I've came across a book written by you but I am curious if anything prerequisite to this course that I should go through before switching to this course again?
But there really is a graveyard of mistaken ontologies, isn't there -- geocentrism, Lamarkism, phlogiston theory, theory of the four bodily humors, etc? Given science's history of error, how can we say with confidence that the current theories are any closer to reality?
Thank you for your comment, Dale. If we are truly fallibilists, then we have to be very careful when deeming ontologies of the past as false in the absolute sense. If we are indeed fallibilists, then we have to agree that they are not absolutely false, but instead they contained at least some grains of truth. For instance, we rejected the theory of four elements was but we don't think it was absolutely false; we think it contained some grains of truth such as the idea of solid, liquid, and gaseous states of matter as well as plasma. Similarly, we no longer accept the theory of phlogiston, but saying that its ontology was absolutely wrong would be a stretch; it was an approximation, a pretty bad one, but an approximation nevertheless. And so are our onologies; they are too approximations. Which is not to say that one approximation cannot be better than another. Think of it as a series of photographs of the same person - from the blurriest to the sharpest. Compared to the sharp photographs, the blurry photographs would be worse approximations of the person's look; yet, importantly, they are approximations. The same goes for ontologies: compared to our contemporary ontologies, ontologies of the past are worse approximations of the world (at least we as a scientific community believe they are), but they are not absolutely false. Thus the argument from the graveyard of ontologies doesn't hold for those who take their fallibilism seriously. If you have further questions, please feel free to email me directly at any time.
Thanks for the reply, Hakob! Really terrific series by the way. I'm trying to get my head around all of it. If scientific knowledge is envisioned as an expanding sphere, we are accurate in describing reality in the center but wildly off base at the margins. Looking forward to the rest of the lectures!
@@hakobbarseghyan9533 In that same respect when dealing with science, and the method of reality science and not commercial, the blurry photo would be ignored as it is not observable enough to draw any conclusion. Today, science is not much greater than a religious system. Sadly this is used as a psychological influence over the general movement of people.
As a wise man once said: "If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and making it serve our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end to the Kantian ungraspable 'thing-in-itself.' The chemical substances produced in the bodies of plants and animals remained such 'things-in-themselves' until organic chemistry began to produce them one after another, whereupon the 'thing-in-itself' became a thing for us, as, for instance, alizarin, the coloring matter of the madder, which we no longer trouble to grow ill the madder roots in the field, but produce much more cheaply and simply from coal tar. For 300 years the Copernican solar system was a hypothesis with a hundred, a thousand or ten thousand chances to one in its favor, but still always a hypothesis. But when Leverrier, by means of the data provided by this system, not only deduced the necessity of the existence of an unknown planet, but also calculated the position in the heavens which this planet must necessarily occupy, and when Galle really found this planet, the Copernican system was proved." (F. Engels, "Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy)
Scientific theories are just descriptive representations that serve to conceptually model some aspect(s) of reality -- just like maps. As we all know, maps aren't identical to the terrain they're used to represent, nor do they have to be. So long as their accuracy is sufficient to the task of navigation, they're true enough.
We can't just jump to a completely correct ontology or theory, the better theories build themselves on top of past mistakes and successes. Descartes needed Aristotle and Newtonians needed Cartesians. Aristotle needed Plato too, and yet we are quick to ridicule the ideas of Plato because they are so distant to us without understanding their progressive historical role at the time!
If science is unique among human endeavors wherein progress can be shown, then obviously we must conclude that the philosophy of science must be part of science itself, unless it is just for our amusement. The Greeks had the technology to record progress in discus throwing at their games, but they did not.
+HarlowBAshur It is a quite interesting remark being made here. And in order to escape this kind of confusion we should remind ourselves that philosophy of science consists of two aspects: a descriptive and a normative one. So when we take into account this nature of the philosophy of science, it is possible to be both scientific (not self-amusing) and yet be able to assess possible progress in science without trapping ourselves into confusion. This is possible because the normative component will always be a part of science itself, while the descriptive one -- describing the development of science from the outside, which, I suppose, is the only way to describe objectively anything at all.
Calling football football and not calling eggball football, made you my favorite prof.
Getting further and further away from error, is it getting closer to the truth?
I've came across a book written by you but I am curious if anything prerequisite to this course that I should go through before switching to this course again?
is there an option for captions?
