Theory & Object (Session 1)

Hello and welcome to the first session of Reza Negristani's Theory and Object, Philosophy of Science in the 20th Century from Carnap to Grenbam. This course provides a survey of motivations, trends, and directions in the philosophy of science in the 20th century. During the 12 sessions, we shall engage with both introductory materials and in-depth issues when necessary. In addition to underlining the pertinence of philosophy of science today, we shall focus on trajectories which specifically engage with the problem of modern philosophy from Hume and Kant to Wittgenstein and Russell. In doing so, they also point to new problems and conceptual territories hitherto hidden

to hidden or ignored by general philosophy to this end we'll closely examine the works of such leading figures as carnap temple reichenbach stegmuller fatnam and gunbaum thank you for joining the class and i will pass the mic to reza negerstani now thank you very much to you uh for participating in this class those of you who know my methods and how I teach I usually you know when I say 12 session we usually mean 15 sessions at least so there will be you know free sessions

precisely because I know very for the fact that we cannot simply even in the most constrained way talk about philosophy of science in 12 sessions so you know well we'll take our time we will and that means that you need to ask questions whatever you feel necessary do not ever let me go without explaining what you think ought to be explained. Okay, so in this sense I would like to make this first session as simple introduction. We're not going to talk about really esoteric technical topics in philosophy of science at this point. I

think at this point we should just simply talk a little bit about what actually science is. So with that regard, I would like before I even start, so I can get a little bit of indication as how science is, for you to talk about what you consider science to be. So then I can start the course by way of, you know, the early, what you might call to be, philosophers of science. I mean the canonical philosophy of science. I understand that philosophy of science has been around for quite a while,

beyond the 20th century ambit. It has been, you know, around since at least 18th century. But the thing is that the formulation, the accurate formulation of what philosophy of science is and what it does, wasn't really proposed until the 20th century. And I think proper and i know that probably a lot of you who know poker think that proper is an asshole but i assure you not proper is quite a fundamental thinker yes and biased claims so as scientists we are just people and so for that i

I beg you to suspend your disbelief or your belief or your prior prejudices when it comes to figures who in content of philosophy, if you are coming from content of philosophy, have been introduced as what you might call to be a rigid kind of philosophers. is usually along with Wittgenstein and so on and so forth have been introduced in content of philosophy circles as extremely rigid people. But I assure you that this is not really the case. This is not the whole of the story. These people actually thought quite coherently about both the vocation of philosophy and

the vocation of science. So with that said, let's start. Whoever wants to talk first, tell me what you think science is ultimately. Theo, do you want to start so you can invigorate other people to talk? It's a hard question.

I think that maybe I think about it more in a negative way that science is a way of testing and putting forth hypotheses and testing them rather than thinking of it as a sort of positive established set of things that we concretely know. So I think of it in terms of a negative... So you basically think of the science in terms of its negatability, which means that it's testability or falsification.

Right, which Popper-y type of way of going about science, I suppose. But I'm not sure exactly what positive aspects Popper would allow in his system. Okay, this is great. Sepideh, I see that you are online. Do you have anything to say on this front? Any other person? Jeff? Yeah, I'll go. Sure. I guess how I would think of science is like the attempt to think the world in the most

invariant way possible. So without the relativity of whatever perspectives we come to it with as like the real things that we are as the objects we are so whether it's like we're cultural objects or a certain kind of animal science is a way of like thinking what's invariant in the world regardless of this initial Adam man may I challenge you at this point and this is not by any means what you might call to be a challenge it's It's just simply a question that will inform how we will move forward. What do you mean by invariant?

I would like you to explicit the idea of the invariant. Okay. So I guess an invariant feature of something would be something that's preserved across differences and changes. Excellent. in mathematics I guess you could think a certain structure and then about that structure given Even the possibility of also shifting that structure, so I guess like invariance is one with change So there's no invariance Yes

Jeff you have any comment on this? uh yeah sorry to join the hangout late first of all um absolutely yeah um i think that traditionally i've thought of science as kind of some kind of uh discovery process of like ground level truth you know like our uh the the facts that seem to establish or support some kind of notion of truth so i think um what's transforming for me is is uh the notion of the varying productions of that truth how those things are created and uh produced through various

frameworks given methods different methods hypotheses etc so this may ask you Jeff I mean you know a lot of people on this in this class are coming from the contents of tradition we know that as I'm sure you know that there is a a kind of aversion. I don't know whether it's good or bad, but nevertheless, there is an aversion to the idea of canonical truth. So when you say truth, what do you mean by it? Yeah, I mean, I guess I mean that in the sense of sort of establishing a baseline of knowledge

or facts that are used in a particular context or in a given framework or something like that. Objectivity. Exactly. And I think that I'm speaking more in the sort of cultural sense, I guess, in how science, you know, we use the term science or we speak about scientific, you know, discovery or investigation or it always has the sense of some kind of greater authority. let's put it that way. And certainly it's been sort of used in that sense to try to establish philosophical positions, you know, I'm thinking of the churchlands, for example, who, you know,

that are, you know, gain their authority from its sort of, you know, its cultural meanings. Yes. This is just, I'm probably stepping flash forwarding too much, but nevertheless, for this occasion, do you really think that, and this is just out of curiosity, it's not a challenge by any means, do you think that science and philosophy, when we are comparing them, philosophy can be subordinate to science or not? And if yes, in what context? You're asking me personally? Yes.

Yeah, no, I would say no. Okay, okay. Yeah. Excellent, excellent. Any more, please, please feel free. I mean, don't be coy, this is just a very casual class. There's no going to be question and answer. There's no reprimand. Just say what you think. Maybe... I think JS's mic is working. Sure, any person. Maybe also our physicists can talk about something. I can say something. Absolutely. I won't be able to say what science is

and just sign up. and say this is my belief like this but i cannot think when you ask what science is for me science is first of all a specific kind of practice and so i have this pragmatic view on what science is but then i cannot also actually say that there is a science for me there are many different sciences which are connected to different practices and and then of course each science has its own rules and its own a game yes yeah and then of course people

were invoking notions of invariance and hypotheses and theories you one of the reasons why I'm in this class it's like I want to understand what like I want to understand first I know what a little bit how physics operates for example or mathematics or this kind of hard sciences and I want to understand what it means to do like this humanitarian sciences for them what scientific is there so I'm having this pragmatic view to enter like I'm trying to answer this question from this pragmatic kind of way so yes so to say what science is would be for me

like I have to consider all different sciences and to see the invariance in there and then try to maybe understand what science is as such yes okay so basically the idea is that you you you somehow think that there is multiplicity of practices and methods but nevertheless there is a very loose thread that somehow integrates what we might call sciences. And this loose thread is what you might call to be objectivat in a Hegelian sense or a Kantian sense. Objectivity as such. And objectivity can be interpreted in different kinds of ways, by way of invariances, by way

of intersubjectivity by way of logic, so on and so forth. Perhaps I'm not familiar with Hegel's notion of objective art. Objective art is simply what you might call to be, you see, since the beginning of the critical philosophy we have at least two notion of objectivity one is called a giga storms which is of the sensible object namely there are senses allow us to somehow gain traction on the cause of fabric of the universe by way of our

judgments but these judgments are about sensible things sensible entities sensible objects like this table over there. And then of course this table over there might not be actually ultimately the object of our senses, but nevertheless our senses allow us to gain traction upon it. So we can talk about this table not just in terms of its color and shape which is manifest, but also in terms of quantum fields, something like that. But then there is something also in Kant, so as Hegel, is called objectivat. Objectivat is what you might call to be objectivity of thought. That's the kind of invariances that we project onto the

universe so as we can distinguish different features and properties of absolute processes is not coming to us naturally. It's something that we develop. We develop out of our own logic and theorizing and labor of theorization. And that's what objectivat is. Objectivat is simply what you might call to be not the object of sensibility as such, But the object of thinking in the broadest possible sense, and by thinking in the broadest

possible sense I mean the labor of theorization, the labor of distinguishing different kinds of structures in the universe. The understanding that Asalars said once, we never know if universe actually has a structure. Because if we were in this position that we could say that the universe actually has an inherent structure, then that would be something what he calls the myth of the given. The word myth in this sense simply means an ideological fixation regarding the idea that

our knowledge at some point bottoms out to a fundament, and that fundament is already given to us, so we do not need to go further than that. Basically, the sense datum, how we observe things, is simply enough for us to arrive at a... Salars challenges this idea as a dubious ideology, in the sense that our knowledge is never fundamental. Our knowledge is never predicated on an ultimate foundation, which you might call to be the datum. degree zero datum, sense datum, or so on and so forth.

