1. Philosophy and Science: the Evolution

The experimentalphilosophy

1. Philosophy and science: the evolution

2. Epistemology

3.The recent works in the experimental philosophy

1.Philosophy and sciences: the evolution

Philosophy is the predecessor and complement of science, and its foundation. It develops notions about issues which underlie science, and ponders the nature of thought itself.

The study of sciences and particularly the study of mathematics conducted in the philosophical way.

The evolution from sciences to philosophy

Greek philosophy: the meta physique, she crosses and influencesall all middle age (the influence of Aristotle), the Renaissance (the influence of Plato)

Modern philosophy: Locke, Descartes, Diderot.

Descartes:

• clear ideas and distinct ideas,
• the theory of method
• the nature philosophy: physics and geometry (the role of the mathematics laws on nature)
• The theory of spirit: the spirit like thought, existed before material things, and the material is the representation of the spirit with which was born idealism.
• The rationalism
• The sentiment : XVII, means all immediate and intuitive knowledge
• Pascal: immediate knowledge, intuition, interior life, deep conscience“the spirit of geometry” is not sufficient; he insists on the idea of “spirit of finesse” is the philosopher role.
• The emergence of philosophical system

During the XV- XVIII centuries the development of sciences (mathematics, physics, astronomy, mechanics).

The nineteenthcentury: development of the life sciences, themethod theory (August Compte) theyrepresentpositivism: Compte established within the sciences one hierarchical order; this order starts with mathematics and finishes with sociology; Claude Bernard (experimental medicine).

-The development ofpsychology , the research of thesubconscious

-The positive sciences

Examples: Cournot the study of probabilities and risks

French philosophy was linked with the positive sciences: a philosopher and savant at the same time: Leibniz was a philosopher and a mathematician; Descartes formed the union between mathematics and philosophy - our geometry is suggested by the metaphysique or the metaphisique is the extension of our geometry; Pascal was physician and deep mathematician; Auguste Compte, Cournot Renouvier, Poincaré were mathematicians, and they arrived in the philosophical field via mathematics; Schopenhauer was psychologist ; Condiallac logician.

The definition of science: is aparticular system of knowledge, the sciences are the object, are the method and the special ordering of the knowledge.

The world science comes from Latin “scientia” meaning knowledge, “knowledge covering general truths of the operation of general law, especially as obtained and tested through scientific method and concerned with the physical world” (New Collegiate Dictionary)

Science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge. This system uses observation and experimentation to describe and explain natural phenomena.

What is the purpose of the sciences?

Science facilitates and improves the practice by explanation. The purpose of science is explanation and hence prediction.

The purpose is to produce useful models of reality.

Fields of science are commonly classified along two major lines:

1. Natural sciences, the study of the natural world

2. Social sciences, the systematic study of human behavior and society.

Scientific method?

Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.

Is the method Unitarian? No, because the practices of scientific researchers are different, but for each scientific research you have an obligatory coherent structure to respect. The method evolves in time and space.

Discover of theory.

The experimental method is one way to start scientific research. Experiments enable us to build up a stock of ‘accepted’ knowledge. Scientific researchers make the analysis of phenomena via hypothesis. An experiment is valid scientifically if itpermits the verification or refutation of hypothesis. The acceptation of hypotheses is expressed via citations of previous works; they become the new agreed-on theory of the considered phenomena and improved or replace a previoustheory.

The classical model of scientific inquiry derives from Aristotle (384-322 BC), who distinguished the forms of approximate and exact reasoning, set out the threefold scheme of abductive, deductive, and inductive inference, and also treated the compound forms such as reasoning by analogy; Roger Bacon (1214-1294) was considered the father of the scientific method and he created experimental science and considered the experience experiment the unique source of the scientific knowledge.

Nowadays, for most of philosophical history, “knowledge” was taken to mean belief that was true and justified to an absolute certainty. Falsifiability is the view that knowing something does not entail certainty regarding it.

Karl Popper in the book “The logic of scientific Discoveryinvestigation”here, he criticised psychologism, naturalism, inductionism and logical positivism, and put forth his theory of potential falsifiability as the criterion demarcating science from non-science.Presented in the idea of Popper: science should produce refutable hypotheses and not verifiable propositions. He criticises induction reasoning: the induction have a psychological value but not logical value. For example the paradox of Hempel: a thousand white cygnets are not enough to prove that allcygnets are white; but one black cygnet is enough to prove that cygnets all not are white.

The list of methods:

Axiomatic method: deductive method (you start general and you arrive at the particular).

