argue that most don't merely assume that science works, reasons are usually offered for thinking that this is true.)  There's room in the article for discussion of this very part of the position.

I much prefer the present structure, dividing the article into nature of science, justification and what you have called "applied" Phil of science (I guess "ethics of science" might be another way to approach it). I like it because it links well with other related philosophy articles: Justification with Falsifiability, problems of induction and so on; and nature of science with the various epistemological and empirical articles.


 * I don't think that there's any problem with linking the article under the proposed structure to articles on problems of induction and so forth. Moreover, I think the proposed structure does a much better job of cohering with discussion of scientific realism, constructive empiricism, logical positivism, social constructivism and the like. I wrote the article on scientific realism and I think it presents exactly what the commitment of scientific realism is; one can easily and accurate cast constructive empiricism and logical positivism in these terms. Social constructivism should move up a level in it's discussion: unlike logical postivism, constructive empiricism and scientific realism, social constructivism denies that science is a priviledged, i.e. more successful, account of the world. Social constructivists claim that science is a product of social factors in the same way that religion is and, hence, that it is not a privildeged account of the world. Philosofool 27 July 2005

I suspect that there is also an inconsistency in separating the question of "does science succeed' from "applied" Phil of science, and wonder if you will find yourself repeating some material in these two sections. Walking on the Moon, for example, has also been described as a supreme waste of money.


 * Say what you like about the laudibility of walking on the moon, the claim isn't that science shows that moon walks are laudible. The claim is that without science we could not have done it. Besides, if moon walks are controversial cases, we can point to germ theories of disease or vaccination or water purification. We should be careful not to confuse bad things people have done with scientific knowledge (the bomb, for example) with the claim that science produces knowledge without which we would be less successful in the things we want to do--if you think that science does more harm than good, you agree that science is successful in the sense I mean that. Philosofool 27 July 2005

Anyway, I encourage you to "be bold" and start editing. Banno 11:40, July 24, 2005 (UTC)
 * Soon, I hope. Philosofool 27 July 2005

Edits by 68.228.52.33
It's good to see some work going on here. But there are problems with these edits.

Foremost is that, prior to the edits by .33, the introduction reflected the structure of the article - more or less. Now the introduction does not. The article is structured around three main headings - the nature of scientific statements, their justification, and the role of science in the wider community. As a matter of form, this structure should be reflected in the introduction.


 * I absolutely agree that this article should, from begining to end, reflect the structure of the intro. I made the edits and I think that the introduction as edited much better reflection of philosophy of science than the present page; still that article needs work: you are right that the article became quite disjoint as a result of the edits made. I will withhold futher changes until I have time to make a complete article from the introduction as I edited it. philosofool 15 July 2005

The other substantial issue with .33's edits is that the presumption of success is quite problematic. Certainly Feyerabend, for instance, would not agree. So the presumption is potentially POV, and inappropriate for the article.


 * Certainly there are prominent philosophers of science that would disagree with the claim that science is successful. However, such an instance is not a counter example to the claim that most philosophers of science agree that science is successful.  More importantly, the fact that there are prominent philosophies of science that would deny this is not counter example to the claim. A cursory look at the web pages of philosophers of science shows that their reseach interests take science very seriously, i.e. that they think that the important goal of philosophy of science is to understand its success. But I agree with the criticsism that the introduction in those edits as written may misleadingly give the impression that all philosophers of science agree to this claim. (Incidentally, I think that Feyerabend is often misread on this very point. Especially in his early work, Feyerabend obviously thinks there's a great deal of importance to understanding the success of science. ) philosofool 15 July 2005

A few other things are problematic - removal of links to Lakatos, Bhaskar, naïve empiricism; spelling, and so on. Comments? Banno 23:01, July 12, 2005 (UTC)


 * Lakatos was never removed. The list was alphabetized, which I take to be an improvement. Bhaskar is a questionable addition to this list.  The article which is present gives far too much prominence to Popperian views and frankly the inclusion of Bhaksar in addition to Lakatos, Feyerabend and Popper is the icing on that cake.  Bhaksar but not van Fraassen? That's not exactly POV, but it certainly give a slant to the article that misrepresents the state of the discipline. I think a better way to structre the list of important contributors would be to list only primary advocates of prominent views. Indeed, I wonder whether an ideal article would have no such list, but link individuals within the body text instead. philosofool 15 July 2005


