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Old 25th November 2012, 12:41 AM   #59
Acleron
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Originally Posted by Weak Kitten View Post
Philosophy has a place in our modern world. It should be the buffer between science and religion, helping both to better understand each other.
If philosophy is supposed to be about pure logic, what can it possibly say about the illogic?

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It should be asking the hard questions about ethics and personal choice. It should be keeping pace with our fast paced technological development, helping the average man to understand their place in this rapidly changing world.
What achievements has it ever made in the field of ethics and personal choice?

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My frustration is not that philosophy has become useless. My frustration is that philosophers have made themselves useless and now the rest of us are having to pick up the slack.
There are three parts to it. Philosophy, philosophical training and philosophers.

Of the three, the only portion that is useful is the training. There is no doubt that these people are trained to be very astute and strictly logical thinkers. But the best then go on to do something useful, like learn a science, become a journalist etc. This isn't a new phenomenon, the shackles of the old Greek philosophers with their disdain for experimentation were finally shed in the renaissance. People would be called philosophers, then natural philosophers and finally we still have the hangover of the PhD. But there is still the intellectual snobbery of philosophers looking down on scientists. This is a common human trait when your reason for elevation has been undermined, commonly characterised by trying to invent a new language that only you know. It also happens in class snobbery.

If you want to call logical thinking philosophy then do so, just don't correct the rest of us who call it logical thinking.
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