On The Philosophy of, well, Philosophy

I don't see why. Remaining completely (and blissfully) ignorant of epistemology was never any impediment to my learning about the world around me. From my experience working with actual scientists I can inform you that the concerns of so-called "philosophy of science" are remote irrelevancies to the day-to-day work of scientists. Indeed the number of scientists I've ever met who give any thought to philosophy of science are few and far between.Even a child, completely ignorant of all thought in the "field" of epistemology, is able to learn about the world around them simply by keeping an open mind and open eyes. So, obviously, tackling the sophistry of epistemology is not a prerequisite to learning about the natural world. That's exactly my point. A field which can't settle even the most basic, fundamental questions of its discipline clearly lacks rigor and cannot meaningfully inform us about anything.It's ridiculous. It would be like biologists being completely unable to arrive at any consensus about whether or not populations grow to the capacity of their environment. Physicists completely unable to determine whether or not objects had mass. Chemists completely unable to determine whether or not HCl was an acid or base.Philosophy has no rigor. As a result, no philosophical model can be verified. No philosophical assertion can be defended except circularly. ("If you accept unknowable X as true, then Y must follow.") Call it the Samuel Johnson proof ("I refute it - thus!"), which of course was no philosophy at all but simply the obvious, empirical observation that, indeed, the world around us is what's real.Of course, the fact that kicking rocks is what we're reduced to only confirms my view that philosophy can't provide answers to any questions. Johnson's "proof" not only refutes solipsism, it refutes philosophy altogether. There is no "philosophy as a whole." Philosophy, of course, was originally all forms of thinking about things - mathematics/logic, empirical science, etc. As the rigorous fields were spun off into disciplines of their own right, philosophy came to represent only those things that, with no rigor, were of no use to those seeking real knowledge. Those things that could not answer questions, in other words.Philosophy is a dumpster. If you think the be-all and -end-all of knowledge is to ask the question, then obviously philosophy has endless appeal to you. If you're someone who believes that answers are more useful, then you'll correctly see philosophy as a dumping ground for bullshit that sounds impressive until you stop and think about it.

But to answer why you think it is a question better suited to empirical methods, you need to justify your position using philosophy. You'd go for a bit of empiricism and rationalism no doubt, throwing verificationism in there for good measure as well as a few other philosophical concepts. Correct. In fact, nothing has any ability to answer any questions. One needs to turn to philosophy in order to get started on asking any questions, and one might get answers that are meaningful or one might not. Bingo - that's philosophy right there. Well, at least some of it. Whether or not a question is answerless is a matter of philosophical debate, assuming it does not have an answer does that make it meaningless? Yet more philosophy. If decide they are answerable, how can we know when we have the correct answer? Philosophy. What do we do when we have what we think is the correct answer? Philosophy.It's all philosophy, all the way down I'm afraid - and everything you think about what is true, or real or a way of knowing some information...all comes under philosophy.Of course, you think that all philosophies but your own (more or less) are wrong, cannot answer questions, pose meaningless statements etc etc. However, you seem to make the mistake of thinking that you don't utilize philosophy yourself, since your way of thinking is right and everything else is silly meaningless philosophy.Think about it, you attempted to show that "what is most important to human beings?" is not a philosophical question by demonstrating how your own philosophical worldview would conclude is the best way to answer the question. How can this not strike you as strange?

It should be apparent, but the question is a question of epistemology. How does evidence help us gain knowledge? Can you answer it without engaging in epistemology? Obviously, and a more powerful example would be to look at animals that do likewise without any cultural exposure to epistemology. And a good job it is too, they have more practical things to do with their grant money. I never said it was a prerequisite to learning about the natural world. I said talking about epistemology was required to answer the question "How does evidence help us gain knowledge?". That's just silly. That's like saying that politics cannot decide policy and achieve political ends because there are many political parties. It's like saying that two scientists who disagree about what the evidence shows invalidates the field of science. Their disagreement, like it or not, could be a philosophical one. Take for example over at Talk Origins. One person thinks that there is enough evidence to call universal common descent a fact, another does not think there is enough evidence. This is a philosophical dispute about the nature and magnitude of required evidence before labelling something a fact.'Philosophy' is not intended to inform you of anything. Logical Empiricism might inform you about verificationism and falsification. On the other hand, consequantialism might inform you of the most moral course of action to take.You can't just say 'hmm, what does philosophy have to say on this subject?', you have to pick one. No - it would be like the 'gene-driven' school of evolution not being able to come to a consensus with the 'group theory' school of evolution or the 'individualistic' school of evolution and then concluding that this therefore invalidates the study of evolution. The 'gene-driven' school will never come to a consensus by definition...whether or not there are any members of this school when a consensus is arrived at. Incorrect. You are aware that verificationism cannot itself be verified, right? Added to this, some philosophical models demand that philosophical answers be verifiable or they are meaningless. Your philosophy, and my own, would seem to agree. You are assuming that X is unknowable - which requires defining what it is to be knowable. A philosophical debate in its own right. If it is unknowable then we'd probably be dealing with some kind of metaphysical argument and I would reject it as meaningless - as would you. However, not all philosophies agree on what is knowable - which means different philosophies discuss lots of things, many of which other philosophies consider unknowable. So, to you, experience (of the real) is the real. That would be the going along with the philosophy of empiricism, from wiki:

