I’ve been trying to think of some new posts on philosophical issues here, and I have a few too many ideas — some (if not most) of which would be of little interest, I conjecture, to most participants here. So I turn it over to you: what topics, if any, would you like to see raised?
Here’s what I have in mind: people here make suggestions, I look them over and see which ones fall within my limited expertise, and then write up a post on that issue for framing discussion.
If that sounds good to you, then have at it!
Gregory,
Thank you for the link to the review of White — I look forward to reading it!
And I had not realized that I was expected to articulate my own conception of why philosophy matters. In a (very small) nutshell, philosophy is the cultivation and exercise of critical self-consciousness.
I would say that if Sellars’ “science is the measure of all things” is identified with a version of scientism (call it “weak scientism”), then I don’t have (much) objection to it. (I would still have someobjection, because I would want to tease apart description and explanation more than Sellars does, and leave some room for phenomenological descriptions of lived experience.)
In any event, Sellars is quite clear that scientia measura holds only for “the dimension of describing and explaining the world,” and he fully recognizes that there are other dimensions of discourse, such as the semantical, the mathematical, and the ethical. I would go so far as to say that Sellars not only takes seriously “the naturalistic fallacy” — the “is-ought” problem, “Hume’s guillotine”, but also that he solves it. Sellars’ achievement is to show how to be both a Kantian (in epistemology, semantics, and ethics) and a naturalist (in metaphysics). This is why I find his work so intriguing. In fact, I would say that Sellars is not an analytic philosopher — certainly not in the paradigmatic sense — but that he translates into an analytic idiom a whole philosophical sensibility deeply informed by pragmatism, critical realism, new realism, phenomenology, Hegel, and Marxism*.
As for his politics, he was firmly on the anti-Communist left that was a widely recognizable position among American intellectuals in his generation (alas, no longer). In his autobiography, Sellars mentions that he campaigned for Norman Thomas. But he did not write about political theory.
* Here’s a story I’ve heard. A former student of Sellars once approached him and asked, “Professor Sellars, have you read much Marx?” — to which Sellars responded, “my dear boy, you do realize that “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” is just Lenin’s “Materialism and Empirico-Criticism” dressed up in analytic drag!”. I am leaving it as a future project to read Lenin’s treatise, in contrast with Sellars, and see if Sellars was right about this or if he was just having some fun with his student. But I would not be at all surprised if it turned out to be easy to vindicate Sellars’ self-understanding on this particular point.
Reminds me of my parents’ anecdote:
A letter to the editor observed that politics is the only field where the descriptive adjective that describes the field, i.e. “politic/political”, is almost always used disparagingly. This drew a response, from a university address, commenting
“It may be an academic point, but…”
Still makes me smile.
hotshoe,
Yes, overuse of the Lazy Ism can become tiresome. Witness endless rehash of what it really means to call someone a ‘Darwinist’. Such debates form a whole sub-genre, which I might dub (with full acknowedgement of Godley and Creme’s coining the term for an album title) “Ismism”.
Sure, there are many people who are anti-philosophical and anti-ideological; that’s not news. Where/when an ideology is properly identified then an ‘-ism’ should be used to properly designate it as such, shouldn’t it? KN and I have little problem speaking about ‘-isms’ because we see the meaningful purpose of the particular designation.
Yes, there are people who abuse terms, like Darwinism (most IDists are guilty of this) or capitalism or naturalism for that matter. Of course, perhaps there actually are *no* lazy biologists, chemists, mathematicians, engineers or programmers out there who simply don’t want to take time to understand what ‘-ism’ is properly in context meant to designate. Perhaps they just don’t care one way or another about ideas.
It’s not so much what it is intended to designate as the fact that in the context of these discussions, “ism” when added to a name or a word is nearly always pejorative.
Without claiming to be first or original, I hereby coin the term philosophism, which is the reduction of all serious problems to problems in philosophy.
I use the term as a pejorative, because to the best of my knowledge, philosophers have never built a bridge or plowed a row or raised a crop or caught a fish using the tools of their trade.
To the best of my knowledge, philosophy is the analysis of self-referential propositions. To the extent that propositions have real world referents, they belong to science or economics or sociology. And to the extent that a proposition has real world consequences, it is empirical. To the extent that it proposes a solution to a real world problem it is technological.
