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My lowered respect for philosophy

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Oodain
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23 May 2011, 5:32 pm

we need something better than speech for comunication

too many pitfalls


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23 May 2011, 5:34 pm

Kon wrote:
This is an interesting quote by M. Friedman on philosophy:

"the philosophers of the modern tradition from Descartes are not best understood as attempting to stand outside the new science so as to show, from some mysterious point outside of sciences itself that our scientific knowledge somehow mirrors an independently existing reality. Rather, they start from the fact of modern scientific knowledge as a fixed point, as it were. Their problem is not so much to justify this knowledge from some 'higher' standpoint so as to articulate the new philosophical conceptions that are forced upon us by the new science. In Kant's words, mathematics and the science of nature stand in no need of philosophical inquiry for themselves, but for the sake of another science: metaphysics."

If I am hearing that correctly, and I do think I am, there is a lot of truth there and far too few people hearing it.


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dionysian
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23 May 2011, 6:02 pm

Socrates wrote:
The unexamined life is not worth living.


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23 May 2011, 6:07 pm

Kon wrote:
This is an interesting quote by M. Friedman on philosophy:

"the philosophers of the modern tradition from Descartes are not best understood as attempting to stand outside the new science so as to show, from some mysterious point outside of sciences itself that our scientific knowledge somehow mirrors an independently existing reality. Rather, they start from the fact of modern scientific knowledge as a fixed point, as it were. Their problem is not so much to justify this knowledge from some 'higher' standpoint so as to articulate the new philosophical conceptions that are forced upon us by the new science. In Kant's words, mathematics and the science of nature stand in no need of philosophical inquiry for themselves, but for the sake of another science: metaphysics."

You'll have to give who M. Friedman is, as when I see the name, my first thought is Milton Friedman, whose philosophical excursions have mostly been limited to his statement on economic methodology, which is usually derided by philosophers for being overly instrumentalist.



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23 May 2011, 6:10 pm

RedHanrahan wrote:
I concur, and would add that the accademisation of 'philosophy' has made it the sport of an elitist and often overly pompous group of contemplative technocrats, I would posit that philosophy which cannot be comprehended by your average person has become somewhat useless?

Well, that feature happens somewhat necessarily. The common person is just going to be rather inept, and unable to follow where an advanced chain of arguments leads. However, this does not mean that such an advanced study is useless.



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23 May 2011, 6:11 pm

dionysian wrote:
Socrates wrote:
The unexamined life is not worth living.

Examine that statement then. Are you saying that people who do not examine their lives are better off dead? Are you saying that your life, before you examined it, and/or were able to examine it, was not worth living? Even further, how much examination is even necessary? Why is examination necessary?

Frankly, I think that the Socrates statement has become an ironic dogma.



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23 May 2011, 6:17 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
RedHanrahan wrote:
I concur, and would add that the accademisation of 'philosophy' has made it the sport of an elitist and often overly pompous group of contemplative technocrats, I would posit that philosophy which cannot be comprehended by your average person has become somewhat useless?

Well, that feature happens somewhat necessarily. The common person is just going to be rather inept, and unable to follow where an advanced chain of arguments leads. However, this does not mean that such an advanced study is useless.

So called "advanced" study of philosophy is the reason it makes so little progress. The greatest advances in philosophy were not made by unimaginative minds accumulating and refining their jargon. They are made by vivid thinkers illustrating vibrant, provocative, inspirational and novel ideas. Most academics treat philosophy as a set of parlor tricks they can use to outmaneuver their opponents.


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23 May 2011, 6:46 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
You'll have to give who M. Friedman is, as when I see the name, my first thought is Milton Friedman, whose philosophical excursions have mostly been limited to his statement on economic methodology, which is usually derided by philosophers for being overly instrumentalist.


Michael Friedman:

http://philosophy.stanford.edu/profile/ ... +Friedman/



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23 May 2011, 6:48 pm

dionysian wrote:
Socrates wrote:
The unexamined life is not worth living.

I believe the opposite is true
A house with too many lights is not worth living in
vivisection (pun intended) is by its nature a destructive act.


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23 May 2011, 6:50 pm

With apology for a bit of rearrangement ...

dionysian wrote:
Most academics treat philosophy as a set of parlor tricks they can use to outmaneuver their opponents.

The greatest advances in philosophy ... are made by vivid thinkers illustrating vibrant, provocative, inspirational and novel ideas.

You bet.


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dionysian
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23 May 2011, 6:52 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
dionysian wrote:
Socrates wrote:
The unexamined life is not worth living.

Examine that statement then. Are you saying that people who do not examine their lives are better off dead? Are you saying that your life, before you examined it, and/or were able to examine it, was not worth living? Even further, how much examination is even necessary? Why is examination necessary?

Frankly, I think that the Socrates statement has become an ironic dogma.

Seems more like you are the one trying to force the generation of dogma around the statement. Take it for what it is: a piece of poetry.