+Nadia S. Hi Nadia. We are working on the subtitles and will have them uploaded in a few months.
But there really is a graveyard of mistaken ontologies, isn't there -- geocentrism, Lamarkism, phlogiston theory, theory of the four bodily humors, etc? Given science's history of error, how can we say with confidence that the current theories are any closer to reality?
Thank you for your comment, Dale.
If we are truly fallibilists, then we have to be very careful when deeming ontologies of the past as false in the absolute sense. If we are indeed fallibilists, then we have to agree that they are not absolutely false, but instead they contained at least some grains of truth. For instance, we rejected the theory of four elements was but we don't think it was absolutely false; we think it contained some grains of truth such as the idea of solid, liquid, and gaseous states of matter as well as plasma. Similarly, we no longer accept the theory of phlogiston, but saying that its ontology was absolutely wrong would be a stretch; it was an approximation, a pretty bad one, but an approximation nevertheless. And so are our onologies; they are too approximations. Which is not to say that one approximation cannot be better than another. Think of it as a series of photographs of the same person - from the blurriest to the sharpest. Compared to the sharp photographs, the blurry photographs would be worse approximations of the person's look; yet, importantly, they are approximations.
The same goes for ontologies: compared to our contemporary ontologies, ontologies of the past are worse approximations of the world (at least we as a scientific community believe they are), but they are not absolutely false. Thus the argument from the graveyard of ontologies doesn't hold for those who take their fallibilism seriously.
If you have further questions, please feel free to email me directly at any time.
Thanks for the reply, Hakob! Really terrific series by the way. I'm trying to get my head around all of it. If scientific knowledge is envisioned as an expanding sphere, we are accurate in describing reality in the center but wildly off base at the margins. Looking forward to the rest of the lectures!
@@hakobbarseghyan9533 In that same respect when dealing with science, and the method of reality science and not commercial, the blurry photo would be ignored as it is not observable enough to draw any conclusion. Today, science is not much greater than a religious system. Sadly this is used as a psychological influence over the general movement of people.
As a wise man once said: "If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and making it serve our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end to the Kantian ungraspable 'thing-in-itself.' The chemical substances produced in the bodies of plants and animals remained such 'things-in-themselves' until organic chemistry began to produce them one after another, whereupon the 'thing-in-itself' became a thing for us, as, for instance, alizarin, the coloring matter of the madder, which we no longer trouble to grow ill the madder roots in the field, but produce much more cheaply and simply from coal tar. For 300 years the Copernican solar system was a hypothesis with a hundred, a thousand or ten thousand chances to one in its favor, but still always a hypothesis. But when Leverrier, by means of the data provided by this system, not only deduced the necessity of the existence of an unknown planet, but also calculated the position in the heavens which this planet must necessarily occupy, and when Galle really found this planet, the Copernican system was proved." (F. Engels, "Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy)
5:14 ... and there are many more.
Scientific theories are just descriptive representations that serve to conceptually model some aspect(s) of reality -- just like maps. As we all know, maps aren't identical to the terrain they're used to represent, nor do they have to be. So long as their accuracy is sufficient to the task of navigation, they're true enough.
GLOSSY SHINE
We can't just jump to a completely correct ontology or theory, the better theories build themselves on top of past mistakes and successes. Descartes needed Aristotle and Newtonians needed Cartesians. Aristotle needed Plato too, and yet we are quick to ridicule the ideas of Plato because they are so distant to us without understanding their progressive historical role at the time!
If science is unique among human endeavors wherein progress can be shown, then obviously we must conclude that the philosophy of science must be part of science itself, unless it is just for our amusement.
The Greeks had the technology to record progress in discus throwing at their games, but they did not.
+HarlowBAshur
It is a quite interesting remark being made here. And in order to escape this kind of confusion we should remind ourselves that philosophy of science consists of two aspects: a descriptive and a normative one. So when we take into account this nature of the philosophy of science, it is possible to be both scientific (not self-amusing) and yet be able to assess possible progress in science without trapping ourselves into confusion. This is possible because the normative component will always be a part of science itself, while the descriptive one -- describing the development of science from the outside, which, I suppose, is the only way to describe objectively anything at all.
omg its hairy style!!!
Not watching this video because the intro made me want to go watch Queen videos.