 * Naive empiricism is a view not held at all in the present philosophical community; it is merely of historical interest. The conflation of scientific realism with naive empricism is a gross error of the present article. The fact that instrumentalism and scientific realism are grouped under the same heading is bizarre.  philosofool 15 July 2005


 * I agree and I do not see several of the recent contributions by this user as improvements. The philosophy of science does not merely ask about its success.  Among other things, I do not think the questions posed represent the "core questions" of the philosophy of science, certainly not among some of the major philosophers of science with whom I am familiar...Mach, Popper, Russell, Feyerabend, Carnap, Kuhn, Penrose, etc. I think the article, while imperfect, was better before, and that the contributor should start again, perhaps by explaining what he means and then proposing what he intends to do on the discussion page, first, before undertaking such a radical overhaul, which, as you say, seems to represent a particular point of view.icut4u


 * Although the term "core" might mistlead, I think that the entry was dead-on on the point that the main question of philosophy of science involve those of success, method and interpreation, i.e. "does science succeed?", "how does science succeed?", and "what does the success involve?". Mach, Popper, Russell, Carnap and Kuhn are exactly concerned with those very questions, as are contemporary philosophers of science. Penrose is not a philosopher of science: He's philosophical and a scientist, something very different. What do you make of Carnap's philosophy of science if not that he was concerned to show that the success of science involved reconstruction of observation statements in theoretical language, hence producing empirically verifiable theories which could not be underdetermined?  What do you make of Kuhn other than the claim that any decent historical treatment of science shows that positivist and falsificationist accounts of method utterly fail to describe actual scientific practice and hence don't make sense of how science succeeds?  What do yo make of Popper other than that he says the method of science (how it succeeds) need only involve deductive testing? What are the main questions/theories of those individuals that don't fall under this very broad rubric? philosofool 15 July 2005


 * I find it difficult, without seeing the content, to differentiate between "how does science succeed?", and "what does the success involve?"; and also to see how these differ from the present "Justification of scientific statements" section. I guess the ""does science succeed?" fits in with what I wanted to put into the "Social accountability" section. Where will the "nature of science" stuff fit into a new article, or do you intend to conflate it with "does science succeed"? Banno 23:40, July 16, 2005 (UTC)


 * the characterization of the philosophy of science as involving the questions of the edit has several advantages. Most prominently, it divides questions of method from quetsions of interpretation; the present article fails to do this well.  Furthermore, it makes for a better encyclopedia entry because it states the subject of philosophy of science in terms that are both accurate and in such a way that a person with no experience with the subject will understand them.  The man on the stree could read that and accurately report "There are these guys, philosophers of science who think that understanding science is really important. They basically try to figure out what science tells us and how it manages to come up with what it tells us. I don't really remember the rest of it. It was pretty detailed, but that's basically what there're up to." Any philosopher of science would be happy to here that when starting a converstation about what they do in a bar. The vagueness of the statements about the aims of philosophy of science is easily clarified and moreover those clarifications lend themselves to categorization.  philosofool 15 July 2005


 * I've found that if one uses questions as section headings, inevitable someone edits them to statements - although I like the idea. Also, bear in mind that this is a general introduction, and should not go in to too much detail - that is for the linked articles. But a more natural style would be an improvement on my constipated waffle. Banno 23:40, July 16, 2005 (UTC)

I stand by everything I have said about your original edits (and on Penrose). While I do not agree with everything you've said, you do have some very good points, both here and below, about an article that was certainly in need of work. Keep in mind, however, it is intended to be encyclopedic (including the history) and not representative of how one thinks the philosophy of science ought to be. I'm glad you're interested in this and good luck to you on improving it! You will be a welcome addition to the group interested in philosophy. icut4u 19:51, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree, icut4u, and look forward to seeing your edits, philosofool. It is great to have people around who know what they are talking about - looking forward to some interesting conversations in the future. Banno 23:27, July 16, 2005 (UTC)

Falsifiability
66.167.253.8 23:00, 11 August 2005 (UTC): The section on Falsifiability was updated with paraphrased observations taken from Popper himself. The previous emphasis on logic and swans and how "theories are simply never falsifiable" needs to be rewritten since Popper anticipated that point already.


