This topic reminds me of my favorite Gödel anecdote: “The mathematician Gregory Chaitin recently told a story of a distinguished physicist who sat down next to Gödel at a dinner party. Trying to make conversation with Gödel, he relayed some exciting new discovery from the research in the field of astrophysics. After telling of the results and waiting for the reaction, Gödel simply replied ‘I don't believe in empirical science. I only believe in a priori truths’.”
As a like and commentician you all should defer to me as to whether this video needs to be liked and commented on. The answer is yes, there's a very large consensus in our community about this.
i find deferentialism to be such a strange position, when you can easily argue that the standards and fundamental framework for mathematics and science are simply themselves philosphical positions, that have been successful at predicting/describing reality and achieving a consensus. while this is useful I doubt anyone would argue that by the standards of science and mathematics that there is a measurable way or logical proof to determine if the work of philosophy is completed or even pointless. the dogma counterargument is fairly convincing for me. this is interesting though as many times I have explicitly said when exploring a philosophical problem that at a certain point this problem should be solved by psychologists, or that more information is needed to more meaningfully explore this problem. in this way the fields of science and mathematics seem to function more as senses for the brain of philosophy to organise and refine. I agree with the argument you present at the end that encourages cross-disciplinary cooperation rather than conflict
Yes, this is a good point. Deferentialism seems to be a solidification of this really common fallacy I see as really common among proponents of scientism: "Useful models are indicative of truth." It's this belief I think that forms the core of a default whole philosophical system. Deferentialism seems to be just another wing of this system. I don't know whether to call it scientism or scientific materialism, but does act in a dogmatic way and, ironically, often ignores common knowledge in cognitive science in favor of a naive sort of materialism.
I think the more productive relationship between philosophy and science/mathematics is knowing when _not_ to solidify a position, and deferring not to the "established facts of science/math" as if there is such a thing, but to the processes of discovery that these fields of study entail. Philosophy often postulates things that can be mathematically proven or empirically verified, and it's important for philosophers to at least have an understanding of what questions are answerable through processes other than philosophical inquiry and what tools are appropriate for discerning different kinds of truths. Otherwise, philosophy itself runs the risk of adopting and persisting ideas that, according to other forms of knowledge-creation, are patently false. There's also other avenues for philosophy that open up by analyzing math and science. Not taking math and science as gospel, but by noticing evidence and fields of study that have not yet been discussed in philosophy, and building new concepts off of those new developments. Mind/body dualism comes to mind, where advancements in neuroscience don't necessarily _disprove_ Cartesian dualism, but open up new possible philosophical positions for a purely embodied understanding of subjectivity, or even a new kind of mind/body dualism based on things like information theory or complexity theory. In that way it's not that philosophy "defers to established facts" but finds new questions to ask within the new discoveries of science and mathematics.
I think that deferentialists might be mistaken if they argue that mathematical fictionalism contradicts mathematics due to the fact that it's not entirely clear that the field of mathematics establishes the existence of numbers (as the video explained) I think a good example of what it would *actually* look like if we were trying to contradict stuff that is well established in math is Terrence Howard (the actor) and his new "terryology" system of math where he's trying to argue that 1x1=2 (an absolute joke of course)
Yeah. How many mathematicians even believe numbers are "real" in the first place? Did they do a survey? It seems awfully bold of deferentialists to just assume this.
Agree, and I'd also argue that the argument has problems regarding definition of science and it's methodology, math and it's "truths" are a borderline case, and I would argue that even if you agree with classical deferentialist arguments, due to uncertain nature of math's methods, they don't apply here.
Arguments about mathematics may just lead to another branch of mathematics. If we imagine a world in which there are no primes above 100, and we work out some of the details, this could lead to a new number system, or topology. It may be a gift to mathematics and science to consider such thing. We shouldn't constrain it.
I think Lewis' objection to using quantum physics to guide philosophy was less a matter of principle than a statement on the state of metaphysical interpretations of quantum physics, of which physicists themselves are very much not in agreement. The situation hasn’t much improved. Look at the debates (on RUclips and elsewhere) between say Everetian many worlds, hidden variables, superdeterminism and shut up and calculate Copenhagen interpretations. If there is no consensus among the physicists then philosophers likely have no reason to defer.
Philosophers discuss the most basic topics from every science: time from physics, mind from cognition, spirit from psychology, meaning from logic, possibility from math, complexity from biology, big bang from cosmology, change from chemistry, religion from culturology and so on.
The use of correlation and statistical probability, rather than causation, in medical science opens the door to philosophical discussions around public policy. For example, should public policy prohibit certain products due to their correlation with negative outcomes? Consider the correlation between tobacco use, socioeconomic status, and the branding of tobacco and alcohol products with sports stars and celebratory influencers. While correlation doesn't equal causation, these relationships raise important questions about the role of regulation and public health interventions. Should policymakers restrict advertising or implement stricter controls on these products to protect vulnerable populations? Presentism reminds me of the Van Halen 70's classic 'Runnin' with the Devil.
Philosophy in the analytical tradition is deferential, in that it regards scientific knowledge as the gold standard of knowledge. But I agree that it is valuable to have people with very broad intellectual interests standing back and offering a critical perspective on all branches of knowledge in the way philosophers do. In my experience (as a scientist) scientists themselves are often rather poor at doing that. Many scientists, particularly the ones highly visible in the media, are good scientists but lousy philosophers. They tend to make the kind of naive errors that newcomers to philosophical thinking make. Analytical philosophy has developed good tools for critical enquiry and people who ignore them will just repeat well-worn mistakes.
If the premises are identical and the question is empirical, and the examination thorough, then accept the solution. If one has a convincing argument against the solution or for its alternative, continue to pursue the question.
I think blind, principled deferentialism is ill advised. In the case of mathematics, I think it is a mistake to claim that it makes any metaphysical claims, or for that matter any sort of philosophically relevant claims at all. Mathematics is just a collection of systems together with language to describe them. At best it can be used as a constraint on philosophical ideas in some specific circumstances. In that sense mathematics is similar in its relationship to philosophy as logic: a formal tool that helps us avoid making reasoning mistakes. As for the sciences, the situation is more nuanced. I think philosophers should certainly take scientific findings into account. The main scenario where philosophy should defer to science is when certain questions previously debated by philosophers become testable. This is the natural point where a question leaves the realm of philosophy and moves into the area of the relevant science. But I think the crucial point to make is that deciding whether a question has become testable is itself a philosophical question. Quantum mechanics are testable and scientists have had great success testing them. They have constructed models with amazing predictive power. But what these findings mean for the fundamental nature of reality is, as I see it, still an open question and therefore belongs to philosophy. So, whether philosophy should defer to science is in any particular case a philosophical question. We should be wary of philosophical questions being masqueraded as scientific questions in order to smuggle in unjustified conclusions.
Mathematics does not deal in truth in the same way that science does. Mathematics says: if your application obeys my axioms and definitions, then my theorems will be true in your application.
I think the question of deference may be explored in three parts : How do we define the reality of the problem in question ? What is the relationship of philosophy to this reality ? What is the relationship of science to this reality ? The answer may perhaps be in the overlapping region of the Venn Diagram . Philosophy is in many ways the panaromic view but we also need the close- up view at times. And then again, It depends on the context in which we are viewing the science and the philosophy.
I don't think I understand diferentialism as you've outlined it here yet, but I have some initial thoughts. I think you should've continued with the example of Presentism, that would've made a better example than the fictionalism in mathematics example. Now, if deferentialism is the view that a philosopher that is a scientific realist should not endorse a theory of Time that conflicts with claims in General Relativity - then I am a diferentialist. But if it is the view that philosophers working at the foundations of physics shouldn't exist - i.e., there shoudn't be philosophers questioning the foundations, then I don't accept that. Philosophy seems inevitable in any field, especially at the foundations. I think there is a distinction here, an example of the distinction is this: the question "do numbers exist?" - is an obviously philosophical question, VS questions and puzzles about Infinity - which I think the mathematicians can handle far better than philosophers. It is in this second instance where I think I lean towards diferentialism; I don't think a philosopher of religion, for example, should hold to some other theory that uses the same concept of infinity that mathematicians talk about, in a way that contradicts the established mathematics of infinity! This is the sort of diferentialism that I'd accept. So, a qualified diferentialist might say that philosophers should not hold theories that contradict mathematics or science about those issues which these fields DIRECTLY tackle. This may be vague in some instances, but I hope it gets the point across. The philosophers working at the foundations can obviously criticize and question established scientific theories, since it's possible that the fundamental assumptions are problematic - but even here, we should be good Bayesians and assign the relevant credence; an empirically successful theory vs the conflicting philosophical theory that philosopher endorses. Possibility of the foundations being problematic isn't enough for the philosopher to hold views that conflict with the well-established science in my view, it has to be that they find the fundamental assumptions of that field shaky and unacceptable, and they have weighed the credence of them being incorrect vs the scientists being incorrect. Only then, can they reasonably endorse a theory that conflicts with the consensus in the field (if they are a realist about that field, of course). In the dogma section, you mention replication failures in psychology, I agree. But also the ineffable phenomenal and dual substance consciousness in the philosophy of mind - here I am highlighting the refusal of philosophy to part with some theories despite the vast evidence against them in many instances. It wouldn't be easy to gauge who to side with, in these instances, the philosopher or the scientist. So, credence assignment should be at work when deciding between the philosophical and scientific theories in conflict. But I see I may have deviated from the original question and missed the mark somewhere and I'm too sleepy to think more carefully.
