Nowhere357

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Originally posted by meritocrat
I know part of the 'ethos' of philosophy is to question our sensibilites (for example, many may feel it's wrong to steal, but a philosopher would ask WHY it's believed to be wrong). But is that the only limit to the subject?
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IMHO philosophy is the study of that part of natural reality not accessible to physical science.


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Originally posted by Starboy
Philosophy is an attempt to understand reality without making any attempt to learn anything about reality. Pretty stupid really.

Starboy
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Why do you say philosophy makes no attempt to learn?


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Originally posted by wiploc
The point of philosophy is to correct our trivial confusions so we can be confused at a higher level.

crc
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This great answer also defines science!

Starboy

NowHere, I didn't say that. Read it carefully. What philosophy does is confuse "truth" with reality and then it assumes that one can explore "truth" (reality) by playing what essentially amounts to word games. We have learned that thinking about reality is no substitute for actually exploring reality. That what exists is far stranger and wonderful than anything we could ever have imagined. Yet philosophers hold on to the crap from over two thousand years as if it were important. From what I can see most of the philosophy of the last two thousand years has been a regurgitation of the ancient philosophers. At best philosophy is an exploration of the human condition, yet here again it does little to actually explore and understand human behavior. Silly discussions about free will and perception of reality take the place of actual explorations of human behavior. Philosophy is to science as astrology is to astronomy; it is a pseudo study, not worthy of serious consideration. When a philosopher actually begins to explore reality then (s)he becomes a scientist. If you want to actually know something about reality study science, don’t waste your time on philosophy.

Oh and please do not give me that line about science being a philosophy. Philosophy doesn’t get science. You will hear philosophers carry on about how epistemology is important to use to determine if scientific knowledge is “true”. All philosophers know how to use is a hammer so everything looks like a nail. They restate science as if it were philosophy and just push aside that the primary tool of science is inductive reasoning, a kind of reasoning that to this day philosophers do not get. They either do not understand or completely ignore that the primary reason science works is not for epistemological reasons but because science has an authority that philosophy lacks, experiment on nature. And lastly because of philosophies bias toward looking at everything in a binary fashion they completely ignore that science is not about the “truth” (what ever the phuck that is) but is about explanations that work.

Starboy

Defiant Heretic

What is the point of life? When you can answer this, you may no longer see the point of philosophy.

Frotiw

Heheh,
This post demonstrates such ignorance that I wasn't really sure it would be worth speding the time writting a reply. There are so many points that justifies critization. This is the Bush way of argumenting: spit out as many bad arguments as possible making it impossible to refute all of them. That is drown the opponent in your own ignorance.
First of all just not to mark me off as philospher thereby being wrong(which is an argumentum ad hominem btw.) I know roughly the equivalent amount of students of molecular biology, physics, math, and other areas of natural science that refute the view of Starboy as I know students of philosphers refuting this view. The tiresome part of replying to this post is that really ought to start from scratch explaining what philosophy is about. Apparently(this does not only go for this forum but generally) very few have a clue what philosophy is about.
Philosphy is definatly not about the study of reality. Neither is philosophy the study of "truth". The last part must be for the theologist or religious people sure as hell not philosphy. I have even heard such redicules claims as philosphy is the love of truth or the search of truth. Whenever I heard this from student of natural science I can only shake my head in despair. How can such student call themselves scientists not knowing the difference between knowledge and truth. This is what the religions doesn't know(along with astology and bad psychology) can it relly be true that such students believe the same thing.
Obviosly philosphy concern it self with knowledge and in opposition to e.g. natural science there is much bigger empasizeing on what is knowledge and what is belief. This is what the branch epistemology(theory of knowledge) is concerned about. Also philosphy of science is somewhat concerned with this. The philosophers "methode" is that he will accept NO DOGMAS. Why is it that the concentration of atheists oftens tend to be higher among students of philosophers than e.g. students of chemistry?
Where I attend philosphy in my department Niels Bohr is pictured along wih other well known philosphers. What he did for a large part whas philosphy e.g. Bohr's theory of complementarity is clearly a work of philosphy and not physics. Also during the debares between Einstein and Bohr(indeterminacy in quantum physics) even some of the old "worthless" greek arguments was used.
The view illustrated by starboy is even more intersting nowadays as theoritical physics, artificial intelligence research, cognitive science, and computer science goes more and more in the direction of philosphy. I need only mention people like Hawkings Penrose. Who would actually claim that modern astrophysics is pure empirically science. Parts of modern astrophysics is even using more "way out"/"non testable" -arguments than I ever see philosophers do. Much much more could be said but it really shouldn't be necessary.
Just for a final note there is also the problem of justifieing e.g. physics as science and knowledge. How will you do that?
I can briefly imagine 3 ways:
1. justified in terms of physics it self. That is physics is science because of the laws of physics e.g. physics should be conidered knowledge because E=mc2. -Obviosly this does not make sense. Physics can be claimed science on it's own merrit as this is not the target of physics at all.
2. Physics is knowledge because of dogmatics. One cannot explain why physics is knowledge it just is. This what the religios people say. I cannot explain why god exist but he just does and this I accept. I cannot explain why physics is knowledge but is just is and I accept it.
3. Physics based on a rational foundation. Physics should be considered knowledge in opposition to supernatural thinking because physics can be explained rationally as best way to gain knowledge of the nature. --This is philosphical argumentation.

