Nowhere357

Hi Kenny. Back on page 1, in response to Starboy's questions, I said:
So I agree with you.

What I would very much like to see now, is some constructive suggestions and ideas for how to improve the situation. We have well mined the idea that philosophy sucks.

Bob K

I have chosen my definitions carefully, and to reflect the fact that in reality we find objects and relationships between/among objects, therefore I prefer to limit the term 'concept' to meaning a mental representation of a thing, an object, an identity which retains its identity for a longer duration of time than a related principle and to limit the term 'principle' to meaning a mental representation of an event, a mental representation of a relationship between/among things/objects.

I disagree.

I prefer to call a perception a perception and a mental representation, an idea, a mental representation, an idea.

In a sequence of perception/observation and the development of mental representations as concepts/principles, we perceive and develop perceptions, and then we organize the perceptions into mental representations, concepts as mental representations, ideas, of things/objects, and principles as mental representations, ideas, of events, of relationships between/among things/objects.

In do not equate the perception of, the becoming aware of, external people/things/events with the mental representation of people/things/events as concepts/principles because of the fact that to perceive we must use perceptual senses which are limited to, at least by current knowledge of the perceptual senses, to sight/hearing/touch/smell/taste, and we do not use sight/hearing/touch/smell/taste to become aware of the mental representations of concepts/principles. Instead, we experience directly the concepts/principles as patterns of neural activity within ourselves, which was what Descartes meant by "Je pense, donc je suis," which translates as "I think, therefore I am."

To use your phraseology, we use our physiological patterns/relationships of things/events, our atoms/molecules/organs/etc., within ourselves to experience psychological patterns/relationships within ourselves we call/can call concepts/principles/techniques.

When I describe a concept to be a mental representation of a thing/object there is an assumption that perception has been used to obtain the initial data concerning the existence/presence of things/objects in reality/space/time.

When I describe a principle to be a mental representation/idea of an event/relationship between/among things/objects there is an assumption that perception has been used to obtain the initial data concerning the existence/presence of events/relationships between/among things/objects in reality/space/time; beyond the initial data, intuition can be used instead of perception to develop additional concepts/principles which have to be tested for their accuracy through perception, through observation, in accord with the Code of Science.

[See http://www.bobkwebsite.com/thecodeofscience.html ]

Be careful of slipping into the unsupported belief which claims that all is perception and we cannot know reality directly.

The fact is that we CAN perceive directly and thereby experience directly some things/events.

Our perceptual sense of touch, when combined with our perceptual senses of sight and hearing, can provide direct experience, confirmation, of reality.

For example, I seriously doubt that you would agree that all is perception and nowhere in perception can we find reality when I invite you to 'run' on your assumption and literally/physically run through the space/time coordinates perceived to be occupied by North Brookings Hall of Washington University [St. Louis].

Also, the event of fire tends to burn and to hurt, therefore there is a strong possibility that if I capture you and drag you to my torture chamber, strap you to a chair, and start using a propane fire-starter, which I normally use for starting fires in my woodstove or barbecue grill, to burn your fingers/hands/etc. then you will react as if you are experiencing directly the event of the fire burning your fingers/hands/etc.

Part of the reason philosophers develop concepts/principles/techniques is to deal with the problems of verifying that perceptions are realities.

Light is perceived by sight, but we are aware of optical illusions, therefore we must be on guard for the possibilities that perception may not be reality, but we normally would test the reality of the perception by using all known perceptual senses and possibilities, such as confirming through perception including hearing/touch/etc. AND including additional observations using sight/light those people/things/events exteranl to us who/which were initially perceived by sight.

Also, we can perceive directly, but we can also perceive indirectly, by observing/perceiving the effects of unobserved people/things/events upon observable/observed people/things/events and eliminating all possible explanations until we get to the few remaining possibilities or the single remaining possibility, by which process we increase our reliable knowledge of reality.

