Gettiers in software engineering (2019)

edit: Then there's the whole "what is a cow" thing. Like if you you stuffed a cow carcass with a robot and no one could tell the difference, would that still be a cow? Or what if you came across a horrifying cow-horse hybrid, what would you call that? Or if the cow in question had a unique mutation possessed by no other cow - does it still fit the cow archetype? For example, what if the cow couldn't produce milk? Or was created in lab? Which features are required to inherit cow-ness? This is an ambiguity covered by language, too. For example, "cow" is a pejorative not necessarily referring to a bovine animal.

edit: And also the whole "is knowledge finite or infinite?". Is there ever a point at which we can explain everything, science ends and we can rest on our laurels? What then? Will we spend our time explaining hypotheticals that don't exist? Pure theoretical math? Or can that end too?

You've called J and T into question, so let's do B as well. Physicists know that QM and relativity can't be true, so it's fair to say that they don't believe in these theories, in a naive sense at least. In general anyone who takes Box' maxim that all models are wrong (but some are useful) to heart, doesn't fully believe in any straightforward sense. But clearly we'd say physicists do have knowledge.

A robot in a cow carcass is not a cow, it's a "robot in a cow carcass". Someone might believe it's a cow because they lack crucial information but that's on them, doesn't change the fact.

A cow-horse hybris is not a cow, it's a cow-horse hybrid.

A cow with a genetic mutation is a cow with a genetic mutation.

A cow created in a lab, perhaps even grown 100% by artificial means in-vitro is of course still a cow since it has the genetic makeup of a cow.

The word cow is the word cow, its meaning can differ based on context.

Things like this is why philosophers enjoy zero respect from me and why I'm an advocate for abolishing philosophy as a subject of study and also as a profession. Anyone can sit around thinking about things all day. If you spend money on studying it at a university you're getting scammed.

Also knowledge is finite based purely on the assumption that the universe is finite. An observer outside the universe would be able to see all information in the universe and they would conclude; you can't pack infinite amounts of knowledge into a finite volume.

While I tend to also wave away philosophers as it always boil down to unclear definitions, I don’t think your argument answers the question at all.

From “it has the genetic makeup of a cow”, you’re saying that what make a cow a cow is the genetic makeup. But then part of that ADN defines the cow? What can vary, by how much, before a cow stops being a cow?

The point is that you can give any definition of “cow”, and we can imagine a thing that fits this definition yet you’d probably not consider a cow. It’s a reflection on how language relates to reality. Whether it’s an interesting point or not is left to the reader (I personally don’t think it is)

I have this pet theory that Philosophy is kind of the Alternative Medicine of intellectual pursuits. In the same way that Alternative Medicine is doomed to consist of stuff that doesn't work (because anything proven to work becomes "Medicine"), Philosophy is made entirely of ideas that can't be validated through observation (because then they'd be Science), and also can't be rigorously formalized (because then they'd be Math).

So for any given claim in Philosophy, if you could find a way to either (a) compare it to the world or (b) state it in unambiguous symbolic terms, then we'd stop calling it Philosophy. As a result it seems like the discipline is doomed to consist of unresolvable debates where none of the participants even define their terms quite the same way.

Crazy idea, or no?

From Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy:

"Some ungentle reader will check us here by informing us that philosophy is as useless as chess, as obscure as ignorance, and as stagnant as content. “There is nothing so absurd,” said Cicero, “but that it may be found in the books of the philosophers.” Doubtless some philosophers have had all sorts of wisdom except common sense; and many a philosophic flight has been due to the elevating power of thin air. Let us resolve, on this voyage of ours, to put in only at the ports of light, to keep out of the muddy streams of metaphysics and the “many-sounding seas” of theological dispute. But is philosophy stagnant? Science seems always to advance, while philosophy seems always to lose ground. Yet this is only because philosophy accepts the hard and hazardous task of dealing with problems not yet open to the methods of science—problems like good and evil, beauty and ugliness, order and freedom, life and death; so soon as a field of inquiry yields knowledge susceptible of exact formulation it is called science. Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement. Philosophy is a hypothetical interpretation of the unknown (as in metaphysics), or of the inexactly known (as in ethics or political philosophy); it is the front trench in the siege of truth. Science is the captured territory; and behind it are those secure regions in which knowledge and art build our imperfect and marvelous world. Philosophy seems to stand still, perplexed; but only because she leaves the fruits of victory to her daughters the sciences, and herself passes on, divinely discontent, to the uncertain and unexplored."

My pet peeve is that a lot of people who have never studied an hour of philosophy think that this is what people who study philosophy do.

"Anyone can sit around thinking about things all day" is like saying "anybody can sit and press keys on a keyboard all day".

