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29th November 2012, 02:39 PM | #321 |
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Watching ants in the garden seems like a nice hobby for some as well, but I see no benefit to it. Not surprisingly though, someone here could certainly tell me otherwise.
I imagine you think you don't bother with philosophy, but you do, every time you make a moral judgment every time you vote, every time you oppose a war, endorse a war, form an opinion on what has artistic merit, what has scientific merit, and every time you advocate a course of action for an individual, a group, or a government, or judge the actions of others. You remind me of my niece at 11 years old, confidently informing me that she never reads. I pointed out that she reads every single day. She reads instructions on her frozen dinner, she reads the TV listings, she reads the menu at a restaurant, she reads her homework and notes from her friends, and she reads street signs and sinage on businesses all the damned time. Just because she never picks up a book for pleasure doesn't mean she doesn't read. Likewise, just because you refuse to take any time to understand what a philosopher is trying to say doesn't mean that you don't "use" philosophy. I don't know what the hell they do at CERN all day, but I'm not arrogant enough to dismiss it as "worthless" because of that. |
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29th November 2012, 02:41 PM | #322 |
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Anything that is either non-repeatable or has dimensions beyond what can be captured in experiments. But this is a huge topic, one that philosophy deals with.
Here is a good critique, but the abstract has a good summary.
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29th November 2012, 02:50 PM | #323 |
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29th November 2012, 04:13 PM | #324 |
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29th November 2012, 04:18 PM | #325 |
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Sigh.......how long is a short piece of string?
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29th November 2012, 05:37 PM | #326 |
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On a sub-atomic level the length of your string would be created by measuring for it.
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29th November 2012, 05:44 PM | #327 |
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29th November 2012, 05:49 PM | #328 |
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29th November 2012, 05:56 PM | #329 |
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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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29th November 2012, 06:15 PM | #330 |
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29th November 2012, 06:17 PM | #331 |
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I have a shelf full of philosophy books, I do not speak from ignorance, and to forestall the wits, yes, I have read them all.
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29th November 2012, 06:21 PM | #332 |
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It turns out that questions like "what is moral behaviour" aren't the kind of questions that have answers that are true or false.
Moral claims can be consistent or inconsistent, useful or useless, intuitive or unintuitive, but not true or false. If you think a moral claim is true or false then you're either confused, you're really talking about an empirical claim, or you've covertly smuggled in a moral claim as a "truth". Beware, however! If you argue with me about this, you're doing philosophy. You'll be doing it badly, since the is/ought distinction is extremely difficult or impossible to argue against rationally, but you'll be doing it. So either way you're going to end up explicitly or implicitly endorsing philosophy as an important area of thought. |
29th November 2012, 06:33 PM | #333 |
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A better answer would be "structuralism", since that was the Continental philosophical movement predating post-structuralism/postmodernism.
It was equally annoying and stupid, but in a different way, since it tried (badly) to appropriate scientific ideas for Continental-philosophical discourse rather than handwaving away scientific ideas for the same purpose. That is, of course, to the extent that you can talk intelligently about postmodernism at all. Since it's so vaguely defined, poorly explained and spread about between different texts I've found that that pinning postmodernism down so you can kill it is like stapling custard. Plus acolytes of postmodernism have a mysticist's conviction that if you read postmodernism you will become convinced of its profundity, and that if you are not convinced of its profundity it just proves you haven't read enough of it. Part of pomo doctrine is that you don't have to be able to explain it with clarity, which of course makes it impossible to ever win an argument with pomos on their own terms. |
29th November 2012, 06:34 PM | #334 |
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In other words, Norseman, you can't win. Every time you open your mouth you are philosophizing.
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29th November 2012, 06:46 PM | #335 |
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Bingo! You finally get it. Every time you open your mouth (to discuss matters of ethics, value, how we should live our lives and so on) you are doing philosophy.
