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Why Is Philosophy Important?

I think one must distinguish between philosophy, as in the way you decide what to believe, and philosophy, as in boring classes that study what a bunch of old wankers had to say about the nature of reality.
 
CapelDodger said:
How so? Where in the recent history of science does this reshaping start to show up? As far as I can see science continues to progress in just the same way it has done for the last couple of centuries.
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I agree. The philosophy of science is probably the only philosophy that is self evident. While idealism and dualism and solipsism and all those other "isms" require a lot of thought and introspection, the philosophy of "evidencism" (to coin a phrase) is obvious even in lower animals. It is nothing more than "learning from experience". Popper didn't invent that.
 
Dark Jaguar said:
This thread's title made me think of this site:

http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/
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The more I read this site, the more I find its title to be misleading. The footnote at the bottom of the home page (The content of this website is primarily based on Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism.) really means what it says. This site is essentially an endorsement of and an argument for Objectivism. Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than in the "Misbegotten Notions" subsection, which criticizes other philosophical theories and attempts to defend Objectivism. Altruism, Environmentalism, Vegetarianism (?), and Determinism, among others, are all criticized. This website is far more concerned with the importance of Objectivism than of philosophy.

On another note, Randfan, I've just realized that my criticism of Objectivism (or, at least, of this website) may be at odds with your beliefs if your username is at all indicative of them. I want to be quite clear, then, that I do not mean to offend and I apologize if I have.
 
I may have quoted this before, but I recall the creator of "8-bit Theater" saying something along the lines of "I had to deal with this stuff all the time. I recall a professor saying "Take this table. Remove one atom at a time. When does it stop being a table?". I said "When it falls over"." A lot of the stuff philosophers go on about aren't real problems. All it shows is that our language is "fuzzy" on certain details. A table is one of those raised surfaces you can put things on with lots of room under it. You can lop off as much as you need but it really only stops being a table when it can't do that. When does a hill become a mountain? I think they made a silly movie about that once. It's meaningless where that dividing line is, like deciding if Pluto is a planet. The two words were arbitrary to begin with. The dividing line can be likewise arbitrary. And, here's a thinker, why can't the two definitions overlap? Like, in this zone both hill and mountain are accurate terms to use.

However, sometimes some very clear stuff is basically finally laid out. I see no problem with someone ironing out what the difference between science and just making random assumptions is. It's helpful at least in telling the difference between endeavors of worth and those that are useless.

I will say this. Rand is an example of problems I have with a lot of philosophy. Her "Since we exist as creatures, we should live and that's a moral desire". I have no idea how she gets from one to the next. So what if we are one way? That's where she jumps from the "A is A" train to the "A SHOULD BE A and never try to be B" train. The latter seems a silly thing to say (things become other things all the time), but that's basically what Rand is trying to state. It's close to a form of fatalism if you ask me. Also, there's that one thing where she basically begs the question as to whether or not we should even bother valuing our own happiness.

Don't get me wrong, I do value my own happiness, and I want to live, but to say that it's a moral imperative by virtue of the very fact that we exist, well, I don't see the logical connection. Seems a non-sequiter to me.
 
I think I'll also take the time to retract my statement of "cute" in describing philosophy. I'll relabel it as "interesting". Some of it is pretty interesting, and I have to say I do enjoy occasionally just mucking around with logic for it's own sake. I'm just saying a lot of the conclusions are misbegotten and rather silly. Some, not so much.

Here's another strike against at least some philosophical arguments. A lot of arguments I seem to hear are "well empiricism lies on the axiomatic assumption that evidence leads to truth", or something like that. But, is that really an assumption at all? Seems to me that that very "assumption" isn't so much assumed as it is shown to BE true by our successful use of observation to predict certain things. Absolute truth? Maybe not, but we get close.

In fact all labels of some part of empirical observation, or insightful conclusions based on those observations (as used in, say, engineering) don't actually seem to be assumed so much as borne out by evidence in and of themselves.
 
CapelDodger said:
To put it another way, what's he ever produced that's of any practical significance? I've read some of his writing on the mind and I found it completely unenlightening.
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First off I'm not sure why what you find unenlightening has to do with anything. Like I said, I can respect your opinion but it is not of much importance to me and I'm not sure why it should be of importance to anyone else?