5:14 quote by David Lewis: he is "not ready to take lessons in ontology from quantum physics as it now is; first it must be purified of instrumentalist frivolity, of double thinking deviant logic and of supernatural tales about the power of the observant mind to make things jump" (eg. to explain motion).
Consider Zeno's Achilles and the Tortoise Paradox. Mathematics misconstrues it to mean that the pursuit strategy is that Achilles targets the current position of the tortoise. While the fact is, Zeno required that Achilles target the position of the tortoise at the start of Achilles movement. So the usual mathematics argument is false. So look at the precise assumptions, including the axioms of the mathematics.
No, but is should most certainly not ignore it, as it tends to do now. Science also tends to ignore philosophy, which in being more justified in doing so, still really shouldn't.
Quantum Entanglement and the Emergence of Time: The concept of time as a fundamental aspect of reality is challenged by the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. If two entangled objects instantaneously influence each other regardless of distance, it raises questions about the traditional linear understanding of time. This suggests the possibility of time being an emergent property rather than a fundamental one. Sociological Interpretation of Time as a Control Mechanism: From a social science viewpoint, time can be seen as a construct used to exert control over individuals and groups. This aligns with the concept of time as a tool employed in religious and cultural practices to maintain order and influence behavior. Therefore even modern science, with its limitations and uncertainties, can be perceived as a form of "contemporary magic" used to shape beliefs and actions by the mass consumer. Scientific Uncertainty and the Magic of the Unknown: The current limitations of scientific understanding, especially in areas like quantum mechanics is philosophically interesting if top scientists claim to lack complete comprehension which mirrors the mystery often associated with magic and the role of uncertainty in both science and magical traditions.
Why should we give a single shit what social science says about a physical phenomenon which exists completely independently of humans and their societies?
These people in-field misinterpret philosophy so badly all the time. Commonly afflicted by dunning kruger and sunk cost, unable to grasp the nature of the relevant philosophical arguments. Confusing usefulness for reality or actuality.
How extreme are the typical proponents of deferentialism? Because I see a huge distance between positions like 1) Don't question what mathemthical statements mean; it's of no interest what I am actually saying when proclaiming 'prime numbers greater than 100 do exist'. (I would disagree with this; othewise we might uncritically end up with stuff like numbers existing as platonic ideals or something) and 2) Philosophers should view Presentism as 'false' (not applying to our universe) until the point they can provide actual data contradicting the mountain of observations we have pointing towards that conclusion. (I would agree with this; behavior of the external world is most accurately modeled based on observations of said external world, not mind-internal arguments since the external world is under no obligation to follow what seems sensible to us).
This is a good point. Indeed, it's not so clear that there even is a coherent position of "deferentialism" -- rather, there are a variety of attitudes that philosophers can take to other disciplines, some more positive, some more critical. Perhaps it's not useful to lump so many of them under a single label.
I think that David Lewis wasn’t paying close enough attention to the philosophical status of mathematics and its philosophy as viewed by mathematicians at the time who actually took the time to consider and discuss the philosophy of mathematics. Update: Ok, so as I continue to watch, it seems like you’re discussing the issues that I wondered about in terms of what David Lewis may have been missing out on by taking his stance about philosophy of mathematics as it relates to mathematicians. However, I cannot tell from your presentation whether David Lewis addressed these issues with his arguments for Deferentialism in philosophy of mathematics. I’ll have to look up and read David Lewis’ publications on the matter. I thank you, Kane, for introducing me to him.
Fundamentally mathematics is based on logic + a few axioms, the same is true of most philosophy. I think the axioms in math are quite minimal too, based around the properties of sets. I'm sure there are branches of philosophy that don't require logic or sets, but if your philosophy requires them to make statements and draw conclusions, then you kinda have to accept math as part of the deal. I would guess that most philosophers that argue against accepting mathematical results, probably just don't like objectivism.
As far as I know, Lewis never addressed these issues. For Lewis, deferentialism was more of a background assumption than a conclusion that he tried to develop rigorous arguments for.
I think the argument that resonated the most with me personally was the standards one. Deference to science is not a standard *even in science* , so if science doesn't have to defer to succesful findings of science, why should anything else.
My impression about halfway through, when the issue has been framed, but no particular take on it has yet been claimed: It's not that you have to defer to mathematicians, simply as a group whose members agree with each other. It's that mathematicians have made a discipline of sound reasoning, including about metamathematics, where errors of reasoning are reliably caught and corrected. Likewise, it's not that you have to defer to scientists simply because they agree with each other. It's that they use sound reasoning and make correct empirical descriptions, explanations, and predictions. These two examples aren't the same The empirical lack of a coherent present makes presentism empirically untenable. If there are good arguments for presentism, they're like Xeno's paradoxes: puzzles to be solved, in order to figure out what's wrong with the premises that they depend on. The soundness of metamathematics makes the putative non-existence of numbers a matter of reframing what "exists" means in different contexts rather than a matter of having reason to believe that there's some error in the foundations of mathematics. You're free to have an ontology where you distinguish between 'exists, in the technical sense of the word used by mathematicians' and 'actually exists, as part of the ontology supported by the best philosophical arguments'. You haven't thereby refuted '53 is prime'. -- Later: If we say that philosophers, as philosophers, should not question the foundational assumptions of math or science on purely philosophical grounds, we're not saying that no one should question those assumptions. We're saying that mathematicians and scientists should question them. It's not dogmatic to say that you need some competence in math or science before your challenge to the foundational assumptions can be taken seriously, or at least that someone with such competence should evaluate your arguments before you can expect other philosophers to accept them. Most obviously, if you don't have such competence, there's no compelling reason to think that you're accurately representing the foundational assumptions. You don't hope that conflicts, like that which apparently exists between acausal fundamental physics and causal higher-order physics, never arise. You hope that when they arise, they're resolved by people who are actually competent to evaluate whether they're real or only apparent, and to resolve them. Maybe there are emergent properties, that are completely absent from fundamental physics but arise from the relations between fundamental particles. Maybe the apparent conflict can be resolved in some other way, that I can't even formulate because I lack the vocabulary. Maybe fundamental physics is in need of revision to allow for causality. And maybe higher-order physics is in need of revision to reflect fundamental acausality. I don't have a particularly valuable guess, because I'm not a physicist.
I do believe in division of labor. The rise of modern science and great emphasis on experimentations and modelling of mind-independent explanation of natural phenomena do revolutionized our fundamental understanding of the universe but that doesn't mean philosophers can't take that as a raw data. You cannot do meta-analysis likewise philosophy of physics without quantum physics or relativity.
I don’t recall you mentioning the following consideration: mathematics and science originated from philosophy and philosophical considerations, abed in fact, when science as a subject became differentiated from philosophy, it did so via a path through the descriptive moniker “natural philosophy”. Now, we still refer to the highest possible level of education in an academic subject as “Doctor of Philosophy”, and now we come to my point: this seems to suggest that in an academic discipline, the academic leaders are to be considered to be philosophers (of their own discipline), so statements in or outside of the academic discipline of philosophy itself and its relationship to other disciplines, in my humble opinion, should not exclude the PhD’s in other disciplines from that cohort in their considerations. Consequently, if the admonitions of David Lewis in his Deferentialist stance are predicated upon an opposition of the views and practice of philosophers against the views and practice of mathematicians, then its a misrepresentation of mathematicians, especially those who are at the top of the academic discipline of mathematics, because they would then be juxtaposed against themselves a priori in his considerations; this seems to me to be an untenable presupposition. Why would this be the approach of a philosopher who is aware of the history of the development of academia and the notion of a doctoral degree in a given subject? …
Because despite all the terminology that history has given us, mathematicians and scientists are not philosophers - the use of a word does not prove the nature of something. Mathematicians and scientists are required to exercise rigour and demonstrate the truth of their claims through experiment and proof. Philosophers can just shit out whatever nonsense they want onto a page and be praised for it. The work of such people absolutely must be compared to the work of real scholars who seriously study the world, and it should not be taken seriously if it is not consistent with reality
@@treyforest1999if you think philosophy has no standards of proof you’re simply unaware of how philosophy is researched. Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, expanding on Kant’s transcendental investigations has settled strict standards for rooting understanding of necessary conditions for the possibility of a perception appearing to anyone as it appears in a comprehendible way. Modern science as well as its precedents are not rigorous enough in their pursuits of truth as they take a large amount of axioms as necessary for their explanations to cohere. Philosophy cannot ascertain quantom entanglement nor predict the unfolding of proteins, but it can sniff out jumping to conclusions without sufficient justification, the misuse of ungrounded assumptions unjustifiably considered as necessary axioms or at some cases not even considered, as well as detecting when people assume their phrasing is clear and simple when it is in fact complex and multifaceted. When people ignore philosophy and bow down to anything scientists put out we get ai garbage polluting information resources and writing nonsense with similar structure to other texts with a purely coincidental connection to any fact at all. Science has split from philosophy, most clearly at Newton’s time. Where Newton openly gave up at studying the nature of reality and aimed to study only the mechanics of its appearances. Philosophy has also turned sour on the potential to reach the nature of reality, but we havent given up on the nature of appearance, which in modern science is diluted to mere mechanical description.