For example, physicists have noticed the aberrations of the orbits of planets/stars/etc. in a specific area of space and have concluded that such aberrations could only be caused by a dense gravitational field caused by an object whose gravity is so dense it does not allow light to escape and thereby it cannot be observed directly by the sense of sight/light; these objects have been labeled 'black holes' and their presence is thus indirectly observed by the direct observation of their effects upon other astronomical objects, planets/stars/etc.

Thus, from the direct observation/perception of the effects of unobserved people/things/events upon observable/perceivable people/things/events we can infer and thereby observe/perceive indirectly the unobserved/unperceived people/things/events.

In law, evidence derived from indirect perception/observation is called circumstantial evidence. We need not observe directly the killer killing the victim; we can derive from the direct observation of the circumstantial evidence the equivalent of an indirect observation of the killer's effects upon the observable people/things/events who/which are relevant to the crime. People may be eyewitnesses. They are not us; we do not perceive directly what they perceived, but if they are credible, defined as not being proven to be chronic/habitual liars or otherwise having motives for the specifics of their testimony other than telling the truth, then we can accept as evidence their testimony and thereby indirectly perceive/observe the killer's committing the crime of killing the victim.

Thus, again, from the direct observation/perception of the effects of unobserved people/things/events upon observable/perceivable people/things/events we can infer and thereby observe/perceive indirectly the unobserved/unperceived people/things/events.

The fact is that we place a trust in the validity of our perceptions while at the same time being aware of the possibilities of misperceptions and the necessity, therefore, of determining the validity of our perceptions, which is one of the functions of philosophy.

Blanket skepticism leading to a belief/premise that 'perception cannot be reality' and therefore leading to the belief/conclusion 'perception is not reality' will lead to the realization that without our perceptions and a trust in our perceptions we cannot develop knowledge, which is a set of verifiable/falsifiable/verified by observation/perception concepts/principles/techniques we can use for dealing with reality/for solving problems, for achieving desires/avoiding fears.

Note that I am saying that we can develop a set of verified concepts/principles/techniques which accurately describe real people/things/events in reality/actuality which we can rely upon and thereby call knowledge.

If you disagree, then let us make a date to meet either in St. Louis, MO, at North Brookings Hall at Washington University or in my torture chamber in New Durham, NH, to test whether or not there are at least a few observable/perceivable facts which can be accepted as verifiable/falsifiable/verified by observation/perception.

I have no problem with (A) inferring perception/observation according to the Code of Science for philosophy/philosophical discussion or (B) acknowledging directly the use of observation by perception to obtain data concerning the units of study of a subject under study, but keep in mind that the direct acknowledgement of observation by perception may lead to a considerable increase in the verbiage needed to define/describe the process of observation by perception in defining/describing a subject by terms/phrases/facts/people/things/events/concepts/principles/techniques.

Are you seriously willing to claim that the the event of Jane's throwing a ball to Dick can perceive itself as a relationship of Jane, a ball, and Dick?

Jane could perceive the event, Dick could perceive the event, but does the ball perceive the event?

Could the relationship among Jane/the ball/Dick perceive itself?

What would be its neurological components?

Jane's neurology is different from Dick's, therefore you are not allowed to claim that the neurology of the relationship fo Jane/ball/Dick includes both Jane's and Dick's neurologies; and, to my knowledge, the ball does not have a neurology, therefore it cannot be included in some neurological scheme for the relationship of Jane/ball/Dick.

If the relationship among Jane/ball/Dick is a whole that perceives itself, what are its parts?

Unless this question can be answered by observable/perceivable and verifiable/falsifiable/verified facts, it becomes moot, useless to answer, not an essential question which begs for an answer.

The patterns/relationships between/among the physical things/events in (A) a brain or (B) a nervous system are capable of perceiving/observing patterns/relationships between/among other people/things/events, but that is not the same as claiming that all patterns/relationships can perceive/observe themselves.

What is critical is the subject under study.

If I study my brain, then the patterns/relationships between/among the physical things/events in my brain which are my brain ARE capable of perceiving/observing their patterns/relationships.

