Your description of academnic philosophers is hilarious!

But, yeah, continental philosophy has been little more than a distraction from the principles of philosophy and should be forgotten as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, it carries way too much currency in a lot of academic circles. I wonder if the less benefit a field has to humanity, the greater the number of incompetent academics it attracts.

In any case, I wouldn’t be so disparaging of analytic philosophy. Many severely important advancements in logic have occured within analytic philosophy, starting with Frege. Quine was an analytic philosopher, after all. Pragmatism (and its kin, including instrumentalism and operationalism) is, if not a blood relative, then at least a very close friend of analytic philosophy.

I was a philosophy grad student with the Churchlands and switched to neuroscience proper because it is so hard to get jobs doing their style of philosophy (plus, who wants to waste their time teaching Aristotle to undergrads when you can be teaching neurophysiology). I was always wasting time defending the approach rather than simply employing it (it’s kind of like an evolutionary biologist responding to creationists all the time rather than just hitting the bench and doing experiments).

So my view clearly cannot let me say that no philosophy is science. Just mainstream philosophy (analytic and continental).

Since then, about 10 years ago, things have shifted in philosophy so it is much more open to substantive research outside of linguistic analysis. Quine has taken hold.

Just one more observation and question. I recall you saying a while back that you view philosophy as being “generative, productive and continuous with science.”

So I was wrong to think I had to persuade you to agree with me on that point. You do agree that philosophy is continuous with science. But why, then, are you disagreeing with the way I’ve described the relationship between science and philosophy?

For all your comments about the dangers of philosophy, I don’t think I’ve said anything that runs contrary to your general understanding here. I’d even say that you probably do think the spirit of science is the spirit of discovery. If you don’t, then I really have no idea what you meant by the phrase.

sonic,

You claimed that evidence has confirmed the theory that life can only come from life, which would imply that evidence has confirmed the theory that abiogenesis is impossible. Thus, I responded by pointing out that there is, in fact, no evidence confirming that abiogenesis is impossible. Now are you chaging your mind about that, or what?

Do you think abiogenesis is impossible? Do you think there is some evidence to support that view? I mean, real evidence, and not just a fatally flawed agrument made by Huxley in 1870.

If you want to understand how abiogenesis is falsifiable, and how scientists support their claims about abiogenesis with evidence and reason, then you should study the field. It’s not my job to do the work for you.

The notion of biogenesis you are throwing around here is not supported by evidence. It is falsifiable, and the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that it is false. If you don’t believe me, do some research.

Here’s a link to point you on your way:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/

First, consider Ockam’s Razor. It is a well-known philosophical tool with direct applicability to the empirical sciences, where it is considered indispensible. Second, consider Steven Hawking’s disagreement with Wheeler over the issue of Platonism.

And what about Quine and other philosophers whose pragmatism, instrumentalism, and/or operationalism have helped us develop an understanding of philosophy that does not pit it against science, but sees it as continuous with scientific discovery?

It makes sense to me that a definition of science would help us understand what philosophy is, how it informs (and is informed by) the empirical sciences, why in some cases it is not obvious how we should distinguish certain philosophical ideas from the empirical sciences, and how together philosophy and the empirical sciences help us achieve the same ultimate goal, which is to improve and expand our knowledge.

Of course, there is plenty of so-called philosophy which I think is garbage. Probably too much of it. For example, see my criticism of Delfino which I just posted a link to here. So by arguing for continuity between the empirical sciences and philosophy, I am not arguing that all philosophizing should be so respected. That would be like saying everything that people think of as “science” should count as science, even the pseudoscientific blatherings of ID proponents.

These are controversial philosophical issues, so it’s not like there is an obvious and incontrovertible reason to disagree with me. In fact, I think a good number of philosophers of science–Quinians and operationalists, at least–would rather like my perspective here.

I’ve carefully distinguished between science in general and the empirical sciences, and between these and mathematics and philosophy. If I’ve unfairly characterized any of these disciplines, then you would have a case against me here.

The fact that my view does take into account the differences between, for example, physics and philosophy, or mathematics and art history, and that it also describes how such disparate disciplines can work together and have common attributes, is something to be appreciated.

To dogmatically reject my approach here on the grounds that it challenges some of your assumptions about what should or shouldn’t be considered part of science, without pointing to any flaws in my reasoning, doesn’t seem to gel with your notion of the “spirit of science.”

Anyway, I’ve enjoyed the discussion. Sorry it has to end without resolution.