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On August 01 2014 16:51 son1dow wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2014 14:57 PoorPotato wrote:
<...>let me disrespect philosophy pls <...> Hey, what about if you disrepsected any reasoning for ethical rights? What if you mocked any person with actual political views? What if you were ignorant of the philosophy of science and denied the scientific method's usefulness? What if you used your pride in this ignorance to deny or confirm basically anything you want, so basically was a proud anti-intellectual? (I mean, go ahead and dislike it yourself. But do it the same way kids hate math - they don't say they don't respect it, because they'll be laughed at by everyone.)
There are people who are immoral and unethical. There are people who mock people with political views (I'm not sure what you mean by "actual political views" as distinct from "political views" but it doesn't matter). There are people who are ignorant of philosophy and science and who deny the scientific method's usefulness.
There are people who take pride in ignorance and conform to anything that somebody else wants them to do.They're called followers of organized religions or patriots.
What's wrong with being laughed at by everyone? Why must I or anyone else strive to be liked or to have fame or to do as others tell us? Why do you feel that people must like you, and that everyone else should strive and work and adapt so that people like them as well? The answer is probably because you want to be liked and respected and to be famous (everyone wants to be famous!) and that's fine, that's your game, but it doesn't have to be done.
It's like if I was a physicist and I saw a man who was bragging that he hadn't ever been to school and didn't believe in gravity and therefore didn't respect it. I could stop and insist that he MUST respect gravity, that he must learn Newton's laws and that if he didn't he would be very lost and stupid indeed and that something must be done about his ignorance! The man would give me a confused look and perhaps hit me, and my comments would fall flat. So it is with philosophy, or any subject, not everyone respects it.
Do you fault a rooster for not respecting philosophy? Of course you don't, it has no impact on the creature's life and he would rather drag his head through the mud and fuck hens. So with people, they don't care and would rather do other things, and that's the state of affairs, there's nothing you can do about it, and so it isn't a problem. It's only a problem if you say that there is a problem and that things should be different.
You would do better, I think, to look at what is in the world, the ignorance, the hate, the violence, the sadness, the systematic failings of education and of the media, and stop making up what should be (i.e. "Everyone should respect philosophy, everyone should have lots of money and a car and a house, and food on the table and a happy family with loving friends, etc") because when you look at what is, uncorrupted by what should be, then you see reality clearly and are free of illusions. Or don't, if you want to look at the world in a way that is different from how it actually is, then that's entirely your prerogative as well. Cheers mate 
P.S. I don't disrespect philosophy. In fact, I'm a philosophy major. But that doesn't prevent me from defending people who disrespect philosophy.
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I think the reason philosophy is so disregarded is because it does not help people anymore. It has just turned into a sort of mental masturbation without much practical application. Back in the day the Romans and Greeks(and many others) actually developed philosophies that were meant to better people's lives, to help people live meaningful lives in which they tried to ascribe value to objects appropriately. For example, Stoicism, cynicism, hedonism, all offered people with a way to make meaningful decisions. These types of movements have largely replaced by religions IMO because of similarities. However the the concept of god and afterlife have kind of overshadowed the actual philosophies.
It is not that one philosophy of life is superior to another, but that having no philosophy of life can lead to a lack of fulfillment and purpose, and more importantly will cast doubt on ones own actions. So basically, the shift from philosophy trying to help people to just pondering questions without much practical application has lead to it's tarnished reputation IMO.
According to Epicurus, " vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man"
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I think you're arguing in a vacuum. Things that have intrinsic value still need significant respect from the outside to be 'okay' to pursue, to be enjoyable. Change the subject to the intrinsic value and disrespect in avant-garde art, and you can easily imagine how social expectations and reactions can be very important for a poor, unappreciated avant-garde student, even if most of what he wants to do is to dive into art fully.
This is besides the fact that underlooking philosophy is an actual problem in science, and even more so, with people in general (gullibility, seeing only from your POV, not copmprehending arguments, ethical thinking... everything and more can be helped with philosophy).
I agree with OP.
Why does an action need to be respected by others to be enjoyable? When a dog humps someone's leg or rolls around in the mud or licks his own penis, people generally don't respect him for it and they don't think that what he is doing is a worthwhile pursuit, particularly amongst the cultural elite. But watch the dog, there he goes, licking his own penis happily! Don't say that this dog isn't enjoying himself!
Or perhaps you want a human example. People generally don't respect people with insect fetishes or people who fuck sheep, but that doesn't prevent these people from thoroughly enjoying what they do, which is putting insects on their genitals and fucking sheep respectively.
Or perhaps you'd like an example of a career. People generally don't respect esports and streaming careers ("What is it you do? People watch you play computer games all day? Get real! You need to work a horrible 60 hour a week office job that I hate like me to be a respectable human being!") but that doesn't prevent the career from being fun or rewarding or worth doing or, to use your words, "from having intrinsic value".
Some people even kill people for fun! And it is people's general consensus that this is a bad idea and that it isn't respectable, but this doesn't prevent sociopaths from cutting up young women and wearing their skin as coats.
What do you mean something needs to be respected by people generally to have intrinsic value?! This is most certainly not the case. It may be the case for you, because you feel that you need to be respected and to have a "valuable" career, whatever the fuck that means, but this is an illusion that you have conjured up in your head and it isn't in accordance with reality. That's quite alright, you are entitled to your illusions, but I submit to you humbly, sir, that this is where you are incorrect.
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On August 02 2014 13:31 NerZhuL wrote:
I think the reason philosophy is so disregarded is because it does not help people anymore. It has just turned into a sort of mental masturbation without much practical application.
the only solution to this is to do it yourself
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@PoorPotato: I don't think you disagree at all with the OP, since I don't think he equates people liking something with it being valuable. The question was whether philosophy does have any value or not - and if so, what kind of value. If it does have value, then pursuing it just for the sake of it can be good, but if it does not have any value at all, then pursuing it is a waste of time. Likewise: if the only kind of value philosophy has were to be economic, then pursuing it for its aesthetic value would be misguided.
