/sci/ - Science & Math

>>12515386
>inb4 schizo nonsense

>>12515386
weak b8. recast your line.

>>12515386
No he didn’t

>>12515386
logical positivism is the answer inb4 /lit/ schizos

>>12515526
Lmao, no, considering their seminal literature BTFO itself:
>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Mathematica#Consistency_and_criticisms

>>12515549
lulz fuck off >>>/lit/ schizo

>>12515553
Come at me, come on, offer a serious rebuttal.

>>12515549
>>12515554
>Come at me, come on, offer a serious rebuttal.
Lol carnap was a logical positivist dude. You gave me a link to principia mathematica but I'm unsure what your position is here that you would like me to rebute? The proper statement of positivism is that the sensory experience is the fundamental object which is invariant to theorizing away, you can’t theorize away a direct observation, so that it forms the foundation of knowledge. The other conceptions are important only to the extent that they have an impact, direct or indirect, on sensory experience. So you need to give a path from the object you are hypothesizing directly to a sensory experience to be sure you know what you are talking about.

This principle is extremely important, and it is clarified by some examples from physics. The first notion which is clarified is the “electric field”. What is a “field”? The answer is that you can measure the field by placing charges at a position in space, and seeing how they accelerate. This procedure defines what the content of the field is in a positivist way, and allows you to be sure that the field is a sensible thing to introduce into a formalism.

Essentially all physicists continue to be positivists until today, without understanding that they are adopting the philosophy, because, in Einstein’s words “They have imbibed it in their mother’s milk”.

>>12515625
Fuck...

>>12515526
Prove it using only tools of logical positivism

>>12515635
lol what

>>12515625
That's all very well and good, but at it's very core, it cannot fulfil its own central dogma, that of the verification principle. How can you empirically verify a philosophical school of thought? You can't. It's self-contradictory, like egoism, in which itself becomes a spook.

>>12515668
Lol dude that is just a stupid political attack on logical positivism. It's idiotic to think that positivism should be required to verify itself or whatever, positivism is simply how you know when you are asking a sensible question-- when you can discriminate between the answers through some sort of observation. If all the different possible answers lead to the same exact sense impressions, then there is no question. That's it.

It is logical positivism that allows you to understand that two coordinate systems for a physical problem are not different, they are really the same, when the predictions for all the sense-impressions predicted by the two systems are equivalent. So if someone insists that the world is really in polar coordinates (perhaps because rotations are important), and someone else insists that the world is really in rectangular coordinates (because translations are important), they are both being silly. Each coordinate system is as good as any other.

The positivism allowed 19th century physicists to convince themselves that fields are actual objects, as real as a chair, because there is a procedure to check if a field is present, just like there is a procedure to check if a chair is present. So it makes the abstract things concrete, whenver you can figure out a solid experimental test to see how the abstract thing is configured. But it also made other questions meaningless, like what is the true rest-frame of the ether? Or where is the electron exactly in the ground state of a Hydrogen atom?

The positivism is so essential for physics, that physicists automatically reduce the debates in other fields into the logically positivistically inequivalent positions, and tune out when the debate is meaningless. This is most debates, unfortunately, at least in the way that they are framed (usually there is a way to frame them so that the debates are meaningful too, it's just that if you aren't used to positivism, you don't tend to do that)

>>12515694
A political attack? No, not at all, it is a philosophical attack, upon a philosophical school of thought. Listen, I'm not saying that logical positivism is worthless, but it isn't the Lord's Gospel either, it's a school of thought, prone to as much error as other schools of thought. It has applicability, but it also isn't infallible, and it shouldn't be treated as it is.

Let's examine Quine's rejection of two of Carnap's central dogmas: analytic-synthetic distinction, and scientific reductionism. Quine's contention within regard to the analytic-synthetic, is that there is no thorough account of analyticity, as such it is not a distinction that can be made soundly. What're the implications of this? It means that positivists are unable to prove the truth of statements that cannot be empirically verified, as per the verification principle; an example of this is mathematical statements. So, as with ethnics, should we regard mathematics as meaningless?

As for reductionism, while the approach of "radical holism" doesn't work, as observation statements can be verified independently, it still disregards the holistic nature of the sciences as a whole. In which case, how much can be trust the forthrightness of logical positivism, when it doesn't reflect the realities of interdisciplinarity?

What about Ayer? He agrees with Quine when it comes the verification principle, in that it is too vague, and can be misapplied, or not applied at all, in this case to logical positivism itself.

In short, it's a useful tool, but don't overstate it.

>>12515694
A political attack? No, not at all, it is a philosophical attack, upon a philosophical school of thought. Listen, I'm not saying that logical positivism is worthless, but it isn't the Lord's Gospel either, it's a school of thought, prone to as much error as other schools of thought. It has applicability, but it also isn't infallible, and it shouldn't be treated as it is.