Inductive method: method of inferences

Test Method: experimental method. The experimental approach requires two complementary and unseparable conditions:

• The experimental approach passes via three steps:

1. The questioning
2. The research of answers at the question asked
3. The validation of the responsesfound.

• The experimental approach involves three intersecting fields: “the real”or the material world, the objects; the theoretical field: the theoretical instruments (theories, concepts, notions); the technical field (the measurement dispositive, the experimental dispositive, and the various indicators.

Method via hypothesis: the deductive model of explanation

Analytic method: division of the complex problem in sub-set of simpler problem (René Descartes).

Abstraction: To isolated via the thinking one particular propriety of one object for former on this base one particular representation of this object.

Observation: the searchers use this method when they follow the empirical method: observe the phenomena or object without changing its behaviour or interfering with reality (astronomy, physique and, psychology).

Experimentation: serve to confirm or infirmed one hypothesis. In all experimental sciences the laboratories play the fundamental role. The experimentation required one a prior theory which could permit to formulatethis.

3. The epistemology.

The origin of this word is Greek: episteme mean knowledge, science and logos,logos indicates the fields of science and philosophy; and studied the particular sciences or generally the knowledge theory “theory of knowledge”.

It addresses the questions: what is the knowledge? how is knowledge acquired?, what do people know, how do we know what we know?

The word epistemology was introduced into English by the Scottish philosopher, James Frederick Ferrier in 1856.

In France, the word “epistemology” appeared in 1901 in the translation of the introduction of the book of Bertrand Russell “Essay on the foundationsof geometry”, a critical study of science. The Kant tradition “The Critic” noknowledge precedes experience and all startswith experience”.The acquiring knowledge process consisted oftwo types of knowledge: a priori and a posteriori. The nature of this distinction has been disputed by various philosophers.

• The a priori knowledge is knowledge that is known independently of experience (that is, it is non empirical, or arrived at beforehand)

Analytic/synthetic distinction: some propositions are such that appear to be justified in believing them just as far as we understand their meaning. For example, considerer, “My father’s brother is my uncle”. We seem to be justified in believing it to be true by virtue of our knowledge of what its terms mean. Philosophers call such propositions “analytic”. Synthetic propositions, on the other hand have distinct subjects and predicates. An example: “My father’s brother has black hair”. Kant held that all mathematical propositions are synthetic.

• A posterioriknowledge is knowledge that is known by experience (that is, it is empirical, or arrived at afterward).

You have two traditions: Francophile and Anglo-Saxon.

For the first tradition, epistemology is one branch of the sciences and philosophy, and is studied in a critical way using the scientific method, the logical forms and the inference mode used in science; also the principles, fundamentals concepts, theories and results of various sciences for determinate the logic origins, the values and objectivity of these.

In the second tradition the epistemology was confounded with the general theory of knowledge and does not have a specific impact on scientific knowledge. The difference between two traditions relates to scientific knowledge and notto general knowledge.

The French epistemologist Jean Piaget propose to define epistemology in these terms: the study of the constitution of valuable knowledge: what is the knowledge, how the knowledge was constituted or engendered (the methodology). Also the normative aspect in this process of knowledge constitution is important: define what“good Knowledge” is.

The epistemology is in two kinds: general (the unity of the science) and the particular epistemology (the plurality of sciences).

The specific theories of knowledge acquisition

I took only two examples because the list of theories is very long...

Empiricism: in philosophy, empiricism is generally a theory of knowledge emphasizing the role of experience, especially experience based on perceptual observations by the five senses. Certain forms treat all knowledge as empirical, while some regard disciplines such as mathematics, economic theory and logic as exceptions.

Rationalism: this believes that knowledge is primarily(at least in some areas) acquired by a priori processes or is innate – for example, in the form of concepts not derived from experience. The relevant theoretical concepts may purportedly be part of the structure of the human mind (Kant), or they may be said to exist independently of the mind (Plato’s theory of forms).

The scientific philosophy and experimental philosophy

Scientific philosophy

Scientific philosophy believes that philosophy is a science and that it must apply the hypothetical-deductive method like any other science.

Its object of study is reality as a whole: it is all that is relevant to build our vision of the world and our place in it, but it does not want to look at concrete details, which are the object of study of other sciences. For example, it wants to know that nature works with causes and consequences, but it does not to want to study concrete natural causes and consequences.

But is not philosophy very different from other sciences?

The hypothetical –deductive method has the following four steps:

1.Problem observation

2. Elaboration of a provisional hypothesis

3.Deduction of the logical consequences of the hypothesis

4.Verification of the consequences with new observation

What is not scientific philosophy?

Scientific philosophy is not philosophy of science.

Scientific philosophy deals with the problem of science, but only as one more question like ethic, politic, epistemology, logic, etc.

Scientific philosophy wants to apply the scientific method to all the problems and not only to the problem of science.

