On The Philosophy of, well, Philosophy

Excellent. Your post shows the true value of philosophy - achieving clarity.I'm going to nominate this for a POTM if someone hasn't beaten me to it.

---

'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

Car driver: I want to know how to drive my car faster. I don't really care how my engine works.Engineer: I want to know how to make the carburettor more efficient. I don't really care about the physics of gases.Scientist: I want to know how gases act at extreme pressures. I don't really care how knowledge works.Philosopher: I want to know what we mean when we say, 'I know'. I don't drive a car.

---

'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

Because they're there?Anyway, the answerable questions are too easy .

---

'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

1. Where do you think the notions of tentativity and falsifiability come from? Philosophy (Particularly Mill and Popper).2. What about the idea of paradigm shift that you referenced in another thread? Philosophy (Thomas Kuhn).3. What about the notion that citizens should be free to pursue their own lives as long as they don't harm anyone? Philosophy (Locke and Mill, amongst others).4. What about the idea that public policy should be decided by whether it has a beneficial or harmful effect on the populace, rather than by the application of an absolute morality? Philosophy (Utilitarian philosophers such as Bentham and Mill).You use these ideas and terminology constantly in your arguments here. Do you think they were always around, or were always obvious to everyone?Scientists don't think about what it is they're doing. They're too busy doing chemistry or physics, or whatever. So how can they describe what the scientific method is? Philosophy is the thing that looks at how scientist's acquire knowledge, which is why terms such as 'scientific method' are philosophical terminology. They're such familiar terms that they always seems to have been around. But they haven't - someone invented them.I can understand some of your frustration with philosophy (and especially with philosophy majors :mad. Plato drives me up the wall, for example. But I do recommend that you dip into some of the empiricist philosophers (all of the examples I gave above, with the exception of Kuhn, are examples of empiricist philosophy). So here are a few suggestions for your reading list :John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
Both of these are short, well-written and exhilirating (especially for a liberal).George Berkeley, The Principles of Knowledge
This was the book that converted me. Berkeley is most famous for the weird idea that things only exist when someone's observing them. But don't let that put you off. It contains a wonderfully precise demolition of the notion that the existence of abstract ideas proves the existence of non-material things (which was the mainstay of medieval theology, and is an idea you still see constantly being put forward here). It also ends with some pretty astounding foreshadowing of quantum theory and relativity (although maybe that's just me reading too much into it ). Edited by JavaMan, : typo

---

'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

You really do have a bee in your bonnet about this, don't you? Scientists do science; philosophers are responsible for theorizing about how science works. As you've said, why would a scientist be bothered to do that?I haven't claimed heliocentrism, or Newton's laws, or evolution, or relativity for philosophy. Those are the work of scientists. But the notions of tentativity, falsifiability and paradigm shift are the work of philosophers. I even gave the names of the philosophers who invented the terms, for God's sake!

---

'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

I thought the use of a smiley was a clear indication that I was making a lighthearted comment. Why are you wasting your time trying to refute a joke?

---

'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang