Not proof that araneae's statement is accurate, of course, but a demonstration that science continues to encroach on the domain of philosophy in ways that the philosophers of old could never have imagined:
Back in the 17th century there was an argument between Descartes and Spinoza about how knowledge was formed. Descartes said that we heard a proposition, judged it on the evidence, and then either believed or rejected it depending on its merits. Spinoza said that, instead, our tendancy was to at first believe anything we heard and then only later reject it after some reflection. Over the centuries most people agreed with Descartes, but recently neuroscience has shown pretty conclusively that Spinoza was right. [1][2] So be very careful in assuming that science will never swallow any particular part of philosophy.
That's rather trite, especially considering it follows that standard wise-mystic pattern of "two statements which contradict each other." Someone wrote a comic about it but unfortunately I can't find it.
There's nothing inherently contradictory about an unknowable truth. Disagree: it's merely trite, not incorrect, and in spite of being trite it still brings a grin to my lips.
Neurethology for one thing assumes the existence of matter, in particular neurons... It may not be your cup of tea (or mine!), but I very much doubt philosophy will ever become obsolete as long as there is a functioning mind ;-).
A characteristic aspect of philosophy is to question essentially every assumption. You and I may find other things much more interesting, even if they require some basic assumptions, but that's another story.
Edit: I don't know why araneae's comments are being downvoted (despite my upvotes). His points are constructive and on topic...
I wouldn't downvote anyone, but perhaps because it's a paradigm example of a particular strain of thought you see a lot amongst techie/engineering types with limited experience of philosophy, and a line of thought that doesn't stand more than a cursory examination.
You've already answered it with your neurons example. Someone else has pointed out that neuroethology will not touch on normative facts (although will presumably uncover empirical facts that have normative significance).
People have been predicting the death of philosophy for hundreds of years. It hasn't happened yet, and it is unlikely to, as there are always fundamental questions to ask (even though progress on them is difficult, if possible - but that's another question).
I think you underrate this line of thought. The existence of neurons is, of course, not justified in the philosophical sense - but its hard to argue that anything is justified in the philosophical sense. Reason might be a source of justification, but for that to be so you first have to assume that reason is justified. Senses might be a source of justification, but first you have to assume that knowledge derived from senses if justified. If you do not make either of these assumptions you have to retreat form justified to probabilistic or tentative knowledge, and in those terms the existence of neurons is a rather more reasonable assumption.
It's not like philosophy is interested in some special notion of 'justified' - philosphy tends to be interested in our ordinary notion of justification.
We normally think that the belief that neurons exist is justified. Philosophy will ask what that amounts to. It may turn out that the belief is unjustified - but most philosophers will reject this. They will argue over different accounts of what that justification consists in.
Modern philosophy has indeed moved beyond this notion of justification, but for a long time it was the central project of Western philosophy. What were the rationalists, empiricists, Kantians, and positivists arguing about other than the justification of knowledge (in this sense).
EDIT: Maybe I'm going overboard here in attributing to philosophy in general what is only true of epistemology, my favorite branch of it. In that case, I should have been referring to "epidemiological justification".
There has been a strand of 20 cent philosophy that has regarded justification as that which together with truth and belief yields knowledge - if you do that, you're individuating justification in terms of a particular epistemic role, and that so it's a theoretical notion. That might be what you're getting at.
But most philosophers nowadays use the notion of 'warrant' for that. So for them, the notion of justification doesn't have that particular theoretical role.
Generally, why be interested in a theoretical notion? The fundamental questions in Epistemology are questions like:
* What is knowledge?
* What is justification?
* Which beliefs are justified?
* What do we know, and how do we know it?
etc etc
Those are the starting points, and they are phrased in English. They use ordinary notions. Given that, no answer to them which first redefines the terms to yield distinct questions is going to suffice as an adequate answer.