 * Welcome to the Wiki. I like the idea of referring to Popper directly. In your edits, I think a few things have dropped out that were important. Foremost, I think it important, especially in the context of this article, that it is clear that Popper was replacing induction with deduction. this part was removed in your edits. But almost as important is the criticism of falsification, that it simply does not achieve the aim of producing an algorithmic method - a theory can always be saved from falsification by ad hoc hypothesising; Both these points should be re-edited in. Banno 11:40, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Chinese Philosophy
I believe it should stay, but be fixed. I'm not sure if there is enough knowledge among Wikipedians to give it its own article. The section is badly informed, because there's a lot of conflict between Taoism and Confucianism, but there are also ways in which the two have integrated parts of each other. The section seems to see this, because it implies they are interchangeable, and then implies that they're not. But what is there isn't helpful! I don't feel well enough informed to say any more. There is a good two-volume work on Chinese philosophy called Sources of Chinese Tradition, by William Theodore de Bary and Richard Lufrano. If only I had time to read my copy and write something here myself. Jmchen 03:21, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Someone just added a section on Chinese philosophy of science. It seems quite out of place, but I'm not sure if that's just because it doesn't belong here or just that it is was just thrown in with no sense of the rest of the article. What I'm getting at is, should it be deleted or fixed? A quick (and non-exhaustive) search seemed to indicate that Chinese philosophy of science is not covered elsewhere, and this is a logical place to put it. It might make more sense as its own article, but it would be a stub at best. Jmeppley 17:29, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

I suggest that the Traditional Chinese PoS section not be under the Critiques of Science section, but rather under something like a "Non-western approaches to Philosophy of Science," which would be open to more of the same. Phil of Sci has a history in Anglo-/German philosophy, and I think that history should be the main content of the article, but non-western ("international"?, "non-English"?) philosophies have had things to say about science which are appropriate to mention. CHE 00:51, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

publication
would you like to publish this article? -- Zondor 22:29, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Mathematics
Is math a science? --Gbleem 16:14, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


 * That depends. You can read a short discussion at Mathematics Karol 23:23, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

It is not for en[sic]lopedia writers, or even for philosophers of science to decide or dictate this. Mathematics has been considered a science for as long as anyone can remember -- it is the phil'o'sci guy's task to explain why, not to say it ain't so. If you look to the origin of the word scientia, just a Latin name for knowledge, it's clear enough. There are always lots of adjectives available for marking off varied and sundried species of scientia, so what's the problem? Jon Awbrey 06:06, 12 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Whether or not mathematics is a science, it would be inappropriate to include a significant compontent on the mathematics in this article for the simple reasons that (1) philosophy of mathematics is its own subfielf of philosophy and (2) there is very little work on the role of mathematics in science done by philosophers of science. This article is about the philosophy of science; even if philosophers of science are making a mistake in not discussing mathematics more, the purpose of this article is to describe philosophy of science as the field has been historically and is done today.
 * Since this is a talk page and not an article, I'll go ahead and tell you what I think about whether mathematics is a science. It isn't.  That's certainly not to malign mathematics as a discipline. Rather, I think it's a report on what people usually mean to include under the heading "science."  Whether that use of 'science' is tracking a substantive difference between what we call science and what we call math, or it's just an accident of the language, is something I don't know.  And answering the question of whether mathematics is a science is having a pretty good solution to the demarcation problem.  Philosofool

In light of the fact that philosophy of mathematics is a sub-field of philosophy distinct from the philosophy of science, I changed the description of philosophy of science at the beginning of the article. I think that the claim that these are separate sub-fields is well-supported by even a cursory survey of text-books and anthologies in the two sub-fields--one finds almost no overlap between the contents of these texts. This article should reflect the state of the discipline of philosophy of science, not the opinions of people about what is or isn't science. philosofool 20:13, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Philosophy of mathematics ⊆ Philosophy of Science

