Tangentially on the topic of Philosophy v. Physics, in my review of
Dempster-Shaffer (to avoid making too stupid of misrepresentations on my
bumper-sticker) I was fascinated to find Raymond Smullyan's "Types of
Reasoners" reduced to formal logic (but also couched in natural language
explanations).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxastic_logic#Types_of_reasoners
FWIW, I contend that *LOGIC* is used (critical to) in the natural
sciences but does not *arise from* them... it arises from Philosophy
(Epistemology) and is formalized in Mathematics and merely USED by Science.
I don't know if someone already quoted Feynman on the topic:
"philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is
to birds."
I suspect that if birds had the type of consciousness that included
self-image/awareness and the abstractions of language, that *some* would
at least find ornithology *interesting* and might even find some
practical ways to apply what they learn from "the study of birds".
But no, for the first part it wouldn't make them better fliers,
predators, foragers, scavengers, etc. And most *good* Scientists I
know don't know much about or care about the larger roles of
Epistemology and Metaphysics, which *sometimes* leads them to believe
they have answered the hard questions outside of the bounds of Empirical
Science *with* Empirical Science? Like the "spherical cow", they just
"assume away" the features that their measurements and models
don't/can't address (much less answer).
Mumble,
- Steve
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