Maarten Boudy and I wrote two papers for Philosophical Psychology. The first was a critique of a paper by philosopher Neil van Leeuwen, who argued that religious beliefs weren’t at all like “real” beliefs, but more often had a status as “fictional imaginings.” We took issue with that. Van Leeuwen then criticized us, and we replied (I don’t have copies of the van Leeuwen papers, as they’re all electronic and we got only our pdfs.) If you want either of these two papers, just ask (by “ask,” I mean “send me a request by email”).
Maarten Boudry & Jerry Coyne (2016): Disbelief in belief: On the cognitive status of supernatural beliefs, Philosophical Psychology, DOI: 10.1080/09515089.2015.1110852
Maarten Boudry & Jerry Coyne (2016): Fakers, fanatics, and false dilemmas: Reply to Van Leeuwen, Philosophical Psychology, DOI: 10.1080/09515089.2016.1146244
I wonder if Massimo Pigliucci will still continue to claim that I’m philosophically incompetent. . .
UPDATE: I’m told by Dr. Boudry that the first 50 people who click on these links can download the paper for free, so try these first:
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Not sure “philosopher” is a title to wear with pride in this day and age. Besides which, I’ll bet you a cup of coffee that all the so-called philosophy in your paper perfectly fits your definition of “science, broadly construed.”
b&
Philosophy has no falsification criterion. Philosophers are good at creating systems of thought with high levels of internal consistency, which may or may not correspond to something externally real.
Aristotle was very clever, but physics has more or less overturned his notion of causality (and with it that of Thomas Aquinas).
Even there, philosophy has long since been far outstripped by mathematicians, logicians, and computer scientists.
b&
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Given that Descartes and Leibnitz were both philosophers and mathematicians and their math achievements have greatly outlived their philosophical musings, there is probably something to that.
(On the other hand, Bertrand Russell was both a philosopher and mathematician, and I think his philosophical thought is more significant than his contributions to math.)
“Philosophy has no falsification criterion.”
uh…Karl Popper?
“Philosophy has no falsification criterion.”
I thought philosophy established the falsificatin criterion. Karl Popper, anyone?
Sorry bout that reply reply. didn’t post for five minutes. Yhen it did.
Still, now that I’m here… Popper.
Popper is in his capacity as a philosopher of science talking about what would falsify a scientific theory rather than what would falsify a philosophy.
Sure it does, hence why philosophers don’t use the same reasons, arguments, and evidences that Plato devised. Even to take one modern notion – Utilitarianism – there’s been arguments forward and back on it such that the modern-day proponents of utilitarianism have a different conception to what the likes of Bentham and JS Mill put forth.
Do you think that philosophy of mind, for example, has not paid attention to what’s going on in physics, neuroscience, and psychology? Do you think that any philosopher endorses Descartes’ mind-body dualism in the way the father of modern philosophy conceived it? Of course not!
Logic has evolved. Philosophy of mind has evolved. Philosophy of science has evolved. Philosophy of language has evolved. Metaethics has evolved. Epistemology has evolved. Metaphysics has evolved. etc. Indeed, it’s hard to try to understand a modern day philosopher without grasping with the 2500 year historical context of their arguments.
Indeed.
It’s true that todays philosophers listen to the sciences, but that seems to me to be a relatively recent phenomenon.
Consider that in the early 20th century, there was a whole set of neo-Kantian philosophers who just didn’t believe quantum theory because it opposed Kantian conceptions of causality.
This was eventually put to rest by a clever philosopher who had an undergrad degree in physics, and was able to expose much of the flawed logic behind their reasoning.
Sounds like you’ve illustrated perfectly of how philosophy makes progress. Is the gripe philosophy doesn’t change, or that it some philosophers don’t immediately defer to science? After all, Einstein spent the last few decades of his line trying to refute quantum mechanics despite its success, yet we don’t disparage physics as a whole because of this.
I believe Albert Einstein thought QM was incomplete, he didn’t refute it.
According to Leonard Mlodinow’s book on the history of science, it was a philosophical distance for the implications of quantum mechanics that underlied Einstein’s quest for a a different theory.
Einstein was troubled by indeterminacy.
And quantum entanglement too. I think there was a recent development there.
He did say to Max Born that god does not play dice.
Interestingly, Max Born’s grand daughter, Olivia Newton-John, is a world class talent in a completely different area.
That’s probably quantum. Or philosophical. Or neither. Hmm.
Einstein was a bad father, teacher and a hypocrite regarding his pacifism, but he was not stupid. QM was already well established back then.