It's true that he doesn't equate people liking something with it being valuable, but he writes that,
Though "academics" (professors, etc.) have been more sympathetic to the budding philosophy student, others outside academia seem to maintain quite a negative attitude. This is where I find fault.
So he finds fault with people who "maintain a negative attitude", whatever that means, towards philosophy, and what I wrote addressed that.
To understand your question of whether or not philosophy has value, we must understand what we mean by valuable. The root of the word is french and is related to "valor" in English, meaning the importance or worth or usefulness of something. This implies that somethings are valuable and others are not valuable. Surely by this definition then gold is valuable and dirt is not, so let's run with this.
Well, where do you draw the line between valuable and not valuable? You may say that dirt is not valuable and that gold is, but then without dirt you have nothing on which to stand or to build a house. So even dirt has some value or some worth or some usefulness.
Furthermore, gold certainly does have usefulness because you can make rings and things with it, and it is worth money (which is of course traded for other things with value or use"). But what use is gold to a cat? Or to a tree? If there was a mass extinction of human beings and we all died, would gold have value? If not, then it has no value of itself, it only has the value which we give it.
Of course it is impossible to draw the line between useful and useless, between valuable and not valuable. If we say that anything has value if it has some value to it, then there is nothing in the world that is not valuable. If we say that anything is valueless if it has some quality of valuelessness to it, then there is nothing in the world that is not valuable. If we say that anything has usefulness if it has some quality of usefulness to it, then there is nothing in the world that is not useful. If we say that anything in the world is useless if it has quality of uselessness to it, then there is nothing in the world that is not useless.
It's like if I have a tiny stone or a boulder. From the point of view of man, the boulder is quite large indeed, and the pebble is quite small. But from the point of view of a mosquito, the pebble is quite large. And from the point of view of an enormous elephant or a vulture way up high, the boulder is quite small.
Which point of view is right? Well obviously they're all right, in the same way that relativity is right in describing the movement of massive celestial bodies, at the big scale, and quantum mechanics is right in describing the universe at a subatomic level, at the small scale. Which theory of physics is correct? Obviously, they're both correct!
Think of a tribal chieftain in the dawn of mankind who fought hard to become the chief, killing his kinsmen and leaders of opposing tribes or whatever he had to do, and how valuable the position was to him at that time. Now it has no value, it is nothing! But at that time it was the most valuable thing in the world to him. Or think of how valuable the palace of King Tutankamun of Egypt was to him and to his kingdom. He has died and now it has no value, it is nothing! But at that time it was among the most valuable things in the world.
So, when you see that there is no line that can be drawn between valuable and valueless, worthy and not worthy, then you cease to worry about if something is going to be enjoyable or not enjoyable, economically valuable or economically not valuable, because obviously both are the case!
You mentioned that a pursuit could be "a waste of time", with the clear implication that wasting time is something to be avoided. What is time for but to be wasted? What is your life or my life or the lives of all creatures on this planet in a million years? I could die right now and in the grand scheme of things nothing would be different. Our lives are nothing, and it was all a "waste" in that sense.
But right now, obviously we are what all there is, you, me and the rest of humanity, and so we are important and valuable because we are the only thing that there is and everything we do therefore is valuable, valuable to us certainly, because we are what there is on the planet right now and we are alive and isn't it all so great! It So the entirety of each life is simultaneously a waste of time and the only thing that there is. What an extraordinary discovery! Therefore all argument about what is or is not valuable comes to an end, because everything is both valuable and not valuable, and further, everything is both of two opposites.
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I think you misunderstood me... I never said people should or need to like philosophy? I only ask that they respect it. For example, I do not particularly like or enjoy math, but I certainly respect it and those who study it. I'm not asking for anything but recognition as an equally useful human being which, I think, is a very fair request.
Why do you need respect from people like a starving man needs food? Is "equally useful human being" some concrete thing that you need to get, or is it just words on a page? The power you give to words is dangerous, you are like the 5 year old whose brother calls him a "sissy". To him, this is a most scornful epithet, and he thinks it is a very fair request for him to make, that brother should calling him a sissy. But who cares! It's just a word. Nothing happens.
As long as you are seeking and begging and searching for respect from everyone, including the ignorant and hateful and bigoted and stupid and those who don't respect what you respect, you will always have a problem because you can't make ignorant, hateful, bigoted, and stupid people go away. Quit seeking their respect, because you won't get it! The solution is instead to see that you don't need it, and after that the problem goes away.
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What do you get when you cross an Existentialist and a Zen Buddhist?
+ Show Spoiler +
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What do you get when you cross an Existentialist and a Zen Buddhist?
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A PoorPotato!
Don't forget Zhuangzi!
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On August 02 2014 08:52 zulu_nation8 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 02 2014 05:50 GeckoXp wrote:On August 02 2014 04:35 MoonfireSpam wrote:On August 02 2014 04:05 GeckoXp wrote:On August 02 2014 03:02 bookwyrm wrote:On August 02 2014 02:30 GeckoXp wrote:On August 02 2014 01:50 bookwyrm wrote:On August 02 2014 01:47 2Pacalypse- wrote:
However, the most useful way of thinking about scientific theory in its truest sense would be to use the word "fact" in ordinary language. No. Not because of the claim you are trying to make (to give "theory" a more solid epistemological force). But a "fact" is a much dumber thing than a theory. A "fact" is something like "the sun keeps rising." A "theory" has to explain why. If you reduce "theory" to "fact" you make "theory" a much less powerful entity, which is not what you are trying to do here. Following your logic, there's nothing we can ever know. I guess it'd help you out a lot if you'd actually talk to someone with a better grasp of empirical procedures, rather than getting your knowledge from hilariously overcomplicated texts. No, I haven't said that, nor do I believe that. Try harder. That doesn't even respond to the thing I said that you're quoting. Nor does what you write respond to things others said prior to you. You don't have any clue whatsoever about what the difference between a fact, an observation and a theory is. Argueing with people not having an idea of what they're talking about makes no sense. I hope you at least feel smart. I think the points that was trying to be made (and very valid) are: An observation is only as good as your instrumentation / conditions. There may be factors messing with your observations you are unaware of. (as in the example of dropping a rock. It goes "down" but is also moving laterally at the speed of rotation of the Earth - but so are your instruments, so alll you measure is motion of the rock relative to the observer).
