Stephen Hawking is wrong

philologos

18AD wrote: »

Science most definitely is not philosophy.

If it is, it is to it what an atom is to an apple. :pac:

Some of the first natural science that took place in the world was carried out by philosophers ranging from Thales to Aristotle. Natural philosophy was the original name for natural science in most university faculties. I would also say that the word science has taken on a different meaning in the last two centuries than it had before that point. Science was related to the term scientia meaning knowledge. I don't believe the only knowledge we have is scientific.

18AD

Yeah, there's certainly a case to be made for the overlap between the two.

I'm reminded that in the German Wissenschaft is translated as science, but it includes history, science, philosophy etc...

Is scientia the latin? What is the latin equivalent of philo-sophy? Amor Scientia?

Gbear

18AD wrote: »

One argument to the contrary is that from the subjective point of view we don't operate as parts working in synchrony, we are actually already unified in experience. When you go to stand up you don't first move your leg and then find your balance and then move your arm to help yourself up. You are already a unified totality working towards a goal.

I don't see how that is an argument to the contrary.
When you stand up you do it automatically, just the same as you breath without thinking about it. We subconsciously do these things, I would imagine, to free the brain up to bend more power towards more difficult things.

Being the sum of your parts includes your brain - the control center which allows you to very quickly, stand up, get your balance, move your arm, all automatically, so you can be thinking how to make a sandwich.

18AD wrote: »

The experience of parts is actually secondary to the unified whole of the above mentioned experience. What we encounter first is an interconnected unity of experience. Only after we attempt to break it down do we find out that there are parts.

I guess it depends where you wish to place the emphasis. Is the original unity there at all or are the parts truer than the whole?

Surely even the language we use hints towards the answer, as we tend to "break things down" or "simplify". That is to say, the whole is the (too complicated) starting point and the discovery of parts is only a tool towards understanding the whole. To put it differently, we can't understand the whole, so we break it down.

Im not sure how any of this refutes that we are no more than the sum of our parts.

18AD

Gbear wrote: »

I don't see how that is an argument to the contrary.
When you stand up you do it automatically, just the same as you breath without thinking about it. We subconsciously do these things, I would imagine, to free the brain up to bend more power towards more difficult things.

The point is that experientially the unity of experience is primary. The act of breaking things down into parts is secondary. We are not an assemblage of parts, we are a unity that can be broken down into parts.

If you're going for a walk you don't think left foot, right foot. You just do it all together as a whole. Thinking about it actually gets in the way.

Most motor awareness is thought to reside mostly in the body as well. So called muscle memory. The brain I suspect has a lot less to do with movement than you make out. If any one here does cogsci could they maybe back that up? Or maybe I'm still behind the times

If you take the leg of a centipede it automatically readjusts it's whole walking pattern immediately to compensate. It doesn't have to learn how to deal with the loss because the bodily movement is a unity and does not need to be "thought through" or relearned.

Gbear

18AD wrote: »

The point is that experientially the unity of experience is primary. The act of breaking things down into parts is secondary. We are not an assemblage of parts, we are a unity that can be broken down into parts.

If you're going for a walk you don't think left foot, right foot. You just do it all together as a whole. Thinking about it actually gets in the way.

Most motor awareness is thought to reside mostly in the body as well. So called muscle memory. The brain I suspect has a lot less to do with movement than you make out. If any one here does cogsci could they maybe back that up? Or maybe I'm still behind the times

If you take the leg of a centipede it automatically readjusts it's whole walking pattern immediately to compensate. It doesn't have to learn how to deal with the loss because the bodily movement is a unity and does not need to be "thought through" or relearned.

I think we're arguing over nothing again. The "sum of our parts" comment doesn't really imply that there is no "unity", as you're calling it.
What integrates those parts and fashions them into a smoothly running machine is just another part - whether it's all done centrally at the brain or decentrally at different points in the body isn't really relevant. It's still just "stuff".

18AD

Gbear wrote: »

I think we're arguing over nothing again. The "sum of our parts" comment doesn't really imply that there is no "unity", as you're calling it.
What integrates those parts and fashions them into a smoothly running machine is just another part - whether it's all done centrally at the brain or decentrally at different points in the body isn't really relevant. It's still just "stuff".

Quite possibly. I'm partially trying to remember some things I read a while ago and arrange them in my own head again.

I wouldn't say that there is one part that intergrates, but that all the parts together are already intergrated. To use an example that's probably too removed to apply to people. Take something like a jellyfish, where none of the tentacles touch. As far as I know, there is no brain. It is unified across the system but not in any specific part.

Or isn't there specific types of simple organisms that have limited functions, but when they combine together they have more advanced functions than any of the composite parts had? I forget the name of these things now. But it would demonstrate that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. I'm sure there're plenty of other examples of this.

Oh yeah, one of the main points of the previous argument was that the part description of the body in physiology describes a dead body. The first person lived body (your experience of your body) is not experienced as an assemblage of parts and does not function like a machine. (The machine metaphor itself being misleading). It comes back to the earlier point of how you'd go about reducing your first person experience to third person descriptions.