But that is different from the study by my patterns/relationships/etc. of the patterns/relationships of other people/things/events.

The difference is accountable by the subject of study; where I can study myself, at least within limitations, I can also study other people/things/events, thus where by my patterns/etc. I can study my patterns/etc. and thus study myself I can also study the patterns/etc. of other people/things/events. In short, studying myself is not the same as/is not studying someone/something else--the study of myself is not the same, does not have the same subject, as the study of someone/something else.

The fallacy of begging the question is, when you analyze it, the fallacy of not answering questions, such as "Is this premise true?" or "Is this premise verifiable/falsifiable/verified true by perception/observation of physical facts" in logical arguments. I.e., begging the question means there is a question begging to be answered, which must be answered, and any premise which has unanswered questions begging to be answered is not acceptable as a premise in a logical argument.

Another analysis of what is meant by the fallacy of begging the question suggests that premises assumed to be true but not verified to be true by observation by perception have attrached to them, because they are assumptions, the unanswered question/question begging to be answered/question which must be answered "Is this premise true/verified?" Thus, assumptions are not acceptable as premises in logical arguments. Assumptions have to be converted into facts, knowledge, accurate descriptions of people/things/events, to be acceptable as premises in logical arguments.

Nowhere357

Your definitions IMO conflict with standard usage, and this makes it too hard to understand your lecture.

I was trying to help communication by using /slash/ words, but now I see that too many of them become very distracting, and even annoying.

Okay.

But the map is not the territory. Our mental representation of reality is not reality itself. To say otherwise is a belief, unsupported. Interesting, isn't it? No matter how a person designs a reality map, unsupported belief is required.

Well, Ive been to your torture room, and have an invitation to come back. For some strange reason this bothers me. I'm looking for teachers and students, not preachers.

Hugo Holbling

Okay. I'm inclined to take you at your word, in spite of your subsequent bluster.

I think the main problem throughout this discussion has been your approach: you may well find that some of us are hostile to certain aspects of philosophy, or any claim that it is anything more than just another cultural practice, as Rorty would term it; but your categorical dismissal lends you the air of a scientistic dogmatic, whether you intend it or not. That, in my opinion, is a real pity because we could steer this conversation to wondering what is the place of philosophy today.

As i explained before, i think philosophy of science remains relevant. Tyler Durden as pointed out that science did not arrive ex nihilo and owes much to the philosophical speculation that was its birthing. You may not consider these arguments convincing but they need addressing. You also say:

I have already pointed out that your critical thinking may need some work if you insist on a blanket dismissal of philosophy, but i'll gladly attribute that to taking on too many posters. As i see it, you have a number of interesting points that in themselves and addressed to the appropriate area would make for excellent criticism; however, you still have some way to go before you can show that all of philosophy is without utility.

It is patently not the case that philosophers of science know nothing of the history or practice of that endeavour, many of them being scientists themselves. Not all philosophers subscribe to the correspondence theory of truth, leaving them immune from your earlier objection. Not all philosophy is "mind-centric", especially pragmatic and analytic work. On the other hand, there are some philosophers who reject the exuberances of the past or the speculation that you decry, welcoming the move from philosophy of mind to neuroscience, for example. That so much disagreement persists and that you previously admonished everyone for not being able to provide a definition of philosophy should surely give you pause before pronouncing the disutility of it. Add to this your own admission that you haven't read enough to make such a thorough rejection, and perhaps you can see where i'm (slowly) heading?

In the light of all this, why not modify your position? You could easily discuss the possibility that some philosophy is mind-centric; that some philosophy is beyond practical import; that some philosophers do not understand science; or that the positivists were on to something after all. No doubt you'd still find plenty of disagreement, but i submit that arguing an extreme position is hopeless and contributive to the hostility that this thread has engendered.

Let's see what you make of all this rambling.

kennyminot

Let me be clear.

