EPTAlso saying something is evolutionnary might sometimes help to understand its nature, but it answers more the question of "where does it come from ?" than "what is it ?" which remains undoutebdly in the domain of philosophy. So to come back to the initial question, while I'm not sure philosophy is "useful", and frankly I don't really care, but I do doubt philosophy of knowledge, political philosophy or ethics for instance will ever fall out of its realm.
Philosophy and Why I Think It Matters - Page 4
| Blogs > TheGloob |
|
corumjhaelen
France6884 Posts
Also saying something is evolutionnary might sometimes help to understand its nature, but it answers more the question of "where does it come from ?" than "what is it ?" which remains undoutebdly in the domain of philosophy. So to come back to the initial question, while I'm not sure philosophy is "useful", and frankly I don't really care, but I do doubt philosophy of knowledge, political philosophy or ethics for instance will ever fall out of its realm. | ||
|
Jerubaal
United States7684 Posts
Unfortunately, we have undergone what, in my mind, appear to be a series of bait and switches where this narrow slice of understanding has come to view itself as the totality of all knowledge. If you think that we need a new kind of science that thinks it can do all the things you say it can, that's fine, but it bears no resemblance to the natural science of Dawkins and de Grasse. To further respond to IgnE, Dawkins et al must believe that there is no use in a field such as epistemology or that they are merely provisional until they are subsumed by a harder science. To respond to the discussion on mathematics, it's worth thinking about the previous incarnations of education. We should call "the liberal arts"- logic, rhetoric, mathematics, music, philosophy poetry, among others- are the real sciences. The disciplines engaged in learning what actual truth is. Of course, most of them achieve this by being self-contained systems, like logic and rhetoric. They are perfect truths, but only within their frame of reference. Mathematics is like this, but, of course, has a much wider purview than the others and can adapt whatever "system", it's operating in. Philosophy is the set of all sets, as it were. | ||
|
Sapphire.lux
Romania2620 Posts
On July 30 2014 00:50 corumjhaelen wrote: You're the one who has tried to give an answer to that, I never did. The most interesting I read, which I think is related, was written in the XVIIIth century by a German philosopher who though space couldn't have more than 3 dimensions and who was not talking about maths (so it necesseraly needs quite a few modifications to be even somewhat satisfactory), but I won't try to say something like "mathematic is" like you did, and then fall back on my unability to explain instead of recognizing that what I've read might not be the truth. Also saying something is evolutionnary might sometimes help to understand its nature, but it answers more the question of "where does it come from ?" than "what is it ?" which remains undoutebdly in the domain of philosophy. Uh? It is a natural process developed for tens of thousands of years through natural selection. You want to know more details on the process you can read how evolution works. Maybe i'm completely misunderstanding your point here though. So to come back to the initial question, while I'm not sure philosophy is "useful", and frankly I don't really care, but I do doubt philosophy of knowledge, political philosophy or ethics for instance will ever fall out of its realm. Those two are the exception i was talking about earlier. Even those 2 are completely dependent on science though as you need to know how and why certain things happen before you can call them immoral for example (like homosexuality, the rights of women, etc) But i agree this are probably the last bastion of useful philosophy. | ||
|
Prog
United Kingdom1470 Posts
| ||
|
Sapphire.lux
Romania2620 Posts
On July 30 2014 00:59 Jerubaal wrote: I'm going to have to strongly criticize Sapphire's position because he seems to be taking things far afield of modern scientific thought. The basis of modern natural science is that it is practical- provisional, if you will- knowledge that makes no reference to the actual basis of reality. This is what totally separates a Bacon from Aristotle. Aristotle is constructing a cosmology that makes reference to metaphysical truth, even if you think it seems more 'sciencey' than a Jewish Talmudic or a Hindu That's funny because the number 1 reason that is given to the refusal of funding different science experiments is "there is no practical use to came of this!!!!!" There is no immediat practical use of understanding the inflation of the Universe, or the nature of black holes. It took what? 50 years before relativity was put to any practical use? The USA canceled a superconductor supercollider because it wasn't worth it "just for science". Advancing the frontier of science and thus of human understanding has little practical value for the common folk IN THE MODERN TIME. The days of playing with toys on a table and discovering a new law that could immediately be put to use are long gone. Unfortunately, we have undergone what, in my mind, appear to be a series of bait and switches where this narrow slice of understanding has come to view itself as the totality of all knowledge. If you think that we need a new kind of science that thinks it can do all the things you say it can, that's fine, but it bears no resemblance to the natural science of Dawkins and de Grasse. I don't know what you mean by "the natural science of Dawkins and de Grasse". Maybe you could elaborate. Biology has it's field of study, astrophysics has it own as does cosmology/physical cosmology and theoretical physics. Maybe you could point out what are the things i've said that would require a new kind of science? To respond to the discussion on mathematics, it's worth thinking about the previous incarnations of education. We should call "the liberal arts"- logic, rhetoric, mathematics, music, philosophy poetry, among others- are the real sciences. The disciplines engaged in learning what actual truth is. Of course, most of them achieve this by being self-contained systems, like logic and rhetoric. They are perfect truths, but only within their frame of reference. Mathematics is like this, but, of course, has a much wider purview than the others and can adapt whatever "system", it's operating in. Philosophy is the set of all sets, as it were. As a history lesson it's a lot of fun to think this way. If anything, it shows you how far education has come since then, even though it's still fairly poor. | ||
