Since you're evading the question of measuring and adjudicating knowledge, I conclude you don't want those questions asked of you. From that defensiveness I hypothesize you have no formal education in philosophy and that your mastery of the field has never been measured. As to how that is customarily done, see my previous posts.
The problem is that you've made a claim to expertise and used that as a premise to a dismissive argument. Reading the thread, I don't see many here who consider you competent in philosophy. Hence we need to discover what exactly you mean by "25 years of studying philosophy." To what extent can we be assured it grants you a basis of understanding from which you can give a credible sweeping dismissal? One that would have evidentiary value.
You could have answered my question simply and honestly. You could have said, "I don't have a degree in philosophy; all my study has been personal." We could have better known from that to what degree we can trust your knowledge. Instead you've been evasive. You tried to deflect the question in a snarky way, then you tried to argue that it was meaningless. (It isn't.) Why the dishonesty? Were you trying to create an impression you knew wasn't strictly true? To what extent, then, are you arguing here in good faith? Do you really have expert philosophical insight into how Stephen Hawking views the existence of a god? Or are you just trying to look cool? If the latter, then to what extent are you justified in expecting people to engage you?
Your still overlooking a third possible.
I have worked for 16 years in a teaching institution. 2 of my coworkers were philosophers. Now both, when asked how many philosophers there was, would answer 3. So am I a philosopher?
Well, that depends on what you take for granted?
I have studied philosophy at the university, but due to illness I never got a degree.
Now that means that there is less chance of a chance than for a philosopher with a degree, that I am one. But the chance is not zero.
How? Because philosophy doesn't require a degree to do it. If that was the case, then universities would never have come into existence, because they started out manned by people, who didn't have degrees.
So we are at an impasse. You will subjectively claim that it means I can't be a philosopher. Others, who have know me for years and have varying university degrees and have debated me, will claim I am one.
So am I one?
Well, that depends on what you and everybody else take for granted and that varies.
So something else.
Please use critical thinking on this:
All thinking is a process of identification and integration. Man perceives a blob of color; by integrating the evidence of his sight and his touch, he learns to identify it as a solid object; he learns to identify the object as a table; he learns that the table is made of wood; he learns that the wood consists of cells, that the cells consist of molecules, that the molecules consist of atoms. All through this process, the work of his mind consists of answers to a single question: What is it? His means to establish the truth of his answers is logic, and logic rests on the axiom that existence exists. Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. A contradiction cannot exist. An atom is itself, and so is the universe; neither can contradict its own identity; nor can a part contradict the whole. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/logic.html
And now something else: Moral relativism.
https://www.iep.utm.edu/moral-re/
Now you ask Skeptic Ginger the same, you ask of me. To account for the link including 1.a. Ancient Greece and then stop.
Now for your other post.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12518054&postcount=2813
There's an irony in playing the "Oh crap I left the stove on" excuse when you're entire argument is a thousand word salad variations on "reality isn't really real."
There is limit to what we can say of reality independent of humans. What is real, is what is real to humans. The word "real" is not a property of the universe independent of humans. So reality is neither really real or unreal.
And as long as you are unable to even tackle this, I will treat you as unable to understand philosophy:
Austin highlights the complexities proper to the uses of ‘real’ by observing that it is (i) a substantive-hungry word that often plays the role of (ii) adjuster-word, a word by means of which “other words are adjusted to meet the innumerable and unforeseeable demands of world upon language” (Austin 1962a, 73). Like ‘good,’ it is (iii) a dimension-word, that is, “the most general and comprehensive term in a whole group of terms of the same kind, terms that fulfil the same function” (Austin 1962a, 71): that is, ‘true,’ ‘proper,’ ‘genuine,’ ‘live,’ ‘natural,’ ‘authentic,’ as opposed to terms such as ‘false,’ ‘artificial,’ ‘fake,’ ‘bogus,’ ‘synthetic,’ ‘toy,’ but also to nouns like ‘dream,’ ‘illusion,’ ‘mirage,’ ‘hallucination.’ ‘Real,’ is also (iv) a word whose negative use “wears the trousers” (a trouser-word) (Austin 1962a, 70).
In order to determine the meaning of ‘real’ we have to consider, case by case, the ways and contexts in which it is used. Only by doing so, according to Austin, can we avoid introducing false dichotomies...
https://www.iep.utm.edu/austin/
So what is the standard in philosophy? That you have overall knowledge about the major parts of philosophy and can as you point out compare different POW.
I just did so with "real". I have do so before and all you as a group do is to answer with a straw man; i.e. "reality isn't really real."
Now I will do combine science and morality. You know a hell of a lot about science, so you know this. If you claim something in general it requires direct observation or an instrument calibrated to a scientific standard. It can be field observation or an experiment. There is more, but in experimental/field science, that is necessary as a part of doing science.
That is all we need for ethics, because you just tell me how to observe good in a moral sense or what instrument to calibrate. But you can't. That is Skeptic Ginger's problem. She think that how she thinks is a scientific standard for morality and ethics. That is her problem.
So come on, JayUtah.
Start doing some philosophy yourself. Limit it to the quote from Ayn Rand. And yes, it is a trick, so see if you can spot it.
BTW On the other hand, if you have time, tackle "real"; whether science can be based on, how you think about good; and if you have really good time do a short run down of animal rights and other living things; that is also a subject in philosophy. I.e. e.g. do common lawn grass have rights? And while you are at explain human and political rights.
And just for the fun of it, do a run down of metaphysics, ontology, logic, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics.
But here I will be fair. If you answer with a short run down of the quote by Ayn Rand, I will give you a short run down of metaphysics, ontology, logic, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics. Forget the rest I asked of you. Show that you can do it with the Ayn Rand quote and I will answer with an overview of philosophy and relate to the OP.
