@Jennifer1984 Said
Loving "Hatchet Job"....
Seriously though.... I appreciate that I must appear hostile to your position on philosophy. Please know... I do respect your views and I read all your posts with interest.
I think I'll just make my own position clear one more time, that I have no antipathy towards philosophy, but adhere to the tenet that, at a certain point, the path of enlightenment splits into two and after that, the two only come together again, and only for as long as science needs to refresh itself with new wonder before diverging again.
Can we allow philosophy to impede science...? Well, actually, we do. We have ethics. Pure science, unrestrained by ethics could lead to the darkest elements of human endeavour becoming unrestrained. Ethics keeps us on the straight and narrow of beneficence to humankind.
Philosophy goes off on its own wanderings and good luck to those who wander. It seems that Mr Goff does exactly that - and as I freely admitted, I have not read his book - I'm content to leave him to his meanderings. If he is on the different part of the path to me, then fine.
I'm not sure you actually understand my "position" at all. I DO see "enlightenment" (call it what you will) as the "bottom line" but that does not preclude any scientific pursuit at all.
You appear to see some sort of division. The armchair OR the lab. The "doers" v the "thinkers".
There is at the moment turmoil in the scientific world as far as the understanding of "consciousness". There are untold theories jostling for position. How will it be solved?
Where did the theory of evolution originate? During the voyage of the Beagle or in the lab, with a flow chart, or in the imagination of Charles Darwin? One does not exclude the other.
And as Philip Goff writes:- "In the years when he was developing special relativity, Einstein wasn’t busy conducting experiments; rather he was staring into space wondering what would happen if you rode on a beam of light."
Reading Kuhn on scientific revolutions, of paradigm shifts, is enlightening (!)
Where precision comes in is when theories are tested. What experiment can be made to test how accurate they are? Then, certain explanations/theories gain credibility while others fall to the wayside.
Really, I find your own position, of the divisions I have spoken of, as unreal and unrelated to the real world.