Philosophy applied to love, art, and ethics do not lead to repeatable results when conducted by different philosophers - nor does it strive to. You will not find and overwhelming consensus about the nature of love and art while studying it from different regional and cultural backgrounds (it would be dull if it did). Two honest scientists from different backgrounds will reach the same conclusion if they perform the same experiment identically.
Also, not to nitpick, but science definitely has something to say about love, art, and ethics. The information it has just might not be the deep and meaningful answer you want it to be.
So now only knowledge that is repeatable is "real" knowledge. No true scotsman AND moving goalposts.
I concede, as I have repeatedly, that science is the best, nay the ONLY real way to understand the natural world empirically. That doesn't mean that subjective experience doesn't make "real" knowledge. I understood that "things fall down" long, long before Newton or Einstein was explained to me, and that knowledge is anything but scientific. Two people can have different experiences, have different opinions on something, and yet both have knowledge of the subject.
But okay, answer these questions for me with results gained through scientific method. Experimentation, observation, repetition. These answers must be empirically true, and falsifiable.
1)Does my mother love me? Why?
2)What is the greatest rock band of all time? Why?
3)Is it wrong to kill a man? Why?
If you think that the answers you come up with are indeed BETTER than those that a philosophical argument can provide, then show your work.
1)Does my mother love me? Why?
I feel love. I act towards things i love in a certain way. Compare that to how your mother acts towards you. Reach conclusion.
2)What is the greatest rock band of all time? Why?
3)Is it wrong to kill a man? Why?
These are important, but i don't know if they qualify as knowledge.
If you think that the answers you come up with are indeed BETTER than those that a philosophical argument can provide, then show your work.
As an allegedly rigorous discipline thats claiming to be a form of knowledge i would think that the onus is on philosophy to provide a better answer.
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So now only knowledge that is repeatable is "real" knowledge. No true scotsman AND moving goalposts.
Not at all. I never said that science is the only way to obtain "real" knowledge. I said
This extra bit is why science is the most successful approach to understanding reality.
How you think that translates to ONLY is beyond me. After you responded and clearly misunderstood me by reading "most successful" as "only" I said
Science gives us information on what is knowable in any meaningful and tangible way
This isn't a modification of my original statement but a clarification. It does not contradict my original statement and therefore is not an example of "no true scotsman". People on the internet throw logical fallacy phrases around too much.
I concede, as I have repeatedly, that science is the best, nay the ONLY real way to understand the natural world empirically. That doesn't mean that subjective experience doesn't make "real" knowledge.
I never used the words "real knowledge". You coined that phrase. All knowledge is "real". It may not be correct, or be of high quaility - but if it can be conveyed then it exists. I am simply arguing that the quality and accuracy of scientific knowledge is of a higher caliber.
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1)Does my mother love me? Why?
2)What is the greatest rock band of all time? Why?
3)Is it wrong to kill a man? Why?If you think that the answers you come up with are indeed BETTER than those that a philosophical argument can provide, then show your work.
I am confused at what you are trying to accomplish. Did I ever claim I could come up with answers that are BETTER than those that a philosophical argument can provide? Perhaps this relates to your "real" knowledge accusation? Anyway I will bite:
1. Love is a biochemical reaction that occurs inside the body. It probably evolved because it helps in the continuation of our species. Whether or not your Mom loves you is only meaningful to you and your Mom and maybe other people in your family. It isn't meaningful to me. Whether or not my Mom loves me is meaningful to me - but probably not to you.
2. Subjective knowledge. It is real - but not meaningful to humanity.
3. Not always. Again, subjective.
I must stress again that I never said that science is the only way to real knowledge. Any information passed between two brains is real knowledge.
POLL: What is Philosophy?
I'll take "the talk on a cereal box" for 1000, Alex.
Careful about mixing up definitions and making up false dichotomies, lads. Science is about empirical knowledge, and not all knowledge is empirical, nor is empirical knowledge necessarily objective.
Empirical knowledge is that which comes from observation. Whether that observation was objective or subjective is another matter altogether (in fact, it usually is subjective, hence why methods such as the Double Blind are used to try and diminish it).