So what? Why is empirical usefulness the measure of how useful philosophy is?
You are assuming that propositions fall into two categories: (1) those that refer to how the world actually is (“science, economics, or sociology”); (2) those that refer to other propositions.
Petrushka’s distinction looks to me like Hume’s distinction between “relations of ideas” and “matters of fact”, otherwise known as “Hume’s fork”, and typically identified today as the distinction between analytic sentences (or propositions) and synthetic sentences (or propositions), or just as “the analytic/synthetic distinction”.
And whether or not we should accept this distinction is actually the concern of a huge amount of 20th-century philosophy.
Part of the difficulty lies in distinguishing between two different distinctions at work here: the analytic/synthetic distinction and the a priori/a posteriori distinction. The first is a semantic distinction; the second is an epistemological distinction. (This is so even if there aren’t any synthetic a priori propositions.)
As I see it, at any particular stage of inquiry, there are propositions that are held in the background, not open for question, but which make possible the questions that are asked — call these the a priori propositions. The propositions that are exposed to inquiry are the a posteriori propositions. So the a priori propositions function as meta-lingustic statements that say what it is that one must be doing in order to conduct a successful inquiry. But this distinction is a matter of degree rather than of kind, because what is a posteriori at one stage can become functionally a priori at a subsequent stage, or vice versa.
(Examples of the a posteriori becoming a priori: it used to be open to empirical investigation whether there are ghosts or angels, and now we assume that there aren’t, because those inquiries were unsuccessful. Examples of the a priori becoming a posteriori: until Einstein showed that space-time is actually curved, it was assumed that actual space is Euclidean, even if alternative geometries were conceivable.)
In other words, philosophy isn’t merely (or even primarily) the analysis of how propositions refer to one another; even at its most theoretical, in epistemology and metaphysics, philosophy is the explication of the implicit structure and dynamics of our discursive practices. In philosophy, we say what it is that we are doing when we make sense of the world. And we do that in order to make the implicit, tacit and not-normally-noticed discursive practices into objects of attention and criticism so that they can be improved upon.
(I’m liberally mixing together Dewey, Lewis, Foucault, and Sellars here — but I’m assuming that no one here actually cares about my historical influences.)
The problem is that you can’t claim to control ‘the context’. If you do, you are saying “No legitimate discussion of ideology or philosophy is allowed here.” Iow, as I understood from above “This is just a scientific conversation about ‘evolutionary’ theories.” I don’t think Elisabeth would want that.
When I use ‘-isms’ and speak of ideology I am not only speaking pejoratively (and I’m not an IDist or creationist either). So, by claiming “nearly always pejorative” your move seeks (intentionally or not) to invalidate my contributions and indeed, those of other philosophers and social theorists who do so ‘properly designate.’ Is that your intention?
To engage in dialogue successfully with philosophers and social theorists, petrushka, you first need to accept openly that ‘-ism’ is used (at least sometimes) to ‘properly designate’ an ideology. Are you willing to do this?
Yes, that’s imo a valid term. In fact, I’ve used it myself also and understand what you are implying by it (not much different, indeed, from ‘biologism’ used above). Just please don’t paint *all* philosophy as ideological or worthless. It doesn’t show well on persons who are anti-philosophy. No loving of wisdom, really?
KN, does, imo, sometimes slip into philosophism, or at least highly jargonistic analytic tripe (which seems to reflect his philosophical heroes of choice, e.g. returning to Hume as often as he does). It would be helpful for petrushka to mention some philosophers influential on him, so understand ‘where he is coming from’ because that usually helps to recognise another person’s ideological and/or worldview position.
Today I taught from Nikolai Berdyaev (perhaps, at least according to some, one of the top 10 greatest philosophers in history), who is certainly one of my personal influences. At least know, petrushka, that it cannot be entirely ‘objective,’ that it indeed must be personal and reflexive when it involves philosophy and ideology. And frankly, for some scientists I know, that thought is frightening (in contrast to ‘just the facts’) in terms of disclosure.
Jargon, maybe. But I would hope that anyone who didn’t understand my choice of terms would request a clarification. I don’t explain a lot of my language because I don’t wish to appear condescending, since I assume that a lot of folks here have a decent amount of philosophical background. And “tripe” is, I feel, going just a bit too far!
