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Since there is only one or two people in this thread that seem to have the desire, and maybe the capability, to actually argue points, i think there is no point in continuing for me. I'l quote a few of the "philosopher" arguments thrown around in the last page that IMO show part of the reason philosophy is viewed in a not so good light these days. Some great minds operating in the field of philosophy there might be, but the students of philosophy...oh dear.
On July 30 2014 05:28 corumjhaelen wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2014 04:53 Sapphire.lux wrote:
On the subject of "mind" i'd recommend Sam Harris, a philosopher that tackles subjects such as free will and death and many others. A PhD in cognitive neuroscience. Yeah I think him and Dawkins and co are among the most idiotic people who ever graced the world of their opinion. He doesn't tackle it, he mubo jumboes some stuff and tries to pass it as an explanation. And I'm an atheist. Edit : Dawkins is as far as i know okay as an evolutionnary biologist obviously.
I've heard religious extremists have more grace then this. But since the subject is philosophy, great arguments mate! Way to throw more dirt on the already poor image philosophy has now days.
On July 30 2014 09:21 IgnE wrote:
You are "scientifically literate" which amounts to understanding some useful facts that you can use to build things that work and you know some fables about how people "discovered" some scientific laws.
That's part of it but not the most important part. The critical point about it is understanding WHY science is done the way it is done and WHY the scientific method is so important. It's about having a rational mind the protects you from, to quote our dear philosopher corumjhaelen: "mumbo jumbo" along with superstition, currents of thought that don't lead anywhere (read Richard Feynman)
On July 30 2014 09:35 IgnE wrote:
His atheism books are less intelligent
You must consider yourself very intelligent to give such a clear verdict. You'l probably win this years world's top thinker award.
On July 30 2014 14:35 koreasilver wrote:
Harris' writings on anything is pretty awful. I've looked through his Ph.D thesis before and it would honestly be funny if it wasn't so alarming that such a poor scholar is such a popular "public intellectual". Out of all the popular "New Atheist" figures I think he's probably the worst out of all of them as he isn't just ignorant of things outside of his own field but even in his own field he's completely irrelevant.
And on the point of "obscurantism", I think it's a valid concern but the way a lot of people fling that word around is basically as a self-justification for talking shit about people who they just can't understand because of their general ignorance.
This one i quoted because it's just such a great example of irony lol
Anyway, OP, this is a big part why Philosophy (the students of) is seen in a bad light by other disciplines (the students of). You would expect to find the kind of people that you could talk all night to with a couple of bottles of wine and have a great conversation based on reason and arguments. The reality however is different; a lot of them just learn to speak in quotes from hundred year old currents of thought, and when that display of argumentative power and intellect doesn't do the job you get the kind of thing i quoted above.
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WWRFS 2:
+ Show Spoiler +What Would Richard Feynman Say 2: It is not direclty adressing the topic right now but it comes reasonably close to it i think and hey its Feynman ^^
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Croatia9517 Posts
On July 30 2014 19:42 son1dow wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2014 18:38 2Pacalypse- wrote:
Say what you will about that quote, but the fact is that scientists don't need philosophy to do science; while philosophers absolutely rely on science to do philosophy. That wouldn't be relevant to proving his quote was any less dumb, or that philosophy was not a worthy discipline, even if it was true. I was going to write up some arguments, but considering that you didn't really respond to much and just incited discussion, I have to ask first: Are you, by any chance, trolling?
His quote wasn't dumb and I think you misunderstood it which I tried to clarify with my, granted tongue-in-cheek, remark.
The point he was trying to make is that the areas in which philosophy had a stronghold in the past (like consciousness, morality, causality etc.) are becoming more and more scientific questions, rather than ponderings of philosophers sitting in their armchairs.
And for philosophers to stay relevant in those fields, they have to keep up with the latest science in order to have the best available opinions on the subject. Science keeps making progress, regardless of the philosophy, and the philosophers are the ones that have to keep up with science. So with that in mind, the quote you labeled as 'dumb' makes much more sense now, because it's obvious that people who are at the forefront in science working on those problems are the ones who are most likely to have the best available opinion on them.
