Does anything exist?

[Belz...]

Claim (1) is the more accurate description of what science means when it suggests that a particle exists, or a theory is 'true' . . . who knows what claim #2 means, that's my point. Claim #2 is something else, perhaps based on personal experience, intuition or gut feeling, a hunch, wishful thinking, etc.

Why are you refusing to answer my question?

What does it mean to "exist", outside of what claim (1) says?

Why is this so difficult for you?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Some concepts are so basic that to say that any particular methodology gets to "take credit" for them is rather silly.

 

[Belz...]

My definition of philosophy is

Striving to reach understanding by reason alone.

Surprisingly, that is not a half-bad definition.

Of course if that were the definition, it would certainly demonstrate what we're saying: if you are using reason alone, and are ignoring evidence and whatever else might be inconvenient for you, then you will almost always reach the wrong conclusions.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Philosophy is over-enamored with the idea of determining facts via just thinking really hard.

That's usually where the stupid fact/truth distinction without difference gets shoved into.

You need to step outside your own head to learn stuff.

 

[abaddon]

<snip for brevity>

I and others value your contributions.

Edited by Agatha: 

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Ball firmly in your court.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

You see this is always the routine.

"Oh but how can science answer those questions?"

*Shrugs* I dunno. How can philosophy? That question never gets answered, it's always just treated as a given that "science" ends at some point and philosophy just takes over by default but how philosophy answers the question is never answered.

And I still stand by my point. If your "answer" (even for *dramatic pause* subjective question) doesn't include concepts like "evidence" and "falsifiability" then they aren't answers.

"But science can't tell you if a painting is beautiful!" or "Science can't answer ethical questions!" (or some other functional identical gotcha)... okay but neither can philosophy from where I'm standing. Philosophy just says "something" that isn't an answer and pats itself on the back.

Okay fine, let's hit the "I believe button" and say science can't answer "ethical" questions. (I think that's absolutely wrong, but let's shelf that for the time being)

How does philosophy? And actually give the method it uses.

Basically, the argument seems to be that philosophy gets to answer questions science can't by having no standards.

Sure if you by answer you mean "not really an answer" philosophy answers all sorts of stuff.

Again this is what is so frustrating. We're being talked to as if "philosophy" has this track record of actually answering things science can't.

See, I don't even fully disagree with what you're saying here.

I don't think philosophy can provide concrete answers. The best it can do is provide discussion from which a consensus arises. This is why I don't have a problem with people who say it's much less useful than science. I agree it is!

Take political philosophy for example (and not just because I had to spend a significant portion of my university time discussing it).

You can use science to determine whether the death penalty works as a deterrent to crime because you can compare states that have it against those that don't and check the crime rates and so on. What I don't think you can do is determine whether the death penalty is an acceptable punishment for a crime. You can certainly use reason and evidence to discuss the fact and you can reach a consensus, but you can't look at the death penalty and say "No, this is absolutely not the correct penalty."

I'm not saying it is the equivalent of science Joe, I'm just saying that it is useful to use reason and evidence to discuss things like politics whether or not you call it philosophy. Call it reason if you feel philosophy is too tainted by metaphysics.

 

[bruto]

My definition of philosophy is

Striving to reach understanding by reason alone.

I would dispute that unless you are ready to disqualify all those who claim to be philosophers who have relied in some degree on actual experience.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Well that and the whole "In my mind" distinction became pointless when we learned "our minds" were processes running on physical hardware.

Again a LOT of philosophy is still looking for a soul that long ago we learned isn't there.

 

[JoeMorgue]

See, I don't even fully disagree with what you're saying here.

I don't think philosophy can provide concrete answers. The best it can do is provide discussion from which a consensus arises. This is why I don't have a problem with people who say it's much less useful than science. I agree it is!

Take political philosophy for example (and not just because I had to spend a significant portion of my university time discussing it).

You can use science to determine whether the death penalty works as a deterrent to crime because you can compare states that have it against those that don't and check the crime rates and so on. What I don't think you can do is determine whether the death penalty is an acceptable punishment for a crime. You can certainly use reason and evidence to discuss the fact and you can reach a consensus, but you can't look at the death penalty and say "No, this is absolutely not the correct penalty."

I'm not saying it is the equivalent of science Joe, I'm just saying that it is useful to use reason and evidence to discuss things like politics whether or not you call it philosophy. Call it reason if you feel philosophy is too tainted by metaphysics.

That's a lot of words to put us basically back at the "Philosophy doesn't provide answers, but we need it to ask the right questions" thing, which has already been discussed to death.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

I and others value your contributions.

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Edited to match quoted post

Ball firmly in your court.

Thank you.

Edited by Agatha: 

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[LarryS]

Wrong.

Wrong.

Wrong.

Wrong.
Nobody can help your misunderstanding but you. And you have to want it in the first place. Everyone does. Nobody pops out of their mothers loins with full knowledge of anything. Not me, not you, not jeebus, nobody. We all must learn.

Can you?

Because I am starting to wonder about that.

How many times must you be reminded that you have the cart before the horse?

So if science can say a thing exists or is true, what does that mean according to your understanding of science?

