Does anything exist?

[Minoosh]

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.

My high school physics teacher very nicely demonstrated that Aristotle was empirically wrong about acceleration during free fall. He had never checked whether a pound of feathers fell faster (or accelerated faster) than a pound of nails. Of course you would need to squish the feathers really tight to minimize air resistance or whatever other variables affect the acceleration of dropped objects, and you'd never get it perfect, but I don't think he even tried.

Wasn't it also Aristotle or his cohort who thought "A is A" was a meaningful statement? According to Wiki, "In logic, the law of identity states that each thing is identical with itself." My response, "Yes, and?" I don't see how that gets us anywhere. It's a tautology. Recognizing that tautological statements exist may be useful for deconstructing philosophical arguments, but I don't see how it's particularly constructive.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Wasn't it also Aristotle or his cohort who thought "A is A" was a meaningful statement?

Too bad he wasn't around to enforce copyright and stop Ayn Rand.

 

[abaddon]

Too bad he wasn't around to enforce copyright and stop Ayn Rand.

Wingnuts would have us deny the law of identity.

In the woo-sphere, A=banana is valid. For some mad reason that nobody has ever explained.

 

[Belz...]

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

This is the FOURTH time I ask you: what do you mean by "exist"?

 

[Myriad]

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.

The problem in the trolley problem isn't what the right answer is. It's the puzzle of explaining why people give inconsistent answers when the same fundamental situation is instantiated in different ways.

For instance, why will many people (not all, of course) say it's either okay or outright mandatory to throw the switch to doom one on a siding and save five on the main track ("the good of the many...") but only a few agree with shoving one person off a bridge over the tracks to save the five, and all but a tiny minority will object to killing a random person to harvest their organs to save five others from deadly organ failures? In a discussion thread about that a few years ago, I posited an answer, which in turn clarifies documented human behavior in other extreme situations such as on the battlefield, and helps me model and predict how people react to certain novel situations. It's falsifiable but untested, and therefore not a scientific fact. (In principle I could seek to investigate it or have it investigated, turning into a scientific hypotheses. There's no way to express in a finite number of words how far down on my to-do list that is.)

Here's an opinion: slavery is wrong. Here's another opinion: slavery is fine. Since neither is a fact, do they have equal standing? If not, what differentiates their standings? Majority opinion?

 

[LarryS]

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?

Not sure how many more times I can answer the question

I’ve already answered what a scientist means when they say particle x exists.
When I say my neighbor’s dog exists, I mean I’ve seen it, touched it, and the thing licked my leg.
Not sure what you’re getting at.

 

[Myriad]

When I say my neighbor’s dog exists, I mean I’ve seen it, touched it, and the thing licked my leg.

You've never seen me or touched me, and I have never licked your leg. Does that mean I don't exist? Or perhaps your example doesn't generalize very well.

 

[JoeMorgue]

The problem in the trolley problem isn't what the right answer is. It's the puzzle of explaining why people give inconsistent answers when the same fundamental situation is instantiated in different ways.

Ah the quest for perfect argumentative consistency where all the parts are labeled and everyone's entire scope of human behaviors can be neatly summed up with one title. "Ah you're a utilitarian. Oh you're a consequentialist. Oh you're a post-modern-reformed-contractionlist with sprinkles."

One of philosophy's many, many fool's errands.

The categories we create to describe different behaviors are often arbitrary at best, counter-intuitive at worse. The fact that Ted pulls the lever to save the 5 people in one case but won't harvest the organs of 1 person to save 5 in another scenario is proof of nothing beyond how bad we are at labeling moral systems.

And even if... so? "Humans don't act 100% consistently." My that's certainly a truth bomb.

And again how is "philosophy" getting us any closer to the answers to these questions?

This line of thinking is best left to the Bob's of the world.

You've never seen me or touched me, and I have never licked your leg. Does that mean I don't exist? Or perhaps your example doesn't generalize very well.