One example where this was relevant was in the discussions about Lawrence Krauss' latest book, "The Universe From Nothing", where he got critiqued heavily by philosophers for having the "wrong" definition of 'nothing'. Here's an interesting talk where he addresses such critiques: http://yotu.be/PL84Yg2dNsg?t=22m55s
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On July 30 2014 23:50 Sapphire.lux wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2014 09:21 IgnE wrote:
You are "scientifically literate" which amounts to understanding some useful facts that you can use to build things that work and you know some fables about how people "discovered" some scientific laws. That's part of it but not the most important part. The critical point about it is understanding WHY science is done the way it is done and WHY the scientific method is so important. It's about having a rational mind the protects you from, to quote our dear philosopher corumjhaelen: "mumbo jumbo" along with superstition, currents of thought that don't lead anywhere (read Richard Feynman) You must consider yourself very intelligent to give such a clear verdict. You'l probably win this years world's top thinker award. Thank you.
But you don't even do science. You don't understand why science is done the way it is done because you've never done it, and you just blindly accept the stories that people tell you about how it was done. They are fables told to children. Scientists have routinely, throughout the centuries, done things that contradicted well-confirmed theories. They have used instruments for experiments that have no theoretical basis for why the experiments should indicate what they indicate. Huge quantities of data are amassed, with the great majority of data, data that doesn't confirm accepted theory, being thrown out.
Why are you so unwilling to entertain the idea that Sam Harris is a bad scholar? Do you read scientific journals? Would you know what a good scholar looks like?
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On July 31 2014 00:44 IgnE wrote:
They are fables told to children. Scientists have routinely, throughout the centuries, done things that contradicted well-confirmed theories.
NO? I will speak for physics now ("all science is either physics or stamp collecting" - Ernest Rutherford)
Scientists have [b]not contradicted well confirmed theories!
So a theory is accepted and not pure imagination if it agrees with experiment (remember thats ALL that matters)
If it agrees with experiment well then you CAN'T contradict it in a sense you're implying.
This is the most important part the example:
So Classical Mechanics. IT WORKS! Okay classical mechanics works excellent we can describe gyroscopes, all kinds of motion and whatever very nicely.
So you may say oh hey thats wrong it has been contradicted. We have to take relativity into account. It has not been contradicted in a sense youre implying. It is still right in the first approximation. Special Relativity still INCLUDES classical mechanics.
If a well confirmed theory is contradicted, it wasn't freakin well confirmed.
The experiments that confirmed it if they havent been done terribly wrong ARE STILL RELEVANT
I think its rather interesting that you tell him he doesnt know what science and the scientific method is. There is not much to it.
If it disagrees with experiment it's wrong period
Edit: I highly doubt any physicist would throw out data that contradicts modern physics (only one and the most primitive reason perhaps) simply because there would be a nobel price waiting for him. In case you adress to certain social sciences (i did read an article in the newspaper about this "scientist" who faked a bunch of data (here i would usually refer to feynman once again) but i cant imagine this being the case in the harder sciences unless you give me evidence)
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On July 31 2014 01:11 Sox03 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2014 00:44 IgnE wrote:
They are fables told to children. Scientists have routinely, throughout the centuries, done things that contradicted well-confirmed theories.
NO? I will speak for physics now ("all science is either physics or stamp collecting" - Ernest Rutherford) Scientists have [b]not contradicted well confirmed theories! So a theory is accepted and not pure imagination if it agrees with experiment (remember thats ALL that matters) If it agrees with experiment well then you CAN'T contradict it in a sense you're implying. This is the most important part the example: So Classical Mechanics. IT WORKS! Okay classical mechanics works excellent we can describe gyroscopes motion and whatever very nicely. So you may say oh hey thats wrong it has been contradicted. We have to take relativity into account. It has not been contradicted in a sense youre implying. It is still right in the first approximation. Special Relativity still INCLUDES classical mechanics. If a well confirmed theory is contradicted, it wasn't freakin well confirmed okay? The experiments that confirmed it if they havent been done terribly wrong ARE RELEVANT I think its rather interesting that you tell him he doesnt know what science and the scientific method is there is not much to it. If it disagrees with experiment it's wrong period
You honestly sound like someone who has never done an experiment. You don't know what you are talking about at all. You can't redefine "contradiction" to mean "not contradiction."