A theory is the mechanics you think are behind said observation, however flawed observations can falsely validate theories. (you could use that observation of the rock dropping to "disprove" that the Earth spins). Because you obviously can't account for the unknown factors, it takes a lot (or should take a lot) for something to become "fact" i.e. a proven theory. This stuff more applies to things from the last 300 or so years. For example when they found trilobyte fossils at the top of mountains, the two theories were: Mass flooding (popular opinion), Plate tectonics (dismissed for ages). Through further examination and observation of rock types etc. the reverse became the case and the prevailing dogma was broken. I think the other point is that because you don't know the unknown, you will never know when you have a "complete" understanding however well a current theory is supported. That is one of the values of philosophy (but has now sortof become "scientific method"). No, he did not write this, and I assume he didn't mean this either. This is a stereotypical discussion in gaming boards, he desperately wants to be right, probably because he got mocked for his views by (natural) scientists somewhen in his life. I can totally relate to that, yet it doesn't help it. Someone already pointed it out, there are tight definitions of what a theory is, what is counted as observation, how any observation can be interpreted and so on and so forth. This is the basic stuff you get taught and learn from day 1. He completely throws around terms, which he doesn't understand, then proceeds to to mock people, who're not used to discussing topics like this in a foreign language. Obviously, we can not help but lose here. Not saying I have experience in this field either, or that I'd be good enough to really explain the difference between having assumptions and creating a theory, or stating a deterministic (natural) law. This is a long way and he portrays "science" as static, stubborn approach. Thing is, science itself is a very vague term. He quotes sources about Galilei, Kepler and others, yet I wouldn't classify them as scientists in a modern sense. Science, its methods and experiments changed and will change in the future. It's a self reflecting process. If it wasn't, the hysteria about not being able to rely on observations, rather than how they should be interpreted, would actually have a point. The way he presents his, whatever it is, let's call them theories, sound as if there's no way at all to approach any topic in any way. No assumption would be possible, there'd be no starting point, nor any reason in pursuing futher knowledge, because "we're too limited". There's the off change I did not understand his posts or the context; however, that'd be his problem, not mine. The second you are forced to derail by quoting ancient language, you lost. Can you point out which terms I don't understand and where I used foreign languages?
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My post wasn't about you. My post was about bookwyrm's useage of different terms, e.g. "facts" or theories. According to the few things I read by him, he mistook observation for facts and claimed that observations would be taken for facts, when nobody really uses the word fact to describe a single or multiple observations. Fact, just one of the examples of his quotes, would be something I use in every day language, but not whenever I try to research and make my point. I probably would not have posted, if he wouldn't use this against other posters, e.g. argueing whether or not "science" makes statements, but scientists. That's pure trolling and derailing.
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Croatia9455 Posts
On August 02 2014 07:58 bookwyrm wrote:Show nested quote +On August 02 2014 06:56 2Pacalypse- wrote:On August 02 2014 06:18 bookwyrm wrote:On August 02 2014 05:32 2Pacalypse- wrote:On August 02 2014 05:05 zulu_nation8 wrote:
but theories... are not facts, and no respectable scientist would think they are. Good thing we have our respectable TL poster to tell us what respectable scientists think. Here, just read this article and you can see there are different definitions for things like fact, theory, scientific fact, scientific theory etc. And this is exactly the semantics discussion that I did not want to get into. On August 02 2014 05:09 bookwyrm wrote:On August 02 2014 04:51 2Pacalypse- wrote:On August 02 2014 04:33 bookwyrm wrote:not examples. I'm looking for experimental design here. all you've done is profess faith that science will someday answer certain questions, what I want is a very specific example of how you might go about using the scientific method to investigate philosophical questions. I want you to be very specific, that's the point like, imagine you are writing a "materials and methods" section in a lab report On August 02 2014 04:28 2Pacalypse- wrote:
if you make some presumptions like "living is preferred to dying", "comfort is preferred to suffering" etc, science has a great deal to say. lol. "if you assume away the question, the question goes away." what if I disagree with your presumptions? that's the whole point. Like, it's more complicated than to say "comfort is better than suffering" for all sorts of obvious reasons. I might think that suffering is good because it builds character (i.e. I might be Seneca). I could think that comfort is meaningless without suffering. I could think that mankind deserves suffering because we have sinned against God. That's the whole question I'm trying to point out to you edit: also, I'm not "moving the goalposts.' I've been trying to get you to do the exact same thing for a few pages now, which you're avoiding. I've been quite consistent in what I'm asking for. Are you fucking serious? completely
I said it quite clearly: "I didn't say science can answer philosophical questions, just that it can ask them." Asking a question is very easy. I even gave you some examples of asking them.
so now you are a personification of Science? You just asked questions in English, not science. Show me how science can ask the questions. In order to do that, you have to give some sort of hint of what an experiment would look like (otherwise, it's not "science"). Experiments are how you ask questions in science. If you don't have an experiment, it's not "science asking questions" Fine, I guess I should've used "scientists" instead of "science". You win. I'm glad we got to the bottom of this. but you recognize that not all things that scientists do is science, right? like, when scientists take a shit, it's not science, it's pooping. when scientists do philosophy, that doesn't make it science. If you're going to agree about THIS, i'm not sure why you were arguing with me. Sure, I'll agree to that. But will you agree that some things that were considered philosophical issues in the past are now part of some branch of science and do you agree that will continue to happen in the future? sure, that's obvious. however in most cases I would argue that the philosophical question has merely been pushed back and not eliminated. or has changed forms in some way. or has imploded upon itself opening up several more philosophical questions in its wake. but there's no way you're going to be able to proceed from an existential claim to a universal claim of this type (i.e. to proceed from "there is an instance in which P problems have become S problems" to "all P problems will eventually become S problems") - it's at best undecidable (but actually quite obviously false).
