The Philosophy of Science - Hilary Putnam & Bryan Magee (1977)

In this program, Hilary Putnam discusses the philosophy of science with Bryan Magee. This is from a 1977 series on Modern Philosophy called Men of Ideas. Hilary Putnam was an influential American philosopher, as well as a mathematician and computer scientist. As a major figure in analytic philosophy, he made important contributions to philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science. He also made contributions to mathematics and computer science.
You can find one of Putnam's best works, "Reason, Truth & History", here: archive.org/details/HilaryPutnam
#Philosophy #Epistemology #BryanMagee

[@EnigmaCodeCrusher]

31:35 Interesting conversation about how Philosophy interacts with Computer Science, especially the linguistic aspects of philosophy. This is especially important in our new age of A.I.

[@Dialogos1989]

This interview took place in the late 70s. Putnam is a little over 50 here, and lived for another 40 years! Just over half his life. That is crazy

[@addammadd]

I’m no Hilary Putnam or Bertrand Russel but the math in this comment doesn’t check out.

[@Dialogos1989]

@@addammadd Putnam lived to be age 89 (let’s say 90). 90/2=45. 50= just over 45. The point is that Putnam was only getting started here in this interview, as he had a significant amount of time left in his life. Make sense now?

[@irreversiblyhuman]

What a lovely discussion.

[@gplunk]

Incredibly enjoyable discussions. Many thanks for your esteemed efforts....

[@Bill-ou7zp]

Putnam seems so genuinely kind

[@conw_y]

He has “great philosopher” hair.

[@davidjones500]

Schopenhair

[@skepticalgenious]

​@@davidjones500I see what you did there. Very punny

[@MS-fg8qo]

"That's exactly right."

[@FanaPLor]

😂😂

[@firstal3799]

Lol

[@joelthomastr]

I'm so engrossed that it gives me an odd kind of jolt to realize I'm watching a conversation between men long dead that took place before I was born

[@firstal3799]

It's common

[@henriquecardoso45]

i can't stop watching these, everytime you upload one I watch it

[@firstal3799]

They keep repeating

[@BrightAgeBeyond]

Great discussion, thanks for the upload.

[@qeuqheeg222]

So glad to find this chanel...so good

[@67mali]

I felt like Putnam is having an issue to express things as clearly as needed to be said and without Magee's help, it would have been imposible. Magee is so good with explaining even the hardest things in a very easy to undestand way. I am amazed.

[@paulheinrichdietrich9518]

Do you happen to have an interview by Putnam where he is sitting in front of a shelve full of books and were he discusses Descartes's concept of mind, Kant's "new" theory of truth, semantic externalism, twin Earth, Rorty and so on? That interview was pure gold, but I am afraid it has been taken down.

[@Anicius_]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/oXmaaWilltyqoc0 kzbin.info/www/bejne/pGrRgoRnqNmHb80

[@exalted_kitharode]

Yes, I need it as well!

[@paulheinrichdietrich9518]

​@@exalted_kitharodeHe has reuploaded it a couple of months back.

[@3ru97c43]

Putnam is an awesome speaker

[@eesidvnnellore3643]

Don't you see wonder and bliss in Sir Hillary delighted.Its a convergence in divergence rather than divergence in convergence of Truth.Classic case we define things through concepts,comprehend things through experience.

[@Bill-ou7zp]

22:58 “Induction logic cannot be programmed onto a computer in the same way deductive logic can” Wow, 40 years later and this has proven untrue with ML algorithms

[@grandfathernebulous]

Philosophy can penetrate everything, but certain Putnam's make that difficult. Yet I think there is truth to be found there.

[@user-vg7zv5us5r]

10:28 Equivalent descriptions - "Равносильное описание".

[@bma1955alimarber]

We may content ourselves of the image of the world that science allows us to have, rather than the world in itself ...and both way should be considered as true and therefore represent the thruth

[@noobieexplorer4697]

We may content ourselves of the image of the world that religion allows us to have, rather than the world in itself ...and both way should be considered as true and therefore represent the truth

[@post-structuralist]

Hard disagree, to say it's truth is dogmatic, and once you adopt a particular view of the world, you get trapped by it.

[@1ntrcnnctr608]

INTERACTIVE GROWTH

[@user-vg7zv5us5r]

27:05 The scientific method was already formulated by Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes. Contemporaries simply striving to invent the wheel.

[@deponensvogel7261]

Philosophy must be made, not learned!

[@user-vg7zv5us5r]

15:27 Truth exists independently from us, this is what he'd missed from Kant's writings. In the best case it is merely our value judgements about the contribution of group of facts about world, impressions do change, not the truth by itself.

