Nor does it have any impact on the society at large, after all who's heard of Kirkegard, Kant, or Camu?Educated people have heard of Kierkegaard, Kant, and Camu. Plus Hume, Hegel, Descartes, Bacon, Wittgenstein, de Beauvoir, Gautama, Gandhi, Augustine, Chomsky, and plenty of others.
And how do they effect how things are done?
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Philosophy IS why science works. All of the disciplines that separate true science from quackery or theocratic domination, are philosophic ones.
Experiments are why science works. Experiments are effectively giving up on philosophy. If philosophy didn't work you wouldn't need to experiment to test your ideas: anything that made sense to you would be right.
We see where that gets us. Philosophy can't discover anything and can't resolve outstanding arguments that have existed for centuries. Meanwhile stephen hawking and kip thorne can settle a bet in their careers because there's an arbiter other than the person involved.
Bad science is disproved. Good science is improved upon. Philosophy just goes in and out of style, like hats.
This analysis brought to you by lack of history.
will save
Clank! :)
So, is your argument that the only thing we should pay any attention to is experimental science?
I think you need a way to verify your ideas against reality or things get really weird really fast. An experiment is the best way. Historical sciences run on lots of evidence that could lend credence to a lot of ideas, history runs on lots of evidence to do the same thing.
No point in even discussing different political systems or ethics or anything else that isn't hard science.
Talking about political systems can be useful , but thinking that any of that talk amounts to an "is" *points up* is fooling yourself. Ethics is just a lot of "i think" with fancy layering on top: doing it formally gets you no more or no less than a pointless internet conversation. And I'd never waste my time with one of those...
Sure. That's because the philosophers already came up with and refined the scientific method. Now that they've done that and it's been around for a few hundred years, we can pretend that it's not actually based on philosophy.
By that logic you're a reptile.
At some point something changes so much that its no longer the thing it used to be.
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Doesn't that just mean that when philosophy does adhere to reality and (granted, long term) lead to technological marvels, you simply reclassify it?What long term? What technological marvels did philosophy lead to?
Philosophy can't grock why science works. It tries to put itself at the forfront instead of the evidence and that doesn't work.
See, I'm pretty sure that you'll dismiss any example I can offer here as "not-philosophy," because you predicate the science/philosophy divide on whether something has real world application or not.
But if I had to pick one, I'd say Pi; if I had to pick two, I'd say Newton's laws of motion; if I'm allowed to go way, way down the list to the point of once-in-a-lifetime-crypto-technology, I'd say the Antikythera mechanism.
Except that if 500+ years ago, we'd said "Philosophy is pointless" and stopped doing it, we'd never have gotten anywhere.
We wouldn't have just spontaneously started using the scientific method because we'd stopped doing philosophy.
it might not be as formalized but it would still be here.
Trying to dig up the book, Hydrology in the ancient world. The author describes a back and forth between a greek engineer and a philosopher with the philosopher arguing that the water should be doing this this this and this. The engineers saying "its not, so you're wrong.
Thats all science takes. And its been with us longer than 500 years.
Similarly now, with those things we can't actually use the scientific method on.
Do philosophers do these things substantially better than random people?
Nor does it have any impact on the society at large, after all who's heard of Kirkegard, Kant, or Camu?Educated people have heard of Kierkegaard, Kant, and Camu. Plus Hume, Hegel, Descartes, Bacon, Wittgenstein, de Beauvoir, Gautama, Gandhi, Augustine, Chomsky, and plenty of others.
[Shakes fist after he sees that dear Simone and execrable Al are included, but not me]
See, I'm pretty sure that you'll dismiss any example I can offer here as "not-philosophy," because you predicate the science/philosophy divide on whether something has real world application or not.But if I had to pick one, I'd say Pi
I don't think I'm going to lose points pointing out that thats math, not philosophy.
Its also empirically verifiable. I remember takinga thread out of my sock and measuring it when they told us it was always the same. (same with angles on a triangle always being 180. DAMN YOU EUCLID AND YOUR RULES!)
if I had to pick two, I'd say Newton's laws of motion
Also emprically verifable AND not derivable from philosophy, at all.
if I'm allowed to go way, way down the list to the point of once-in-a-lifetime-crypto-technology, I'd say the Antikythera mechanism.
How is something that perfectly mimics the motion of celestial bodies based off of entirely observational data philosophy?
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You rely a great deal upon empirical evidence. The idea of empirical evidence is itself a philosophical concept, and philosophy explains why it has value.
Even in arguing against philosophy, you rely upon philosophy.
You rely a great deal upon empirical evidence. The idea of empirical evidence is itself a philosophical concept, and philosophy explains why it has value.
I'm pretty sure the concept of "Hey look, a deer!" predates the philosophical framework for wondering if there really was a deer there and if so how we could know vs. know.
I'm pretty sure the concept of "Hey look, a deer!" predates the philosophical framework for wondering if there really was a deer there and if so how we could know vs. know.First, there is a mountain.
Then, there is no mountain.
Then, there IS a mountain.
"hey Grog, maybe you no eat mushrooms with bright colors no more"
I'm pretty sure the concept of "Hey look, a deer!" predates the philosophical framework for wondering if there really was a deer there and if so how we could know vs. know.First, there is a mountain.