A philosopher and a baby with no object permanence playing peekaboo.

*They're the same picture Office scene meme here*

 

[JoeMorgue]

The fact that philosophers thought that "A=A" was some sort of esoteric deep knowledge kernel they had to point out and give an official "Law" name to so the rest of us Morlocks would understand it pretty much all you need to know about the level they are operating on.

A=A? A thing is equal to itself? The hell you say? Thank good some old white guy sitting around in ancient Greece or 16th century Europe took the time to write an entire leather-bound book about that as it would simply have never occurred to me, a non-philosopher, to think such a thing.

Now that such a truth bomb as "A thing is equal to itself" has been established the philosophers can move on to more pressing issues like "Why don't Apple Jacks taste like Apples?"

 

[Belz...]

Not sure how many more times I can answer the question

You haven't answered it at all. I'm asking for YOUR definition of "TO EXIST".

This is your last chance to answer that question before I simply declare that you are a troll.

 

[JoeMorgue]

We have to call trolling "being Socratic" when it's a philosophy topic.

 

[LarryS]

You've never seen me or touched me, and I have never licked your leg. Does that mean I don't exist? Or perhaps your example doesn't generalize very well.

The point being there's lots of ways one can say a thing exists, and when a scientist suggests it it's in a specific manner - with specific conditions.

 

[LarryS]

You haven't answered it at all. I'm asking for YOUR definition of "TO EXIST".

This is your last chance to answer that question before I simply declare that you are a troll.

I don't have a definition of 'to exist', and even if I did, my definition is n ot the point.

 

[Minoosh]

Too bad he wasn't around to enforce copyright and stop Ayn Rand.

I think "Atlas Shrugged" was a towering achievement - but not necessarily a very good book. Cut about a third of it and it would be fairly readable but the philosophical speeches were deadly. The reception left Rand crushed. She'd been on amphetamines for much of the writing process and was sure her arguments were so crystal-clear that people would "get" right away what she was saying. They didn't, in droves. I don't think she ever recovered.

 

[IanS]

And while I'll disagree with Joe's or Ian's position that all philosophy is BS peddling... it's not hard to see where he's getting that impression from. If everyone trying to convince you of the merits of some domain X -- let's call it xnorgology -- is just chasing strawmen and trivial/irrelevant platitudes, you too might be excused for forming the impression that it's just a scam.

.

I'm not actually saying that all of philosophy is completely useless. Because for one thing I don't know all the areas of human life that academic philosophy courses might include ... eg., until someone posted about it a few pages back, I did not know that "philosophy of politics" existed as an actual part of university philosophy courses.

But from all that I've seen over about 15 years of these discussions on forums like this, and all of the YouTube debates that I've seen with philosophers, I think that compared to science, philosophy has turned out to be almost completely useless in what was it's original claimed role of explaining the universe around us ... I think that role (which originally which was virtually all of philosophy, afaik), has been completely taken away by science. And that's almost always (perhaps literally always), what's being argued about in all of these threads, ie some posters here are still arguing that philosophy has an important role in explaining the world around us. So that's my first objection to philosophical arguments.

My second objection, or rather its more of a question, is - I cannot actually see a real role or value in the areas of philosophy that I'm aware of, ie all the areas that get discussed here or on YouTube etc. As far as I can see from 15 years of reading all that stuff, the role of philosophy seems to be an egotistical attempt to hang on to academic university subject that has now become almost completely redundant. So to put that more directly - I can't see what the claimed value of philosophy is now in the 21st century ... and I don't mean some minimal value or some value that everyone else outside of formal philosophy can just as easily have for themselves anyway; I mean it has to have some really very important value & great use to society/humanity, otherwise it cannot be justified any more as a subject still funded & taught for university degrees and PhD's and post-doc research etc. (not to mention professorships as well paid employment for life) ... I'm just not seeing where it still has anywhere near that value or use.