(For the record, most of my work is on Nietzsche, Adorno, Levinas, and Merleau-Ponty (in the ‘Continental’ tradition) and on Sellars, McDowell, and Rorty (in the ‘analytic’ tradition). I read up on Carnap, C. I. Lewis, and Quine so that I understood where Sellars is coming from. I don’t think of myself as an “analytic” philosopher by any means. If anything, I am a pragmatist.)
And Hume is certainly not among my “philosophical heroes”. I used Hume to set up my discussion of the analytic/synthetic distinction, that’s all. If I had to name by top three “philosophical heroes,” they would be Plato, Kant, and Spinoza (in that order). Hume is (mostly) a useful foil for me, though I adore him just as much as I adore the philosophers whose thinking I have incorporated into my own.
You are free to propose a useful proposition that has no empirical implications.
I have been asking for some examples.
But Gregory and Mung and Blas (and numerous others at UD) have strongly implied that civilization is suffering due to failures in philosophy.
I am trying to understand how an idea that has no empirical implications and no testable implications can affect people.
I can see that moral teachings can affect people, but teaching is an action, and the effects of actions can be studied empirically.
This could be cleared up pretty quickly by some examples.
I’m not sure what “it” refers to. When I think of objectivity, I think of consensus rather than “truth.”
I operate on the assumption that other people are real, that they are much like myself, that experience refers to stable aspects of existence that are external to myself, that the consensus of people who study some aspect of existence is more reliable than than the opinion of any one person. You may call this an article of my faith, if it pleases you to do so.
I accept that my faith in consensus is bound to a particular time and place, and that if I had been born in a different time and place, in the society of different people, I might hold opinions that contradict my current opinions. This is just something I accept, because I see no alternative.
I accept that I have no knowledge of why there is something rather than nothing, or what it means that there is something. I another thread that I started, I proposed that if there is an omniscient deity, one of the implications is that there is a one to one mapping between what is and what the deity thinks or knows, and that therefore is no important difference between existing and being thought. I likened that to the existence of a multiverse, in which all possible thoughts are realized simultaneously.
All of this speculation is entertaining to me, but has no implications (to me) for my actions. My actions are calculated entirely from what I expect in the form of consequences. Mundane consequences.
petrushka,
Are you asking for an example of a true proposition that is justified a priori and yet not “analytic” (= relating one proposition to another)? Or are you asking for empirical data about the effects of philosophical training? Both? Or something else entirely?
On the former, I can think of a couple of candidates, but they are (of course!) all terribly controversial.
On the latter, I can cite data about how well philosophy majors do on the GRE and LSAT. And I found one study some time ago which strongly indicates that introducing a bit of philosophy of science into a science classroom positively affects how willing students are to accept evolutionary theory.
I’m fishing for something that would connect me to philosophy. I’m rather concrete-headed, but not terribly fussy.
I will list a few topics I personally think can only be productively discussed if they are given operational definitions. Otherwise, discussions seem to go round and round with people talking past each other.
Free will
Causation
Consciousness
Philosophy is a game of big words, so I would not be surprised that people who enjoy philosophy do well on tests of vocabulary and verbal reasoning, or math. These deal with manipulation of abstract concepts.
My own hobby horse is invention. (Someone upthread mentioned creation, in a context that I interpreted as implying invention.) I see living mostly as inventing rather than as choosing. We invent ourselves as we go along, and as social animals we invent social institutions. I don’t see life as a catalog or a multiple choice test. I don’t see wealth as a zero sum game.
I see evolution as a process that invents. I see brains as organs that invent. I see invention as an iterative trial and accumulation process.
So when I look at philosophy I would like to see some aspect of it that participates in inventing. If philosophers are participating in solving cultural or civilizational problems, I would like to know what it is they are doing to invent solutions.
So maybe Dewey’s work in education reform, or Adorno’s work in post-WWII de-Nazification of Germany? Foucault’s work in prison reform? That kind of thing?
I don’t know. I’d have to see the details.
My mother was an elementary school teacher, and I have an MA in special education. One of my graduate level professors told us that if you summed up all the research ever done on educational effectiveness, it boils down to “kids learn more from nice people.” Everything else washes out.
