What is philosophy of science supposed to achieve?

[koganbot]

Ha! In my head I'd been composing a post in response to meserach's claiming, "any position toward the philosophy of science which fails to give a good accounting of how science achieves 'better' practical results than other ways of thinking about the universe is ultimately bankrupt," where I say that the hard sciences so far have a very limited scope that leaves out vast hunks of the the universe. Turns out, according to Dave, that sitcom The Big Bang Theory beat me to the punch (click link to find out how).

So anyway, my reply to meserach is that t.A.T.u. and the Veronicas are in the universe, and as of yet physics, chemistry, biology, paleontology etc. have had nothing interesting to say about them or anything like them.* So it would seem that the hard sciences' ways of thinking about that part of the universe (the t.A.T.u.-Veronica's part) have no practical results whatsoever, in fact don't exist. It could be legitimate for meserach to claim that, e.g., physics does a better job of talking about electrons than music critics do of talking about t.A.T.u. and the Veronicas, but I don't know what to do with that information: I don't know if there would be any benefit if we could talk about t.A.T.u. and the Veronicas with the precision etc. that physicists talk about electrons, and even if there would be a benefit, I have no clue how to achieve that precision, or even what it would be.

This isn't a criticism of the sciences at all, but it accentuates the question I've been bringing up in my last couple of posts: just what is philosophy of science (or philosophy overall) for? What's it supposed to achieve?

*Well, I'm sure that the physical acoustics people could have something to say, but it probably couldn't be extended to most of the questions or ideas I'd have about t.A.T.u. or the Veronicas. And biological research into the brain may well have something to say about the appeal of music, at some point, but again I don't see where that would have an impact on anything I'd have to say about them, though of course I won't know until it happens.

Comments

[meserach.livejournal.com]

physics does a better job of talking about electrons than music critics do of talking about t.A.T.u. and the Veronicas

See again, you have this focus on talking about electrons as if doing so was a good in and of itself, when my whole position is that I don;t give a shit about electrons except insofar as they are useful conceptual tools that allow humans to achieve cool shit, such as, for one example, allowing me to argue the merits of t.A.T.u vs. the Veronicas over the internet, which would not have been achieved without the precision conceptual tool of quantum mechanics' description of electrons.

The point of physics is engineering, just as the point of biology is stuff like medicine.

The point of a precision science of music would be to make better music! And your last paragraph does indeed hint at possible pathways as to how one could do so in the future.

But even a precision science of music criticism could help make better music - I'm sure most music critics would agree, or at least would hope, that in some way good music criticism would lead to better music being made.

What would a more "scientific" music criticism look like? Simply, attention to the production of theories, the making of predictions based on said theories, carrying out experiments based on said predictions, and then the modification of theory based on the results of experiment.

In short, music criticism that directly informs music practice.

I would contend that something very like this actually goes on already! You could even view genres as Kuhnian paradigms, perhaps....

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

For some reason Meserach's post reminded me of a quote i've always liked from Adorno's pupil the critic, historian and musicologist Carl Dahlhaus: “The life of compositional history is to be found less in its actual results that in its problems and utopias.”

CD was talking -- was only really interested in -- the composed music of the Western tradition, Bach-Boulez, as it were; and in a sense there's a definitional thing going on here (viz it only counts as "composition" in the sense CD cares about IF AND WHEN it's the case that the "life" of it is to be found in discussion of problems solved and utopias evoked and aimed at)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

I studied philosophy of mathematics rather than philosophy of science, and in effect what it largely was a kind of border patrol: of what was acceptable as mathematics, and what shouldn't be.

What was at issue was primarily the status of infinity as a concept, a tool and a "thing": was it OK to be using it the way it was being used, when it had no real-world signified; if not, what could be done to "rescue" it. There were three schools as I recall: the foundationalist, the formalists and the intuitionists. The foundationalists wanted to rebuild all mathematics in terms of logic (which they considered unimpeachable); and set off to do so (and failed, between the work of Russell&Whitehead and Gödel it was discovered that not even arithmetic could be re-expressed in purely logical terms, iun sense the required).

The formalists (led by David Hilbert) said that it didn't matter: as long as mathematical systems were internally consistent, they were worthy of study.

The intuitionists (led by Brouwer) banished a variety types of types on infinity from a series of key proofs and built alternative tools to reach the proofs by other means.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

Very loosely, the philosophy of science that i do know a bit about -- Karl Popper, for example -- is also primarily concerned with border patrol: what counts as science, what doesn't, why this might matter. And this topic treated as a project in itself, rather than ad hoc disciplinary skirmishing and interdeparmental politics and funding battles.

Another territory it might be fruitfully concerned with -- possibly rather more urgent than the "what is and what isn't science" -- is the study of the effects within knowledge as a whole of what was termed "Balkanisation", of particular disciplinary fields.

In both cases, the issue would be overview, to various ends. The question would be, is philosophy as currently constituted good at tackling such an issue; and if not, how should it change.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

physics, chemistry, biology, paleontology etc. have had nothing interesting to say about them or anything like them

I'd dispute that - those sciences may have a lot of interesting things to say about them (though of course who's deciding 'interesting' counts for a lot) - just not necessarily anything about them as distinct from other humans.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

Frank, have you read any of Ian Hacking's stuff - I get the vague feeling you'd get something out of it if not. He's very good (IMO) on making Foucault's ideas work. (well i could never stand Foucault's [translated] prose style, so it kind of got in the way of working out what the hell he was on about)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Hacking

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Here's something I ran across at work: this guy is using philosophy of science to talk about whether we should (or could) research and effectively implement geoengineering to combat climate change.