Physicists Should Stop Saying Silly Things about Philosophy

I found the following, I think apt, quote from Dan Dennett:<p>&quot;In a review of Steven Pinker&#x27;s book, How the Mind Works, in New York Review of Books, the British geneticist Steve Jones had the following comment to make: &quot;To most wearers of white coats, philosophy is to science as pornography is to sex. It is cheaper, easier and some people seem, bafflingly, to prefer it.&quot; Now that view is all too common, and I understand it from the depths of my soul. I appreciate why people think this, but I think it is also important to combat this stereotype in a friendly and constructive spirit, and no place better than in a center for research in cognitive science. What philosophers can be good at – there aren&#x27;t many things we can be good at – is helping people figure out what the right questions are. When people ask me whether there&#x27;s been any progress in philosophy I say, &quot;Oh yes, mathematics, astronomy, physics, physiology, psychology – these all started out as philosophy, and once we philosophers got them whipped into shape we set them off on their own to be sciences. We figured out how to ask the right the questions, and and then we turned them over to other specialists to answer.&quot;

Somewhat related: I&#x27;m currently enjoying Scott Aaronson&#x27;s &quot;Quantum computing since Democritus&quot;. A snippet:<p><i>Not every branch of science was scouted out ahead of time by philosophy, but some were. And in recent history, I think quantum computing is really the poster child here. It&#x27;s fine to tell people to &quot;Shut up and calculate,&quot; but the question is, what should they calculate? At least in quantum computing, which is my field, the sorts of things that we like to calculate — capacities of quantum channels, error probabilities of quantum algorithms — are things people would never have thought to calculate if not for philosophy.</i><p>For more: <a href="http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scottaaronson.com&#x2F;democritus&#x2F;</a> — it&#x27;s been posted here a bunch of times, although without any comments.

Most people have a very mistaken view of modern philosophy, and unfortunately this article does little to clarify. Today, analytic philosophy (as opposed to the continental philosophers) is fairly rigorous and usually narrow focused. It can be about modeling systems (for example Bayesian epistemology, various forms of modal logic). It can be about decision analysis (game theory) It can be about number theory (Frege, Gödel, etc.) and it can be about scientific theory (Popper, Kuhn, Quine, Ulian). Some of these things have been profoundly influential, and important to the modern world.

The trouble, I feel, with the overlap between science and philosophy is that most modern practitioners of what we know as &quot;science&quot; only have exposure to one epistomological world view: positivism. Granted, this world view has created a great abundance of valuable and life improving knowledge for humanity - as Bacon would have described it, it is good for more than disputation (no offense, to Ol&#x27; Aristotle) - but it does not encompass the entire sphere of knowledge. There is authentic knowledge to be gained from disciplines which are entirely a priori - such as mathematics, or as some argue, economics.

The author seems to be saying that the main reason physicists should pay attention to philosophers is that philosophy can be useful in the study of physics.<p>I think he could have made his point better by noting that pretty much any thinking about why we study physics leads directly to philosophy. What is the point of doing science? What is knowledge, and why should we be interested in it? These are just the sort of questions philosophy as a discipline is intended to answer.<p>Any physicist who is interested in any &#x27;meta&#x27; questions about his&#x2F;her work is necessarily interested in philosophy. One can disagree with the particular methodologies of modern academic philosophy, but it is hard to see how any intellectually curious person can dismiss the field entirely.<p>It seems to me that this is a stronger argument for the relevance of philosophy to science.

I found the article vague and unconvincing. If philosophy is useful for physics research, where is the evidence? What new thing did philosophy contribute to physics in the last 100 years?<p>I am a physicist who cares deeply about the foundational issues mentioned in the article. And yet I honestly don&#x27;t see any meaningful input about these issues coming from philosophers.

Best quote:<p>&quot;Nevertheless, there are some physics questions where philosophical input actually is useful. Foundational questions, such as the quantum measurement problem, the arrow of time, the nature of probability, and so on. Again, a huge majority of working physicists don’t ever worry about these problems. But some of us do! And frankly, if more physicists who wrote in these areas would make the effort to talk to philosophers, they would save themselves from making a lot of simple mistakes.&quot;<p>Philosophers interests overlap at times with mathematicians, linguists, psychologists, physicists. Sometimes they have valuable things to say to each other. E.g. Experimental philosophy is a trend in philosophy, and people who have never done scientific experiments before could learn how to do them better from scientists who have that experience and knowledge. I support people that find common ground and work together to help each other tackle the puzzles they&#x27;re working on.