He says that simply the idea is that we need to understand knowledge as a labor of theorization in which our sense datum are being cut up. They are not subordinated to sense datum. that are in fact are being caught up in the labor of theorization, computational modeling, logical modeling, mathematical modeling, so on and so forth. Any person who wants to say something on this front?

I thought of science as a practice which creates objects. My apologies, create what? Objects. Create objects, okay. creates what is called nature and something kind of objects which can be used independently of and studied independently of or even against specific cultures. Yes, yes, that's a very very very good definition. And that also leads us to say that even objects as what you might call to be Kantian sensible objects, the giganishtan, are not given in advance.

They are being constituted by our cognitive theoretical structural resources. But there is something in this very process that prohibits us to understand the labor of science as if it was simply a byproduct of solipsistic idealism, as if whatever we think about the universe should happen in the universe. No. The thing is that science postulates using our resources, and these resources are fundamentally modifiable and revisable.

You see, the whole point as we will talk about, there is no such a thing science if it was not a revisable endeavor, if its standards could not be modified at a later time. The thing is that we constitute objects, and these objects actually are postulates of our own thoughts in relation with an external reality of which we have no a priori. But nevertheless, once through the course of science, we postulate objects, and thus the concepts of such objects which are insensitive to our subjective biases, to our psychological

prejudices. And this is one of the greatest achievements of science. This enthralling, unyoking thinking from psychologism, from the psychology of subject, from human biases. what they are. And there is a reason that usually the Copernican revolution, the Keplerian revolution, the Nietzschean, the Darwinian scientific revolution and

and later on the computer revolution, deliver the most resolute message to the human subject. Objectivity is different from your experience of objects. These are two different things. In fact, if you can ever think about how conditions of human experience can be changed, it can only be through resorting to objectivity rather than the subjective human experience.

Questions? Heckling, whatever you want. So are you just essentially calling science, you know, like the, all of the theoretical resources that we have, like everything which lies within the faculty of the understanding? And in the process of revising them? I wouldn't say that science is essentially a subset of understanding. In the case, science is twofold.

What you might call to be the constitution of the scientific enterprise and what you might call to be the extractions of sensible facts about the universe. So the extraction of the sensible facts falls under what you might call to be understanding, in a Kantian sense, wisdom. But then the constitution of such an enterprise is beyond the scope of understanding. in a Kantian sense. Because understanding, as we know in a Kantian parlance, is not really something that you might call the constitutive aspect of how we arrive at such facts.

It's simply what you might call to be the after-the-fact enterprise of cognition, in the sense that, you know, we look at this table and we say that this table has its shape such and such and its color is thus and so. But the very fact that we make such a claim, we make such a perceptual judgment, is precisely because understanding is itself subsumed within a broader realm, and that's what you might call to be the realm of reason or logic. Logical structure or mathematical structures are ultimately what inform us how we make

such perceptual judgments about matter-of-factish, sensible objects within the universe. And this is fundamentally a platonic thesis. Mathematicals or analytical idealities are ultimately what give us the resources to a are sensations which we derive from an external reality. So science is logic? Yes and no.

Precisely because when we are talking about science of logic, if you mean a Hegelian science of logic, I think that it's a little bit too bloated with its own metaphysical assumptions. But I would just like to say that it's what you might call to be logics in a plural sense. The idea that the structure is a dimension of mind and not reality. If we ever mistake these two, then we fall victim for what Sellars called the myth of the given. So what is the myth of the given? Sellars has this very famous example. He says that reality, whatever it might be, we do not know what it is really, unless we

actually structure it. We do know reality is not a molten block of wax in which a structure can be imprinted. No. The connection between mind and its structuring faculties and reality is far from obvious. You see, the structure of reality is never given. If you think it is given, then you are not in the business of science. You are in the business of mysticism, where you have already concluded that there is such and such structures

structures or fundamental features of reality. But that's not how science works. Science, and that's why we need to understand science as essentially a, what you might call to be a critical progression over Kant's transcendental thesis. So what is Kant's transcendental thesis? You see, before Kant's critical term in philosophy, the dichotomy between reality and mind was

so easy. as Descartes. Reality was thought as the datum or the structure in data and mind was thought as a tabula rasa, as a blank state. So mind is just a blank state and it gets imprinted by the very structure of reality. However, after Kant's critical turn, this was simply garbage. It was trashed once and for all. Mind is no longer a blanket state. Mind is

in fact the data, the structure in data, and reality is a blanket slate. There is no such a thing as a reality without the labor of a structuration, without the labor by which we can postulate that which is intelligible and that which is a structure. So, could we say then that the reality in itself is pure multiplicity in the way that you would say? Because it seems like what you're saying is that there is no structure to reality. Yes, I wouldn't call it multiplicity, Adam. You see, I tend to go with Plato on this front,

even though I know that Badiou is fundamentally Platonist, but I don't want to go to this route that I would say is not Platonist enough. Okay? So what is exactly the thesis of Plato? And the thing is that Plato thinks that even multiplicity is an index of a structure, and hence not of reality but of mind, because a structure is the dimension of mind and mind alone. If we postulate that multiplicity was a necessary feature of reality, then we would have actually attributed a minimum level of a structure. which Sellars would call a myth of the given,

as if it is fundamental. Plato, on the other hand, thinks about multiplicity and the structuring unity in terms of, in his later works, as what you might call to be interaction between the infinite diode and the one. The infinite diode is what you might call to be the material reality. We do not know what it is. It is yet to be determined. And the one is the force of determination or a structuring mind. And even multiplicity, Plato would like to argue, is not an essential feature of reality,

but it is something that is projected onto reality by the structures of mind, namely science. The very reason that we can talk about multiplicity of objects is precisely because we can constitute different objects using the structuring powers of mind. I have a question. Absolutely. this things that you said I'd like you to maybe elaborate on this absolutely relationship of structure and you say structure is a feature what

kind of feature is this or what else it's a logical feature it's ultimately a logical feature and by that when I say logical and this is something that we will come when we read Karna. That logic should not be understood in terms of classical logic. We should suspend our belief or misbelief in classical logic. No, classical logic is simply one feature among the ultimate logical infrastructure of mind. A structure is a logical feature is something that we project onto reality.

By that I mean we do indeed have sensations of how reality affects us, an external reality, of which we do not yet know anything. we are just human version zero or beta at the beginning of time. We do not have yet an idea of what logic is or what objectivity is or what reality is. All we know is that there is a way that this external reality affects us. It's what you might call to be the causal postulate of reality. that reality does affect our senses. And by true which, but these sensations are not structured.

