Science of Philosophy vs. Science Science?

[HowardRoarkSpaceDetective]

As we all know, empiricists like to argue that "science" has disproven what Objectivists would call "intrinsicism". Now, if philosophy is a kind of science (in the sense that both disciplines are inductive), then they're right. But they don't mean it the way we mean it. For example, my departure with religion began with the problem of free will, but now, as an Objectivist, I wouldn't make that argument. So what exactly is the difference between what we call the philosophy-as-science and what they would call science-as-opposed-to-philosophy.

My first guess was that science can disprove God, etc., but knowledge of brain chemistry and Newtonian physics and microscopes and all that isn't necessary. All the data really needed to disprove God is available to the average person. But I also remember Piekoff describing Platonism/Rationalism this way. Am I not hitting the mark here? Where exactly does one draw the line between philosophy and what is colloquially called science? Is there a line?

For example, if we say that life is self-sustaining action, is that biology as well as philosophy? Or is that concept actually the subject matter of biology and any statement more detailed than that one solidly in the realm of biology? Does philosophy just set the bounds of the special sciences? Am I wrong to think of knowledge generally as a spectrum going from "existence exists" all the way down to "what I had for breakfast", or is there truly a hard line between two categories of knowledge? AR's statement that "In the realm of cognition, the special sciences are the trees, but philosophy is the soil which makes the forest possible" suggests that there is a hard line.

I think this question is indicative of a major hangup I'm having in epistemology. What is the "shape" of philosophy? What is its relationship to, for example, my non-scientific knowledge, such as my mom's hair color? Does that "fall under" a particular philosophical heading, like "senses as valid" maybe? Or the fact "my dog bit me" under "animals as having an automatic code of values"?

A related question might be: Am I conceiving of this whole question incorrectly? If so, is that an error in method which could be remedied by a better understanding of philosophy as a concept?

[Boydstun]

Mathematics used to be called a science. Logic used to be called a science. Metaphysics was called a science by Kant and his German Rationalist predecessors. In more recent years, we call those by the super-ordinate of them and of science: rationally organized disciplines, but we no longer call them science. By "science" we do not mean what Aristotle or the early moderns meant by it. We mean only empirical science such as physics, chemistry, geology, or biology as they have developed in and after the Scientific Revolution. 

Rand took her definition of life as self-generated, self-sustaining action from biology books. (She gave a little longer definition in ITOE, also from biology book.) But what she did with the concept after stating it was not something one would find in a biology book. She put it to use in making a theory of value, and although one can draw on anthropology and child development concerning moral concepts from psychological research (of a scientific sort), theory of value and ethics has remained a topic in the job description of philosophy (or usually less rationally, of religion).

A subdivision of philosophy, called natural philosophy, later became disciplines that are the various physical sciences today, as you probably know. Their methods and boundaries and overlaps are not set by philosophy, but internally by the scientific discipline and its history. Newton's method of using a certain equation of free fall at the earth's surface from Galileo in application to bits of orbits of planets whose shapes he showed also would necessarily vary according to various candidates for what is the strength of a central attractive force as a function of distance from the source of the force, and then showing the Kepler patterns capturing empirical observation results for orbits implies which of those central force candidates is the one true in the solar system, in the end demonstrating that the force causing free fall at the surface of the earth is identical to the central attractive force pulling satellites into their orbits (such as planetary orbits about the sun) IS NO METHOD HANDED DOWN FROM PHILOSOPHY NOR EVER CONCEIVED AS A ROUTE TO SOLID KNOWLEDGE BY PHILOSOPHY—not Aristotle, not F. Bacon, not Locke. Newton was doing some philosophizing in his later exchanges (through Samuel Clarke) with Leibniz, but none of THAT either had anything to do with the technique Newton employed to remake the world, which was a method devised by a mind deep into the science of mechanics and geometry up to his time.

My description of what Newton did in the preceding is only off the top of my head and from memory across many years ago. (And I'm taking some issue with Rand on the historical and proper relations between philosophy and science, so far as I understand her [just the way you mentioned].) So for aid in exactitude, I would like to point to the great definitive explication, for possible needed adjustments to my representation: The Key to Newton's Dynamics (1995) by J. Bruce Brackenridge.

Edited August 1, 2023 by Boydstun

[DavidOdden]

2 hours ago, HowardRoarkSpaceDetective said:

My first guess was that science can disprove God, etc., but knowledge of brain chemistry and Newtonian physics and microscopes and all that isn't necessary.

I disagree, in that the existence of God is not even logically capable of scientific evaluation. As is acknowledged by all right-thinking scientists (Eddington, even Popper, and certainly all classical scientists from Aristotle to Newton and beyond), science requires a logical foundation, which is the purview of philosophy. Data is useless unless you have a conceptual framework for evaluating data – an epistemology.

