Philosophy or Physics

[Clockwork]

Debate Topic : Should we direct existential questions such as "Why are we here" or "Why is there something rather than nothing" or "How is any of this possible" to physics are philosophy.

Before we get started I'd like to quote a good author, It was one of the first lines in Stephen Hawking's book, The Grand Design.

"...but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has failed to keep up with developments in modern science, particularly physics..."

Despite being very aggressive. He makes a lot of sense. Philosophy has failed to answer existential questions. And physics is no at a point where we can start answering these questions.

[Fringe Pioneer]

Oh, philosophy has answered some existential questions: as a matter of fact, existentialists themselves, such as Kierkegaard and Albert Camus have their own proposed solutions. Of course, philosophy doesn't just try to answer existential questions, but epistemological questions and ethical questions and aesthetic questions and metalogical questions and essential (i.e. "what is _____") questions and so many other kinds of questions that it's not even funny.

What I would like to ask is whether physics has answered any existential questions (although that doesn't seem to be within physics's domain of askable questions, so to speak)?

[ganondorfchampin]

Physics is nothing without philosophy.

[Clockwork]

Can I have an example of philosophy answering some of the questions I listed?

@ganon, I beg to differ.

[ganondorfchampin]

Oct 17, 2011 0:05:18 GMT Clockwork said:

Can I have an example of philosophy answering some of the questions I listed?

@ganon, I beg to differ.

Yesh, as there is philosophy behind science, and how we interpret science comes from philosophy.

[Fringe Pioneer]

You didn't ask any of the questions: you merely indicated their existence. I'll answer your latest question (what an example of philosophy answering "existential questions" is) with what I learned from Camus's L'Etranger, but since I asked you first, I would greatly appreciate it if you would first tell me whether physics answered any existential questions and rationally contradict my belief that existential questions is not in the domain of questions that physics asks. Once you answer my question, I will answer your question.

Fair enough?

[Likep]

Philosophy is the answer to life. Physic is the answer to science. Without life, there is no science

[Fringe Pioneer]

Philosophy isn't the answer to life: it is a love of wisdom. It doesn't matter from whence the wisdom comes, or about what the wisdom is: philosophy is the love of all wisdom. It doesn't comprise of life alone, or science alone. Philosophy is a very broad, very general field.

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Regardless, imagine some land and some builders on the land. This group of builders wants to make a building, so it starts at the foundation. For a very long time, this first group works at the foundation, making sure it is sturdy, making sure it is level, and always making it better, but the group never builds above the foundation. A second group of builders comes along and sees the first group and the foundation. After waiting a while for the foundation to be complete, the second group gets impatient and start building the rest of the building, always going higher with every passing moment. Eventually, a skyscraper is built, but the first group is still perfecting the foundation and the second group is continuing to build higher.

With regards to science, the foundation is the basis of math and science, and the rest of the building is the math and sciences. The first group is the philosophers of math and science, and the second group is the mathematicians and scientists themselves. The mathematicians and scientists build upon math and science, but the philosophers of math and science (which I should add is just a subset of philosophers in general) make sure that the math and science is sound. Should anything be wrong with the basic premises of math and science, all of math and science will crumble into confusion and puzzlement.

If I'm correct, Omni said in chat that he did not doubt this, but the question was whether the philosophers of math and science still continue to work on the foundation or whether they have stopped working on the foundation a while ago and handed construction over to the mathematicians and scientists. Correct me if I'm wrong...

[Clockwork]

You're right, but I also wonder if they'll ever actually get an answer. You say science just proves the existence of something. Physics is much more complicated than that. We know a lot about what exists. We just don't know how it works or how to put it into an equation.

[Fringe Pioneer]

I don't recall ever having said that science only proves existence - as a matter of fact, I could argue to the contrary with Descartes's Evil Demon and state that science (and everything else, too) can't prove the existence of anything at all, but I will do no such thing.

Ignoring the Evil Demon, the brain-in-a-vat argument, and other similar philosophies with the intention of casting doubt, one could agree that we know quite a bit of what does exist, although that has nothing to do with Existentialism or existentialist questions. Existentialism is not about whether something exists, but instead questions what a human should do with his or her absurd, purposeless existence. If this is not what you meant by "existentialist questions," then it's no wonder we're at odds about science's ability to answer such questions: you think "existentialist questions" refers to whether things exist, while I think "existentialist questions" refers to the philosophy regarding what a human should do with his or her absurd, purposeless existence...

[Clockwork]

I actually posted the questions in the OP Fringe Pioneer...

[Fringe Pioneer]

Ah, right. In that case, maybe I should just state my answers to the questions in the first post in hopes of not forgetting it again and see what goes from there.

Two of your three questions, "Why are we here," and "How is any of this possible" seem appropriate for science in general to answer, either directly or indirectly by physics. We are here because a primordial soup created protocells, and some mutations of protocells were naturally selected because they had a higher chance of reproducing before dying than protocells without the mutation, and so this process of natural selection was repeated over the course of billions of years to evolve the many different species of the many different kingdoms of life, one species of which including what we know today as Homo sapiens sapiens, i.e. ourselves.