As it relates to science I'm not sure why practical significance is important. Whatever "practical significance" is. Much of what science studies is without practical application. Since you are a fan of science, as I also am, then I must ask, when did science just become only a search for that which is practically significant?

That said there is practical significance. Just because it isn't of significance to you does not render it insignificant. Some people think the study of the sex life of butterflies silly and without significance. That doesn't make it so. Pinker and Dawkins don't think Dennett insignificant. Why is your opinion more important than theirs? For that matter, why is it more important than mine? Look, I don't really care if you find philosophy insignificant. I can only tell you why it is significant to me.

In other words I really don't understand your criteria for significance.
 
Dark Jaguar said:
I may have quoted this before, but I recall the creator of "8-bit Theater" saying something along the lines of "I had to deal with this stuff all the time. I recall a professor saying "Take this table. Remove one atom at a time. When does it stop being a table?". I said "When it falls over"." A lot of the stuff philosophers go on about aren't real problems. All it shows is that our language is "fuzzy" on certain details. A table is one of those raised surfaces you can put things on with lots of room under it. You can lop off as much as you need but it really only stops being a table when it can't do that. When does a hill become a mountain? I think they made a silly movie about that once. It's meaningless where that dividing line is, like deciding if Pluto is a planet. The two words were arbitrary to begin with. The dividing line can be likewise arbitrary. And, here's a thinker, why can't the two definitions overlap? Like, in this zone both hill and mountain are accurate terms to use.
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Based on this quote I would have to say that you miss the point of philosophy. The point about the table is to understand that a table isn't just a table. It was a philosopher that first realized that a table wasn't simply a table but instead was composed of smaller units of matter. The point about the table is to get us to step outside of our macro world and view the micro or view the universe from a different perspective. Your instructor wasn't trying to get you to find a demarcation. He was trying to get you to take your blinders off and change your perspective.

However, sometimes some very clear stuff is basically finally laid out. I see no problem with someone ironing out what the difference between science and just making random assumptions is. It's helpful at least in telling the difference between endeavors of worth and those that are useless.
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I'm sorry, I think one of the biggest mistakes is to assume that scientific or philosophical inquiry must first have worth. Pursuit of knowledge is its own reward and I think we would be poor indeed to only seek to learn that which we first can justify as worthy.

I will say this. Rand is an example of problems I have with a lot of philosophy. Her "Since we exist as creatures, we should live and that's a moral desire". I have no idea how she gets from one to the next. So what if we are one way? That's where she jumps from the "A is A" train to the "A SHOULD BE A and never try to be B" train. The latter seems a silly thing to say (things become other things all the time), but that's basically what Rand is trying to state. It's close to a form of fatalism if you ask me. Also, there's that one thing where she basically begs the question as to whether or not we should even bother valuing our own happiness.
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You are judging Ann by just a couple of propositions. I suppose that we could do the same with Tesla. He had some spurious ideas. That would be ad hominem though. Tesla's bad ideas don't invalidate his good ones. I don't get the desire to completely dismiss philosophical inquiry based solely on cherry picked examples?
 
Cosmo said:
The more I read this site, the more I find its title to be misleading. The footnote at the bottom of the home page (The content of this website is primarily based on Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism.) really means what it says. This site is essentially an endorsement of and an argument for Objectivism. Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than in the "Misbegotten Notions" subsection, which criticizes other philosophical theories and attempts to defend Objectivism. Altruism, Environmentalism, Vegetarianism (?), and Determinism, among others, are all criticized. This website is far more concerned with the importance of Objectivism than of philosophy.

On another note, Randfan, I've just realized that my criticism of Objectivism (or, at least, of this website) may be at odds with your beliefs if your username is at all indicative of them. I want to be quite clear, then, that I do not mean to offend and I apologize if I have.
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Hey Cosmo, I've never been an objectivist and I find objectivism to be woo. I admire Rand for many reasons that I have to keep explaining so I guess I'll have to start a small web page to explain myself. I like to find insights to human behavior and human understanding. I find it fascinating. Rand was a compeling woman in a time when women were not so easily compelling. I think she offered some insights into human behavior that were counter to the paradigms of the time. She contributed to our thinking and considerations of human social dynamics much the same way that Dostoevsky, Orwell and Lenin did if for no other reason than she got us to consider her arguments. She was influential.
 