I took a semester of philosophy at uni, perhaps the best invested time during my years there and by far more demanding than most of what followed. 100 % recommend it for anyone who wants to hone their critical reasoning skills and intellectual development in general.

> for any given claim in Philosophy, if you could find a way to either (a) compare it to the world or (b) state it in unambiguous symbolic terms…

Not a crazy idea – that is called logic. Which is a field of philosophy. Philosophy and math intersect more than many people think.

Science and Math started as part of Philosophy. They just split out and became large specializations of their own. Schools for Math and Science still graduate Doctors of Philosophy for a reason.

Even the Juris Doctor is a branch of philosophy. After all, what is justice?

Thanks, that's a hell of a quote! Though one suspects that Alternative Medicine would describe itself in similar terms, given the chance..

Sure, I hoped it might go without saying that I meant Philosophy as the term is used now - post-axiomatic systems and whatnot, not as the term was used when it encompassed the two things I'm comparing it to.

Oh, this is a fun Gettier, with some language ambiguities, and some ship of Theseus sprinkled in! Let's say some smart-aleck travels back in time to when the English language was being developed and replaces all cows with robot cows such that current cows remain biological. So technically the word "cow" refers only to robot cows. What then?

Sure we'd say physicists have knowledge of quantum mechanics and general relativity. And we can also say physicists have knowledge of how to make predictions using quantum mechanics and general relativity. In this sense, general relativity is no more wrong than a hammer is wrong. Relativity is simply a tool that a person can use to make predictions. Strictly speaking then relativity is not itself right or wrong, rather it's the person who uses relativity to predict things who can be right or wrong. If a person uses general relativity incorrectly, which can be done by applying it to an area where it's not able to make predictions such as in the quantum domain, then it's the person who uses relativity as a tool who is wrong, not relativity itself.

As a matter of linguistic convenience, it's easier to say that relativity (or theory X) is right means that people who use relativity to make predictions make correct predictions as opposed to relativity itself being correct or incorrect.

My point is that QM and GR make very different claims about what exists. Perhaps it's possible to unify the descriptions. But more likely there will be a new theory with a completely different description of reality.

On small scales, GR and Newtonian mechanics make almost the same predictions, but make completely different claims about what exists in reality. In my view, if the theories made equally good predictions, but still differed so fundamentally about what exists, then that matters, and implies that at least one of the theories is wrong. This is more a realist, than an instrumentalist position, which perhaps is what you subscribe to, but tbh instrumentalism always seemed indefensible to me.

If you are aware that "Maxatar's conjecture is that 1 + 1 = 5", then it's correct to say that you have knowledge about "Maxatar's conjecture", regardless of whether the conjecture is actually true or false. Your knowledge is that there is some conjecture that 1 + 1 = 5, not that it's actually true.

In that sense, it's also correct to say that physicists have knowledge of relativity and quantum mechanics. I don't think any physicist including Einstein himself thinks that either theory is actually true, but they do have knowledge of both theories in much the same way that one has knowledge of "Maxatar's conjecture" and in much the way that you have knowledge of what the flat Earth proposition is, despite them being false.'

It seems fairly radical to believe that instrumentalism is indefensible, or at least it's not clear what's indefensible about it. Were NASA physicists indefensible to use Newtonian mechanics to send a person to the moon because Newtonian mechanics are "wrong"?

What exactly is indefensible? The observation that working physicists don't really care about whether a physical theory is "real" versus trying to come up with formal descriptions of observed phenomenon to make future predictions, regardless of whether those formal descriptions are "real"?

If someone choses to engage in science by coming up with descriptions and models that are effective at communicating with other people observations, experimental results and whose results go on to allow for engineering advances in technology, are they doing something indefensible?

Yes, it's correct to say that I have knowledge of your conjecture, and in the same way that physicists have knowledge of QM and GR regardless of their truth status, but beyond just having knowledge of the theory, they also have knowledge of the reality that the theory describes.

>Were NASA physicists indefensible to use Newtonian mechanics to send a person to the moon because Newtonian mechanics are "wrong"?

No, it was defensible, and that's exactly my point. Even though they didn't believe in the content of the theory (and ignoring the fact that they know a better theory), they do have knowledge of reality through it.

I don't think instrumentalism makes sense for reasons unrelated to this discussion. A scientist can hold instrumentalist views without being a worse scientist for it, it's a philosophical position. Basically, I think it's bad metaphysics. If you refuse to believe that the objects described by a well-established theory really exist, but you don't have any concrete experiment that falsifies it or a better theory, then to me it seems like sheer refusal to accept reality. I think people find instrumentalism appealing because they expect that any theory could be replaced by a new one that could turn out very different, and then they see it as foolish to have believed the old one, so they straight up refuse to believe or care what any theory says about reality. But you always believe something, whether you are aware of it or not, and the question is whether your beliefs are supported by evidence and logic.