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dfranke comments on Three consistent positions for computationalists - Less Wrong
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I agree, and furthermore this is a true statement regardless of whether you classify the problem as philosophical or scientific. You can't do science without picking some hypotheses to test.
That's not strictly speaking true. First of all, this doesn't quite match what Perplexed said since Perplexed was talking about taking a position. I can decide to test a hypothesis without taking a position on it. Second of all, a lot of good science is just "let's see what happens if I do this." A lot of early chemistry was just sticking together various substances and seeing what happened. Similarly, a lot of the early work with electricity was just systematically seeing what could and could not conduct. It was only later that patterns any more complicated than "metals conduct" developed. (Priestly's The History and Present State of Electricity gives a detailed account of the early research into electricity by someone who was deeply involved in it. The archaic language is sometimes difficult to read but overall the book is surprisingly readable and interesting for something that he wrote in the mid 1700s.)
Those early experimenters with electricity were still taking a position whether they knew it or not: namely, that "will this conduct?" is a productive question to ask -- that if p is the subjective probability that it will, then p*(1-p) is a sufficiently large value that the experiment is worth their time.
Ok. Yes, this connects to the theory-laden nature of observation and experimentation. But that's distinct from having any substantial hypotheses about the nature of electricity which would be closer to the sort of thing that would be analogous to what Perplexed was talking about. (It is possible that I'm misinterpreting the statement's intention.)
Perplexed intended to contrast science - where it is not respectable to take a position in advance of evidence (pace Karl P.) - with philosophy - where it is the taking and defending of positions which drives the whole process. Last philosopher left standing wins. You can't win if you don't take a stand.
Thanks for clarifying. Is that true though? If so, I'd suggest that that might be a problem about how we do philosophy more than anything else. If I don't have evidence or good arguments either way on a philosophical question I shouldn't take a stand on it. I should just acknowledge the weak arguments for or against the relevant positions.
There are no specifically philosophical truths, only specifically philosophical questions. Philosophy is the precursor to science; its job is to help us state our hypotheses clearly enough that we can test them scientifically. ETA: For example, if you want to determine how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, it's philosophy's job to either clarify or reject as nonsensical the concept of an angel, and then in the former case to hand off to science the problem of tracking down some angels to participate in a pin-dancing study.