|
Sapphire.lux
Romania2620 Posts
On July 30 2014 01:40 Prog wrote: Corumjhaelen's point can be explained, I think, by this analogy: Suppose I have never seen a knife before. Now I come across someone who has a knife and I ask him "what is this?". He answers with a detailed causel description of how the knife was forged. Then I still don't know what a knife is. I think you just explained how the knife came to be, not what it is. You say it's a tool that cuts, say, like a cats claw. The description of something is very much grounded in reality and as scientific as it gets IMO. | ||
|
Prog
United Kingdom1470 Posts
On July 30 2014 01:59 Sapphire.lux wrote: I think you just explained how the knife came to be, not what it is. You say it's a tool that cuts, say, like a cats claw. The description of something is very much grounded in reality and as scientific as it gets IMO. Exactly, I just explained how the knife came to be, not what it is. Evolution as an explanation does exactly the same: it explains how something came to be, not what it is. That's corumjhaelen's point, if I understood it correctly. Just like with the knife, if someone asks what (for instance) the mind is and you answer with evolutionary descriptions, then you just explain how the mind came to be, not what it is. | ||
|
Sapphire.lux
Romania2620 Posts
On July 30 2014 02:07 Prog wrote: Exactly, I just explained how the knife came to be, not what it is. Evolution as an explanation does exactly the same: it explains how something came to be, not what it is. That's corumjhaelen's point, if I understood it correctly. Just like with the knife, if someone asks what (for instance) the mind is and you answer with evolutionary descriptions, then you just explain how the mind came to be, not what it is. Fair enough, but the nature of what it is comes simply from biology. I though that was self evident. Evolutionary biology will give the origin and biology the description and mechanisms. My point was that it definitely is not in the field of philosophy like he so vehemently put it. | ||
|
Sapphire.lux
Romania2620 Posts
| ||
|
TheGloob
97 Posts
 Keep up the good philosophizing everyone  | ||
|
son1dow
Lithuania322 Posts
| ||
|
Jerubaal
United States7684 Posts
On July 30 2014 03:10 son1dow wrote: These discussions on the value of philosophy can be tiring though. I mean, everybody uses philosophy. Every "Philosophy has no use" smartass uses philosophy to base his arguments, everyone has ethical values, everyone bases his choices in life and discusses things using philosophy. Our societies were reshaped by ideas of philosophers just a few hundred years ago. Anything you're using logic in any way for has at least something to do with philosophy. Yet for those people doing their ignorant shitty philosophy, admitting that they could do better would be a direct affront, so they need to hide from that, even if they don't realize it. "You mean there's thousands of years worth of logical analysis and competition of ideas on topics that everyone touches? Hahah look how dumb discussion on weird thing X here is, and look at all the discoveries of science and engineering! How could that philosophy shit have any value LOL." This is an astute point, but you also need to distinguish (something I didn't do very well) between the philosophy that makes sense of the universe versus the philosophy that occurs inside of our heads and cultures. If you limit it to the second case, that we simply need to be rigorous and aware of our influences and choices, then philosophy is descriptive and predictive of human activity, but doesn't give us any real knowledge. You could still claim that immanent sources inform these assessments. I find these sorts of discussions amusing because the Scientism advanced by some here is symbiotic on much larger currents of thought. | ||
|
Prog
United Kingdom1470 Posts
On July 30 2014 02:19 Sapphire.lux wrote: Fair enough, but the nature of what it is comes simply from biology. I though that was self evident. Evolutionary biology will give the origin and biology the description and mechanisms. My point was that it definitely is not in the field of philosophy like he so vehemently put it. I'll respond here in two parts and then say something about both of them together: 1) My first reaction was this: I would neither claim that is definitely in the field of philosophy, nor that it is outside of it. It really depends on that specific thing we want to know what it is. (and in some cases it is a very contested matter which fields are relevant, for instance in questions about the mind, there are various hardline positions that disregard certain fields. I personally like to include as many as possible.) To give some examples: For something like a knife it is everyday practice and use that are for the most part constitutive for what it is. For something like a hand the physiological aspects become important, but these alone are not sufficient either, because what a hand is, is still largely determined by what we can do with a hand. This can be nicely related to the op, because if there are things whichs nature is largely (or completely) accounted by philosophy, we find another way to ascribe instrumental value to philosophy. What a good life is (the aristotelean starting point for ethics), for instance, could be one of those. 