Aren't you just calling my original point obvious? If you agreed with my previous post then you agree that science has in the past asked (and answered!) some of the philosophical questions and it will continue asking some of the philosophical questions and potentially answering them.
Sure, you can move the goalpost again and say that the philosophical question is still hiding somewhere in there (like asking endlessly a 'why' question), but we can just stop the discussion right here because you call philosophical questions those that don't have answers (those that do have been / will potentially be answered by science), I just call them a silly questions.
On August 02 2014 08:48 zulu_nation8 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 02 2014 05:41 2Pacalypse- wrote:
Didn't you learn in your first lesson in high school physics class that "theories can never be proven"? How would you go about proving the fact then and why do you think the same rule doesn't apply to them? the statement "theories can never be proven" is not a theory but a logical necessity, if a theory is not falsifiable then it's not a scientific theory because you can't empirically test it and hence has no place in science.
I think that statement has more to do with probabilities and less with logical necessities. But anyways, you didn't answer my question. Also, you've said that no respectable scientist would call a scientific theory a fact; I'd like to know why is that such a crime in everyday language that someone as esteemed as you would not respect someone's whole life work because of that.
On August 02 2014 10:49 koreasilver wrote:Show nested quote +On August 02 2014 04:42 2Pacalypse- wrote:On August 02 2014 04:22 koreasilver wrote:
Honestly, at this point the problem with this thread isn't even really about the usefulness of philosophy or science or whathaveyou, but a far more simplistic and banal problem of people not even actually taking any of this actually seriously. If you're citing Dawkins, Harris, and Krauss you're basically showing the world that you don't study any of the relevant material seriously, especially the natural sciences, since you're throwing all your weight behind someone who hasn't done any work in his field for decades and is outdated in evolutionary biology, a charlatan who wrote an awful dissertation and is considered a joke in his field, and someone who talks endlessly on topics he has absolutely no training in and is a disgrace to his field. If the best you can do it constantly and endlessly refer only to these pop culture figures then I just can't take you seriously. It would be funny if it wasn't so exasperating that some of you, who like to have the pretense that you're "defending science and the scientific method" obviously are not scientists in any shape or form. This isn't really a problem of philosophy or science. It's a problem with education, ideological demagoguery, and an absurd lack of respect for real scholarship. I'm sorry we offended your highness up there on the throne surrounded by quotations of obscure philosophers. Us normal plebs, who are denied higher education in THE NATURAL SCIENCES, have to rely on pop culture figures to guide us. Nevermind the actual arguments being presented, unless you cite an authority on these issues, you're not taking it serious enough for me to even consider arguing with! There, I fixed it for you; better now? I wasn't even talking about philosophical scholarship in the post. And yes, I'm not going to take you seriously enough to even argue with. This is the same problem that plague(d) the economics threads and cause(d) endless headache for the actual economics students on this forum because of idiot gold-standard touting libertarians, who would ceaselessly link to youtube hacks and conspiratorial nonsense like the Zeitgeist series and other assorted Austrian crap, or leftists, for who the extent of their economic education was reading chapters of Naomi Klein.
You didn't fix shit. You just found another way to feel superior to say "people I listen to are more important than people you listen to".
Would there be a difference if I didn't cite those pop culture figures as you call them, and instead quoted my friend Tom saying those exact same things? Would you again dismiss everything that was said because my friend Tom is not in your people I listen to book?
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@PoorPotato yeah but I felt the OP was really about value and so the rather flippant remark of him taking issue with people disliking it can be easily put into exactly that context: After all, it makes sense to reject something that has no value over something that does have value, but it makes no sense to reject something that does have value. The quotes that he uses in the first paragraph try to establish that philosophy has no value and so should be rejected. The OP finds fault with the rejection, but he cannot do that without questioning the underlying assumption that lead to this rejection. Your objection is fine though, since OP should have said "I take issue with them thinking x has no value and so rejecting it" rather than "I take issue with them rejecting it." This is because he goes on arguing that their rejection is unjustified rather than merely an expression of bad taste.
As for the part on value, you at first did seem to equate value with utility based on an etymological analysis of the word, but then have abandoned that in favour of arguing a kind of relativism that does not depend on any such equation. This is good, since the sole existence of certain etymological roots does not force us to change the meaning of the words as they are used today (think person vs persona, "decimate" etc). You could argue that we ought to do just that, namely understand modern words in terms of their etymological roots, but you would have to claim that those roots are somehow epistemically privileged, which I'm sure you recognize is a bit of a spurious endeavour, as most arguments for privilege tend to be. But since you abandon that, there's no problem with it and the rest of your argument is not based on any such thing.
You then argue that because some people value certain things and others do not, so therefore either everything has value "as such" as long as it was valued by someone or something at some point in time ("has the quality of valueableness") or nothing has value "as such" as long as it was not valued by someone or something at some point in time. Since this is absurd, you argue that it is better to think of a thing's value as determined by some person valuing it and reject the notion of value "as such" (just like whether a boulder is large depends on the person viewing it without there being largeness "as such"), since that would unfairly privilege one perspective over another.
