Philosophy in a nutshell

How should we live? What really exists? And how do we know for sure? 

These three questions are at the heart of philosophy as an academic discipline.  This raises the question as to what the "philosophy of physics" is and what it should be? Philosophy of Physics: A Very Short Introduction by David Wallace explores this. He begins by stating that "Daniel Dennett defines philosophy as what we do when we don't know what questions to ask." I found that somewhat unsatisfying and went to The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. 

Most definitions of philosophy are fairly controversial, particularly if they aim to be at all interesting or profound. That is partly because what has been called philosophy has changed radically in scope in the course of history, with many inquiries that were originally part of it having detached themselves from it. The shortest definition, and it is quite a good one, is that philosophy is thinking about thinking. That brings out the generally second-order character of the subject, as reflective thought about particular kinds of thinking—formation of beliefs, claims to knowledge—about the world or large parts of it.

A more detailed, but still uncontroversially comprehensive, definition is that philosophy is rationally critical thinking, of a more or less systematic kind about the general nature of the world (metaphysics or theory of existence), the justification of belief (epistemology or theory of knowledge), and the conduct of life (ethics or theory of value). 

Each of the three elements in this list has a non-philosophical counterpart, from which it is distinguished by its explicitly rational and critical way of proceeding and by its systematic nature. 

Everyone has some general conception of the nature of the world in which they live and of their place in it. Metaphysics replaces the unargued assumptions embodied in such a conception with a rational and organized body of beliefs about the world as a whole. 

Everyone has occasion to doubt and question beliefs, their own or those of others, with more or less success and without any theory of what they are doing. Epistemology seeks by argument to make explicit the rules of correct belief-formation. 

Everyone governs their conduct by directing it to desired or valued ends. Ethics, or moral philosophy, in its most inclusive sense, seeks to articulate, in rationally systematic form, the rules or principles involved. 

The three main parts of philosophy are related in various ways. For us to guide our conduct rationally we need a general conception of the world in which it is carried out and of ourselves as acting in it. Metaphysics presupposes epistemology, both to authenticate the special forms of reasoning on which it relies and to assure the correctness of the large assumptions which, in some of its varieties, it makes about the nature of things, such as that nothing comes out of nothing, that there are recurrences in the world and our experience of it, that the mental is not in space.

On the lighter side here is Philomena Cunk's brief engagement with philosophy.

A video worth showing non-scientists

Sometimes I give talks about science to high school students and to community groups, mostly churches. Recently I showed this one.



Besides the "wow factor" I think it is valuable because it demonstrates some very basic but profound and important points about science.

1. Common sense observation and experience can be misleading.

2. Consequently, nature appears sometimes to be counter intuitive.

3. The way to discover the way things really are is by doing experiments.

One can explain the historical significance of this experiment. Aristotle advocated basing science on common sense observations [heavy objects fall faster, objects that start their motion eventually slow down unless a force is applied to them, objects on earth move in a qualitatively different manner to those in the heavens, ....]. In contrast, Galileo went against this and did real experiments, dropping two balls of different mass [probably not from the leaning tower of Pisa].

This can also lead to a discussion of how scientific observations today confront us today with many counter-intuitive realities such as wave-particle duality, Schrodinger's cat, dark matter, ....

For high school or introductory college students who know Newton's laws of motion and gravitation one can explain how this illustrates the equality of inertial and gravitational mass.

Aside. Thanks to insights from my wife, I stop the video before the very end when Brian Cox starts talking about Einstein and the Principle of Equivalence. Non-scientists find this too confusing, get fixated on it since it is the last thing they hear, and then get distracted from the more basic stuff such as the above.

If your game, you could then discuss the problems with string theory....

Objectivity has a price

The movie The Inside Job is an Academy Award winning documentary which considers the origins of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). It particularly focuses on conflicts of interest, including of economists in universities who write academic papers and books, sympathetic to vested interests, but do not reveal in those publications that they have received large consulting fees from those interests.

Last year, the director of the movie, Charles Ferguson, wrote a compelling and challenging article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Larry Summers and the Subversion of Economics, which documents these conflicts of interest, and how they represent a serious problem for the university and government.

It is worth reading a post on the Creative Destruction blog. One economics faculty member from Gettysburg College writes:

But are these economists corrupt? Have they been peddling the economic ideology of deregulated financial markets knowing that it is a load of crap? I don't know, but my gut tells me that's going too far. I think rather that they are the victims and perpetrators of groupthink. Having entered the world of high finance they become desensitized and sympathetic to the culture and stop questioning the worldview of those who are paying their consulting fees. They lose certain of their critical faculties - and that is a real problem, because the ability to examine issues critically is central to their identity as academics. In the end a guy like Frederic Mishkin comes off in the movie not as corrupt or malevolent, but simply clueless. He's so deep in the tank he doesn't know how deep he is. In the end my contempt for these guys is rooted not in my sense that they're corrupt but that they've made themselves lousy economists.

On a related subject, the Director of the London School of Economics (LSE) has had to resign because of links with Libya, including "giving" a Ph.D to one of Gadaffi's sons.
Gaddafi's thesis proves money talks, especially in halls of academe.

As I have said before, human nature is such that once large amounts of money, power, prestige, and/or bureaucracy become involved, the quest for the real truth becomes difficult. This applies in any research.

Seeing what you want to see

There is a good Opinion piece in the November Scientific American, Fudge Factor: a look at Harvard science fraud case by Scott O. Lillienfeld. He discusses the problem of distinguishing intentional scientific fraud from confirmation bias, the tendency we have as scientists to selectively interpret data in order to confirm our own theories.

This is a good reminder that the easiest person to fool is yourself.

It is well known that ....

I just read this advice:

1. Be an outsider. Don't be unduly awed by authority,...

2. Be fact driven. An obsession with facts can help you avoid common pitfalls and the bending of facts to fit your theories....

3. Respect the unknowable. Work on the assumption that too many people are too certain about the inherently uncertain things.

4. Always question your own convictions. Most of us look for verification of our own beliefs. Instead you should be open to having your ideas criticised. Only through this kind of stress testing can the true validity of your beliefs be determined.

5. Employ meta-cognition. Consciously practise all the steps above to avoid falling into overconfidence when success is experienced.

Actually, this advice is not about doing science. It is from Kathryn Schutz's reflections Five lessons for investors, from Michael Lewis's The Big Short. I read the above summary in The Week.

But, it seems to me it is good advice also for doing better science!