“Clarify” is probably one of the most unclear concepts that philosophers use to describe what they do. It can mean anything and lacks broadly accepted criteria for what it means to successfully clarify something. I recommend bingweb.binghamton.edu/~dietrich/Pa... - quite relevant for your claims.
Re your link, you will probably not be surprised to hear that other philosophers take different views on the question of whether there is progress in philosophy, and if so what form it takes (spoiler alert: not the form that progress in science takes). But it seems quite easy to say that...
Exactly, they take different views, with no resolution. Even the most unsavoury ideas and history came with support by some philosopher or another. Hardly a recommendation for being the right ones to clarify issues, let alone help resolve them…
You very understandably come at this from the perspective of 'if philosophy can't find the one right answer, what use is philosophy'? But we're looking at different scales here. It's not a question of finding the 'right' answer to a big philosophical question; there are smaller tasks to which ...
No, that is not my perspective. I am just pointing out that that perspective is implicit in some of the claims thrown around here, and when I do, there is always a retreat to “clarification” and pluri-perspectivism - which offer very little useful guidance to working scientists.
Ultimately, the role of Philosophy of Science amounts to what Locke stated "it is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge." That said, there's an awful lot of rubbish to clear.
Whatever rubbish there is to clear in science, I am still waiting for a convincing example of any such rubbish having been cleared by philosophy of science in the past. Scientists always had to clean their own rubbish, and I suspect that they will do it in the future, too. Nobody else can help much.
Okay then. Look up “species concepts“ and tell me how that hot mess has been cleaned up. Be thorough.
Only philosophers of biology and some zoologists fuss about the concept of species. Most biologists who have any use for the concept know that there is no definition that can be made to work for all branches of the tree of life. And no working biologists have need for a unifying definition.
How many conceptual problems in biology boil down to "how long is a piece of string"?
Yep. Insisting on a universal definition of some biological concepts amounts to "doing things with words" in a way that would inevitably make the resulting definition less useful. We use operative definitions that might differ according to context; there is no problem as long as we are aware of it.
Surely it's botanist more than zoologists who might get their minds occupied by the species problem? And sure, biologists working on specific fields/issues (yes, a major part of biologists/their work) might not find the problem relevant. But it becomes relevant once you start unifying the projects.
Most botanists are pragmatic and know they do not have anything as sharp as mammalian or avian reproductive barrier to make it the main criterion. And those who work on asexually reproducing species know that, in their case, the species is no more special than the taxonomic ranks above and below it.
A colleague of mine is working on defining "control" in AVH. She argues that different psychologists use the concept of "control" in very different ways, which explains their seemingly contradictory findings. Maybe not phil of sci, but it seems to be a good example of philosophy guiding science.
Yes, the same word in different context can have different operating definition (like "species" - different in vertebrate zoology and in microbiology; or "gene" - different in population genetics and genomics). We know that without philosophy guiding us.
And our domain knowledge makes us see why insisting on unifying definition is a waste of time - the definition would have to be so abstract as to be useless for practical work. (I cannot say anythiing about how psychologists use "control", but I doubt that they are unaware of how they do it.)
/ in which they can be well-trained that provide value. Eg finding holes in the logic of an argument (spotting hidden premises, equivocations etc). Or exploring the different possible meanings of a scientific concept (I think collaborative work in the foundations of physics is an example of this).
Again, not arguing that scientists *can't* do this. But when you are specifically trained in doing something, and you do it day in and day out, you do develop some expertise.
OK, give me examples where a philosopher discovered a hole in a scientific argument that scientists missed. You can be trained in logic to perfection, yet without the domain knowledge you are unlikely to be able to spot any errors. Errors reducible to faulty syllogisms are rare in science.
Definitely, domain-specific knowledge is crucial; that's why I think it's in collaboration *with* scientists that philosophers can be most of use. Re your question, I think you overestimate humans in general! All of us are susceptible to believing/constructing flawed arguments ...
... (which are not the same as 'faulty syllogisms'), or purporting to 'prove' something that we actually haven't. Again, detecting this is not a skill unique to philosophers; I think here of how poor the connection between scientific hypothesis and statistical evidence can be in ...
... some published medical research. And obviously there are a lot of academic biostatisticians who do a lot of important work on that. From my inexpert perspective of someone who's studied a bunch of phil., and is currently studying mathematical statistics, I think phil. could add something here.
Dennett was a philosopher who studied and worked alongside scientists. He avoided ivory tower academic philosophical jargon - to his credit. He had (enough) domain knowledge to make an impact on science. Part of the problem I see with the present conversation is that you guys are talking about...
philosophers and scientists as if they were people in two different departments wearing badges that say "philosopher" or "scientist". Academia loves its silos. The real breakthroughs usually happen in the margins.
...a philosopher has successfully clarified something if someone personally finds the attempted clarification clarifying! I would deny that no philosopher has ever clarified anything; and I also wouldn't claim that every philosophers' attempt is successful.