My political philosophy could be summarized as “people don’t like being bullied.” I suspect that applies to prisoners also. I’m not aware of any prison programs that convert nasty people into nice people. I’ve read that restitution is the most effective deterrent against garden variety crime. That would seem to be an empirical question.
I have no idea whether or not those three items would count as an answer to petrushka’s question. Consider that Stephen J. Gould was a scientist and a noted baseball fan—but Gould sure as hell wasn’t doing science when he attended a baseball game. Are you saying that Foucault’s philosophical activity had more relevance to his work as a prison reformer, than Gould’s baseball-fan activity had to Gould’s work as a scientist?
What we mostly see is the use of “ism” labels, without anything having been clearly identified.
Gregory,
It’s precisely because I care about ideas that I resist the resort to labels. It’s the ideas that matter, not arguments about what is and isn’t intended by or received by interlocutors’ use of an -ism.
And now we are debating the legitimacy of ismism. Ismismism. 😉
Regarding the value of philosophy, Bertrand Russell, as is often the case, said it best:
and,
(From The Problems of Philosophy (1912), Chapter 15: The Value of Philosophy)
If you actually cared about ideas, Allan, you’d take ideology more seriously and treat it with more respect than you do. Dismissiveness towards the ‘proper designation’ of ideologies is all you’ve displayed thus far. Why?
The term ‘ismism’ is from musicians, not scholars. Is that who you go to for ‘scientific’ ideas? For philosophical understanding? Do you expect scholars to take you seriously with such an anti-philosophy approach? At least you are laughing along with yourself about it.
Neil, there is much written regarding ideology that involves clear definitions (even Pinker tried to give a clear definition of ‘scientism’ recently, to much controversy), which nevertheless doesn’t mean that there are not multiple interpretations and definitions. Have you made an attempt to dig deeper into this conversation? If so, can you list some names, titles that you’ve actually read? Are you ‘honestly fishing’ and doing the work to show it?
This forum seems to draw quite a few scientists who refuse to even accept the existence of ideology, that mock the use of ‘-ism’ to properly identify ideology (especially if it is one they personally hold) and have not the knowledge (or even curiosity!) to discuss it thoughtfully or carefully. They just want knowledge and awareness of ideologies (e.g. biologism, scientism, naturalism, reductionism, philosophism, sociologism, economism, capitalism, etc.), even their own (!), swept under the carpet of polite conversation.
They want to speak *only* about biology, science, nature, reduction, philosophy, sociology, economics, capital, etc. without looking out responsibly for exaggerations and over-extensions of these ‘ideas’ into ideologies. Why? The limits of (natural) scientific explanations leave a haunting legacy for scientism and those whose lives are ruled by its narrow-minded worldview arrogance.
More and more people are realising this, which has led to a delegitimisation of natural scientists and a loss of respect for natural scientists (whatever their actual distribution holding to the ideology of scientism) who exaggerate their knowledge claims beyond their limited specialist realms (e.g. E.O. Wilson, D.S. Wilson, R. Dawkins, plus a long list of others, including theists like M. Novak and M. Dowd – this isn’t something only atheists and skeptics are guilty of, quite obviously that is not the case).
For those in the USA who lament this fall in prestige of scientists (not like it’s a brand new thing in some circles!), you don’t have to look far for answers. Blaming everything on religious fundamentalists and scientific unsophisticates is simply disingenuous. Look deeper into the problem and you’ll discover faults coming from scientists themselves too, perhaps even ideological problems, *if* you’ll buckle-up & admit such ‘problems’ even could possibly exist.
I’m not a science- or scientist-hater. I study science as a scholar, working with scientists regularly and benefitting much knowledge from the balanced, respectable and non-fanatical ones. In contrast, however, a few people here are far, far from reality in terms of fruitful science + philosophy + theology/worldview discourse, their heads stuck in sandy denial about the ideologies that both surround and quite obviously possess them.
Sounds a bit like brainstorming, which was a popular management technique a while back. I have no doubt that the habit of asking hard and unanswerable questions is useful in many practical ways.
I guess my problem lies in the implication that science avoids asking hard questions or that it misses important questions. Which is why I have asked for examples.
Thanks SophistiCat. Even though I’m not a great fan of B. Russell, he does provide a solid defense of philosophy that especially ‘western’ thinkers can relate to. I’d go more supportive of Mortimer J. Adler’s promotion of philosophy (even in the face of scientism), and also Russell’s former collaborator A.N. Whitehead (the latter who did most of the actual mathematics in Principia Mathematica).
