Comment by lebrad | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lebrad | Hacker News Reader

The argument about science replacing philosophy is constantly presented as a nuanced conundrum.

But there really are scientific questions and there really are philosophical questions.

For example, when two cars crash, science can in principle tell us exactly at what speeds they were traveling, what the drivers were doing, and all the physical details.

But as humans we want to find not just what happened but who's at fault.

When we ask questions about guilt, we're asking a non-scientific, philosophical question.

Understanding precisely what happened is important in assessing guilt, but only up to a point. I don't mean questions of physical cause and effect, or even of legal guilt, but actual culpability. If you think that question is answerable, then you're in the realm of philosophy.

Questions of credit and blame lead to questions of good and bad. If you believe that ethics are a real thing, then every decision has an ethical dimension, and science can't really help with that.

The best attempt I've seen at reconciling science and physics is by Bob Doyle at http://www.informationphilosopher.com/

"But as humans we want to find not just what happened but who's at fault."

Well, guilt may well be a necessary concepts for a variety of social, institutional and psychological reasons. To say that guilt is must exist simply because of our humanness seems very much like the simplification that article gives some enlightening (imo) Wittgenstein quotes on:

"Our craving for generality has [as one] source … our preoccupation with the method of science. I mean the method of reducing the explanation of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive natural laws; and, in mathematics, of unifying the treatment of different topics by using a generalization. Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer in the way science does."

Also, Wittgenstein is certainly not arguing for science replacing philosophy but arguing for philosophers not to emulate scientists.

Why do you think that guilt is a non-scientific question? Is it only because it is too inadequately defined to produce a consistent interpretation?

And guilt probably has little to do with fault.

The comment was presumably talking about guilt in the ethical rather than factual sense.

E.g. Trolley Problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

Do you mean guilt-the-emotion, or guilt as a causal relation? Neither of those are beyond the pervue of science. The only troubles you get -- the reasons scientists don't engage in this kind of theorizing -- is that the domain is both complex and culturally sensitive, and thus work doesn't receive funding and appreciation. It's not because it can't be done.

I meant guilt the causal relationship.

As you note, a large portion of it depends on value judgements. If I wilfully murder 1 person to save 3 from being accidentally killed, am I guilty? What if I take no action and allow 3 people to be accidentally killed?

Without attempting to Asimovly define the value of all possibilities, I'm not sure how science can answer these questions in any meaningful sense.

Without tumbling into a morass of complexity (e.g. a life is worth this because of GDP per capita and birth rate and lifespan, and taking an action is to be valued this way because of neuroscience and experimental psychology) that, should it be fallen into, would start to look more like ethical philosophy than post-Enlightenment science.

But then, that's why they were both the same field before experimental repetition was enshrined...

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