I always liked the tale of the six blind men and the elephant as an example of this:
-One of them touched a leg and determined it was a pillar.
-Another touched the tail and said it was a rope.
-Another touched the trunk and saidit was a tree.
-Another touched the ears and said it was a fan.
-Another touched the belly and said it was a wall.
-And the last one touches the tusk and said it was a pipe.
They all gather empirical data (acquired through observation and direct experimentation), yet they all come to different conclussions, because their respective knowledges were subject to their particular points of view determined by their context and available means of observation. Objectively (that's it, something that is not dependent on the mind to be) the elephant is none of those things (though it may share some of its characteristics), yet this doesn't change the empirical nature of the data collected.
The problem with philosophy is that all it usually does is ask "Why?" when 99.9% of the time "Why not?" is a good enough answer..
What happens in the 0.1% ?
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Good question, in 14 billion years of existence that 0.1% has never come up.
I was just covering my bases in case it ever does.
-One of them touched a leg and determined it was a pillar.-Another touched the tail and said it was a rope.
-Another touched the trunk and saidit was a tree.
-Another touched the ears and said it was a fan.
-Another touched the belly and said it was a wall.
-And the last one touches the tusk and said it was a pipe.
Then someone touched the wrong spot, and was crushed to death. He thought it was a wine press.
Good question, in 14 billion years of existence that 0.1% has never come up.
Pfft. You must be doing it wrong.
I'll take "the talk on a cereal box" for 1000, Alex.
POLL: What is Philosophy?
I didn't want to favorite this post, because it shall never be said that Jean-Paul Sartre ever liked that song.
But I did go Hee hee!
Pfft. You must be doing it wrong.
Good question, in 14 billion years of existence that 0.1% has never come up.
For curiosity's sake, can you think of a point where "why not?" isn't valid enough?
Well, for precision's sake, "why not" is not actually a valid explanation, since it is not an explanation, but instead a shift in the burden of proof. It doesn't answer, but rather changes the premise from "Find a reason to explain why this is happens" to "Find a reason to explain why this shouldn't happen".
It's a great line for when people are doubting doing bungee jumping, though.
I am confused at what you are trying to accomplish. Did I ever claim I could come up with answers that are BETTER than those that a philosophical argument can provide?
Yes. Yes you did.
Allow me to walk you through this.
Science is a methodology that is grounded in philosophy. It differs from other philosophical approaches because it includes observation and experiment in it's revision process. This extra bit is why science is the most successful approach to understanding reality.
The last sentence puzzled me, because surely you didn't think that science was more successfull ("better") at providing an understanding for all things that are real. You provide what appears to be a logical claim, "All A are B". Or to restate it:
"All successful ways of understanding reality are scientific ways of understanding reality."
Feel free to correct me, but I tried to get confirmation that this is how you thought.
I'll make the following assumptions. Successful, in the context of understanding reality, means that it is the "best". In other words it holds up better than other models. Science is successful over other ways of understanding heredity because the scientific model uses DNA and models heredity using genetics. And since "best" is just a degree of "good"...
Therefore if "The Best ways of understanding reality are scientific ways of understanding reality."
I questioned whether you thought things like art, love, and ethics were real, but you conceded they were.
Therefore for this claim to continue to be true, you must either believe that either 1)science is the best way of understanding them or 2)there is some disagreement over the definition of understanding, hence the questions regarding "real" knowledge.
I'm trying to refute your claim, and since it appears to be an absolute claim (all X are Y) I need only find a single example for which ANYTHING other than science is more successful at understanding something that is real. I'm only trying to establish that science isn't the ONLY way of understanding reality, and furthermore other ways of understanding reality are better when dealing with certain topics.
I'm as far from anti-science as you can get, but the level of hubris displayed in this (and other) threads is remarkable, ascribing things to scientific thought that actual scientists have denied since its inception.
Science does not make ought claims, normative claims, only positive/descriptive ones. You can feasibly generate an if/then statement through science (IF your planet is going to run out of resources and IF you desire for your species to continue THEN you must colonize other worlds, etc.) but CAN NOT make any ethical claims.
