Peirce’s Pragmati[ci]sm is actually a generalization of the logic of experimental science to all of philosophy. Quite splendid, actually.
By the way, the Feynman quote is really dumb, and it’s annoying that people keep trotting it out as if it was sage. The reason birds can’t make use of ornithology is they can’t read. Think how useful it would be for a cuckoo host to be able to spend a few hours reading a text on egg identification. Is the reason physicists can’t make use of philosophy of science that they can’t think? I doubt anyone who cites this “aphorism” would come to that conclusion. Bad metaphor.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2017 5:51 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] Doxastic logic - Wikipedia
Tangentially on the topic of Philosophy v. Physics, in my review of Dempster-Shaffer (to avoid making too stupid of misrepresentations on my bumper-sticker) I was fascinated to find Raymond Smullyan's "Types of Reasoners" reduced to formal logic (but also couched in natural language explanations).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Doxastic_logic#Types_of_ reasoners FWIW, I contend that *LOGIC* is used (critical to) in the natural sciences but does not *arise from* them... it arises from Philosophy (Epistemology) and is formalized in Mathematics and merely USED by Science.
I don't know if someone already quoted Feynman on the topic:
"philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds."
I suspect that if birds had the type of consciousness that included self-image/awareness and the abstractions of language, that *some* would at least find ornithology *interesting* and might even find some practical ways to apply what they learn from "the study of birds". But no, for the first part it wouldn't make them better fliers, predators, foragers, scavengers, etc. And most *good* Scientists I know don't know much about or care about the larger roles of Epistemology and Metaphysics, which *sometimes* leads them to believe they have answered the hard questions outside of the bounds of Empirical Science *with* Empirical Science? Like the "spherical cow", they just "assume away" the features that their measurements and models don't/can't address (much less answer).
Mumble,
- Steve
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