I agree with 3 being a philsopher and not accepting dogmas. 1. does not make sense and is obviosly not an option. By the judgment of starboy antiphilosphy I tend to think him as supporting 2. That is being a religious person but as where the traditional religious accept that they are relgious the people accepting 2 are more redicules by not knowing their own religiousity.
To make a long story short is not very controversial that natural science cannot support itfself but is highly dependant on philosphy. Also natural science up to a certain age was simply known as philosphy because that was what is was. 1200 years ago there was no physics or chemistry all science in the direction of physics and chemistry(was founded later) was simply philosphy.

I suggest reading about the "logical positivist" who very enthusiatic attempted to refute philosphy only realizing that in their attempt to refute philosphy they themselves commited philosphy. Now logical positism(empirism) is almost extinct. Besides having the problem that they commit philosophy while saying philosphy is false there are other problems. There is also "the verifiability principle" that absurdly while strictly being uphold as a criteria of science(this is the prime principel in l. empirism) must be rejected. Neither logical empirism or the verifiability principle can verified empirically therefor logical empirism AND the verifiability principle must be rejected.

Finaly I will note that starboys explanation of philsophy is a "work of philosphy" itself. As I wrote abote he might blindly believe in science like a fanatic or explain science and then do philosphy.

Nowhere357

quote:
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Originally posted by Nowhere357
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Originally posted by Starboy

Philosophy is an attempt to understand reality without making any attempt to learn anything about reality. Pretty stupid really.

Starboy
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Why do you say philosophy makes no attempt to learn?

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"NowHere, I didn't say that. Read it carefully."

I absolutely don't get it. Unless you are trying to say that things like love, hope, desire, fear, pain, etc., and things like the number system, set theory, complementarity, etc., don't exist. What reason do you have for assuming that non-physical equates with non-existent?

IMHO "reality" usually means "natural reality" which means "all that exists." It does NOT mean "all that is physical". For that I would use "physical reality". But that's just me, I guess.

Some of your comments on philosophy I agree with. Much of the literature seems archaic, poorly formulated, unstructured. Philosophy is not standardized, yet, and exploration here is difficult.
Close your eyes and concentrate (this is called "meditation"), and and see for yourself - there is a whole bunch of stuff that exists, yet is not physical. I see no wisdom in denying that.

(Thanks for the correct interpretation of my sn!)

King's Indian

I rather like Mary Midgley's analogy of philosophy with plumbing: we only really notice the need for it when there is a bad stink coming from below. That is to say, when the concepts we have inherited become unworkable and lead us into confusion, then philosophy is the work we do to examine our starting assumptions, and wonder if we really needed to have started from there in the first place. Mrs Midgley offers the example of social contract ethics: very necessary to counter a prevailing belief of obeying a monarch appointed by divine right, but not useful when we consider things that cannot be thought of as mutual participants.These include such things as babies, or animals, or even ecologies such as the rainforest. Nevertheless, it seems difficult to discount our thoughts about our obligations to such things.
The best common-place description for philosophy that I can think of is the discipline of not taking things for granted. I don't think such a thing would benefit from a too-enthusiastic narrowing of applicability, which is why we can never really pin it down.
KI

Starboy

Before we go any further I think we should agree on what philosophy is:

I have been referring to 2, 3 and 6, the activity that philosophers do. Definition 5 is a historical artifact. In this day and age 7 is not as commonly used as science or art – the science or art of advertising. Definitions 1, 4 and 8 are so broad as to apply to just about anything that humanity is involved with and thus rendering them trivial.