Fictionalists who consider mystery writers can say the same for the writers' characters. They don't really exist, do they? If they do exist, they exist in one person's mind--to start.
I don't think math should be taken to make worldly existential statements at all. Peano arithmetic (PA), say, is an equational theory with the four symbols 0S+*. Its axioms let us demonstrate SS0 * SSS0 = SSSSSS0 to be one of its theorems, colloquially written 2 * 3 = 6. In turn, also ∃n. ∃m. (n* m = 6) and n!=1 and m!=1 is a theorem, i.e. "6 has two nontrivial factors". People say "there exist a number n and a number m that multiply to 6". But I feel it's our own fault to talk about existence here, as if this is talking about general existence in our world. For one, one of the PA axioms is "there exists a number, 0, which can't be reached via succession S", so most "existence" claims I can write down here will be contingent on that first existence postulate. We could just as well use words that make the very formal PA context and symbol derivation clear.
How is or is this related to 'exceptionalism' about philosophy? If philosophy must defer to science then it is not as exceptional as one might think?! Or does that point more to the overlapping nature of the magesteria of philosophy and science?!
This sounded believable to me till your showed to example of how this can be used to justify Platonism and then I immediately stopped believing it because Platonism is just obviously wrong.
@@PhilSophia-ox7ep I wasn't giving an argument. I just said that Platonism is obviously false. There ain't no magical realm of "ideal/abstract objects and concepts". Numbers aren't real. Math IS just a useful tool.
@@aRUclipsuserwhoisanonymous The same way you rule out Platonism. By observing that numbers and math don't actually exist. I'm not good enough at philosophy to describe this properly, but from my perspective math is just obviously a tool/invention of the human mind to describe the physical world. The effectiveness of math doesn't make it physically true. Math exists only in the mind. You cannot show me the concept of the Pythagoras theorem or pi. You can show me a triangle or a circle, but you cannot show me their "math" as physical thing separate from the triangle/circle itself. Yes I'm a physicalist. Math also doesn't appear to be an emergent property. For physicalist consciousness can be explained as an emergent property of brain. But you cannot do the same with math. What would math even be an emergent property of? Physics? The universe itself? I just don't see it. If this were the case it wouldn't be like any other emergent properties which we could still see / experience. I can observe the eusocial behavior of ants, I can see how water makes clothing wet, but I cannot observe/experience the Pythagoras theorem outside of my mind. I guess another problem I have with Platonism is that there is just no need for it. There is no need to invent a realm of perfect concepts when the world works perfectly fine without it. It's not like we can't make sense of the world without it.
@@TheGlenn8 Human minds are not capable of inventing things, only perceiving reality and then abstracting upon those perceptions. We didn't invent mathematics to describe the physical world, we perceived the physical world and then invented symbols to represent what we had seen. And then once the fundamental logic of mathematics had been understood and mastered, humanity began to abstract upon on this logic and explore theoretical mathematics, of which you can argue those are invented the way you propose, but even there the very foundational logic that theoretical mathematics operates on exists outside of the mind in external matter.
No. Too often scientists and mathematicians have incoherent a priori beliefs. Your first segment hints at one of them: that a sort of Platonic realism is taken for granted among most mathematicians, which I find patently silly. Another is this idea that the brain creates consciousness. When pressed how they know that true, most scientists will say something about how messing with the brain's physical structure changes conscious experience, but it's so easy to show that they really haven't thought it through, by offering alternatives like the brain-as-filter (rather than producer) hypothesis and dream-world hypothesis. They haven't ruled these out and no amount of science could rule these out. I've yet to run into a scientific discovery made by a scientific materialist that wasn't quite easily translated into a more coherent philosophical worldview. There's no reason for us to subscribe to the worldview that the discovery was made under, which deferentialism implies we do. The idea that mathematical objects are useful fictions (some sort of mathematical nominalism or conceptualism) is exactly correct. Mathematical objects only appear in the mind, and the mind imposes them onto its sense objects. And you know what? This is well established cognitive science. It's called top-down processing. So here you have mutually exclusive, but well-established within their individual disciplines, claims between scientists! This is just yet another Moorean-like, or Christian presuppositionalist-like, attempt at special pleading scientific materialism into the default worldview. The job of scientists is to produce useful mental models. The problem isn't that philosophy hasn't discovered anything, it's that folks don't want to accept the conclusions that are inevitable. Even many philosophers spend their days beating their head against a wall because they simply cannot let this epistemological realism slip away. We have an attachment problem, not a good arguments problem.
"Brain-as-filter (rather than producer) hypothesis and dream-world hypothesis." Well as per certain breed of what you seem to call scientific materialist also assert that you probably won't find an answer to those question without looking at the evidence either ways, since you could information theoritically violate the second law of thermodynamics the same law which prohibits perpetual motion machines if the brain stores memories and it could get correct information without interaction with the surrounding.
@@aRUclipsuserwhoisanonymous There is no answer to such questions. The entire point of Descarte's demon, brain-in-a-vat, the simulation hypothesis, and brain-as-filter is that there is no answer. They're demonstrations of hard limits on knowledge. Idk. I just get frustrated with scientific materialists and realists. Even when they're tenured philosophers and I listen to them, they usually, and I'm serious, they usually don't understand Kant or the phenomena/noumena distinction. It's seriously strange how common this is the case and it's seriously strange just how all the attempts to address these arguments are always some attempt to special plead a preferred outcome into the default.
@@aRUclipsuserwhoisanonymous Mathematical objects only appear in the mind, and the mind imposes them onto its sense objects. And you know what? This is well established cognitive science. It's called top-down processing. (I liked this: well articulated)
@@aRUclipsuserwhoisanonymous i was just reading comments: i have little to contibute to the conversation. If something is well worded i feel compelled to express appreciation If i were to guess why the unoverse is mathematically consistent i might argue that it is because "the principles of sufficient reason are conditioned" by the body (Nietzsche) On mathematics: we rely on these principles of metaphor, association, impressions and distinction in order to create concepts prior to having concieved of said mathematical concepts. Impressions compound (multiplication), distinctions subtract, addition associates and metaphor is a type of division
It sounds like Deferentialism assumes that philosophical questions are the same kind of questions as those in physics or mathematics. To where should philosophy defer, for instance, when asking ethical questions? Isn’t ethics taken widely to be uniquely philosophical? Deferentialism makes sense to me in so far as philosophical arguments are sound or not based on the truth of their premises. It seems that philosophy is ‘outside’ of the facts it’s considering, not about those facts directly. In this way, philosophy would be identical with the logic cradling scientific facts, or identical with ‘meta thought’ as AC Grayling says, or as those questions that are not asked in any other discipline. Or all of the above.
Surely deferentialism is correct at least to some degree. If you have a great philosophical theory that explains what ever it is trying to explain in a very clear and convincing way, but accepting the theory requires accepting that e.g. 1 + 1 = 3, or that dropping an object here on Earth in ordinary circumstances causes it to fall upwards, it seems no reasonable person will accept the theory.
The clearest example is that aging works differently if you take two people of identical age, keep one at place and move the other some sufficiently long distance out to space. The two would experience, both consciously and by the biological changes of their body, such as the shortening of telomeres, time at differing paces relative to their change of location in space
@@PhilSophia-ox7ep I think you can attack him on his being going over into becoming. Like there is no valid reason that this should happen, it requires a leap of faith
@@NRWTx Then how does the Being of the acorn BECOME the being of the oak tree? Hegel's point is that the facile opposition between Being and Nothingness, in which Being Is and Nothing is Not, is an antithesis overcome amd sublated by the higher category of Becoming in which what was not becomes an is and what is becomes an is not.
