philosophy of science

after doing some research on philosophy of science and reflecting on my own experiences with science, i decided that instead of choosing one established position over another or synthesizing a few different positions, it was best for me to start with some basic tenets and see what evolved from there. however, i must say that i agree with popper's fundamental notion of falsifiability constituting what is scientific (as opposed to what is not; just because something is not scientific does not necessarily mean that it is not meaningful, however), and that my tenets are based on promoting that principle in a variety of ways. in creating the tenets, an interesting trend emerged: what happened was that the tenets, while each being distinctly independent from the others, were still interrelated, and thus i had created a system wherein if any of the fundamental tenets were not upheld, then this affected another tenets and further distanced that approach, beyond just not fulfilling that one tenet, from what i considered in my system to be true science. so without further ado, i will state these 6 central tenets:

science to me is these things: 1) experimentally reproducible, 2) at bare minimum, strong correlation resulting in predictive power, but preferably perfect causality to establish universal truths/laws 3) ability to clearly and accurately explain the relationship between cause and effect, 4) aim at establishing universal truths (although knowing that one can never perfectly attain them, that is nevertheless the goal), 5) being fundamentally reducible to mathematical concepts so that it can be translated to another identical scenario with different metaphysics and still maintain its methodological integrity (although the results may be different), 6) building a knowledge base, albeit not necessarily linearly, that can be viewed as "progress".

#1 is necessary for epistemology to hold true (see my previous post entitled "what in the world does social science actually study" for an explanation and example). #2 is a matter of a degree of scientific authenticity. #3 is to demonstrate the functioning of a scientific theory. #4 is necessary to convert philosophy to science. #5 is necessary for science to function as a universal "language". #6 is a reflection of the relationship between philosophy and science, and it should be noted that while it is generally perceived that science gradually replaces philosophy, advances in science also add to or enhance philosophical problems. #2 and #4 are related in that without universal truths, philosophy is never completely replaced by science ("completely" being a relative term in that ultimately everything can be reduced to metaphysical from physical at some point, and universal laws are just laws that seem to be valid 100% of the time but in truth are just asymptotic of that value). cognitive psychology fits #2 even though it has less of a correlation than material science because it is a reasonable attempt to establish universal laws at a certain level, and is an outgrowth of and the predecessor to a more scientific neurological understanding of the same principles. thus, cognitive psychology is the first step towards achieving universal truths and turning philosophy into science, so technically in a strict sense i would classify it as an "almost science". no other non-natural (natural being chem/physics/bio) science can claim to be doing this. furthermore, physics has its own areas of incomplete explanations, and bio has areas, particularly in non-lab settings, where correlations mirror those of cognitive psych.

it should be noted that social science, in not being based off of universal truths (unlike, say, meteorology) or pursuing universal truths scientifically [#2 -- from now on, the appearance of numbers in brackets is used to denote that the mentioned example does not fit the requirement of the numbered tenet] is not scientific either in means (meteorology) or in ends (cog psych) (in a looser definition of science where science is either means or ends, then meteorology and cognitive psychology would be science, but in a stricter definition where science must be both means and ends, then i would classify meteorology and cognitive psychology as being "almost science"). by not replacing philosophy [#4], it expands our knowledge base but does not solidify it (social psych is an example of everything mentioned in the previous sentence; social psych will be used from now on as an example that is in some cases more scientific than the rest of conventional social science and in some cases is on the same level, so it provides a good measuring stick for comparison with social science). also, by not establishing true causality [#3], it cannot scientifically explain all aspects of its theory. furthermore, by not being experimentally reproducible [#1], it compromises its epistemology and it either changes the premises of experiments or makes them contextually driven to the point that it is impossible to draw stable philosophical implications from them, let alone scientific ones [#4, but worse than social psych]. by not being able to draw stable philosophical implications from the experiments, social science is not only against the idea of science following the notion of progress [#6 -- due to #4, social psych and social science both at the same level], but is against the idea of social science complementing philosophy [#4 -- social psych and social science both at the same level]. by relying on qualitative evidence [#5], social science is unable to test for causality [#2] for qualitative evidence that will be able to be quantitatively accounted for in the future, and is philosophically interpreting evidence for the rest of the data [#4] instead of framing it in a scientific theory. as such, social science does not contribute anything to science (not even in the soc psych sense because of lack of #1) or philosophy (technically, it contributes to philosophy in the way of a *particular* situation, but not a *universal* scenario), but instead uses methods and ideas from both for its own situational purposes.

of course, theoretical science like the origin of the universe is an exception. however, i view social scientists as investigators/detectives instead of scientists even though some (but not all) of what they do is based on scientific principles. so social scientists have a legitimate purpose -- after all, don't we regard investigators and detectives as truth-seekers in some sense, although a different sense from scientists? i would view things like nutrition, or even meteorology to not be science per se, but "almost science" according to the standards i have set. for psych, i would say that things that ultimately extend into the social sphere are not science per se, but that cognitive psych is "almost science" because it establishes strong enough correlations and can ultimately be reduced to neurological/biological processes (and it will be reduced in the coming years, in which case the majority of it will exist as true science instead of "almost science". on the other hand social psych will not be reduced to even the cognitive level, let alone the neurological one).