Then of course there is the body of work created by philosophers and specifically referred to as philosophy. A quick perusal will demonstrate how confused and conflicted the field is. If there is a part you don’t like, don’t fret because there is some other philosopher that has a philosophy that you will like just fine. As a discipline it is accretive, There is no mechanism to discard, discredit and distance an idea from philosophy. If philosophy is as claimed the study of how we know things then it is a failure at its own game. It cannot even come to a consensus if it is possible to know anything at all. If philosophy is plumbing, those pipes have not worked in a very long time.

Starboy

Kim o' the Concrete Jungle

For me, I think the most useful reason to engage in philosophy is to build and examine epistemological models, much in the same way that science builds physical models of the universe. By an "epistomological model" I mean a framework for thinking about things, whether that be an ethical framework, or an aesthetic framework, an existential framework, or whatever.

Without some sort of philosophical framework from which to draw inferences we couldn't understand anything. But then, our necessity for "models" raises a number of questions. What would these models be? How do we judge them? What gives them their legitimacy? Clearly, we need some sort of meta-model, that gives us some consistent way of dealing with all the other epistemological models we invent. It is the features of this "meta-model" -- this fundamental philosophy -- that I have been arguing about on and off in this forum.

For what it's worth, here is a summary of the meta-model I have formulated in my philosophical musings. I call it the Practical Philosophy.

(1) We can allow ourselves no absolutes. Our knowledge of the universe beyond ourselves is probabilistic, and the probability is always less than 1 in 1. This is a consequence of the "egocentric dilemma", and the limitations placed on measurement by Planck's constant, chaos, and other such phenomena.

(1A) A "truth" derived logically from a model is relative, bound to the context of the model, and not necessarily true outside of its limited context. It shares the peculiarities and assumptions of the model, which are not necessarily the same as the peculiarities and assumptions of another model.

(2) Since we cannot know any "absolute truths" to build our models from, the axioms of our models are necessarily arbitrary. The only possible justification for any particular axiom is that it is useful to the model as a whole.

(2A) This is a circular argument which means two things: i. our models are not logically defensible, since they contain within them a logical fallacy; ii. our models are circular, self-perpetuating systems, with all the features and difficulties of any circular, self-perpetuating system.

(3) The lack of any absolute reference points and the arbitrariness of our axioms causes us a dilemma. We must either dismiss modelling as an illogical exercise and embrace solipsism, or we must rule that, while logic is a good tool for determining points within a model, it is inadequate for determining the legitimacy of the model as a whole. Since the former attitude leaves us with nowhere to go, we must adopt the latter.

(4) Inasmuch as we admit we can rely on neither logic nor absolute truth, the post-modern relativist hypothesis holds true. Every philosophical model is legitimate as philosophy, provided that it is internally consistent. No one model can be said to be more legitimate or more true than any other.

(5) However, while we must concede that we cannot use logic and absolute truth to differentiate between models, we can still hold there are legitimate reasons why we might judge that some models are more "useful" than others. I have arranged these in a heirarchical "criterion of usefulness". In order, the points are:

(5A) Does the system work in the real world? That is, does it agree with empirical observation? If a particular system doesn't work in reality, or if it doesn't produce predictable results, then it is not useful.

(5B) Is the system internally logical? If it doesn't have some sort of logic to it, then you can't draw logical inferences, and you can't use the system syntactically. That makes it less useful.

(5C) Is it parsimonious? In other words, is it the simplest explanation of the thing you want to explain, that requires the least number of novel ideas to explain it? The most useful system is generally the simplest system that covers all the relevant factors. In science, this is called Ockham's Razor.

(5D) Is it effective? That is, does the system suggest effective action, or does it tie your hands? It is all very well to invent some idea to explain something, but if that explanation leaves you with nowhere to go, or if it causes you to take dangerous or ineffective actions, then it is not useful.

(5E) Is it positive? If you are driven to hold some philosophical conceit that is not empirically verifiable, or logical, or parsimonious, or effective, then you may just as well make it a positive philosophical conceit -- a conceit that makes you happy rather than sad or anxious.

(6 & 7) Apart from the criteria of usefulness, I have two other sets of criteria -- a criteria of aesthetics, and a criteria of ethics. Since this post is already long enough, and since I haven't developed these as thoroughly as the other parts of my philosophical system, I won't discuss them further here.

(8) It should be clear from all the above that there is not just one possible model, but many. And all these models are free to coexist side by side. Some rival models might even appear to contradict each other, but this poses no particular difficulty if it is understood that each model is employed for a particular purpose in a particular context, so they are not necessarily rival models.

