Thor 2
Philosopher
A favourite strategy of theists: Using your lack of precise knowledge about a subject to lever in their own favourite bit of woo. I like your sevenheaded space reptile however. It just might take off.
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Does anything exist?
- Thread starter Scorpion
- Start date
A favourite strategy of theists: Using your lack of precise knowledge about a subject to lever in their own favourite bit of woo. I like your sevenheaded space reptile however. It just might take off.
Trying to think about the evidence objectively, and trying honestly to form an objective explanation, and then devising all known available means of testing the explanation etc., ... seems to be a very good way of deciding if your explanation is likely to be correct, does it not? Where did the need for formal academic philosophy come into that as a requirement?
Are you going to say that all analytical thought is "philosophy"?
If the priests methods are praying and claiming miracles, then their methods have been tested and found to be very bad indeed. Whereas the methods of science have been tested (in every way known to Man), and the results have almost always turned out to be phenomenally good. Just because your hypothetical priest has his method whilst science has different methods, does not mean the two methods are equally good. Praying is not as good as finding out scientifically what is actually happening.
Scientists do not need philosophers to tell them when they are "right". How did you think otherwise? If you look at all the papers published in core science over the last 20 years (say), i.e. maybe a million or more papers (just at a rough guess), you will struggle to find a single reference in any of those papers acknowledging the contribution of any earlier philosophers ... why is that do you think? And remember, in science we must provide a reference whenever we have used any earlier work from anyone else.
There is a difference between thinking “logically” vs using formal mathematical constructs that we call “logic”, to solve mathematical problems. Scientists use all sorts of different areas of maths to solve problems, not just “logic”. But afaik, the formal rules of "modern" mathematical logic were developed around 1800 (or perhaps earlier), at which time many mathematicians still called themselves “philosophers”, though today I think we would call them mathematicians. Many of them were also scientists of course (afaik).
Of course science uses a lot of maths. But scientists generally learn that from earlier mathematicians, as well as from earlier scientists who were working more with the maths of different scientific problems.
Today if you study science (say a degree in physics or chemistry), you do not afaik, normally take courses in philosophy (well, not in the UK at least) … though you will certainly need to take various courses in maths. There is a difference between Maths and Philosophy ; they are two different subjects.
All sorts of human ideas and beliefs play an important role in peoples lives. Religious beliefs still play an important role in peoplese lives. But that does not make those ideas, beliefs, opinions etc. either correct or scientific in any formal sense of scientific experimentation, explanation & testing etc. Just because philosophers like to study what they call “morals and ethics”, does not mean that either of those things have any actual existance beyond being subjective ideas defined by the use of human language. They are not actual objects or events occurring in reality … they are not part of the natural world around us. Where philosophy is concerned with so-called “morals & ethics”, it's closer to religion than it is to any science.
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angrysoba
Philosophile
That said, the vast majority of those papers probably have to have some kind of IRB (or equivalent) oversight, particularly if they involve human or animal subjects.
These review boards have to make a determination on whether or not the research methods are ethical, and ethics is indeed a branch of philosophy.
Additionally, as lomiller says, science uses the scientific method, which is epistemology - a branch of philosophy.
Similarly, the data and results have to be interpreted. As you say, science doesn't speak, so scientists have to make the most logical derivations of the data, and discount any fallacious reasoning that they might be tempted to make. Logic is indeed a branch of philosophy.
Perhaps the branch of philosophy that gets the worst rap is metaphysics, and it is here that people who call themselves "philosophers" (random people on the internet usually, or gurus). That said, I think that I became an atheist through reason and realizing that the claims of religion are incoherent. This is a form of metaphysical reasoning, and I did that before I knew much about science. In that sense then, even metaphysics is useful.
MarkCorrigan
Героям слава!
Oh, you've presented Scorpion with an uncomfortable truth. He won't come back now.
Thor 2
Philosopher
Oh he'll be back. Perhaps not on this thread but on another, with the same **** all over again, reheated.
arthwollipot
Limerick Purist Pronouns: He/Him
I'm concerned about Scorpion, but it doesn't appear that in his episodes of untreated psychosis he becomes a danger to himself or others. That still remains a very real possibility, though.