Scientific philosophy does not want to realise the synthesis of all the knowledge that other sciences gives us. Scientific philosophy is not a part of the philosophy or a type of philosophy: it tries to be correct conception of the philosophy.

The origins

The origin of the scientific vision of the philosophy can be traced to diverse authors; nevertheless, it’s clearer and explicit origin appears in the logical positivism born around the Circle of Vienna. Another origin of scientific philosophy can be seen in analytical philosophy, somehow continuing the logical positivism though being critical with it: some philosophical problems are solved after an analysis of philosophical language and an elucidation of used concepts.

The recent experimental philosophy

Looks for the same aim that scientific philosophy when its rejects the utilization of the intuition to elucidate concepts and prefers asking people to know what they associate with a concept or how they understand a problem. Experimental philosophy succeeds when it looks for a scientific philosophy, but when it limits its method to experimentation, it is being too restrictive without any need.

The experimental philosophy is only a subset of scientific philosophy because it uses only one part of scientific method: the experimental one.

Experimental philosophy is a form of philosophical inquiry that makes at least partial use of quantitative researchespecially opinion polling in order to address philosophical questions.

Use of the methods of experimental psychology to probe the way people think about philosophical issues and then examine how the results of such studies bear on traditional philosophical debates. J. Knobe has discovered that the goodness or badness of side effects influences peoples’ intentional action intuitions. The Knobe effect is the phenomena where people tend to judge that a bad side effect is brought about intentionally, whereas a good side effect is judged not to be brought about intentionality.

Experimental philosophy is an emerging field of the philosophical inquiry that makes use of empirical data –often gathered through surveys which probe the intuition of ordinary people- in order to inform research on philosophical questions. Experimental philosophy initially began by focusing on a philosophical questions related to intentional action, the putative conflict between free will and determinism, and casuals’ descriptive theories of linguistic reference. The experimental philosophy began around 2000.

Areas of research

Consciousness. Experimental philosopher have approached this questions by trying to get a better grasp on know exactly people ordinarily understand consciousness. For instance, work by Joshua Knobe and Jesse Prinz suggests that people may have two different ways of understanding minds generally, and Justin Sytsma and Eduardo Machery have written about the proper methodology for studying folk intuitions about consciousness.

Cultural diversity

Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich compared epistemic intuitions of Western College East Asian College students. The student were presented with of number of cases and asked to judge whether a person in the case really knew some fact or merely believed it. The found that the East Asian subjects were more likely to judge that the subjects really knew. Later, Machery, Nichols and Stich performed a similar experiment concerning intuitions about reference of proper names, using cases from Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity. Again, they found significant cultural differences. Eachgroup of authors argued that these cultural variances undetermined the philosophical project of using intuitions to creates theories of knowledge or reference.

Intentional action

A prominent topic in experimental philosophy is intentional action. Work by J.Knobe has especially been influential. The “Knobe Effect” as it is often called, concerns an asymmetry in our judgments of whether an agent intentionally performed an action.Knobe has discovered that the perceived goodness or badness of side effects of actions influence people’s ascriptions of intentionality to those side effects.

Knobe ask people to suppose that the CEO of a corporation is presented of a proposal that would, as a side effect, affect the environment. In one version of the scenario, the effect on the environment will be negative (it will harm it), will in another version the effect on the environment will be positive (it will help it). In both case, the CEO optsto pursue the policy and the effect does occur (the environment is harmed or helped by the policy). However the CEO only adopts the program because he wants to raise profits; he does not care about the effect that the action will have on the environment. Although all features of scenarios are held constant except for whether the side effect on the environment will be positive or negative a majority of people judge that the CEO intentionally hurt the environment in the one case, but did not intentionally help it in the other. Knobe ultimately argues that the effect is a reflection of a feature of the speaker’s underling concept of intentional action: broadly moral considerations affect whether we judge that an action is performed intentionally.

The intention an agent’s intention in performing an action is his or her specific purpose in doing so, the end or goal that is aimed at, or intended to accomplish.

The concept of intentional action in experimental philosophy. The large amount of work has aimed understanding the factors which influence people’s judgements of whether an action was done intentionally.

The side effects: if the side effect is considered bad and the person acting knew the side-effect would occur before acting.Yet when the side effect is considered good, people generally don’t think it was done intentionally, even if the person knew it would occur before acting. The most well-know example involves a chairman who implements a new business program for the sole purpose to make money but ends up affecting the environment in the process. If he implements his business plan and in the process he ends up helping the environment, the people generally say he unintentionally helped the environment; if he implements his business plan and in the process he ends up harming the environment, then people generally say he intentionally harmed the environment. The important point is that in both cases his only goal was to make money.

There is one serious problem with this experimental philosophy method: how do we know when we ask people this kind of question that they tell us the truth?