(9) The problem of uncertainty posed by the implied elimination of absolute truth can be dealt with through the concept of "resolution". I mean "resolution" here in the same sense as the resolution of a computer screen. On a computer monitor, the higher the resolution, the higher the dot pitch on the screen, and so the more fine detail can be displayed. Similarly, a model will have its own "resolution", which would be defined as the smallest unit you could measure down to with a reasonable probability of accuracy. An example of that is the plus or minus 100 years in radio carbon dating. Similarly each problem has its own ideal resolution. For example, if you wanted to know the distance between Tokyo and New York, you probably wouldn't want to know down to the nearest inch -- the nearest mile would do, or maybe even the nearest hundred miles. You can function perfectly well in this world without knowing the absolute truth of anything. What you really need is for the ideal resolution of your problem to be equal to or lower than the resolution of the model used to solve it.

That's pretty much the basics of it. Any further points of this summary would only be describing specific models I have created for specific purposes according to the ideas summarized above. I will describe only one of these -- my five spheres philosophy.

I developed the idea of five spheres of focus to try and reconcile some of the difficulties you come across when arguing about the traditional philosophical dichotomies between subjectivity and objectivity, materialism and idealism, and so on. The five spheres are: (1) the material sphere, which I describe as the reality beyond ourselves; (2) the sensory sphere, which represents the impressions you receive of the outside world through your sensory organs; (3) the personal sphere, which represents our thoughts, memories, emotions, reasoning, and interior monologue; (4) the abstract sphere, which represents the schemas we hold of the world in our minds, but which can also be extended to things we write down, symbols, and syntactical systems we invent; (5) the dynamic sphere, which represents time, change, cause and effect, and movement, but it also covers our actions, and the effects of our actions upon the world outside ourselves.

It might seem fairly crude to divide the world of our human experiences up into five arbitrary groups like this, but I have actually found it very helpful. For example, subjectivity verses objectivity becomes easier to understand when you look at it in terms of interactions between these five spheres. A theory obviously belongs to the abstract sphere. If you want it to be an objective theory, then you must test it against the data you receive via the sensory sphere. The impossibility of complete objectivity is obvious when you realize that the data must pass from the material sphere through the sensory sphere, to be interpreted in the personal sphere before it can be compared to the abstract theory. The five way distinction makes many such problems much easier to resolve.

Well, that's it. That's my entire philosophical system, all summarized in one post.

Nowhere357

"There is no mechanism to discard, discredit and distance an idea from philosophy."

Peer pressure?

Seriously, I think I agree with this point. An abundance of labels and a lack of tools. Needs work!

Frotiw

This part I REALLY agree on.

The purpose of philosphy is philosophical debate itself. I will not accept a dictonary's definition of philosophy as absolute truth(or something like that). I dictonary is just an emperical report of how to use correctly within a language. That is it is contingent and relative to the current language. -just a note.

That said there is some consensus and generally well accepted layout of philosophy. One may say there is a codex of philosphy or laws or philosphy. First of all philsophy is concerning itself with the written and spoken word, it's not satisfactory to say "this piece of art or music explains everything". Philosphy may concern itself with aesthetics but using words. My point is that some might say that e.g. music might express some sort of knowledge(in some sense) about the world. True or not true even if it is possible to learn about the world through music or art it is not philosphy(but perhaps mystitism or something).
Secondly philosphy is heavily concerned with logic. This is the main "rule" of philosophy. If there is no logic there is no science, no judgement, no knowledge or anything at all. Any philosphical theory must by core uphold the laws of logic.
My point is obviosly that philosphy is not just about anything there is fairly stricht notion og what is philosphy and what it is not. I agree that some philosphy is confused this is definatly true and more so than it is the case for e.g. physics. This is definatly not the case for all philosphy though. There are parts of philospy that are way more scienticly grounded and plausible than natural could ever hope to be.
Natural scientists tend to concern them selves with methaphysical claims and presumptions without even doubting them or thinking for a second about them. Fearing im being put in the same boat as "german idealsm" and the such I say(confidently) that most natural scientist tend to commit themselves far more to presuppositions and belief than philosophers. Actually this was the main reason I chose to study philosphy instead of physics before that I was faily dedicated to physics and wanted to read physics. Many of the true hardliners of natural science tend to be much more like to the religious fanatics though they despise them.
I am a materialst and an atheist but the reason for being that is because of rational thinking not blind belief and fanatism like some natural scientist commit themselves to. Now it sounds like there is some great distance between natural science and philosphy were I attend this isn't really true I just had to mark a point. Where I attend there are several student studieing physics, math and biology along with philosphy. The same goes for about any other well accepted place like, Oxford, Cambridge and so on. Philosphy is not stricth seperated from e.g. physics and math today though perhaps more so 50-60 years ago during the time og logical philosphy.