All knowledge reduces to the non-contradictory integration of knowledge which arrives at new knowledge. This is true of the domains of knowledge regarding particle physics, plate tectonics, human or fish perception, the theory of grammar, road paving, and so on. It is also true of basic foundational notions used to gain knowledge, like “cause”, “justice”, “man” and “justice”. The difference between the two sets is that the former requires specialized training, equipment and methods, but the latter is available to everyone who engages the faculty of reason. The former is highly observation-dependent, the latter is highly reason-dependent.

I believe that the line between law and ethics is a good example of the science / philosophy distinction. Rand sets forth an ethical theory as to the proper nature of government and rights, which defines what proper law should be: force is properly used by government solely to protect the rights of individuals. But what exactly is requires, allowed or forbidden under that ethical principle? The doctrine “fruit of the poison tree” says that when the government obtains evidence of rights-violation in a specific (forbidden) manner, that evidence cannot be used against the accused. Is that prohibition proper? That is a more-scientific legal question. It requires a focused, specialized and empirical study to determine what laws properly realize the fundamental philosophical principles that are accessible to everybody.

Rand was wrong in some of her judgments as to questions that are actually scientific, the most problematic of them being epistemological issues that pertain to language. Not horrifyingly wrong, but still, some of the linguistic aspects of her epistemology need correcting. I’ve never asked those who knew her personally, but I suspect that they would have some “what she really meant” interpretation.

[EC]

Science is the specific usage of (proper reason and evidence based) epistemology applied to the Universe as a whole. It's a highly specialized sub-branch that includes and requires the usage of all it's sub-branches together (including mathematics-the science of abstract logic) as a cohesive whole with epistemology as it's base (and of course true reality-based metaphysics as epistemology's base).

Edited August 1, 2023 by EC

[Leonid]

All statements about proving or disproving god are floating abstractions. By definition god can’t be defined and therefore proved. If someone somehow will ever prove god , he will strip him from his divine qualities. He will become an object , one among many which could be observed, studied, explained but not worshipped.

[Leonid]

To prove means to define, to limit, to put boundaries. That all completely impossible to apply to infinite, omniscient omnipresent omnipotent eternal being. Not to mention that all these qualities are also floating abstractions.

[HowardRoarkSpaceDetective]

10 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

I disagree, in that the existence of God is not even logically capable of scientific evaluation.

2 hours ago, Leonid said:

All statements about proving or disproving god are floating abstractions. By definition god can’t be defined and therefore proved.

So this seems to be an example of a question that falls squarely outside of "science science" and inside of "philosophy". Once you've formed the floating abstraction "God", you've already violated the scientific method and are attempting to claim that A = not A. In this sense, philosophy appears to be a kind of scaffolding on which to hang observations about particular existents. But if observations of particular existents are prerequisites for philosophy, we appear to have a chicken-egg situation, although it may in fact be what Piekoff called circular-yet-not-invalid reasoning. It seems as though the human ability to do logic imposes itself at some point to inform us (or at least suggest to us) that observation as such implies metaphysical boundaries, namely the law of identity, around what is possible, i.e., what kinds of conclusions can be drawn from perceptual data. Every human seems to have this process internalized almost right out the womb and only begins to question it when he starts to ask "deep" questions. Have I got that right?

10 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

The difference between the two sets is that the former requires specialized training, equipment and methods, but the latter is available to everyone who engages the faculty of reason.

So it would seem that the order of knowledge acquisition would be: normal every-day observations that are easily graspable -> general, philosophical truths derived inductively and which set the boundaries for further induction -> "scientific" truths derived from more specialized, not-so-every-day observations that are difficult/impossible to integrate without a proper philosophical foundation.

10 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

That is a more-scientific legal question.

This is a difficulty I run into when thinking about government. Objectivist politics is universally valid. Rand says little to nothing about how to select government officials, however I would imagine that the correct process, whatever it is, would be universal as well and therefore a "philosophically" truth rather than a "scientific" truth that pertains to only a specific category of existents, say, nations of a certain size, culture, etc. 

Then again, there are presumably universal truths about physical matter which have no bearing whatsoever on metaphysics and are therefore not philosophical. So universality can't be a criterion for "philosophicality". On the one hand, fundamental truths, to Rand, are reached inductively using every-day observation. However, for the average modern person, "fundamental truths" are reached inductively using large hadron colliders and electron microscopes. It feels odd to say that philosophy can know fundamental truths yet cannot tell us what a quark is.

11 hours ago, Boydstun said:

Rand took her definition of life as self-generated, self-sustaining action from biology books.

So in doing this, was she taking a quicker/more rigorous route to her definition, or can we say that a philosophy of life could not be formed without prior biological knowledge?

