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Does anything exist?

JoeMorgue said:
"Pursuit of thought." This is another one of those philosophy adjacent terms that sounds all good but... what does actually mean?

Again we keep coming back to this vague idea that science, rationality, and just like... humanity was/is just sitting there until "philosophy" goes "Did you try thinking about it?" as if the idea never occurred to anybody.

"Think about it" isn't something that we need to told to do. Nobody gets credit for that idea.
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Well, to me, it looks like you're saying that philosophy has to have some kind of pre-defined output. I feel that smacks of politicians looking for return on investment in science funding! "But basic research is important..."

I'm saying that there should exactly be an academic generalist bubble (or a general collection of specialist bubbles). In a sense, it should be people being paid to just sit around and think (again, not exactly what happens, I'm describing an ideal). I was being glib, but call it philosophy, the art of thinking, whatever. They should not be paid to be doing plumbing, 15 hour days of seasonal construction work, etc. They should be paid to hang out in the top end of thought... who else studies ethics full time? It may even be inter-disciplinary with math, or art or something. The output, like basic scientific research should NOT be pre-determined...

... and I'm a pretty utilitarian kind of guy
 
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I'm saying "But we gave all the useful epistemologies the idea to think about stuff" is A) wrong and B) would be meaningless even if it where correct.

Science is not and was never sitting around waiting for "philosophy" to give it permission or the initial idea to think about stuff.
 
Hey maaaaaaan, you science defenders say people use science in different ways and to different degrees, both personally and professionally, maaaaaaaaan. That's just saying "science is everything", maaaaaaaaaan.
 
Thermal said:
Hey maaaaaaan, you science defenders say people use science in different ways and to different degrees, both personally and professionally, maaaaaaaaan. That's just saying "science is everything", maaaaaaaaaan.
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Again you demonstrate your ability to use criticisms used against you in such a way that proves you have no idea what the criticism actually is.

I swear I could get you to say anything by just saying it to you first.

I've identified what I mean by science multiple times. Nobody has defined philosophy.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Again you demonstrate your ability to use criticisms used against you in such a way that proves you have no idea what the criticism actually is.

I swear I could get you to say anything by just saying it to you first.

I've identified what I mean by science multiple times. Nobody has defined philosophy.
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Jesus H Tapdancing Christ dude, are you going to sit there and seriously claim this?? That's handwaving raised to an art form.

Eta: and adding to your ever-growing displays or fallacious thinking, that argument was not directed at me. It's your own oft-repeated summation on philosophy and the entire discussion. Nothing to do with me.
 
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Thermal said:
Jesus H Tapdancing Christ dude, are you going to sit there and seriously claim this??
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Yes.

A definition that changes every .4 seconds in order to be convenient at that point in the discussion isn't a definition.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
A definition that changes every .4 seconds in order to be convenient at that point in the discussion isn't a definition.
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Every .4 seconds is about 200 times more often than posts appear on this entire forum. Think you might get better results if you didn't exaggerate to absurdity constantly?

And to address another bit of total absurdity: There is a dictionary definition of philosophy. Most (all that I've noticed) of the defenders of philosophy are simply using that definition.
 
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RecoveringYuppy said:
Every .4 seconds is about 200 times more often than posts appear on this entire forum. Think you might get better results if you didn't exaggerate to absurdity constantly?
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Don't defend philosophy by pretending the concept of a "humorous exaggeration" is too esoteric for your brain to comprehend.

This is what I mean when I say philosophy and trolling are getting hard to differentiate.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
This is what I mean when I say philosophy and trolling are getting hard to differentiate.
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It's easy to differentiate. See the word "rational" in the definition of philosophy I just alerted you to. If you see someone claiming to be doing philosophy and they aren't bothering to explain their logic, or aren't self consistent, or something like that, you know, irrational, then you get to tell them they are doing philosophy wrong.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
Every .4 seconds is about 200 times more often than posts appear on this entire forum. Think you might get better results if you didn't exaggerate to absurdity constantly?
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History shows that no, he wouldn't. So why not be flavourful? You understood what he meant, and so did I.

And to address another bit of total absurdity: There is a dictionary definition of philosophy. Most (all that I've noticed) of the defenders of philosophy are simply using that definition.
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From what I've noticed, no they're not.
 