I reject value "as such" for very similar reasons, even if I wouldn't make the reductio, since I don't think one can even argue that from "valuable for x" follows "valuable as such". But that doesn't commit me to the kind of relativism you argue for where "x is valuable (in some way)" and "x is not valuable (in the same way)" can both be true. This would only follow if we were to accept two additional premises, namely that (1) "x is valuable for y" leads to "x is valuable (in some way)" and (2) that "whether x is valuable (in some way) is determined by y valuing x" with a transitive relation between the two, so that the relativist (here: subjectivist) claim (3) would follow: "x is valuable for y if y values x". Since y valuing x establishes that x is being valued and so therefore valuable (in some way), but z not valuing x establishes that x is not being valued and so therefore not valuable (in the same way), so therefore "x is valuable (in some way) and "x is not valuable (in the same way)" would both be true, but only if we accept those two additional premises I mentioned.
The issue is that you implicitly accept the second premise, namely that there is no fact of the matter as to what is valuable, and instead take a person's evaluation of x as being the determinant of x's value. However, when I say "x has value (in some way, be it even 'valueable for me')", I could be wrong - the sole fact of me thinking x has value or treating it as if it had value does not make it so and vice versa, i.e. the sole fact that something has value does not mean that everyone is going to esteem it. After all, I could think that my post is of philosophical value even if in reality it sucks really hard, just as whether or not my poem is a good poem (has aesthetic value) does not depend on whether or not I think it is a good poem. Beethoven wrote music of great aesthetic value and if someone disagrees, then they have no idea what they are talking about. From the rejection of those statements follows your claim that something can only be said to have value if it was valued by someone, which you then use to draw the conclusion that there is nothing that has value independent of what we think. But that is exactly the thing you have to assume in order for that argument to work.
The same is true of the boulder analogy: Your analogy with largeness is good, but you'd have to establish that value and largeness have the same ontological status, but in order to do that you'd have to claim that there was no value "as such" and that all value is determined by the act of valuing, just as there is no largeness "as such" and that all largeness is determined by an act of comparison. So you would have to argue that there is nothing in value that would correspond to the actual height of the boulder instead of its largeness. If you make that claim, you then cannot use the boulder analogy to establish relativism since that would beg the question.
Since this post is already super long, I'm not going to get into my own arguments, but suffice to say that I do agree with you that there is no such thing as value "as such", but I think this is because there can be no value at all independent of prudential considerations (i.e. independent of what is good for us). This, however, does not commit me to relativism since I don't think "what is good for me" reduces to "what I think/desire/enjoy." It's something I poked OP about, who wants to argue exactly that, namely that philosophy does have value "as such" independent of prudential considerations. I'm looking forward to his follow up post because of that.
EDIT: Oops, didn't get to talk about wasting time. Maybe at some other time then.
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@PoorPotato
I don't argue that everyone MUST do this or that. I'm merely in the line of thinking that it's better:
1) When something is respected, it's easier, more enjoyable etc etc to pursue
2) Philosophy is valuable, we need as much of it (good philosophy and education in it, ofc) as we can. We also need less ignorance regarding philosophy, because it is running rampant
3) it is good if people respect philosophy, and it's bad if they don't
Ignoring this would be like ignoring our psychological nature, it's not about fame or anything else like that ( I'm not even a philosophy student myself, I barely have a dog in this game).
The thing is, if people disrespect science, things will change. Progress will slow down, people will waste time & follow false idols. They'll get manipulated by the ignorant.
Not respecting philosophy is the same, it's saying any reasoning is worthless, because any reasoning ultimately stems form philosophical roots. There's a great quote by Isaac Asimov:
"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"
You can go ahead and disrespect anything or live in a cave for all I care, but telling people than anything is as good as anything else is detrimental to all of us in the functioning society.
PS. I should add that I admire doing what you need without psychological support. It's just that you're applying the same standards to others, which obviously doesn't work because they're not amateur monks like you are.
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I don't argue that everyone MUST do this or that. I'm merely in the line of thinking that it's better:
1) When something is respected, it's easier, more enjoyable etc etc to pursue
2) Philosophy is valuable, we need as much of it (good philosophy and education in it, ofc) as we can. We also need less ignorance regarding philosophy, because it is running rampant
3) it is good if people respect philosophy, and it's bad if they don't
What do you mean by "better"? Better for what? Better for what you want the world to be like? You're looking at how you want the world to be and not how it actually is. Your intentions and analysis are no doubt noble and perhaps accurate, but the problem is this: when you say "the world should be this way but it isn't" you fail to see how things actually are, free of illusions and delusions and confusions, and then everything is a problem. Do you want to toil away and perhaps someday maybe solve a problem that you made up with words and logic and careful analysis, and which seems to have no end in sight, or do you want to simply not have the problem?
It's as if said to yourself, "We must arrange everything in this country so that it is all up" (or, in context, "Things always must be progressing, everyone and everything should be respected, society must be preserved and it must progress, this is good and that is bad and this good part must win! Or something terrible might happen!") I humbly submit to you sir, that this is as impossible of a problem as "We must have a piece of paper with a front and no back" or "Everything must always be increasing, and we must make it that way" or "I want a string with a right half and no left half, and if I don't get it, I'll be very upset indeed and rant about it on a forum somewhere!"
Can you see, sir, that progress and regression/stagnation give birth to each other? That you can't have one without the other? And in the same way, you can't ONLY have people that respect something, because if you did you wouldn't know that everyone was respecting it! This is because all knowledge is contrast, and so if you have nothing to contrast "respect" against (i.e. disrespect), then you can't possibly know what respect is! You need disrespecters to know that you are a respecter! You need those lowly ignorant heathens to know that you are a respectable, intelligent well-off man! Because if everyone was a respectable, intelligent, well-off man, then you would have nothing to contrast it against and so you wouldn't know that would anyone was respectable, intelligent, or well-off!
As long as you make up problems, there always will be problems. When you stop imaging them, they cease to be problems and you accept what actually is happening. This is what I mean when I say "Don't look at what should be, look at what is." You say "this is better than that, and we must do this or something terrible will happen! We really should do and really need to do this!" (also, saying that "this is better than that" is exactly the same as saying "we must do this, or we'll get the short end of the stick and won't that be horrible!") If you say that this is so, then it is so! But if you don't, then it isn't so! Please sir, can you see that?