1)Does my mother love me? Why?I feel love. I act towards things i love in a certain way. Compare that to how your mother acts towards you. Reach conclusion.
2)What is the greatest rock band of all time? Why?
3)Is it wrong to kill a man? Why?These are important, but i don't know if they qualify as knowledge.
If you think that the answers you come up with are indeed BETTER than those that a philosophical argument can provide, then show your work.As an allegedly rigorous discipline thats claiming to be a form of knowledge i would think that the onus is on philosophy to provide a better answer.
1)That's not even remotely scientific, it's purely subjective and isn't falsifiable.
2/3)Then you are making the claim I was fishing for with Asphere. It's good to know who the ultimate universal arbiter on what is or is not knowledge hangs out on these very boards.As to your parting comment, since you didn't provide ANY scientific answers, ANY answer I give would be better than those you provided.
Well, for precision's sake, "why not" is not actually a valid explanation, since it is not an explanation, but instead a shift in the burden of proof. It doesn't answer, but rather changes the premise from "Find a reason to explain why this is happens" to "Find a reason to explain why this shouldn't happen".
It's a great line for when people are doubting doing bungee jumping, though.
That's not what I was getting at.
I meant when people ask "why" we do things, or "should we do this."
Obviously "why not" isn't a scientific answer.
But it's for when people try to shoe horn morality into science.
So when someone asks "Why should we make genetically engineered super humans", "why not?" is a perfectly acceptable answer.
If someone asks why the sky is blue, obviously we have actual answers for that.
We don't have moral answers, we have moral opinions.
We don't have moral answers, we have moral opinions.
Then you are a moral relativist. Nothing is right or wrong, good or bad. So we can't really judge anyone other than ourselves on moral grounds, and things like the Spanish Inquisition are passed off as merely "signs of the times" and not necessarily good or bad.
It's a bad position to take, because it's self-defeating.
We don't have moral answers, we have moral opinions.Then you are a moral relativist. Nothing is right or wrong, good or bad. So we can't really judge anyone other than ourselves on moral grounds, and things like the Spanish Inquisition are passed off as merely "signs of the times" and not necessarily good or bad.
It's a bad position to take, because it's self-defeating.
How is it self defeating?
It's just a non-anthropocentric view of the universe.
Our actions are merely the actions of a specific species on a specific planet.
All our actions simply fall under "human behaviour."
Dolphin's sometimes beat their children to death, we tie people to stakes and set them on fire.
Neither is right or wrong, it simply within the listing of human and dolphin behaviour traits.
It's like looking at humans as an alien anthropologist.
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I think we are locked in a definitions game. Forgive me, my English is not so primo - but I can crunch equations like there is no tomorrow! "Successful" in the context that I am using it means that a solution provides an explanation of the problem that is empirical, testable and repeatable, and is overwhelmingly accepted by experts from widely varying backgrounds. When I say that science provides higher quality knowldege than philosophy it is because of the restrictions within science on what can be answered and how it must be answered. Philosophy, though it may still have restrictions, is much looser and is capable of providing answers of a lower standard.
I am confused at what you are trying to accomplish. Did I ever claim I could come up with answers that are BETTER than those that a philosophical argument can provide?Yes. Yes you did.
Allow me to walk you through this.
Science is a methodology that is grounded in philosophy. It differs from other philosophical approaches because it includes observation and experiment in it's revision process. This extra bit is why science is the most successful approach to understanding reality.The last sentence puzzled me, because surely you didn't think that science was more successfull ("better") at providing an understanding for all things that are real. You provide what appears to be a logical claim, "All A are B". Or to restate it:
"All successful ways of understanding reality are scientific ways of understanding reality."
So when I say "most successful" you interpret that as "only successful"? Either you read it too quickly or you are re-postulating it as an absolute to make it easier to tear down.
