In defense of the value free ideal, Gregor Betz

• the most important distinction:

“The methodological critique is not only ill-founded, but distracts from the crucial methodological challenge scientific policy advice faces today, namely the appropriate description and communication of knowledge gaps and uncertainty.”

Continue reading “Values in Science”

Haha! You will hear my humble opinions on a variety of topics on philosophy and science. I will put my assignments here to track myself!

– What does it mean, according to Carnap, that philosophy should just be logic of science?

• Carnap builds his point of view onto the intersection of logic and empiricism, primarily affected by Ernst Mach. He tries to define a system of logical language constructed with internal and external questions. With the rules of this language, metaphysics can be expelled from the realms of science. The metaphysical statements do not contain empirical criterion, deducibility, truth-conditions, and method of verification. Once we identify those statements and words, we can remove meaningless words and pseudo-statements and clarify the scientific concepts. What remains for philosophy is science through the method of logical analysis.

– Describe one example in Laplane et al’s article that shows how philosophy can have a productive impact on science

• As a half-way scientist, I disagree with most of the conceptual examples introduced in the paper (ie. formulation of a novel theoretical framework, which should be a core part of science, in a sense that asking hypothetical questions, forming research statement/hypothesis etc.). However, I also found that the most intriguing and driving discussions on human cognition can be oriented by philosophy! Artificial intelligence (AI) is simply our future, believe it or not. Yet, the concepts of mind, intelligence, consciousness, and emotion are equally vague in terms of a computer-generated body of code with thousands of lines. I have an insight that if we can define ‘what human is’, we will make a huge step in AI. That’s why, we need philosophy right now! Immediately!

– Describe one instance of negative contribution of positivism to science according to Weinberg

• Unfortunately, Kaufmann did not believe what he deduced from measurements (electric charge/mass) without ‘observing’ physically. However, it was an electron, which is still not observed alone since it is a quantum particle following Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. But, if we observe particles, expelled from a cathode ray with a certain velocity, are deflecting in magnetic field with the same radius, we can obtain a ratio (charge/mass) which points out a new particle: electron. Kaufmann hesitated to report this new particle due to his positivist views and maybe the common positivist atmosphere in scientific world of his time, and he missed the Nobel prize… This might seem as an individual failure, but also shows the adverse effect of being a conservative ‘believer’ of any idea/approach.