Tommy Jeppesen
Illuminator
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Evidence based on science for the term useful, please and no first person opinion a la "I find science useful". "I find science useful" is not science, that is philosophy.
What do philosophers believe?
- Thread starter phiwum
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Evidence based on science for the term useful, please and no first person opinion a la "I find science useful". "I find science useful" is not science, that is philosophy.
I wish I could find it again... a long time ago I had an MSDOS program that every time you ran it, it generated a sentence that sounded utterly amazing and seemed deeply profound. However, if you actually inspected what exactly it was saying you would realize that it was total gibberish.
I think, like you said, 90% of philosophy/philodeusy, whether modern or classic, is really nothing more than circular reasoning disguised in sentences that are much like the ones generated by the above mentioned program.
Compare this
The hermitically derived synopsis of the pseudonymous tautology is fundamentally pedagogical to the aim of aspiring erudites.
To this
For creation is not a change, but that dependence of the created existence on the principle from which it is instituted, and thus is of the genus of relation; whence nothing prohibits it being in the created as in the subject.
Sideroxylon
Featherless biped
About the level of your usual contributions to these threads.
Tommy Jeppesen
Illuminator
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So you have solved Agrippa's trilemma? Evidence please!
Sideroxylon
Featherless biped
I find it rather boneheaded to write off what Aquinas was saying without examining the context, language being used and questions being worked.
I find it boneheaded to find it boneheaded to write off Aquinas' mostly circular unreasoning and philodeusy.
I think this statement of his says all about what he was
To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.
— Thomas Aquinas
And now... here is some context for you to examine:
There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading. I cannot, therefore, feel that he deserves to be put on a level with the best philosophers either of Greece or of modern times.
St. Thomas Aquinas ...in the Summa, ... accepts the idea that certain animals, spring from the decaying bodies of plants and animals, and declares that they are produced by the creative word of God either actually or virtually. He develops this view by saying, "Nothing was made by God, after the six days of creation, absolutely new, but it was in some sense included in the work of the six days"; and that "even new species, if any appear, have existed before in certain native properties, just as animals are produced from putrefaction."
Summary list of common objections to the Argument from Motion:
A.There seems to be a contradiction in the argument. Premise (2), "Whatever is moved is moved by another," conflicts with the notion of God in this argument as that of something unmoved, i.e., that of the Unmoved Mover. God, then, is an the exception to the truth of premise (2). Nevertheless, cannot God move or act? If God is pure actuality, then it would seem to follow that God can't do anything, for God is already all that God could be. If, then, God is already all that God can be, there's no potential for God to be able to act or be in any way different from what God is. If God is claimed to have a privileged status and not subject to the first premise, then the argument becomes viciously circular.
Summary list of common objections to Thomas' Argument from Cause:
A.There seems to be a contradiction in the argument. The first premise states, "There is an efficient cause for everything, nothing can be the efficient cause of itself." Is, then, God something or nothing? If God is something, then we can ask the question of children, "What caused God?" If God is nothing, then God's existence is not proven. If God is claimed to have a privileged status, then the argument becomes viciously circular.
Summary list of common objections to Thomas' Argument from Necessity:
B.If God is an existent object in the universe, then by premise (1), it is possible for God not to exist. If God is a different kind of existent thing, then the argument commits the fallacy of petitio principii or the circularity of assuming in the premises what is to be proved.
Thomas Aquinas and the Five Ways
The First Way: God, the Prime Mover
The Second Way: God, the First Cause
The Third Way: God, the Necessary Being
With the benefit of modern physics we can get rid of this argument for good. ...
..... This, of course, makes the idea of a Prime Mover absolute nonsense!
There is another, more traditional, objection to the first way. The fundamental principle in the argument is that everything which initiates change must have been initiated in some way itself. This principle, must therefore be applied to the Prime Mover as well. There is no logical reason why we should stop applying that principle at that point. This objection is conclusive. For the argument begins with an observation (that there is motion) and a fundamental principle (that every moving thing is moved by another already moving) which, at least in Thomas' philosophy, seems to be valid. Yet he postulated the existence of The Unmoved Mover that violates the argument's own fundamental premise. The irritating (to believers) question of a naturally skeptical child sums up the main problem with the first way: If God made the world, who made God?
..... This, of course, makes the idea of a Prime Mover absolute nonsense!
There is another, more traditional, objection to the first way. The fundamental principle in the argument is that everything which initiates change must have been initiated in some way itself. This principle, must therefore be applied to the Prime Mover as well. There is no logical reason why we should stop applying that principle at that point. This objection is conclusive. For the argument begins with an observation (that there is motion) and a fundamental principle (that every moving thing is moved by another already moving) which, at least in Thomas' philosophy, seems to be valid. Yet he postulated the existence of The Unmoved Mover that violates the argument's own fundamental premise. The irritating (to believers) question of a naturally skeptical child sums up the main problem with the first way: If God made the world, who made God?
The Second Way: God, the First Cause
The second way looks logically clear and ostensibly convincing. Unfortunately, for the believer, the argument contains a number of flaws which have allowed its complete demolition by philosophers David Hume (1711-1776) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
.....God directs and causes the moment of the decay, although it has no physical cause. But this defence is obviously circular. For the theologians are using the conclusion of the First Cause Argument (that God is the ultimate cause of things) to secure the validity of one of its premises (that every event must have a cause). A perfect example of the fallacy of petitio principii (begging the principle). [14] The second way is therefore unconvincing for the following reasons: it assumes that all sequences must be finite when we have no logical reason for believing so; we have no way of determining which cause exactly is the first cause; it commits the logical fallacy of quantifier reversal; and finally the fundamental assumption, that every event must have a cause, is shown to be untrue by modern physics. The First Cause Argument, the second way of Thomas Aquinas, has been shown the direction of the first, they are both invalid as proofs of God's existence.