So lets look at ethics. A scientist would attempt to answer why ethics exists among human beings while a philosopher would ponder what is ethical. If you apply a scientific approach to the philosopher's question you would fail. However, has philosophy even come close to offering a solution that isn't completely subjective or lives up to the high quality demands for an answer that science requires? When scientists cannot meet the demands of science when offering a solution they take a null position. Philosophy doesn't have the same high demands and so it isn't restrained to empirical and testable solutions - in other words it can give answers that are not true (or true for everyone). Just because science is incapable of answering the question "what is ethical" doesn't mean that my statement isn't true. Science contains the most successful methodology for understanding reality, even if it is incapable of providing an answer for abstract ideas. The only way to prove this statement false is to show me that philosophy has had more success at answering more questions about reality than science.
Therefore for this claim to continue to be true, you must either believe that either 1)science is the best way of understanding them or 2)there is some disagreement over the definition of understanding, hence the questions regarding "real" knowledge.
3) Science cannot provide successful answers to abstract notions but neither can any other approach. However, even if some other approach could provide empirically backed answers to questions like "what is ethical?" or "what is art?", science has still answered MORE questions about reality than these approaches and is thus MORE successful at understanding reality.
I'm trying to refute your claim, and since it appears to be an absolute claim (all X are Y) I need only find a single example for which ANYTHING other than science is more successful at understanding something that is real. I'm only...
But it isn't all X are Y. Lets say we have the following questions: 1. why do we stay attached to the ground, 2. why do we get sick, 3. why are there so many different lifeforms, 3. why do we love, 4. what is love, 5. what is ethical, 6. why do we have ethics, 7. what is art, 8. why do we like art...
Science offers answers to 1, 2, 3, 6, 8 to a high degree of certainty (but never absolutely certain) and there is overwhelming consensus in the community about these answers spanning culture, gender, and region. On 4,5, and 7 science is silent.
Philosophy can't come to a consensus on 4, 5, and 7 and it offers a myriad of differing answers within its community.
Which methodology had the most success at answering questions about reality? Providing one example question that science can't answer does not invalidate the other successes it has had in answering other questions about reality. Science has been the MOST successful at answering questions about reality.
If your rhetorical definition of successful fundamentally excludes all but empirical, scientific knowledge there's nothing to even debate with you.
All I am trying to establish, and I'm really baffled why you're fighting me on it when every attempt to discern WHY you disagree is met with obfuscation, that there are some things that science does not, cannot, and does not attempt to answer and that there are ways of understanding, i.e. types of knowledge, that are not empirical. Can we agree on this at least?
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We don't have moral answers, we have moral opinions.Then you are a moral relativist. Nothing is right or wrong, good or bad. So we can't really judge anyone other than ourselves on moral grounds, and things like the Spanish Inquisition are passed off as merely "signs of the times" and not necessarily good or bad.
It's a bad position to take, because it's self-defeating.
This is a straw man. I agree with Fleshgrinder that there are no answers to moral questions in an absolute sense. We have moral opinions. Maybe that makes me a moral relativist. However, that doesn't mean that I don't believe in right or wrong - only that I consider context and give opinions on what I believe is right or wrong for the well being of the community in which I live. I make my case that my opinion may be more well reasoned than others in the hopes that my community might adopt my position. There were plenty of people who opposed the Spanish Inquisition while it was happening. Its not like all of Spain was on the same page with that one.
Well, biologically, we actually do have some "ethics".
Altruism naturally evolved in animals thanks to the selfish gene, we are biologically predisposed to sociologically "good" behavior.
It's just that the definition of good shifts from culture to culture on our own planet, let alone speaking of the infinite possibilities in our universe.
See, for morality to be universal it would have to apply to ALL things, even inanimate objects, because we're all made of the same stuff.
Life isn't special when compared to non-life, we're just different, so we don't get our own special rules.
If morality were universal, it would be like physics, inescapable.
If killing was inherently wrong, tornadoes would dodge trailer parks.
Not to mention that every breath we take is like microbe genocide, making us all evil by any objective definition of evil.
The problem with most people's morality is that it starts with the belief that humans are somehow special when compared to everything else despite no evidence to back that up.
The forms atoms and energy take are largely insignificant.
We used to be all one singularity of energy, we'll eventually be a ubiquitous cloud of dust in a dead universe.
All the between stuff is just the death rattle of a universe.
We're sort of like maggots in a necrotic wound.