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In philosophy generally, empiricism is a theory of knowledge emphasizing the role of experience, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas.

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Turns out that Johnson was engaging in philosophy. Wow, there is no philosophy as a whole. Tell the world, they need to know, crashfrog has swept it all away - only metaphysics and other philosophies (such as those that don't include verificationism) he rejects now remain.Sorry crashfrog, but what you said runs counter to everything I know so, since we are both fans of evidence, the dispute can be settled that way. Do you have any?Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

If we're simply going to reduce to this back-and-forth - where every means of addressing a certain question gets absorbed into "philosophy" when I try to pose alternatives - then you're only making my point for me.If everything can be philosophy, then there's no such thing as philosophy.

I can answer it by gaining some evidence, and seeing if my knowledge is accordingly extended. Why is that question meaningful or relevant to the gaining of knowledge? Particularly if epistemology gives us no tools to actually answer it? But the scientists have access to tools that, eventually, will settle their dispute. Science provides a framework to settle questions and disputes.That's why the only modern proponents of geocentricism are the insane and the ignorant - science has settled the dispute.What disputes has philosophy ever settled? None, as far as we can tell. Philosophy does not provide a means of discerning true positions from false ones, because it has no rigor. The best it can seem to do is to tell us when conclusions come logically from premises - and therefore which arguments are well-formed - but that's largely an exercise of logic, which is properly considered mathematics and not philosophy, and that doesn't help us distinguish which arguments that come logically from their premises are based on true premises.In philosophy, that's always left as an exercise to the reader. If everything is philosophy then nothing is. You're just proving my point. Why are philosophers so intent on taking the credit for other people's work?How strange it must be to be a philosopher walking down the street, seeing people - the baker, the bricklayer, the typesetter - engaged in activities that philosophers have been told they made possible. What a sense of one's own importance one must have when one believes that the entire scope of human endeavor owes its existence to one's graduate thesis!How preening and arrogant. Not philosophically, no, which is my entire point. Philosophy simply can't even detect the obvious rightness of empiricism. It's so useless it can't even detect what everyone, even children, know - seeing is believing. I doubt the Dean is going to close the Philosophy department just because I don't see any intellectual merit in the field. For one thing, they'd have to close down Theology and Economics, next.And anyway, graduate students do need to get laid. The study of philosophy has always had merit in that application. So by all means, let people continue to dirty themselves in the Philosodumpster. I'm simply not willing to pretend that they're doing anything useful. Only what I've presented so far. As I gain more, I'll let you know.

My statement indeed. Which proves the point: ______Edited by Archer Opterix, : html, brev.

I addressed this point. Can you respond to the rebuttal, please?

Science is guided by the general "philosophy of science." You can't avoid it. You can't assert it without denying it, and you can't deny it without asserting it, thus giving you the circular reasoning spoken of by myself, Archer, Java, and Modulous.I know what you are trying to say, along with Quetzal-- that philosophy is subjective, and can't ascertain concrete answers like empirical science can. I get that part up. And I agree with the statement up to a finite point. But to completely dismiss epistemics as a legitimate discipline is to dismiss the basis for even coming to science from a theoretical approach. Interpreting evidence often first derives from a philosophical notion as it cancels out possible variables a priori. I think perhaps the problem is that when we think of philosophy, we tend to associate these with some grand Aristotlean paradox, which, while being an aspect of philosophy, is not in and of itself the summation of philosophy. Children learn very early on about philosophy. Any truth claim made, or the very nature of what truth is, is philosophical. They are tackling epistemological questions before they can entertain scientific ones. What is true? What is false? What is truth? What are falsehoods? These come before the Pythagorean theorem or the aggregate air speed of an African swallow-- none of which, by the way, could be understood without that integral understanding of some basic philosophical points first. Is meaning an aspect of mathematics, science, or empiricism in general? I think what might be even more ridiculous is you placing any of these higher up on the totem than, say, love. Is that a scientific statement or a philosophical one? Better yet, what Johnson's statement a scientific statement or a philosophical one? Well, you're right. The word philosophy in Greek really just means the "love of knowledge." That's broad and all encompassing. But I agree with Mod that you seem to be attacking philosophy when perhaps you mean to really be bashing metaphysics. More scientific statements? Crash, everything you have stated is philosophical. Everything! You really can't see the irony in all of this? You are nailing your own coffin shut. You can't even glean answers about science without having first dealt with the philosophical aspect. Edited by Nemesis Juggernaut, : typo