[I don't see you blasting science for referencing specific experiments, thinkers, and using a professional vocabulary.]

Science requires a whole jargonized vocabulary, an entire obscure language, to perform its wonderful feats. And so does philosophy. But the problem is here: when scientists want to show results, they can make the information readily available to the public. They can write in CNN and Newsweek and explain the practical importance of an experiment. (This new vaccine could save an X amount of lives from the disease Y). But philosophers . . . what can they say? What good have any of them done in the past 30 years? Can they even REFORMULATE their discipline into a public vocabulary without DROPPING the public wholesale into the philosophical lingo? In other words, why do appeals to the value of philosophy always seem so circular? (You need to know the meaning of life because you need to know the meaning of life. Isn't it obvious?)

Dewey, for example, revolutionized the education system, because he felt it necessary to be INVOLVED in the political system. He felt that all his technical mumbo-jumbo needed to have an application. But in the past fifty years, despite the growing disinterest in philosophy departments, it seems people are more interested in knowledge-for-its-own-sake. Modern analytic philosophy reminds one of scholasticism: caught up in a formalized language, unwilling (and unable) to explain their work to the public, deluding themselves into believing that 'serious' intellectual work has some 'real' value. Why do we need people spending hours upon hours studying symbolic logic? Who cares if they make a new discovery? And who uses those goofy little symbols besides a whole legion of philosophers? And why do we need people to contemplate how we tell the difference between people and zombies? Or why do we need to know what it is like to be a bat? Philosophers REALLY SPEND TIME contemplating these problems. And I want to know whether my tax dollars are producing any REAL BENEFIT to the public.

Why do philosophers value these questions:

(1) What is really real?

(2) Which ethical theory is really right?

(3) How do we know what is really real?

When they could be valuing these questions:

(1B) How can we improve the education system?

(2B) What is the best way to organize the tax code?

(3B) Should we eat meat?


Most people seem to disregard the last three questions. They consider these 'practical' issues. And philosophy deals with higher problems: the pursuit of knowledge, the absolute, the unchanging facts about the universe. And if you need knowledge of (1), (2), and (3) to explain (1B), (2B), and (3B), how does that explain the REAL RESULTS people make in these fields without answering the first three questions?

Why does the public like Peter Signer? Because HALF HIS BOOKS aren't even talking about philosophical theories. People like Animal Liberation because it contains information about the meat industry. The technical philosophical justification is boring. I don't need the lingo to know that I should be horrified by the inhumane treatment of baby cows.

Most students are not lamenting about the pragmatic function of philosophy in history. We are all aware it had a glorious past. We know about Locke and Rosseau and Descartes. We know they made contributions to science, literature, and politics. But that says nothing about Philosophy Today. I have been forced to read papers about the most ridiculous things. I have watched philosophers walk around issues by introducing their obscure words - - heh! Did you know that animals don't have desires! That's because they don't have language! And without language they can't have beliefs! And without beliefs they can't have desires! And without desires they can't have rights! So it's okee-dokee to throw hundreds of baby chickens in the backseat of a station wagon! In little crates! So they swarm all over one another and bite each other's heads! Yeah! :banghead:


Get the point?

Peace out,
Kennie Smith

Starboy

I admit I have been difficult, perhaps even dogmatic. It is interesting that you accuse me of the crime of dogma when it appears to me that philosophy has not been very successful at expunging itself of its own implicit dogma. But my primary difficulty is the apparent inability of philosophy to demonstrate relevance by its advocates without requiring one to becoming a philosopher. I also find it ironic that many of the advocates of philosophy claim that everyone that thinks about what they know is a philosopher. Excuse me if I express my dismay at how ridiculous all this seems to be.

A blanket dismissal of anything is extreme, unless of course there is sufficient reason to dismiss it. You can if you wish throw my points out because they dismiss what you advocate but that would hardly qualify as critical thinking or being non-dogmatic. I think it would be non-dogmatic of you if you ignored what appears to be “the fallacy of the complete dismissal” argument and considered the possibility that there is reason to dismiss philosophy.