These sense datum are not structured by themselves. We will talk about them when we are talking about logical positivism and ultimate failure of Carnap's logical positivism, which I think that if Carnap's, and believe me, Carnap was the god of philosophy, If he, spectacularly, failed when it came to logical positivism, in the sense that the sense that will give you already a logical structure, then it means that any form of empiricism will eventually fail. So I tend to go with a Szilard's idea, in the sense that the structure of reality is

not revealed to us by sensation. But it is a product of what you might call to be a very complex entanglement between how the logical infrastructure of mind is is projected onto sensible data or observational statements. You mentioned how science is twofold. On the one hand, you have the extraction of invariance from sensibility.

Then you have object constitution, theory constitution, world constitution. I'm wondering, you know, because it seems like that starts to get combined, you know, the negative move of testing, also like a positive move sort of tentative assertions. And, you know, what I'm wondering is, what would be, what do you think the difference would be between, you know, say the constitution of scientific knowledge and, you know, the constitution of, you know, scientific practice and more like, you know, practical craft of

applying the concepts of science and what would be the the the proper Distinguishing of the two Yes, but you see Christian Things are never black and white in any field. I mean that's just a given the thing even is As we will I mean and that's really admission on this whole course Shudha science is not, like philosophy, is not a clear-cut position. You see, there are different kinds of ways by which postulates of objectivity can be put forward.

It is not what you might call to be a universal endeavor in a Kantian sense, as if there was just one unified way, we call it science, and it can shed light on the furniture of the universe. No, that's not how it's going to work. In fact, what I'm going to do throughout this course is to show that any way this philosophy of science has ever formulated science as being a clear cut position in the sense that you have a canonical set of methods by which you arrive at objectivity, at the truth of the furniture of the world, it's not going to work. It's going to be challenged by the proper instruments of philosophy.

And what I would like to mention this before we're having the break is that science is essentially a pluralistic endeavor. For it to be pluralistic doesn't mean that it is relativist. We are going to shed light on this idea of pluralism versus relativism. It's not relativistic, but nevertheless it is pluralistic. I was just wondering if you're seeing a deep relationship between mind and what science is and if there is a deep relationship between what mind is and what science is.

To be honest with you, Theo, this is something that is still I'm trying to grapple with. But all I can tell you at this point, and this is susceptible to further revision at some point, is that I think that science is what you might call to be refinement of methods of objectivity. I genuinely believe that Thomas Kuhn was right. There is such a thing as a paradigm of science. Not precisely in the sense that he tried to canonize the paradigms of science or the scientific method, but nevertheless it's what you might call to be most optimal philosophy par excellence,

in the sense that philosophers ultimately arrive at a community of a set of optimal methods and optimal investigation with regard to the empirical data and the criterion of testability of our own postulates of thoughts. So in that regard, I wouldn't say that science is different from philosophy. I would say the science is the refinement of the philosophical discipline. So just to be clear, I know it might be quite a stretch, but are you basically trying to, I mean,

go into Szilardian space of reasons, kind of establish a neutral epistemic domain where... No, no, no. I will actually give a very harsh critique of Szilard's. on this point. Okay, it just seems like... But precisely I would... Go on, go on Artem. Yeah, it just felt like when you were talking about the pluralism, it seems that there was this kind of epistemic allowance for a neutral field that I felt was really kind of drawing the change. No, no, no, not in the sense of neutrality, Artem. What I would say methodological polarism ultimately is, is that you might think about it in terms of a patchwork.

You see that there is this planet Earth, like this allegory of Earth. You know, how do we know that Earth is not flat? Well, precisely because of the kind of photographic images that we can give, provide ourselves by way of traversing in low orbit this planet. These photographs, each of them give only a sector of reality, of what you might call to be objectivity. But the thing is that once we integrate, once we saw these little photographs of the Earth taken at the low orbit,

we would say that Earth is a round object. So that's how I imagine pluralism. It's what you might call to be different individual photographs or propositions about different sectors of reality that ought to be integrated according to the scientific method. And this scientific method is scientific only in so far as the method is very explicit. can be challenged unlike the laws which are implicit also so you're a much more of a piercing in that sense that this I can say so I would say so I would say

so yes okay shall we have a break and then reconvene in five minutes so I'm sure Absolutely. See you everyone in five. Go take your cigarettes. Adio for now. I haven't eaten yet. I haven't eaten yet. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Any questions before we restart?

Artem? I'm exhausted from the conference. I don't have any questions. Oh, I, oh, okay. Sorry, I think I lost my lighter. But I really think that this class is fundamentally different than our previous classes precisely because there are such a diverse kinds of people. That's the best. I mean, if a class doesn't have challenge and different voices and opinions, it's not a really good class. If you don't have heckling, it's not a good class.

Hey, just not to waste time, does anyone hear this? I can hear you, absolutely. Okay, good. Shall we start?

Phil? That sounds great. Okay. So, let us begin the class. We are going, this session as I said, is going to be near introduction and don't worry, we will extend the length of our class as far as, you know, we need. I will add sessions at the end if you haven't gone through the stuff that we were supposed to read and think about. So let us start our session in earnest with a Popperian question.

What is the difference between science and non-science? Or let me be more explicit. What is the difference between science, pseudoscience or junk science? Who can start to talk about this before I start talking about this topic? I mean, you have, you know, this empty appeals, you know, to science, you know, that you see,

you know talks about us before but the you know the Neil deGrasse Tyson types you know but but you know then you also have like all sorts of like you know mystical shaman type people who who just talking about the string theory yes I know that I mean so many string theory conferences i'm fed up on this and then people can just like ramble like incoherent like string theory nonsense for like hours somehow and it's like how this isn't even thinking this is just words yes it's it's what do i call to be dogmatic philosophy worse than bad philosophy

worse than if you think content of philosophy is bad let me enlighten you there is such a thing as bad philosophy that is even worse than philosophy. Bad science is something that is actually quite dangerous. You see, no one really today, unfortunately, because of the liberal, you know, this whole idea of the capitalist liberalism and the kind of infrastructure of thinking that has already been put there by capitalist system, people already have given up on philosophy.

Philosophy is not taken seriously by anyone unless those people who are actually very well committed to the duty of thinking and thinking better. tries at this day to become and somehow fabricate a semblance of philosophy. It's what you might call to be, it's claims about truth, about objectivity and so on and so forth. But then We see quite clearly, look at PopSci, Inc. broadcasted, particularly in America, in the

name of science. You see that science is not anything other than a dogmatic, worst kind of dogmatic philosophy. It is in the service of neoliberalist thinking. It's in the service of the most dogmatic forms of thinking, which is also unconscious of what it actually does things. And this is, on all accounts, in opposition to how Einstein, Boltzmann, Newton, Darwin, Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, what so many other people thought about science. So thinking about philosophy of science as the consciousness of the science

is not just a practice of philosophy. It is a practice that has political implications against the neoliberalist appropriation. today quite clearly thoughts questions before I move on one I'm just not there okay oh I was just gonna say something about Einstein so there's this idea you

I guess there's a discussion lately about Einstein vs. Poincaré and how there was sort of like a concerted effort like almost like the philosophers were used as PR or advertising to support an Einsteinian notion of time as a as divisible into equal units against a Poincaré notion of a dynamic view of time whether or not this is the case, but it is this question again of where dogmatism begins, ends, and science begins. Yes, yes, a very, very good question. Can I add something to that?

