[ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge?

Thu May 6 16:46:39 UTC 2021

The first step is to define your terms in ways that Neuralink et al can
work with.  In other words: stop using jargon.

What exactly is "qualia"?  What exactly is "redness"?  These are not terms
that Neuralink or other such researchers can define experiments around,
since the definitions are - at best - loose.

Define what you are looking for, using only words that you can find in
commonly accepted dictionaries.  For instance, instead of "qualia" you
might use "perceived sensation", if that 100% captures what you are looking
to measure here.  Neuralink might be able to measure the neurological
underpinnings of sensation.

Is "redness", "the sensation of seeing light of roughly 700 nanometer
wavelength"?  If not, what is it?  Remember that "red" is "light of roughly
700 nanometer wavelength" (red is a color of light, and that is where red
falls on the spectrum), so "the sensation of seeing red", which seems to be
what you mean, is by definition "the sensation of seeing light of roughly
700 nanometer wavelength".

The problem of jargon isn't specific to you.  Jargon is a problem in many
scientific fields.  People inside a field get used to using such shorthand,
then when they try to relate their concepts to related fields which might
offer insight, they find that shorthand (specifically that those in the
related fields don't know it, and are often too polite or too uninterested
to point out that this is why they do not understand what is being asked of
them) becomes a barrier to communication - even when the shorthand is
well-defined, and in this case I'm not entirely certain it is.  I have
found that the best solution is, when talking in cases where this shorthand
might not already be understood, is to swap in equivalent terms that are
understood by the audience (which also helps me make sure that my jargon is
well-defined).

On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 9:06 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> For example, can any one give me any examples of ANY peer reviewed
> "philosophy of mind" claims which are falsifiable?
> That is other than what we are describing in our "Consciousness: Not a
> hard problem, just a color problem
> <https://canonizer.com/videos/consciousness/>".
> Basically, all the supporters of "Representational Qualia theory", and all
> sub camps, are predicting that if experimentalists can discover and
> demonstrate which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a
> description of redness, only one camp can remain standing, only the one
> making the correct prediction about the nature of qualia, all others being
> falsified by such a demonstration.  Stathis, even functionalists must agree
> with this, right?  In other words, if someone could demonstrate that nobody
> could ever experience redness if, and only if that redness was glutamate
> reacting in the correct set of computationally bound synapses, and that if
> no neuro substitution of any kind, or anything else, could produce even a
> pixel of conscious redness experience...
>
> In other words, what we have is theoretical physical science, each
> competing camp describing the experiments required to falsify the camps
> they support.  Doing the actual experiments is now up to the
> experimentalists, right?
>
> With my Ether earnings, I could now afford to fund some significant
> experimental research to discover this.  Does anyone have any idea of how I
> might go about funding such experimental work?  Maybe we could help fund
> some of the work going on at Neuralink or something, along this direction?
> Elon once was involved in this list, right?  Any idea how I could propose
> putting a few $ million towards something like this to Neuralink, or any
> other neuroscience experimental institutions?
>
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> On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 9:32 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> What I don't get out of that quote by Gillis is whether the philosophers
>> proceed to do the actual research their proposal suggests.   bill w
>>
>> On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 10:26 AM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I've always considered the difference between scientific and
>>> philosophical claims to be experimental falsifiability.
>>> Is that not right?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, May 5, 2021 at 10:30 AM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18972/1/Pradeu-Lemoine-Khelfaoui-Gingras_Philosophy%20in%20Science_Online%20version.pdf
>>>>
>>>> Abstract:
>>>>
>>>> Most philosophers of science do philosophy ‘on’ science. By contrast,
>>>> others do philosophy ‘in’ science (‘PinS’), i.e., they use philosophical
>>>> tools to address scientific problems and to provide scientifically useful
>>>> proposals. Here, we consider the evidence in favour of a trend of this
>>>> nature. We proceed in two stages. First, we identify relevant authors and
>>>> articles empirically with bibliometric tools, given that PinS would be
>>>> likely to infiltrate science and thus to be published in scientific
>>>> journals (‘intervention’), cited in scientific journals (‘visibility’) and
>>>> sometimes recognized as a scientific result by scientists (‘contribution’).
>>>> We show that many central figures in philosophy of science have been
>>>> involved in PinS, and that some philosophers have even ‘specialized’ in
>>>> this practice. Second, we propose a conceptual definition of PinS as a
>>>> process involving three conditions (raising a scientific problem, using
>>>> philosophical tools to address it, and making a scientific proposal), and
>>>> we ask whether the articles identified at the first stage fulfil all these
>>>> conditions. We show that PinS is a distinctive, quantitatively substantial
>>>> trend within philosophy of science, demonstrating the existence of a
>>>> methodological continuity from science to philosophy of science.
>>>> ——————
>>>> CHT William Gillis
>>>>
>>>> Haven’t finished the paper yet, but not really surprised.
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>
>>>> Dan
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