OK, well now you are just being childish and quite ridiculous (as well as arrogantly telling other people what they must do) … nobody needs a course in philosophy to make logical decisions. We all do that entirely regardless of philosophy.
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Does anything exist?
- Thread starter Scorpion
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OK, well now you are just being childish and quite ridiculous (as well as arrogantly telling other people what they must do) … nobody needs a course in philosophy to make logical decisions. We all do that entirely regardless of philosophy.
Belz...
Fiend God
Yeah because again every type of thinking is philosophy. What you don't seem to realise is that this definition of philosophy actually supports our position, not yours.
Maybe you've missed it, but I made a pretty comprehensive argument as to why you're using "logic" wrong when you talk about it being part of philosophy. But don't let that stop you.
lomiller
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2007
- Messages
- 13,208
Boolean algebra was fist described in a book on philosophy. It's not something different than the study of whether an argument is logical or not, it's a tool that was developed as part of a methodology to analyze if an argument is logical or not.
wrt x and ~x, can a statement about a quantum state be both true and false at the same time? Depending on how you interpret quantum mechanics it may well be. What philosophy and modern logic have to say about this I'm not sure.
So?
What is the goddamn point of this over-reaching "But this is philosophy, but philosophy said this, but everything is philosophy" meta-point that's literally the only argument anyone can make?
Belz...
Fiend God
If that book also discussed omelettes would that make cooking a philosophical topic? The point is that the logical framework that is at the core of every possible thought process is axiomatic. That means it's not a subject of debate.
That is exactly what I told you earlier and you ignored it. You're talking about logic as in the study of the what's logical; while I'm refering to the very fact that something cannot be true and false at the same time, which is not a conclusion of philosophy: it's self-evident.
Show your proof.
If you are talking about the 1850's book by George Boole, then Boole lived at a time when many mathematicians and early scientists still thought of themselves as philosophers.
I don't think anyone here is dismissing the mathematical work which those people did (I wont bother to name them all, because they are rightly famous, all the way from the time of Euclid through people like Leibniz and right up to 1900 with people like Einstein and Minkowski).
But maths is now really a separate subject from philosophy. And it was really a separate subject even then, eg iirc Galileo described himself as a philosopher, astronomer and mathematician.
We are not complaining about philosophy just for the sake of it. Nor just because we want to give credit to what has become “science”. But more because philosophers today, and people on the internet, often want philosophy to take the credit for what science has achieved, and that's just not acceptable.
According to most of the pro-philosophy posts here, people also want philosophy to take the credit for advising and guiding people in all sorts of other subjects/fields too. I think most of us are less concerned about that. Though perhaps we should be concerned because there does not seem to be any genuine basis for why philosophy should be claiming credit there either.
I could answer your question about about quantum states of particle/fields, but given what has happened here, I am not going to bother wasting my time (because I don't think you actually want to know, except as a way of creating more endless philosophically inspired acrimonious arguments).
Belz...
Fiend God
I think an issue with this discussion is not only that what was once considered part of philosophy became their own thing, but more fundamentally, the definition of "philosophy" has changed since Socrates.
Apropos, those with the background in natural science often think that the universe consists only of matter. In that regard things like mathematics and logical axioms are quite interesting - is mathematics matter? Are logical axioms matter? Or from my own discipline of history is the concept of British parliamentary reform effort of the 19th century matter? I think we can, theoretically, reduce these to various bodies and brain states but would that be a meaningful or realistic way to see them?
Are we are just out beyond the Event Horizon of the Formless...
Belz...
Fiend God
That's not very realistice.
Tbh, I would have appreciated an honest effort to address those issues... And no, I am totally a realist and materialist when it comes to the world, and would hope one day to see history as a branch natural science - I mean as far as I understand it already is, but there just are no tools there to practice it as one. But I'm not a huge fan of this kind of facetious know-nothingness. Again, tbbh.
What is to address? You (pretending as part of the philosopher persona) not knowing the difference between an idea/concept and a physical object?
This is the problem with "philosophy." It prides itself in being so far away from a functional, normal conversation that correcting people isn't even worth it. It's the "I'm so wrong about everything that even explaining things to me to get to the point of having a discussion would take the equivalent of several college courses" problem.
I'm not doing it, anymore than I was going to waste time explaining what death was and that 1 and 2 weren't the same number to Jabba.
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No, I just bet that there are lots of relatively simple scientists and engineers who have never thought about that and continue to claim that the world only consists of matter. And, weirdly enough, it likely does. But there are complications. I happen to believe that philosophy is a very handy tool for disciplined and logical thinking, among other things, and don't see it as a worthless language game - which is the consensus here. I just wonder which side has the burden of proof...
Anyways, am very ambivalent myself about many aspects of philosophy, a comment from my blog some years ago:
https://stockholmslender.blogspot.com/2008/09/sub-species-aeternitatis.html
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
No scientist or engineer believes that the universe consists only of matter.
Belz...
Fiend God
Well if photons are matter, what else is there?
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
I believe in mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
That will lead to interesting concequences - how can natural science study non-material things? What are its tools, its experiments and predictions? How would an engineer or a scientist study and analyze an idea? Would he or she need help from other disciplines?
Belz...
Fiend God
What are you on about? What's a non-material thing? Examples?
Well, like said, a logical axiom, a mathematic formula, the concept of absolutist monarchy in the 17th century Europe, the habeas corpus principle in common law. Are those material things?
Belz...
Fiend God
Are you joking?