There's no moralism in this; you can have all the problems you want and it won't bother anything one bit. But if you see that the source of all problems is in words and thoughts, then wouldn't you just stay away from them, as a child learns that the fire burns him, and so he stays away? Put your hand in the fire if you like, that's entirely your right, sir, but when your hand becomes very swollen and burned understand that you can take it out.
But some people love to have their hand in the fire. This addresses your point that I am urging everyone to give up their problems and restrictions that they put on themselves. This is not at all what I say! Get burned if you like, that's your game! And it can be a very fun game indeed ("Watch out, Louis! Don't get burned! You've gotta win and you can't lose, or else!")! But you don't have to play.
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+ Show Spoiler +@PoorPotato yeah but I felt the OP was really about value and so the rather flippant remark of him taking issue with people disliking it can be easily put into exactly that context: After all, it makes sense to reject something that has no value over something that does have value, but it makes no sense to reject something that does have value. The quotes that he uses in the first paragraph try to establish that philosophy has no value and so should be rejected. The OP finds fault with the rejection, but he cannot do that without questioning the underlying assumption that lead to this rejection. Your objection is fine though, since OP should have said "I take issue with them thinking x has no value and so rejecting it" rather than "I take issue with them rejecting it." This is because he goes on arguing that their rejection is unjustified rather than merely an expression of bad taste.
As for the part on value, you at first did seem to equate value with utility based on an etymological analysis of the word, but then have abandoned that in favour of arguing a kind of relativism that does not depend on any such equation. This is good, since the sole existence of certain etymological roots does not force us to change the meaning of the words as they are used today (think person vs persona, "decimate" etc). You could argue that we ought to do just that, namely understand modern words in terms of their etymological roots, but you would have to claim that those roots are somehow epistemically privileged, which I'm sure you recognize is a bit of a spurious endeavour, as most arguments for privilege tend to be. But since you abandon that, there's no problem with it and the rest of your argument is not based on any such thing.
You then argue that because some people value certain things and others do not, so therefore either everything has value "as such" as long as it was valued by someone or something at some point in time ("has the quality of valueableness") or nothing has value "as such" as long as it was not valued by someone or something at some point in time. Since this is absurd, you argue that it is better to think of a thing's value as determined by some person valuing it and reject the notion of value "as such" (just like whether a boulder is large depends on the person viewing it without there being largeness "as such"), since that would unfairly privilege one perspective over another.
I reject value "as such" for very similar reasons, even if I wouldn't make the reductio, since I don't think one can even argue that from "valuable for x" follows "valuable as such". But that doesn't commit me to the kind of relativism you argue for where "x is valuable (in some way)" and "x is not valuable (in the same way)" can both be true. This would only follow if we were to accept two additional premises, namely that (1) "x is valuable for y" leads to "x is valuable (in some way)" and (2) that "whether x is valuable (in some way) is determined by y valuing x" with a transitive relation between the two, so that the relativist (here: subjectivist) claim (3) would follow: "x is valuable for y if y values x". Since y valuing x establishes that x is being valued and so therefore valuable (in some way), but z not valuing x establishes that x is not being valued and so therefore not valuable (in the same way), so therefore "x is valuable (in some way) and "x is not valuable (in the same way)" would both be true, but only if we accept those two additional premises I mentioned.
The issue is that you implicitly accept the second premise, namely that there is no fact of the matter as to what is valuable, and instead take a person's evaluation of x as being the determinant of x's value. However, when I say "x has value (in some way, be it even 'valueable for me')", I could be wrong - the sole fact of me thinking x has value or treating it as if it had value does not make it so and vice versa, i.e. the sole fact that something has value does not mean that everyone is going to esteem it. After all, I could think that my post is of philosophical value even if in reality it sucks really hard, just as whether or not my poem is a good poem (has aesthetic value) does not depend on whether or not I think it is a good poem. Beethoven wrote music of great aesthetic value and if someone disagrees, then they have no idea what they are talking about. From the rejection of those statements follows your claim that something can only be said to have value if it was valued by someone, which you then use to draw the conclusion that there is nothing that has value independent of what we think. But that is exactly the thing you have to assume in order for that argument to work.
The same is true of the boulder analogy: Your analogy with largeness is good, but you'd have to establish that value and largeness have the same ontological status, but in order to do that you'd have to claim that there was no value "as such" and that all value is determined by the act of valuing, just as there is no largeness "as such" and that all largeness is determined by an act of comparison. So you would have to argue that there is nothing in value that would correspond to the actual height of the boulder instead of its largeness. If you make that claim, you then cannot use the boulder analogy to establish relativism since that would beg the question.
Since this post is already super long, I'm not going to get into my own arguments, but suffice to say that I do agree with you that there is no such thing as value "as such", but I think this is because there can be no value at all independent of prudential considerations (i.e. independent of what is good for us). This, however, does not commit me to relativism since I don't think "what is good for me" reduces to "what I think/desire/enjoy." It's something I poked OP about, who wants to argue exactly that, namely that philosophy does have value "as such" independent of prudential considerations. I'm looking forward to his follow up post because of that.
EDIT: Oops, didn't get to talk about wasting time. Maybe at some other time then.
If you please, sir, why do you make the distinction between "value as such" and "valuable for x"? They are the same! There can't just be a thing which has value without an environment, without things around it, and so the x is always present, and the object in question is never with out the "for x", and so this idea of "value as such" or "inherent value" is entirely conjured up as a thought experiment, it is imaginary. Perhaps this is what is meant by "arguing in a vacuum", or in a world without surroundings (Indeed, how do you know what a thing is? You only know it as distinct from other things, or from its environment!) Due to the imaginary nature of this thing without other things, different people hold different beliefs about it and make up different proofs for it, and that is why people are in constant logical disagreement and confusion and strife and argument over what it means exactly.
