Starboy

Tani, so as not to repeat myself please read my posts on this entire thread. I think you will find my answer to your posts therein.

Starboy

DoubleDutchy

Starboy, your point seems to be that philosophy is pointless and that science isn't. My question to you: What is the point of science ?

King's Indian

Hello again, Starboy!
If one did, you'd just cite it as an example of philosophers disagreeing (Derrida has called him on it, by the way).
I wonder what you think you're doing, if not philosophy. How did you arrive by a claim like "philosophy has no relation to the real world, like science, and just causes muddle"? You can't have done so by experiment. I wonder if you took the same paths as these chaps:
"The right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing except that which can be said, i.e. the propositions of natural science, i.e. something which has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions."
Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus.
"I do not think that the world or the sciences would ever have suggested to me any philosophical problems. What has suggested philosophical problems to me is [sic] things which other philosophers have said about the world or sciences"
GE Moore, "An Autobiography"
"Its followers [ie the Oxford School] hold that philosophy arises from a state of perplexity, that all philosophical perplexity is NonSense [sic], that there are no genuine philosophic problems, that there are no genuine philosophic answers [...etc]".
JO (no relation to John) Wisdom, "The Metamorphosis of Philosophy"
I see your ideas have some heritage.

Take care,
KI.

To Hugo: please accept the condolences of a stranger.

Starboy

Indian, please define philosophy and then we can discuss if you think I am doing it. As far as I can tell, you see it as some sort of historic tradition where argument is merely quoting past philosophers. Why I or anyone else should find such arguments convincing is beyond me. In any case, since I have not been quoting past philosophers I do not see why you think I am doing philosophy.

I have noticed that you put words into my mouth that I did not say. If you are going to quote me please get it right. What I said is that philosophy doesn’t understand science or reality and that philosophers were reality challenged. For your benefit I will repeat in this post what I have stated in a previous post. Philosophy suffers from three deficiencies that make it impossible for it to get reality or science. 1) It presumes properties of reality without justification. 2) It is mind centric, and by implication separates the mind from reality and in so doing implies existence without reality (nonsense). 3) It lacks any method to select between competing philosophies other than intuition.

Ponder this carefully Indian, these points don’t have any relation to your philosophical quotations.

Starboy

Hugo Holbling

Thanks for the kind words. I'm going to keep on with my point for now in an effort to take my mind off events and because i don't want to think about going back to work and finding out that i knew the guys who have died.

Philosophy of science is concerned chiefly, although not exclusively, with (i) demarcation criteria: that is, how do we differentiate between a "good" theory and a "bad" one?; and (ii) progress in science and the accumulation of knowledge: that is, what do we mean when we say that theory A is better than B? Science has used different demarcation and progressive criteria at different times; for example, simplicism, predictive power, probabilism, empirical support (cf. the problem of innate ordering of hypotheses related to Bayesian probability here), correspondence, inductivism, verificationism, verisimilitude and falsificationism (naive, methodological or sophisticated). That science takes the form it has today (if we suppose, contra Feyerabend, that it possesses a unique methodology) is due to the influence of philosophers of science, particularly Popper and his critics.

As Tani says, these questions are still being discussed today. To paraphrase Starboy's third point, science only has methods of choosing between competing theories because the philosophy of science has established criteria that for the time being are agreed upon. Therefore, philosophy of science is a counterexample to the idea that all philosophy is useless.

Guillaume

Starboy : Yesterday I was despising science. It appeared to me as a rigid system unable to question itself ; I though scientists as embellished zealots who just happened to follow science’s dogma instead of religion’s. In opposition, philosophy appeared as very noble discipline who took great pride in taking nothing for granted . Yet what you wrote made me realize how much closer I am of science then I am of philosophy.

You made me realize how useless and hypocrite philosophy truly is. Philosophy pretends to take nothing for granted, but if you take nothing for granted it is effectively impossible to reach any kind of conclusion. The philosopher, horrified at this thought, then blindly accept the first idea that feels right. As such as philosophical conclusions are innerly based on nothing more than beliefs. I had already discovered this problem with my study of ethics, which is considered one of the five main area branches of philosophy. Indeed, I came to the conclusion that both objective and subjective morality are ridiculous claims not worthy of attention as they are at the core based on nothing more then mere opinions ( or intuition as you call it ). Yet it never incurred that all branches of philosophy were effectively like that. I then reread Plato, Descartes and Nietzsche in a new light, and it become clear to me that at the base of their arguments there is nothing more than unjustified claims and blind presumptions.

Science, on the other hand, is the only justified way of gaining knowledge, simply because it is directly supported by reality. Yet Philosophy seems to think that knowledge can be somehow gained without studying reality. It is clear that Plato’s “word of ideas” is still well engraved in the mind of modern philosophers in the claim that studying abstracts ideas is the only way to learn reality. Yet modern philosophers make the same mistake of Plato, by not justifying this very assertion….

Note : it seems like many people defend philosophy on the ground that it can somehow provides a protection against prejudice and fanaticism . Yet even philosophy itself can neither justify why prejudice and fanaticism are not desirable nor judge if a particular system brings prejudice or not. In fact, only empiric facts, which science is based on, can truly demonstrate the mistake of prejudice and fanaticism.

DoubleDutchy

This was meant to be a challenge, that obviously not came through. My point: you can't possibly answer this question without taking a philosophical stand. If you don't believe it, just try.

