Physics began as natural philosophy, that's the point.
I think we all realize that, and as I noted in my last post I can't see how you can criticize the field of inquiry that gave rise to physics and all of the empirical sciences as a waste of time. But the point is that what Einstein was doing with general and special relativity, Brownian motion, etc., can't really be considered a part of "philosophy" unless you want to call all science a subset of philosophy. I'm not necessarily opposed to that, but it would be something of a departure from the way the terms are typically used, and we might be better advised to stick to traditional definitions when discussing the merits of what's generally known as "philosophy" here.
I call it a waste of time because it always ends up in semantics.
Can you offer an example of this? Or better, several examples?
I have never even implied that metaphysics or musings constitute all of philosophy. But as you might reckon, I belong most of all in the empirical tradition, so I'm but left in wonder when you drop such a strange interpretation.
Person A: "There are white and black sheeps."
Person B: "So you're saying that all sheeps are white!"
That's a clear strawman or misinterpretation.
I made reference to metaphysics in response to your statement that:
Sure, it can can be interesting to try to understand nature from pure logical reasoning and fancy musings - rather than empirical investigation.
I was, actually, trying to be charitable, since your characterization applies, if at all, only to the field of metaphysics. You might pay a little more attention to context before you start accusing me of intellectual dishonesty. If you want to argue that your comment applies more broadly to philosophy generally, feel free, but I don't think that a compelling case can be made that political philosophy, ethical theory, or epistemology, for example, can be adequately described in that way.
Try to hold that statement against what I wrote earlier in this thread:
"To take a strict empirical approach is not the same as to stop wondering about the meaning of various things. But it will keep the unicorns out."
I was responding to your argument that
But let fair be fair, the empirical approach is the most fruitful from a status quo scientific and practical point of view.
That statement seems to me to set up a false dichotomy between empirical science and non-empirical philosophy as alternate and competing means of investigating the same questions, which, as I argued above, they are not. In the sentence you just quoted about unicorns, it still seems that you're advocating the pursuit of science to the exclusion of philosophy, which once again seems to me to set up the same false dilemma and to rest of a misunderstanding of the goals of philosophy. So I don't see how you've avoided my earlier criticism.
Then you'll realize that your statement looks like an attempt to put words in my mouth. As another strawman or misinterpretation.
I would greatly appreciate it if you were to curb these implications of intellectual dishonesty on my part and assume that my arguments are made in good faith on my best understanding of your words, as I have extended the same courtesy to you. If you think I am misunderstanding your point, then kindly explain that to me and the rest of us by clarifying your position.
Sure, a small part of it remain, but most doesn't.
Again, I don't quite understand what this means, or how it's supposed to be a criticism. Certainly our philosophical understandings have changed over the centuries, though less so than, say, our scientific understandings-- more evidence, I think, that science and philosophy are independent areas of inquiry that apply quite different, though related, methodologies to different questions. But is the fact that no one really believes any more that, say, solipsism can be avoided simply by reliance on the goodness of God a reason not to study Descartes? Why?
I think this statement explains why you have misinterpretated all of the above, because everything I say is not a criticism of philosophy. Sometimes I just state the obvious to outline a point or stay in the clear, and one of them is, that most of the study of philosophy; is the study of the history of philosophy.
It seems reasonable to assume that what you're saying amidst a discussion of whether the study of philosophy is worthwhile should be construed as a criticism, but, ok. I think a better way to characterize this point is by saying that the history and modern practice of philosophy are inextricably linked, because the great texts of the past continue to engage us in the present day in a way that, for example, the scientific and technical works of past centuries do not. We still read Plato's
Republic, for example, in part out of an intellectual interest in the foundations of philosophical inquiry, but also in part because his insights into the nature of the state remain relevant and insightful to the questions that political philosophers are asking today. The same goes for Kant's ethics, and its ongoing debate with the utilitarianism of Mill and Bentham. As I noted in my last post, Hume's contributions to epistemology remain as relevant today as they were when written.
In fact, on further reflection, I would argue that only the sub-field of metaphysics has really been encroached upon at all by the rise of empirical science, and that only in the sense that the areas of inquiry formerly explored by metaphysics that were capable of empirical investigation split off to become modern science, resulting in a sort of intellectual mitosis that created the contemporary, distinct fields of science and philosophy (specifically metaphysics). But modern metaphysics does leave the empirical questions to science, and proceeds to examine the non-empirical questions of meaning and reality that science creates. I don't see how your arguments are relevant in the slightest to any of the other major branches of philosophy.