To KN, yes, probably ‘trite’ went a bit far. My apology if you were offended. We just place focus quite differently on which topics are ‘current’ and ‘resonant’ and I wasn’t and am still not satisfied with your ‘defense’ or ‘promotion’ of philosophy here. Perhaps it’s because you are not a philosopher of science, as you’ve repeatedly said, yet that’s the most relevant sub-discipline required to engage here with an unusually high % of scientists, engineers, programmers, mathematicians, etc.
Thanks for passing along your Top-3 philosophical heroes: Plato, Kant, Spinoza. I’m a big fan of Plato too! 😉
In case you’re curious, if you’ve read the first part, and because it is highly relevant to what I’ve written in this thread, even in the most recent post, Part II of our joint review of “The Science Delusion” has just been published. This time I am the lead reviewer and my defense of ‘science’ and ‘scientists’ against ‘scientism’ and inferiority-complex humanism might surprise a few people here.
“or that it misses important questions” – petrushka
Yes, natural sciences *do* ask important questions. But I’m sure you’ll agree that it/they do actually miss *SOME* (perhaps even a lot of) important questions. Won’t you agree?
If so, please welcome philosophy and theology/worldview collaboratively and reflexively alongside/together with science! Why not grow the cooperative discourse and work to shrink scientism as an unnecessary ideological exaggeration?
I might agree if you would cite some examples for me to agree with or disagree with.
But in formulating my attitude, my thoughts turn to big issues that have been raised by science (possibly feeding off questions originally raised by philosophers.)
Questions like what is matter, what is causation, what is time.
And yet you were either unable or unwilling to provide a clear definition of “evolutionism”, even though there were many requests.
A label is useless if it cannot be clearly defined, and if it means different things to different people.
Ideologies are for people who want to accept a bunch of stuff in a package deal, instead of thinking for themselves.
Okay, I have read the review.
I’m glad that you were impressed with that review. Because that makes one of us.
“I might agree if you would cite some examples for me to agree with or disagree with.” – petrushka
Just open your eyes, ears and heart. Search…as an actual person. Examples abound, ripe, everywhere. One man simply can’t do the thinking/feeling for another man.
That ‘science’ misses *SOME* important questions is accepted by most people who are educated liberally, not mechanically or just in ‘technical’ arts. But hey, petrushka, don’t feel bad, during my western economics higher education I used to feel like a ‘rational idiot’ sometimes too. Robot, facts, objective…(dis)comfort.
C-a-l-c-u-l-a-t-e = science = real.
Science doesn’t address questions that cannot be operationally defined.
What I have requested is just an example or two of an important question that cannot be operationally defined.
I acknowledge that there are scads of interesting and entertaining questions that are outside science. I’m just wonder why you are so reluctant to provide an example of a question or problem that has real world consequences but cannot be addressed empirically. That seems self-contradictory to me, but I’m willing to learn if you are willing to teach.
Just a tidbit from the review that gregory linked:
I’m sorry, but this is just name calling in a cheap tuxedo.
What other forms of knowledge?
Knowledge, perhaps, that the sun orbits the earth, or the earth is approximately 6000 years old? knowledge derived from sacred texts?
How about the knowledge that our purpose is to be fruitful and multiply? Now that’s an interesting intersection of tradition and technology.
“there are scads of interesting and entertaining questions that are outside science.”
Fine. That’s enough to agree on. Thanks. Be welcome to make your own list of questions on this thread without my participation. I guess that’s what KN was asking for in the first place.
“why you are so reluctant”
I’m a busy person. I teach 2 university courses & am a full-time researcher, along with other projects. I’m heading abroad for a conference tomorrow night. I write and publish and keep trying to learn from those who know. People who are anti-philosophy and or scientistic (or comp-maths near-sighted and cognitively numb like Neil) don’t in any way influence my growing curiosity and appreciation for philosophers and thinkers around the world.
“How can you know what it is if you’ve never had one?”
I moved beyond simple empiricism during my studies in economics more than a decade ago. There’s just more to life than that. “cannot be addressed empirically” isn’t really a problem for most people. Really. We talk about this and reach general consensus. The big world goes beyond mere empiricism or operationalism wrt ‘science’.
