this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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Science

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The Brouhaha Over Consciousness and “Pseudoscience” — John Horgan (The Science Writer) (johnhorgan.org)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Personally, I do think, philosophy should not exist without a scientific basis. So, science should research questions that arise from philosophy.

However, the concept of consciousness underpinning most of modern philosophy, morals, laws etc. is entirely unscientific.
And in that respect, yeah, I do also think that science should not bend over backwards to accomodate that. It's society that needs to catch up.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Philosophy can't have "a scientific basis.

If an idea has a legitimate scientific basis, then it's not philosophy - it's science. Philosophy explicitly addresses ideas for which there is not, and in most cases there can't be, a legitimate scientific basis.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Right, that wording wasn't necessarily the best. I meant "basis" there, as in it not having been fully explored by science.

To take a recent example, the EU allowed the use of glyphosat for the next ten years. As a pesticide, there's considerations to be made:

  • We're committing genocide.
  • We might not be able to feed all humans, if we don't.
  • We might be contributing to the extinction of animals we need for feeding future humans (e.g. bees).
  • We might need to commit genocide on certain species, if we want to continue our monocultural agriculture, as that causes those species to explode in numbers.

Well, and for those topics, science provides a basis discussion frame:

  • How many humans do we need to feed?
  • Which species are being killed by glyphosat?
  • Which species are irreplaceable in our own food chain?
  • Are there more environmentally compatible methods that can potentially feed humanity?

Science doesn't have oppressive evidence to make one and only one strategy the logically correct approach, so we need philosophy. But philosophy shouldn't be blathing nonsense either. It needs to be as close to reality as possible, which is where we need science.