Does anything exist?

[Thermal]

That's what's being discussed, so you can't just affirm this.

The great philosophers of classical Greece didn't manage to come up with modern science, for instance, for all their thinking. Neither did Nietschze (or however you write his stupid name) or Descartes.

Right...but not sure what you are getting at. You are disputing that the Greeks et al didn't identify and make a structure for formal thinking, now considered part of the P word? The Thinky Arts were pretty much in the philosophers wheelhouse for a long time, and remain so in academia. Philosophy, as a readily identified discipline, is still the broad umbrella for the study of same.

They performed engineering marvels in Greece and Rome, too, but on the whole they did not employ the scientific method consistently. So im not sure what this "bragging rights" gig is all about.

My objection is the dismissal and ridicule of one of our most useful disciplines (while at the same time passionately embracing most of it). Makes no sense. Philosophy is not the antithesis of science. They share more elements than not.

 

[abaddon]

I never got an answer to my "What isn't philosophy then?" question.

Of course not. Even thinking about formulating an answer would be philosophy. Everything is philosophy.

Even questioning the mad claims of philosophy is philosophy.

Because it is "meta".

Simple question. Have you ever watched some person who buys this BS of "is anything real" baloney cross the street? That will answer all the questions. Because if they really believer that garbage they spout, one could blindfold them and set them forth on a busy New York street. It is not real therefore they would come to no real harm, right?

Metaphysics is simply an excuse to make up any crap without the need to ever test such navel gazing utter crap.

"What if we are all mere thoughts in the mind of a higher being? Isn't that deep?"

Well no. That is the most shallow bucket of crap ever.

Alas, some "spiritual" "philosocranks" think it actually means something.

For me, it is no different than the spiritualists communicating with the dead to extract the surprising information that you are the reincarnation of Cleopatra.

First time I happen upon that claim I was quite impressed at first blush. Until I discovered that Cleo was quite the busy chick.

Same with the meta crank philosophy. It goes nowhere, produces bugger all, and only occurs because of rich people who seek to fill their vacant lives. It is useless otherwise.

Do I really care how many angels can dance upon the head of a pin? Nope. Yet in philosophy, it is somehow important.

So let me chuck a concrete example.

Suppose one was in a position with a pregnant woman. One can save the woman, or one can save the child, but not both. It is either or, one or the other. Make your choice.

Personally, I would make that choice upon rational bases, or at least what I considered rational bases. If one cannot save both, save as much as one can. It is called triage.

And what what did philosophy come up with? Nothing until both mother and child were dead. Instead of saving at least one, philosophy made sure that both died because they argued the matter literally to death

 

[LarryS]

Of course not. Even thinking about formulating an answer would be philosophy. Everything is philosophy.

Even questioning the mad claims of philosophy is philosophy.

Because it is "meta".

Simple question. Have you ever watched some person who buys this BS of "is anything real" baloney cross the street? That will answer all the questions. Because if they really believer that garbage they spout, one could blindfold them and set them forth on a busy New York street. It is not real therefore they would come to no real harm, right?

Metaphysics is simply an excuse to make up any crap without the need to ever test such navel gazing utter crap.

"What if we are all mere thoughts in the mind of a higher being? Isn't that deep?"

Well no. That is the most shallow bucket of crap ever.

Alas, some "spiritual" "philosocranks" think it actually means something.

For me, it is no different than the spiritualists communicating with the dead to extract the surprising information that you are the reincarnation of Cleopatra.

First time I happen upon that claim I was quite impressed at first blush. Until I discovered that Cleo was quite the busy chick.

Same with the meta crank philosophy. It goes nowhere, produces bugger all, and only occurs because of rich people who seek to fill their vacant lives. It is useless otherwise.

Do I really care how many angels can dance upon the head of a pin? Nope. Yet in philosophy, it is somehow important.

So let me chuck a concrete example.

Suppose one was in a position with a pregnant woman. One can save the woman, or one can save the child, but not both. It is either or, one or the other. Make your choice.

Personally, I would make that choice upon rational bases, or at least what I considered rational bases. If one cannot save both, save as much as one can. It is called triage.

And what what did philosophy come up with? Nothing until both mother and child were dead. Instead of saving at least one, philosophy made sure that both died because they argued the matter literally to death

it's being in a position with a woman that get's her pregnant in the first place, speaking of which, really collapses my wave function

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

aH bUT yOu SaiD "Should" sO yOU're DoiNG pHIlosOPhy!

I have no problem with philosophy, me doing philosophy, or granting that logic is a part of philosophy.

(Well, or at least it started that way. Nowadays it's more like a part of mathematics, with all that rigour that it entails -- like, literally syllogistic logic is a subset of set theory -- rather than it being so because some wise old dead guy said so.)