Any of this is possible because the universe follows a simple set of rules, much like a computer program, and it's hyper-exponentially (i.e. you can't add enough "very"s before the following phrase to make the following phrase accurate) harder for a set of rules to be broken than for a set of rules to be followed.

Why is it that physics is better suited to answer those questions as opposed to philosophy? I think the answer is that, when philosophers do ask those questions and come up with answers, they're no longer called philosophers, but physicists. Those questions are certainly in the domain of askable questions in philosophy, as are just about all questions, and those questions are also in the domain of askable questions in the sciences. Since science is the more "specialized" domain, the questions default to being called scientific rather than philosophical, although those questions are philosophical. Think of it in terms of Randall Munroe's comic about the purity of math and sciences: if you ask a question concerning societal behaviours, that question falls in the domain of askable questions for physicists, chemists, biologists, psychologists, and sociologists, i.e. it can certainly be asked and answered by all those listed sciences. Since "sociology" is the most specialized science for the task, despite ultimately being a narrower version of the sciences before it, a question about one's personality is considered a sociological question. If you ask a question concerning the melting point of a given element at a given pressure, that question makes no sense to sociology, psychology, or biology; that question does not fall in the domain of askable questions for those sciences. The same question does make sense and can be asked and answered by chemistry and physics - the question falls in the domain of askable questions for those two sciences. Since "chemistry" is the most specialized science for the task, despite ultimately being a narrower version of the science that comes before it, a question about the melting point of a given element at a given pressure is considered a chemical question.

My point is that, since philosophy is a parent of mathematics and sciences (and many other things), philosophy comes before physics in the same way that physics comes before biology. Just as a question that is in the domain of askable questions in a child/descendent field is also in the domain of askable questions in a parent/ancestral field, so a question that is in the domain of askable questions in physics in also in the domain of askable questions in philosophy (and math, since I consider math to be the parent of physics, and philosophy to be the parent of math). Given this hierarchy, if a question is asked that is in the domain of askable questions for both physics and philosophy, the question is regarded as belonging to the most specific field for which the question is askable. It is for this reason that, when a question can be asked by both philosophy and physics, physics is considered the one that answers the question.

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"Why is there something rather than nothing?" seems like a question that isn't in the domain of askable questions in physics, but is in the domain of askable questions in philosophy. Why? The question reflects on what could have been, which physics doesn't do. Physics examines what is and allows for educated predictions from given observations and laws, but it doesn't go "what if gravity didn't exist" or "what if there were no such things as humans." Philosophy, broad as it is, permits for this kind of questioning, although many philosophers don't like Hypotheses Contrary to Fact...

[Clockwork]

I've heard that the motion of subatomic particles don't have a single trace, but instead, they experience every single possible eventuality. Each with a difference chance of happening. So that would be directed towards physics, not philosophy. The question reflects on what could have been.

Why is there something rather than nothing, science may be unable to answer this but it's made more progress than philosophy has at least.

[Fringe Pioneer]

I disagree with your example of the subatomic particles: that isn't a question of what could have been (past), it's a question of what could be (future). That question fails to reflect on what could have been and ergo fails to be a counterexample to my claim that physics does not ask what could have been.

As for "Why is there something rather than nothing"...well, my claim that physics does not reflect what could have been hasn't been successfully countered, and the specific question "Why is there something rather than nothing" is a question of what could have been, so with my claim still in place, I still hold that physics cannot ask that question - of course, since you yourself admit that it could be the case that science may not be able to answer that specific question, that cuts the work I have to do to defend it. I must ask, however, how it is that science can have made more progress than philosophy on answering what you agree is an unanswerable question for science?

[Clockwork]

I don't want to sound defensive so I'll step back and abandon that point. Some of the questions scientists haven't answered yet. I can only hope that they'll eventually answer such a question.

It seems that physics would be more able to answer such a question than philosophy.

[Fringe Pioneer]

Well, there are certainly questions that haven't been asked yet which do fall in the domain of askable questions in one of the sciences. Since all questions that do fall in the domain of askable questions in any of the sciences must also necessarily fall in the domain of askable questions in philosophy, then such a question you seek will also be askable by philosophy - it's just that, since a science would be more specialized than philosophy, the question would be regarded as belonging to that most specialized science. Through this train of thought, which comes directly from my "hierarchy of fields" argument, I would have to disagree with the last statement you made.

Now, I can say that, with my argued "hierarchy of fields," a child field usually abstracts away most of the details from a parent field and presents the details that it uses the most - for example, although biology comes indirectly from physics and ultimately requires details from physics, you don't see biologists talking about force fields and nuclear interactions to explain how natural selection works. In much the same way, despite that a question is askable by physics and philosophy, you don't see physicists talking about whether the metaphorical foundation is stable or not to explain the principle of force-at-a-distance. To this, I can agree...