A system cannot contain its own justification, although it might demonstrate itself invalid. So philosophical thought is needed to develop a scientific method, it can't develop itself.

However once you have your scientific method in place, whatever it is, then it is that you rely on to address real world questions like origins of the universe, free will, determinism vs indeterminism etc.

That depends. That's actually something up for debate.

Is it truth? Is it knowledge? Or, is it justification? Or...something else?

Again, not questions for science per se.

What about compatibilism vs incompatibilism? Can your science do that?

That's what philosophers care about.

My view of science is that it ONLY attempts to model (aka describe) and predict. A theory or law is just a model. The extent to which the theory/model predicts well, makes us confident in its relationship to the real world.

Of course. The biggest problem, in my view, is that the great moral philosophers went around it in the wrong manner to various extents. There is no such thing as a "good will" or "categorical imperative," nor will you ever be able to point to a "virtue" as a thing-in-itself.

Where they succeed, to various degrees, is in describing what living a good life entails. Particularly when they prescribe certain viewpoints/habits/behaviors that lead to personal/societal happiness or can distinguish between good actors and bad actors.

Kant, for example, seems to spend a lot of effort describing the difference between someone acting nicely due to circumstance and someone acting nice due to character. Although I find his moral theory to be lacking in the face of reality, his attempt is an important demonstration of human nature: to describe how we tend to separate character and circumstance as causal factors. Curiously, the question of whether my fiance is washing the dishes right now because she loves me, or whether she think this will lead to me doing her, comes immediately to mind. Of course, if the first is true, then she is a good person, and if the second is true, then she is not a good person and deserves to be punished.*

In my opinion, no. There seems to be a holding pattern while everyone is focussing on learning details, rather than attempting a grand theory.

*randomly inserted s&m implication itt fyp.

I'm assuming that was your response to me (and hoping you realized that the naturalistic fallacy part didn't apply). Ok, a different question along the same lines. An epistemologist has two (hypothetical) potential goals for the belief-forming process. What would make him think that one is a better goal than another?

So, unanswerable questions are the one eternal domain of philosophy.

I assume, by extension, you expect no answers to be found.

Sounds like job security to me.

That entirely depends. How do they fit into an overall theory? Why are the BFPs characterized the way they are?

Lots of things to consider.

That's a dodge. Link to a publication in epistemology that has answered this question.

Well yes, indirectly by resolving the issues of free will and determinism independently.

However the whole subject seems silly to me, as it seems to be forcing a relationship between two issues that don't really relate. Admittedly I did not know what compatiblism meant until yesterday so I might be missing something.

Free will relates to how we make choices. This happens in the brain so that what we study to resolve the issue. It seems really simple to me.

Determinism/indeterminism is trickier as it seems to relate to the fundamental structure of the universe. One might deduce from QM and the uncertainty principle that indeterminism is the correct option, in fact that is pretty close to my position. However there is certainly the potential for further ground shaking developments. But the key point here I think is that the results of physics experiments can produce evidence towards resolving the determinism/indeterminism issue, it can be approached empirically.

Huh? "Answered"?

Some people argue for knowledge (Williamson), some people argue for justification (Goldman, Lackey...me), some people argue for truth (Weiner, Wright).

Each places their arguments in a broader theory than just epistemology (assertion, practical reasoning, action theory, etc.).

Specifying what level BFPs should be characterized is known as the 'generality problem.'

edit: TC: what do you think that Gettier actually "proved"? How do you think he did it? Why do you think he was successful? Are you sure that he "proved" anything at all?

They're totally independent! That's the point. Answering whether determinism or indeterminism is true won't answer compatibilism/incompatibilism!

You say that it "relates to choices"...HOW does it relate to choices? What is choice? Why that definition rather than another?

Well actually the key point I was making about free will, whatever that is, was, “it happens in the brain”.

There are several experiments that appear to relate to free will. Two I find interesting are: The Benjamin Libet's experiments where people are shown to experience the decisions to do something after they have decided. And the Ammon and Gandevia's experiment where subjects were induced to move a certain hand by magnetic stimulation while believing it was via their own volition.

The key theme here seems to be the sensation of making a decision is disjoint from the actual cause of the decision. In the first experiment the decision to perform an action was preformed by a separate non conscious thread, while in the second experiment the decision was induced by an outside agent. In both instances the feeling of making a decision appears to be the mind rationalising a decision that was already a fait accompli. Our sensation of being a free agent would appear to be a result of a trick our mind is playing on us. I expect further study in this area will help develop these ideas.

So, to summarize your comments, it's the job of epistemology to tell us what we OUGHT to be doing as far as belief-forming processes, but epistemology doesn't know what the correct goal of the BFP is and can't even tell us what would make one hypothetical goal better than another. Clearly it's overqualified to tell us what we ought to be doing.

C'MON MAN.

Umm...what's your point, exactly? People have different views on what the proper 'goal' of a BFP is. There is no 'answer'...there are different answers. One of the debates is over what this goal is. Another takes different goals as given and then procedes to the prescriptive claims about how we ought to think, form beliefs, and come to know.

You're not asking the right questions if you think that there must be a unique answer to that sort of question in order for any meaningful discussion or development to take place.