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“This life’s dim windows of the soul, distorts the heavens from pole to pole, and goads you to believe a lie, when you see with and not through the eye.” -William Blake

Quetzal,I really, really disdain philosophy. And I'm not religious myself, at least as far as I am aware.With that said, the issue I have with your OP is this: questions which you may interpret as questions about truth; questions which religious people themselves believe are questions about truth: they are often not about truth at all! That's why we see the constant moving of goalposts, the convoluted responses to HARD DATA. Because it is not truth that is being sought.That's why your lumping of religion and philosophy in your response seems very poor to me (even understanding that you were responding to a question where that was also the case). In religion, truth is often not sought. In philosophy, as a discipline (but not necessarily in practice) it is.I can tolerate religion and understand it as simply a completely different approach to understanding than science. To me, philosophy is just a big lie. It's value lies not in truth, but in the same allegorical methods employed in fiction.Ben

You can, though. Just about every scientist I've ever met is.Don't you find that significant? That the concerns of "philosophy of science", supposedly so crucial to scientific inquiry, are in practice completely ignored and dismissed by nearly every practicing scientist? If everything is philosophy, NJ, then nothing is. You're not proving anything except philosophy's own uselessness. I don't have anything to add to how ridiculous this is except to say that there's few things more amusing than to watch people who have no experience with the sciences explain how it works. Except this is trivially disproven, NJ. People all over the world are ignoring philosophy and yet proving the Pythagorean theorem or learning about swallows.They're called "schoolchildren." Think about it, NJ. Schoolkids prove the Pythagorean theorem in 9th grade (at least, at my school, although I might have been in accelerated math. I don't remember.) Yet almost nobody studies philosophy until they go off to college.So it's safe to say that the nation's ninth-graders are pretty ignorant of all epistemological arguments; nonetheless, they're able to do something you claim can't be done without the contributions of philosophers.It's the same old pattern. Philosophers salve their wounded pride by taking credit for the accomplishments of others. "Everything comes back to philosophy", they say, even though nothing does. If everything is philosophy, then nothing is. Obviously. You're not doing anything but proving my point the more you try to give philosophy the credit for my arguments.

Noted. You imply here that 'hard data' and 'truth' matter to you.Why?

Ok maybe that was a bait and switch. It was late and i did not read all the prerequisite posts.Recently I heard someone describe Philosophers as intellectual plumbers that patch leaks in scientific reasoning, logic and assumptions. I can go with that.

Hi Archer Opertix. I'm happy to answer the question, but afraid that doing so might pull the thread off-topic. I hope it will suffice to say that my enduring respect for religion comes from the fact that I don't have a principled answer to this question.If you're looking for more, feel free to email me or try & help me understand how the question relates to the topic, so that I can answer in a way that will promote addressing Quetzal's original questions.

Would you be willing, iceage, to write an OP for a new thread? I think it would be great if you started as you did above, using precise terms and quoting Hume. We could then discuss the (necessarily philosophical) question I think Quetzal wanted to explore: the role of empiricism in epistomology.It would be nice to see that idea take wing. This thread is serving a different, and sadder, need. It has become a primer for bird watchers who don't think they do any of that high-falutin' ornithology stuff.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

I asked why 'hard data' and 'truth' matter. It would not pull the thread off-topic. What it would do is contradict your statement that you disdain philosophy.But you have already done that, so we're good. You say you are 'happy' to address the question of why data and truth matter.Philosophy deals with, among other things, the question of why data and truth matter. It deals with the question of what they are.So as soon as you say you are happy and willing to discuss this question, you show you do not disdain philosophy at all. You enjoy it.Welcome to the Acropolis, Mr Philo.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.