Philosophy, though it may still have restrictions, is much looser and is capable of providing answers of a lower standard.
In some things, yes. The rest of your post is unnecessary because, bafflingly, you continue to misconstrue my intentions.
Philosophy (other than natural philosophy, i.e. science LOLZ) is woefully unequipped to calculate or predict weather cycles or the movement of the heavens, among zillions of other topics. GRANTED.
Now, when it comes to the things I've suggested, science does not even attempt to answer and therefore anything else defeats it by default. In other words, when dealing with such topics, philosophy DOESN'T provide answers of a "lower standard", since the term lower is a relative one. Relative to science, philosophy gives us very good, workable answers to questions like ethical dilemmas (for example).
This is a straw man.
So calling his position moral relativism is a straw man?
Did you read his post? Or the one after it? It's moral relativism. He didn't even disagree with that descriptor...
I don't call it moral relativism to be fair, I refer to it as a physics based view of reality.
You see people, I see combinations of atoms destined to be something else eventually.
You may see a sun, I see a fusion reactor.
You may see time as fleeting, I see time as a 4th dimension of space that only has a perceived flow.
This affords me an extremely calm existence... and a complete lack of fear of death considering I already spent about 14 billion years not existing and it wasn't bad enough to remember.
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If your rhetorical definition of successful fundamentally excludes all but empirical, scientific knowledge there's nothing to even debate with you.
All I am trying to establish, and I'm really baffled why you're fighting me on it when every attempt to discern WHY you disagree is met with obfuscation, that there are some things that science does not, cannot, and does not attempt to answer and that there are ways of understanding, i.e. types of knowledge, that are not empirical. Can we agree on this at least?
I agree completely with the limits on what science is capable of approaching. Perhaps I should clarify with the statement:
There is more knowledge within science that is universally accepted by scientists than there is knowledge within philosophy that is universally accepted by philosophers.
Philosophy may be the only approach to understand knowledge that is not empirical but it doesn't make it better quality knowledge. After all, no answer is better than a wrong answer.
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This is a straw man.So calling his position moral relativism is a straw man?
Did you read his post? Or the one after it? It's moral relativism. He didn't even disagree with that descriptor...
Defining moral relativism as not being able to "judge anyone other than ourselves on moral grounds, and things like the Spanish Inquisition are passed off as merely "signs of the times" and not necessarily good or bad" is the straw man.
Pfft. You must be doing it wrong.
Good question, in 14 billion years of existence that 0.1% has never come up.
Philosophy gets you laid!
EDIT: I think I should get bonus points for the Luddite folk meaning of the song, too.
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Philosophy, though it may still have restrictions, is much looser and is capable of providing answers of a lower standard.In some things, yes. The rest of your post is unnecessary because, bafflingly, you continue to misconstrue my intentions.
Philosophy (other than natural philosophy, i.e. science LOLZ) is woefully unequipped to calculate or predict weather cycles or the movement of the heavens, among zillions of other topics. GRANTED.
Now, when it comes to the things I've suggested, science does not even attempt to answer and therefore anything else defeats it by default. In other words, when dealing with such topics, philosophy DOESN'T provide answers of a "lower standard", since the term lower is a relative one. Relative to science, philosophy gives us very good, workable answers to questions like ethical dilemmas (for example).
I would argue that an answer such as "I don't know" is of a higher quality than a wrong answer.
Pfft. You must be doing it wrong.
Good question, in 14 billion years of existence that 0.1% has never come up.Philosophy gets you laid!
EDIT: I think I should get bonus points for the Luddite folk meaning of the song, too.
I have the libido of a rock, getting laid is very low on my list of things that are important.
Spoken like a true machine!
1)That's not even remotely scientific, it's purely subjective and isn't falsifiable.
Its quite falsifiable. Its entirely possible that your mother isn't acting in a manner consistent with loving you. Its subjective because the definition of love is subjective, as is any sort of mechanism for determining what any being other than yourself is thinking (or if they're thinking at all)
2/3)Then you are making the claim I was fishing for with Asphere.
Honesty! Cutting down on conversational tap dancing since the invention of the haymaker.
It's good to know who the ultimate universal arbiter on what is or is not knowledge hangs out on these very boards.
Well I'd look better hanging out in an ivory tower with a pipe and a smoking jacket but I think the effect would be purely cosmetic.
As to your parting comment, since you didn't provide ANY scientific answers, ANY answer I give would be better than those you provided.
Show, don't tell.
Not yet, but hopefully we hit the technological singularity so I can get out of his filthy flesh bag they call a body and get myself into something a little more comfortable and metallic.
Or a body genetically engineered to look like an Ork. I'd take that.
They have no gender, so it'd work out.
2)What is the greatest rock band of all time? Why?
Since I am becoming predictable, I didn't post the Dead.
I love my flesh!
[Rubs one out]
Well I'd look better hanging out in an ivory tower with a pipe and a smoking jacket but I think the effect would be purely cosmetic.
Yeah, that's how I got Simone.
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Relative to science, philosophy gives us very good, workable answers to questions like ethical dilemmas (for example).
There is a difference between "Science says no comment on ought questions" and "Philosophy gives good answers on ought questions"
Just because science doesn't answer them doesn't mean that philosophy does.
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Relative to science, philosophy gives us very good, workable answers to questions like ethical dilemmas (for example).There is a difference between "Science says no comment on ought questions" and "Philosophy gives good answers on ought questions"
Just because science doesn't answer them doesn't mean that philosophy does.
Or it may answer them but it doesn't mean that the answer is worth more than not answering - especially if it is wrong.
I have the libido of a rock, getting laid is very low on my list of things that are important.
Hold on, sparky. How do you think mountains get made?
Rocks may seem frigid, but really, there's a lot of plate tectonics going between their masses down there.
It's like Barry White, volcano style.
Or it may answer them but it doesn't mean that the answer is worth more than not answering - especially if it is wrong.Relative to science, philosophy gives us very good, workable answers to questions like ethical dilemmas (for example).There is a difference between "Science says no comment on ought questions" and "Philosophy gives good answers on ought questions"
Just because science doesn't answer them doesn't mean that philosophy does.
It just takes the answer you want and puts more razzmatazz on it .
Slathering razzmatazz on things is a really good way to put what a lot of philosophy leads to.
It's like people who are effectively atheists but then claim that "the universe itself is divine."
All they're doing is putting pixie dust on the cold universe to make it pretty.
Because, in reality, if the entire universe was divine, that means everything in it is divine, which means it is now a definition that everything shares, making it a worthless definition.
It's also like supernatural.
Supernatural doesn't exist, for is something is real, it is instantly natural simply by existing.
All of it is just trying to put tinsel on a dying tree.
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Slathering razzmatazz on things is a really good way to put what a lot of philosophy leads to.
It's like people who are effectively atheists but then claim that "the universe itself is divine."
All they're doing is putting pixie dust on the cold universe to make it pretty.
Because, in reality, if the entire universe was divine, that means everything in it is divine, which means it is now a definition that everything shares, making it a worthless definition.
It's also like supernatural.
Supernatural doesn't exist, for is something is real, it is instantly natural simply by existing.
All of it is just trying to put tinsel on a dying tree.
What does everyone have against the Nihilists these days?
"If God does not exist, then everythng is permitted."
--Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov
For the record, I already gave you the answer to this thread.
.
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And the correct answer is:
-- A kind of scientific knowledge --
.
END OF GAME.
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"If God does not exist, then everythng is permitted."
--Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov
More accurately, it doesn't mean everything is permitted, it just means nothing is prohibited by "cosmic law".
Man is still often held accountable by his fellow man and so to remain free and alive he must often at least abide by the rules set forth by his society.
We invented law and punishment because, fundamentally, we've always known in the back of our head as a species that God isn't real.
Even "true believers" know in the back of their head. This little nagging feeling like a drill.
They pretend, and self-delude, and what not, but their actions speak louder than words.
They wear seatbelts, they take medicine when they're sick, they go to the doctor often before they go the priest.
They know, deep down, but it's hard to admit that kind of stuff to yourself.
** spoiler omitted **