Yes, absolutely, you can. Because this is very true, you know, and if you, you know, look at, you know, the sciences and you look at real science and, you know, real logics, you know, they frequently do have this sort of like certain like implicit, like philosophical narratives, you know, which could or could not be caught up in certain biases. And, you know, I think the point that she made about, you know, having philosophers do PR, you know, for the scientists is true. and you know I think that what this shows is that you know there there is can be some sort of

philosophical dogmatism in real science and and and to carry things further you you need to be critical and diligent about that. You see the thing is that neither philosophy nor philosophy are unbiased. We should completely rule out any form of thinking that purports itself to be an unbiased method or form of thinking. No, all forms of thinking, all they can do, insofar as we are really living in a concrete universe, is that they can mitigate human biases. Mitigation of human biases is not something that can achieve wholesale at

the beginning. It's something that can only be achieved step by step, baby step by baby step. And so are Sire, for that matter. Now, with regard to Meredith's question or Meredith's comments is that you see that there is a reason that these earlier scientists had in fact conversation with philosophers. You see Poincaré had conversation with Hossell, he had conversation with Oscar Becker who was student of Husserl and was also a great philosopher of mathematics. Boltzmann had conversations

with the philosophers of his time. In fact, Boltzmann went to philosophy school. He educated in philosophy. He however thought that the way that philosophers taught activity and the furniture of the real universe are not adequate. He was essentially what you might call to be disappointed by the philosophers way of thinking about the world. In so far Whereas he thought that at that time, and yes, if you really think about it today, particularly within the contents of philosophy, it also holds.

He thought that philosophers' way of thinking about the world is fundamentally entangled with their subjective experience. But for Boltzmann, science was not an appendage of human subjective experience. Subjective experience can only give you a tiny aperture, a tiny axis into the structure of the world. But if we are going to postulate what the structure of the world is, the universe is,

the idea that reality is in excess of the subject, then we should really understand how we can, step by step, critically, move away from our subjective experiential biases. So yes, I think at the beginning philosophers and scientists had a fundamentally fruitful conversation about all these matters, about the idea of what objectivity is, so on and so forth, but also about the most important aspect and what is that. It's the idea that what you might call to be what does science does, what does in fact

science does. Today we know that many theorists believe in that science, we can't, philosophy of science is extinguished or it's passé, it's antiquated, precisely because philosophy of science is not, it doesn't really give us any insight into the practice of science in laboratories and so on and so forth. They think that the practice of science is what is really important, but no, it is not. Boltzmann, Einstein, Kepler, Newton all believe in the idea of science whose importance is predicated upon the fact of not its practice

but its explanatory powers. How many scientists today, would you tell me, can tell us about the explanation of the kind of mechanisms that undergird the kind of phenomenon they describe? They are no longer interested in understanding what explanation is or what the phenomenon under study is being explained by the explainants of the phenomenon. All they're interested in is that to make science work properly.

as if doing the most optimal way of doing things. Just because science works, that's just a dogmatic philosophy. That's just a dogmatic philosophy. The practice of science should always be coupled with ambition to explain things, to find the best explainance for the explanandum phenomenon which you are studying.

Can I ask a derivative question? Absolutely. Yeah, it's just when we're talking about science versus pseudoscience, I kind of think that emerge in my head is also what we consider like properly science because and here I'm mostly thinking about like mathematics because uh when you for example read purses works or just you know look at the history of mathematics you get that well mathematician didn't really do that much some people gave him then data and he just practiced it and that's the person a person idea of this kind of pragmatism of mathematics and it seems that it can be even argued that

like mathematics properly became a science only kind of after Newton only after calculus is invented that kind of bounded geometry yes with everything and so and even contemporary maybe Maybe after Galileo, I think after Galileo, it became a sign. Yes. But even right now, when we talk about in academia, for example, in STEM, well, first in sciences, but math is removed from the sciences. And it seems like, yes, mathematics has been kind of removed specifically because it didn't have the explanatory power. That is, we have those kind of algebraic structures, but I mean, who can tell you like that how to apply linear algebra other than to solve like or finite calculus.

But it seems that it did gather some sort of an explanatory power. But I wanted to ask you what's kind of your opinion on those disciplines that seem to provide tools, but kind of maybe no straightforward applications, because it seems that would a bit remove it from sciences. And like that would inquire also into the fact like, is it scientific to inquire into foundations of mathematics? Does foundations of mathematics impact anything? Of course, something like Goethe-Losin-Completeness Theorem paved the way for contemporary computation, yet in general, would a philosophy of science say that, well, those talks about whether Terminal Frankl said theory or not is the valid foundation is kind of out of the way, it's useless.

Yes, you see, the thing is that I think, to be honest with you, the more I have looked into the history of math and science is that I think the disjunction between mathematics and what you might call to be exact sciences is something that needs to be blamed on both parties, both mathematicians and both scientists. absolutely. I mean, the thing is that moved at each other. They simply try to say that, you know, Mathematical, he was such a great mathematician. He contributed to the field

of epistemology, computation, whatever you call it. But it is famous. After he came to the US, he was chasing Einstein in the corridors of Princeton, telling him every morning that I have this recipe for a time machine which I have postulated through my mathematical discipline. He really thought that mathematics is real, like almost Pythagoreans, that basically whatever is postulated in the field of mathematics has a counterpart in sensible reality.

He was a pleaser. The point that Einstein, to the point that Einstein was said, I do not fucking want to see the face of this guy one more time. I'm just sick of this person. He was really like sick of Godel chasing him and trying to sell him the stuff. The thing is that you see this all comes to the idea that what is the status of mathematics with regard to sciences. I think philosophy and mathematics has shed light onto it but not sufficient. precisely because this is not something that you might call to be a clear-cut position

or which we have already a fundamental knowledge. No, I would say that the main one thing that we can go on for is like a Platonic position. And by the way, you know, Plato usually in canonical interpretation, he is thought as a Pythagorean in the sense that he thinks that mathematicals are real. Namely, for every mathematical structure, there is a counterpart in the sensible reality. But no, this is absolutely not what Plato ever said. Plato never said such a thing and I would challenge any person who would say that Plato said something like that. No, all Plato says is that

mathematics is important precisely because of its epistemological import What is this epistemological import? If we think that reality is unstructured and only the powers of mind can structure it Namely, the intelligibility of the objective is something not is given, but something that is being constructed. For us to think mathematics can structure reality.

This is a fundamental question to which unfortunately I have no conclusive answer. Reza, I think we just lost your signal for a little bit. Can you repeat the question to which you have no conclusive answer? Yes, I was saying that the point is that Plato thinks about mathematicals in terms of their epistemological status, in the sense that the structures are projected onto reality and we enrich reality by the structures of the mind, precisely because there is no such a thing as a given reality. Any person who thinks that there is such a thing as a given reality is following the

logic of illusions. But then this does not answer the fundamental question that under what conditions and why should we take mathematics as the most efficient and efficacious way of structuring the furniture of the world? Unfortunately, as I said, I do not have a conclusive answer to this question. The correspondence between mathematics and physical reality is far from obvious.