If only I or someone else here could express that more ‘artistically’ perhaps you might embrace it and start exploring the grand realm of philosophy (in addition, collaboratively with science and theology/worldview)! 😉
“I’m sorry, but this is just name calling in a cheap tuxedo.”
Please note those were not my words. Citing names from published work is normal procedure.
Nevertheless, now were’s just back to the epistemological drawing board with petrushka: “What other forms of knowledge?”
Is ‘science’ the only form of knowledge in your humble and current opinion, petrushka or not? If so, welcome to the ideology of scientism. If not, then please answer your own question and get over it finally.
Gregory,
I’m with Petrushka on this one — if you or I are claiming that there are non-scientific kinds of knowledge, then the burden is on us to defend that claim — or at the very least present a few candidates.
I’ll have to think about whether I agree that there other “other kinds of knowledge besides science”, and if so, what examples look promising to me.
In my humble opinion, the term knowledge is best restricted to concepts and statements that transcend culture, nationality and religion.
I can, of course, have private knowledge of my personal experiences, and families can have knowledge of family histories. I would not argue that knowledge cannot exist outside science, but when discussing knowledge in the context of the larger society, I would prefer to limit the term to statements or concepts having wide acceptance.
I said earlier that I value consensus. In doing so I accept the likelihood that current consensus can be wrong. It is almost certainly incomplete.
I also value consilience. I value knowledge that fits with evidence from many disciplines.
I am concrete-headed. I want an example of economics that is outside empiricism.
“I’ll have to think about whether I agree that there other “other kinds of knowledge besides science”
This is silly, KN. You are no philosopher with such talk. This is why you need a pseudonym; your higher education institution should be ashamed that you ‘have to think’ about it or not. Scientism tugs on you too hard, amigo.
“I want an example of economics that is outside empiricism.”
Consumer confidence. You can try to measure it, but it goes beyond empirical measure. Imputs/outputs, supply/demand, GDP growth, job growth, etc. are insufficient for measuring consumer confidence. The complexity (and nuance) involved cannot be reduced to a simple metric. (Nevertheless, economic scientists do try, don’t we!) 😉 A rousing political speech or overseas event might make an unforseen impact. The point is that empiricism cannot tell the whole story and it is often misleading when it tries to.
Try to let go of the reigns sometimes, petrushka. Science + philosophy + theology/worldview conversation is indeed much greater than simply ‘science-alone’ or just what is countable, empirical.
“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.” – J.K. Galbraith
p.s. you may be concrete-headed (I’ve got an enigineer friend like that), but it doesn’t mean you’ve got to be concrete-hearted or mentally incapable of moving beyond empiricism (that well-outdated late-18th, early-19th to mid-20th century ideology).
Okay, I will agree that consumer confidence sounds like bullshit. So is — in my opinion — the cost of living index.
I would argue that the difficulty in studying complex phenomena does not mean they are outside science or beyond empirical methods. It simply means we don’t have answers for every question.
But having found a complex phenomenon that is not instantly amenable to number crunching, exactly what value is added by word crunching?
If I find a musical experience to be ineffable, what value is added by effing it?
Gregory, attempting to forecast economic conditions is somewhat akin to trying to forecast the direction of evolution. Or long range weather.
There are well understood reasons why such forecasts are impossible.
In pointing out things that have been known and well understood for at least half a century, you are not making a case for any value being added by philosophy.
Unless your case is that we should be philosophical about accepting things beyond our control.
What I had in mind here was the problem with the term “knowledge”. I’m completely in favor of the idea that there are other kinds of understanding besides explanation. But whether “knowledge” applies to both sides of the understanding/explanation distinction (Dilthey‘s distinction between Erklarung and Verstehen) is a terminological decision on which I have no strong feelings.
Gregory, I have been silent about this for a long time, but your implications that I am mentally or morally or emotionally defective are unwelcome.
If you wish to have an adult conversation, please stick to the issues. Try making an argument that doesn’t involve thinly veiled put-downs.
You have no idea what is in my heart. I spent seven years as a family counselor in childrens’ protective services. Unless you’ve been there you cannot imagine the things I’ve seen or the human problems I’ve had to deal with. So just shut the fuck up about my heart.
