The progress science has made in the last 400 years is staggering. Who would have thought that we could trace the history of our universe back to its origins 14 billion years ago? Science has increased the length and quality of our lives, and technology, commonplace in the modern world, seemed like magic to our ancestors.
For all these reasons and more, science is rightly celebrated and respected. But a healthy pro-science attitude is not the same as “scientism,” the view that the scientific method is the only way to uncover truth. As the question of consciousness emerges, there may be a limit to what we can learn through science alone.
Perhaps the most studied form of scientism was the early 20th century movement known as logical positivism. Logical positivists adopted the “verification principle,” which held that a sentence whose truth cannot be tested by observation and experiment is either logically trivial or meaningless. With this weapon they hoped to dismiss all metaphysical questions as not only false but also absurd.
Nowadays logical positivism is almost universally rejected by philosophers. First of all, logical positivism is self-defeating because the verification principle itself cannot be scientifically tested and therefore can only be true if it is meaningless. In fact, something like this problem haunts all unqualified forms of scientism. There are no scientific experiments we can do to prove that scientism is true; and so if scientism is true, then its truth cannot be proven.
Despite all these deep problems, a large part of society assumes that scientism is correct. Most people in the UK are completely unaware that “metaphysics” is included in almost every philosophy department in the country. By metaphysics philosophers do not mean something spooky or supernatural; This is a technical term for philosophical investigations as opposed to scientific investigations into the nature of reality.
truth without science
How is it possible to learn the truth without doing science? The distinguishing feature of philosophical theories is that they are “empirically equivalent,” meaning you cannot decide between them by experiment.
Take the example of my research field: philosophy of consciousness. Some philosophers think that consciousness emerges from physical processes in the brain; this is the “physicalist” view. Others think the opposite is true: Consciousness is primary, and the physical world emerges from consciousness. One version of this is the “panpsyche” view, which holds that consciousness goes down to the basic building blocks of reality; The word derives from two Greek words pan (all) and psyche (soul or mind).
Others think that both consciousness and the physical world are fundamental but radically different; This is the view of the “dualist”. Most importantly, you cannot distinguish between these views in an experiment because for any given scientific data, each of the views will interpret that data in their own terms.
For example, let’s say we have scientifically discovered that a certain type of brain activity is associated with an organism’s conscious experience. The physicalist will interpret this as a form of organization that transforms unconscious physical processes, such as electrical signals between brain cells, into conscious experience, whereas the panpsychist will interpret it as a form of organization that combines individual conscious particles into a larger state of consciousness. system. Thus we find two different philosophical interpretations of the same scientific data.
If we cannot figure out through experiment which view is correct, how can we choose between them? In fact, the selection process is not very different from what we find in science. In addition to appealing to experimental data, scientists also appeal to a theory’s theoretical merits (e.g., how simple, elegant, and unified it is).
Philosophers may also appeal to theoretical virtues to justify their preferred positions. For example, while ideas of simplicity count against the dualist theory of consciousness, which is less simple than its rivals insofar as it posits two kinds of fundamental things (physical material and consciousness), physicalism and panpsychism are equally simple. some kind of fundamental matter (either physical matter or consciousness).
It is also possible that some theories are inconsistent, but careful analysis is required to reveal them. For example, I have argued that physicalist views of consciousness are inconsistent (although, as in philosophy, this is controversial).
There is no guarantee that these methods will yield a clear winner. There may be multiple, consistent and equally simple competing theories on particular philosophical topics; In this case we must be agnostic about which is correct. This in itself would be an important philosophical finding about the limits of human knowledge.
Philosophy can be frustrating because there is so much disagreement. However, this is also valid for many fields of science such as history and economics. And there are some questions on free will, for example, where there is modest consensus.
The tendency to confuse philosophy with the growing anti-science movement undermines the united front against the real and harmful opposition to science that we see in climate change denial and anti-vax conspiracies.
Whether we like it or not, we cannot escape philosophy. When we try to do this, we end up with bad philosophy. The first line of Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow’s The Grand Design boldly declared: “Philosophy is dead.” The book then went on to engage in incredibly crude philosophical debates about free will and objectivity.
If I were to write a book that made controversial statements about particle physics, it would rightly be ridiculed because I have not been trained in the relevant skills, have not read the literature, and have not subjected my views in this field to scrutiny. peer review. And yet there are many examples of scientists devoid of any philosophical training publishing very poor books on philosophical topics without affecting their credibility.
This may sound bitter. However, I truly believe that society will be deeply enriched by greater knowledge of philosophy. I hope that one day we will leave this “scientific” period of history and understand the vital role that both science and philosophy must play in the noble project of finding out what reality is like.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Philip Goff received funding from the Templeton Foundation.