In the buzz factory around Cosmos II. Here (transcript):
Dr. Craig: It is a very naive misconception of what philosophers do. The example he gives in this interview of a philosophical question is “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” He says this is pointless. It just delays our progress in science. Well, Kevin, this is not at all the kind of question that philosophers engage in, especially philosophers of science. This example is from Buddhist thought to indicate the absurdity of a rational grasp of the world and promotes a mystical union with reality to transcend reason. This isn’t something that philosophers work on. Philosophers of science work on the concepts that science works with and attempts to do conceptual analysis to elucidate concepts. There it is very important that we ask about meanings of words and concepts, otherwise we don’t really know what we are talking about.
DeGrasse Tyson says this philosophical question asking “devolves into a discussion of the definition of words. And I’d rather keep the conversation about ideas.” That is a very naive bifurcation. Our ideas are concepts and these are expressed linguistically. So we need to define words in order to have a clear articulation of our ideas and our concepts. A great example of this would be the use of the word “nothing” by certain contemporary physicists when they talk about the origin of the universe from nothing.[3] It turns out that the word is used in a very ambiguous and equivocal way. There it is absolutely critical, if we are to understand the concept or the idea, that we understand how the words are being used. You can’t divorce ideas or concepts from the words that we use to express them.
I noticed that deGrasse Tyson isn’t against philosophy as such. He seems to have his sights more on those who do philosophy of science. He actually says here:
It’s not that there can’t be other philosophical subjects, there is religious philosophy, and ethical philosophy, and political philosophy, plenty of stuff for the philosophers to do, but the frontier of the physical sciences does not appear to be among them.
That is interesting. He apparently would not inauthenticate my work. I do philosophy of religion and metaphysics. He thinks that there is ample work for philosophers to do there. But for some reason he thinks that philosophy of science is an illicit enterprise. Of course, this raises Pigliucci’s ire because he is a philosopher of science and thinks there is plenty for philosophy to do.
Actually, Tyson would inauthenticate Craig’s work if he knew enough about his subject to know that he should.
Science and philosophy are a far better fit than science and show business.
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