11 hours ago, Boydstun said:

IS NO METHOD HANDED DOWN FROM PHILOSOPHY NOR EVER CONCEIVED AS A ROUTE TO SOLID KNOWLEDGE BY PHILOSOPHY

Not ever YET, but presumably, a proper theory of induction - a la Piekoff, let's say - would set methodological boundaries on the study of physics in a more secure fashion than those employed by Newton. Is it wrong to say that a proper theory of induction would have improved Newton's process? And are you suggesting that the "divisions" between "sciences" are historical phenomena rather than logical/philosophical?

2 hours ago, EC said:

Science is the specific usage of (proper reason and evidence based) epistemology applied to the Universe as a whole.

Where I get caught up is that it appears as though science, as a sub-branch of epistemology, employs the same method (induction) to get to its truths as philosophy does to get to its truths. It makes perfect sense to me that epistemology sets the terms for inductive inference, but I'm under the impression that inductive inference is necessary for formulating a correct epistemology.

Also, I wanted to mention that your TJ quote has been bouncing around in my mind for a couple weeks now. It seems a fantastic way of describing philosophy as a whole (and Objectivism especially) and resembles the conception of philosophy as having "branches". The rationalists seem to have a strong commitment to standing like a rock while the empiricists are happy to swim with the current. But conceiving of reality (or more properly, conceiving of one's conception of reality) as solid at bottom and fluid up top can be applied in so many ways - for example, the will as neither deterministic nor supernatural. It's goes right to heart of Rand's definition of objectivity and of uniting mind and body.

[DavidOdden]

38 minutes ago, HowardRoarkSpaceDetective said:

Objectivist politics is universally valid. Rand says little to nothing about how to select government officials, however I would imagine that the correct process, whatever it is, would be universal as well and therefore a "philosophically" truth rather than a "scientific" truth that pertains to only a specific category of existents, say, nations of a certain size, culture, etc.

Especially with respect to political questions, the answer is “the same” only in “the same context”. Nevertheless, Objectivism does not advocate considering what is allowed on a subjective case-by-case basis. First, let’s consider a particular property right, copyright, which gives the author of a literary work the exclusive right to make copies of his work. Unlike tangible property, where you have to do something to maintain your property (lest it rot or slide down hill), the property right “copyright” requires no maintenance. Therefore, as Rand argues, it must have a definite period. This is recognized in all (modern) copyright laws. The general rule in the US is “the life of the author plus 70 years”, but originally it was 14 years (then 28 with optional 14 year extension, next 28+28). In other countries (following the Berne Convention) it is life + 50, except that in the EU it was increased to life plus 70. In Bangladesh it is life + 60, Colombia is life + 80, in Eritrea it is life or 50 (whichever is longer).

The current numbers were arrived at by reference to a primary desideratum: this property right should last for the life of the author. Since this property right can be inherited, it was noted that an 80 year old author could create a work (perhaps hoping to assure financial security for the heirs), then might die a week later. A strict “life of the author” law would lead to premature termination of this property right, which gave rise to the “life plus” scheme. The number is mainly directed at the question “how long do people live?”. We can nitpick the answer until the cows come home, at some point we have to select a number. Yes, you can object “70 is arbitrary, why not 71”. The law has to set concrete, objective limits. The age of majority is another example, again, why not 17 years and 180 days, of 17 years and 51 days…?

The law is full of seemingly-arbitrary decisions, which are motivated by a general and universal fact, but which have to be implemented with a specific decision. In a hypothetical world where Americans live for 180 years, the specific duration of copyright would probably be reconsidered. The law also applies certain standards (admittedly not very well articulated – the “reasonable man” standard) in deciding whether a criminal initiation of force has taken place. Is a certain action “initiation of force”? The act has to be evaluated in a specific social context, insofar as the concept includes threats and not just stabbing to death.

Then the question of whether there should be a unicameral, bicameral or tricameral system of government, or who gets to vote for said representatives, or what the duties and powers of each chamber are, is guided by fundamental philosophical facts, but is not fully determined by any philosophy.

[Boydstun]

Quote

SB: Rand took her definition of life as self-generated, self-sustaining action from biology books.

Quote

HRSD: So in doing this, was she taking a quicker/more rigorous route to her definition, or can we say that a philosophy of life could not be formed without prior biological knowledge?

HRSD,

There was no need to originate her own definition or for her to do any tweaking to standard biology texts and their definitions in order to get on with the the philosophical project she could undertake upon that modern scientific knowledge. And she wanted her philosophy to be seamlessly integrated with firm science and ordinary experience.