@@KaneBThis is going to sound wild but Hegel's phenomenology is the only true philosophical breakthrough in modern philosophy as all other currents have been led astray by Kant's distinction of noumenon and phenomenon: due to the emphasis in the unabrigdeable distance of the things in themselves and human knowledge many philosophers have refused to engage in the rationality of what is "outside" of the mind and, in the cases of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche to assume that rationality itself was not much more than a useful fiction or tool. Hegel was bold enough to claim that whatever concepts we use to describe the world and reason we are bound to surpass them, there's not a fixed way in which we understand anything and each of them has it's own truth. But that idea doesn't lead him to claim that there's no such thing as progress in philosophy, science or humanity at large. You can point to the many instances where his ideas on particular sciences are wrong, for sure, but this idea, that knowledge is a dialectical process (historical) by which reason and experience intertwine (where language plays a crucial role) and that there's no possibility to posit a first unchanging principle from which to ground all knowledge still stands, to my understanding, absolutely uncontested.
I think philosophy should defer to math but not to science. Math is just deductive reasoning from various axioms, and so any results there are already philosophical and already guaranteed should those axioms obtain. So if math says Arithmetic implies B, then any philosophy that states that both Arithmetic and ~B obtains should be disregarded.
1. The consensus among chess grandmasters is that the Sicilian defense can lead to an attack on the Queenside by black. 2.The Game-rules-fictionalist says that the Sicilian defense does not exist and can therefore not have the predicate "can lead to an attack on the Queenside". 3. Chess grandmasters are really successful in making statements about chess. 4. The Game-rules-fictionalist should defer to the view of the chess masters. 5. Chess-rule-fictionalism is false. Q.E.D
As a physicist I think that being religiously convinced about quantum physics is plain arrogant, and I'm willing to take anti-realism about causality seriously. As for the first, "we all agree" that quantum physics is so hard that none of us really understand it. Being certain that it's more than a useful model is delusional. As for the second, if quantum physics is indeed exactly correct you can make the case that there is no causation, there is only wave functions and the time dependent Schrödinger equation. So you have a universal potential energy field, you have solutions to the equations of which states a particle can be in, and the probability amplitudes drift over time.
I have seen certain online physicists make that argument that classical realm is an approximation of the quantum realm since quantum theory corresponds better with reality than classical theory...I haven't reached that level of physics just yet- to actually conclude anything though, because it's hard to understand physics without the maths even classically speaking intuitions are just starting points for further mathematization...
Some of the claims in the paper are absurd and dumb. That said the main point stands. Too much of philosophy is disconnected from reality and rooted in plato and Aristotle.
a mathematician saying philosophy should defer to maths is the same as a soldier saying rifle engineering should defer to soldiering just because soldiers are so good at shooting the thing.
Some people argue that if you give up the idea that the two-way speed of light is constant, which was stipulated (not proved!) by Einstein, you can restore newtonian time and absolute simmultaneity. I wonder if that is true.
Yes, if you invest a fictional world in which the entire theory of relativity and all of its implications are false, then universal simultaneity is possible, because its impossibility is a consequence of the theory of relativity. The problem is that you'd be writing fiction if you did this, because the invariance of the speed of light has been experimentally proven hundreds of times over - not by Einstein, but by other scientists both after and before him, most notably Michelson and Morley
@@treyforest1999 sorry. My mistake. I said two-way speed of light, but I meant one-way speed of light. No one measured that according to some: ruclips.net/video/pTn6Ewhb27k/видео.htmlsi=NDNiAOaltMtJ3NTT
i heard a very convincing argument that philosophy is dead, and that science reigns over reality. however, humans do not think that way. there will always be a reality (science) and there will always be a philosophy (attempt to understand)
Philosophy is both related to and different from science. When we say it is beyond science, we do not mean it is anti-scientific rather we mean it is at least scientific and goes further.
@@PhilSophia-ox7ep That's the current 'in vogue' dominant view in philosophical naturalism. I don't think it's likely to ever change to something else in any sort of paradigmatic shift. But it certainly could. It's not like it's a logical impossibility. We'd probably have to suffer some kind of world-wide calamity first, but...
Do whatever you want. You are still likely to live and die as all our monkey like ancestors have done. Or you could study genetics and have a tiny chance to live much longer. How much longer? Longer than your tiny monkey brain could ever imagine. Science is philosophy in the right hands and given enough time.
Not! Solved? …like materialism, ie consciousness is in the brain..WHICH IS WHY SCIENCE HAS IT’s HEAD IN THE SAND. They are wrong , I need philosophers to help them pull their head out of their
I find deferentialism to be obviously necessary. Philosophy generally relies on intuitions for saying which stuff is accurate without any picture of how those intuitions come to be (neuroscience, evolution, psychology is way more useful) and whether they are reliable or not. I understand that the science position requires intuition in the first place, but I’d rather a theory that is circular (especially if it simply explains phenomena and predict future phenomena) than one that can never fully explain everything.
@@PhilSophia-ox7ep I guess we disagree then, I can clearly see a distinction between scientific humility to nature v/s boasting your modesty v/s motivated skepticism towards xyz ideas v/s over-reliance on armchair
@@aRUclipsuserwhoisanonymous You disagree because you conflate modesty/boasting (which are personal traits) with EPISTEMIC HUMILITY which is a question of methodological rigour.
your content is too clickbait lmao , maybe you just touch on exactly those topics which I find interesting but I guess it's just content porn since whilst philosophy is about the "big" questions it rarely goes any deeper in online videos when you compare it to deduction chains in maths lectures online
"we know even successful theories can be false" thanks for demonstrating your lack of understanding. No successfully theory can be false. There can be a point at which the model stops working or breaks down but it's not false.
What do you think my answer, as a thoroughgoing normative antirealist, would be to the question, "should people refrain from asking questions that they believe contain false presuppositions?"?
So would a deferentialist be likely to suggest that Robert M. Pirsig should have left Motorcycle Maintenance to garage mechanics at motorcycle repair shops? en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig
@@KaneB well I can't speak for others, but I have been watching all your videos for a while now. Except that recently, I've been short on time and haven't crossed 20-30 minutes on any of them :/
@@kappaprimusAre you simply saying that you are unable to finish the videos because you’re short on time? Because when you mention the view count in relation to the time since the video was posted in conjunction with “bro fell off”, it seems like you’re saying Kane B is less popular than he used to be. Which seems utterly unrelated to your reply to Kane after he addressed your comment. So are you just claiming that he has less views than he used to in order to try and bully Kane or something?
So would a deferentialist be likely to suggest that Robert M. Pirsig should have left Motorcycle Maintenance to garage mechanics at motorcycle repair shops? en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig
![Kodak Black - Versatile 4 [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VcP_1Ua__vY/mqdefault.jpg)
![Twenty One Pilots - “The Line” (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/E2Rj2gQAyPA/mqdefault.jpg)
This topic reminds me of my favorite Gödel anecdote: “The mathematician Gregory Chaitin recently told a story of a distinguished physicist who sat down next to Gödel at a dinner party. Trying to make conversation with Gödel, he relayed some exciting new discovery from the research in the field of astrophysics. After telling of the results and waiting for the reaction, Gödel simply replied ‘I don't believe in empirical science. I only believe in a priori truths’.”
That's hilarious. I'm even cooler than Gödel though because I don't believe in either empirical science or a priori truths.
@@KaneB So you're basically a moron🤣
@KaneB I'm so smart I believe empirical truths are a priori bc the way up is the way down ^-^
@@KaneB also isn't this just another phrase for subject naturalism?
As a like and commentician you all should defer to me as to whether this video needs to be liked and commented on. The answer is yes, there's a very large consensus in our community about this.
i find deferentialism to be such a strange position, when you can easily argue that the standards and fundamental framework for mathematics and science are simply themselves philosphical positions, that have been successful at predicting/describing reality and achieving a consensus. while this is useful I doubt anyone would argue that by the standards of science and mathematics that there is a measurable way or logical proof to determine if the work of philosophy is completed or even pointless. the dogma counterargument is fairly convincing for me. this is interesting though as many times I have explicitly said when exploring a philosophical problem that at a certain point this problem should be solved by psychologists, or that more information is needed to more meaningfully explore this problem. in this way the fields of science and mathematics seem to function more as senses for the brain of philosophy to organise and refine. I agree with the argument you present at the end that encourages cross-disciplinary cooperation rather than conflict
Yes, this is a good point. Deferentialism seems to be a solidification of this really common fallacy I see as really common among proponents of scientism: "Useful models are indicative of truth." It's this belief I think that forms the core of a default whole philosophical system. Deferentialism seems to be just another wing of this system. I don't know whether to call it scientism or scientific materialism, but does act in a dogmatic way and, ironically, often ignores common knowledge in cognitive science in favor of a naive sort of materialism.
