Science doesn't dictate how nature behaves.
Science explains difficult to understand things in nature in terms of much simpler things, to such an extent that predictions about future behaviour are possible and verifiable.
It does this better than intuition.
It does this better than revelation.
It does this better than studying ideal forms.
I'm sure Dennis Markuze makes perfect sense to you
This isn't a direct reply to you, Taz, but this quote seems like a good springboard.
Imagine you are psychotic. Not like in the films or on many TV shows....let me help with the mindset I'm looking for you to imagine: First off, you are anxious. A gnawing fear of some unseen fate. The walls in your room seem concave as they loom menacingly. You realize you are experiencing a bad mental scenario, but you have go to work. Fortunately you work within walking distance from home - but walking with mild hallucinations carries risks.
As you round a corner that man is standing there. You recognize that he's been following you for a few weeks. Checking on you. The fear begins to double, the unseen fate begins to be seen. Once they know the patterns, they will lie in wait and spring the worst trap bringing everything you've worked for down.
He's worried about the manOf course he's worried, what does he have in his pocket?Poison
"It's not poison.", you say, attempting to persuade yourself.
It's not poison! It's not poison!
they jeer, mockingly.
The point is - how does a person that goes through this, manage to function? People who undergo mild psychosis with insight often gravitate towards strange beliefs as a coping mechanism (superstitions, OCD or other rituals, spiritualism, remote viewing etc). Another possibility is an attraction towards philosophy.
Normal people may take it for granted that a certain skeptical empiricism is the way to go and until it's shown to not work which is fine - the work has been done to show and any present day work to try and show it not to work are fraught with problems, fallacies and so on. Naturally - there is some degree of credulity in normal people, but it only mildly impacts them if at all and they tend not to be that bothered.
But for someone who experiences psychosis the problems of 'what is real? what is true? what is right?' is a personal crisis that strikes ferociously and almost always is initially dealt with alone. It isn't a matter of mild academic interest, it's a matter of survival or at least of camouflage.
One option is to surrender to them, believe you are the saviour of humankind and begin to write barely coherent screeds and other Great Works.
But another option is acknowledge some beliefs are delusional. Some perceptions are erroneous. And to try and figure out a way of telling the real from the false. Epistemology is the place to learn the right questions to ask, logic helps determine which arguments follow naturally, science provides a paragon of execution that can rarely be achieved from an individual day-to-day subjective perspective.
As far as I know - most people that struggle with psychosis don't gravitate immediately to rational empiricism as a means to remain functional in society. But if they seek professional help, a significant part of that help involves developing what is sometimes called 'reality testing skills'. Another way of saying 'a more sensible series of epistemological habits based on exploring available evidence and using reasoning skills that conform with logic'...that is to say: learning to interpret evidence using reason in a not strictly scientific fashion (one can't really perform sociological studies of one's friends to see if they are genuinely consipring for instance).
Of course, some people who experience psychosis, do discover philosophies that assist them towards being high functioning individuals. They do tend to be a little obsessive about it, going onto forums and writing thousands of posts on it and related subjects, occasionally all but vanishing for months at a time as symptoms flare up only to return with a barely disguised semi-auto-biographical rant.
For the OP:
Straggler writes:
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?
Other than its vitally important point to me, personally (heh, navel gazing indeed) - coming up with useful answers so very often depends on asking the right questions. Even if you despise philosophy you have to admit that its a pretty good question generation machine, even if you want to argue that there is a poor Signal-to-Noise Ratio.
Straggler writes:
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 Nonsense
Postmodernists are more likely to say something like "Scientific theories have nothing to say about how nature behaves" for instance - but postmodernism is often misunderstood because it is incredibally difficult to do postmodernism without sounding like a gibbering madman (often because postmodernism has a streak of epistemological nihilism that is a mile wide). Those that are regarded as its founders are often saying perfectly sensible things. But the 'knowledge is merely opinion', 'facts are worldview biased subjective observations' drivel I think can be traced to postmodernism.
When postmodernists consider whether postmodernism is a culturally derived construct with no meaning beyond the hallowed walls of philosophy lectures and book reviews...I dare say they become angsty existentialists.
Finally - my expanded view of this subject can be read
in my responses to this thread's grandfather,
On The Philosophy of, well, Philosophy. For obvious reasons there are so many reasons not to press submit, but for once I think I will.
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