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If you dont agree with the sentence well confirmed theories still remain true under the circumstances of the experiment (uncertainties, special cases whatever) and new theories have to include those because there is no way around experiment (unless the initial theory was NOT well confirmed) then sorry i cannot believe you're a man of science sorry.
If you want a serious discussion please deliver some arguments or examples.
Maybe it was just because you seem to have a different definition of contradiction and for example assume that theories are exact.
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On July 30 2014 18:38 2Pacalypse- wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2014 14:35 koreasilver wrote:On July 29 2014 17:58 Sapphire.lux wrote:
I'd add that some form of philosophy is integral to the pursuit of knowledge. The problem is, you have to have extensive knowledge on the subject matter first. So in essence, the "new" philosophers are the top, top scientific minds that are operating at the limit of our understanding of reality.
So philosophy is awesome, when done by Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss, Brian Greene, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Brian Cox, etc. is this for real? fuck me senseless I can't tell which is worse. the Muslim preachers on my university campus that seriously tried to tell me that evolution as understood by contemporary science was already laid out in the Quran, or this post. I'm going to bed. Say what you will about that quote, but the fact is that scientists don't need philosophy to do science; while philosophers absolutely rely on science to do philosophy.
Right, because it's not like most of the natural sciences already presuppose particular ontological and metaphysical stances that ground their methodologies, right? This is like the problem of logical positivism from decades ago, but at least the Anglo-philosophical community were able to see, understand, and accept the problem. The contemporary pop-culture scientism riff-raff isn't just stupid because many of these figures are hardly brilliant, but also because they're essentially intellectual barbarians. Feyerabend wasn't wrong about the new generation of scientists in this regard. Listing Krauss as someone who does awesome philosophy is pretty much analogous to an American Bible Belt redneck listing some pop-culture creationist, who has no background in evolutionary biology, as someone who does awesome science.
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There are very few outright contradictions, as in the history of science, opposing evidence is usually reconciled into the existing framework through ad-hoc hypotheses. There is no such thing as a "confirmed" theory, it's logically impossible.
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On July 31 2014 01:31 koreasilver wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2014 18:38 2Pacalypse- wrote:On July 30 2014 14:35 koreasilver wrote:On July 29 2014 17:58 Sapphire.lux wrote:
I'd add that some form of philosophy is integral to the pursuit of knowledge. The problem is, you have to have extensive knowledge on the subject matter first. So in essence, the "new" philosophers are the top, top scientific minds that are operating at the limit of our understanding of reality.
So philosophy is awesome, when done by Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss, Brian Greene, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Brian Cox, etc. is this for real? fuck me senseless I can't tell which is worse. the Muslim preachers on my university campus that seriously tried to tell me that evolution as understood by contemporary science was already laid out in the Quran, or this post. I'm going to bed. Say what you will about that quote, but the fact is that scientists don't need philosophy to do science; while philosophers absolutely rely on science to do philosophy. Right, because it's not like most of the natural sciences already presuppose particular ontological and metaphysical stances that ground their methodologies, right? This is like the problem of logical positivism from decade ago, but at least the Anglo-philosophical community were able to see, understand, and accept the problem. The contemporary pop-culture scientism riff-raff isn't just stupid because many of these figures are hardly brilliant, but because they're essentially intellectual barbarians. Feyerabend wasn't wrong about the new generation of scientists in this regard.
What he says is mostly correct, technology has become so important and prominent that every philosopher has to recognize its influence on today's world. It would help a scientist tremendously if he reads up on some philosophy of science, but it's not required. On the other hand, our society is dominated by scientific ways of thinking, and it would be ignorant for philosophers of any kind to be unfamiliar with its fundamentals. Likewise an overwhelming majority of past great philosophers had at very least an intellectual interest if not expertise in a technical field like math or science.