 

[MarkCorrigan]

That's a lot of words to put us basically back at the "Philosophy doesn't provide answers, but we need it to ask the right questions" thing, which has already been discussed to death.

It does provide answers, but the answers aren't as based in absolutes as science, that's all.

Political philosophy is extremely useful, even if it can't provide answers in the same way that biochemical research does. That's all I've ever been saying.

 

[Steve]

Philosophy is over-enamored with the idea of determining facts via just thinking really hard.

That's usually where the stupid fact/truth distinction without difference gets shoved into.

You need to step outside your own head to learn stuff.

Philosophers have never determined a fact or a “truth”. Philosophers are pretty good at determining opinions and presenting them as facts or truths.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Philosophers have never determined a fact or a “truth”. Philosophers are pretty good at determining opinions and presenting them as facts or truths.

That's actually the closest to the actual point as anyone has got I think.

Philosophy is this idea that there has to exist some third state between "opinion" and "fact."

"Philosophical Truths" (for lack of a better term) seem to want to have the intellectual standards of an opinion, but be treated more like a fact, something that can be stated with authority.

 

[JoeMorgue]

If you say pull the lever, moving the trolley from the track with five people on it to the track with one, you are either stating a fact or an opinion, not some new philosophical third category which isn't a mere opinion yet still doesn't have to meet the intellectual standards to be called "a fact."

Philosophy has to be more than an opinion wearing a fine suit.

 

[abaddon]

Surprisingly, that is not a half-bad definition.

Of course if that were the definition, it would certainly demonstrate what we're saying: if you are using reason alone, and are ignoring evidence and whatever else might be inconvenient for you, then you will almost always reach the wrong conclusions.

Not to mention that we must ask is the reasoning sound. Rubbish invented premises can nevertheless be used to reach logical conclusions. The whole lot is absurd unless one puts the magnifying glass on the underlying assumptions behind the argument.

For example, were I, you or anyone to assume reincarnation was real, all of us could make up whatever we liked.

God, jahweh, allah, buddha, vishnu, whatever. Or spiritualism

Scorpion will, pretzel fashion, try to fold that into whatever it might that be into whatever his faith might be today. That is no small effort. His faith was different yesterday. It will be different tomorrow.

Scorpion has claimed that he knows all about the mechanics of the spirit realm. Scorpion has also claimed that he knows nothing about the spirit realm.

Any optimist want to try resolving that?

In Scorpion's world view, belief in anything appears to be like a suit of clothes. One can change into a different suit as need arises.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Falsefiability is my gold standard.

"Is X or Y true?"
"Well, how would the universe function if X was true versus how Y was true?"
"I dunno"

is proof the question is bad, not that it's "in the realm of philosophy".

That's another place where me and philosophy butt heads often. A question can just be bad and not have an answer. We can let some questions just... go if we've been asking them since basically before we were human and we haven't only not answered them but also have not learned to ask them any better in the thousands of years we've been asking them.

Materialism/Dualism, "Do we have free will?", and a lot of other Philosophical chew toys fall into that category for me.

 

[Myriad]

That's actually the closest to the actual point as anyone has got I think.

Philosophy is this idea that there has to exist some third state between "opinion" and "fact."

"Philosophical Truths" (for lack of a better term) seem to want to have the intellectual standards of an opinion, but be treated more like a fact, something that can be stated with authority.

I don't see a problem with that. To wit: "Opinion (or more usually and practically, decision) that's informed by or consistent with a recognizable framework or self-consistent set of guiding principles." You might claim to be a conscientious objector, but is that because that status would be advantageous for your plans at the moment (e.g. not being drafted), or is it actually consistent with other choices you've made?

There's something about how the world works that you don't like. Do you seek the power to change it, strive to adapt to it, or disregard it to focus on the things you do like? Different philosophies suggest different answers; yes those philosophies are opinions, and which one you choose is also an expression of your opinion, and you could just decide moment by moment without applying any of them in any consistent way or even being aware of them. But in the end you have to respond to the world somehow.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I don't see a problem with that. To wit: "Opinion (or more usually and practically, decision) that's informed by or consistent with a recognizable framework or self-consistent set of guiding principles." You might claim to be a conscientious objector, but is that because that status would be advantageous for your plans at the moment (e.g. not being drafted), or is it actually consistent with other choices you've made?

There's something about how the world works that you don't like. Do you seek the power to change it, strive to adapt to it, or disregard it to focus on the things you do like? Different philosophies suggest different answers; yes those philosophies are opinions, and which one you choose is also an expression of your opinion, and you could just decide moment by moment without applying any of them in any consistent way or even being aware of them. But in the end you have to respond to the world somehow.

A statement about how the world does or should work is only as good as how much you can back it up. Everything else is semantics.

Again the "answer" you give to the trolley problem is either a fact or an opinion.

 

[abaddon]

Falsefiability is my gold standard.

"Is X or Y true?"
"Well, how would the universe function if X was true versus how Y was true?"
"I dunno"

is proof the question is bad, not that it's "in the realm of philosophy".

And right there is another thing that annoys seven shades out of me. What the pseudo philosophers want to do is say goddunit. But the religious have a lock on that. Thus they cannot gazzump that superstitious crap and have to invent their very own out of whole cloth as if it has any import. Not.