2) However, when I thought more about it it seems to me that one could also argue that philosophy is exactly the space where different scientific inputs can be melted together in answering questions about the nature of something. If I ask myself what is relevant to grasp the nature of something, I am already in the realm of philosophy. In this realm I will need to reach out to our everyday practice and also to the sciences to gather information. But what I do is not something those sciences do and it is not something we do in our everyday life. The theory of science in aristotle was already something like this. He argued that we (as philosophers) have to start with the sciences and from that starting point we can try to get a grip on the nature of things by employing logic to order and relate what all sciences give us. (Sciences included also things like metaphysics though. The greek term 'episteme' is very broad.) The main point of the study of logic by aristotle was that it should become a tool for exactly this project. This idea is also related to essentialism and still discussed today. Saul Kripke, for example, argued that necessary (and thereby essential) properties are discovered by sciences. For instance one can get to the essential properties (the nature of) a tiger by biological description of the organs and mechanisms of a tiger. (Can be found in 'Naming and Necessity'. I think this is one of the most important books of 20th century philosophy and I can only recommend reading it.) ----- Now those two approaches to a response seem somewhat contradictory, but I think the reason for this is something that already Aristotle noticed. Like I said Aristotle had this idea of the philosopher as the one who brings order based on what sciences say, but under the label sciences he also had metaphysics. The point of his was, that philosophers have two roles. For one they are the "scientists of being" as a metaphysician. And as a second role they put this metaphysic beliefs right next to the other scientific beliefs (like biology, physics,...) and start ordering and relating them with logic. So there is philosophy as an individual science (so to speak) and then there is philosophy as something that comes after the sciences. Aristotle belived that philosophers have to be both. And I think in a sense he was right. There are subject matters that call for philosophy as an independent project (ethics, for instance). And then there are subject matters that call for philosophy as a discipline that uses scientific knowledge to grasp something (the mind, for instance). This was long and felt difficult to express in a concise way, so I'm worried that I did not express myself clearly enough. Also even though I am not at all an expert on Aristotle I am always positively surprised by how his ideas fit to discussions I find myself in. This guy was a genius. | ||
|
corumjhaelen
France6884 Posts
On July 30 2014 02:19 Sapphire.lux wrote: Fair enough, but the nature of what it is comes simply from biology. I though that was self evident. Evolutionary biology will give the origin and biology the description and mechanisms. My point was that it definitely is not in the field of philosophy like he so vehemently put it. If we're talking about the mind, or consciousness or that kind of thing, I think holding biology will one day manage to describe those as self-evident is nothing but scientism. For now anyway, those are completely out of reach. | ||
|
zulu_nation8
China26351 Posts
| ||
|
Prog
United Kingdom1470 Posts
On July 30 2014 03:42 zulu_nation8 wrote: I thought the op was simply asking if philosophy is worth studying, and most of the time that answer is no, at least in the US, unless you're dead set on going to law/med/philosophy grad school. No he wasn't. He tried to show that it is in fact always worth studying because of intrinsic value, even though its unclear if it also has instrumental value. The further discussion was mostly about whether it has instrumental value and how much of that if any. Also a bit about what current academic philosophy and sciences look like in relation to the value questions. | ||
|
zulu_nation8
China26351 Posts
If you're really asking what the "use" of pure theory philosophy is, it's the same as asking what use does studying aesthetics or art history have? They make you more knowledgeable and cultured, and probably more intellectually interested. Otherwise like people have pointed out, the theory aspect of most social and natural sciences are still considered philosophy. And also, yes, Aristotle's natural philosopher would be the theoretical physicist of today. One of the defining qualities of modern education is specialization, and the same goes for philosophy. | ||
|
Jerubaal
United States7684 Posts
Of course, that is a problematic question because an immanentized universe (I just love that word these days) is made possible by previous changes vis a vis those bait and switches I referred to. | ||
|
Sapphire.lux
Romania2620 Posts
On July 30 2014 03:37 corumjhaelen wrote: If we're talking about the mind, or consciousness or that kind of thing, I think holding biology will one day manage to describe those as self-evident is nothing but scientism. For now anyway, those are completely out of reach. They are not as out of reach as you might think, but even so, thinking that if something seems very difficult to understand now they will never be scientifically understood is nothing else then narrow thinking. Religious people used to do this a lot about every phenomenon that was unknown only to end up with egg on their faces ones the subject was understood. This is called the "God of gaps". You are doing something similar here. I've already said that at the limits of our understanding, speculation...a philosophy begins. This is fine, but you (the philosopher) HAVE to know what these limits actually are and the direction they seem to lead. When you understand this, you understand that, for the mind for example, the best philosophy that can be had (the one that will most likely be grounded in reality and, well, true) will come from the top neuroscientists. Here's an interesting bit about the brain changes that happen during meditation (in religion this happens during prayer) + Show Spoiler + I'l have to mention that if you think that the mind or consciousness or anything else we don't have a clear understanding of is something to do with the divine, gods, souls or the like, then that's fine, but something that is outside of reason and the scope of this conversation(on my part). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prog, that's a great post that unfortunately i can't give it the attention it deserves now as it's getting late here. I hope i'l tackle it tomorrow. | ||
|
Sapphire.lux
Romania2620 Posts
| ||
| ||