I think the more productive relationship between philosophy and science/mathematics is knowing when _not_ to solidify a position, and deferring not to the "established facts of science/math" as if there is such a thing, but to the processes of discovery that these fields of study entail. Philosophy often postulates things that can be mathematically proven or empirically verified, and it's important for philosophers to at least have an understanding of what questions are answerable through processes other than philosophical inquiry and what tools are appropriate for discerning different kinds of truths. Otherwise, philosophy itself runs the risk of adopting and persisting ideas that, according to other forms of knowledge-creation, are patently false.
There's also other avenues for philosophy that open up by analyzing math and science. Not taking math and science as gospel, but by noticing evidence and fields of study that have not yet been discussed in philosophy, and building new concepts off of those new developments. Mind/body dualism comes to mind, where advancements in neuroscience don't necessarily _disprove_ Cartesian dualism, but open up new possible philosophical positions for a purely embodied understanding of subjectivity, or even a new kind of mind/body dualism based on things like information theory or complexity theory. In that way it's not that philosophy "defers to established facts" but finds new questions to ask within the new discoveries of science and mathematics.
When (and where) I went to university, Mathematics was a department in the School of Philosophy.
I think that deferentialists might be mistaken if they argue that mathematical fictionalism contradicts mathematics due to the fact that it's not entirely clear that the field of mathematics establishes the existence of numbers (as the video explained)
I think a good example of what it would *actually* look like if we were trying to contradict stuff that is well established in math is Terrence Howard (the actor) and his new "terryology" system of math where he's trying to argue that 1x1=2 (an absolute joke of course)
Yeah. How many mathematicians even believe numbers are "real" in the first place? Did they do a survey? It seems awfully bold of deferentialists to just assume this.
Agree, and I'd also argue that the argument has problems regarding definition of science and it's methodology, math and it's "truths" are a borderline case, and I would argue that even if you agree with classical deferentialist arguments, due to uncertain nature of math's methods, they don't apply here.
@@marxisminvariantmaths from my understanding is not a science but a logically derived system of value representation.
Arguments about mathematics may just lead to another branch of mathematics. If we imagine a world in which there are no primes above 100, and we work out some of the details, this could lead to a new number system, or topology. It may be a gift to mathematics and science to consider such thing. We shouldn't constrain it.
I think Lewis' objection to using quantum physics to guide philosophy was less a matter of principle than a statement on the state of metaphysical interpretations of quantum physics, of which physicists themselves are very much not in agreement. The situation hasn’t much improved. Look at the debates (on RUclips and elsewhere) between say Everetian many worlds, hidden variables, superdeterminism and shut up and calculate Copenhagen interpretations. If there is no consensus among the physicists then philosophers likely have no reason to defer.
Math describing reality is not math being reality.
Philosophers discuss the most basic topics from every science:
time from physics, mind from cognition, spirit from psychology, meaning from logic, possibility from math, complexity from biology, big bang from cosmology, change from chemistry, religion from culturology and so on.
The use of correlation and statistical probability, rather than causation, in medical science opens the door to philosophical discussions around public policy. For example, should public policy prohibit certain products due to their correlation with negative outcomes? Consider the correlation between tobacco use, socioeconomic status, and the branding of tobacco and alcohol products with sports stars and celebratory influencers. While correlation doesn't equal causation, these relationships raise important questions about the role of regulation and public health interventions. Should policymakers restrict advertising or implement stricter controls on these products to protect vulnerable populations? Presentism reminds me of the Van Halen 70's classic 'Runnin' with the Devil.
Philosophy in the analytical tradition is deferential, in that it regards scientific knowledge as the gold standard of knowledge. But I agree that it is valuable to have people with very broad intellectual interests standing back and offering a critical perspective on all branches of knowledge in the way philosophers do. In my experience (as a scientist) scientists themselves are often rather poor at doing that. Many scientists, particularly the ones highly visible in the media, are good scientists but lousy philosophers. They tend to make the kind of naive errors that newcomers to philosophical thinking make. Analytical philosophy has developed good tools for critical enquiry and people who ignore them will just repeat well-worn mistakes.
This was fun to watch. Thank you for sharing
When a scientist or mathematician advances a new theory, are they awarded a Doctorate of Philosophy? Fact or fiction?
If the premises are identical and the question is empirical, and the examination thorough, then accept the solution. If one has a convincing argument against the solution or for its alternative, continue to pursue the question.
I think blind, principled deferentialism is ill advised.
In the case of mathematics, I think it is a mistake to claim that it makes any metaphysical claims, or for that matter any sort of philosophically relevant claims at all.
Mathematics is just a collection of systems together with language to describe them. At best it can be used as a constraint on philosophical ideas in some specific circumstances. In that sense mathematics is similar in its relationship to philosophy as logic: a formal tool that helps us avoid making reasoning mistakes.
As for the sciences, the situation is more nuanced. I think philosophers should certainly take scientific findings into account.
The main scenario where philosophy should defer to science is when certain questions previously debated by philosophers become testable. This is the natural point where a question leaves the realm of philosophy and moves into the area of the relevant science.
But I think the crucial point to make is that deciding whether a question has become testable is itself a philosophical question.
Quantum mechanics are testable and scientists have had great success testing them. They have constructed models with amazing predictive power. But what these findings mean for the fundamental nature of reality is, as I see it, still an open question and therefore belongs to philosophy.
So, whether philosophy should defer to science is in any particular case a philosophical question. We should be wary of philosophical questions being masqueraded as scientific questions in order to smuggle in unjustified conclusions.
Mathematics does not deal in truth in the same way that science does. Mathematics says: if your application obeys my axioms and definitions, then my theorems will be true in your application.
I think the question of deference may be explored in three parts :
How do we define the reality of the problem in question ?
What is the relationship of philosophy to this reality ?
What is the relationship of science to this reality ?
The answer may perhaps be in the overlapping region of the Venn Diagram .
Philosophy is in many ways the panaromic view but we also need the close- up view at times.
And then again, It depends on the context in which we are viewing the science and the philosophy.
I don't think I understand diferentialism as you've outlined it here yet, but I have some initial thoughts. I think you should've continued with the example of Presentism, that would've made a better example than the fictionalism in mathematics example.
Now, if deferentialism is the view that a philosopher that is a scientific realist should not endorse a theory of Time that conflicts with claims in General Relativity - then I am a diferentialist. But if it is the view that philosophers working at the foundations of physics shouldn't exist - i.e., there shoudn't be philosophers questioning the foundations, then I don't accept that. Philosophy seems inevitable in any field, especially at the foundations. I think there is a distinction here, an example of the distinction is this: the question "do numbers exist?" - is an obviously philosophical question, VS questions and puzzles about Infinity - which I think the mathematicians can handle far better than philosophers. It is in this second instance where I think I lean towards diferentialism; I don't think a philosopher of religion, for example, should hold to some other theory that uses the same concept of infinity that mathematicians talk about, in a way that contradicts the established mathematics of infinity! This is the sort of diferentialism that I'd accept. So, a qualified diferentialist might say that philosophers should not hold theories that contradict mathematics or science about those issues which these fields DIRECTLY tackle. This may be vague in some instances, but I hope it gets the point across.
The philosophers working at the foundations can obviously criticize and question established scientific theories, since it's possible that the fundamental assumptions are problematic - but even here, we should be good Bayesians and assign the relevant credence; an empirically successful theory vs the conflicting philosophical theory that philosopher endorses. Possibility of the foundations being problematic isn't enough for the philosopher to hold views that conflict with the well-established science in my view, it has to be that they find the fundamental assumptions of that field shaky and unacceptable, and they have weighed the credence of them being incorrect vs the scientists being incorrect. Only then, can they reasonably endorse a theory that conflicts with the consensus in the field (if they are a realist about that field, of course).
In the dogma section, you mention replication failures in psychology, I agree. But also the ineffable phenomenal and dual substance consciousness in the philosophy of mind - here I am highlighting the refusal of philosophy to part with some theories despite the vast evidence against them in many instances. It wouldn't be easy to gauge who to side with, in these instances, the philosopher or the scientist. So, credence assignment should be at work when deciding between the philosophical and scientific theories in conflict. But I see I may have deviated from the original question and missed the mark somewhere and I'm too sleepy to think more carefully.
5:14 quote by David Lewis:
he is "not ready to take lessons in ontology from quantum physics as it now is; first it must be purified of instrumentalist frivolity, of double thinking deviant logic and of supernatural tales about the power of the observant mind to make things jump" (eg. to explain motion).