This is probably a glass half full/empty sort of discussion; I’m afraid I can only guide you to a pay-walled article 🙁
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-einstein-really-thought-about-quantum-mechanics/
And the *real* debate, which Bohr and Einstein talked past each other on, was about realism, a philosophical topic. A refusal to be a realist (in the original sense) when talking still infects physics. (Needless to say all physicists are tacitly realists when actually working – which Einstein knew.)
It is selective, but it is a *welcome return* to what was happening before Kant (maybe Hume), or thereabouts. Kant tried to understand Newton’s physics and (in my view) failed miserably because of lack of mathematics.
Selective: there’s an interview with J. Kim where he asserts he needs to know no neuroscience. This lack shows up in spades in his recent _Mind in a Physical World_ where actual examples from science about downward causation would have been help.
(An interesting exercise is to replace all the “mind” stuff in that book with chemical examples.)
It appears that a paper, or a “paper” isn’t real either, but are rather “semiconductor transients” produced from …. I’m done.
Does this mean that now you can get rid of your wastebasket?
Massimo may stop claiming you are philosophically incompetent…but he will always feel privately superior. That being said, I only have one PhD, so my predictions obviously count less too.🐬
Into a seedy downtown bar walked three doctors…
Into a seedy downtown bar walked three doctors…
…and?
…and he said, “I’ll have the usual.”
🙂
It’s white wine, too!
Quite likely, yes. Indeed on his blog he’s just posted (another) dismissal of your use of broad-definition “science” as including plumbing, as in the Gould quote.
I tend to wonder what the difference between Pigliucci’s use of scientia and Coyne’s broad definition of science is. From the outside, it looks like an argument over semantics that doesn’t really differentiate the general concept each is trying to get across.
I agree, Jerry’s “broadly conceived science” is pretty much the same concept as Massimo’s “scientia”.
Massimo’s main objection is that “science” already has a meaning in a narrower sense, and thus it is confusing to use the word as Jerry does. That’s a valid but somewhat limited objection.
“Science broadly construed” is much more easily understood on sight that “scientia.” Philosophers just like to make up and use obscure words, just to sound intellectual.
Neat.
what will be the reaction of parsons and lowder and the other “sophisticated” atheists whom even feser likes to hang out with?
If you want either of these two papers, just ask.
I’m asking. Yes I would like to a copy of both of your wonderful papers. Thanks.
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Can you send me an email? I’ll add that note to the above.
Does this apply to everyone? I’d also love to read those papers.
Yes, of course it applies to everyone. If you want, just email me.
Got the email, look forward to reading them. Thanks for that!
But do you have sophisticated philosopher cred?
Well, he’s got some pretty sophisticated boots. Does that count?
b&
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No, that would be “tread,” not “cred.”
(Tho come to think of it, cowboy boots really don’t have any of the former.)
PCC (E ) is doing unto philosophy what Bobby Henderson did with Kansas ‘equal time’ laws. Calling the bluff.
Coming soon to a catwalk near you : the Emperors’s New Clothes.
Hmmm. Are you sure? I have been reliably informed by a philosophy prof that anyone who believes in reductionism, or physicalism, or the computational theory of mind, or that intelligence could evolve, or who doubts the proofs of god’s existence, is philosophically inept. (This is not MP, but a different philosopher I sometimes fight with online.)
And you won’t name names?
Edward Feser?
Eugene Callahan, and he’s a big Feser fan.
“I have been reliably informed by a philosophy prof that anyone who believes in reductionism, or physicalism, or the computational theory of mind, or that intelligence could evolve, or who doubts the proofs of god’s existence, is philosophically inept.”
What professional philosophers believe:
16. Mind: physicalism 56.5%; non-physicalism 27.1%; other 16.4%.
25. Science: scientific realism 75.1%; scientific anti-realism 11.6%; other 13.3%.
8. God: atheism 72.8%; theism 14.6%; other 12.6%.
Looks like most philosophers by profession and training are philosophically inept 😉
There are a lot of Maroon stories on divestment. You can see them here:
http://chicagomaroon.com/tag/divestment/
You really shouldn’t let comments about philosophy cred bother you. The best way to gain philosophy cred, it seems to me, is to read a lot of philosophy and engage in arguments using what you’ve learnt from doing so.
The way to competence is practice, practice, practice, practice, practice.
(couldn’t get to the papers btw)
“How can I get to Carnegie Hall”? Asked a passer by to a musician sitting on a bench in Central Park.
Somewhere, someone must track numbers of undergrads majoring in this and that. When I was in a Biological Sciences dept, our #s of majors kept increasing. I once tried to find out what the numbers were with Philosophy, but heard that those numbers weren’t readily available, and didn’t press further.
But there must be some stats out there…