It is not my claim that there are not philosophers that know of science or scientists that know of philosophy. It is my claim that what appears to be philosophy as practiced by philosophers is not competent to comment on science or anything thing else that involves reality. The reason for this is because the tradition of philosophy has no reality check. Science has demonstrated that a reality check is crucial if you want to make progress in understanding reality. Because we have learned that everything is part of reality any human endeavor that wants to make reasonable claims about reality must have a reality check. The most important thing to understand here is that philosophy, as a tradition has never had a reality check. It was the insistence by early scientists that a reality check was crucial if one wanted to make progress in understanding reality that separated science from philosophy and continues to separate it from philosophy to this very day. This insistence on a reality check is what makes science scientific! If philosophy were to require a reality check it would no longer be philosophy but would now become science. This is why I said that philosophy is not competent to comment on science or anything else that has to do with reality. The fact that philosophy does the philosophy of science or religion or morals or art or anything else for that matter just doesn’t matter to anyone that is concerned with the actual reality of these topics. Incidentally, any scientist that studied science and put their ideas about science to a reality test would not be doing the philosophy of science but they would be doing the science of science. I would take such a study seriously, but as for philosophy of science I say get real!

The inability of philosophy to have a clear and communicable understanding of what it is about is just icing on the cake and adds to the argument that it is not competent to comment on anything except perhaps philosophy. But if philosophy can’t figure out what it is about and can only comment competently on itself then why should I or anyone else care about it?

In addition this inability to clearly and unambiguously define itself makes it impossible for a critical thinker to take any claims by philosophers that philosophy is relevant since one cannot even begin to examine the claim by determining if what is claimed as philosophy is indeed philosophy. The whole thing stinks of religion.

Modify my position? Why? Your argument appears to boil down to “shame on you for being so insistent” or at best “moderation in all opinions.”

Starboy

Aethari

I still think you're just picking helpful examples out of the mix, while ignoring everything else. Can Quantum Mechanics really be explained without the technical lingo? And even more important, what exactly has physicists sitting around studying the 'strangeness' and 'charm' of fundamental particles done for us in the past 30 years? Just as we can pick fields of science that fall under the same critiques (practically anything theoretical), we can pick fields of philosophy that escape equally well. Political philosophy can be made available to the public, and has been historically on a very broad scale. The same with moral theory: we can present and explain various moral arguments without having to dip into obscurity and technicality. IMHO, you seem to be thinking that philosophy is always revolutionary in it's time: it is not. What philosophers do now might be recognized decades or centuries down the road, not next week. Plato and Socrates reached their greatest fame long after their deaths, and even the work of the earlier Modern Period philosophers took time to be appreciated. Success in philosophy isn't earth-shaking, life-saving and society-altering in the face of the week. Philosophy is the fine-tuned chisle that moulds our underlying beliefs and assumptions, slowly altering our perception over the year. Plans within plans, and thoughts within thoughts...

I don't need knowledge of Newton's theory of gravitation in order to get real results when I drop a rock. Equally, I can make presumptions and do all sorts of things and achieve results, but whether they are meaningful without a thorough grounding is questionable. We all know that everything can't be worked out philosophically, or progress would grind to a slow halt. But you seem to be confusing:

1) It is not practical to have every issue worked out in a very detailed sense in philosophical thought.

with

2) Philosophy isn't of value because it isn't always pragmatic.

Philosophy isn't for everyone, and few people would ever claim it is. If everyone was a philosopher, we'd all sit around and think instead of doing things. It therefore isn't practical to have everyone be a philosopher (even in the sense of understanding or valuing technical philosophy.) But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have some people pursue philosophy. It might not be reasonable to expect every math student to know all the derivations of all of the formulae, but that doesn't mean someone shouldn't understand them.

The same as what I said before: philosophy is rarely valued in its time. Where are you going to draw the line of 'valuable philosophers'? More to the point, how are you even in a position to judge if a modern philosopher is 'important'? I mean, hell, Hume wasn't even granted a teaching position at college because they thought he was so wrong.