This is exactly why your rant against philosophy was dumb from the outset, as we've been telling you from the outset. I'm glad it's finally sunk in. |
29th November 2012, 06:48 PM | #336 |
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Aside from the general anti-intellectualism of the philosophy bashers I noted earlier, I'm wondering if some aspects of what has been called the Village Atheist Syndrome might apply here.
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29th November 2012, 09:38 PM | #338 |
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Originally Posted by Kevin_Lowe
Apt to call structuralism the opposite of empiricism though i don't get the hatred for structuralism. Autopoiesis plus history being empiricism (along the same lines maybe behaviorism or positivism ie the objective world)... phenomenology plus history being structuralism (subjective world) very generally speaking. |
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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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29th November 2012, 10:13 PM | #339 |
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Intellectual Impostures by Sokal and Bricmont amply demonstrates the bankruptcy of that movement.
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29th November 2012, 10:51 PM | #340 |
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Sounds like structuralism is the mirror opposite of post-modernism, where empiricism might be viewed as its diametric opposite (across several dimenstions).
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Stapling custard, that is.
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30th November 2012, 12:57 AM | #341 |
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30th November 2012, 03:08 AM | #342 |
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From A Fish Called Wanda:
Wanda: Oh, right! To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people! I've known sheep that could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher IQs. But you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape? Otto West: Apes don't read philosophy. Wanda: Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it. Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not "Every man for himself." And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up. |
30th November 2012, 03:40 AM | #343 |
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30th November 2012, 06:10 AM | #344 |
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30th November 2012, 06:24 AM | #345 |
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Actually, Gabriel Stolzenberg has done a fairly thorough job of demonstrating that, like the anti-philosophy posters in this thread, Sokal and Birchmont and the various other scientists who advocated their position on the vapidity of post-modernism were responding to straw men. He is quite clear that Sokal, Birchmont, and their supporter do not have to agree with the post-modernists; however, he insists that such disagreement should not arise from facile (mis)readings.
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30th November 2012, 07:16 AM | #346 |
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30th November 2012, 07:17 AM | #347 |
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30th November 2012, 08:24 AM | #348 |
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30th November 2012, 08:27 AM | #349 |
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30th November 2012, 08:33 AM | #350 |
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30th November 2012, 08:40 AM | #351 |
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30th November 2012, 09:19 AM | #352 |
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Taunting and insults, is that all you got?
I've exchanged posts with a lot of philosophers on the web and they all eventually told me that if I'd just study weaving and understood the finer aspects of the warp and woof of the cloth I too would see the Emperors' new clothes. |
30th November 2012, 10:02 AM | #353 |
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30th November 2012, 11:15 AM | #354 |
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30th November 2012, 11:25 AM | #355 |
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30th November 2012, 11:29 AM | #356 |
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It's neither a taunt nor an insult to point out that your post merely reversed the point being made in the post to which you responded. I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I can be latinized to tu quoque. Is that considered less of a taunt or insult?
It is also worth noting that you apparently reject the possibility that Emperor is actually wearing clothes because you don't like his fashion sense. |
30th November 2012, 11:36 AM | #357 |
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And you reject the possibility that the Emperor is naked.
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30th November 2012, 11:48 AM | #358 |
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No, I don't, but I think that we would need to have a common definition of "naked" before we established that fact.
I understand that some of the anti-philosophy posters in this thread dislike philosophy because they find what they think is the dominant school of thought within philosophy, most often post-modernism to be "intellectually bankrupt". However, they then continue on to reject most, if not all, of philosophy because of that, which is again like denying that the Emperor is wearing clothes because you don't like the cut and color of his waistcoat. |
30th November 2012, 12:35 PM | #359 |
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30th November 2012, 12:52 PM | #360 |
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Spoken like someone whp truly doesn't understand how philosophy works. All I have seen you do is assert that the Emperor is naked without trying to establish why you think he is naked.
If we are going to have productive discussion about the nakedness of the Emperor, we have to make sure that we are both using "naked" in a mutually intelligible way. Without some provisional agreement on how to use the terms under discussion, the discussion itself become utterly meaningless. |
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