You're completely missing the point. "truth", "justification", and "knowledge" aren't even goals in the sense that I'm asking about. For the sake of explanation, if the proper perspective is Darwinian, then you evaluate one BFP against another based on what competitive advantage it gives (from the relative advantages and disadvantages of the beliefs themselves and the use of finite resources to form beliefs compared to doing other things) in the context of the world.

These are more fundamental questions. What is the REAL purpose of the BFP? How can you evaluate hypothetical BFPs in this context to determine one fulfills that purpose better than another?

If you have no idea what the real purpose is, and no idea how to evaluate one relative to another in fulfilling that purpose, then anything you write about "this is how you ought to do things" is just undirected spew. You might wind up hitting your zillion to one shot and actually being right by accident, but there's no reason for anybody to take any prescriptions seriously in the meantime.

I think the important question is whether the sum total of philosophers' output on the subject has had even the slightest influence on the "BFP" of scientists.

Okay, so that's yet another proposal: Darwinian fitness is the 'goal' of a good BFP. But, we may still ask: is there a more fundamental feature which gives rise to such a feature? Is it truth, justification, knowledge? If not, why not? Is there a better theory that uses one of the latter concepts instead of the Darwinian concept?


Again, you're misunderstanding things at a fundamental level. You're assuming that a single unique answer to this must be determined before ANY other important work can be done. Sure, the work on prescriptive theories in some sense depends on the more fundamental questions, but then we should all be doing metaphysics and that's it. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand intellectual investigations.

The position you've expressed begs the question about methodology...why do you take that position? Why is it useless to discuss what might follow on condition x rather than y even if we don't know whether x or y is true? You're begging the question here.

It most certainly has...the reason that the scientific method is the way it is is a direct result of philosophical investigations into the scientific methodology.

Furthermore, investigations into inference to the best explanation and informal logic loom large (you have no doubt heard of Ockham's Razor). The point is that science is the bastard child of philosophy and, for some strange reason, you're unwilling to admit your genealogy. Why is some implicit separateness thesis required for your identity? Why do you have to disparage philosophy?

If the Darwinian concept is right, then nothing can be better by definition (and it's also trivial to make examples that show that maximizing t, j, or k, are not maximum performers in this framework). Maybe there is a better theory. Maybe there isn't. What would you need to see to show you that one theory about the goal of BFP (darwinian) is better than another (hypothetical other) theory?

No. As I've said plenty of times already ITT, you're quite welcome to hypothesize answers to some questions and analyze based on those hypotheses. If the goal is x, and some other stuff y, you should do z. I have no inherent problem with anything of that form.

Exactly. You're basically answering the questions in the wrong order. As an analogy, I have a number written down between 1 and a million. You're all off coming up with theories, if the number is 1, this means x, and you should do y.. if the number is 2, this means d, and you should do f, etc. And some people just ignore that part and say you should do z, just because. It's the exact same problem that exists with ethics.

If you want to answer the questions out of order (figuring out what all of the million possible numbers mean before trying to figure out what the number is), knock yourself out, but when you're exploring a wide range of possibilities with no real idea what the answer to the first question is, it's a sign of inefficient and sloppy thought of the highest order (if the goal is to actually solve the problem, and not just to find something to write a paper about).

If you want to make prescriptions about how we ought to do something (and I don't see you disputing that this is a goal of epistemology or ethics), then you'd damn well better answer the first question before you even think about doing that. All the different conditional prescriptions in the world are wonderful, but until you know the actual condition, you can't know the proper prescription (well, ok, if you have it narrowed down to 2 possible conditions, and both somehow have the same prescription, but you should be able to get the point).

If your goal is to make an accurate prescription, then yeah, somebody had better do it.

On the contrary. I've specifically said multiple times that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with it as an intellectual exercise. What I have a problem with is passing that off as knowledge about or understanding of the actual condition.

Well, you should be off doing metaphysics then. Why are you doing whatever it is that you do? We don't have the answers to the most fundamental questions on which everything else is based...why are we wasting our time with any normative investigations?!

Everyone stop doing science...get into your armchairs and figure out the metaphysics!

You know what's kindof funny, the greek philosophers considered Ethics to be the most important discipline. But, in order to do ethics you have to answer epistemological questions...so they did Epistemology. But, in order to do epistemology, you have to answer metaphysical questions...so they did Metaphysics.

But, of course, we don't get many metaphysical 'answers.' So, that doesn't stop them from doing epistemology or ethics. Everything is just appropriately prefixed. That's still true today. I don't understand why you don't realize this.

Your disparaging views of normative philosophy are basically one giant straw man.

What is this supposed to mean?

Give your favorite prescription that normative ethics has to offer.

Depending on your favourite metaethical story, you should do x...

No one really thinks that we've answered which ethical system is 'correct' because, in part, we're still debating over whether there IS one (and only one). Mackie, for example, doubts whether there are any moral 'facts.'

I'll settle for SEP or wiki links to a couple of relatively recent ones.

I still don't see the point of your question. It's as if you think it matters in some 'gotcha' sense, when it doesn't.

Here's one of the more famous discussions in ethics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

Again, NO ONE thinks that we have the 'answers' for ethics. Why? Because we haven't sorted out the metaethical questions yet, but that doesn't mean that we can avoid making ethical decisions in the meantime. So, we work out ways to 'get by' and make the 'best decisions' we can in the meantime.

How do you think we should reason in moral situations?