Tyler Durden

The demand of shoehorning the entire body of philosophical discourse to whatever passes for scientific discourse these days is at best suspect, ill-conceived, and at worst, a strawman.


After all, one only has to observe the abortive maneuver those positivists attempted in the '30's (the legitimation of philosophy under scientistic dogma) by studying their mistakes in order to avoid repeating history.

Frotiw

Exactly the point I have tried tp make the last several posts and along with others as well I believe. Unless some defence are actually made against this accusation(I have seen none yet) I consider the debate over. There is no point building up an entire debate on an obvios strawman. I repeat myself for god* knows what time when I say Starboy does not present a concept of philosophy than any even remotly sensible philosopher let alone a preffesional(educated) would accept.

Anyway agree completely with Tyler Durden if anyone should doubt it.

*Heheh, had he existed.

-And in the meantime a new post was written by Tyler Durden one that I do not agree less on. Yes the postivist attempt(rejecting philosophy) are pretty much extinct nowadays(as a serius philosophical contender) and for good reason.

Starboy

Hi Tyler,

It would appear that the first rule of philosophy is you do not attack philosophy. As well as the second and third.

I have read essays from several philosophers. I make no claim that it is exhaustive but these people are well-respected philosophers so I assume that it is representative. I have read several condensations of philosophy and observed and interacted with several philosophical threads and I must say it has little to offer someone that seeks to understand reality or much else for that matter. What I have seen is full of unchallenged and baseless presumptions, but because the field is so inbred no one seems to notice.

I do find it interesting that the reaction of philosophers to my criticism, as lame as they might be, is this nee jerk anger response instead of trotting out all that grand philosophy they seem to think is important. After all if it is as great as you all think it is why should the comments of a misinformed scientist bother you? You should be able to deal with them easily. What could I think of that the great thinkers of philosophy haven’t thought of before?

When I say I do not have the time it is not a cop out. I shouldn't be spending time on this thread let alone take the time to dive into a philosophical tome. For the record I am not afraid of philosophy any more than I am afraid of crap. Nuf said I think.

Starboy

Tyler Durden

Amusing, Starboy. Actually the first rule of philosophy is to disagree with other philosophers.

Then growing something resembling a spine, cojones, and reading Feyerabend's books shouldn't be too tough, unless you can explain to me why the judgment of something as 'crap' from a position from ignorance should be taken seriously at all.

One you've done so, then feel free to come back here with a better clue of what you're attacking. I do so enjoy a thorough destruction of philosophy - probably more than anyone - but not from ignoramuses.

I wouldn't impose limits on the enterprise of science without going through the wringer of academia and cutting my teeth on the necessary knowledge first. I respect the scientists in their privileged position as the modern priests of society.

Philosophers do much better job at destroying past philosophies than specialists of technical fields (who mysteriously feel threatened a la Alan Sokal) otherwise it wouldn't survive.

If and only if you are arguing that philosophy is pretty useless as a science, i totally agree. It would be silly to demand a field of discourse to streamline itself according to the criteria of another field of discourse. In its modern form today philosophy is nearly dead and bankrupt as a pseudo "super" science. It also suck rotten eggs as a pseudo "super religion."

However, if you demand that the entire discourse of philo should be abolished on those grounds alone, then i have no reason to take you seriously. Logical positivists made the exact same claim 70 years ago, and if you understand why their ambitions far exceeded their grasp, (their intellectual wherewithal) how the movement was a failure, then you will understand why your argument does not deserve to be taken seriously.

Frotiw

Starboy

1. There are many philosophicals attack on philosophy even more as history has developed starting from Kant(if not before) and still continueing.

2. I don't think any philosopher is representive to philosophy. What many on this forum ask you is to consider a different concept of philosophy one that the philosophers are leaning more against(along with most scientists). It is not much use to learn where you got your false concept of philosophy from. If you expect philosophers to investigate "reality" like scientists you will obviosly be dissapointed philosophy is not science.

3. Not all are that angerfull. I can be rather bothersome and frustrating to repeat one self though. Few arguements seem to have any effect at all their not even considered. As the thread develops you seem more and more like a zealot still holding tight to a basic simplified belief despiteless what ever is said*. It is no wonder that there is some attention to this thead as philosophy is beeing attacking and you must reasonably assume there are philosophically inclined persons here.

4. At this point you seem a lot more aggresive than I have yet to a see a philosopher(supporting philosophy) in this thread. It is not easy to convince a misinformed scientist(I know of scientist who wouldn't let me call you scientist) when argumentational method is rejected. When there is no hope of changing the misconcept. Finally I don't think anyone has refered to past philosophers as an argument for philosophy.


At this point it seems like discussion ended. Philosophers are inbred narrowminded people who don't concern themselves with reality. No matter what is said this is not change in any way. This is where philosophers tend to get a bad taste of religiousity in their mouth. All rationality has ended. Again I don't mean to offend this my reflection on the lasts posts.

Finally this strawman was not touched. Starboy has not defended why his concept of philosophy are right and the philosophers wrong or made any obejctions against the accusations of commiting the strawman fallacy. At this point the debatting parties are not talking about the same thing as the debate is off.

*This is not meant to be offensive or agressive it's my honest view having read all the your posts.

Starboy

Tyler, I have no idea if philosophy should be abolished, but as far as I can tell its only use is as entertainment.

Good night.

Starboy

Tyler Durden

Starboy
Thanks for the entertaining aside, and please do feel free to come again when you got a stronger case. I'd be more than happy to hear you out.

I too take philosophy to be thoroughly entertaining - it so aptly demonstrates the utter inanity of man.

DoubleDutchy

That 's far from obvious and, IMHO, it's not even remotely true. 'Reality' is situated somewhere between the ears; it can be brought to an abrupt end through a baseball-club and undergoes major transformations after three pints of Guinness. It is, among other things, subject to a rhytm of time that almost comes to a halt in the dentist's chair an sharply accelerates during the hot phase of a chessgame. That is the only reality I really know about, though I have reasons to assume that it is related to likes of it that are occurring elsewhere.
Science gets into 'reality' no more than fluid mechanics gets into the inner workings of alcohol abuse.

King's Indian

Starboy,

The pleasure’s mine too.
I’ll not reply to your latest points, as I stated previously. They are interesting, and they deserve to be addressed seriously, rather than with the rough-housing we’ve been indulging in. Perhaps later. (My! Don’t we play rough, though?)
I’ve just popped in to acknowledge that your points always have some substance (else I wouldn’t feel the need to reply, and I’m still tempted to do so), and to look forward to the time when I summon up the power of my Linguaphone English to address any posts you make in future*. As a matter of fact, I think you’ve hit it on the head when you say that science is “radically different” to anything gone before, although I’ll save any further discussion of that for another time.
I also want to recommend at least one book: “Intellectual Impostures**”, by Alain Sokal and Jean Bricmont, two scientists who write about how some philosophers (hem hem) completely miss the point of the scientific terms they use. It’s really funny, and it’s the sort of thing that’s very quotable for positions such as yours. Apologies if you’ve already read it.
Take care,
KI
* ”English being my second language” was good enough to give me a chuckle: credit where it’s due. I think, though, that you and “Hard Determinism” Kip are going to have to take it to the law to determine who gets Intellectual Copyright, as it looks as if you both came up with it independently.
** I think the US title is “Fashionable Nonsense”. Anyway, here is info on Sokal’s hoax

Starboy

DoubleDutchy, your post illustrates quite nicely the "mind" centric bias of philosophy. Think about it.

Starboy