Philosophy 101

Is philosophy a load of navel gazing pompous pointless nonsense? or does philosophy provide us with the foundations on which science and society are formed?I would say a bit of both. I think real philosophy is absolutely vital to the sort of questions EvC is designed to contend with. BUT there is undoubtably a contingent of philosophers who need their superior post-modern bubble to be burst. As per Alan Sokal and the Fashionable NonsenseBut this post-modern drivel doesn’t make all philosophy pointless. The need for philosophy remains with regard to how and why we should choose to live (i.e moral/political philosophy) and how/what we can know and to what extent we can distinguish things like belief from knowledge (i.e epistemology).What do others (Hello Mod and Crashfrog) think?

Wherever you think best.

To promote or not to promote......

Philosophically?

Isn't this a philosophical conclusion? How have you decided which methods of investigation are superior in terms of being "correct". And what do you mean by "wrong"?

Sure. But is that the be-all-and-end-all of philosophy? Or just a fashionable blind alley? On what basis do scientists derive their methods? Why do they think these methods are superior to other methods? What is tentativity and why is it necessary in science? How do we judge what is science and what is not?And then there is political and moral philosophy. How do we decide what sort of society we want to live in? And how do we best achieve that?

You old pseudoskeptic you.

OK. Postmodern ramblings aside isn't there a significant overlap?

I agree that postmodern philosophy is fashionable nonsense as exposed by Alan Sokal. I even described it as such in the OP. Nobody here is defending that. But are you going to throw away all philosophy on that basis? Can you really cite science itself as supporting the conclusion that science is superior method of investigation? And doesn’t science show us that common sense is an unreliable tool? Whilst your conclusion may ultimately be right are these not valid (philosophical?) questions? Or do you think we should just accept what you say as obviously true? Common sense and obviousness dictated that the natural state of motion was for things to come to rest. Common sense and obviousness are not always enough. Hence the need for science in the first place. It sounds so simple. Yet the idea of testing conclusions, formalising procedures to overcome preconceived notions etc. These things had to be thought of and developed. Do you agree with Alan Sokal and Richard Dawkins that science seeks objective truths about the world? Is that a philosophical stance?

Yet many working scientists on this very site would dispute that science is the search for objective truth. How do we determine how close we are to the truths of reality? Isn’t empiricism a philosophical position? I don’t think any philosophers are trying to take credit for the achievements of science. Philosophers of science (postmodernist-nonsensicalists apart) are instead trying to explain why science is a successful as it demonstrably is.

And it is our "fallacious experience" that makes (naive) empiricism alone an insufficient basis for investigating reality.Hence the scientific method and more structured empirical methods we have developed. But can the formulation of these methods be entirely empirically derived or justified? I would say that at root the validity of science is based on a heavy dose of empiricism (i.e. it works), a large dash of rationalism/logic and some skeptically applied "common sense" thrown in too.But the exact mixture and how or why this mixture is as successful as it is remains a philosophical question.

If "most scientists" take the 'It's obvious' approach to the value of what they do then it is difficult to argue on a purely practical level. But here at EvC we are debating those who insist that their "knowledge" and their "evidence" is just as valid as that garnered by the methods of science. Are they right? If not why not?"It's obvious" is not a very convincing argument to those who do not find it as "obvious" as maybe you or I do.On what basis do scientists derive their methods? Why do they think these methods are superior to other methods? What is tentativity and why is it necessary in science? How do we judge what is science and what is not? What is it that science is actually seeking to do? And is that aim meaningful or logically justifiable (and how much does it matter if it isn't?) I think a few philosophers have had a significant effect on the working of science. Empiricism, falsification, questions of truth etc. etc. These are philosophical stances directly relevant to science. Arguably forming the foundation of Western scientific thought.It is these foundations that the pompous postmodern philosophers we have all been deriding deny as valid.

I have just been to the bathroom. The Graffiti in there said "A poo a day keeps the evil alien probes away"I am guessin this your kinda "philosophy".

It makes me think whether or not Dr Newall ever used those toilets and how he ever managed to get a mule in there with him.

A question worthy of your intellectual prowess Jon. And one I will endeavour to answer with the clarity it demands and deserves. Consider the epistemological variants at play here. If we apply the principle of Cartesian hegemony it becomes clear that the answer to your question is neither self-evident nor evident of self. It is instead indicative of the meta-self. The process of Post-Freudian masculinisation then requires that we take the natural logarithm of the Id and deconstruct this as a factor of the linear co-efficient of the ego. In this manner we are able to overcome the transgressional boundaries imposed by the modernistic societistic subjective I of the object in question. In other words the transmutational id-ego of the subject provides the over-arching ontological framework in which your parallel induced epistemological question objectively resides. Evidently the modality of the expressionistic components of the question are now divided into their genderised subsets. Thus by putting the non-orthogonal didactic elements of your question to one side the answer should become obvious to even those lacking erudition such as yourself.I hope this clarifies things. Feel free to ask further questions if necessary.