Lausten,
That first video was interesting, but there were definitely some problems with it.
First he claimed that science was a part of philosophy, named “physics” in his chart, and then later claimed that science was philosophy, that philosophy became science. So essentially he said that science is a part of itself. That’s an obvious problem as a thing cannot be an integral part of itself.
He then gives old examples of where science was referred to as philosophy. Okay, so because, in the early days of science, it was known as philosophy that means that they’re the same thing? Language evolves. To me that suggests that science and philosophy became so different that eventually we had to create a word to distinguish the two.
Throughout the talk he both says that science and philosophy are the same thing, but also points out obvious differences between the two, most notably when he says, “Science is philosophy with the best data”.
And he continually says that atheism is “a highly certain factual conclusion, but not a scientific conclusion.” Even as an atheist I am not willing to concede that there is any certainty to the idea. Certainly no “facts”. I am an atheist because of the lack of facts to support supernatural claims. A lack of facts does not constitute facts. I am very certain that there are no gods or magic of any sort, but I have absolutely zero facts to back that, it is based on the claims of the existence of gods and magic also have absolutely zero facts to back their claims.
In the end I think he ended up actually confirming some of my (revised) views and beliefs about what philosophy is and is not. I do not agree whatsoever that science is both a part of and analogous to science. I don’t think philosophy can “prove” anything. In fact, most of the things he said philosophy could help us answer were things like our own world view, things which weren’t at all scientific in nature, further demonstrating that science is most definitely not philosophy by another name, nor a specific branch of philosophy.
However, philosophy is a part of science, as I have long known. The formation of a hypothesis is a philosophical act, taking what you know (the facts) and trying to understand what it means. But then the testing of your conclusions is completely non-philosophical.
I have no doubt that philosophy has evolved into modern science, but it has also remained its own, separate thing. Because philosophy still exists as a separate thing, a separate field of study, they are simply not the same thing.
I was happy to see, however, that Hawking made a philosophical argument against philosophy. I feel that I’m in good company now. But I do not believe, as I originally did, that philosophy is completely useless. But I still do believe philosophy is, used alone, completely useless for answering any question of any kind with any amount of certainty. It is more for answering questions about one’s own beliefs. I’ll check out the second link when I have a little more time. But personally, I think the way you use and count on philosophy is a lot more realistic than this speaker did in the video.
EDIT: I was typing this as I was finishing up the video and hadn’t gotten to this part yet. Toward the end of the video he even claimed that mathematics departments were really philosophy departments (presumably in colleges). I find that claim to be particularly outlandish. Science AND mathematics are really just philosophy? AND science is an integral part of philosophy and you can’t do ANY philosophy without using science (and the 5 other parts)? This strikes me as a kind of “fanboy” stance on philosophy. He loves philosophy. Great. But that doesn’t make philosophy a part of ALL quest for knowledge. I would say that philosophy is more a quest for belief, generally speaking, and science a quest for knowledge.