Let's examine Quine's rejection of two of Carnap's central dogmas: analytic-synthetic distinction, and scientific reductionism. Quine's contention within regard to the analytic-synthetic, is that there is no thorough account of analyticity, as such it is not a distinction that can be made soundly. What're the implications of this? It means that positivists are unable to prove the truth of statements that cannot be empirically verified, as per the verification principle; an example of this is mathematical statements. So, as with ethics, should we regard mathematics as meaningless?

As for reductionism, while the approach of "radical holism" doesn't work, as observation statements can be verified independently, it still disregards the holistic nature of the sciences as a whole. In which case, how much can we trust the forthrightness of logical positivism, when it doesn't reflect the realities of interdisciplinarity?

What about Ayer? He agrees with Quine when it comes the verification principle, in that it is too vague, and can be misapplied, or not applied at all, in this case to logical positivism itself.

In short, it's a useful tool, but don't overstate it.

>>12515727
>>12515734
>No, not at all, it is a philosophical attack, upon a philosophical school of thought.
Not science or math.
>Listen, I'm not saying that logical positivism is worthless, but it isn't the Lord's Gospel either, it's a school of thought, prone to as much error as other schools of thought. It has applicability, but it also isn't infallible, and it shouldn't be treated as it is.
This is just stupid. Nothing I've said is incorrect, you need to get on board or get out.
>Let's examine Quine's rejection of two of Carnap's central dogmas: analytic-synthetic distinction, and scientific reductionism.
>Quine's contention within regard to the analytic-synthetic, is that there is no thorough account of analyticity, as such it is not a distinction that can be made soundly. What're the implications of this?
Yeah let's not, you gibbering autist. You are certainly not addressing anything I said. Instead, you seem to be addressing and rehashing the stupid arguments of gay old men I've never read, straying into the political sector of /lit/eral nonsense. You need to go back to /lit/, or just far away from /sci/.

>>12515748
Haha, fucking philistine, you can't argue philosophy for shit, in which case, don't embroil yourself in a thread clearly addressing the philosophy of science.
Look, kid, if you just want to "shut-up-and-calculate", feel free to do so, but don't act like your viewpoint is sound, or defensible when you can't even into some basic philosophy.
My advice to you here? Learn when to shut up, learn when not to engage, learn when you're outclassed.
By the way, thinklet, I'm a biophysicist. However, unlike your ilk, I understand the importance of having a sound framework within which to work, and one which I am not fooled into accepting as sacrosanct. Your belove of logical positivism, without philosophical reason, is nothing short of theologic itself.

>>12515760
>Haha, fucking philistine, you can't argue philosophy for shit
Lul not science or math, stopped reading there. Either kill yourself or get the fuck out.

>>12515765
Verify your mathematics empirically, go on. Observe it.

>>12515767
What is your math not working for you or something? Mine works fine, get fucked. Just checked btw.

>>12515772
Oh, fucking classic, this so-called "logical positivist" doesn't even understand the verification principle, the fucking central dogma. You're like those "Christians" who can't even into theology. Rich.

>>12515782
You're right, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. The central dogma is as I explained above: "The proper statement of positivism is that the sensory experience is the fundamental object which is invariant to theorizing away, you can’t theorize away a direct observation, so that it forms the foundation of knowledge. The other conceptions are important only to the extent that they have an impact, direct or indirect, on sensory experience. So you need to give a path from the object you are hypothesizing directly to a sensory experience to be sure you know what you are talking about."
Everything else you mention is stuff you heard somewhere else, and probably has no connection to what I said. Yet you go off and sperg on about such things like:
>verification principle
>analytic-synthetic distinction
>scientific reductionism
>radical holism
>old men
Any of that shit, but you're not addressing anything I said in any obvious way. I do math just fine, it reduces to the sense impressions in my head, in accordance with the principle I described, and dude I gotta tell you it just works beautifully every damn time! Sorry dude, maybe you're just plain fucking dumb and consequently you believe obvious nonsense peddled by /lit/eral retard politicians larping as scientists. I don't give a fuck if you call me crazy, you're wrong and I'm right, it's that fucking simple.

>>12515805
Oh boy, I've already addressed what you've said, but it doesn't take this many lines of "profundity":
>Listen, I'm not saying that logical positivism is worthless, but it isn't the Lord's Gospel either, it's a school of thought, prone to as much error as other schools of thought. It has applicability, but it also isn't infallible, and it shouldn't be treated as it is.
>In short, it's a useful tool, but don't overstate it.
That's it. But, as it is self-contradictory, as detailed above, but you've been too simple to extract, it is not the "Truth". It's that fucking simple.

>>12515805
>>12515807
Also, it is considered a depreciated school of thought, replaced by modern descendants, see:
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verificationism#Decline
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verificationism#Legacy
Stop pretending you're a stalwart for something you don't understand, and that which is considered outdated. Okay? It's rather sad.