My 2 cents about philosophy. Philosophy is the glue that holds all your thoughts together or the framework that you place your pictures of the world around you on. You learn about things and these create thoughts/images that help you to deal with (hopefully by understanding it) the world. Each little bit of data is separate and as such has less meaning but held together by your philosophy, you have a somewhat cohesive interlocking picture of the world. This is why religion works so well for some people because it provides all the right shapes (it's malleable) to hold everything together. In my thoughts religion is a philosophy. It works just like other philosophies. Some people will have religion holding one portion of their world picture and some other philosophy holding other parts of their world picture with varying amounts of integration between the two parts . Some people may have lots of different parts held together by lots of different philosophies creating a patchwork view of the world so they have many conflicting thoughts. These frameworks (philosophies) are built up over time starting from when you are very young and in response to your experiences and your understanding of them. So everyone has a philosophy developed to some degree.
The importance has only to do with how well it allows you to achieve your goals.
 
Dark Jaguar said:
I may have quoted this before, but I recall the creator of "8-bit Theater" saying something along the lines of "I had to deal with this stuff all the time. I recall a professor saying "Take this table. Remove one atom at a time. When does it stop being a table?". I said "When it falls over"." A lot of the stuff philosophers go on about aren't real problems. All it shows is that our language is "fuzzy" on certain details. A table is one of those raised surfaces you can put things on with lots of room under it. You can lop off as much as you need but it really only stops being a table when it can't do that. When does a hill become a mountain? I think they made a silly movie about that once. It's meaningless where that dividing line is, like deciding if Pluto is a planet. The two words were arbitrary to begin with. The dividing line can be likewise arbitrary. And, here's a thinker, why can't the two definitions overlap? Like, in this zone both hill and mountain are accurate terms to use.
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Nominated!

Man, I spend so much time here trying to illustrate this principle of "overlapping definitions". This does it so beautifully.
 
RandFan said:
Based on this quote I would have to say that you miss the point of philosophy. The point about the table is to understand that a table isn't just a table. It was a philosopher that first realized that a table wasn't simply a table but instead was composed of smaller units of matter. The point about the table is to get us to step outside of our macro world and view the micro or view the universe from a different perspective. Your instructor wasn't trying to get you to find a demarcation. He was trying to get you to take your blinders off and change your perspective.
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I was actually quoting someone else as regarding that professor. I wasn't the one that took that class. The point is that the table may be composed of smaller units of matter, but that's not what we are calling a "table". We're calling that thing you put things on. What it's made of is irrelevant. It could be made of dark matter or programmed into a game for all I care, so it doesn't matter how much is removed so long as it still fits the definition. What blinders need to be removed here? Nothing is enlightened by asking that sort of question, because a table isn't defined as "this amount of atoms". A table is a macroscopic definition for a macroscopic idea. Microscopic doesn't even play into it. That's incidental.

I'm sorry, I think one of the biggest mistakes is to assume that scientific or philosophical inquiry must first have worth. Pursuit of knowledge is its own reward and I think we would be poor indeed to only seek to learn that which we first can justify as worthy.
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I think others here asking about worth sort of muddied the waters. That's not really my position. I'm just saying that it doesn't seem like a lot of it is uncovering ANY truth whatsoever, whether it would be of value or not. That table exercise is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. It gives me no great understanding of anything except that the professor doesn't know what the concept of a "definition" is. It's not some super specific thing that must include all sub-parts. It's really just a vague thing. If it can do what a table does, it's a table. When it can't do that, it isn't. That guy's answer of "when it falls down" is the best answer I've ever heard for such a philosophical question. Reminds me of the "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" question. My answer? Yes, it does. If you define sound as vibrations, as sound is defined in this age, then it makes a sound. If that's labeled as just an assumption because you can't prove it, I might as well say you can't prove the tree or the forest was even there to begin with, making the question pointless.