Concerning your second query in the quote above: Rand's philosophy so far as it concerns the arena of the living as topic can be set surely, I say, upon biological knowledge as was available at the time of Aristotle and Galen. That much biology was enough for the same definition, the same elementary conception of what the living is, including even that life is an end in itself. One wouldn't need to know that there is a nervous system, that organisms are cellular, that thought and emotions are not features belonging not to the heart, but the brain, or that the heart pumps blood through a returning circuit. There are other factors that would make it unlikely that Rand's ethics, a philosophy of human life, could have been conceived prior to the modern age. Like us, the ancients knew that humans die and are susceptible to various sorts of threats from nature and other humans. They knew also that humans needed to produce in order to survive. But they had no experience of the vast results of science and technology such as we have today (and the ways [[e.g. in electrodynamics] we use mathematics to bring those into existence). And they had no conception of the philosophies that would be arising between their time and the time of Rand. Like any philosopher with a big philosophy, Rand formulated her theory of value and ethics minded of all the intervening philosophy (and theology) and history of philosophic ideas available, and she knew that modern science and technology, as well as history of philosophical thought, were influences with her potential audience for her own different, positive proposals in philosophy.

 

Edited August 1, 2023 by Boydstun

[Grames]

19 hours ago, HowardRoarkSpaceDetective said:

A related question might be: Am I conceiving of this whole question incorrectly? If so, is that an error in method which could be remedied by a better understanding of philosophy as a concept?

The "shape" of philosophy?  The boundaries?  Okay.  Do you remember the purpose of a definition?  What is the definition of philosophy?

[Boydstun]

 

Quote

SB:. . . in the end demonstrating that the force causing free fall at the surface of the earth is identical to the central attractive force pulling satellites into their orbits (such as planetary orbits about the sun) IS NO METHOD HANDED DOWN FROM PHILOSOPHY NOR EVER CONCEIVED AS A ROUTE TO SOLID KNOWLEDGE BY PHILOSOPHY—not Aristotle, not F. Bacon, not Locke. 

Quote

HRSD: Not ever YET, but presumably, a proper theory of induction - a la Piekoff, let's say - would set methodological boundaries on the study of physics in a more secure fashion than those employed by Newton. Is it wrong to say that a proper theory of induction would have improved Newton's process? 

Philosophers have gotten themselves informed on the content of the sciences and on modern logic and the frontiers of mathematics. They then write about what methods they see those professionals using. C. S. Peirce found not only induction, but abduction. Philosophers continue to think about how these work and how they help deliver the spectacular successes of modern science, which is alive and well from Newton to now, notwithstanding pessimistic orations on science from the ignorant peanut gallery of humanities folk.

Recent ongoing informed work by philosophers on science and its methods:

The Material Theory of Induction by John D. Norton

The Art of Abduction by Igor Douven

The Inference that Makes Science by Ernan McMullin

People making discoveries in the world use methods that may have not received so much close examination as later a philosopher might bring on it. I’m not aware of any such methods being improved by later explicit exposition and elucidation of the method by philosophers. But I haven’t heard of science or the other specialized rationally organized disciplines being held back either by advice from philosophers (largely ignored perhaps). Actually, there was a case in which a philosophical view calling for a certain constraint on good deductions yielded a mathematical proof that had been unsuccessfully aimed for (aimed for because the thesis was pretty obviously true) to that point. That man was a philosopher and a mathematician (and a priest) Bernard Bolzano. Following his own special advice on deductions, he found a proof of the mean value theorem.

William Whewell in the century before last noticed a very effective sort of argumentation in natural science, which he called Consilience of Inductions. It may be valuable to make this method explicitly known, but without such explicit identification, it seems to me that even as far back as Aristotle the method was profitably in use, as when Aristotle mustered all the independent lines of evidence pointing to the result that the earth is in fact round. The result set by that consilience was so persuasive that it held in firm minds for about 500 years, both minds and the result crumbling finally with the onset of the Dark Ages.

For a good while now, no philosophy of science is given serious attention by the professionals (or by me) if the characterizations of science are not backed up with precise illustration in actual episodes, actual cases, in the history of science. As I recall, the little book The Logical Leap – Induction in Physics, by David Harriman, marshals at least some illustrative history. Leonard Peikoff’s ideas on induction are presented and applied in that book. I don’t recall any claim that use of this method in physics would improve physics, such as a claim that if Newton had used this method (and a claim that he did not use it) he would have done a better job. That would have been a silly claim. I hope your suggestion that Objectivism logically entails such silliness is not your point. That would be a false point.

 

[HowardRoarkSpaceDetective]

@grames A definition is for identifying the essential characteristics of a group of existents as against all other existents, yeah? 

"Philosophy is the science that studies the fundamental aspects of the nature of existence."

Not sure if that's a definition or a description.

Also,

"Philosophy is the foundation of science; epistemology is the foundation of philosophy."

This just throws me for a loop. Is epistemology a branch or a foundation, or both?

I guess my motivation for this post is the attempt to concretize philosophy.

3 hours ago, Boydstun said:

I don’t recall any claim that use of this method in physics would improve physics

I think what I'm saying is that anyone will benefit from a more explicit formulation of their own method. Perhaps his method was perfectly sound, but at the very least, he might have spent less time considering what would turn out to be various blind alleys, assuming he, like any investigator, was prone to encounter some.