 * JA: Aside from the fact that phil of math is 'considered' (by me and my army) to be an integral part of phil of sci, the very relation between formal and natural sciences is one of the biggest wings (drumsticks?) that phil of sci has on its plate. Jon Awbrey 20:30, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Re: In light of the fact that philosophy of mathematics is a sub-field of philosophy distinct from the philosophy of science, I changed the description of philosophy of science at the beginning of the article. I think that the claim that these are separate sub-fields is well-supported by even a cursory survey of text-books and anthologies in the two sub-fields--one finds almost no overlap between the contents of these texts. This article should reflect the state of the discipline of philosophy of science, not the opinions of people about what is or isn't science. philosofool 20:13, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * JA: The above statement is incorrect. I went to my library and pulled out the first philosophy of science textbook that struck my eye -- Brody & Grandy, Readings in the Philosophy of Science, 2nd ed., Prentice-Hall, 1989.  The very first article is Carnap on "Theories as Partially Interpreted Formal Systems" — math logic by any other name.  Just scanning titles, there are at least 4 more on statistical issues, 3 more on geometry, in and out of the context of relativistic space-time, etc.  [User:Jon Awbrey|Jon Awbrey]] 20:50, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * In support of considering philosophy of math part of philosophy of science you can see that my graduate program's requirements list philosophy of math and logic classes as fullfilling the philosophy of science requirement. I think its probably up in the air whether philosophy of math is considered part of philosophy of science in the same way that its up in the air whether math is a science. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 21:08, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * JA: Actually, it would be the business of Philosophy to reflect on the relationship between formal science X and special science Y even if the concerns or the domains of X and Y were somehow disjoint, which they rarely ever are in practice. Jon Awbrey 21:45, 18 January 2006 (UTC)


 * JA: One component of the variation in POV's here seems to turn on a certain parallaxity in what constitutes "philosophy of science". Though we currently have academic departments and disciplines by that name, that is, of course, historically speaking, an extremely late development and just the tip of the iceberg.  Taking the long view of history, the lion's share of what goes into those curricula consists of the thought and works of folks who were simply reflective practitioners of this or that, usually this "and" that science, most especially including mathematics, since the elephant's share of developed sciences inescapably involve mathematics in an integral way.  That is the subject matter that we are duty bound to cover.  If the academic discipline has become detached from that, then it will serve neither the general public nor the subset of those who work in specialized scientific communities.  Jon Awbrey 05:44, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * This last consideration is irrelevant for the article. Whether the development of the discipline is good or bad for the world is not our concern, we merely report on those developments. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 06:16, 19 January 2006 (UTC)