You are judging Ann by just a couple of propositions. I suppose that we could do the same with Tesla. He had some spurious ideas. That would be ad hominem though. Tesla's bad ideas don't invalidate his good ones. I don't get the desire to completely dismiss philosophical inquiry based solely on cherry picked examples?
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Yeah, you're right. I'm only familiar with the things I've read she said though, and I'm judging those on their own merits. If she's said other things that were of great insight, then I'll judge them on their own merits. What sort of observations about human behavior did she make?
 
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Tricky said:
Nominated!

Man, I spend so much time here trying to illustrate this principle of "overlapping definitions". This does it so beautifully.
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Thanks, though I think the best way to illustrate it would be via a diagram. Draw two circles next to some height marker and in the middle, the two circles overlap. One is the red "mountain" circle and the other is the blue "hill" circle. Just pick whatever point works for you for the entry point to "rough territory".

Actually, my idea is kinda flawed. Notice no one asks something like "where does hot become cold?" because that's just understood to be subjective and just having a temperature gauge works fine? Well, you could just put all raised land on a graph with the bottom being "more hill-like" and the top being "more mountain-like". There would be no dividing line at all, just a gradual slope from more of one trait to more of another. That is probably the most accurate way to explain the fuzzy nature of a lot of definitions.
 
Fair enough, RandFan. Thanks for clearing that up. :)
 
Dark Jaguar, the philosophy you explain and find interesting seems to be conflating older philosophy with the more modern, skewing the image of it as mostly older, and judging from there.

It's true that most philosophy is poor in comparision to our current understanding of things, but this is because the philosophies of the past outnumber the philosophies of today. Most philosophers of today consider these past ideas a keen history lesson, and good exercises for lateral thinking, but we all acknowledge that they don't stand ground.

Philosophy these days is more interested in justifications for the inheritance and incorporation of knowledge and linguistics. It's been said, though I can't readily produce the source, that today's philosophy's only lone battle is on linguistics; something science can't produce evidence for -- these things have simply been lost in time, and only reasoning is really left to explain it. Still, today's philosophy provides the axioms and justified processes science uses to establish and build upon itself. Falsifiability can not be mentioned enough. Neither can the three philosophers Ranfan, the other guy, and I have mentioned.
 
I think that most people live perfectly good lives without philosophy. If, on the other hand, you argue that everybody has a worldview and so can't really escape philosophy, then I'd reply that saying that "philosophy is important" bears no more weight than saying "love is important" - a moot point. Besides, philosophy is one of those futile non-exact sciences where my opinion can very well bear the same weight as that of any famous philosopher.
 
"philosophy is important" bears no more weight than saying "love is important"
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The fact that faculties of philosophizing and love are inert in humans do not make make them equal, and loafing reasoning as an attribute of "humans" on the whole is a misunderstanding of a species as complex as ours. In general, our species can reason, and in general, they can love, but the range and of these characteristics differ in everyone.

I can also argue that both love and philosophy are not moot, and are powerful aspects of the human race, one which emotionally binds and aids in our social structure, and the other helping us build and create.

Besides, philosophy is one of those futile non-exact sciences where my opinion can very well bear the same weight as that of any famous philosopher.
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Logic is both a science and a philosophy, and it is pretty much as exacting as you get in human experience.

And what you mean by "bear weight" largely depends on what you consider valuable when it comes to reasoning and opinion. If we're looking at backing evidence, logical consistency, and application in our experience of reality, philosophies can be judged, and we can get pretty objective in picking which ones are relatively superior. We can always say that "all philosophies are equal because there is no truism when it comes to what is most valuable in judgment and objectivity," but this advances only nihilism. It is better instead not to look for objective truths, but for what progresses us.

I've always said that we should stop looking at things from a perspective of what is "right or wrong," and start valuing things on progression and destruction, which are real-world concepts, based not on abstraction, but obvious things in the universe.
 
