When Science Confronts Philosophy: Three Case Studies
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When Science Confronts Philosophy: Three Case Studies Eric Dietrich1 Received: 19 July 2019 / Accepted: 31 December 2019 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This paper examines three cases of the clash between science and philosophy: Zeno’s paradoxes, the Frame Problem, and a recent attempt to experimentally refute skepticism. In all three cases, the relevant science claims to have resolved the purported problem. The sciences, construing the term broadly, are mathematics, artificial intelligence, and psychology. The goal of this paper is to show that none of the three scientific solutions work. The three philosophical problems remain as vibrant as ever in the face of robust scientific attempts to dispel them. The paper concludes by examining some consequences of this persistence. Keywords Computation · Frame Problem · Geometric series · Infinity · Knowledge · Relevance · Semantics · Skepticism · Zeno’s Paradoxes
1 Introduction This paper provides arguments that three famous philosophy problems are not solved or even dented by the best efforts of science and mathematics. The three problems are Zeno’s Paradoxes, the Frame Problem, and Skepticism. The first and third are ancient. The Frame Problem in much younger; it is just now only a little over fifty years old. The conclusions will be the same for all three. The sciences (broadly construed to include mathematics) that allegedly solve each problem are all susceptible to the same objection: the empirical and theoretical methods used assume the existence of precisely what the philosopher calls into question. So, in each case, the scientist begs the question against the philosopher.
* Eric Dietrich [email protected] 1
Philosophy Department, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, USA
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Axiomathes
2 Zeno’s Paradoxes Parmenides held that reality—the What Is—is a partless, continuous, unchangeable, immovable, unity that will exist forever, could never come into existence from “nothingness,” and could never go out of existence. There is, finally, only pure crystalline being, now and forever. This is Parmenides’s primary truth. A second truth (or path) concerns the What Is Not, which necessarily is not (i.e., it doesn’t and cannot exist). Together, these two truths make up the Way of Truth. (In modern parlance we would probably call the Way of Truth, the Way of A priori, Necessary Truth.) Contrasting with the Way of Truth is the Way of Opinion. This way is merely the way of appearances, which merely seem to exist. This way is untrustworthy because it is often false or varied (one person has one opinion, another has the opposite opinion). Accordingly, it is the way of mortals, of contingent beings. This way is ugly and should be avoided, but, alas, it cannot, Parmenides held, due to its pervasiveness. At best, one can adopt a sort of detestable pragmatism toward the Way of Opinion. It may be that Parmenides held that the Way of Opinion is a pervasive illusion.1 Parmenides’s philosophy is a shocking metaphysics and epistemology, and unsurprisin
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