 * JA: Maybe, I will think on it, but that's not the point I was addressing. The story of the academic discipline that we all know and love under the heading of "philosophy of science" is a part of the story of the philosophy of science -- call this the partial disquotation principle -- but it's not the whole story, and if the detached story part gets too detached from the whole story, then there's a tendency for it to drift into distortion, and we're not about preserving distortions of perspective.  Jon Awbrey 06:26, 19 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Historical overlap between philosophers of science and philosophers of mathematics are beside the point. Of course you will find philosophers that do both philosophy of science and philosophy of mathematics. You will also find philosophers of science that do metaethics, but that hardly makes one a subfield of the other.  And there is overlap between the two fields, just as the is overlap of political philosophy and ethics, or philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. Still, to say that these one of these is a sub-field of the other is just wrong.  Specialists in one sub-field are often competent in another as well, but that doesn't show that one is a sub-field of the other.  I maintain my claim that there is hardly any overlap between phil of sci and phil of math in prominent anthologies, one article overlap hardly counts to show that one is a sub-field of the other.  Benacerraf and Putnam's Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings contains twenty-seven articles. It shares no articles with Martin Curd and J. A. Cover's Philosophy of Science, The Central Issues.  It shares one article with Boyd, Gasper and Trout's Philosophy of Science; that article is Carnap's "Empiricism Sematics and Ontology", an article so widely republished (it appears in numerous metaphysics anothologies, for example) that it hardly shows that one field is a sub-field of another.  The fact that philosophers of science look at the role of mathematics in science does not make them philosophers of mathematics.  Of course philosophers of science look at the role of statistics and geometry in science; that doesn't mean their doing philosophy of statistics or philosophy of mathematics.  Take a look at most graduate program requirements and you will find that philosophers of science are required to learn history of philosophy and political philosophy and on and on.  The purpose of graduate programs is to create philosophers who are generally familiar with philosophical issues as well as specialists in their chosen field, so I think that graduate program requirements don't reveal which fields are sub-fields of others.  Note that in the case of philosophy of science and mathematics, the reasons for requiring those in one field to know something of the other is that most departments in philosophy (once you step outside the top-tier institutions) will have only one person that deals in the "techy" issues (science, logic, math), and so as a matter of making marketable graduate students, there is an interst in training speicialist in one field to be at least competent in the other.  Nonetheless, this does not show that philosophy of mathematics is a sub-field of philosophy of science.philosofool 17:08, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * This article should represent the disipline which is philosophy of science. If anything represents what the core of philosophy of science is, it is textbooks and anthologies in the philosophy of science. This article (obviously) needs revision and part of the problem is that it is, well, all over the map.  A good start for revision is to focus on what anthologies and textbooks emphasize; at least then we are assured of representing the POV of professional in the field rather than the POV of authors.  philosofool 17:08, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Grounds Of Validity (GOV)
JA: "Grounds of validity" is a stock phrase that goes way back, probably to Kant, referring to the broader considerations of evaluating, justifying, validating, warranting various types of inferences, laws, methods, and so on. It is of course not to be confused with the contemporary use of "valid" to describe logical arguments. Cf. C.S. Peirce, "Grounds of Validity of the Laws of Logic". Jon Awbrey 18:20, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Ockham's Razor
JA: The remarks about Ockham's Razor in the article were well-considered and reflect the great mass of discussion that has taken place in many literatures over many years. If there are those who are unfamiliar with these commonplaces, then references can be supplied. But reputable references must also be supplied for contrary assertions. Jon Awbrey 04:01, 8 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Here is the section under discussion:

The practice of scientific inquiry typically involves a number of heuristic principles that serve as rules of thumb for guiding the work. Prominent among these are the principles of conceptual economy or theoretical parsimony that fall under the rubric of Ockham's Razor, named after the 14th Century Franciscan friar William of Ockham who is credited with giving the maxim many pithy expressions that unfortunately have yet to be found among his extant works. The motto is most commonly cited in the form "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity", generally taken to suggest that the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one. As interpreted in contemporary scientific practice, it advises opting for the simplest theory among a set of competing theories that have a comparable explanatory power, discarding assumptions that do not improve the explanation. The "other things being equal" clause is a critical qualification, which rather limits the utility of Ockham's Razor in real practice, as theorists rarely if ever find themselves presented with competent theories of exactly equal explanatory adequacy.


 * Here are the errors and other garbage:


 * "the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one"-- No serious scientist would ever maintain the position that the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one. Occam's Razor is more subtle than that.  This is well explored in the Occam's Razor article, so I won't reproduce that here.


 * "maxim many pithy expressions that unfortunately have yet to be found among his extant works." -- This is in the Occam's Razor article and doesn't need to be repeated here. Here we are looking for the role of Occam's Razor in the philosophy of science.


 * "The "other things being equal" clause is a critical qualification, which rather limits the utility of Ockham's Razor in real practice, as theorists rarely if ever find themselves presented with competent theories of exactly equal explanatory adequacy." -- You are confusing cause and effect here. Theorist are rarely faced with simultaneous theories of this nature BECAUSE of the implicit or explicit use of Occam's Razor.  Without it, there would be no justification discarding the INFINITE set of such theories which exist for EVERY set of data.


