Tyler Durden

You're painfully incorrect on that one, which comes to no surprise. So, what method would that be, and why isn't a method germane to a fully functional philosophy, if you're not afraid of answering such questions? A philosophical system has a method. Does that automatically make it a science?

Wrong. This bullentin board is evidence of such intrusion of both fields of discourse upon one another. When Stephen Hawking is talking about the mind of God is he being scientific? And you are not being honest here: reality is whatever its constituents define it as, and religious people will define it according to their belief systems. So it's a matter of competing definitions.

Sure, as long as you work within the framework of science, you will not be capable of validating anything religious - be it the miracle events that do not recur at all, or supernatural entities that aren't amenable to empirical analysis.

Care to elaborate? I'm all ears.


Not according to neurophilosophy, or to cognitive scientists, who draw upon philosophy of mind to enrich their research in University of San Diego, where i am thinking of applying for grad school.


Personal insult deleted

link to thread that may contain a definition of philsophy.

Starboy

Yes Tyler, you have found me out. All along it has been my plan that philosophers could invoke philosophy in their explanations of mankind and yet be unable to agree as to what philosophy was. How ignorant of me.

Starboy

Tyler Durden

Then why should they? If those thinkers agreed on what should be the fundamental nature of philosophy, then that would be science, wouldn't it? Science is a social activity philosophy isn't. Think deep and honestly, chum, and try to avoid pissing in the well with illegitimate demands.

Starboy

Be still my heart. Tyler, are we possibly close to agreeing on something? That science is not philosophy? Or is my ignorance showing again?

Starboy

Hugo Holbling

Here we go again. Your realism is quaint, but that's about all. Although you have a hot-line to heaven and can match the claims of religion against reality, many scientists are not so keen to take this overtly metaphysical step. No doubt these poor fellows are practising the wrong method among the multiplicity that you presume to bring under one banner.

Starboy

I don’t have a hot line to heaven, do you? Do you talk to god? Or at least its receptionist? Why do you say that the indicated website is my website? Looks like it was created by some reality challenged philosopher. In any case it doesn't reflect my views on the subject, does it reflect yours? As far as matching the claims of religion against reality this is not something I started. If the religious would keep their spirits, soul, sin and such in the realm of the unreal that would be fine with me, but it is they that claim they are real. Not real in the first century sense but real in the twenty-first century sense. It is the religious that bring the comparison on since by claiming twenty-first century reality they are subject to the twenty-first century standard for reality, and that is ipso-facto science.

Starboy

Hugo Holbling

The point of the link was to show you that realism is not so simple as your posts suggest. The idea that science is any kind of standard for reality is a metaphysical position, usually called scientific realism and open to a barrage of difficulties, some of which are discussed at the link. Opposing what you suppose to be bunkum with metaphysics is hardly as damning as you apparently would hope, particularly with your continued usage of emotionally-laden terms like "reality challenged".

This has very little to do with philosophy, in any case: not all scientists are realists; indeed, probably not even anything close to a majority. (That may be because they are involved in or open to the philosophy of science.) You bemoan the religious for making reality-claims and then implicitly or overtly make them yourself, there being a considerable distance between asking "how do you know x is real?" and declaring x to be nonsense when compared to a mythical science that adjudicates such claims. Do you really know nothing of instrumentalism or the theological origins of your essentialism? A dose of Bohr would probably help, but i won't hold my breath.

Tyler Durden

...and you'll remove your head out of your ass faster than you can say "naive falsificationism."

As usual, you dance to the tune of a jester to avoid answering the questions i have posed.

Even though i know it's painful to discover that the feet of your idols have clay, intellectual honesty dictates my choices. Science originates from two philosophical movements in epistemology: 17th century rationalism and classical empiricism. Science inherits the methods of reasoning from rationalism, and the method of experimentation from empiricism. Today it is old philosophy in a new dress sanctioned by society.

Starboy

Hugo, based on your response I suspect that in philosophical circles you would be considered a fine philosopher, but if you were just a mediocre scientists rather than presume what I think you would ask a few simple questions. In any case, last time I checked, in this day and age if there is a question as to whether something is real no one runs to a priest or a philosopher. This is the world we live in, get over it, philosophy’s time has come and gone a long time ago.

Starboy

Starboy

Darn, I was right. I am ignorant. But seriously Tyler, I have a question for you. You be’n a philosopher and all. Is it possible for a philosopher to express a thought in a clear and simple manner without referring to a tangled web of previous philosophers? Or is that not possible, since if they did so they wouldn’t be doing philosophy?

Starboy