Foster Zygote
Dental Floss Tycoon
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Was that a Spinal Tap piece?
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Does anything exist?
- Thread starter Scorpion
- Start date
Was that a Spinal Tap piece?
So is it useful or not?
PS:
Sorry, I misread 'I don't think all' as 'I don't think at all'.
Philosophy is an academic discipline in which you can do a degree, a PhD, and then further post-doctoral research (as well as getting well paid for life as a professor to lecture the subject). If we are saying that some parts of it are “useful”, then it has to be contributing something important that other academic subjects and people in the general public cannot easily think of, use, or understand themselves.
Earlier Mark mentioned the “philosophy of politics”. But Scorpion started this thread with the title “Does Anything Exist?”. It's true that philosophers apparently still see themselves as the people to answer that. But science has taken that role away from them entirely … science has proved itself vastly superior in answering questions like that. In fact it's proved that philosophy actually cannot answer such questions, but that science does answer them in the most mind-boggling and astonishing detail.
That has not stopped philosophy professors still claiming to be the authority on such questions, and still actually telling scientists what they can, and cannot investigate etc. Frankly that is one hell of a cheek from philosophers (who's actual input on questions about the nature of the universe and how we perceive it through our brain and senses etc., has been minimal compared to what we have achieved through science … in fact it's so minimal as to be not even worth bothering with anymore).
Whether politicians value the input from philosophers telling them what to do, I don't know. But it would not surprise me if most politicians (a) had no idea that philosophers were getting involved in politics in some way, and (b) far less would it be a surprise to me if many politicians took no notice of what any philosopers had to say (except maybe those politicians who had a philosophy degree anyway before going into politics).
It's been said in this thread (and many times in previous similar threads) that the role of philosophy is to ask searching questions. But which of the experts in other academic or professional fields need philosophers to tell them what the searching questions are? Scientists certainly do not need it. In fact if were not for what philosophers have learned over the last 200 years from scientists about the nature of the universe around around us (as well as about all sorts of aspects of human behaviour), then none of those philosophers would have had the faintest idea which were the searching questions to even ask in the first place!
So, what exactly is philosophy telling us that the rest of us (in any subject, or just generally in life), could not have perfectly well decided for ourselves?
And just to be clear – I'm well aware that there are philosophers such as David Wallace, who study the more puzzling aspects of quantum theory (eg entanglement and superposition), and who have written extensively on that and with a deep understanding of the issues. And that's great. But frankly I think that philosophers like Wallace really ought to be described as a “theoreticians” (ie a mathematical physicists) … because he's really doing what theoretical physicists are also doing (and what they have been doing since at least the time of Einstein) … here's David Wallace https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK9JE1HjPi8 .
Belz...
Fiend God
There is no "right" way of thinking. And you're still defining philosophy as "everything you do".
And yet, the outcome would be very similar.
Steve
Penultimate Amazing
Yup. Those monks existed right up until they didn't anymore. Just like "ordinary" humans.
As usual nothing but "man in the pub told me" trite nonsense.
Patient: "I just want to die with dignity."
House: *Angrily* "There's no such thing! Our bodies break down, sometimes when we're 90, sometimes before we're even born, but it always happens and there's never any dignity in it! I don't care if you can walk, see, wipe your own ass... it's always ugly - ALWAYS! You can live with dignity; we can't die with it!"
BTW, the other day I ran into this VDO (Sabine Hossenfelder) re what science can say about what is real - the first minute of the video - this is how I learned and read about science, and what I was referring to earlier in this thread. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTWmz9k7v9M.
Stop right there.
No it isn't. Because "disciplines" have sets of standards, things you can and cannot do and there is nothing philosophy "can't" do because everything philosophy can't do just magically turns into another kind of philosophy.
Rather than me spend my time watching and listening to what she says (which I suspect may well be a waste/abuse of my time), please just tell me what she is claiming or what you think she is claiming.
lomiller
Penultimate Amazing
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Great video!
I even went on to watch a few more of her videos and really liked this one as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8DQSM-b2cc
She explains why the flat earth is implausible and it's almost impossible to reconcile that with observational evidence. She then explains that the flat earthers themselves won't accept observations, logic and experiments they didn't personally perform but can't do everything required to replicate it themselves. This leaves them with a limited subset of empirical evidence that tells them the earth is flat.
In their own minds they are just being empirical rational and scientific. This is actually a theme I find all to common in pseudo-science. Everything from climate change denial to 9\11 truthers are doing similar things and they end up reaching the wrong conclusions as a result. This all happens because they don't think about science and scientific evidence in the right way.
She makes the claim in first 20 seconds of VDO - and it's the same claim I learned as a student: science says a thing/force/etc. is real as it has utility in explaining observations. We can model the universe as though the Higgs boson particle exists, and the results of the observation(s) are consistent with the predictions of that model. It doesn't say that Higgs boson exist, and it doesn't say that they don't exist.
That anyone can sit at a computer, use their brain to consider "Does anything exist?", then use their fingers to type "Does anything exist?", then click the submit button and witness their "Does anything exist?" post being published, and still question "Does anything exist?", is evidence that stupidity exists.
Don't take this post too seriously, it may not exist!
Don't take this post too seriously, it may not exist!
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bruto
Penultimate Amazing
Getting into an argument with a duelist is always serious whatever his philosophy, even if you have fencing practice on your to-do-list.
I am reminded of the kid, sitting in he back of the class, who wakes up mid-lecture with a snort.
Now you're just taking a post and poster, that may not even exist, far too seriously
Now you're just taking a post and poster, that may not even exist, far too seriously
your post exists only as a sequence of 1's and 0's, the rendering is a 'hallucination' and not really real
I am reminded of the kid, sitting in the front of the class, who complains to the lecturer that the imaginary kid at the back of the class has snorted an imaginary snort, and should be ordered to leave the lecture room.
Your turn . . .
I watched the first minute.
First of all I think this is the same women who I saw a year or so ago in a video about hidden dimensions of reality (or something like that), it was actually a video presenting complete woo. It was made to look authoritative, but it was actually unscientific garbage presented as a attempt to deceive impressionable people who have little or no genuine education in research science ... the first 30 sec of what she was saying in your link looks EXACTLY like that ...
... she starts by immediately claiming "scientists say something exists if it is useful to explain observations", she says that is what scientists mean by "existing". OK, well that is thoroughly misleading garbage to start with - scientists do not say things exist on such a basis as that ... she is trying to dismiss and minimise what science can say about the world around us, and she is doing that as she then immediately reveals, to claim that philosophy is needed to explain what is real (not science!). If you believe this sort of internet conspiracy theory crap, then it's no wonder that you have a seriously misguided and frankly uneducated view/belief about the world.
Scientists do not generally say anything about "reality". They do not need to. All that we need to do is to study and explain whatever our senses and our experimental systems detect. So called "reality" does not come into it. Because there is no reason to doubt it. If someone like Sabine or any philosophers claim that the observed reality may not exist, then it's their burden to show how and why that is true (or even possible) ... science does not need to do anything like that ... we just study and explain what we are confronted with.
If you do not believe that things actually exist, eg a bus, or your computer or yourself, then all of the burden is upon you to explain how and why none of that exists.