Any person who would say that they have thought about it is going to gerrymander the conclusions. I really do not. I mean, you have been in my math class, you have been in my Plato and Kant class. I really don't think that at this point we can conclusively answer this question, unfortunately. It's part of what you might call to be the consciousness of science of objectivity. And it is to the extent that it is a fundamental aspect of how we do physics, how we do engineering,

so on and so forth. Yes, it is extremely important. And I am so sorry that I don't have any answer. I am just a philosopher. I can only try to stop for so long, but you see, the whole point about such questions that they can never be answered by whether scientists or philosophers, they require coordinated research by a community of people. And I think Cohn was right on this front. Kohn, Thomas Kohn was thinking that, you see the whole point of what he calls normal science and

what is normal science for Kohn. So you, those of you, we will talk about this in next session when we in earnest start to look at the work of Kohn, Popper and Firebond. We will look at this in the sense that Kohn had this idea that there are two different, at least two different patterns of doing scientific work. What you might call to be normal science and what you might call to be revolutionary science. So what is normal science? Imagine thinks of normal science as an enterprise of puzzle making.

Imagine you are putting the jigsaw together. You can only think of knowledge of objectivity and the scientific accumulation of knowledge in terms of finding the best piece that you think that is going to hold up, that can, in the right, most optimal way, hang together with the piece that you have already posited. This is what you might call, so normal science from Kuhn's perspective, is what you might call to be an accumulative sense of scientific enterprise, enterprise in the sense that we are in the business of tinkering.

Science in the normal paradigm is just a business of tinkering, like a jigsaw puzzle. We can only think about what, here and now, hang together in the best possible way with what we have already presented, the theory that we have already presented. But there is also a different kind of paradigm that Kohn puts forward. It's called the revolutionary paradigm of science. The thing is that Kohn thinks, unlike Popper, that the revolutionary paradigm of science is qualitatively different from the enterprise of normal science or puzzle making.

In the sense that in the revolutionary paradigm of science we posit a new theory, a fundamentally new theory but what i but why fundamentally it is fundamentally new theory in so far as not only it solves the problem of the old theory but also addresses the kind of important anomalies or counter examples that the old normal theory or normal doing of science failed to address.

A good example is what you might call to be Newton versus Ptolemaic or even Copernican revolution. not only it explains the phenomenon that they try to explain but also it explains further phenomenons that they could not explain in their own frameworks. Questions, challenges, mind if you throw a bottle at me at this point?

I have a question. Absolutely. Just, I would like you to go a little bit back to what you were saying when you were discussing what possibly proper science is or not and you were talking about explanatory I don't remember how you formulated it did you say fun explanatory function of science yes they and you are saying this is not my question my question is like you are saying that the bad part today about scientists is that they don't know or they don't want to know or they don't care about what explanation is yes yes somehow you also mentioned some words

about politics but then my connection was not really good so actually sure yeah I just want to say that within scientific discipline practically I don't see why you need to know what your explanation is if you're if you're proposing new theory or you already have a theory that explains new or old phenomena so what does it add to science? Fantastic question, superb question, superb question, really fantastic question. Okay let me make this by way of example. First of all let me just go a little bit if you lost the connection

and talk a little bit about a labor of explanation in the sense that you see Obviously science tries to study target systems, namely phenomenon under study. And of course the phenomenon under study is not something that's what you might call to be a real phenomenon. It's something that is captured by the powers of mind, by logic, by the labor of modeling, so on and so forth. First of all, let me make sure to tell you, and I have seen this put forward on so many occasions by so many philosophers, that data trumps rationalism. This is just bullshit. This is really bullshit.

First of all, there is no such thing as pure or raw data. Now, every data in science or even in engineering is going to be mined, is going to be organized, is going to be framed by models. Models are theoretical entities, ultimately. So, you might say that there is no such a thing as a pure or raw empirical data. All of our data in science, in engineering, in whatever thing that you think, and no matter what kind of data we are talking about, is always going to be a product of models. That's actually a scare.

it does mean implicitly, to the extent models can be distorted, our data can also be distorted. Our data about reality can be distorted. But so what? This is where science shines forth. Science is not something that simply extracts some fundamental data from the structure of the universe and giving you as the stepping stone. No, everything that science does take time. It is the labor of theorization and modeling, refinement and mining of the data, which are required for detestability, refutation, or corroboration of our most cherished theories.

This is what theories are. We will talk about this when Popper makes a distinction between science and pseudoscience. that yes, I do believe that Popper, despite all of his prejudices, was right. What ultimately distinguishes science from pseudoscience is a testability criterion. Something that cannot be tested or falsified is not a scientific theory, is a pseudoscience. The more you can be refuted the more scientific you can get.

So this was the first thing. The first. Now, I think we just, I'm just going to lower the bandwidth a little bit because we just lost you again. Can you hear me now, Reza? I can hear you. I can hear you. I was asking Esvidyana that if she can pose the second part of her question.

I vaguely remember it, but I think I just went too off tangent. I don't know which part now I have to... I think the part that you were talking about science and practice and whether they need to know about explanation or not. So my question was, it's a very simple question. you said so first I say that science at least today they don't know what explanation is they're just happy with if they have an explanation and you say

that that's that could be a feature of bad science or just this is how I understand you saying and it could be better or good if scientists knew what explanation is? Yes, yes. What it means to have an explanation, basically being a bit more philosophical. Thank you so much. I'm so sorry. I really like sometimes I forget quite. Hello, can anyone hear me?

I can hear you. Can you hear me? All of you? Yeah, I lost you for a second, but maybe it's just my connection. Please, please, everyone who loses me. I lost it as well. If people can... Okay, okay. I'm just gonna... Can you hear me now? Yeah, I can hear you now, Reza. But I'm just going to tell people right now, if they can, in the upper part of the Hangout, right next to where there's like a mic icon and a camera icon, there's an ascending bars icon. It sort of looks like a right triangle. You can click on that and lower your bandwidth. That might help with people's connections. Also, you can always just put a short note on the sidebar that I don't hear you.

I will disconnect if it is necessary and we will resume. I'm sorry for today. I'm just not feeling well because of the accident. I have to be downstairs. Next time I will go next upstairs which is close to the modem and unfortunately we won't have such difficulties. Anyway, so yes, science is essentially coupled with the labor of explanation. Because science is not the study of the phenomenon at hand.

It is the study of the phenomenon according to what has given reason to such phenomenon, namely its explainant. Phenomenon is explanando, that which is to be explained. But the real point of science, I would say, is about explainants, those which explain. A good example is Boltzmann's work in thermodynamics. We know very well that Boltzmann drew his work on Maxwell, on Colossus, on Kelvin, on

Carnot-Gibbs. All of these people prior to Boltzmann had simply given us a partial picture of what thermodynamics is. By that I mean thermal thermodynamics. So what is thermodynamics? It's what you might call to be observable phenomena. Like for example, you have this cylinder completely contained. Inside the cylinder we have a compartment, a plate inside which there is implemented

a trapdoor. So imagine, and this is what really observable or thermal thermodynamics is, so imagine about the second law of thermodynamics. So in the first compartment, inside the cylinder, we have a volume of gas, okay? And let's say that this gas is somehow colored, so we can observe it by naked eye. This is what you might call to be equilibrium position.

Now imagine that the plate that compartmentalized the cylinder has a trap door. We open this trap door. the gas starts to creep into the second compartment. This is what you call a scenario far from thermodyte, far from equilibrium, in the sense that we are really genuinely dealing with the chaotic behavior of the gas, which is observable. precisely because we are talking at this point about thermal thermodynamics, namely observable

thermodynamical behaviors of a gas. Now as we lift the strap door, the gas creeps into second compartment. The process of filling the second compartment is what you might call to be far from equilibrium behaviors. But this chaotic behavior thrives toward equilibrium behavior in the sense that gas ultimately fills the entire cylinder in a homogeneous manner. Okay? This is what you might call to be equilibrium, the second equilibrium stage. The first equilibrium stage

was in the first compartment. Then we open the trapdoor far from equilibrium. Then after a passage of the gas fills the energy uniformly. This is what we call to be equilibrium at the second stage. This is a thermal entropy. Scientists throughout ages since Carnot's engine, steam engine, and Poincaré's idea of the Carnot's engine and the kind of mathematics that is required to solve such a problem to Gibbs, to Maxwell, all of these people have simply tried to describe the phenomenon at

hand that what is actually happening but no one ever really thought about what is what are the parameters and the constraints that are behind such a phenomenon these are what you might call all unnaturally components, or the explainance of the said phenomenon. The explainance, the part of the explainance, and that's where the science comes through, is that the explainance are not always within the field of our experience, our observable domain.

