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28th November 2012, 06:23 AM | #203 |
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28th November 2012, 06:34 AM | #204 |
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You are surely joking. The constant refrain is that somehow philosophy is important to science. Well without any evidence for that I can dismiss the claim.
OK so you seem to be withdrawing from that, well now show some evidence that philosophy has contributed anything to ethics. Critical thinking certainly isn't a monopoly of philosophy you may be trained in it and use logical arguments but scientists have been doing that for years without training in philosophy. |
28th November 2012, 07:14 AM | #205 |
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Perhaps I can at last get a straight answer to straight question from the philosophy fans. What did philosophy have to do with the discovery of DNA? Hard facts this time please, not the usual vagueness.
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28th November 2012, 07:30 AM | #206 |
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"Ironically, the fact that the god-bashers can't usefully define the "god" they are attacking demonstrates that they could probably benefit from going to a university Religion department and doing a first year religious reasoning subject."
Look familiar? Anyway, a)you are presuming that many of us haven't already gone and done this and, b)I'll personally leave it up to the philosophy people to offer definitions and work with those. In fact, definitions have already been done in this thread, one most recently by tsig (perhaps considered by some to be one of the "philosophy-bashers" but maybe it'd be less emotionally charged to use the phrase "questioners of philosophy" ), so I'm not certain as to why you're making this statement anyway. |
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28th November 2012, 07:38 AM | #207 |
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Philosophy is how it was determined that witches float because they're made out of wood.
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28th November 2012, 07:43 AM | #208 |
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Although this isn't the constant refrain, philosophy is somehow important to science. (The constant refrain is that philosophy isn't worthless). The problem is you don't specify what do you mean by importance or what you regard as important. This is why all this miscommunication is happening. Think of this: how important is syntax to spoken language? You can actually speak relatively proper English without knowing any rules of the language. Does that mean syntax is worthless to language? Or worthless overall, as has been hinted about philosophy? Philosophy is kind of like that syntax.
This polarity that either it is essential to science or it is worthless endeavor overall is a blatant false dilemma. Can we at least agree with this? As already said, scientists don't need to know philosophy to do science, but philosophy describes the principles science actually works on and assumptions that are made (and that's just a tiny fraction of what philosophy deals with). You may not see the value in that. I don't know about others, but for me it certainly helps to understand the world better. (a question like "why does science work?" is essentially a philosophical questions, dealing with the problem of induction etc.) So what? I don't see the problem here. Nobody has claimed monopoly on critical thinking. |
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28th November 2012, 07:44 AM | #209 |
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“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” – Christopher Hitchens. |
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28th November 2012, 07:46 AM | #210 |
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“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” – Christopher Hitchens. |
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28th November 2012, 07:56 AM | #211 |
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“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” – Christopher Hitchens. |
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28th November 2012, 08:00 AM | #212 |
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Indeed, definitions have already been done, but they seem to have fallen on deaf ears. Those questioners of philosophy still think philosophy claims to do science, needs to do science, and/or/but fails to do science, and is therefore somehow irrelevant and unimportant.
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28th November 2012, 08:08 AM | #213 |
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28th November 2012, 08:10 AM | #214 |
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28th November 2012, 08:24 AM | #215 |
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Hemlock anyone?
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28th November 2012, 08:32 AM | #216 |
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Apart from it being simply false (I have provided my own definitions, not that it matters), here, how's that for you: Philosophy is the study of the nature of reality, knowledge, ethics, language and reason. Didn't copy-paste it, honest.
Now could you tell me what is the point of me telling you my half-assed, probably poorly phrased and certainly lacking definition of philosophy, when a more sufficient one is provided for us in any dictionary or encyclopedia? |
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28th November 2012, 08:45 AM | #217 |
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28th November 2012, 08:50 AM | #218 |
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Originally Posted by Acleron
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28th November 2012, 08:52 AM | #219 | |||
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Here's a real philosopher.
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28th November 2012, 08:57 AM | #220 |
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28th November 2012, 09:02 AM | #221 |
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28th November 2012, 09:09 AM | #222 |
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If there are objective criteria for philosophy then perhaps some one could tell me which philosophers got things right and which ones missed the mark, and how this can be proven.
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28th November 2012, 09:16 AM | #223 |
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To what?
You want to talk about scientists foiling philosophers. I'm not aware of any scientists going out to actively foil a philosopher but I suppose there were plenty of examples of departmental politics, even in those days. The philosophy being spoiled by the advances of science is obvious and apparent even in the left over bits that pervade science, such as the PhD awarded by universities. Science was the domain of philosophy, but people kept finding out pesky facts. But for a real laugh, let us look at a modern day Philosophy Department. The Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford reckons itself to be the one of the foremost philosophy centres in the world. It is embarking on a new study the Philosophy of Cosmology. Lets just ignore that this is actually an old study that cosmologists took over and started achieving progress for the first time. Instead let us look at who is pushing this new study.