Quantization solves Zenos Paradox or at least it's a better model than "lol see, you can't move" when we obviously can.
Brilliant video. I love the topics on this channel and it is the perfect balance of philosophical inquiry and intrigue into interesting questions.
Consider Zeno's Achilles and the Tortoise Paradox. Mathematics misconstrues it to mean that the pursuit strategy is that Achilles targets the current position of the tortoise. While the fact is, Zeno required that Achilles target the position of the tortoise at the start of Achilles movement. So the usual mathematics argument is false. So look at the precise assumptions, including the axioms of the mathematics.
No, but is should most certainly not ignore it, as it tends to do now. Science also tends to ignore philosophy, which in being more justified in doing so, still really shouldn't.
Quantum Entanglement and the Emergence of Time:
The concept of time as a fundamental aspect of reality is challenged by the phenomenon of quantum entanglement.
If two entangled objects instantaneously influence each other regardless of distance, it raises questions about the traditional linear understanding of time.
This suggests the possibility of time being an emergent property rather than a fundamental one.
Sociological Interpretation of Time as a Control Mechanism:
From a social science viewpoint, time can be seen as a construct used to exert control over individuals and groups.
This aligns with the concept of time as a tool employed in religious and cultural practices to maintain order and influence behavior.
Therefore even modern science, with its limitations and uncertainties, can be perceived as a form of "contemporary magic" used to shape beliefs and actions by the mass consumer.
Scientific Uncertainty and the Magic of the Unknown:
The current limitations of scientific understanding, especially in areas like quantum mechanics is philosophically interesting if
top scientists claim to lack complete comprehension which mirrors the mystery often associated with magic and the role of uncertainty in both science and magical traditions.
Why should we give a single shit what social science says about a physical phenomenon which exists completely independently of humans and their societies?
These people in-field misinterpret philosophy so badly all the time. Commonly afflicted by dunning kruger and sunk cost, unable to grasp the nature of the relevant philosophical arguments. Confusing usefulness for reality or actuality.
How extreme are the typical proponents of deferentialism? Because I see a huge distance between positions like
1) Don't question what mathemthical statements mean; it's of no interest what I am actually saying when proclaiming 'prime numbers greater than 100 do exist'. (I would disagree with this; othewise we might uncritically end up with stuff like numbers existing as platonic ideals or something)
and
2) Philosophers should view Presentism as 'false' (not applying to our universe) until the point they can provide actual data contradicting the mountain of observations we have pointing towards that conclusion. (I would agree with this; behavior of the external world is most accurately modeled based on observations of said external world, not mind-internal arguments since the external world is under no obligation to follow what seems sensible to us).
This is a good point. Indeed, it's not so clear that there even is a coherent position of "deferentialism" -- rather, there are a variety of attitudes that philosophers can take to other disciplines, some more positive, some more critical. Perhaps it's not useful to lump so many of them under a single label.
I think that David Lewis wasn’t paying close enough attention to the philosophical status of mathematics and its philosophy as viewed by mathematicians at the time who actually took the time to consider and discuss the philosophy of mathematics.
Update:
Ok, so as I continue to watch, it seems like you’re discussing the issues that I wondered about in terms of what David Lewis may have been missing out on by taking his stance about philosophy of mathematics as it relates to mathematicians. However, I cannot tell from your presentation whether David Lewis addressed these issues with his arguments for Deferentialism in philosophy of mathematics. I’ll have to look up and read David Lewis’ publications on the matter. I thank you, Kane, for introducing me to him.
Fundamentally mathematics is based on logic + a few axioms, the same is true of most philosophy. I think the axioms in math are quite minimal too, based around the properties of sets. I'm sure there are branches of philosophy that don't require logic or sets, but if your philosophy requires them to make statements and draw conclusions, then you kinda have to accept math as part of the deal. I would guess that most philosophers that argue against accepting mathematical results, probably just don't like objectivism.
As far as I know, Lewis never addressed these issues. For Lewis, deferentialism was more of a background assumption than a conclusion that he tried to develop rigorous arguments for.
Good to know about this discussion.
I think the argument that resonated the most with me personally was the standards one. Deference to science is not a standard *even in science* , so if science doesn't have to defer to succesful findings of science, why should anything else.
My impression about halfway through, when the issue has been framed, but no particular take on it has yet been claimed:
It's not that you have to defer to mathematicians, simply as a group whose members agree with each other. It's that mathematicians have made a discipline of sound reasoning, including about metamathematics, where errors of reasoning are reliably caught and corrected. Likewise, it's not that you have to defer to scientists simply because they agree with each other. It's that they use sound reasoning and make correct empirical descriptions, explanations, and predictions.
These two examples aren't the same The empirical lack of a coherent present makes presentism empirically untenable. If there are good arguments for presentism, they're like Xeno's paradoxes: puzzles to be solved, in order to figure out what's wrong with the premises that they depend on. The soundness of metamathematics makes the putative non-existence of numbers a matter of reframing what "exists" means in different contexts rather than a matter of having reason to believe that there's some error in the foundations of mathematics. You're free to have an ontology where you distinguish between 'exists, in the technical sense of the word used by mathematicians' and 'actually exists, as part of the ontology supported by the best philosophical arguments'. You haven't thereby refuted '53 is prime'.
--
Later:
If we say that philosophers, as philosophers, should not question the foundational assumptions of math or science on purely philosophical grounds, we're not saying that no one should question those assumptions. We're saying that mathematicians and scientists should question them. It's not dogmatic to say that you need some competence in math or science before your challenge to the foundational assumptions can be taken seriously, or at least that someone with such competence should evaluate your arguments before you can expect other philosophers to accept them. Most obviously, if you don't have such competence, there's no compelling reason to think that you're accurately representing the foundational assumptions.
You don't hope that conflicts, like that which apparently exists between acausal fundamental physics and causal higher-order physics, never arise. You hope that when they arise, they're resolved by people who are actually competent to evaluate whether they're real or only apparent, and to resolve them. Maybe there are emergent properties, that are completely absent from fundamental physics but arise from the relations between fundamental particles. Maybe the apparent conflict can be resolved in some other way, that I can't even formulate because I lack the vocabulary. Maybe fundamental physics is in need of revision to allow for causality. And maybe higher-order physics is in need of revision to reflect fundamental acausality. I don't have a particularly valuable guess, because I'm not a physicist.
I do believe in division of labor. The rise of modern science and great emphasis on experimentations and modelling of mind-independent explanation of natural phenomena do revolutionized our fundamental understanding of the universe but that doesn't mean philosophers can't take that as a raw data. You cannot do meta-analysis likewise philosophy of physics without quantum physics or relativity.
I don’t recall you mentioning the following consideration: mathematics and science originated from philosophy and philosophical considerations, abed in fact, when science as a subject became differentiated from philosophy, it did so via a path through the descriptive moniker “natural philosophy”.
Now, we still refer to the highest possible level of education in an academic subject as “Doctor of Philosophy”, and now we come to my point: this seems to suggest that in an academic discipline, the academic leaders are to be considered to be philosophers (of their own discipline), so statements in or outside of the academic discipline of philosophy itself and its relationship to other disciplines, in my humble opinion, should not exclude the PhD’s in other disciplines from that cohort in their considerations. Consequently, if the admonitions of David Lewis in his Deferentialist stance are predicated upon an opposition of the views and practice of philosophers against the views and practice of mathematicians, then its a misrepresentation of mathematicians, especially those who are at the top of the academic discipline of mathematics, because they would then be juxtaposed against themselves a priori in his considerations; this seems to me to be an untenable presupposition. Why would this be the approach of a philosopher who is aware of the history of the development of academia and the notion of a doctoral degree in a given subject?
…
Because despite all the terminology that history has given us, mathematicians and scientists are not philosophers - the use of a word does not prove the nature of something. Mathematicians and scientists are required to exercise rigour and demonstrate the truth of their claims through experiment and proof. Philosophers can just shit out whatever nonsense they want onto a page and be praised for it. The work of such people absolutely must be compared to the work of real scholars who seriously study the world, and it should not be taken seriously if it is not consistent with reality
@@treyforest1999if you think philosophy has no standards of proof you’re simply unaware of how philosophy is researched. Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, expanding on Kant’s transcendental investigations has settled strict standards for rooting understanding of necessary conditions for the possibility of a perception appearing to anyone as it appears in a comprehendible way. Modern science as well as its precedents are not rigorous enough in their pursuits of truth as they take a large amount of axioms as necessary for their explanations to cohere. Philosophy cannot ascertain quantom entanglement nor predict the unfolding of proteins, but it can sniff out jumping to conclusions without sufficient justification, the misuse of ungrounded assumptions unjustifiably considered as necessary axioms or at some cases not even considered, as well as detecting when people assume their phrasing is clear and simple when it is in fact complex and multifaceted. When people ignore philosophy and bow down to anything scientists put out we get ai garbage polluting information resources and writing nonsense with similar structure to other texts with a purely coincidental connection to any fact at all.