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Dark Jaguar said:
I was actually quoting someone else as regarding that professor. I wasn't the one that took that class. The point is that the table may be composed of smaller units of matter, but that's not what we are calling a "table". We're calling that thing you put things on. What it's made of is irrelevant. It could be made of dark matter or programmed into a game for all I care, so it doesn't matter how much is removed so long as it still fits the definition. What blinders need to be removed here? Nothing is enlightened by asking that sort of question, because a table isn't defined as "this amount of atoms". A table is a macroscopic definition for a macroscopic idea. Microscopic doesn't even play into it. That's incidental.
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It's a perception thing. You are correct about the definition of table. I can only say that you are failing to see (in this case) the trees for the forest. Clearly you understand that there is both a micro and macro world and to you everything works fine so long as we keep the two separate and clearly define our terms. Tables are tables and atoms are atoms. If I understand you correctly (I beg your forgiveness if I'm wrong) your understanding of the world is purely academic. You see the world based on the rote education you received. That's fine. People don't need to be able to think outside of the box to function in our world. They just need to be able to understand our world as it is explained.

The problem is that much of what we have learned about the universe and our natural world was the result of people seeing beyond the forest. People who could think outside of the box. How many people give a damn about space/time? The vast majority of people clearly never gave it a second thought. The reason that they didn't is because we evolved in a macro world and our brains simply didn't need to deal with notions of the absolute speed of light and Relativity. It took someone like Einstein who was capable of thinking outside of the box to wonder about that. That is what I mean by blinders. Dawkins has a wonderful take on this. He uses the metaphor of a slit in a burka to represent our view of the world. As he says, the universe is not only queerer than we imagine it is queerer than we can imagine. If you have not yet read the God Delusion I highly recommend it. Dawkins gets it.

I think others here asking about worth sort of muddied the waters. That's not really my position. I'm just saying that it doesn't seem like a lot of it is uncovering ANY truth whatsoever, whether it would be of value or not. That table exercise is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. It gives me no great understanding of anything except that the professor doesn't know what the concept of a "definition" is. It's not some super specific thing that must include all sub-parts. It's really just a vague thing. If it can do what a table does, it's a table. When it can't do that, it isn't. That guy's answer of "when it falls down" is the best answer I've ever heard for such a philosophical question. Reminds me of the "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" question. My answer? Yes, it does. If you define sound as vibrations, as sound is defined in this age, then it makes a sound. If that's labeled as just an assumption because you can't prove it, I might as well say you can't prove the tree or the forest was even there to begin with, making the question pointless.
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That was my take on the "falling tree" example also. How utterly ridiculous I thought.

The point isn't whether trees makes vibrations when they fall and no one is there. The point is "what is sound"? Again, your understanding of sound is based on your experience and rote learning of what sound is. You take it for granted that you are capable of both hearing sound and giving meaning to that which you perceive as sound. Sound is actually, by definition, that which we perceive. Without an eardrum to convert the vibrations to a signal and brain to process the signal and give meaning that signal then there really is no sound just vibrations moving through a medium. It's true that we have come to call and have even defined those vibrations as sound but that is not a precise definition. To be precise we should say "sound vibrations". Analog information that is capable of being processed and interpreted as sound. Now, you may say, ah but this is just semantics. No, it's not. It's a fundamental point. Human perception is a wonderful thing that makes it possible for us to derive meaning from simple vipration and not simply a que for us to act. That's what ants do. It's an important distinction that defines human cognition. On the other hand, human perception evolved in our macro world and we are often blind to that which is not macro. Pasteur was one such person who thought beyond the macro world.

Yeah, you're right. I'm only familiar with the things I've read she said though, and I'm judging those on their own merits. If she's said other things that were of great insight, then I'll judge them on their own merits. What sort of observations about human behavior did she make?
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I was watching a show about China and how Mao had collectivized the farms and Deng Xiaoping had reversed Mao because the collectivization was a complete failure. As the narrator said, "in communist systems workers pretended to work and the state pretended to pay them." When Deng allowed the workers to keep their profits productions rose dramatically. They did so because the needs of the individual are important to the individual and the unencumbered individual is capable of so much more than the encumbered one.
 
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RandFan said:
Rand was a compeling woman in a time when women were not so easily compelling.
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This makes me flinch (and I'm not just talking about the typo). What I meant was that society made it difficult for women to have a voice so that they could be compelling. My apologies if anyone took it differently.
 
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