Yes, we see the colored gas moving in such and such direction, having such and such a status at such and such time, but imagine if we go to a different scale, where we are dealing with atoms, particles, endowed with momentum, velocity, collision course, and energy points. At this point, we are no longer seeing this phenomenon in the way that we saw it in our thermal observable example.

So this is exactly what Boltzmann does. He tries to explain why is that? This phenomenon is being observed in such and such way that gases always move toward equilibrium. That there are such a thing as observable irreversible processes. Like as if once the gas moved out of the trapdoor, it can never come back inside the trapdoor. This is called an irreversible process. So this is, yes, the point is that, sure, science does not need to always talk about

explanation, but the scientific enterprise as a whole is about explanation, is about the kind of mechanisms that are responsible for observations reza absolutely i don't think i made myself clear i was asking but I agree that you have to try to find an explanation. Yes.

But I understood you saying that it would also be important to know what it means for a physicist, for example, to know what explanation is, not the content of explanation, but rather the metaphysical I don't want to use this word but metaphysical explanation of what explanation is and what it means to have an explanation I see I saw that you're making this point that you that physics or sciences are in in poor state if they don't try to understand what they're doing.

Am I making myself clear? Yes, yes, okay, yes. You see, when I said that science, at least in the contemporary times, doesn't know what it does, it's precisely because What I simply meant, and perhaps I went too far, and I am so sorry if I went too far. I simply meant that the emphasis of science today is just simply about the scientific method or the scientific practice, which is of the laboratory. Right? What I meant is that the, what you might call to be the global vision of science is not just about practice and method.

It's also about explaining the phenomenons at hand. so by that I do not mean that science just simply becomes like Boltzmannian or Einsteinian or Newtonian kind of science that tries to always dig deeper, dig deeper and deeper deeper, deeper what I meant is that overconfidence in the scientific method can backfire, that's all I meant can backfire in what We do not even know whether our methods are optimal or not unless we test them against new explanatory phenomena. That's all I know.

I'm a little bit unclear on what an explanation would be or what even a scientific explanation is. I mean, it seems like something we take for granted. So like, if I'm boiling some water, I put it over my stove, it starts to boil. We could give a scientific explanation. We could say, you know, what's the boiling or it's due to the molecules in the water. But is this ever

an explanation and not itself, just a description, just a description of another kind? So to talk about the microscopic happenings? Adam, I think you are right on this point. I mean, first of all, you need to know that in the canonical philosophy of science, usually explanation descriptions are being distinguished from one another. However, as you said, there is a point at which the distinction between explanation and description fundamentally blurs. But at which point?

You see, when we are talking about the thermal, observable behaviors of a gas or a body of water that is being heated, we posit a different kind of entity responsible for such behavior, right? So we essentially describe such behaviors, we describe such molecular behaviors in terms of, for example, like Boltzmann, in terms of the statistical physics, namely the velocity, momentum and energy of colliding particles in Brownian motion. So yes, this is a description, but it is not just any kind of description.

It is a description that can shed light to the kind of phenomenon that we are described. And that's only description in that sense. And yes, from that perspective, what you might call to be the fundamental division between description and explanation is blurred. It's just simply that we have positive, new kind of class of entities, properties, and features of the system which explain the upper level, more observable behaviors of the system.

So what exactly makes them lower level, these entities? besides being, I guess, microscopic in this case. There are many ways that in today's philosophy of science or science, these lower levels are being distinguished. One is a scale length. A scale length in physics... Let me just give you a very fun example put forward by philosopher of science, Mark Wilson. Imagine the amazing shrinking man, like the old movie. So the amazing shrinking man is like this human

who has a behavior at this kind of a scale, you know, what you might call to be a human scale. And then this human can also be shrunk to nano molecular level. The thing is that the behavior at the nano molecular level is very different from the behavior at the level of the human behavior and what is observable. Imagine, let me give you another example. Engineers usually think about such things quite often. engineers think of a scale length or what you might call to be explanatory levels in

terms of levels of manipulations. Imagine like a metal beam, okay? At the level of metal beam we know that metal beam should, you know, endure under such and such stress, pressure, and so forth. These are just observable phenomena, okay? But then think of the metal being at a different scale, like at a level of the crystallographic configuration of metal. At that level, we need more details, we need new formulas and mathematical models

to explain why is that such separate crystals, metal crystals, can in fact form such uniform behaviors at the level of the observable metal bar. Okay? You can go even further at the atomic level. So this is one of the things, scaling. Another way is how you might call to be by way of modeling. In the sense that, you see, we can only predict such and such behaviors and such and such levels. But if we go to a lower level, and lower level is distinguished by its predictability,

You know, we can predict the behavior of a microscopic metal beam far better at the level of the atomic nanoscale length. Of course, this prediction is also very, very difficult precisely because the amount of details that we are dealing with is just astonishing. It's far beyond the amount of details that we are dealing at the level of the microscopic metal beam. I really suggest you to search and read this essay written by Carl Craver.

It's called Levels, which precisely on this very problem. Craver, did you say? Karl Craver? So, is it just a question of complexity? So the practical complexity of reducing certain things to microscopic behavior? like social phenomena seem very difficult to understand by reducing them to microscopic

composition but is the idea that in theory we could but we're just practically unable at this point or do we think there's some like emergent structures at macroscopic levels that are like undecomposable yes that's a really I mean I I I didn't want to talk about this in our course but you know in so far as this is just an introduction session let's just talk about this engineers I think you see I wish all philosophers had an engineering mentality you see engineers usually in the colloquial sense are thought as mindless and menial technicians. But believe me, engineers are not like that.

Engineers think about the world by different possibilities. So the thing is that usually When we are looking at the macroscopic level, that macroscopic level might have what you might call to be an intractable level of complexity in the sense that we cannot know, we cannot conclude how we should approach the practice at this level. It's just too much fuzzy logic. it's just too much basically blaring of boundaries of the given phenomenon

so what engineers do also also by the way so the macroscopic has its own fuzzy boundaries and so on so forth that makes it very very hard to pin down in terms of practice but so has the microscopic level. Microscopic level is not always a great way to start intervention with the system. In fact, hardly any engineer will touch a system at a microscopic atomic level because at the atomic or molecular level, we are dealing with such details

that just make our models computationally intractable. It just makes our practices infeasible. So both of these levels are just what you might call to be impractical. It's like you are trying to make a bridge. You see, at the level of making a bridge, you need to make, implement, beams, cords, cables, so on and so forth. The phenomenons under which you observe the cord, the cable, and the metal beam are fuzzy, but so as the crystallographic scale

of studying the metal nature. So what do engineers do in such situations? And that's why I would like, I would consider it as a paradigm for what you might call to be an engineering paradigm of political intervention. Engineers don't think about intervention at this or that level. They always think about what they call a mixed level understanding of a target system. In order for you to work with the messy problems of quantum physics or crystallographic, metallurgical

properties of metal beams, but also the fuzzy logic of the metal behavior at the microscopic level, you should find a new model. They call this model a mixed-level model. It's essentially a kind of model that bridge the gap between lower level microscopic behaviors and upper level macroscopic behaviors. The way that they can do it is by way of something that they call approximation techniques. In physics this is called simply renormalization groups or normalization techniques.