On the other hand, maybe I'm misunderstanding what is meant by "method" in this discussion. I'm of the deduction-happy variety, so when I hear "method" I intuitively hear "formula". However, I know that Piekoff (I started The Logical Leap, but realized I was in over my head - a fact which may be notable here) called his project a validation of induction rather than a prescription for proper induction.

[HowardRoarkSpaceDetective]

9 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

Then the question of whether there should be a unicameral, bicameral or tricameral system of government, or who gets to vote for said representatives, or what the duties and powers of each chamber are, is guided by fundamental philosophical facts, but is not fully determined by any philosophy.

I guess I can't imagine what factors would differentiate the proper context for, say, a tricameral system versus a bicameral. More to the point, what is it about those particular factors (contextual ones) that distinguishes them from factors which are universal? The phrase "as such" seems to play an important role here. Rand was concerned with government as such.

To use your first example, it would seem that average life expectancy is a nonessential characteristic of man rather than a defining one. Objectivism prescribes rules for copyright as such, but not for copyright in, say, the 20th or 21st century - except where Rand provides illustrative examples. But what's to stop us from making claims about 21st century man as such and calling it philosophy rather than legal science?

See, this is where I begin to wonder whether I'm lapsing into the synthetic-analytic thing. However - to use Piekoff's example - the defining characteristics of ice (solid water), as well as the non-defining (floats), are scientific rather than philosophical facts, so I don't know if the synthetic-analytic dichotomy is relevant here. Still, it's tempting to think that philosophy involves defining characteristics ("as such") of a particular set of concepts (existence, reason, man, art) while science involves both the defining and non-defining characteristics of some other set of concepts that is chiefly physical (gravity, cells, electricity, food chains) - and that's not to mention where to place history. 

And then there are the soft sciences. Psychology and sociology just seem to me like philosophy rebranded. Cultural and neurological facts are more scientific than philosophical, but emotions and social ethics are philosophical. On the other hand, subjects like networks or computing are closer to math and logic, which are the queens of science and philosophy, respectively, rather than belonging to either camp.

*** Furthermore, I can't figure out whether "analytic" refers to nonessential-but-universal characteristics of a concept (such as Piekoff's example of the fact that ice floats) or to circumstantial facts, such as how much the ice caps melted last year. Life expectancy could fall into either category since it's treated as universal, like the fact that ice floats in water, but is also not an unchanging fact about man the way that floating is an unchanging fact about ice. So I find it hard not to classify facts into philosophical (synthetic/essential), scientific (analytic/nonessential), and circumstantial. So maybe my original confusion runs along those lines. ***

My point is: I'm all turned around here.

[DavidOdden]

Let’s start with unicameral vs. bicameral. We know that American bicameral system is the result of the English system which started as a unicameral system of “ruling elite” and bifurcated that into greater vs. lesser elites. The American analog is based on a political compromise regarding the power and rights of “the people” vs. “the states”. We can now ask, is it legitimate to maintain the Senate and is it legitimate to maintain the states? But wait, also, is it legitimate to have an executive branch as opposed to a legislative branch?

Geography is a very common theme in political structure, for good reason. If you live in Georgia, you are subject to the laws of Georgia, and so is the guy next to you. Chaos and confusion would ensue if people were subject to laws according to some sign-up system where you subscribe to the laws of organization A vs. organization B. But this only applies to jurisdictions and laws, and not the structure of the lawmaking body. Suppose we were to have a single lawmaking body of 50 individuals. Theory 1 is that every voter can cast 5 votes, and the top 50 vote-getters rule the country (geography plays no role). Theory 2 is that the country is divided into 50 population-based chunks i.e. most like the House of Representatives, but without the states. Theory 3 is that the country is divided into 50 equal-sized geographical chunks… These approaches reflect different theories of the interests of the population, structured so as to best limit government to doing nothing more than protecting individual rights, and is not based on the false premise that every individual in society is John Galt. Theory 1 favors ideology, which is on the face of it the best basis for selecting lawmakers. I can’t come up with a good rationale for Theory 2, but let’s just accept democracy for the moment. Theory 3 favors recognition of the somewhat-metaphysically given (rivers, mountains, snow, adjacency to a fascist dictatorship) and these are rational interests.

The Constitution in fact provides another basis for dividing chunks of government: what does / can the body do? The powers of the House and Senate are not identical. Perhaps then there might be one body that proposes laws and a second that confirms them. Plus, there could be a branch of specialists that “evaluates” them – the judiciary branch (currently appointed, not elected). My point here is to first indicate some of the considerations that could lead you to having a single-body government versus a two- or three-body government. The larger point is that Objectivism does not say which of these forms of government is proper for government as such, and just like the case of copyright, there are questions of the science of politics that go beyond what Objectivism, or any other philosophy, gives you as the answer. Objectivism simply says “Whatever protects the rights of individuals”.