 * For these reasons I have reverted this section back to the version that was here before these innaccuracies were added. OverZealousFan


 * One last thing to guide this discussion. Please let us all know how you believe science deals with the problem of underdetermination (see the wikipedia article on the topic) on a philosophical level if not through the constant and pervasive application of Occam's razor. OverZealousFan

I have reverted this back to the earlier version for now. Mass edits should be discussed issue by issue after other editors have diligently contributed, with at least a brief note or explanation accompanying each significant edit, and if possible and appropriate, with some remark qualifying why for each...Kenosis 20:46, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

These issues brought up by OverZealousFan now dealt with via some reorganizing and slightly greater parsimony of content, with maximum possible perservation of earlier, well considered issues posted by other editors. ...Kenosis 16:43, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

JA: I realize that our poor friar has become a popular icon among those have read none of his writings nor any of the last millennium's voluminous literature on this subject, but we are not interested in talk-show mythology here. Jon Awbrey 16:09, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Heuristic
I don't want to appear anal, but I think there is a serious philosophical innaccuracy here so I'm trying to correct it. The section in question is once again: "The practice of scientific inquiry typically involves a number of heuristic principles that serve as rules of thumb for guiding the work. Prominent among these are the principles of conceptual economy or theoretical parsimony. The practice of shaving away the unnecessaries to achieve best possible parsimony (the heuristic utilized to seek the heuristic of parsimony) has traditionally been called Ockham's Razor (or, "Occam's Razor"), after the 14th Century Franciscan friar William of Ockham. The principle of parsimony is commonly stated something like: "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity." As interpreted in contemporary scientific practice, it advises opting for the simplest theory among a set of competing theories that have comparable explanatory power, discarding assumptions that do not improve the explanation. In practice, of course, it is not always this straightforward. Theorists quite commonly do not find themselves presented with competing hypotheses or theories of exactly equal explanatory adequacy."

The problem is that Occam's Razor is NOT a heurisitc. According to wikipedia "a heuristic is a particular technique of directing one's attention in learning, discovery, or problem-solving." But this is not an accurate discription of Occam's Razor. Occam's Razor is not a method of directing attention during problem solving, it is a philosophical principle which recommends dispensing with unsupported models when deciding on which theory is best, and it is a justification for doing so.

In case the difference between these two things isn't clear let me try to elaborate. A heuristic comes into play when you find a problem, and you are trying to generate good solutions to the problem. Occam's Razor comes into play later, when you've found some good models and you are trying to decide which of them is best.

I hope that helps.

Anyway, since the entire paragraph is discussing heuristics I've copied the previously existing paragraph over it to correct it. I've left the rest of the section which Kenosis and other have worked on untouched.

I think its important to be accurate with the word heuristic because calling Occam's Razor a heuristic implies in a sense that scientific inquiry can proceed without it, which is wrong. This is a subtle point which even many scientists (most of whom are not science philosophers) do not understand (even though they employ Occam's Razor implicitly in everything they do). However clearly its important that an entry in the philosophy of science not be confused on this issue.(unsigned by OverZealousFan)


 * A substantial amount of the more recent literature agrees it is a heuristic. But I wish no further part of this attempt at doing your own interpretation to replace what so many published commentators have said about Occam.  Bye, and good luck...Kenosis 05:55, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

JA: Nobody, but nobody, is interested in our personal philosophies about any of these issues, nor what compromissory notes we are able to work out this week or the next among the editors who chance to gravitate here. If contributors can back up their personal spins with citations from informed, competent, recent, and/or venerated literature, then that may be of some interest to readers. Jon Awbrey 16:31, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Material for examination
JA: I have moved the following paragraph here for examination. I see perhaps one or two points that might be salvaged, though not without quite a bit of work. But tomorrow. Jon Awbrey 05:36, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

JA: I will break up the paragraph for ease of examination:


 * 1) To illustrate the principle, consider the common scenario of two theories A and B, where A is the simplest theory that fits the data, and where B is a version of A augmented by additional elements that neither improve nor harm the fit.  The principle of Ockham's Razor advises us to "shave" away the extra elements of B leaving us with the more basic theory A.
 * 2) For example, consider Newton's famous theory that "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction".  An alternative theory would be that "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, except on the 12 of January 2055 when the reaction will be of half intensity".  This seemingly absurd addition detracts from the proposed theory's simplicity, and also radically reduces the explanatory capacity because of the expiration date.  Lacking considerable evidence for a sudden expiration date, the added entity should be removed.
 * 3) The crucial role of Occam's Razor in science is thus illuminated by the problem of underdetermination &mdash; that is, that for every set of data, there is literally an infinitude of theories consistent with those data, and thus possible.  Without a heuristic involving a preference to choose a parsimonious theory from among the possible theories, science would be very substantially compromised; and without at least an intuitive application of such a principle in hypothesis and theory development, progress might completely cease.