It's as if a guy called Steve said a unicorn is a brown creature with one spiral horn, and a guy called Kyle denounced this as utter hogwash and that actually it is white with one cone-shaped horn. Of course there is disagreement, the thing itself doesn't exist! And so in the same way, disputes over "value as such" and its nature are completely unavoidable.
From this we can see that if there is dispute over something, then neither side can be right, because if "right" really was right, it would be so unmistakably distinguishable from "wrong" that there could be no argument! And if "wrong' really was wrong, it would be so unmistakably distinguishable from "right" that there could be no argument! When you see a tree, you don't argue with your friend about if it's a tree or not, because obviously it is so, it's right there in front of you plain as day! The only thing that you do argue about is its classification, its use, its value, who should or should not respect it, and all the rest of the unending talk of logicians and thinkers.
You say that I or anyone can be "wrong" about if something is useful to me or not, and that I have to know what is good for me or what I enjoy or what I desire in order for something to be useful. Please, let's look at an example.
If I find a moldy old pinecone on the ground with ants crawling around in it and which smells vaguely of piss, and I thoroughly enjoy sticking it up my ass, isn't that useful to me? Obviously it is, and obviously I can't be "wrong" about it either. What is this standard to which you compare my evaluation? Is it your evaluation? Is it someone else's evaluation? How can we find out? Shall we ask another man who agrees with you? If he agrees with you, then how can we know his evaluation was fair? Shall we ask a man who agrees with me? If he agrees with me then how can we know that his evaluation was fair? Shall we ask a man who agrees with neither of us? If he agrees with neither of us, then how can we know that his evaluation was fair? Shall we ask a man who agrees with both of us? If he agrees with both of us, how can we know that his evaluation was fair?
At the end of this interminable argument and confusion and misunderstanding, we don't come any closer to any type of truth or idea of what right or wrong are. Indeed, where can you draw the line between right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable? And who is to decide this absolute truth? You? Me? A hampster? A cactus? From the point of view of "me", that which preserves me, my desires, and all the rest is "right" or "acceptable" and that which destroys me, my desires, and all the rest is "wrong" or "unacceptable". And again, if we say that something is acceptable if something has a certain quality of acceptableness to it, then there is nothing that is not acceptable! And again if we say that something is unacceptable if it has a certain quality of unacceptableness to it, then there is nothing that is not unacceptable!
Going back to the moldy pinecone analogy, must I think "oh yes I desire and enjoy this thing, it is good for me!" for the thing to be useful? Obviously not, I just use it and enjoy it and its usefulness! The trouble here is that you stipulate that I must first say "this is useful" for it to be useful to me. Does beaver have to say "This wood is useful to me, and so it is good for me to use it and I desire to use it and I enjoy using it!"? Or what about a starving dog when he finds freshly found meat? Must he say anything? Of course not, he just uses it! And in the same way if something is useful to me, I don't have to think about its usefulness, I just use it.
You say that I need to correct my boulder analogy with clarification regarding comparison the values of things. How can you understand the value of something without comparison, that is, without any terms with which to understand it?
The only way you know anything is in terms of something else. For example, you know that a road 200 miles long is a long way only because you can put it in terms something you do know, which is miles, and you only know miles in terms of something else, maybe an experience walking a mile or something like that, and only know the experience of walking a mile in terms of the breeze at your back, the soreness in your feet after walking such a distance, or whatever, and so on! There is again no knowledge "as such", it is entirely made up, like the tooth fairy and this is why there is so much argument about it!
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If you can actually and convincingly show that there cannot be a thing like "value as such", or "knowledge as such" you probably get a position at an ivy league university. It is a highly debated topic with regard to moral realism, objective aesthetical value, knowledge contextualism/relativism/invariantism, etc. Take the philpapers survey for example:
39% believe there are platonic abstract objects
41% believe there are objective aesthetic values
31% believe in knowledge invariantism
56% accept or tend to moral realism
...
Also a standard problem for "The only way you know anything is in terms of something else" is qualia. If you are in pain, you know that you are in pain. There is nothing more needed than being in pain, to know that you experience pain. Pain is not understood in terms of something else. There are workarounds for this (functionalism could be used to do that, for example), but I did not came across one that I found convincing.
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From this we can see that if there is dispute over something, then neither side can be right, because if "right" really was right, it would be so unmistakably distinguishable from "wrong" that there could be no argument! And if "wrong' really was wrong, it would be so unmistakably distinguishable from "right" that there could be no argument! From the sole fact that people disagree about something doesn't mean that there can be no right or wrong answer about it. There is plenty of disagreement about plain matters of fact.
You say that I or anyone can be "wrong" about if something is useful to me or not, and that I have to know what is good for me or what I enjoy or what I desire in order for something to be useful. I have never said anything about usefulness, except that you can't reduce value to utility based on some etymological argument about the word "value". But let's just accept that for the sake of argument. You then say that you don't have to evaluate something as useful for it to be useful, which I of course agree with because anything else would be the kind of relativism you were arguing for in your previous post. It is therefore surprising to me that you say something like utility (and I guess value) does not depend on whether or not we think or treat it as useful, since that also undermines your claim that we cannot be wrong about something being useful/valuable.
And again, if we say that something is acceptable if something has a certain quality of acceptableness to it, then there is nothing that is not acceptable! And again if we say that something is unacceptable if it has a certain quality of unacceptableness to it, then there is nothing that is not unacceptable! I've already addressed that and I'm rather disappointed that you ignored it. I'm generally a bit disappointed by the quality of your reply, seeing as your first post made some good points, but here you actually write things like 'valuable for x = value as such' with 'value as such' being imaginary but 'valuable for x' being 'always present'.