But seriously, yes, for better or worse, any kind of thinking hard about something IS by definition philosophy. As I keep saying, even Beavis and Butthead putting some thought into, "How come they call it taking a dump and not leaving a dump? I mean after all, you're not really taking it anywhere." is quite literally philosophy of the language.

And I'm ok with that. I've got better things to do than tilt at the windmills about how I'd change words in the dictionary.

And I have no problem with people just asking hard questions even if they don't have a definitive answer. Sometimes while engineering can tell us how to build boats to go kill the tribe across the river, and logistics can tell us exactly how many boats we need, and economics can tell us how many resources and workers can we divert to supporting that war, and so on, there's nothing wrong with someone asking, "OK, but are we sure killing them is the best course of action?"


There still are issues I have, typically when it comes to people thinking it's just a free ticket to try to sound deep and smart on the Internet. Which is really the problem IMHO.

 

[abaddon]

*Head desk* Is getting drunk because people keep making the same argument over and over philosophy or science. God forbid I get it wrong.

You describe science, and the call it philosophy because science isn't allowed to discover itself but philosophy is.

Yeah, I know it is frustrating, but the philosopher can happily argue that there is no such thing as gravity while happily operating in a gravity driven universe.

One cannot philosophise one's way out of the reality of gravity.

Does not stop philosophers from making the attempt. After all, you and I are mere constructs of their brains, or souls, or whatever. Mere "qualia" right?

That is metaphysics at the core..

Useless in any way.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Uh, you know that that's literally what General Relativity says, right? There's no gravity, we're just moving inertially through curved space-time.

 

[IanS]

Rigorous observational testing is something of a newcomer and our understanding or at least our technological growth was stifled until we included it.



Not without the tools provided by philosophy it doesn't. If you don't use those tools correctly the result is pseudo-science.

OK well you are now absolutely 100% in the game of claiming that all purposeful thinking is "doing philosophy". That argument is as utterly absurd as it is arrogant, egotistical and actually dishonest. You ought to be ashamed of yourself making that argument/claim.

All animals that have a structure identifiable as a brain capable on conscious awareness, think constructively ... so they are all philosophers ... my cat is a philosopher, mice are philosophers, and long before any humans existed all dinosaurs were also philosophers.

The fact that all humans think constructively, inc. of course scientists, is not either part of philosophy or something given to us by earlier philosophers. It comes to us because of animal evolution.

The main function of philosophy (perhaps it's only function since science took away philosophy's original claimed function), is what is now going on in this thread, and what goes on in every thread where philosophy is being promoted, and that is the ability to argue over the use of words from a dictionary for ever-&-ever until everyone is thoroughly sick of it and eventualy leaves on the basis that they have far better things to do with their time than indulge philosophy students in talking the world to death … at which point philosophy declares itself the winner (and “winner” is appropriate for the triviality of philosophy, because that's all it's trying to do, all it's been reduced to doing, ie trying to win a game of words that it takes from a dictionary).

The world can certainly live without the thinking of philosophers, and without any of the thinking and posturing that philosophy students do on the internet … that is of zero help or use to anyone. But in vast and unarguable contrast, the world certainly cannot live without the thinking of scientists. Philosophy is no longer of any use to the world, and it would make no difference to the lives of anyone or everyone if philosophy completely disappeared with no further mention by anyone … but if science disappeared the whole world would suffer enormously (and that's an understatement). There is no comparison at all between the value & success of those two approaches to understanding the world around us – Science is fantastically successful beyond anyones wildest expectation, hopes or dreams, and philosophy is a completely useless waste of everyones time and has actually become a huge negative drain on humanity.

 

[angrysoba]

OK well you are now absolutely 100% in the game of claiming that all purposeful thinking is "doing philosophy". That argument is as utterly absurd as it is arrogant, egotistical and actually dishonest. You ought to be ashamed of yourself making that argument/claim.

Normative judgement = ethics ergo philosophy.

Also, appeal to emotion fallacy.

It sounds like something religious people say to scientists all the time, "You ought to be ashamed of your theories for arrogantly displacing God, blah blah blah...."

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

OK well you are now absolutely 100% in the game of claiming that all purposeful thinking is "doing philosophy". That argument is as utterly absurd as it is arrogant, egotistical and actually dishonest.

It's none of those, actually. It's just semantics. That's what it means.

What's utterly "arrogant, egotistical and actually dishonest", and absurd too, is your thinking you can demand that people redefine the dictionary. If you don't like what a word means, apparently you think you can just demand to redefine it. I don't know what kind of confusion of the mind makes you think you're entitled to do that.