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On July 31 2014 01:31 zulu_nation8 wrote:
There is no such thing as a "confirmed" theory, it's logically impossible.
I agree the usuage of that term was probably not a good idea. I wanted to refer to theories that work so well that one could almost assume they are "fact". I think thats what IngE meant too.
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When I first viewed the thread it was like people sitting at a table having a discussion. I come in a couple of days later to see the table flipped over and people yelling expletives at each other while Sam Harris is prancing in the background.
5/5 for the shit show this has become. 
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On July 31 2014 01:36 Sox03 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2014 01:31 zulu_nation8 wrote:
There is no such thing as a "confirmed" theory, it's logically impossible. I agree the usuage of that term was probably not a good idea. I wanted to refer to theories that work so well that one could almost assume they are "fact". I think thats what IngE meant too.
If you look at the history of physics, those theories don't exist.
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On July 31 2014 01:36 zulu_nation8 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2014 01:31 koreasilver wrote:On July 30 2014 18:38 2Pacalypse- wrote:On July 30 2014 14:35 koreasilver wrote:On July 29 2014 17:58 Sapphire.lux wrote:
I'd add that some form of philosophy is integral to the pursuit of knowledge. The problem is, you have to have extensive knowledge on the subject matter first. So in essence, the "new" philosophers are the top, top scientific minds that are operating at the limit of our understanding of reality.
So philosophy is awesome, when done by Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss, Brian Greene, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Brian Cox, etc. is this for real? fuck me senseless I can't tell which is worse. the Muslim preachers on my university campus that seriously tried to tell me that evolution as understood by contemporary science was already laid out in the Quran, or this post. I'm going to bed. Say what you will about that quote, but the fact is that scientists don't need philosophy to do science; while philosophers absolutely rely on science to do philosophy. Right, because it's not like most of the natural sciences already presuppose particular ontological and metaphysical stances that ground their methodologies, right? This is like the problem of logical positivism from decade ago, but at least the Anglo-philosophical community were able to see, understand, and accept the problem. The contemporary pop-culture scientism riff-raff isn't just stupid because many of these figures are hardly brilliant, but because they're essentially intellectual barbarians. Feyerabend wasn't wrong about the new generation of scientists in this regard. What he says is mostly correct, technology has become so important and prominent that every philosopher has to recognize its influence on today's world. It would help a scientist tremendously if he reads up on some philosophy of science, but it's not required. On the other hand, our society is dominated by scientific ways of thinking, and it would be ignorant for philosophers of any kind to be unfamiliar with its fundamentals. Likewise an overwhelming majority of past great philosophers had at very least an intellectual interest if not expertise in a technical field like math or science.
Yeah, you don't have to actually be aware of your own ontological and metaphysical presuppositions to simply do your own work. I don't mind that and I really don't care if someone in the natural sciences is ignorant of their own latent philosophical positions. It's not necessary to know and a lot of the time it isn't relevant. But that doesn't change the fact that they do possess them, and it does get annoying when they start talking in conversations like this completely blind to it. A lot of contemporary philosophy does deal with the natural sciences anyway, both in the analytic and continental traditions, and it's not as if Western philosophy was ever completely divorced from it.
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Scientists take philosophical positions derived from empirical activity, which is more philosophically noble than what moral philosophers can claim.
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On July 31 2014 01:22 Sox03 wrote:
If you dont agree with the sentence well confirmed theories still remain true under the circumstances of the experiment (uncertainties, special cases whatever) and new theories have to include those because there is no way around experiment (unless the initial theory was NOT well confirmed) then sorry i cannot believe you're a man of science sorry.
If you want a serious discussion please deliver some arguments or examples.
Maybe it was just because you seem to have a different definition of contradiction and for example assume that theories are exact.
You are refusing to engage with the real challenge here. Classical mehanics is an imperfect description of reproducible behavior not a true description of reality. Nor does this tower of science babel you are attempting to construct save you. In what way did Galileo "include" old theories into his new paradigm? He completely upended the old, using methods that had no theoretical underpinnings.