You seem really confused about this whole thing. How are "I can't see the benefit of X" and "there is no benefit of X" the same things? Just because Tycho Brahe's observations might have seemed trivial at the time, it doesn't mean that they didn't lay the groundwork for much greater things.

Pragmatism must always be tempered with foresight, lest it become nothing more than vicious attack on investment.

~Aethari

Tyler Durden

Starboy, your last posts are more evidence of your painful ignorance. Go read the books Hugo Holbling mentioned and stop strawman-ing philosophy as something a layman can reject on critical thinking grounds. As if the layperson can even begin to divide critical thinking from whatever passes as philosophy in the first place.

Your entire case is a complaint made from unfamilarity, that the entire body of philosophy cannot be watered down for Joe public, so it must be abolished. As if ordinary language was never a philosophy itself (messrs. strawson, Austin, etc in the 50's) is too ironic to ignore.

If you are not willing to go the extra mile to shake off your limited understanding of philosophy, especially beyond the introductory level of your daughter's class, then why should anyone take you seriously? Educate thyself.

If science reaches several counter-intuitive results with its experimental method, but philosophy is castigated when it does the exact same thing, then there's something to be said about dogmatism.

Hugo Holbling

Oh dear. If i had known you would carry on your bluster regardless, i wouldn't have bothered - just as you haven't bothered to answer my post from before. Lest you ask, i refer to the one in which i wondered how it is that you have no time to actually read philosophy but you have plenty of time to post here claiming that it's useless.

As Aethari has already pointed out, this objection applies equally to other pursuits. I doubt if you or many others here would follow a discussion of the positing of a priori probabilities for hypothesese when using Bayesian theory, but that doesn't make the topic irrelevant, as any practising scientist should know. Try again.

Try to make an effort to take in my posts. I've already said that there are philosophers (and also were) who have not only considered the possibility, but taken it rather further than your superficial attempts. If you read these you may help your case, but that would take up the time you need to carry on in spite of your admitted lack of understanding, right?

Uh huh. A scientistic neo-positivist after all. You are so far off-target that it hardly bears explaining, but here we go. Not only were Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn, Duhem, Quine, et al, all the way up to Musgrave and Fine today more than competent to comment on science, the popular and specialist understanding of what science means has had to adapt with them. If you yourself understood science as well as you like to suppose, you'd hardly be making ridiculous claims about science "progressing" toward a greater appreciation of reality. I guess irrealism and falsification in science just passed you by. :banghead:

Am i the only one with the feeling we never moved on from the Tractatus? I can almost hear the Wiener Kreis egging him on.

Why should i let you dig yourself deeper? The philosophy of Mill has had no influence on politics? Politicians are no longer concerned with his ideas? Moral philosophy has no influence on the law? Politicians in the UK didn't turn to philosophy when trying to decide the question of consent in homosexual acts, then? Why don't you come up for air occasionally? :banghead:

Ho hum. Popper did no such thing and yet his ideas changed the way in which scientific experiment is understood and by which the demarcation is made between good and bad theories. Wrong again.

As opposed to the unique methodology of science, i suppose? Wake up - that myth is long dead.

Take a look at the Durrant quote that Tyler posted. Then try again.

There is no dispute with regard to philosophy of science or of politics being philosophy. You've singularly failed to counter the claim that the former is relevant and i wish you luck in showing similarly for the latter.

You may be confusing it with the stench of your scientism. You'd fit right in in the Vienna of the 20's.

How disingenuous of you. The point of my post was to try to save this thread from where you've dragged it with your "philosophy is fucked" attitude, but it's clear you've done too much poisoning of the well for that. Add to that the killing of any good-will towards you, and the picture is complete.

Nowhere357

"What I would very much like to see now, is some constructive suggestions and ideas for how to improve the situation. We have well mined the idea that philosophy sucks."