Again, Objectivism does not mandate anything about intellectual property as a primitive axiom of the theory of rights, beyond the fact that a man has the right to the product of his mind and body. Objectivism sets certain limits on what those rights should be, but doesn’t say whether the duration of copyright should be 14 years, or life plus 90. Objective laws cannot be framed exclusively in terms of defining, essential characteristics, for example “man is a rational animal”. “Dying from ingesting poison” is not an essential characteristic of man, yet it is proper that there be a law against poisoning people. Essential characteristics serve the purpose of saying “What are you referring to?”, therefore laws against poisoning people are stated in terms of people, not “animals” or “life forms”. The law protects rights, but we do not limit laws to vague statements as to what a right is, we say under a regime of objective law what actions are forbidden (the underlying reason being that those actions violate rights).

IMO the ASD is sort of irrelevant since it is a meaningless mental exercise of philosophers, however, if you find yourself thinking “By definition, X must be true” where X is some concrete fact, then I would move away from that mode of thinking. We could talk about psychology separately. No philosophy will tell you what the just-noticible difference between two vowel formants will be.

[Grames]

19 hours ago, HowardRoarkSpaceDetective said:

@grames A definition is for identifying the essential characteristics of a group of existents as against all other existents, yeah? 

"Philosophy is the science that studies the fundamental aspects of the nature of existence."

Not sure if that's a definition or a description.

Also,

"Philosophy is the foundation of science; epistemology is the foundation of philosophy."

This just throws me for a loop. Is epistemology a branch or a foundation, or both?

Definition entry at the Ayn Rand Lexicon.  The meaning of any concept is what it refers to.  A definition tells us what a concept includes (and excludes).  

A proper definition is given in terms of genus and differentia.  The genus of philosophy is 'science' and the differentia is 'the fundamental aspects of the nature of existence'.   The ordinary definition of 'science' in the sense used here is just "A systematic method or body of knowledge in a given area" (From The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition via Wordnik).

That philosophy is the foundation of science and also a science itself is not much of a paradox, it just means that Rand is asserting a hierarchical relationship between philosophy and the other sciences.  Other sciences are logically dependent upon philosophy because it is philosophy that explicitly identifies metaphysical axioms such as existence and identity and the methods of logic without which no other science could function as a systematic investigation.  Specifically and most commonly that method is the principle of non-contradiction.

Epistemology is the foundation of philosophy because the other parts of philosophy (ethics, politics, economics, ... ) are all also dependent upon epistemology to supply the methods used for systematic investigation.  Epistemology is both a special area of investigation within philosophy (a branch) and a foundation because it enables other branches to be investigated systematically.

[HowardRoarkSpaceDetective]

@grames So it seems like epistemology is to philosophy what philosophy is to science. Still, I think the itch I'm trying to scratch is delineating "fundamental aspects of the nature of existence" from other aspects. I'm tempted to say that metaphysics can be defined the same way, but Rand defines metaphysics as dealing with existence as a whole. Meanwhile, subjects like man's survival and concept formation don't pertain so much to the nature of existence as to the natures of particular existents. 

Epistemology, for example, is only applicable, as far as we know, in a small corner of existence, namely Earth - this goes as well for ethics, politics and art. It also resembles disciplines which are regarded as strictly scientific, almost like an "ecology of concepts", where the mind is like a biome.

Of course, there is the normative aspect of epistemology, ethics, politics and art that differentiate them from the sciences. It also differentiates them, however, from metaphysics.

It's possible I'm expecting the answer I'm looking for to be more systematic than it really is. To call back to my initial question, I'm engaging in a bit of polemics against the empiricist mode of thought that classifies beliefs into "faith", science", and "opinion" - the first being bullshit, the middle being basically materialism, and the last being what they have managed to reduce philosophy to. One aim of that polemics is to justify believing in truths that don't vary between people. So while philosophy studies those truths in focus, science seems to be concerned, not with "truths" that vary between people, but with "facts" that do, such as height, race, brain chemistry, culture, etc. An objectivist would argue that all men are capable of reason. Materialists, on the other hand, believe firmly that "reason" exists on a spectrum between a rock and Einstein (not a philosopher but a physicist).

That gap has been very difficult for me to cross. It almost feels intrinsicist to say that all humans have reason, free will, individuality, etc. in their fullest senses. The blurred line between philosophy and science is similar.

[Doug Morris]

On 8/1/2023 at 11:45 AM, HowardRoarkSpaceDetective said:

It feels odd to say that philosophy can know fundamental truths yet cannot tell us what a quark is.

There are different kinds of fundamental truths, fundamental to different things.

Philosophy provides truths fundamental to our approach to knowledge and to life.  Everyone needs to know these.

Physics tells us the fundamental nature of the physical universe.  Everyone's existence emerges from these.  But no one needs to know them in the same sense that we need to know philosophy.

