Dialogue: Philosophy and Science

-- Part 2 --

Now hold on a second, what do you mean "Certain knowledge comes from philosophy and not science."?

Just that - science is incapable of providing certain knowledge.

Why exactly?

Because it rests on certain suppositions.

Like what?

Like logic, like truth, like knowledge, like experience, like the senses, etc.

And you are saying that philosophy doesn't?

No, I am saying that parts of philosophy don't - what Descartes called First Philosophy, for example.

But I read that Descartes was refuted, or is not really taken very seriously these days.

Oh? News to me.

Wasn't he refuted by, uh what was their name again... Like Karnap and Russell?

Maybe. Not to my knowledge. What was the refutation?

Oh, I can't clearly remember. Something like his "Cognition" argument -

The Cogito argument?

Yeah, the Cogito argument was refuted because saying "I think therefore I am" and then saying that has to be true is not logically valid, or something.

Well first off that's not what Descartes said. A closer translation of the actual claim would be "I think; I am".

Oh, ok. What's the difference? In either case he is just stating that it is true. I can state that I am blue all day - it does not make it so.

Yes, this is true. But he does say more. And his Cogito argument, at least the statement "I think; I am" is not necessarily true anyways.

What do you mean? You mean he has been refuted then, that's it's wrong?

No, not to my knowledge.

... I don't get it.

It's not true per se, but indubitable.

What does that mean?

That means that it cannot be doubted, for him. For doubting is thinking, and thinking is being.

You mean thinking implies a thinker?

No, that does not follow with certainty either. I mean he cannot doubt his existence. It is like a paradox, he just can't do it. He is active. He asserts. He thinks. He is. That statement is, for him, at the time of utterance or thinking it, indubitable. While he is thinking he exists. When he is not thinking he does not know if he exists, literally and figuratively. I can doubt that he exists, but I cannot doubt that I myself exist, not as I doubt - as doubting is thinking. There is no logical law that states I can't, but this indubitable law of thought the cogito argument relies upon. A law perhaps even of reality, although there is no way to know that for certain I don't think.

But isn't that what people generally believe? That Descartes was wrong?

"People" generally believing a thing, whoever they may be, does not make it so. And anyone who believes that Descartes was wrong in that argument in my opinion did not interpret the argument as well as they could have. With as much charity to Descartes as they could or maybe should have.

So the indubitable proposition is like a self-evident proposition?

No, not at all. They are quire different.

What's the difference?

Something that is indubitable is not doubtable. Self-evident propositions can be doubted - I doubt them all the time! A self-evident proposition is one implied logically by an assertion.

You mean like a contradiction.

Well the Law of Non-Contradiction is one of these laws which is implied necessarily by any assertion. When one is asserting X is true, they also imply "If X is true then X is true" -

Obviously.

It is also a self-evident implication of any assertion that "X is either true or not true" and then that "It can never be true that statement X is both true and not true". These are all self-evident from any given assertion, given what the nature of an assertion is: that it purports to precisely describe some facet of reality.

But you just contradicted yourself.

Did I? How?

You just said that science relies on truth and on logic, but then you said that an assertion describes reality. But that's all science does is describe reality.

Does it? How does it do that, describe reality?

It makes a hypothesis then tries to prove or disprove that hypothesis by conducting experiments.

That's not entirely correct but ok, how does conducting experiments aloow science to describe reality?

Well, by conducting experiments science discerns what is true or not.

Really?

Uh, yeah.

Is that the only way to know what is true?