"Bill Hobba" wrote in message ...
"Franco" wrote in message
...
On the thread I wrote about philosophy of science, most of users are
quoting
Richard Feynman and other physicists that can't say what philosophy is.

Unfortunately, most of scientists use the "empty word" philosophy. But
when
they use that "empty" word, they do not know what they are talking
about)

Philsophy is an empty word. Without any meaning. Philosophy is not a
discipline.

A simple examination of a dictionary and courses offered at universities
would indicate otherwise.

I'm very very surprised how most of users are talking about philsophy as a
discipline)

Somebody told me "dictionary say that philosophy is...". Somebody else
told
me "Feynman said that philsophy.......".

That's very funny to talk about something that is ONLY a name.
That is like "god". Everybody talk about "god", but nobody knows what
"god"
is)

Certain words like god, reality, etc, and to some extent philosophy are
difficult to pin down exactly but that does not men we do not have some idea
what the concepts mean - the fact they can be defined in a dictionary
trivially proves otherwise.

Positivists look at it this way: If there is no physical way to verify
the existence of a concept then you have no right to talk about such a
concept as being "meaningful." I disagree with that dogma. And when I
say "positivist," I mean not just in regard to scientific dogmas, but
also with respect to one's total belief system of existence.

Here's a question to ponder: Is reality verifiable?


Bill

Philosophy -- the study of the set of all possible belief systems
about everything real or imagined.

Natural philosophy -- the study of the set of all possible belief
systems about everything natural, including what "natural" and
"physical" mean.

Science -- a division of natural philosophy that attempts to formulate
and interpret laws (rules) of science that describe invariable
relationships among physical values and/or physical events.

Physics -- the search for the smallest set of rules that completely
describes and interprets the behavior of the inanimate material realm
under natural conditions.

There is no gap between philosophy and science. To do science you have
to first know what "natural" and "physical" mean and you have to setup
a method of vetting "scientific knowledge" claims. Therefore, you have
to also have a prior epistemology of scientific knowledge. That is,
you have to have a means of 1) conceptually formulating, 2)
linguistically expressing, and 3) rationally justifying scientific
knowledge claims. Likewise, you have to first have a scientific
ontology. That is, you have to be able to 1) conceptually formulate
what are natural and/or physical objects, 2) decide how to represent
these objects linguistically, and 3) decide how rationally justify
existence claims for these objects.

Metaphysics deals with every aspect of the question of existence;
ontology is a subdivision of metaphysics that deals with the prior
establishment of how to formally deal with the nature of existence
before one asks the question, "What actually does exist?": 1) how are
existence claims meaningful, 2) how are these claims represented in a
language, and 3) how are these claims presented as justified,
rationally or otherwise. Apparently someone decided that science is
supposed to be "rational" --- whatever that means.

Science is either just another belief system or it is not. If it is
just another belief system, what is it in detail? And how does it
compare to other belief systems?

Patrick