   

[Grames]

Metaphysics is so meta that it should be a short subject.  We need the explicit affirmation that "existence really does exist' just to forestall some stupid shenanigans by people trying to shill their secret cultic knowledge.  Metaphysics is also where the law of identity belongs.  Non-contradiction closely follows on the law of identity but is epistemology.  That's it for the "most fundamental" aspects of existence.  The context is not "the most fundamental physics" but the most abstract statements that can apply to everything.

On 8/2/2023 at 9:34 PM, HowardRoarkSpaceDetective said:

That gap has been very difficult for me to cross. It almost feels intrinsicist to say that all humans have reason, free will, individuality, etc. in their fullest senses. The blurred line between philosophy and science is similar.

It would be intrinsicist, you are not wrong there.  It is a noncontroversial fact that all humans do NOT have reason, free will, individuality, etc. in their fullest senses, only the capacity for such.  Gaining one's fullest degree of free will, individuality, reason  etc. is where the normative aspects of philosophy come in.  

[HowardRoarkSpaceDetective]

2 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

Philosophy provides truths fundamental to our approach to knowledge and to life.

I think the "life" part there is the most vital (so to speak). Philosophy as a toolkit for happiness is a formulation that I had not seen anywhere until Objectivism.

36 minutes ago, Grames said:

Gaining one's fullest degree of free will, individuality, reason  etc. is where the normative aspects of philosophy come in.  

I would tend to agree. Actually, I had that thought most profoundly while I was watching West World. I don't remember exactly why, but I realized that free will just does not operate at all times in all people. We are free to forfeit it. In the same spirit, I've started to view many philosophies (especially Nietzsche's emotionalism) as perfectly true on the condition that you neglect to be rational.

[Boydstun]

HRSD,

Rand, as most philosophers, bought the ancient metaphysical principle that from nothing, nothing comes. Or nothing comes from nothing. She held the broad-as-broad-can-be metaphysical principle that a thing having no identity does not exist. She held to the metaphysical principle that any thing that has a cause is caused by the identity of itself, including its constitution, and its situation. She held to the metaphysical principle that there are no contradictions in reality, including no contradictions between the parts of a thing and the whole of it. Rand took her metaphysical axiom “Existence exists” to entail that the universe as a whole cannot come into or go out of existence. For her, this meant that from metaphysics (based in perceptual experience) we know that duration is applicable to the universe as a whole and that the duration of the universe is endless.

Rand, as you noted, took the subject of metaphysics to be “the fundamental aspects of the nature of existence”, and she defined the discipline of metaphysics to be “the study of existence as such.” That would be what is often called general metaphysics, which Leonard Peikoff thought of as “the ultimate keeper of the context,” a conception I like.

Even in general metaphysics, such as the views in the first paragraph of this post, one has begun to employ standards for knowledge and correct epistemology and to have some concept of the relation of mind to the world. Value and standards in existence more extensively—such as in ethics or esthetics and in epistemology—requires more special metaphysics nested within general metaphysics. For Rand that needed special metaphysics is the nature of living organisms and the division of it that is human life and human mind.

I emphatically disagree with the idea that before one could have metaphysical knowledge one must have a justified epistemology. (That was Kant’s spiel, and it is profoundly incorrect.) Aquinas was on the right track when he said “Before one can know what truth is, one must first have some truth.” We can know something, and that can become a tool for knowing more (this is from Spinoza). How we have come to know something can be brought under examination after we’ve come to have that something known, and the examination will be in terms of other things known.

Edited August 4, 2023 by Boydstun

[HowardRoarkSpaceDetective]

5 hours ago, Boydstun said:

How we have come to know something can be brought under examination after we’ve come to have that something known, and the examination will be in terms of other things known.

Okay, this definitely goes to the heart of something of which I think I had almost consciously realized I was unsure. For Rand, is this perception? If so, that jibes with the way I've been thinking about the validity of perception, with percepts being puzzle pieces that can only fit together in one way ultimately. And while they don't provide revealed truth, they do impose something unambiguous. From there - at the risk of suggesting deduction - it's sort of a matter of "solving for x" or "filling in the blanks", if you will. 

So, is this where ostensive definitions enter in? I never really considered percepts themselves to be a kind of knowledge, but I can see that being the case. It's easy to study Objectivism and then take off running with the idea that unvalidated knowledge is no knowledge whatsoever, but an ostensive definition - as well as a 'subconscious integration', for that matter - appears to have a claim to being something of an 'unknown known'. Moreover, this approach would seem to bring some light to the notion that intrinsicism habitually treats concepts as percepts, especially considering that the relationship between percepts and higher-level concepts - as well as for, again, the nature of subconscious integrations - was hardly a question in most ancient minds (an unknown unknown, if you like).