If you look at the quote that you took from my post, I specifically said “core” science, and I've stressed that core all the way through, and distinguished it from softer areas of science or more fringe use of science. All research papers in core science have to pass peer review before publication (many papers are rejected outright … and many more are required by the reviewers and the editors to be changed with corrections and omissions and additions etc.). But those papers are not about the treatment of animals (or humans). However, even where branches of science (eg medicine) do conduct research on human and animal issues, it is not afaik the job of the journals review body to decide if the work has been conducted in a “ethical” way … that would be done long before the stage of publication, where the work would be required to follow all existing rules and laws about how animals (and people) are to be treated.
None of that needs academic philosophers who have specialised in what philosophy calls “ethics”. The courts and governments (and the scientists who work in those fields) do not summon phlosophers to tell them what is or is not ethical, ie humane etc., treatemnt of animals or people. They are perfectly capable of deciding that for themselves without having to be bodgged down with literaly endless diatribes from philosophers. The philosophers input is not helpful, and it's not required.
Sorry, but that is simply absurd. What is called “epistemology” in philosophy, is afaik a study of “knowledge” and how we “know” things. The so-called “scientific method” is just a set of general procedures which people (scientists) have found to be very productive as a way of investigating and explaining the world around us (roughly what we think of as all of “Reality”). You are trying to give philosophy the credit for whatever scientists discover and explain, by claiming that just because the scientists have tried to understand the objects and events in the sense of accurately explaining all of their properties, that must mean they were actually doing “philosophy” simply because they were increasing our “knowledge” about all of those things.
That's just another way of trying to say that everything is “philosophy” … so that whenever anyone thinks about anything at all, and tries therefore to “know” something about it, it must be credited to “Philosophy”.
This is again trying to say that everything is philosophy. You are trying to give the academic subject called “philosophy” the credit for whatever science (or mathematicians!) think of whenever they try to use their brain to decide what is likely to be the explanation for anything.
On that basis all thinking animals are also philosophers conducting philosophy all of the time 24/7.
Philosophy is a much older subject (much older than what we now describe as “science”, and older than what we now describe as “maths”). It goes back further even than the time of Greco-Roman philosophers of around 500BC. Philosophers were just the academic thinkers of the time. They tried to think of how the world could be explained. That lead some of them to use early forms of what much later became a scientific method. And still more of those philosophising individuals had used numbers and the manipulation of numbers, which increased over the centuries with different philosophers and which was clearly the beginnings of what we now have as the modern subject of “Mathematics” …
… nobody is denying that philosophers had started to think about all such things many thousands of years ago. But that does not make everyone today who thinks about such aspects of the world, a “Philosopher”. What happened in the case of science is that around the time of Galileo, a new way of attempting to investigate the natural world began to emerge. That was largely because by that time new mechanical devices had been developed, such as the telescope and the pendulum, which some philosophers of the time (such as Galileo) realised could be used to make actual measurements and to record actual numerical data from objects such as the stars in the night sky.
But that turned out to be a very fundamental change from what had been the earlier method called “philosophy”. Until then what philosophers had done, and what some of them still do even now, was to try to find explanations for the natural world, by pure thought of intellectual reasoning alone. However, what was gradually realised with the new methods of using instrumental measurements, was that it's actually virtually impossible to properly & accurately understand the world around us just by philosophical reasoning alone. That was where science succeeded in a way that earlier philosophy had failed to do. And the difference has turned out to be enormous – it showed that philosophical thinking alone is virtually useless when it comes to genuinely explaining the nature of “reality” in the universe around us; whereas in vast contrast that newer emerging method called “science” has turned out to be so good at explaining things that it's ability and it's success has been “proven” beyond even anyones wildest dreams … really what happened, was that science eventually exposed the weakness of philosophy (where, historically, for much of what was done under the title of philosophy, it has turned out to be little better than religious belief).