Philosophers use a lot of technical jargon, and are interested in technical questions. But generally, those questions have pretty clear connections to our ordinary ways of thinking about the world.
> Sometimes you can go too far in questioning everything to get any practical result.
That's the thing, philosophy doesn't have to be practical, it stands by itself above everything else, with maybe only Maths as a worthy companion. You can either make fun of this, like Aristophanes already did 2,500 years ago in The Clouds, or you can take it as it is.
Does neuroethology tell us whether neuroethology can account for all of the human mind? Probably not, and if we just assume that is the case, then we waste a whole bunch of time if we're wrong.
Philosophy has only been displaced if physics can account for all of reality, but whether it can or cannot is a philosophical problem. So, since you can't appeal to physics to determine whether physics is a comprehensive answer, it isn't.
It won't, it will show that there are no normative questions. (exaggerated on purpose, of course, but it's The Final Frontier - once we know how the brain works, we will have a real insight into the nature of morality and we will have 'proof' for the objective nature thereof - all this IMNSHO of course ;) )
I think you're confused. There are clearly normative questions; "Should I do X?" for any value of X is a normative question. You might have intended to contend that there are no normative facts: that there is no "right answer", as it were, to normative questions, merely what we choose to do.
However, this is not something that science can prove, at least without adding the claim that the only facts there are are physical facts. You're basically suggesting that we open up people's heads, look around, go "Nope, no norms here!" and take that to be evidence that they don't exist. This is problematic at best, since were they to exist, normative facts would seem to have properties quite at odds with physical facts, and your assertion starts to look question-begging.
Metaethics is not my area, so I'm afraid all of this is rather rough and ready, but the SEP article [1] is a pretty decent starting point.
Yes of course there's the distinction between the normative question and the underlying reality that question is about; my point doesn't require a distinction so I found it useless to make it and just went with the phrasing of the post I was replying to.
My point was that there is nothing science won't be able to prove; and that there is only physical reality, and facts, and that once we crack the 'code' (as in 'security code', not 'programming code', although in another discussion I'd posit that it's both) we will learn about the fundamental nature of morality - as humans perceive it; it's exactly this realization (that moral issues stem from interpretation by man) that will show that most things we consider 'moral issues' really aren't.
(the above may make it seem that I'm a moral relativist but I'm not - au contraire, once we peel away the human-induced layers of morality we will find the fundamental nature of it at the core)
Neurology and related sciences can help illuminate what our interests are, but cannot resolve the moral problem of what to do when those interests come into conflict. Science can tell me what kind of diet a child needs to grow into healthy adulthood, but it can’t tell me under what circumstances it would be moral to take money from the wealthy (or, heck, the middle class) in order to feed starving children.
but it can’t tell me under what circumstances it would be moral to take money from the wealthy (or, heck, the middle class) in order to feed starving children.
Sure it can. Take north western Europe, notoriously secular (when compared to the US) yes quite socialist with an extensive social safety net. Economics, sociology, etc, all help you identify what you need to do to reach what ever goals you are aiming for.
And ethics and fairness have been studied and are well known in other social species, like the great apes. They are not uniquely human.
Morality is just the formalization of a whole set of instinctive emotional desires for fairness. Most often it is enforced by using another emotional foundation, the respect for alpha leaders, as in it is God's law you do this and that.
There is no domain which will eternally be out of the reach of reason and science, not morality, not love, not spirituality, nothing. I find this wonderful!
I have an instinctive emotional desire to keep what I possess. You have an instinctive emotional desire to feel compassion for someone who is suffering. Because of your emotions, you want to raise taxes on my property to support the poor. Because of my emotions, I want my taxes to stay the same, if not lower. How can science decide between us?
Social game theory is complex but not impossible to understand. If it were impossible, countries not ruled by the pope any more would be all like Somalia.
Game theory helps you decide, given a game with certain rules and a scoring metric, how to maximize your score. Political philosophy helps you choose the rules of the game.