You're not making sense dude. Look, here is a list of meaningless questions in physics (that are trivial once you understand logical positivism, but hopeless otherwise):
1. Are gauge ghosts actual particles?
2. Does the electron have a position in the ground state of Hydrogen, if you aren’t measuring where it is?
3. Are confined particles, like quarks, actual particles?
4. Do objects cross the black-hole event horizon or get smeared on the surface, never falling through?
5. Are Green-Schwarz superstrings the same as RNS superstrings?
I could go on all day. All these superficially sensible questions are obviously nonsensical in logical positivism, and to simply study physics, you can’t avoid imbibing the entire philosophy right at the outset, and definitely when you study quantum mechanics. This is how I can tell you've never really studied anything, brainlet.
>That's it. But, as it is self-contradictory, as detailed above
Never detailed above, and the "self-contradictory" thing has not relation to positivism as I've stated it. You pulled that out of nowhere-- it doesn't even relate to what you've greentexted there.
>Also, it is considered a depreciated school of thought, replaced by modern descendants, see
"Oh, oh look at what all these retarded old politicians think about this thing we're talking about." You're reliance on political authority is why you're too stupid to see why this thing works.
>Stop pretending you're a stalwart for something you don't understand
This is politics getting in the way of your ability to critique a thing, and it's rather stupid.
>It's rather sad.
Oh I'm so embarrassed anon. What will the others think of me anon.

>>12515807
>>12515811
You're not making sense dude. Look, here is a list of meaningless questions in physics (that are trivial once you understand logical positivism, but hopeless otherwise):
1. Are gauge ghosts actual particles?
2. Does the electron have a position in the ground state of Hydrogen, if you aren’t measuring where it is?
3. Are confined particles, like quarks, actual particles?
4. Do objects cross the black-hole event horizon or get smeared on the surface, never falling through?
5. Are Green-Schwarz superstrings the same as RNS superstrings?
I could go on all day. All these superficially sensible questions are obviously nonsensical in logical positivism, and to simply study physics, you can’t avoid imbibing the entire philosophy right at the outset, and definitely when you study quantum mechanics. This is how I can tell you've never really studied anything, brainlet.
>That's it. But, as it is self-contradictory, as detailed above
Never detailed above, and the "self-contradictory" thing has not relation to positivism as I've stated it. You pulled that out of nowhere-- it doesn't even relate to what you've greentexted there.
>Also, it is considered a depreciated school of thought, replaced by modern descendants, see
"Oh, oh look at what all these retarded old politicians think about this thing we're talking about." You're reliance on political authority is why you're too stupid to see why this thing works.
>Stop pretending you're a stalwart for something you don't understand
This is politics getting in the way of your ability to critique a thing, and it's rather stupid.
>It's rather sad.
Oh I'm so embarrassed anon. What will the others think of me anon?

>>12515841
Oh, god, this is so tiresome. One again, all of this can be cleared up by saying:
>In short, it's a useful tool, but don't overstate it.
The question in the OP is a philosophical one, not a practical one. What you are describing here is the scientific method, a descendant of empiricism, much like logical positivism. However, it isn't an exclusively logical positivist standpoint, it is an aspect of it. Logical positivism as a whole, comes with several other dogmas, some of which I have explored above, that are separate from the "school of thought" that is the scientific method. Allow me to draw a distinct here, the OP is philosophical, akin to the concept of "theoretical", say "theoretical physics", which differs from say "applied physics". To address this philosophically we aren't looking at the application of the verification principle, because that is entailed within the scientific method, we're looking at the philosophical justification for, or against, logical positivism. As I've already displayed, 1) it is self-contractionary in philosophical terms, 2) redundant in modern terms, in this case replaced by the scientific method, this argument is over. I've "won", not that it really matters.
>Oh I'm so embarrassed anon.
Honestly, you should be, you're conflating application with theory, and it's very sad.

>>12515386
Matter is an irrelevant concept in the Standard Model, you don't even need an interpretation of qm to refute materialism.

>>12515841
Oh, god, this is so tiresome. Once again, all of this can be cleared up by saying:
>In short, it's a useful tool, but don't overstate it.
The question in the OP is a philosophical one, not a practical one. What you are describing here is the scientific method, a descendant of empiricism, much like logical positivism. However, it isn't an exclusively logical positivist standpoint, it is an aspect of it. Logical positivism as a whole, comes with several other dogmas, some of which I have explored above, that are separate from the "school of thought" that is the scientific method. Allow me to draw a distinct line here, the OP is philosophical, akin to the concept of "theoretical", say "theoretical physics", which differs from say "applied physics". To address this philosophically we aren't looking at the application of the verification principle, because that is entailed within the scientific method, we're looking at the philosophical justification for, or against, logical positivism. As I've already displayed, 1) it is self-contractionary in philosophical terms, 2) redundant in modern terms, in this case replaced by the scientific method, this argument is over. I've "won", not that it really matters.
>Oh I'm so embarrassed anon.
Honestly, you should be, you're conflating application with theory, and it's very sad.

literally who cares about any of this gay shit?

>>12515386
Bohmian mechanics is a soviet demoralization operation.
I mean just look at him, he's obviously in the pay of the KGB