And the real problem isn't calling it all the same name anyway. We have lots of words that cover vast domains, including stuff that's not even similar or of the same quality. E.g., "book" covers Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time", just as well as it does crap like the Book Of Mormon or Edward Bulwer-Lytton's sub-par novels. Or "movie" covers science documentaries just as well as it does Plan 9 From Outer Space.

If you can't deal with that, I dare say the problem is on your side. And one doesn't get to demand that people change the language just because one or two people's little brain is too underdeveloped to deal with real language and words covering more than one narrowly-defined thing.

The real problem is the association fallacy that is used to prop certain domains of philosophy. They're covered by the same word as, say, science or logic, therefore you must take them equally seriously, that's the usual implication. But you can deal with that by just pointing out the fallacy, rather than the whole nonsense railing against what words in the dictionary mean.

 

[abaddon]

Normative judgement = ethics ergo philosophy.

Also, appeal to emotion fallacy.

It sounds like something religious people say to scientists all the time, "You ought to be ashamed of your theories for arrogantly displacing God, blah blah blah...."

According to philosophers, god's existence is valid philosophy. So is discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. So are the apologetic ramblings of William Lane Craig (theologian and christian apologist). Heck, theology itself is a branch of philosophy.

I have no truck with making excuses for some magic, beardy sky fairy any more than Santa Claus squeezing through the chimney I don't have every Christmas.

But it is PHILOSOPHY.

See they way I chucked in god and Santa? Philosophy.
See the way I posted my opinion? Philosophy.

Everything is philosophy.

When one points it out that the claim is that everything is philosophy, outright denial happens. Which is a philosophical claim itself.

Easy is it not. Have a meaningless term? Then you can slap it on anything and everything with wild abandon.

 

[Belz...]

Right...but not sure what you are getting at. You are disputing that the Greeks et al didn't identify and make a structure for formal thinking, now considered part of the P word?

If you read what I actually posted rather than try to ascertain what it "really" means, like a good philosopher, you would be sure what I'm getting at, since I actually wrote it.

The Thinky Arts were pretty much in the philosophers wheelhouse for a long time, and remain so in academia.

And yet it didn't bring about any actual results except more thinking.

My objection is the dismissal and ridicule of one of our most useful disciplines

And yet I'm still waiting to know what uses it has had.

 

[Belz...]

I have no problem with philosophy, me doing philosophy, or granting that logic is a part of philosophy.

(Well, or at least it started that way. Nowadays it's more like a part of mathematics, with all that rigour that it entails -- like, literally syllogistic logic is a subset of set theory -- rather than it being so because some wise old dead guy said so.)

But seriously, yes, for better or worse, any kind of thinking hard about something IS by definition philosophy. As I keep saying, even Beavis and Butthead putting some thought into, "How come they call it taking a dump and not leaving a dump? I mean after all, you're not really taking it anywhere." is quite literally philosophy of the language.

And I'm ok with that. I've got better things to do than tilt at the windmills about how I'd change words in the dictionary.

Except that I did provide those definitions and that's not what they say. I think the issue is that we've let people who desperately want philosophy to be the greatest thing in the world define the word.

It's none of those, actually. It's just semantics. That's what it means.

Ok then your turn: provide a definition from a respectable dictionary that agrees with you.

 

[Belz...]

Uh, you know that that's literally what General Relativity says, right? There's no gravity, we're just moving inertially through curved space-time.

Wrong. It says that moving through curved space-time IS gravity.

 

[Scorpion]

what is the philosophical answer to "Does anything exist?"

"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter." ~ Max Planck

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Yes yes, Max Planck believed in god and he was a very smart man. So what Scorpion? That isn't evidence of god any more than Carl Sagan not believing is evidence against god.

 

[Belz...]

"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter." ~ Max Planck

He didn't ask for the religious answer.

Yes yes, Max Planck believed in god and he was a very smart man. So what Scorpion? That isn't evidence of god any more than Carl Sagan not believing is evidence against god.

I've never understood why smart people believing stupid things is evidence for these stupid things being true.

 

[Myriad]

"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter." ~ Max Planck

In other words, yes, things exist.

 

[LarryS]

"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter." ~ Max Planck

Scientific findings are always conditional when extended beyong the confines of the observation (scientific method) itself. Here Max Planck is expressing his opinion; perhaps wishful thinking, perhaps he has some logic or reasoning behind it; but here he is not being 'scientific'.

 

[Belz...]

Scientific findings are always conditional when extended beyong the confines of the observation (scientific method) itself.

That doesn't make any sense.

Can you name a single instance of a scientific finding that is beyond the confines of the scientific method?

 

[JoeMorgue]

For the 30th time to be ignored by the philosophy fanboys.

"Philosophy did that!" WITHOUT EXPLAINING THE PROCESS PHILOSOPHY USED is meaningless twaddle.