Normalization techniques are what you might call to be in a way that you do not want to have just this or that, either this or that, but you want to have a view of this and a view of that at the same time. These are called approximation techniques, like bridges between the microscopic and the macroscopic in the most optimal way. So you can actually formulate coherently both about the microscopic messy problem of physics and the macroscopic fuzzy problems of experiential observation.

do that all the time but engineers are famous for that basically this is just what engineering is Okay, we are 22-20. Let's have here questions. As I mentioned to you, don't get frustrated. This was just an introductory session. We are going in earnest start next session with

Popper and Kuhn about what science really is, the kind of theories of the nature of science that have been advanced since the beginning or the inception of the philosophy of science. And then unfortunately as the time passes, things become more and more technical. I will make sure that if there is such a technicality, I will elaborate it. But if you think that it is something vague, you should always ask me the question to elaborate on this and simplify it.

But yes, so this was our first session, just like a rudimentary ideas and how we can think about such problems in the broader context. So if you have questions, please pose them. I have a few questions, but I would like other people also, because I think I speak, I ask a question. No, no, no, believe me. There is never enough questions, so go on. Okay. One is a comment and another is a question about something early.

comment like we had this little discussion about difference between differences the different kind of descriptions and I think Adam asked a question about yeah how is it that so that theoretical description is not a description and then I was thinking that the difference between between different kind of descriptions, for example, subjective or literary description of a boiling water, or even poetic description of a boiling water, and explanation, description which is an explanation, is in how these different descriptions or statements are committed to a certain kind of theory,

scientific theory or a model I don't know so this is like a little maybe addition to what we've discussed before but my question was about something completely different you were talking earlier about a certain integration of different you said the science is a refinement of methods of arriving to objectivity or something like that and and philosophy I think you imply the philosophy is the space is a point where the integration of this different points of view on objectivity or objectivities somehow happens and I was

wondering if you're talking about philosophy of science in this case or like philosophy in general? Okay, so with regard to your comments, yes, the idea of description and explanation is always theory-laden and the whole point is that as we look into the history of philosophy of science, we see that the majority of the paradigms of philosophy of science are based on the idea that if a theory can accommodate the previous description within an explanatory, i.e. a new descriptive paradigm that explains

not only the previous paradigm, what we have described from an observational point of view, but also something more at a deeper scale, then this would be a new theory. Exactly like Boltzmann, a statistical thermodynamics versus Colossius and Kelvin, in thermal thermodynamics. So Boltzmann theory of a statistical thermodynamics just does not simply describe thermal thermodynamics as advanced by Clausius, Carnot, and Kelvin.

It adds something else. It gives a description of a new kind of hypothetical entities, namely statistical components, statistical end symbols, which are basically statistical end symbols of particles defined in terms of the boundary condition of the system, but also the velocity, their momentum, and their energy points. So this is yet, yes this is a description, but this is not just another description. It is a description that can accommodate not only the previous description, but can explain any kind of behavior that arise from it.

And I think Boltzmann, a statistical law of thermodynamics, particularly the second law, is something what you might call to be, gets as close as to a universal law. I don't think that any person in the history of science, even Einstein, managed to really understand the nature of science in terms of how scientific explanation works in the sense that we always work we always start from the observational

I think we lost you. Can you hear us at all? We might need you to repeat a couple minutes back. Yeah, I can't hear you either. Can you hear me, Tio? I can hear you now. We lost about two minutes. Can you hear me? Yeah, can you hear me? Yes, yes. Sorry. I was saying that basically Boltzmann, I think Boltzmann revolution in thermodynamics is even more important than Einstein within the context of the history of science.

precisely because Boltzmann tries to understand that all of our observations and we always only initiate from an observational point of view precisely because we are limited beings can be explained by non-observable entities Thermal thermodynamics and its observable behaviors can be explained by a statistical thermodynamics or a statistical physics, by a statistical ensembles of particles having such and such velocities, momentum, and energy points.

So this is my first answer to Svitiano's comment. As with regard to the question, I think that if I answer this question right now, it might actually make more confusion than resolution. Let's at least go to the next session and please do record your question and pose it at that point. Precisely because I think that we, if I say something at this point it might actually

put everyone, throw everyone off. Because some of the stuff that we are going to talk about, as I mentioned, are detailed and they are not clear-cut matters. So please, please do record this question and pose it at the end of the second session, when we at least have gone through a little bit of details. So I don't want to make an answer that requires just too many assumptions at this point.

Okay, anyone else? I have some comments about the question about explanatory power that I sort of wrote in the sidebar. My apologies, Theo. It's not that I don't want to read the sidebar, it's just that I can't see it. I totally understand. You can get, what do they call it, when there's too much information going up to you. I'll just read what I said in the sidebar. I said, what do we mean by

explanation of a theory, or what exactly do we mean by explanatory power? What gives explanation power? Clarity or cohesion or simplicity or communicability? And what do we do about contradictory or exclusive explanations and what makes a description say an utterly subjective one less powerful or efficient than a scientific explanation if we are saying it is more efficient because of x then are we acknowledging some sort of purpose of the said scientific explanation okay uh one more thing to add to it is just um who are explanations for if explanations are for

other scientists um then what fundamentally differs from other types of descriptions in other disciplines, say like explanations by non-scientists to non-scientists or, you know, the mystical to or poetic to other poets or something like that? Well, first of all, I mean, in answer to the first part of your question, explanation simply means the relation between explainants and the explanandum. such a relation can be elaborated in different terms, in terms of invariances, in terms of

what you might call to be accommodation of assumptions, like, okay, let me elaborate on these points. Like, we have a pole, a wooden pole, and this wooden pole casts a shadow on the wall. The shadow is the explanando. The position of the pole is the explainance. So you see, we always assert with the explanando, that which ought to be explained, basically the phenomenon under a study. Like the shadow cast on the wall by the pole. So how can we really shed light on what gave rise to this phenomenon, to this shadow?

As we will, and this is premature for me to try to elaborate this, but all I can say that we will, throughout this course, go through different kinds of theories of scientific explanation. But one of the theories of explanation that has been put forward quite recently by James Woodward is the idea that explanation is what you might call to be invariance under a range of manipulations. As long as, so imagine you move this pole to the left, to the right, you tilt it in different

ways, but you do not simply annihilate the pole and replace it with something else. And that's what I meant by the constraints of the range of manipulation. As long as we do this, we notice that under all such manipulations, this pole will still cast a shadow on the wall. This is what James Woodward called a causal or explanatory environment. So this is one. I will give you in the future sessions about the critique of Woodward's paradigm and I

will give you different alternative explanatory paradigms as put forward by Hempel, by Putnam and so on and so forth. But anyway, the whole point is that for now you can think about explanatory powers as variants under constraints of manipulation. As long as you do not change the gas molecules of these gas molecules with some liquid molecules or atoms, when you go to the atomic scale, it should give you the explanatory powers

over the observed phenomenon. So this is one. Two, with regard to your second question, is that I think it is yet to be decided whether philosophy in general can shed light on the problem of explanation or it is philosophy of science. At this point I can say and this is completely it's part of the research and I'm going research I will not know the final answer

I would say that philosophy in general unfortunately cannot give you the paradigm of explanation. Only science and philosophy of science does. I think philosophy is just too vague and too general to shed light on these matters. Precisely because philosophy needs to be combined with experimentation. but does continental philosophies combine with experimentation i really would like you to answer me that no i really don't think so can can one experiment with ideas themselves like could

Could that be a form of experimentation in some sense? Sure, it's experimentation. But Adam, don't you think that this experimentation is what you might call to be an experimentation in the domain of ideas? Or where these ideas came from is an entirely different field. That's the labor of explanation. It's not that I'm saying that philosophy cannot in principle tell us anything about explanation. I just simply want to say that in its current instantiation, philosophy unfortunately does not have enough resources to adequately think about explanatory paradigms.