Science has split from philosophy, most clearly at Newton’s time. Where Newton openly gave up at studying the nature of reality and aimed to study only the mechanics of its appearances. Philosophy has also turned sour on the potential to reach the nature of reality, but we havent given up on the nature of appearance, which in modern science is diluted to mere mechanical description.
@@treyforest1999
Many mathematicians still are practicing philosophy even if they aren’t read by people in philosophy departments.
@@treyforest1999
Your stupid disdain for philosophers is grounded in a false understanding of what they actually do.
Fictionalists who consider mystery writers can say the same for the writers' characters. They don't really exist, do they? If they do exist, they exist in one person's mind--to start.
I love You Kane You are so Objective Person. Love from 🇹🇷
I don't think math should be taken to make worldly existential statements at all.
Peano arithmetic (PA), say, is an equational theory with the four symbols 0S+*. Its axioms let us demonstrate
SS0 * SSS0 = SSSSSS0
to be one of its theorems, colloquially written 2 * 3 = 6. In turn, also
∃n. ∃m. (n* m = 6) and n!=1 and m!=1
is a theorem, i.e. "6 has two nontrivial factors".
People say "there exist a number n and a number m that multiply to 6". But I feel it's our own fault to talk about existence here, as if this is talking about general existence in our world. For one, one of the PA axioms is "there exists a number, 0, which can't be reached via succession S", so most "existence" claims I can write down here will be contingent on that first existence postulate.
We could just as well use words that make the very formal PA context and symbol derivation clear.
Science is a philosophy. It's a philosophy that models observations. It says nothing of the observer.
wonder if adopting philosophical naturalism, on behalf of both scientists and philosophers, dissolves the question
How is or is this related to 'exceptionalism' about philosophy? If philosophy must defer to science then it is not as exceptional as one might think?! Or does that point more to the overlapping nature of the magesteria of philosophy and science?!
This sounded believable to me till your showed to example of how this can be used to justify Platonism and then I immediately stopped believing it because Platonism is just obviously wrong.
I'm no Platonist, but your argument against it is so bad I think it may have found a new convert in me.
@@PhilSophia-ox7ep
I wasn't giving an argument. I just said that Platonism is obviously false. There ain't no magical realm of "ideal/abstract objects and concepts". Numbers aren't real. Math IS just a useful tool.
@@TheGlenn8 how do you rule out mathematical universe hypothesis?
@@aRUclipsuserwhoisanonymous
The same way you rule out Platonism. By observing that numbers and math don't actually exist.
I'm not good enough at philosophy to describe this properly, but from my perspective math is just obviously a tool/invention of the human mind to describe the physical world. The effectiveness of math doesn't make it physically true. Math exists only in the mind. You cannot show me the concept of the Pythagoras theorem or pi. You can show me a triangle or a circle, but you cannot show me their "math" as physical thing separate from the triangle/circle itself. Yes I'm a physicalist.
Math also doesn't appear to be an emergent property. For physicalist consciousness can be explained as an emergent property of brain. But you cannot do the same with math. What would math even be an emergent property of? Physics? The universe itself? I just don't see it. If this were the case it wouldn't be like any other emergent properties which we could still see / experience. I can observe the eusocial behavior of ants, I can see how water makes clothing wet, but I cannot observe/experience the Pythagoras theorem outside of my mind.
I guess another problem I have with Platonism is that there is just no need for it. There is no need to invent a realm of perfect concepts when the world works perfectly fine without it. It's not like we can't make sense of the world without it.
@@TheGlenn8 Human minds are not capable of inventing things, only perceiving reality and then abstracting upon those perceptions. We didn't invent mathematics to describe the physical world, we perceived the physical world and then invented symbols to represent what we had seen. And then once the fundamental logic of mathematics had been understood and mastered, humanity began to abstract upon on this logic and explore theoretical mathematics, of which you can argue those are invented the way you propose, but even there the very foundational logic that theoretical mathematics operates on exists outside of the mind in external matter.
No. Too often scientists and mathematicians have incoherent a priori beliefs. Your first segment hints at one of them: that a sort of Platonic realism is taken for granted among most mathematicians, which I find patently silly. Another is this idea that the brain creates consciousness. When pressed how they know that true, most scientists will say something about how messing with the brain's physical structure changes conscious experience, but it's so easy to show that they really haven't thought it through, by offering alternatives like the brain-as-filter (rather than producer) hypothesis and dream-world hypothesis. They haven't ruled these out and no amount of science could rule these out.
I've yet to run into a scientific discovery made by a scientific materialist that wasn't quite easily translated into a more coherent philosophical worldview. There's no reason for us to subscribe to the worldview that the discovery was made under, which deferentialism implies we do. The idea that mathematical objects are useful fictions (some sort of mathematical nominalism or conceptualism) is exactly correct. Mathematical objects only appear in the mind, and the mind imposes them onto its sense objects. And you know what? This is well established cognitive science. It's called top-down processing. So here you have mutually exclusive, but well-established within their individual disciplines, claims between scientists!
This is just yet another Moorean-like, or Christian presuppositionalist-like, attempt at special pleading scientific materialism into the default worldview. The job of scientists is to produce useful mental models. The problem isn't that philosophy hasn't discovered anything, it's that folks don't want to accept the conclusions that are inevitable. Even many philosophers spend their days beating their head against a wall because they simply cannot let this epistemological realism slip away. We have an attachment problem, not a good arguments problem.
"Brain-as-filter (rather than producer) hypothesis and dream-world hypothesis."
Well as per certain breed of what you seem to call scientific materialist also assert that you probably won't find an answer to those question without looking at the evidence either ways, since you could information theoritically violate the second law of thermodynamics the same law which prohibits perpetual motion machines if the brain stores memories and it could get correct information without interaction with the surrounding.
@@aRUclipsuserwhoisanonymous There is no answer to such questions. The entire point of Descarte's demon, brain-in-a-vat, the simulation hypothesis, and brain-as-filter is that there is no answer. They're demonstrations of hard limits on knowledge.
Idk. I just get frustrated with scientific materialists and realists. Even when they're tenured philosophers and I listen to them, they usually, and I'm serious, they usually don't understand Kant or the phenomena/noumena distinction. It's seriously strange how common this is the case and it's seriously strange just how all the attempts to address these arguments are always some attempt to special plead a preferred outcome into the default.
@@aRUclipsuserwhoisanonymous Mathematical objects only appear in the mind, and the mind imposes them onto its sense objects. And you know what? This is well established cognitive science. It's called top-down processing. (I liked this: well articulated)
@@isaacbarratt854 that doesn't answer the question of "why is universe mathematically consistent?"
@@aRUclipsuserwhoisanonymous i was just reading comments: i have little to contibute to the conversation.
If something is well worded i feel compelled to express appreciation
If i were to guess why the unoverse is mathematically consistent i might argue that it is because "the principles of sufficient reason are conditioned" by the body (Nietzsche)
On mathematics: we rely on these principles of metaphor, association, impressions and distinction in order to create concepts prior to having concieved of said mathematical concepts.
Impressions compound (multiplication), distinctions subtract, addition associates and metaphor is a type of division
It sounds like Deferentialism assumes that philosophical questions are the same kind of questions as those in physics or mathematics.
To where should philosophy defer, for instance, when asking ethical questions? Isn’t ethics taken widely to be uniquely philosophical?
Deferentialism makes sense to me in so far as philosophical arguments are sound or not based on the truth of their premises. It seems that philosophy is ‘outside’ of the facts it’s considering, not about those facts directly.
In this way, philosophy would be identical with the logic cradling scientific facts, or identical with ‘meta thought’ as AC Grayling says, or as those questions that are not asked in any other discipline. Or all of the above.
Most definitely. Go with the evidence-based view of things.
Hi Kane. Nice video.
Wondering if you (have /-)had anything interesting to say about contextualism here?
Surely deferentialism is correct at least to some degree. If you have a great philosophical theory that explains what ever it is trying to explain in a very clear and convincing way, but accepting the theory requires accepting that e.g. 1 + 1 = 3, or that dropping an object here on Earth in ordinary circumstances causes it to fall upwards, it seems no reasonable person will accept the theory.
I'm not sure what's wrong with the view that the time is right now everywhere, but perspective makes it seem like it's not the case.
Relativity.
The clearest example is that aging works differently if you take two people of identical age, keep one at place and move the other some sufficiently long distance out to space. The two would experience, both consciously and by the biological changes of their body, such as the shortening of telomeres, time at differing paces relative to their change of location in space
Amazing topic
Have you considered making a video on hegel ? To debunk him or other ?