You say that I need to correct my boulder analogy with clarification regarding comparison the values of things. How can you understand the value of something without comparison, that is, without any terms with which to understand it? The point was not to ask for a correction of your analogy "with clarification regarding comparison the values of things", but rather pointing out that it's begging the question. You assume value is like the largeness of the boulder rather than the height of the boulder and then draw the conclusion that there is no value "as such", which is the thing you already assumed as a premise by saying that it is like the largeness instead of the height.
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On August 02 2014 18:47 2Pacalypse- wrote:Show nested quote +On August 02 2014 07:58 bookwyrm wrote:On August 02 2014 06:56 2Pacalypse- wrote:On August 02 2014 06:18 bookwyrm wrote:On August 02 2014 05:32 2Pacalypse- wrote:On August 02 2014 05:05 zulu_nation8 wrote:
but theories... are not facts, and no respectable scientist would think they are. Good thing we have our respectable TL poster to tell us what respectable scientists think. Here, just read this article and you can see there are different definitions for things like fact, theory, scientific fact, scientific theory etc. And this is exactly the semantics discussion that I did not want to get into. On August 02 2014 05:09 bookwyrm wrote:On August 02 2014 04:51 2Pacalypse- wrote:On August 02 2014 04:33 bookwyrm wrote:not examples. I'm looking for experimental design here. all you've done is profess faith that science will someday answer certain questions, what I want is a very specific example of how you might go about using the scientific method to investigate philosophical questions. I want you to be very specific, that's the point like, imagine you are writing a "materials and methods" section in a lab report On August 02 2014 04:28 2Pacalypse- wrote:
if you make some presumptions like "living is preferred to dying", "comfort is preferred to suffering" etc, science has a great deal to say. lol. "if you assume away the question, the question goes away." what if I disagree with your presumptions? that's the whole point. Like, it's more complicated than to say "comfort is better than suffering" for all sorts of obvious reasons. I might think that suffering is good because it builds character (i.e. I might be Seneca). I could think that comfort is meaningless without suffering. I could think that mankind deserves suffering because we have sinned against God. That's the whole question I'm trying to point out to you edit: also, I'm not "moving the goalposts.' I've been trying to get you to do the exact same thing for a few pages now, which you're avoiding. I've been quite consistent in what I'm asking for. Are you fucking serious? completely
I said it quite clearly: "I didn't say science can answer philosophical questions, just that it can ask them." Asking a question is very easy. I even gave you some examples of asking them.
so now you are a personification of Science? You just asked questions in English, not science. Show me how science can ask the questions. In order to do that, you have to give some sort of hint of what an experiment would look like (otherwise, it's not "science"). Experiments are how you ask questions in science. If you don't have an experiment, it's not "science asking questions" Fine, I guess I should've used "scientists" instead of "science". You win. I'm glad we got to the bottom of this. but you recognize that not all things that scientists do is science, right? like, when scientists take a shit, it's not science, it's pooping. when scientists do philosophy, that doesn't make it science. If you're going to agree about THIS, i'm not sure why you were arguing with me. Sure, I'll agree to that. But will you agree that some things that were considered philosophical issues in the past are now part of some branch of science and do you agree that will continue to happen in the future? sure, that's obvious. however in most cases I would argue that the philosophical question has merely been pushed back and not eliminated. or has changed forms in some way. or has imploded upon itself opening up several more philosophical questions in its wake. but there's no way you're going to be able to proceed from an existential claim to a universal claim of this type (i.e. to proceed from "there is an instance in which P problems have become S problems" to "all P problems will eventually become S problems") - it's at best undecidable (but actually quite obviously false). Aren't you just calling my original point obvious? If you agreed with my previous post then you agree that science has in the past asked (and answered!) some of the philosophical questions and it will continue asking some of the philosophical questions and potentially answering them.
No, we don't agree. see the last ten pages. we can go back to the bit where I ask you for an example of an experiment and you spend five posts trying to avoid it, if you like
you provided a list of philosophical questions yourself, none of which can be "asked" in a well formed manner by science. make an experiment that asks one of those questions, and I'll concede defeat. I thought I had you licked but you seem to have forgotten overnight that you lost.
you want to divide questions into a) scientific questions and b) silly questions. here's a question: Should I punch you in the face? It's not a particularly silly questions. Nor can you use science to answer it. You lose man, sorry.
edit: also I've already addressed the points. please go back and read my last post, specifically about "proceeding from an existential to a universal claim". That rebuts your most recent post in advance. Since only stubborn people who don't read are left arguing with me, I'm unsubscribing, I think i've made my point and the fun is running out.
On August 03 2014 00:49 Prog wrote:
If you can actually and convincingly show that there cannot be a thing like "value as such", or "knowledge as such" you probably get a position at an ivy league university
no you wouldn't, we already had the 70s, saying those things is just a cliche
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PoorPotato, I rest my case where my claim is more than enough to convice any normal person as it should. Arguing about whether value exists with a monk-like person doesn't come into it, so whatever.
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On August 03 2014 01:31 bookwyrm wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2014 00:49 Prog wrote:
If you can actually and convincingly show that there cannot be a thing like "value as such", or "knowledge as such" you probably get a position at an ivy league university no you wouldn't, we already had the 70s, saying those things is just a cliche
It is not about saying this things, it is about actually and convincingly showing that they are true. The debate is still really big in academic philosophy currently. It's just that noone has an overwhelmingly convincing argument for either side.
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On August 03 2014 01:39 Prog wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2014 01:31 bookwyrm wrote:On August 03 2014 00:49 Prog wrote:
If you can actually and convincingly show that there cannot be a thing like "value as such", or "knowledge as such" you probably get a position at an ivy league university no you wouldn't, we already had the 70s, saying those things is just a cliche It is not about saying this things, it is about actually and convincingly showing that they are true. The debate is still really big in academic philosophy currently. It's just that noone has a overwhelmingly convincing argument for either side.
ah ok. I don't like academic philosophers I think they are pretty much useless. There's obviously no way to "prove" anything like that, if they are really engaged in that activity I think they are a waste of space.
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EPT