Then, there is no mountain.
Then, there IS a mountain.
I'm sorry, was that a Donovan Leitch lyric? Must be The Season of the Witch! :P
Foutre, philistines!
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I know this discussion has delved into the philosophy vs science debate, I'm personally less worried about the difference between the two, or their relative merits, and more worried how both are being subsumed under waves of anti-intellectualism. Our national broadcaster, the CBC, did a great series of programs on how our current government has dismantled our once world class fundamental research institution, and governs by opinion instead of evidenced based policy.
Its a great listen, even if you aren't a Canadian.
Here is the first one: Science Under Siege, Part 1
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So, we have 3 or so pages of...
BNW: I hate philosophy
Everyone else: But it's useful
BNW: I don't care
Do we have enough of that yet? Or do we need another page?
Well, not quite. Time and time again, democracy has been proven to be more resilient, provide for better quality of life for citizens, reduce wars more than any alternative.
I don't see how you can prove this? To find evidence you would have to:
1. Define democracy in such a way that you can classify exactly what countries are democratic and not and2. Compare many countries that are similar in everything but system of governance, or where we can satisfyingly account for all other variables.
I don't think this has ever been done, or really can be done easily. The most we can do is look at anecdotal evidence. We can see that life expectancy is higher now than it was 200 years ago, but we can't account for the technological changes. On the other hand, in the modern world, I wouldn't be surprised if the average country determined as "democratic" was involved in more wars than the average country determined as "non-democratic" currently. But again, this is just anecdotal evidence and very weak. While the average "democratic" country has higher life expectancy than the average "nondemocratic" country, it's also hard to account for the influence of economy, technology and world dominace. When comparing countries in similar areas and situations it's often far less clear; Panama and Uruguay are democracies, Cuba is not, yet Cuba has higher life expectancy.
Yes, well, Sissyl and I are both Swedes :P
But I don't particularly mind using any single definition, as long as it's applied consistently.
So, we have 3 or so pages of...Only three? You haven't read BNW's post history.
I was only referencing this thread :P
So, we have 3 or so pages of...Only three? You haven't read BNW's post history.
Four out of orange psyciatrists recommend tat you don't.
The idea that philosophy predates and is responsible for the concept of empirical evidence is somewhere between preposterous and unevidenced.
" SABRE TOOTHED TIGER! RUN!" has been with us longer than the spoken word.
" Well how can we reallyknow its a sabre toothed tige.. .AHHHHHHHH!" had to wait for an era of no saber toothed tigers when everyone was wearing togas you couldn't run away in anyway to come about.
So tell me. How exactly, do you believe, something like Newgrange was constructed without a fundamental understanding of the concept of how ideas are spoken and understood?
That question only makes sense as a rebuttal if you conflate language with the philosophical concept of language.
Language is philosophy.
No. Its not.
Philosophy is not linguistics.
Linguistics isn't language either.
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Wait, are you claiming that neither logic nor communications fall under the larger heading of philosophy? No wonder you think it's useless. Here, let me do the same thing:
"Science is useless. The scientific method is not science, nor are biology, geology, chemistry, physics, etc. So what have you got left? That's right, nothing. Burn!"
Wait, are you claiming that neither logic nor communications fall under the larger heading of philosophy? No wonder you think it's useless. Here, let me do the same thing
Logic does fall under philosophy.
Communication does not. Communication is communicating, not investigating the universe by speculative means.
So when we communicate we are not investigating the intangible ideas that others have about the world?
Depends on how tangible their ideas are.
I mean are you going to admit to animals having philosophy?
So the answer to my earlier question, are 3 pages enough, is no.
So when we communicate we are not investigating the intangible ideas that others have about the world?Depends on how tangible their ideas are.
I mean are you going to admit to animals having philosophy?
Philosophy? Maybe not. There is, however, a large subset of scholars who believe that Animals have rhetoric.
What is the purpose of lines of thought like this?
It seems to treat green like a platonic property that an item has rather than the result of aon objects chemical/physical structure and how it reflects/refracts light. You know that an emerald will be green tomorrow because you know why its green, and that its structure is incredibly stable. You know lettuce left outside won't be because you know how lettuce and chlorophyll decay.
The point is: Can we make generalizations and predictions AT ALL? Assume for a moment that we can't generalize. You drop a rock. It falls to the ground. You pick it up, drop it again. You keep doing this for a thousand times. It keeps falling down. Can you now say it will drop the next time? By what logic do you assume you can? Worse, if you take the next rock and drop it, will it fall? By now you will probably say that it is probable... But can you KNOW it will? No. Past behaviour does not determine future behaviour. We assume it does.
If we didn't, we could start by tossing everything science tells us out the window.
When a doctor checks someone's myocardial infarction, every single thing done is done because we assume the patient is mostly like every other human out there. The stuff we find out about Joey Bum's myocardial infarction is taken to be generalizable, not just about that specific event.
We can't go too far, obviously, or everything we predict is useless. Nor can we stop assuming generalizability, or we can't predict at all. How far this goes is an extremely valid question. And yes, it is philosophy.