Which approach do you prefer: philosophy or science?

[Agent Washington]

I don't know.

The eraliest philosophers were also scientists and vice versa, so I'm not sure where they got lost. Perhaps it has to do with the fact science became more and more complex, with more and more fields of study.

Also, I'm not sure I agree that all science has a poltical or ideological motivation like the example of industrialists denying climate change - I imagine most of science is just about understanding the physical world without much bias there. If you want to know what the sun is composed of or what the chemical structure of sodium chloride is, this isn't a matter of preference but of understanding objective laws. Yes, research is funded by vested interests, which can be said to be biased in alot of cases (though not necessarily towards the research they fund), but most scientists have enough ethical sense not to lie about what their research concludes.

I think philosophy is much easier to be biased about since it doesn't deal with objective realities directly. In the absence verifiablity, you risk falling into the trap of your own imagination. Nothing wrong with that, in itself, so long as you don't lose focus on reality either. The problem is that philosophers are alot more likely to be biased - though not all or even most of them have ill intents, it's just that they work further from the hard data. Same can be said of other humanities such as psychology, economics, political science and so forth, they are the soft sciences, that is, not subject to experimentation the way biology, chemsitry, physics etc are.

I didn't expect this thread to take this turn btw - I am making this up as I go along, lol.

tl:dr; "hard" sciences are more likely to be free from emotional bias due to working with strict experimental data than the "soft" sciences such as philosophy. It isn't impossible however, for someone who wants to deny or believe in some natural phenomenon to nitpick and choose scientific evidence that backs up what they say (at least where science isn't completely settled).

I didn't say all science is biased. I'm saying the people interpreting it, creating it, requiring the resources to create it, are biased. Even if the scientists involved aren't, nobody's going to get funding for something that's not deemed valuable by people with money. That's also bias at work, just on a practical level.

There are branches of philosophy that deal with existing reality (eg: phenomenology). Consequentialist ethics also deal with reality. The philosophy of science is ac tu ally also quite interesting, since empiricism as a method as we know it today didn't exactly exist until the 20th century.

The branching out of sciences began with the Enlightenment and the increased demand for practical sciences such as the industrial revolution. It was a paradigm shift-- taking the long view I simply view the division of 'science' and 'philosophy' (or other 'soft sciences') as a construct. It's simply the way it is commonly seen now, as absolute and categorical. This division is one that I reject on an epistemological level.

"Soft sciences" are not less likely to be free from emotional bias, they simply are structured to take emotions into account.

 

[Gunboat Diplomat]

They are just two different things, because the object of their study is different.

This is the classical distinction, but it doesn't seem to be true any more. People I mentioned before are obviously studying morality/ethics. You can call the questions philosophical, but they are applying scientific methods to them.

I think philosophy is much easier to be biased about since it doesn't deal with objective realities directly. In the absence verifiablity, you risk falling into the trap of your own imagination. Nothing wrong with that, in itself, so long as you don't lose focus on reality either. The problem is that philosophers are alot more likely to be biased - though not all or even most of them have ill intents, it's just that they work further from the hard data.

We mostly agree on this. The main tools of classical philosophy would be logic and reasoning. Logic is only as good as premises, and when it comes to reasoning, I have come across this paper:

http://evolution.binghamton.edu/evo...1/06/Mercier-Sperber-Why-do-humans-reason.pdf

It argues (and provides quite a bit of supporting evidence), that the main function of reasoning is not to arrive at the truth, but to convince to one's own position. The confirmation bias is a feature, not a defect. Now, I think that many modern philosophers are aware of this limitation, and have decided to incorporate scientific methods into their study - to minimise the bias and provide a link to reality. In the end, I agree with agentwashington that the distinction between science and philosophy is artificial, and this is what we are observing in these cases.