That's why today science and mathematics are two completely separate and distinct subjects, and not part of philosophy. If you go to a university to study (say) physics or maths, then you will not be in a section of the philosophy department, and you will not be given philosophy books which might have a couple of chapters about “mathematics” or about the history of “physics” … they are today properly regarded and established as completely different subjects from one-another. That's why science is called “science” ; it's why it's not called “philosophical science” … it's long since become a separate and very different subject.
I'm really not interested in philosophical terms like “metaphysics”. But afaik, that is supposed to be the study of all things that exist as a “reality” in this universe. But you did not need an academic course in philosophy of “metaphysics” to teach you how to think for yourself about which claims and beliefs are credible or reasonable. You could, and no doubt did, determine that for yourself without being taught it from a philosophy book. If you want to understand what appears to exist as “reality” in this universe, and you want to understand what you can discover about that, then as I said before – science has proved enormously successful at that, far far beyond anyones wildest imagination/dreams … whereas philosophy has proved virtually 100% useless for studying, investigating and explaining the universe around us.
Really what you are doing again, is trying always to give the subject called “philosophy” the credit for any sort of thinking that you or anyone else ever does.
Scorpion
Illuminator
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You people have no idea, I have survived schizophrenia more than fifty years.
I have told most of my story in my thread 'scorpions spiritualism' and I don't intend to take this thread any more off topic by discussing it here.
Scorpion
Illuminator
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2013
- Messages
- 3,829
I have had experiences of telepathy, and I know for a fact thoughts can be transmitted beyond the brain. On one occasion a friend of mine knew I was in trouble by ESP or telepathy, and he ran from his flat to mine to help me. How do you explain that?
MarkCorrigan
Героям слава!
We can't explain it. Not because "ZOMG TELEPATHY!!!!!" but because we have no first hand access to the events in question. We have no way of confirming that any of your recollections about the event are correct beyond the most basic details (not because you're a liar, but because human memory is just AWFUL) and no way to repeat the incident to exclude other possible alternative explanations.
Science does not claim that this or that exists, or does not exist - science only suggests whether such and such exist or doesn't exist - to the extent that object, force, field etc. has utility in explaining or predicting observations.
For example, science does not say a photon absolutely exists, science suggests a photon exists (in the manner) it explains or predicts observations.
Re existence - that is the only claim science can make.
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MarkCorrigan
Героям слава!
We know you have, and yet you continually attempt to get us to accept things likeESP are real because of your experiences despite 1. These experiences you are claiming to have being literally some of the most common symptoms of untreated schizophrenia and 2. As I stated before even if this wasn't your illness we have no way of even verifying that your recollections are accurate let alone being able to exclude any other possibilities such as random chance or some other trick of the mind.
Belz...
Fiend God
Personal experiences aren't necessarily facts. People have all sorts of experiences that turn out to be illusory, or interpretations of experiences that turn out to be false. You have not, presumably, made any effort to demonstrate this ability of yours in an objective, controlled environment.
And of course you'll ignore this as you've done the rest, but I'll leave you with another explanation:
You have schizophrenia.
Belz...
Fiend God
That's a distinction without a difference. Science doesnt "suggest" anything. It seeks to explain and predict, and that's the best approximation of what things "are" that we can ever hope to have.
I see we've reached the "Oh but you see we ask the questions!" nonsense part of philosophy jerking itself off.
"How many potatoes can a Pentium MMX processor powerwash if the bishop is a Pisces..." lookit me philosophizing...
"How many potatoes can a Pentium MMX processor powerwash if the bishop is a Pisces..." lookit me philosophizing...
sure, as long as one understands claims such as qualia exist, or qualia don't exist, are beliefs, it's doing philosophy or religion, not science.
Belz...
Fiend God
Absolute nonsense.
ANY claim of existence can be studied by science. If you choose to believe in the existence of something that's completely unproven or ridiculous, however, you're not doing science, or philosophy, or religion. You're just being silly.
Your first sentence (ANY claim of existence can be studied by science.) is patently false - you should review what 'science' means.
your second sentence is obviously true
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