Science’s Need For Philosophy

Abstract

Science and philosophy are often considered to be in conflict. Certain people in the scientific community tend to crudely deride philosophy as a meaningless endeavour. This view is exemplified by mathematician Mike Alder in his Philosophy Now article “Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword”. Alder makes the claim that only propositions with observable consequences should be debated. Since a majority of philosophy makes propositions that do not have observable consequences it fails to provide meaningful truths. As such, Alder wishes to reduce philosophical questions, like ethical ones, to scientific ones. In my argument against Alder’s reductionist view of philosophy, I argue that ethical questions cannot be reduced to only observable propositions. I use the accounts of sophistry in Plato’s Gorgias and Josef Pieper’s Abuse of Language - Abuse of Power as a basis for my argument. I consider the example of a sophistic scientist who acts immorally, akin to the character of Callicles in the Gorgias, but produces scientific breakthroughs nonetheless. There would be no proposition with observable consequences to convince the scientist to act ethically. Yet our intuition is that the scientist’s conduct requires just the debate Alder rejects. I put forward that Alder’s crude account of philosophy and science offers scientists no meaning or reason as to why the scientist has acted immorally. Thus science alone cannot answer why we ought to care about acting ethically.

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Celia Hatherly, Dr. Edvard Lorkovic, & Dr. Susan Mills