Philosophy Untouched by Science? Zeno’s Runner, Sextus’ Epochē, and More

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

This is a reply to a paper in Axiomathes by Eric Dietrich who claims that some science based refutations pf philosophical theses are question-begging. The authors reply at length, and  to my mind persuasively, to his defense of global skepticism based on Brain in the Vat or Evil Demon scenarios. The authors’ discussion of Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox is much shorter, but adequate.

 

The paper is well-written and the case against Dietrich persuasive. If it were a reply in Axiomathes I would recommend only minor alterations.  As it is, a reply in another journal might be expected to be more ambitious .  Therefore,, I would expect the authors to include in their paper a  discussion of  Dietrich’s criticism of the  AI treatment of the Frame problem, at whatever length required to refute him.

In addition, the authors might -or might not - like to consider the idea that Parmenides and Zeno would have taken physics’ unification of space and time into a 4D Minkowski space as vindication. The point here is that classical Greek philosophers took motion to be change of position, and, arguably, took genuine change to be something’s having a property and (later) not having it.  This idea leads to David Lewis’ Problem of Temporary Intrinsics, but assuming that problem can be dealt with, let us call such a change an event s.str.  Then we have a causal narrative: earlier events s.str.  cause and hence explain later events s.str.   Now, there is a familiar objection to an infinite causal regress of explanations as no better than a circular explanation. So, Zeno’s conclusion might be that motion is absurd because it implies such an infinite regress.  One solution is to go 4D, denying there are any events in the strict sense, and rejecting the causal narrative. Zeno could claim that solution as a victory.

Minor points.

1.    The introduction seems to exhibit a rather strong version of naturalism, playing the game of Science Says (modelled on Simon Says): Believe it if and only if science tells us that it is that way.  The authors’ defense of science in disputes between science and a priori philosophy leaves intact  two areas of independent philosophical inquiry: (a) discussing matters on which science is neutral, e.g. the existence of God, and (b)interpreting science, e.g. .the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum theory.

2.    The authors say, “Even more basically, it is not clear that time and space can be chopped up in arbitrarily short intervals: what happens below Planck length and time is anybody's guess.” Indeed, but Zeno had a different argument for the case of discrete space and time. The Dichotomy was based on the continuous case.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment and the revised manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper Zeno’s runner and Sextus’ epoché: Philosphy  untouched by science? enter the debate on the relationship between science and philosophy, discussing two recent papers on the subject, and covering classical topics in philosophy, including Zeno's runner and the epoché of Sextus Empiricus. The papers are by Dietrich and Turri.

There is no doubt that the topics chosen by the authors are very interesting, but in my opinion there are serious problems in their presentation.

 

1.It is not explained clearly why the two papers were chosen, which in my opinion only have the merit of being recent, but not such as to exemplify the discussion on the relation between philosophy and science.

2. The paper gives large excerpts from the two articles under discussion; perhaps it would be sufficient to refer to the sources, since they are easily found online.

3. The language used by the authors is somewhat convoluted and makes for difficult reading, at least for me. I am not talking so much about grammar, which I cannot comment on as a non-native speaker, but about sentence construction. For example, the authors do a poor job of reporting the position of skepticism (p. 4), which is very clearly stated in Torri's work.

 

In my opinion, the weakness of the authors' work is largely due to the weakness of the articles chosen for commentary.

The authors, do not make clear what the difference between science and philosophy is. For example, Zeno's argument is itself a logical and mathematical problem; here the comparison is not between a scientist and a philosopher, but rather between a philosopher who knows mathematics (like Bertrand Russell, for example) and a philosopher who does not. It is clear that the former has the advantage.

The situation is more complex in the case of the epoché of Sextus Empiricus, where one can speak of the relation between empirical science and philosophy understood as metaphysics. It seems to me that in such a case  the authors' refutation of Dietrich's positions is unconvincing. Moreover I do not understand their criticism of Turri's work as far as the scientific aspects are concerned; if this is the case, why was Turri's work chosen; just because it was cited by Dietrich?

The arguments discussed in section 4  should be summarized and added to the conclusions.

 

In conclusion, the authors should do a better job of justifying the choice that led them to Dietrich's and Turri's papers. Try to write the article in a more understandable way, putting the two philosophical problems in a broader philosophical and historical context.

Author Response

Please see the attachment and the revised manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author has taken my recommendations into consideration. 

Please check for typos.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The overall quality is good but the text should be carefully checked.

Author Response

> Dear reviewer, thank you again for your time and effort spent on this manuscript. Here is my reply to the second round of review: 

The author has taken my recommendations into consideration. 
Please check for typos.
Minor editing of English language required 

> Reply: Done (I hope successfully). 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

My appreciation of the paper as a whole has not changed. And I cannot see how it could, given the very short tome with which you revised the paper.

Nevertheless, the paper has improved a bit. There remains my criticism of the choice of Dietrich's paper, especially the part on Zeno. I think there is general agreement among philosophers that this has been clarified, if not solved. I say philosophers, not mathematicians, because I see no difference between them, if not a purely academic distinction.

I suggest that you eliminate some of the footnotes (e.g., the first and second), since it is useless to add comments to a problem that has been discussed for centuries.

Author Response

> Dear reviewer, thank you again for your time and effort spent on this manuscript. Here is my reply to the second round of review: 

My appreciation of the paper as a whole has not changed. And I cannot see how it could, given the very short tome with which you revised the paper.

> Reply: The journal had asked for the revision being ready within 10 days. 

Nevertheless, the paper has improved a bit. There remains my criticism of the choice of Dietrich's paper, especially the part on Zeno. I think there is general agreement among philosophers that this has been clarified, if not solved. I say philosophers, not mathematicians, because I see no difference between them, if not a purely academic distinction.

> As I noted in my previous reply, I don't think Dietrich errs on the mathematical side. Where he goes wrong is in believing his (interpretation of Zeno's) argument against the actual physical running is untouched by the mathematical argument. And that issue seems to be part of the current discussion (see, e.g., "a purely mathematical solution is not sufficient: the paradoxes not only question abstract mathematics, but also the nature of physical reality" etc., in: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/#ZenoInflPhil)

I suggest that you eliminate some of the footnotes (e.g., the first and second), since it is useless to add comments to a problem that has been discussed for centuries.

> Reply: Thank you for the suggestion. I removed footnotes 2, 4, 1o, and 22.  I kept footnote 1 since I often see Quine being attacked for "scientism" without attention being paid to how he understood science.