 

[IanS]

Ideology may or may not play a role, I've seen it both ways. Most of those promoting pseudo-science are actually trying to follow scientific methods, they just have their own "facts" and their own incorrect opinions on what constitutes evidence. Plugging bad evidence into good methodology will still give you the wrong answer. This is what makes it so difficult to convince them they are wrong.

What's required to combat pseudoscience isn't a better science education it's a better education in logic and understanding of how we know things. While people who lean science tend to pick some of this up along the way, they are actually subjects than fall under philosophy.

You keep talking about what you call "pseudo science". You must have used that expression here 10 times or more. What do you actually mean by "pseudo science", what are you including as "pseudo science"? ...

... I've repeatedly emphasised here that when I talk about science, I am talking about core science and published research papers in the genuine scientific journals. I've explained that here (and in previous threads) countless times (hundreds of times in fact) ... which part of published core science research are you calling "pseudo science"?

 

[IanS]

That said, ok, you've convinced me. Nothing is real, it's all a dream, and you're all just figments of my imagination.

I worry about you lot. In fact I feel sorry for you.

Because then when I die, it all ends.

And frankly, you don't have long. I drink, I chain smoke, I've never gone to a gym, and I call 3000 kilocalories an appetizer. I eat junk, and not nearly enough veggies either. I routinely skip sleep just to play some game. Etc.

The end is coming and it's nigh. You should fear for your lives, really.

My best advice to you lot is to live every day like it's your last. In fact, like it's my last. Because it may well be.

If we were to do that (ie the highlight), then we certainly would not be wasting our time here arguing the same philosophical claims over-&-over-&-over-&... again, and again, and again, with internet philosophy students/adherents/whatever, who will clearly continue with philosophical arguments literally for ever ...

... as I said many pages back - that actually seems to be the main characteristic of philosophy, ie to create endless arguments, which almost always turn out to be just an argument about how certain words are defined from a dictionary!! ... and to do that indefinitely! ... that seems to actually be the main value that's for formal philosophy, ie an attempt to "win" word arguments by talking everything into oblivion.

 

[Darat]

Not sure how many more times I can answer the question

I’ve already answered what a scientist means when they say particle x exists.
When I say my neighbor’s dog exists, I mean I’ve seen it, touched it, and the thing licked my leg.
Not sure what you’re getting at.

LarryS - you claim that the question "Does anything exist?" can't be answered by "science", can philosophy answer it and if so, what is the philosophical answer?

 

[Belz...]

I don't have a definition of 'to exist', and even if I did, my definition is n ot the point.

If you don't have a definition then you can't say that (1) and (2) are not equivalent. That was your claim, remember?

 

[IanS]

The "argument version" being repeated to you by multiple posters is pretty much in line with any Phil 101.

The straw version you are repeating back is not.

Serious question: you didn't take a philosophy class in school, did you?

No. But I also did not take any classes in New Testament Religious studies from the likes of Bart Ehrman or any graduate or postgraduate theology degrees either. Because that would have been a scandalous waste of my time being fed with absurdly untrue religious faith!

But you also said "in school" ... we should be talking about degree level as a bare minimum! Some of the people you are arguing against here have far more than PhD's in core science research ... you are trying to argue that they need courses in philosophy before they could have done any of their published research ... what's needed here in terms of education (since that's what your highlight is talking about), is for you, Larry and Lomiller to get at least a decent degree in physics, chemistry of biology, and along the way do at least 33% of that degree in maths ... though really you need a PhD and then post-doc stuff and beyond as real eye-opener to what science is actually about and why it's so important.

Having said that – you can learn a great deal these days, and get a very good insight into science, from a whole mass of general/public level science books that have been published in the last 20+ years. But you need to read those with an open enquiring mind and without an attitude that is already hostile to science, or hostile to science as an alternative to philosophy … you won't improve your understanding of science if you already convinced that philosophy is the real answer.