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On July 31 2014 01:50 zulu_nation8 wrote:
Scientists take philosophical positions derived from empirical activity, which is more philosophically noble than what moral philosophers can claim.
I don't think most scientists think much about philosophy. Certainly they don't automatically update their ontologies based on new empirical evidence (what Badiou would call the process of the conditioning of philosophy by the truth procedure generated from an Event). Most scientists go about doing science just fine while continuing to subscribe to basically nineteenth century ontologies and epistemologies which haven't really felt the impact of 20th century science (because individual scientists don't work on "science," they work on a tiny piece of science and it simply doesn't matter to them for what they do, which is mostly very tedious)
On July 30 2014 23:43 MoonfireSpam wrote:
Can any of you guys recommend a brief summary book of some of this stuff? (Think something like Bill Brysons - Short History of Nearly Everything). Because actually I'm ignorant on the topic and my views come from 2 philosophy students who I'd had random discussions with.
Sorry, it's impossible  you either have to care, or you don't care, which is also fine. Whatever you do don't trust the philosophy students, they don't know anything and they're trained to keep it that way.
If you're gonna do philosophy you have to want it. I don't even think that philosophy can be supported by institutions, because if philosophy is done right it's dangerous and the institutions don't want it. Institutionalized philosophy is therefore either 1) imperial propaganda or 2) irrelevant scholasticism
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On July 31 2014 02:27 bookwyrm wrote:Sorry, it's impossible you either have to care, or you don't care, which is also fine. Whatever you do don't trust the philosophy students, they don't know anything and they're trained to keep it that way. If you're gonna do philosophy you have to want it. I don't even think that philosophy can be supported by institutions, because if philosophy is done right it's dangerous and the institutions don't want it. Institutionalized philosophy is therefore either 1) imperial propaganda or 2) irrelevant scholasticism
You can't learn philosophy by yourself.
Moonfire- you're going to have to be more specific about what you want.
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In my opinion there just is no challenge. I am well aware of the fact that classical mechanics is imperfect. Is your goal to get a "perfect" mathematical theory? Claiming that alone would imply that mathematics itself is indeed the language of the universe and it would imply a lot of other things that make me very skeptical if we will ever be able to know.
I mean i dont think any theory in physics is accurate but i am happy with what we get, because it seems to me that the level of precision is pretty high.
I dont know much about Galileo so i dont know what he did exactly. If we go one step further you get the classical mechanics example i mentioned earlier.
What i dont understand aswell is what you mean with my tower of science babel?
People are working hard to figure out the best possible models about our universe and everything in it.
Models are not exact. Sometimes you linearize stuff. I am well aware of that but i dont really see where the problem is?
I think it's really impressive and wonderful how much we got to know in the last couple of years esp because of the natural sciences. It's not perfect but it is as best as they could get until know and it will probably only get better over time.
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On July 31 2014 02:45 Jerubaal wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2014 02:27 bookwyrm wrote:Sorry, it's impossible you either have to care, or you don't care, which is also fine. Whatever you do don't trust the philosophy students, they don't know anything and they're trained to keep it that way. If you're gonna do philosophy you have to want it. I don't even think that philosophy can be supported by institutions, because if philosophy is done right it's dangerous and the institutions don't want it. Institutionalized philosophy is therefore either 1) imperial propaganda or 2) irrelevant scholasticism You can't learn philosophy by yourself. Moonfire- you're going to have to be more specific about what you want.
Luckily there are a lot of people who wrote down their thoughts in books and you can read them. Much more interesting than talking to most people who are alive today. Some people are good philosophers, but most of them aren't in philosophy departments. I've studied philosophy in school, and I've taught myself philosophy sitting in my room with an amazon account, and I can assure you I learned much more philosophy the second way (and had to unlearn some stuff I learned the first way)
On July 31 2014 02:54 Sox03 wrote:
Sometimes you linearize stuff. I am well aware of that but i dont really see where the problem is?
hahahaha that is the whole problem! that is the scientific and philosophical revolution we are living through at this moment which is not yet complete! how to think nonlinearity! it's the whole problem!
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