That's all I'm saying. It's not that I'm saying that it is in principle cannot do it. I said that it can do it, but right now it doesn't have the resources. That's all. But what is philosophy supposed to explain with regards to those paradigms? Because it seems like scientists that are doing those explanatory moments, so is philosophy supposed to explain something else? That's another really fantastic question. You see, as we will go through these sessions,

we notice that science has always implicit metaphysical assumptions. When scientists think that they don't have metaphysical assumptions, they are quite wrong. we are actually doing the bad job of philosophy. I think one of the great avenues that philosophy can actually not be an underdog of science, but a compliment to science is when it shed lights on the metaphysical assumption of the scientific practice. Is an electron real or a metaphysical positive? No philosopher can, no scientist can answer you this at this moment currently.

Do you really think that now Gracie Tyson or Dawkins can answer you? No, they are going to whitewash it. Van Fressen will answer you. Sellars will answer you. Philosopher will answer you. That's, I think that is really a good thing and that is precisely when science, you see the discipline of science and philosophy, these are just modes of thinking. They cannot be subordinated with one another. They should be thought as complementary. And so far as they are complementary, they should also be thought, like all other modes of thought as essentially having their own biases how can we mitigate the biases

of this or that mode of thinking science or philosophy or that matter well by integration of all modes of thinking when philosophy can shed light into the metaphysical assumptions of science are unconscious. I'm not sure I'm understanding how this non-biased thing is working in the integration between philosophy and sciences. Insofar as... The thing is that when I'm saying non-biased, I do not mean that we are non-biased as if we are in some sort of innocent mode of thinking. You see, bias

can only be mitigated. In fact, you want the bias in order to progress. But you need to also have a method of mitigation of biases. Science has its own biases. And I really do think that it does not have the adequate resources, as we will talk about, to mitigate its own observational and conceptual biases. It requires the hand of philosophy. And so philosophy requires the hand of science. If I'm understanding you right, sorry for going too long about this, but would you agree to say that bias exists in scientific practices?

Absolutely, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, and so the metaphysical biases existing in scientific practice renders philosophical... So how philosophy could add to this is by changing the philosophical practice imminent to scientific practice? Is that where you're kind of going? You might say that philosophy, at least, I mean, I don't want to go too flash forward on this, but I would say that the only way, at least, I mean for now, that you can think of philosophy as something as a critique of metaphysics or metaphysical implicit assumptions that are within the practice of science.

And that's really an important thing. Precisely because when scientists think that they are simply doing the practice of science, They do not know how much their practice is actually being informed by their own metaphysical biases. This doesn't mean that a philosopher should tell them what to do. They can themselves be philosophers. They can themselves be philosophers. They can themselves criticize their own metaphysical assumptions. I do not want to subordinate science to philosophy at all, nor philosophy to science.

Genesek, would you give an example of metaphysical bias of a scientist? Yes. I made a good go to the string conference, the string theory conference, where the string field or quantum field is actually talking as if it was real. But is it really real? No, what does that mean? You know, what is a quantum field? Is it has the... or just simply postulates models?

This actually has fundamental consequences on the progress of science, precisely because if you think that they are real, then you are going to, by way of the human bias, posit precisely such things as the ultimate furniture of the world, beyond which you cannot see anything else. But if you think then as simply metaphysical posits, which can in fact be revised, then you are in the business of Boltzmannian or Einsteinian science. You explain it away. I had a quick question.

Absolutely. I guess actually it's kind of turning it back to your court. For me, it's easier to trudge through the trenches of the history and philosophy of science when I have the relevance of the contemporary debates, which is where I'm interested in and why I'm digging into the past. And I guess I was going to throw it back in your core and just ask you, and you can decline this, but you're at the end of the course after we've talked about all the details. What at the beginning, other than getting lost in these little questions going sideways, are big picture, I guess, issues that still exist today? For me, like you touched on today, maybe purse versus sellers and the idea of artificial intelligence and language and objectivity moving beyond empirical sort of first person experience.

Yes. I guess I'm interested to just ask you, like, put yourself all the way to end of the course and zoom all the way up to where you're at at the moment, like five minutes. Just lay out how you thread the needle of all those all those things to set the stage to some degree to go back and dig dig again through the trenches. Sure. I don't know if that made sense. I would say, yes, no, no, that's a good that's that's that's a good one, but also very, very difficult one. In the sense that, okay let me give you a brief abstract of how we are moving forward. In the sense that I genuinely believe that science gives what you might call to be the

complete picture of objectivity. By that I do not mean that this objectivity is perfect. It can be revised and that's precisely it is perfect. of objectivity cannot be revised, it's not objectivity, it's of the subject. So this is one. I think that only science can do that. I do not want, I might be branded as a scientist or a scientific philosopher, but so be it. If that's what scientism is, I will wear it as a badge of honor. Two, despite the fact about the vocation of science and the scientific endeavor, there

are still many philosophical blind spots in the practice of science. To me, after I have read a lot of, and I am coming from a scientific tradition rather and philosophical tradition. If you know this, if you already don't know, I don't have any formal philosophical education. I'm purely autodidactic on this front. For the last 25 years, I have taught myself philosophy. My real education is science. The thing is that, However, I think that philosophy can shed fundamental lights on the blindest parts of

the scientific practice. And that's why I think philosophy of science should be taken seriously. Those people who say that science is just about practice and those philosophers who talk about scientific discipline and so on and so forth, have no idea about what the practical of science entails, I would counter this challenge. I would say that those people who are only in the business of the practical of science do not know what science is. They are the unconscious, menial technicians, like engineers.

So I would like to gather this whole thing and I'm going to point out to all the kind of plot holes in the scientific enterprise which are still open problem as we move forward to show you that science in that respect, in that specific sense is not that much different from philosophy. Just because it succeeds with its own discoveries

doesn't mean that it is doing the right kind of thing. Accomplishment Pragmatic accomplishment is not an index of truth. In the broadest possible way of truth. should we finish it to you at this point i am being summoned to the garden work yeah that's totally fine and we yeah we went a little

bit over today but we also did a little bit late no no no it's good it's good i mean uh you those of you haven't been my classes we are going to take our time don't worry if we never managed to finish it we will add free sessions at the end nevertheless I'm really a pleasure to have all of you here yeah thank you everyone I'll post the recording of this in the classroom if you don't have access to the classroom for any reason just um feel free to send me an email or reach out to me on facebook i'll try and help you yes in addition to theo's uh i would say that you know i understand that uh you know this is

a class and i understand that like all classes people usually feel coy or shy to pose their questions but you can always pose your questions in the google classroom and i will be happy to I'll say again. All right. Last minute. Maybe logistical questions? Or I'll end the broadcast and then if anyone else... I can wait for the broadcast to end. Okay. All right. I'm going to end the broadcast. Thank you, everyone.