Philosophy and Science

I recently had a reader post on one of my Facebook threads:
 "Unfortunately, my mind doesn't work like a scientist's. I studied English Lit and Philosophy. Philosophers can pontificate without having their hypotheses tested for correctness."
There are several things here that need to be addressed: Science, Philosophy, hypothesis, and hypothesis testing.  I have participated in discussions where essentially the same phrase finds a way into the conversation. It shows some common misunderstanding of how "intellectuals", "academics", or "scientists" think about reality. Scientists *are* philosophers and therefore their minds *do* operate in the same manner as the mind of a Philosopher, by definition.

Philosophical ideas  *are* rigorously tested for correctness. A person who  pontificates without testing his ideas is not engaged in philosophy, at all. These people pontificate, they are *not* "philosophizing" and I don't care what their degree is in or whether or not they are full professors in a philosophy department. Maybe what is needed here is a clear explanation of what constitutes philosophy? Philosophizing (doing philosophy) is the act of creating a model of reality; the word philosophy is often used to describe the intellectual model of reality constructed by philosophizing.

Scientists *are* philosophers. It is only recently that people have started separating out science from philosophy. Others can if do this if they like, but I do not. Philosophy has to do with 'reality' in all of its manifestations. For example your own ideas, emotions, and thoughts are part of this grand 'reality', so is mathematics and physics. People may have stopped thinking of science as philosophy because it was so successful; it took the spotlight and reduced the rest of philosophy to small academic corners in our universities. This is *not* progress; it is sad. Science is philosophy that addresses the physical and *repeatable* world.

Science deals with things that we can repeat, nothing else really. We do experiments that we can repeat in in order to test the "null hypothesis". That is, we attempt to prove that the idea is *wrong* as it is impossible to prove that an idea is correct. I mean that. It is impossible, theoretically, to prove an idea is correct; it *is* possible to demonstrate that it is wrong. This is how scientists makes progress concerning our knowledge of the physical world.

The rest of philosophy deals with things that are not repeatable. For instance, people think that the study of the origin of the universe is science; for all *practical* purposes the universe is not a repeatable phenomenon subject to experimentation. The study of universe is called cosmology and although it uses some of the tools that are considered 'science' it is not science but it is philosophy, important philosophy. I know that this is a bit "technical" but the point is important for understanding how we pick the world apart in order to understand it. So this thing that we call a "hypothesis" is really only applicable to the "science" part of philosophy.

So how do the other philosophers, the ones that deal with more ephemeral topics such as logic or law deal with 'testing' their ideas? These are not the sort of thing that one can test physically so how do we separate the bad ideas from the good ones? We use consistency. If a system of thought, "Law" for instance, is internally inconsistent, it is considered as incomplete or impracticable. Much of the work in philosophy (thought) is in locating and fixing the inconsistencies and finding and filling the holes (completeness).

When I evaluate what people are saying, I look for internal inconsistencies, contradictions and completeness. When I find an internal inconsistency, I know that the idea is not viable. We *define* what is viable by that which is consistent with itself and the world that it fits into. This does *not* mean that it is correct. It means that it has the *possibility* of being correct. When I find an area the seems applicable but it is not covered in the philosophical structure, I attempt to patch the hole so that what would logically be covered in the concept is covered in the idea structure.

Sorry about the 'lecture' but this stuff is important. I hope that what I have said makes sense to you. Correctness for a philosopher means internal consistency, completeness and conformance to that which is observed. It is highly rigorous and subject to intense testing. More intense scrutiny than perhaps any other human activity. It deal with how we think.