Did you read Adler’s piece that I linked to above yet petrushka? Better to have an argument with him. Your concrete-headedness (which YOU called yourself) is tiring.
KN’s responsible for defending/promoting philosophy in his thread. I asked him about biologism & ideology. He kicked a 1-yrd field goal. Some people here have had the philosophical shallowness to even deny the existence of ideology. Is that skepticism? If you want more, ask KN for tutelage as my time here is up.
Your ‘value-added’ with philosophy questions are not unfamiliar coming from students in 1st & 2nd year humanities courses. Even some natural sciences students (probably quite a few!) are curious about ‘outside of science’ (alternative knowledge) questions. There are answers (or at least good attempts), if you’re willing to put in the work to elevate your thoughts and ideas, even (heaven forbid!) potentially seeking wisdom (that is *not* to be found in empirical sciences).
You seem a bit like William James’ ‘radical empiricist’ ‘philosopher,’ no, petrushka? The Will to Believe
p.s. you’re right that I don’t have any idea what’s in your heart, petrushka. I just believe you have one. And empiricism-alone is not a very good measure of it, certainly not symbolically, whatever it is inside you.
This appears to be the point in the discussion when, failing to answer simple questions, you resort to insults.
I do not require philosophy to produce commercially viable products for sale on Amazon.
But you and your cohorts have implied that philosophy is somehow engaged in solving the world’s problems, and that bad philosophy is somehow responsible for the impending downfall of civilization.
You are the ones who have set up the question of value-added.
“I do not require philosophy to produce commercially viable products for sale on Amazon.” – petrushka
Save that one. All hail, American pragmatism!
“you are not making a case for any value being added by philosophy” … “You are the ones who have set up the question of value-added.” – petrushka
Observers might want to do a ‘Find’ for the term ‘value’ in this thread, much of which is linked to ‘petrushka.’
Yes, to value in philosophy for life and wisdom above mere empiricism and pragmatism!
Argumentum ad insult ’em.
I suggest you take those remarks by Gregory as entertainment. That’s pretty much what I do when he says such things about me. In my estimation, given the people reading this site, Gregory mostly harms himself with such remarks.
I, for one, still don’t know what the fuck you mean when you make noise about “scientism” and “biologism” and yada yada yada, Gregory. Yes, yes, I’m sure you are a busy person and you budget your time with care and so forth… but I note that while you obviously have all the time you need to make apparently-unsupported assertions about “biologism” and “scientism”, and all the time you need to reply it’s obvious, dude! just open your eyes! when you are asked for more-or-less concrete instances of the harm (be that harm intellectual, physical, or whatever other form of harm) done by “biologism” and “scientism”, it’s equally obvious that you do not have the time to explain what the fuck you’re talking about.
In short: You spend a lot of time crying “wolf”, and no time at all substantiating your “wolf”-cries.
I call bullshit, Gregory. I see no reason for anyone to address inchoate, ill-defined Portents Of Doom such as you regularly disgorge. No doubt the sentence just previous will cause you to dismiss me as yet another of those short-sighted fools who are blind, just blind, to the horrible dangers of the ideologies of “biologism” and “scientism”… and I’m totally okay with that.
Thank god.
Errm, I meant to say “Dear, you take care now, Gregory, and write when you get work.”
Yeah, that seems weird to me, too. The downfall of civilization is being caused by the lack of political will to do anything substantive about corporate greed and environmental destruction. Speaking as a philosopher, I don’t see what philosophy can do about that. The transmission of critical thinking skills would produce a better electorate, but philosophy has no monopoly on that — despite what the chairs of philosophy departments tell their deans and provosts.
petrushka:
Well, my own personal view is that philosophy does have empirical implications.
For example, what philosophy led to the dropping of atomic bombs on the cities of Japan, or, for that matter, the development of atomic weapons?
What philosophy led to the death camps and the killing fields?
If you don’t know the answers, does it follow that there are none? Does science give us an answer to those questions? Do they require an operational definition before they can be answered?
Okay, good examples. But you are talking about “philosophy” in a different sense of the word. You are talking about the personal and political philosophies of people or groups, rather than about philosophy as an area of academic study in the universities.
Ah, the “Ivory Tower” defense.
Is it possible that the scientists who developed the atomic bombs took much the same approach?