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And people wonder why some scientists look down on philosophy. |
28th November 2012, 09:17 AM | #224 |
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Originally Posted by PixyMisa
Via an epistemological philosophy he titled critical rationalism. Karl Popper was a philosopher you know. |
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28th November 2012, 09:19 AM | #225 |
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28th November 2012, 09:20 AM | #226 |
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Disturbances of the semantic reactions in connection with faulty education and ignorance must be considered as sub-microscopic colloidal lesions - Alfred O. Korzybski |
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28th November 2012, 09:29 AM | #227 |
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Thank you. Hilarious!
''Critical rationalists hold that scientific theories and any other claims to knowledge can and should be rationally criticized, and (if they have empirical content) can and should be subjected to tests which may falsify them. Thus claims to knowledge may be contrastingly and normatively evaluated. They are either falsifiable and thus empirical (in a very broad sense), or not falsifiable and thus non-empirical. Those claims to knowledge that are potentially falsifiable can then be admitted to the body of empirical science, and then further differentiated according to whether they are retained or are later actually falsified. If retained, yet further differentiation may be made on the basis of how much subjection to criticism they have received, how severe such criticism has been, and how probable the theory is, with the least[1] probable theory that still withstands attempts to falsify it being the one to be preferred. That it is the least[1] probable theory that is to be preferred is one of the contrasting differences between critical rationalism and classical views on science, such as positivism, who hold that one should instead accept the most probable theory. (The least probable theory is the one with the highest information content and most open to future falsification.) Critical Rationalism as a discourse positioned itself against what its proponents took to be epistemologically relativist philosophies, particularly post-modernist or sociological approaches to knowledge. Critical rationalism has it that knowledge is objective (in the sense of being embodied in various substrates and in the sense of not being reducible to what humans individually "know"), and also that truth is objective (exists independently of social mediation or individual perception, but is "really real").'' In other words ''do the experiment and see what happens.'' |
28th November 2012, 09:30 AM | #228 |
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Yes he did and for that we can be thankful. But you were careful to say 'clarified' He formally stated the principles of falsifiability and prediction and although some scientists deny the former principle as an essential for a theory, in general, it holds up very well. But the principles were already known. The moment predictions were made on the basis of science theory, a theory could be disproved.
What would have been an achievement for philosophy was to formulate Popper's principles 2000 years ago. Think on what that could have done for our thinking. |
28th November 2012, 09:35 AM | #229 |
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The arguments get closer to religion all the time.
Elsewhere on a religious site I mentioned George Boole and the instant response was George Boole was a Christian you know. As it happens, I have never met a scientist who didn't know that. But as I discuss above, he had to observe real science before writing his principles. |
28th November 2012, 10:54 AM | #230 |
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If a philosopher falls in the middle of an empty philosophy classroom, did he make a sound at all?
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28th November 2012, 11:03 AM | #231 |
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Probably not. Science has the answer to all our questions, and if it doesn't the questions are not worth asking.
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28th November 2012, 11:03 AM | #232 |
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I'm beginning to think no answer will suffice, but I'll try yet again.
Here's a paper in philosophy with a direct application to evolutionary theory: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/3035...paperFinal.pdf There are many like these. Philosophy and science are not at odds. They are simply two different methods of trying to understand reality. Science limits itself to empiricism, philosophy does not. And to drive the point home, here's one by a philosopher (sorry, abstracts only): http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.108...21101370328793 Cited by an entomologist: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...nticated=false |
28th November 2012, 11:05 AM | #233 |
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In the recent New Scientist 24/11/12, Eric Scerri, a lecturer in chemistry, and the history and philosophy of science writes an opinion piece article.
He sets up two groups, the scientific realists and the anti-realists. Scientific realists hold that for example particles such as electrons are real while anti-realists 'stop short of taking the additional leap of faith'. (It appears to me he has the two labels the wrong way around and that it is a false dichotomy as there is a third group, the don't knows. He cites John Worrall, a philosopher of science, who claims that the parts of Fresnel's theory of light being a disturbance in an aether are incorporated into Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism. Because of this he further claims that Fresnel had the correct structure of light. Presumably this means that there must be an aether. This is supported by other philosophers (well duh!). There is more of this balderdash for two whole pages including a diversion into the colour of gold being explained by Einstein's theory of relativity. (So?) His final statement is:
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So after all this, what have Scerri and Worrall contributed to science? Zilch. |
28th November 2012, 11:20 AM | #234 | |||
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It's proven the same way it is in science: peer review.
Cartesian dualism is an idea that has been dropped, as an example. Ayn Rand's objectivism has been dumped as well. There are others. Here's an example of Rand being taken to task by a philosopher: http://www.kiekeben.com/rand.html And here's a lecture from Oxford that kills Descarte in the first five minutes:
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28th November 2012, 11:46 AM | #235 |
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28th November 2012, 11:48 AM | #236 |
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28th November 2012, 11:52 AM | #237 |
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Why not. He is remembered as a scientist. How did his study of philosophy help with his work on genetics? What kind of philosophy was it? If he had studied another branch of philosophy would he made his genetic discoveries? If he had never studied philosophy would we have heard of him?
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28th November 2012, 11:54 AM | #238 |
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28th November 2012, 11:56 AM | #239 |
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28th November 2012, 12:03 PM | #240 |
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