Debunk Hegel? Nah, can't be done.
@@PhilSophia-ox7ep I think you can attack him on his being going over into becoming. Like there is no valid reason that this should happen, it requires a leap of faith
@@NRWTx Then how does the Being of the acorn BECOME the being of the oak tree? Hegel's point is that the facile opposition between Being and Nothingness, in which Being Is and Nothing is Not, is an antithesis overcome amd sublated by the higher category of Becoming in which what was not becomes an is and what is becomes an is not.
That's unlikely to happen any time soon. I've never read Hegel, and what little I've heard about him hasn't piqued my interest at all.
@@KaneBThis is going to sound wild but Hegel's phenomenology is the only true philosophical breakthrough in modern philosophy as all other currents have been led astray by Kant's distinction of noumenon and phenomenon: due to the emphasis in the unabrigdeable distance of the things in themselves and human knowledge many philosophers have refused to engage in the rationality of what is "outside" of the mind and, in the cases of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche to assume that rationality itself was not much more than a useful fiction or tool. Hegel was bold enough to claim that whatever concepts we use to describe the world and reason we are bound to surpass them, there's not a fixed way in which we understand anything and each of them has it's own truth. But that idea doesn't lead him to claim that there's no such thing as progress in philosophy, science or humanity at large. You can point to the many instances where his ideas on particular sciences are wrong, for sure, but this idea, that knowledge is a dialectical process (historical) by which reason and experience intertwine (where language plays a crucial role) and that there's no possibility to posit a first unchanging principle from which to ground all knowledge still stands, to my understanding, absolutely uncontested.
I think philosophy should defer to math but not to science. Math is just deductive reasoning from various axioms, and so any results there are already philosophical and already guaranteed should those axioms obtain. So if math says Arithmetic implies B, then any philosophy that states that both Arithmetic and ~B obtains should be disregarded.
Leaving a comment so that the algorithm gods may help you. Pretend it's something meaningful.
I reject math, I accept lambda calculus. The idea that math is stateless and exists outside what is implemented, appears to be wrong to me.
1. The consensus among chess grandmasters is that the Sicilian defense can lead to an attack on the Queenside by black. 2.The Game-rules-fictionalist says that the Sicilian defense does not exist and can therefore not have the predicate "can lead to an attack on the Queenside". 3. Chess grandmasters are really successful in making statements about chess. 4. The Game-rules-fictionalist should defer to the view of the chess masters. 5. Chess-rule-fictionalism is false. Q.E.D
As a physicist I think that being religiously convinced about quantum physics is plain arrogant, and I'm willing to take anti-realism about causality seriously. As for the first, "we all agree" that quantum physics is so hard that none of us really understand it. Being certain that it's more than a useful model is delusional. As for the second, if quantum physics is indeed exactly correct you can make the case that there is no causation, there is only wave functions and the time dependent Schrödinger equation. So you have a universal potential energy field, you have solutions to the equations of which states a particle can be in, and the probability amplitudes drift over time.
I have seen certain online physicists make that argument that classical realm is an approximation of the quantum realm since quantum theory corresponds better with reality than classical theory...I haven't reached that level of physics just yet- to actually conclude anything though, because it's hard to understand physics without the maths even classically speaking intuitions are just starting points for further mathematization...
Excellent!
answer: yes!
Answer: defer in what way?
Some of the claims in the paper are absurd and dumb. That said the main point stands. Too much of philosophy is disconnected from reality and rooted in plato and Aristotle.
a mathematician saying philosophy should defer to maths is the same as a soldier saying rifle engineering should defer to soldiering just because soldiers are so good at shooting the thing.
Some people argue that if you give up the idea that the two-way speed of light is constant, which was stipulated (not proved!) by Einstein, you can restore newtonian time and absolute simmultaneity. I wonder if that is true.
Yes, if you invest a fictional world in which the entire theory of relativity and all of its implications are false, then universal simultaneity is possible, because its impossibility is a consequence of the theory of relativity. The problem is that you'd be writing fiction if you did this, because the invariance of the speed of light has been experimentally proven hundreds of times over - not by Einstein, but by other scientists both after and before him, most notably Michelson and Morley
@@treyforest1999 sorry. My mistake. I said two-way speed of light, but I meant one-way speed of light. No one measured that according to some: ruclips.net/video/pTn6Ewhb27k/видео.htmlsi=NDNiAOaltMtJ3NTT
I hold to algorithmic fictionalism
Engagement
i heard a very convincing argument that philosophy is dead, and that science reigns over reality. however, humans do not think that way. there will always be a reality (science) and there will always be a philosophy (attempt to understand)
Personally, I think everyone should defer to philosophy .
When is the next tier list?
Philosophy is both related to and different from science. When we say it is beyond science, we do not mean it is anti-scientific rather we mean it is at least scientific and goes further.
Science is philosophical naturalism.
Experts: "There's more to physics than math."
Novices: "😡"
@shanejohns7901 It is more methodological naturalism.
@@kyol420 In my experience physics uses maths to deduce further beliefs from premise beliefs and data
@@PhilSophia-ox7ep That's the current 'in vogue' dominant view in philosophical naturalism. I don't think it's likely to ever change to something else in any sort of paradigmatic shift. But it certainly could. It's not like it's a logical impossibility. We'd probably have to suffer some kind of world-wide calamity first, but...
No
Why not buy a good mic?
Yes.
Do whatever you want. You are still likely to live and die as all our monkey like ancestors have done.
Or you could study genetics and have a tiny chance to live much longer. How much longer? Longer than your tiny monkey brain could ever imagine.
Science is philosophy in the right hands and given enough time.
Not! Solved? …like materialism, ie consciousness is in the brain..WHICH IS WHY SCIENCE HAS IT’s HEAD IN THE SAND. They are wrong , I need philosophers to help them pull their head out of their
🤔
I find deferentialism to be obviously necessary. Philosophy generally relies on intuitions for saying which stuff is accurate without any picture of how those intuitions come to be (neuroscience, evolution, psychology is way more useful) and whether they are reliable or not. I understand that the science position requires intuition in the first place, but I’d rather a theory that is circular (especially if it simply explains phenomena and predict future phenomena) than one that can never fully explain everything.
So you'd rather have a fallacious system rather than one with epistemic humility?
@@PhilSophia-ox7ep there is a difference between humility "trying in anticipation of your errors" and being a radical skeptic boasting your modesty...
@@aRUclipsuserwhoisanonymous No, not much.
@@PhilSophia-ox7ep I guess we disagree then, I can clearly see a distinction between scientific humility to nature v/s boasting your modesty v/s motivated skepticism towards xyz ideas v/s over-reliance on armchair
@@aRUclipsuserwhoisanonymous You disagree because you conflate modesty/boasting (which are personal traits) with EPISTEMIC HUMILITY which is a question of methodological rigour.
comment
your content is too clickbait lmao , maybe you just touch on exactly those topics which I find interesting but I guess it's just content porn since whilst philosophy is about the "big" questions it rarely goes any deeper in online videos when you compare it to deduction chains in maths lectures online
"we know even successful theories can be false" thanks for demonstrating your lack of understanding. No successfully theory can be false. There can be a point at which the model stops working or breaks down but it's not false.
This is literally the topic that I specialized in. See my videos on scientific realism for more on it.
"Should philosophy defer to science?"
YES.
Did Leibniz do that? No, but the exact opposite if anything.
Nice to see you active after this while!
should is an ought question. I thought you were an ethical anti realist😅
What do you think my answer, as a thoroughgoing normative antirealist, would be to the question, "should people refrain from asking questions that they believe contain false presuppositions?"?
first
So would a deferentialist be likely to suggest that Robert M. Pirsig should have left Motorcycle Maintenance to garage mechanics at motorcycle repair shops?
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig
10 views in 3 minutes... Bro fell off
Yeah views on my channel seem to have been decreasing for the last few months.
@@KaneB well I can't speak for others, but I have been watching all your videos for a while now. Except that recently, I've been short on time and haven't crossed 20-30 minutes on any of them :/
@@kappaprimus well all views help, so thank you!
@@KaneB :D
@@kappaprimusAre you simply saying that you are unable to finish the videos because you’re short on time? Because when you mention the view count in relation to the time since the video was posted in conjunction with “bro fell off”, it seems like you’re saying Kane B is less popular than he used to be. Which seems utterly unrelated to your reply to Kane after he addressed your comment. So are you just claiming that he has less views than he used to in order to try and bully Kane or something?
So would a deferentialist be likely to suggest that Robert M. Pirsig should have left Motorcycle Maintenance to garage mechanics at motorcycle repair shops?
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Pirsig