[@wilfergamboa4990]

Kant los conceptos que imponemos al mundo pueden no ser los correctos hay una interracion entre lo que aportamos y lo que descubrimos

[@maxheadrom3088]

Some people's haircuts improve when they go bald. There was a time when the elites had a genuine interest in guiding the people ... then the elites got a bad name and the good people of these elites gave up or died leaving us with just the crooks. Nowadays the term "elites" is used without any qualification to mean a "an underground secret group whose goal is to manipulate the people for their own personal material gain". I find that weird since the Argentinian footballer Messi - a member of Football's elite players - manipulates no one - well, maybe the defense and goal keeper of the teams he play against. This show was broadcast by the BBC during the 1970s. The people who decide broadcast it were part of the British elite and they decided to guide the public by offering them a type of information *they* considered should be offered to the public. Now, after Thatcher and Blair - who made the people free from elites - the BBC offers, very often, what the independent self governing individual wants. The British are luck, btw - the BBC is awesome - but the Americans ... they dug their own rabbit hole and the TV programs gives them power machinery to do the digging. The result: Richard Dawkins became a genius, Steve Pinker the great explainer of how the modern world and how it's a kingdom of happiness, Sam Harris is respected as a political scientist and historian (things he's even worse at than he is in Neuroscience) and Jordan Peterson is now considered able to debate Zizek as if both were in equal footing (in the subject of the debate)!!!! Hell, even Rick Gervais is now considered a philosopher of religion!!!! I mean, he is funny ... but he's no Monty Python - who were so funny they could make jokes with philosophy.

[@paulheinrichdietrich9518]

True but remember that Magee's second programme on the BBC was broadcasted during the Thatcher era. I don't think politicians have as much influence on the content of TV broadcast or newspaper articles as is commonly thought.

[@owood2288]

Agree with pretty much all of that. Pinker & Harris, from what I can tell, have a purely rhetorical conception of rationality. I'm not convinced either could properly distinguish it from empiricism, or have any notion of it being related to necessary truth. This would quickly become evident with a moderator like Magee in control. Or just anyone with a basic education in philosophy. They're very selective in who gets to field the questions. See also: Peterson. Someone who I've only ever seen interviewed by journalists, or comics like Joe Rogan/Stephen Fry.

[@forthrightgambitia1032]

Magee himself was an interesting character. He came from a rather humble background but his intelligence got him scholarships to a good school and then to Oxford. He became part of the elite but knew the lives of the common people. Perhaps that's why he never patronised them in programmes like this.

[@maxheadrom3088]

@@forthrightgambitia1032 Very interesting! Thanks!!!!

[@davidmwakima3027]

Scientists are willing to test. Not infallible 19:10. For the future 42:15

[@addammadd]

TIL Hilary Putnam pronounced the word "method" incredibly strangely.

[@jamestiburon443]

Human truth will always be AGNOSTICISM.

[@CarlosElio82]

If the concept of truth varies according to the observer, then one may say that there is an uncertainty principle surrounding truth. If such is a property of any mode of reasoning, then what to do with the belief in a perfect being with no uncertainty surrounding it? Seems that the act of believing grandfathers to the believers zero uncertainty around their beliefs. Herald of dangerous stuff.

[@Liberated_from_Religion]

Newton was influenced by bacon.

[@tomasomaonaigh7659]

Eggs and sausage too.

[@RuthvenMurgatroyd]

Nah, I'm pretty sure he was more of an apple sort of guy.

[@user-vg7zv5us5r]

12:56 Wholesale scepticism - Ширпотребный скептицизм, попсовый, популярный скептицизм, скептицизм из массмаркета, безвкусный скептицизм, народный скептицизм, расхожий скептицизм.

[@firstal3799]

???

[@klammer75]

Math is thought….I’m a tegmarkian in my view of reality…all is based in the formalism behind the logic of the mafs🤔🤓😁

[@davidjones500]

Would you then consider yourself an Idealist?

[@forthrightgambitia1032]

But then thought has a materialism of its own. Our structures of thought are confined by the laws of physics and so reflect the kind of logic and mathematical relationships that exist in reality. I would say I am a mathematical idealist, but an idealism grounded as the consequent of how reality material shapes our thoughts.

[@jeffryphillipsburns]

The overall thrust of this is at odds from what I hear from actual scientists. Magee and Putnam would seemingly have you believe that modern scientists are interest only in attempting to trade-in last year’s theory for a shiny new model just off the Detroit assembly line. Sure, SOME scientists concern themselves with theory nearly exclusively, and sometimes highly speculative theory at that (”many worlds” and string theory for example), but MOST scientists, from what I can tell, are MOSTLY engaged in discovering, confirming, and accumulating FACT-fact to the closest approximation possible.

[@laserprawn]

This must be true since this interview is from 1978 and scientific progress has certainly not accelerated.

[@9Ballr]

They're not talking about what scientists "are interested in," i.e., what the daily business of science is about, they're talking about the bigger picture of the arc of scientific progress. Of course the typical scientific "laborer" is going to be working each day on the discovery, accumulation, and interpretation (by and large in the service of confirmation, presumably) of data and facts, but the bigger picture is about what happens over time to our currently accepted best theories, which are what inform and drive the daily work of the scientist. The point that Putnam and Magee are emphasizing is that the bigger picture suggests a process of revolution where ultimately theories like general relativity and quantum mechanics will be replaced by a very different paradigm, and out of necessity due to the inadequacies of the current theories (like the fact that relativity and quantum mechanics are actually incompatible). This is about the philosophy of science, not the daily work of scientists, who are not typically concerned with questions in the philosophy of science.

[@joelthomastr]

All models are wrong, but some are useful. No need to marry one

[@mapsdot9223]

If what you said were true there wouldn't be a replication crisis

[@mrmetaphysics9457]

I have figured out long ago that science is nothing more than mathematics!

[@firstal3799]

Wow