&gt; (Aside: of course there are bad philosophers, who do all sorts of stupid things, just as there are bad practitioners of every field. Let’s concentrate on the good ones, of whom there are plenty.)<p>The impression that most physicists I know is that the percentage of bad philosophers or bad philosophy papers is much high then in chemistry, physics, biology and several others.<p>I could not take the arguments here and convince those friends&#x2F;peers otherwise.<p>&gt; Philosophers are, by their nature, more interested in foundational questions where the latest wrinkle in the data is of less importance than it would be to a model-building phenomenologist.<p>The problem is that philosophers have so little data to work with. The problems they are pointed at often need tremendous amounts of data or very hard to collect data. Instead of making an incremental improvement on collecting that data or analyzing existing data it seems to often be the case that philosophers decided to work with guess work instead.<p>&gt;The idea is apparently that developing a new technique for calculating a certain wave function is an honorable enterprise worthy of support, while trying to understand what wave functions actually are and how they capture reality is a boring waste of time.<p>A theoretical paper that examines the various quantum calculation techniques through the lens of information theory and attempts to make rigorous claims on which methods or fundamentally more simple(form an information theory definition) sounds like solid science and an interesting read. &quot;trying to understand what wave functions actually are and how they capture reality&quot; - does not sound like something I would want to fund or read.<p>&gt;And part of that task is understanding the foundational aspects of our physical picture of the world, digging deeply into issues that go well beyond merely being able to calculate things.<p>I would want an example of an issue where calculation plays no role. Being able to communicate the ideas to fellow humans might be thought to involve not calculation, I would argue that starting with the simplest mathematical models then isomorphically(or at least minimize information lose) tweaking for human understanding would be the non-practical ideal method and use considerable calculation.

While a physicist should be commended for defending philosophy, I&#x27;m still not convinced that &quot;asking deep questions about what it all means&quot; isn&#x27;t a complete waste of time.<p>Regardless of whether anything &quot;<i>means</i>&quot; anything, I really don&#x27;t get why it should.<p>Uncovering actionable (and often very surprising) laws of nature sound much more exciting to me than pondering about &quot;meaning&quot;, especially when done by people who don&#x27;t have a deep understanding of physics.<p>The only people who should be philosophizing are the physicists, but they&#x27;d rather do physics instead, and I think that&#x27;s a good thing.

There is a whole other sector of philosophy that is almost completely divorced from science that is often called &quot;Continental Philosophy&quot;. It deals with all of the classic problems -- meaning, love, truth, etc. The U.S. tends to not hear a lot about it, but it&#x27;s huge in the non-english speaking world. Check it out: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Continental_philosophy</a>

The criticism certainly goes both ways, with the understanding of many (most?) in philosophy and the humanities in general of what science actually is and has done is deeply depressing (see Soakl and Bricmont&#x27;s &quot;Intellectual Impostures&quot;). My personal observation is that there is a lot of resentment, envy, and repressed inferiority complexes that humanist academics hold towards scientists.

Philosophy is more concerned with consciousness being a black-box and thus physical measurements not being able to be fully trusted. Science assumes a physical world that does not lie above untrusted surface. However, philosophy takes nothing for granted. It&#x27;s possible that you are the only real conscious person, and everyone else is just merely &#x27;reactive.&#x27;<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Solipsism</a><p>There is not a divide between Philosophy and Physics. Their axioms are merely different. Physics has axioms. Philosophy is about life, and therefore examines it with NO precepts. In order to discover the truth about the universe, one must make no assumptions. One must simply understand the level of truth each thought holds. This is the &#x27;golden key.&#x27;

I might misunderstand philosophy, but I think about it like this: scientists gather data, run experiments, etc. while philosophers draw conclusions. Sure most&#x2F;maybe all scientists draw their own conclusions (it is pretty much the only way to get published) but sometimes the conclusions are not so obvious.<p>Does the Heisenberg uncertainty principle mean we have free will? Can free will exist? What sort of (theoretical) evidence would we need to disprove free will?<p>Is that line of questioning philosophy or science? I&#x27;m really not sure. I think you take a headlong leap into science when you start running tests, but I&#x27;m not sure at what point talk turns from philosophy to science.<p>In the end, everyone is just trying to make a more accurate map, right?

Some of the problem, as Locke1689 said, lies in how non-philosophers perceive philosophy. I&#x27;m betting most of the laity were exposed to philosophy through low-level survey courses where notions such as substrata and monads were thrown about. While interesting and entertaining, to the typical physics major, it seems akin to teaching chemistry using alchemy and cosmology using geocentrism.<p>Young physicists also seem unusually biased towards mathematical forms of expression, as opposed to &quot;mere&quot; human language.

Reminds me of an anecdote: for a long time, when faced with the non-intuitiveness that is quantum theory, physicists had one simple rule <i>shut up and do the math.</i>

I think a big part of why many physicists reject philosophy as a useful endeavor is that a lot of popularly-known philosophy places inductive reasoning below deductive reasoning.

HN naturally attracts people with expertise in STEM. Is it really meaningful or interesting that they think their own field is more valuable and important than others?

I&#x27;ve heard many research scientists say, &quot;Science is what I&#x27;m doing when I don&#x27;t know what I&#x27;m doing.&quot;

We need someone to tell us not just how things work, but why they work.

3:0 to Physicists I think

Something I think Philosophers should also stop saying silly things about Physics.