.....God directs and causes the moment of the decay, although it has no physical cause. But this defence is obviously circular. For the theologians are using the conclusion of the First Cause Argument (that God is the ultimate cause of things) to secure the validity of one of its premises (that every event must have a cause). A perfect example of the fallacy of petitio principii (begging the principle). [14] The second way is therefore unconvincing for the following reasons: it assumes that all sequences must be finite when we have no logical reason for believing so; we have no way of determining which cause exactly is the first cause; it commits the logical fallacy of quantifier reversal; and finally the fundamental assumption, that every event must have a cause, is shown to be untrue by modern physics. The First Cause Argument, the second way of Thomas Aquinas, has been shown the direction of the first, they are both invalid as proofs of God's existence.
The Third Way: God, the Necessary Being
We can now sum up the various problems with the Third Way: the argument, in its basic form is circular, as it assumes the conclusion in one of its premises; the term "necessary being" if it is to be used in a empirical sense boils down to the Second Way, which was already shown to be fallacious, if it is used in the logical sense it reduces to the Ontological Argument, another argument already dismissed as unsound; and finally even if we must admit a necessary existent entity why shouldn't it be the universe itself?. All in all the Cosmological Arguments fail to demonstrate the existence of God.
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Sideroxylon
Featherless biped
There go the goal posts. Like an earlier poster, you started by comparing computer generated gibberish with philosophical text. The clear suggestion being that philosophy is meaningless gibberish. Then you present criticism of the content of Aquinas work. If it was meaningless these types of criticisms on logic could not be made.
On those types of criticism, they form the dialectic ongoing in philosophy from the ancient Greeks.
On those types of criticism, they form the dialectic ongoing in philosophy from the ancient Greeks.
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phiwum
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It would be rather remarkable, then, that philosophers were able to answer the questions of the survey.
But in any case, I rather doubt that you're correct. Can you name any philosopher that believes everything, much less while believing nothing? Have I (barely worthy of the name) done that in any thread? Maybe you confuse being willing to admit the limits of one's knowledge with believing nothing, but it is instead a matter of acknowledging limitations of reason.
For instance, I strongly lean towards moral realism. I think it is correct. But if you press me, I will admit that I don't have a convincing argument for that conclusion. I don't at all think that it's irrational to reject realism. On the contrary, I think there is reasonable (though not definitve) grounds for doing so. Is this a matter of believing everything and nothing? I think not.
Maybe so. I won't argue as to the utility of philosophy aside from this point: we each must decide what to do, and this decision depends in part on our notions of morality and prudence. Surely, these are important considerations, then, and we should make our decisions with as much reason as we can muster.
phiwum
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Funny you should say that. What reason have you ever contributed to these matters? HINT: Superficial dismissals, such as the above, don't count as reason.
phiwum
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Not sure I agree.
Science produces very accurate predictions, and these are useful even prior to any philosophical analysis. It doesn't take a philosopher to notice that accurate predictions of the weather are quite useful to the average person.
Sideroxylon
Featherless biped
Elaborate the tautology in both your examples then.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
Did they really answer the survey? How do you know? How do you know the survey was real? Is it not possible that the survey was simply an internal expression of an outward desire for meaning in an imaginary universe which they have already rendered devoid of meaning? Surely those answers provided are simply subjective assessments of a reality which cannot be demonstrated to exist beyond each individuals own limited consciousness? Surely the subjective results of a survey of subjective assessment of a posited reality which may or may not actually exist is in itself a manifestation of a perturbation of consciousness which manifests itself beyond the event horizon of the formless? Isn't that not true or false?
So what does all that mean? I have no idea because I made it up out of whole cloth and dressed it in the linguistic equivalent of the emperor's clothes of philosophical skullduggery. It looks superficially as though it might mean something profound, but the reality is that it is all appearance and no substance, no utility, no purpose and no meaning.
It is also directly equivalent to 90% of what gets wheeled around as valid philosophy.
tsig
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3000 years examining the same questions with out an answer. Could there be something wrong here?
tsig
a carbon based life-form
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Studied Tommy A many years ago, short version.
Everything that exists had a cause therefore there must be something that exists that did not have a cause.
We call this god therefore Christ died for your sins.
I Am The Scum
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So what is your point? If ISF forum poster abaddon does not understand it, then philosophers are making it up?
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
Nope. In general, the bulk of what passes for philosophy is pretty much as useful as a chocolate motorcycle helmet.
John Jones
Penultimate Amazing
Can you run the above through a Gibberish-to-English translator?
In fact, many of the more intelligent ones already knew the answers long ago... it is all fakery.
But obviously if they just declared the answer there would be no more need for philosophers... Just like what Douglas Adams' very cleverly wrote in Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy ...when Deep Thought came online:
Adams, Douglas - The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
“O Deep Thought computer,” he said, “the task we have designed you to perform is this.
We want you to tell us …” he paused, “the Answer!”
“The Answer?” said Deep Thought. “The Answer to what?”
“Life!” urged Fook. “The Universe!” said Lunkwill. “Everything!” they said in chorus.
Deep Thought paused for a moment’s reflection. “Tricky,” he said finally.
“But can you do it?
” Again, a significant pause. “Yes,” said Deep Thought, “I can do it.”
“There is an answer?” said Fook with breathless excitement. “A simple answer?” added Lunkwill.
“Yes,” said Deep Thought. “Life, the Universe, and Everything. There is an answer.
But,” he added,
...snip...
Edited by jsfisher:
Text edited for compliance with Rule 4 of the Membership Agreement.
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