Belz... said:
...and? I don't see the relation with what I said. There are plenty of things we do that are useless.
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Wait, have I misunderstood you? Do you agree that basic research has to provide an immediate return on investment? That can't be right. It's not very scientific...
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
It's easy to differentiate. See the word "rational" in the definition of philosophy I just alerted you to. If you see someone claiming to be doing philosophy and they aren't bothering to explain their logic, or aren't self consistent, or something like that, you know, irrational, then you get to tell them they are doing philosophy wrong.
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Oh then this entire thread from the philosophy defenders has been trolling. Good to know.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Again you demonstrate your ability to use criticisms used against you in such a way that proves you have no idea what the criticism actually is.

I swear I could get you to say anything by just saying it to you first.

I've identified what I mean by science multiple times. Nobody has defined philosophy.
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The dictionary defines "philosophy" as "the study of the nature and meaning of the universe and of human life". But it's purely an academic exercise because, unlike scientific methodology, it has no mechanism to examine the factual accuracy of its arguments.
 
The Man said:
Well, I wouldn't call people ignoring what was posted, ignoring references to their own posts, simply repeating demands, trying to limit scopes to just their preference, attacking positions not asserted or even explicitly denied, making up numbers, then not caring about numbers to again just make the same claim even the made up numbers did not support, as actually arguing.



"certainly a significant number." compared to what? You can assert anything you want with made up numbers compared to nothing. As noted, philosophers don't generally do experimentation so such papers would generally be coauthored by a scientist(s) providing the data. Or as we saw before some paper in a philosophical journal being cited in a scientific paper. Unfortunately, near as I can tell, systems aren't set up to do such kinds of searches. Heck, if I actually were some kind of 'philosophy fan', I'd probably know of some off hand or at least the best authors/areas to search.



My answer is I don't know and, as noted before, that evidently even most scientists aren't "making a significant contribution to that central fundamental area of science".



Yep, ontology, apologies, auto correct gets me again.



Oh, it's no bother.

Again the point wasn't that it was done by philosophers but that the scientists were doing philosophy. As again, the only differences in the interpretations is fundamentally philosophical. Again something even noted in the video you posted.

An article in Scientific American by Carlo Rovelli, an Italian theoretical physicist and a founder of of loop quantum gravity theory. It's a bit long but in it he directly addresses the assertions of Weinberg, Hawking and Neil de Grasse Tyson concerning philosophy. As well as asserting that physicists need to discuss with philosophers just to help make sense of all the various implications of even just his own area, loop quantum gravity.

Physics Needs Philosophy / Philosophy Needs Physics
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Ahh ... well, I am not going to read the whole of Rovelli's article in a popular-level public magazine ... I just glanced at it, and its a long piece where he is going on about Socrates and Plato!

But you just said that you linked that article to show that "scientists were doing philosophy" ... but there, you are apparently accepting what I have said to you; namely that all of that fundamental science (and it IS "science") has actually been discovered & explained by scientists and not by any philosophers ... BUT, as many of us have pointed out here at least 50 times before all through this thread, you want to claim that when science explains those fundamental discoveries, that it all suddenly becomes "Philosophy", and the scientists suddenly become "Philosophers" … you are trying to claim that “everything is philosophy” (ie that all conscious constructive thinking explanations are always “philosophy”).

This entire argument boils down to what I pointed out to you in the previous post, and which I think you completely failed to answer. Namely – if philosophy has (or is) made/making a significant contribution to that core fundamental area of science, then you really must be able to show a substantial number of papers from philosophers, publishing such discoveries and explanations in the science research journals … can you do that? …

… where are all these papers from philosophers that have explained the nature of reality and the universe as we understand it from the detail of molecules, atoms, and subatomic particle/fields as described by QM, as described by relativity, as described by evolution, and as we are now discovering & explaining with Big Bang cosmology ... can you please produce all the papers where that is shown to have been published by philosophers and not by scientists?

If you cannot do that; then you are simply wrong to claim that philosophy is making a substantial or significant contribution to any of that.

Or to put that the other way around – if in fact almost all of that has been published as discoveries and explanations by scientists publishing the results of their research in the science research journals, then that makes it unarguably “science” and not philosophy.

That's why the word ”science” is different from the word”philosophy” The two subjects are very substantially different.
 
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