JA: Let's take up Point 3 first. Historically speaking, the property of underdetermination has been called on to support many splintered theses, diverse and contradictory among themselves, from nativism to skepticism, and so simplicitism will have to get in line if it seeks aid in this direction. As I noted in the main article, the resort to measures of simplicity provides no succor at all if the underdetermination of simplicity measures is as great as the underdetermination of hypotheses. Whether this is so is still up in the air at present, but the relative degree of underdetermination cannot begin to be addressed until more rigorous definitions of simplicity measures have been brought forward. Jon Awbrey 14:04, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

JA: Continuing with Point 3. It's a fact that choices among hypotheses do occur. But to argue from the fact that choices get made to the conclusion that they must get made according to your favorite heuristic is about as cogent as arguing from the existence of the universe to the existence of your favorite deity.

JA: The questions are:


 * 1) Do choices get made according to any principle at all?
 * 2) If (1) is answered "yes", do choices get made according to one or according many different principles?
 * 3) If (2) is answered "one", then what is that principle?

JA: People who shave away the first couple of steps in this descent are committing the error commonly known as "jumping to a conclusion". Jon Awbrey 16:30, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

JA: Wrapping up Point 3. As far as I can tell, there is very little to salvage in the current text of Point 3, except perhaps to make the passing observation that this is just the problem of "giving a rule to abduction" all over again. Jon Awbrey 17:04, 12 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The current revision would be another way of reasonably expressing the issues related to parsimony and Occam. So long as the the article doesn't get caught in trying to overdescribe the whole abductive process (the opposite of the drastic oversimplification just attempted recently)-- I can see it already--next thing there'll be editors throwing in stuff about noogenesis as evidence of the abductive process...Kenosis 17:12, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

JA: Yes, I think that the section on Ockham's razor is already too long for the Philosophy of Science article, and probably even for the Scientific Method article, as there is still a lot of work to do on the proper spin-offs of that, so I'm guessing that it will probably be best to locate what's left of this material with the Ockham's razor or William of Ockham articles. But I thought we might as well discuss it while it's here. Jon Awbrey 17:34, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Ockham's Razor Redux
(Moved for interpretation reasons) --M a s 22:02, 4 May 2006 (UTC) I have to agree with OverZealousFan. I think we need to get rid of "maxim many pithy expressions that unfortunately have yet to be found among his extant works" Who says "unfortunately?" What POV does this take? Isn't this discussed at length in the actual Ockham's Razor article where it belongs? JA, I'm sorry but I still talk of "Pell's equation" even though I know Euler got him wrong. Likewise another monk probably fabricated much of his work. The name sticks, and reasons why can probably be debated historiographically, but how does this contribute to the nature of the article at hand? Who mythologizes Ockham the person? Thanks! --M a s 00:44, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

JA: If I remember correctly — something that I will in due course need to double-check later — Pythagoras is reputed to have had "a golden thigh". Since I do not think that our forebears were any dimmer bulbs, er, lamps than our enlightened selves, I presume that this legendary report has some sort of meaning, somewhere on the line between literal and figurative. Unfortunately, I am not in possession of any extant data that would clarify the presumptive sense of this fragmentary repute any further. That is what I mean by unfortunately in Ockham's case also. Jon Awbrey 01:20, 4 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your quick reply JA. So to carry your example further Wikipedia should add qualifications to every instance of some eponymous statements or theorems that might be a misattribution, along the lines of "unfortunately, the Pythagoreans left no written records, so much of what's known about them might very well be apocryphal?"  Thanks!  --M a s 01:38, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

JA: I think that the operative principle is something like: Report the data that we have. In the case of Ockham, the details are reported in rather un-razored detail across two other articles: William of Ockham and Ockham's razor, so a more clipped precis suffices here. Jon Awbrey 02:00, 4 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks again JA. In the Ockham's razor article, we have:


 * (deleted for space reasons)


 * I count 3 (three) external references, and no "unfortunately." Also a google search site:www.wikipedia.org +unfortunately returns only "Aristotle" with a similar phrasing referring to an non-extant treatise.  At the minimum I would prefer the removal of "unfortunately" or a (weaker) rephrasing along the lines of "unfortunately for historians of science" with an internal wikilink to Ockham's razor.  Thanks,--M a s 15:41, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

JA: I cannot figure what the deal is. We have three refs saying that Ockham's razor does not belong to Ockham. It is unfortunate that some people's desire for simplicity, hoc fingo ego, would have them prefer a shearly false attribution to the more wooly truth. Jon Awbrey 16:56, 4 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Funny analogy JA. (aside: hoc fingo ego?  thus feign I?)  But I think an encyclopedia should be more descriptive than prescriptive.  Many people, yours truly, refer to the principal of parsimony as Ockham's razor.  It's encyclopedic to say that the attribution itself is wrong, but how is it encyclopedic to say or imply (with "unfortunately") that, because the attribition is wrong, it should not be used?  Thanks! --M a s 20:48, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

JA: Try to keep up. Dame Unfortune is Nevermore. The rest of your strained interpretation I can no longer follow in the slightest. N o M a s, N o M a s. Jon Awbrey 20:58, 4 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks JA. Egg on my face for not seeing it gone.  Cheers! --M a s 22:05, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Causality vs. the Existence of a God
So how is the concept of causility or "cause and effect" more justifiable than the existence of God? Both cannot be empirically tested; you can not "experience" both with your five senses. I understand that one concept can be "believed in more" than the other; for example, you COULD say that you believe in cause and effect more than you believe in the existence of God. But you can't say, from an empiricist point of view; that you KNOW casualty or God exists. So what I'm asking is how can scientists (and empiricists) believe in the concept of "cause and effect" more than they believe in the existence of God? How iss causility more justified (and therefore, more readily "assumeable") than the existence of God? You can't say you know they both exist according to Hume, if you are an empiricist, but why would anyone be an atheist (not believe in God), but assume that causility exist? 165.196.139.24 21:04, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

empiricism v.s. rationalism
Shouldn't this article also deal with the issues of reallying on empirical evidence (the five senses)? Many philosophers have brung up the issue of trusting the five senses; and some argue that only knowledge gained by reasoning should be trusted (this is sort of the opposite of an empiricist).


 * Good question. Rationalism is really a historical issue in philosophy--look for it, or add material on it, in the history of philosophy pages. No current or recent philosopher of science makes a serious case that, as you say, only knowledge gained by reasoning should be trusted. Two problems are that it's not clear that anything can be established without the aid of experience, and that it is not clear that there is a sharp distinction between knowledge gained from experience and knowledge gained through reasoning alone. That is to say, skepticism is a live issue in epistemology especially and to a lesser degree philosophy of science, but it's not clear that reasoning alone, if there is such a thing could get you very far. CHE 17:26, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Opening Page poor
I think the opening bullet list looks bad for this article. Moving this bullet list to the next section and inluding an image, eg, could be helpful. Lucaas 01:41, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Social constructionism vs Constructivist epistemology
Paragraph 1.5 's title should be for me "Constructivist epistemology" whether than "Social constructivism" as the latter is a part of the first. Chrisdel 14:53, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

The review of Physics continues at Talk:Physics/wip
Some time ago a group of editors set up a "work in progress" page (at Talk:Physics/wip) to hammer out a consensus for the Physics article, which for too long had been in an unstable state. Discussion of the lead for the article has taken a great deal of time and thousands of words. The definitional and philosophical foundations seem to cause most headaches; but progress has been made. Why not review some of the proposals for the lead material that people are putting forward, or put forward your own, or simply join the discussion? The more contributors the better, for a consensus. – Noetica 02:02, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Update: Concrete proposals have now been put forward, arising from recent discussion aimed at producing a stable and consensual lead section for the Physics article. We have set up a straw poll, for comments on the proposals. Why not drop in at Talk:Physics/wip, and have your say? The more the better! – Noetica 22:28, 13 November 2006 (UTC)