Frotiw

I don't think many philosophers would dare claim that there are no assumptions in philosophy. It is easy to demonstrate aspects which are simply assumed e.g. interpersonal language and rationality are often assumed. Guillaume seem to forget the important part. It not that there are assumptions but that contrary to science the presumptions are actually being theorized upon. There are many phiosopher tho reject e.g. ethics or critize philosophy all together but the theorizing is still philosophy. Wittgenstein is philosopher, the oxford school was philosopher. The core of the problem is that you apparently have no clue what philosophy is about or at least very vague. Especially Starboy's last post really demostrates effectivly a misconception of philosophy. You cannot simply "define philosophy". Where do get the definition from, from a dictonary? An example of philosophy(though not covering all ofcause) is the theorized upon the role and justification of philosophy. An attempt to define philosophy by using rational argumentation is an example of theoritical philosophy. I personally am not that interesting in practical philosphy but more theortical e.g. for the reason Guillaume mention concerning ethics.

The three deficiencies Starboy have nothing to do philosphy if they had I would agree that philosophy is redicules for sure. I have seen non-philosophers do pseudo-philosophy like that but you cannot blame philosophy for that like for you cannot blame science for the astrologiests claming that they do science. I find it really sad that to comment Starboy's deficiencies is really shouldn't be necessarily but I guess so. It's pretty much like speaking science vs religion with a zealot. Explaining that darwinism is science while creationism is not.

1) It presumes properties of reality without justification.
-The theorizing upon what properties realities has or what is withing the realm of existence is part of philosophy. Presuming inventory of existence and theorizing upon the inventory after the existence is considered established is e.g. physics.

2) It is mind centric, and by implication separates the mind from reality and in so doing implies existence without reality (nonsense).
-The is a philosophical stance that one might opt for(though I know of none). It's might be a position WITHIN philosophy it is not philosophy. I am not sure what is meant by this pseudo-philosophical vague expression. There seems to be some unaccounted for metaphysical claims, conserning existance and reality. Existance without reality?

3) It lacks any method to select between competing philosophies other than intuition.
-Ahh this one I can agree on atleast in some way. Yes philosophy lacks method this is true. This the burden and the strength of philosophy. This is what make philosophy philosophy and not science. The downside is that philosophy lacks the proven strengt of method that science use. The good thing is that philosophy is not dependant on method and need not be rejected if a method should turn out wrong. Also it's not philosophy to simply assume a method like science does it must be accounted for. That means that philosophers may and have done(Bacon, Descartes and 1000 others) method WITHIN their philsophical system. It's not an option to have a method in philosophy(as discipline) because you would then anyway some way of theorizing upon the justification of the method and philosophy would reinvent itself.
The part about intuition is redicules. Obviosly a modern philosopher(as well as even most of the ancient ones) would not be satisfied with using intuition. I am not even sure what "intuition" is.

I think Starboy's rejection is very fair and understandable but it is not philosophy he is rejecting. Should I follow his example I ought to visit a natural science forum and reject science having astrology, creationism and mystism in mind.

Starboy

DoubleDutchy, I thought the answer was obvious, to explore reality.

Starboy

Starboy

Hugo, The fundamental difficulty of science is that the explorers are embedded in reality and that what they detect is limited by this. The primary product of science is explanations. Those explanations are pictures of reality but are not reality itself. A picture of a pipe is not a pipe. We can conceive of the existence of a god’s eye view but no one can conceive the view itself.

I have yet to get a consistent definition of philosophy from anyone on this thread. All of those points that you list, “simplicism, predictive power, probabilism…” are all labels that philosophy have placed on science. Some of them like “simplicism” have not been born out by science and are indeed assertions about reality that are most likely unwarranted yet reflect a philosophical tradition of over two thousand years ago. Each of these labels can be shown to be either unwarranted assumptions about reality or even more worthless, just terms coined by philosophers such as “inductivism” where they have no idea as to what they are talking about. Such a list also leaves out things like “serendipity” which historically has played one of the largest roles in scientific discovery. The descriptions you offer are philosopher’s feeble attempts to understand science. The best way I can describe science is to put yourself into the middle of a battle with the fog of war all around you and no clear indication of the threat, where it is and what it is. All of those philosophical sentiments are all fine and good but they are the words of an armchair general. The reality of exploring reality if a far more difficult operation and I am not sure can be described in words because so much of it relies on intuition, inspiration and what some might call art. I will say this again, what makes science work and therefore different from philosophy is it has the authority of experiment on nature. This authority is very difficult to work with and does not give unequivocal answers by any means, but it can be used to get answers. It is this insistence on the use of this authority that is the distinguishing characteristic of science; it also is a breath of rationality as compared to philosophy. Imagine how senseless it would be to try to understand reality without constantly doing a reality check by performing experiments on nature. Because of this, why would anyone think that philosophical pronouncements about science or anything else for that matter have any relationship to reality whatsoever?

As to Tani’s point, he keeps attributing to me things I did not say. I wish he would stop it! You philosophers remind me of the politician that claims to be in charge of the mob simply because he happens to be in front of it. Science can choose between competing theories not because of some philosophical sentiments but because it has the authority of experiment of nature. How obvious can it be that philosophers are reality challenged and don’t get science? I have repeated this statement incessantly and yet you all still don’t get it! You do not get it because you are embedded in a tradition that is “mind” centric as opposed to science, which is “reality” centric and has an actual test for reality.


Starboy