Also, that Aquinas quote will take some chewing. I think the rationalist in me wants to agree with Kant. Descartes is similar, no? See, I'm the type that wants to deduce from A is A. But I've had a hard time shifting over to Rand's more empirical foundations. In Understanding Objectivism, Piekoff notes that many/most Objectivists tend towards rationalism. That makes perfect sense to me. I was in an empirical phase when I found Rand, so if I had encountered more empiricism, I wouldn't have been turned off I don't think. But, as I'm fundamentally more rationalistic, her philosophy was the break from consequentialism I'd been needing.

[Boydstun]

HRSD,

Rand had a bit in Galt's speech saying that the senses tell one only that something exists, but what exists is up to your mind. That is kind of like your puzzle in perception idea.

I don't trust that idea of Rand 1957. It smacks too much of 18th century models of perception, and rather like sense-datum theory of the early 20th century.

In the 1960's, Rand had further development in her thoughts on perception or at least in what she had become ready to put into writing for publication. She took it that the brain automatically did the sorting out and integration that is required to deliver percepts to us and to the higher animals. Those are of definite objects and motions in the world, not just smaller bits or aspects of them which we then have to sort out with our conscious thinking. The notion of percepts she likely got from C.S. Peirce, who championed them as the starting point of our thinking about the world. She knew of course that what we are presented with at that level can be illusory, but presumably she would still have that sorted out by conscious thought, as she had had illusions sorted out in the Galt's Speech earlier.

In her 1957 also, she had (somewhat obliquely contra Kant): "'Things as they are' are things as perceived by your mind."  Here the concept of "perceived" is a more general sense, including both sensory perception and higher mental discernment. That is a sense in common currency. Assimilating her later writings beyond 1957, it is natural enough to take her picture in which both sensory perception and conceptual operations in coordination yield things as perceived by one's mind, which is things as they are.

Descartes was in the line thinking that right method needed explicit declaration before knowledge could be gotten. Some of his scientific discoveries can be cast in the form of his early "Rules for the Right Direction of the Mind." But we might give account of his successes in terms of our more contemporary methods of science as well (and perhaps more plausibly). Coming to widest knowledge, called by Aristotle and Descartes "first philosophy" and called by us "metaphysics", Descartes again thought (wrongly in my view) that method must be found and justified before secure knowledge could be attained. He thought he found that method by doubting (or anyway pretending to doubt) everything he formerly thought he knew, so as to find something indubitable—his own existence as a thinker and doubter and the usual stuff of our minds. He then went on to try to prove the existence of an all-powerful and good God who would not deceive us about the things we think we rationally know. Therefore, the world really does exist and so forth.

Rand and some others of her century took it to be wrong-headed from the start to doubt that one knows the world exists. That existence is perfectly known in sensory perception, and it is from there that any proofs of anything should proceed. No floating in some beyond-the-world and proving such things as the existence of the world from that no-such-place. Descartes thought his indubitable knowledge (of his mental existence implicit in "I doubt" or more generally in "I think") together with knowledge by proof of a most perfect, therefore all-powerful and purely good, being ruling the universe. He got some criticism (and perhaps some laughter) for maintaining that geometers who know about God's role have geometry in better standing as knowledge than an atheist geometer would have.

Aquinas had that implicit in one's thinking was one's existence. But he did not think of that circumstance as some sort of foundation for philosophy. And he rejected the sort of proof for God's existence that Descartes had revived from Anselm et al. who were before the time of Aquinas. 

Young children at the one-word stage of development have concepts, but without subject-predicate form of thought, they cannot form definitions. I proposed three decades ago that such children (all of us when children) instead use action-schemas in lieu of definitions for keeping in separate classes different sorts of things in the world they encounter and some of their interrelations. That seems still to hold up to subsequent research. This pinch-hitter for definitions seems richer than ostensive definitions.

Edited August 5, 2023 by Boydstun

[Boydstun]

8 hours ago, Boydstun said:

. . .

. . . Descartes thought his indubitable knowledge (of his mental existence implicit in "I doubt" or more generally in "I think") together with knowledge by proof of a most perfect, therefore all-powerful and purely good, being ruling the universe. 

. . .

. . . ruling the universe established that our knowledge, if clear and distinct, is surely correct, a firm grasp of reality, including in science.

Sorry for this error and one in my post before my last, wherein I have a that where a what should be. It was hard (and unwise) to keep going at that hour.

[tadmjones]

More inter webs serendipity, I’m currently listening to an audiobook version of Whitehead’s Process and Reality. Just experienced a section on a critique of Descartes, Hume , Locke and Kant and theories of perception and resultant conceptualization theory.

This nascent exploration into his thought has caused ( or in Whiteheadian vernacular the actual occasion of my understanding has satisfied the apprehension of the thought or contextually notion) that Existence exists is more satisfyingly felt as the universe is the state of being.
 

This exploration is putting a lot more meat and flesh on the bones on my previous conception of existence as and metaphysics.

Edited August 5, 2023 by tadmjones
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