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23 May 2011, 8:17 pm

dionysian wrote:
So called "advanced" study of philosophy is the reason it makes so little progress. The greatest advances in philosophy were not made by unimaginative minds accumulating and refining their jargon. They are made by vivid thinkers illustrating vibrant, provocative, inspirational and novel ideas. Most academics treat philosophy as a set of parlor tricks they can use to outmaneuver their opponents.

There have been debates, but no real "great advances", nor have there been any. In order for philosophy to advance, it would have to have a clear eye to allow it to attain truth. Philosophers have never had this, and instead philosophy has always been a matter of clearing a person's ability to think or parlor tricks to pull castles out of the aether.

Even if we abolished academic philosophy, it'd have no great advances. As it stands, academic philosophy today actually has a good amount of "progress" compared to most ages. However, most academic strainings have always lacked a justifying reason for their existence.

Edit: Just to be clear, I do know that some philosophically minded person may try to take me to task for what I just stated, but philosophy has rarely refuted positions to a degree where they go up and die, instead, they just revamp themselves, their conclusions, and all of that to keep on lurking about. It wouldn't matter whether it is Platonic ideas, mind-body dualism, or whatever have you, a lot of ideas that many outside the field would think to be past the point of being reasonable still maintain a presence.



Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 23 May 2011, 8:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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23 May 2011, 8:18 pm

dionysian wrote:
Seems more like you are the one trying to force the generation of dogma around the statement. Take it for what it is: a piece of poetry.

More like a piece of rhetoric, and one designed to cloud the mind. When a statement gets uttered enough, whether it is true or not, it gets mistaken for a truth. If you say a lie enough, even you will start to believe it.



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23 May 2011, 8:32 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
In order for philosophy to advance, it would have to have a clear eye to allow it to attain truth. Philosophers have never had this, and instead philosophy has always been a matter of clearing a person's ability to think or parlor tricks to pull castles out of the aether.


I think philosophy deals with a lot of questions that may, in principle, be unanswerable to symbolic chimps like ourselves due to our cognitive limitations as argued here:

"The suspicion is that, in trying to do philosophy, we run up against the limits of our understanding in some deep way. Ignorance seems the natural condition of philosophical endeavour, contributing both to the charm and the frustration of the discipline (if that is the right word). Thus a tenacious tradition, cutting across the usual division between empiricists and rationalists, accepts

(i) that there are nontrivial limits to our epistemic capacities and
(ii) that these limits stem, at least in part, from the internal organisation of the knowing mind - its constitutive structure - as distinct from limits that result from our contingent position in the world.

It is not merely that we are a tiny speck in a vast cosmos; that speck also has its own specific cognitive orientation, its own distinctive architecture. The human mind conforms to certain principles in forming concepts and beliefs and theories, originally given, and these constrain the range of knowledge to which we have access"

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/cour ... sophy.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_ ... philosophy)



Last edited by Kon on 23 May 2011, 8:47 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Awesomelyglorious
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23 May 2011, 8:43 pm

Kon wrote:
I think philosophy deals with a lot of questions that may, in principle, be unanswerable to symbolic chimps like ourselves due to our cognitive limitations as argued here:

I don't think that the issue would be our cognitive limitations so much as the fact that philosophy deals with subjects beyond theoretical confirmation or falsification,(Note: we can quibble on "confirmation", but let's just leave that aside and recognize that there is some legitimate interpretation on prediction according to many.) which leads to a legitimate possibility of continuing an argument when in science an issue could be dead and resolved more quickly. This alongside with the overall squishiness of our cognitive workings, as human beings are not ideal beings of reason, and we often reason according to intuitions that we only have access to and which we feel justified in using. And... well... the list goes on. (note: the point about epistemic limitations should be considered somewhat reasonable, although "nontrivial" doesn't mean "necessary", as the latter is more untrustworthy)

This isn't to say that your idea cannot be correct, but, as a general principle, we ought to put it last anyway, just as we ought to put "The martians did it" as the cause for any historical event as our last possible explanation.



Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on 23 May 2011, 9:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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23 May 2011, 8:47 pm

Kon wrote:
Awesomelyglorious wrote:
In order for philosophy to advance, it would have to have a clear eye to allow it to attain truth. Philosophers have never had this, and instead philosophy has always been a matter of clearing a person's ability to think or parlor tricks to pull castles out of the aether.


I think philosophy deals with a lot of questions that may, in principle, be unanswerable to symbolic chimps like ourselves due to our cognitive limitations as argued here:

"Thus a tenacious tradition, cutting across the usual division between empiricists and rationalists, accepts

(i) that there are nontrivial limits to our epistemic capacities and
(ii) that these limits stem, at least in part, from the internal organisation of the knowing mind - its constitutive structure - as distinct from limits that result from our contingent position in the world.

It is not merely that we are a tiny speck in a vast cosmos; that speck also has its own specific cognitive orientation, its own distinctive architecture. The human mind conforms to certain principles in forming concepts and beliefs and theories, originally given, and these constrain the range of knowledge to which we have access"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_ ... philosophy)
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/cour ... sophy.html


To make that assertion you must be aware that there is knowledge beyond human comprehension. Is it possible you are not human? It's fascinating that an alien should participate in this discussion.