The Relevance of Philosophy

HighLordDave · Post by **HighLordDave** » Wed Jan 30, 2002 8:59 am

A philosophical discipline, such as aesthetics, doesn't deal with what type of car it is, but its subjective merits whereas a physical discipline deals with universal Truths.

For instance, if you ask ten physicists this question: "Under ideal conditions, if you drop a 1970 Impala, a hammer, an orange and a sheep of a building, which will his the ground first?", all twelve will give you the same answer ("They'll all strike the ground at the same time).

If you ask ten car magazine editors what the most beautiful car ever built was, you will get ten different answers (even though the correct answer is the 1967 Corvette Roadster). If there were universal Truths in aesthetics, all ten would pick the same car (which would, of course, be the 1967 Corvette Roadster).

This is probably should be a wholly different thread, but the purpose of government is not to do "what's best for the people" but to exert social control. The idea of government being an entity that serves its constituents is a relatively new idea. Throughout history, most governments have not had their peoples interests at heart, but its leaders. We still see some of them in modern times: the Marcos regime in the Phillipines, the Duvaliers in Haiti, Saddam Hussein, etc.

Both the Marcos and Baby Doc Duvalier were removed from power because people got it into their heads that they had "free will" and did not have to be subjected to the iron-fisted rule of a dictator. Because most people around the world (today) believe in self-determination (a direct descendent of "free will" thinking), we have bent government to be the entity that obstensibly serves its electorate. However, back when these ideas were first postulated, they were called revolutionary and the monarchs trembled in their boots.

Because of the philosophical (and theological) question of whether or not people are born free with things like "natural rights", the discussion carried implications into the political arena. Similar to the paradigm shift in physics, the model has changed to a point where most people reject notions like the "divine right of kings" and accept ideas like self-determination without hesitation. However, this has not always been true, and one day the model will shift again.

C Elegans · Post by **C Elegans** » Wed Jan 30, 2002 10:55 am

Very nice thread...

Philosophy is a metascience. As such, it holds a unique role in offering a metaperspective on all science and all knowledge. Knowledge and science can't develop without philosophy, rather the development of knowledge is a typical philosophical question.
How can we know anything? What means should be used to gain knowledge? What is the knowledge for? What does it mean? Is this knowlede for good or bad? These are examples of questions that philosophy deals with.

I view philosophy as having different, discrete areas like any other discipline. Some areas deal with existential questions, others with the nature of things and reality or the nature of knowledge and how we can know anything, still others with moral and ethics.

Philosophy can study society, nature, mankind and science and offer new perspecitves, critisism, and point out what the consequences of things might be.

Most Swedish professional philosophers actually work in the computer business with developement of program languages and such. This is not surprising, since logics is a big part of the philosophy discipline. Others are teachers and researchers at the universities, and some are working in others fields with ethics, moral, etc. An example: I am a researcher at a large medical university. My institution often arrange lectures where philosophers speak about important issues for medical research, everythin from ethics for human and animal experiments to more theoretical issues like how the modern gene technology changes our view of mankind and societies, and what responsibilities should follow with our increasing control of fundamental life processes. This kind of thinking should be part of any researchers basic education, and to me personally, this is an extremely relevant application of philosophy.

IMO everybody can be a good and insightful philosopher in the sense that we can all think and reflect about the world around us, draw conclusions and have opinions. But the step between us "late night at the pub"-philosophers and professional philosophers is bigger than many people might realise - philosophy is a certain way of viewing the world, at the same time as it examines different world views. Different disciplines of studying the world focus of different aspects, biology has it's perspective, physics has it's, philosophy has it's. But again - philosophy is the only discipline which examines the very nature and fundaments of knowledge itself.

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Wed Jan 30, 2002 1:27 pm

Re: Very nice thread...

Originally posted by C Elegans
IMO everybody can be a good and insightful philosopher in the sense that we can all think and reflect about the world around us, draw conclusions and have opinions. But the step between us "late night at the pub"-philosophers and professional philosophers is bigger than many people might realise - philosophy is a certain way of viewing the world, at the same time as it examines different world views. Different disciplines of studying the world focus of different aspects, biology has it's perspective, physics has it's, philosophy has it's. But again - philosophy is the only discipline which examines the very nature and fundaments of knowledge itself.

So in your opinion would you presume that philosophy is more based on an individuals adaption to reality. In many ways this could be discovered through intelligence tests, quite often they will give you a score for cognitive thought or some such example. Could a test be made for the handling of philisophical issues?

I suppose to some degrees one also has to ponder what prompts a philosopher to take up the mantle, is it for self recognition, is it so they understand themselves and the world better, or is because they feel like they can make a difference. Someone like Socrates does not count since when he was a philosipher it was not a known Science (or however one wished to classify it) however more recently the term is known well. What is the main motivation do you think behind the attitudes of most modern day philosophers?

Yshania · Post by **Yshania** » Wed Jan 30, 2002 4:08 pm

Re: Re: Very nice thread...

Originally posted by Mr Sleep

So in your opinion would you presume that philosophy is more based on an individuals adaption to reality. In many ways this could be discovered through intelligence tests, quite often they will give you a score for cognitive thought or some such example. Could a test be made for the handling of philisophical issues?

I know you're not asking me, but in my humble opinion, individual philosophies are based on perceptions of their own realities...perceptions that change with mood or experience. Rarely is there a right or wrong answer, so to be able to draw up a conclusive test would be difficult, if not impossible.

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Wed Jan 30, 2002 4:30 pm

Re: Re: Re: Very nice thread...

Originally posted by Yshania

I know you're not asking me, but in my humble opinion, individual philosophies are based on perceptions of their own realities...perceptions that change with mood or experience. Rarely is there a right or wrong answer, so to be able to draw up a conclusive test would be difficult, if not impossible.

You are, as everyone free to add some opinions to the conversation at hand

I didn't explain myself particularly well, what i actually meant to say was that it might be possible to create a test that shows candidates adeptitude to certain certain patterns of thinking. Just like a IQ test could one have a test to define a persons philisophical merit.

Vivien · Post by **Vivien** » Wed Jan 30, 2002 4:38 pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Very nice thread...

Originally posted by Mr Sleep

You are, as everyone free to add some opinions to the conversation at hand

I didn't explain myself particularly well, what i actually meant to say was that it might be possible to create a test that shows candidates adeptitude to certain certain patterns of thinking. Just like a IQ test could one have a test to define a persons philisophical merit.

*sighs* Define, define, define.... Defining a persons philisophical merit? *sighs* *hugs Sleep anyway*

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

See, this is why I never take part in these, I ramble and get off topic

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Wed Jan 30, 2002 5:04 pm

Originally posted by Vivien

*sighs* Define, define, define.... Defining a persons philisophical merit? *sighs* *hugs Sleep anyway*

I don't think necessarily i would want it to define the merit of a philosopher, but it would be interesting to see if there are paralels of thinking between philosophers. In essence a way of understanding if there is a certain predisposition to that method of thinking.

Viv nice work *hug*

Ned Flanders · Post by **Ned Flanders** » Wed Jan 30, 2002 6:11 pm

by mr sleep
I didn't explain myself particularly well, what i actually meant to say was that it might be possible to create a test that shows candidates adeptitude to certain certain patterns of thinking. Just like a IQ test could one have a test to define a persons philisophical merit.

sounds like life to me sleep

btw great thread people; HLD and tom - you put into words so easy that which I have such a hard time thinking about for myself.

Curdis · Post by **Curdis** » Wed Jan 30, 2002 8:51 pm

Philosophy was originally the overarching title for the quest for knowledge. This is why the 'highest' degrees are PhDs or, doctors of philosophy. Due to increased specialisation the chief overarching elements of the quest for knowledge were seperated and became philosophy as we know it. Philosophy is the art of dissertation, logic and linguistics, or how to construct a logical arguement. The seperate elements of science, history, mathematics, ethics(etc) are what philosophy is applied to.

I have even heard it argued that modern philosophy has become nothing more than linquistics! Modern philosphy has really fallen in a hole due to scisms in the hierarcy on fundamental issues like 'is anything real' and 'is anything *actually* real'. Definition debates are the norm and no apparent progress of knowledge has been occuring for sometime.

Contextualism (which some here have argued is needed to interpert the works of individual philosophers) was a recent fad but it has largely been dropped because it is so fundamental to how we (as humans) assimalate information. Basically - we all have biases and we place information we receive into internal contexts of our own choosing regardless of whatever other information we may have about it (the bias is built in).

A lot of people, who should have known better, started to say that as a result a polar bear was incapable of writing penguin history because they were a polar bear and had hostile biases. To accept this arguement is to end the possibility of any discourse, by anyone, about anything, ever (see modern philosphy has fallen into a hole).

I'm a physicist by training and because 'quantum', 'astro', and 'chaos' were flavours of the month recently, at parties I was always cornered by the philosophy student, teacher... who started to tell me, on a base knowledge of zero, that it was all a. a crock, b. we had lost the plot and it wasn't the *real* question, c. It was so full of contradictions that you'd have to be a fool to accept even the slightest bit as being O.K.

They were boring, dogmatic, boarish and unyielding in the face of superior arguements. Most retreated to the refugue of a logical conundrum when their arguements fell apart, a favourite being 'but what is real(true, factual). sheesh give me a break.

I realise that this has now lost any sense of reasoned arguement and become stream of consciousness, so I will stop. - Curdis !

VoodooDali · Post by **VoodooDali** » Wed Jan 30, 2002 9:11 pm

@Vivien

Thanks for posting that Wordsworth poem...it's near and dear to my heart.

Reminds me of this one by Whitman. I don't think they met, but I guess the feeling of losing touch with nature was a part of the zeitgeist of the beginning of the Industrial Age.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are
so placid and self-contain'd ;
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition ;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their
sins ;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God ;
Not one is dissatisfied—not one is demented with the
mania of owning things ;
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived
thousands of years ago ;
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole
earth.

As far as the above philosophy discussion goes, it reminds of the the purpose of art thread. There are those who are inclined to believe that everyone is a philosopher/artist/poet/whatever. While I like the spirit of that belief, I think that it underestimates or diminishes the work and skill involved in learning those disciplines. My ex was a philosophy PhD (boy, could he argue!), he had an amazing ability to grasp really complex writing on the first read. I always liked owning books like Being and Nothingness--just seeing it there on the shelf, but I had to re-read some parts over and over--it's rough going. I liked the passages about presence and absence and the waiter Pierre.

C Elegans · Post by **C Elegans** » Thu Jan 31, 2002 12:45 am

Aptitude for philosophy test?

@all: Probably the most difficult name to spell in the history of philosophy: it is Nietzsche

Originally posted by Mr Sleep

So in your opinion would you presume that philosophy is more based on an individuals adaption to reality. In many ways this could be discovered through intelligence tests, quite often they will give you a score for cognitive thought or some such example. Could a test be made for the handling of philisophical issues?

Considering the vast problems we have had with the concept of intelligence and measuring it, I doubt that any meaningful test of philosophical aptitude could be constructed other that what Ned says: life

The first problem is always: How do we define the concept we want to measure? The next problem is: How do we define it in a meaningful way?
One problem that still lingers in the area of intelligence measurements, is that even if there are many different ways of measuring the many aspects of a person's cognitive abilities, there is still no measurement that are connected to intelligence as we mean it normal language. For instance, most intelligence tests (including all IQ-tests) measure your current level of education, but none of them can predict future academic acheivements or aptitude for a certain profession. Likewise, even if there are tests that measure specific aspects of your learning ability, no tests can tell you how well you cope with different life situations or how good you will be at learning in general or learning some specific topic.

So, let's say that we define philosophical aptitude as
1. Ability to draw logical conclusions and analyse and synthesise a material
2. Ability to elaborate a material in a creative way, make predictions and see what consequences will follow
3. Ability to differ between different levels of knowledge/premises/conclusions and to generalise principles between areas

All my examples would be very depending on education, even the creativity part. Cognitive functions are so greatly depending on training. I guess it would be possible to create a philosophy test based on different cognitive, perceptual and even personality trait factors, but just as with intelligence tests, such a test would have very limited use.

I suppose to some degrees one also has to ponder what prompts a philosopher to take up the mantle, is it for self recognition, is it so they understand themselves and the world better, or is because they feel like they can make a difference. Someone like Socrates does not count since when he was a philosipher it was not a known Science (or however one wished to classify it) however more recently the term is known well. What is the main motivation do you think behind the attitudes of most modern day philosophers?

Hm, very difficult to know. I would guess that many people who start studying philosophy does it because they want to learn methods of thinking, of reasoning and examining everything else. There is also the historical aspect - the history of philosophy is an important part of the history of mankind and man's society. I think understanding the world and oneself might be one motive, but when people have come as far as choosing philosophy as a profession, I believe those goals have dimished and goals more directed at society in general are more dominating.

@Curdis: Your personal experience of philosophers seems very strange to me, you must have had bad luck

The philosophers I've met have not been anything like what you describe.

C Elegans · Post by **C Elegans** » Thu Jan 31, 2002 1:00 am

Originally posted by VoodooDali
There are those who are inclined to believe that everyone is a philosopher/artist/poet/whatever. While I like the spirit of that belief, I think that it underestimates or diminishes the work and skill involved in learning those disciplines. My ex was a philosophy PhD (boy, could he argue!), he had an amazing ability to grasp really complex writing on the first read. I always liked owning books like Being and Nothingness--just seeing it there on the shelf, but I had to re-read some parts over and over--it's rough going. I liked the passages about presence and absence and the waiter Pierre.

Well said, VooD, I very much agree with you here. Btw, one of my ex was an MA is philosophy

I'm still not sure I understand Wittengenstein correctly even with his guiding through "Tractatus Logico philosophicus" (sp?).

I think nothing sharpens your mind, your reasoning and your ability to critical analysis as training in philosophy does. In Norway, I've heard it's mandatory to take one year of philosophy before further university studying - I think this is great.

Tom · Post by **Tom** » Thu Jan 31, 2002 6:59 am

Originally posted by HighLordDave
A philosophical discipline, such as aesthetics, doesn't deal with what type of car it is, but its subjective merits whereas a physical discipline deals with universal Truths.

Aesthetics as a philosophical topic deals with questions concerning what art is. Not individual pieces of art.

Originally posted by HighLordDave
For instance, if you ask ten physicists this question: "Under ideal conditions, if you drop a 1970 Impala, a hammer, an orange and a sheep of a building, which will his the ground first?", all twelve will give you the same answer ("They'll all strike the ground at the same time).

If you ask ten car magazine editors what the most beautiful car ever built was, you will get ten different answers (even though the correct answer is the 1967 Corvette Roadster). If there were universal Truths in aesthetics, all ten would pick the same car (which would, of course, be the 1967 Corvette Roadster).

While we might not want to say that there is a fact of the matter what painting is the most beautiful I would claim that there is indeed a fact of the matter whether statements concerning aesthetics have a definite truth-value.

Originally posted by C Elegans

Philosophy is a metascience. As such, it holds a unique role in offering a metaperspective on all science and all knowledge. Knowledge and science can't develop without philosophy, rather the development of knowledge is a typical philosophical question.

I have to say I think that science can pretty much develop with out a lot of philosophical asumptions. In the same way philosophy can develop quit well with out science. Of course they have in fact developed together and influenced each other and that seems most natural.

Originally posted by Cudtis

I'm a physicist by training and because 'quantum', 'astro', and 'chaos' were flavours of the month recently, at parties I was always cornered by the philosophy student, teacher... who started to tell me, on a base knowledge of zero, that it was all a. a crock, b. we had lost the plot and it wasn't the *real* question, c. It was so full of contradictions that you'd have to be a fool to accept even the slightest bit as being O.K.

They were boring, dogmatic, boarish and unyielding in the face of superior arguements. Most retreated to the refugue of a logical conundrum when their arguements fell apart, a favourite being 'but what is real(true, factual). sheesh give me a break.

Oh dear, sounds to me like you had a bit of bad luck - running into people that made comments about things they didn't really know about.
You would think that people educated to such a level would know better than to show off their ignorance.

Originally posted by Curdis

I have even heard it argued that modern philosophy has become nothing more than linquistics! Modern philosphy has really fallen in a hole due to scisms in the hierarcy on fundamental issues like 'is anything real' and 'is anything *actually* real'. Definition debates are the norm and no apparent progress of knowledge has been occuring for sometime.

Thank god that you have made a stand against that kind of dogmatic, ignorant and frankly fatuous people.

Despite your insightful comments allow me to just add a few points.

Philosophy has been divided on just about any issue throughout its history - that is how progress has been made, by trashing out the arguments presented. In the last century there have been huge progress in our understanding of all philosophical areas, this however is not widely understood since people are not taught even the most basic facts about philosophy.
To think that no progress has been made in philosophy is equivalent to thinking that no progress has been made in physics since Einstein and Bor.

Leaving all that to one side.

There are philosophical concerns about quantum theory that cant be dismissed out of hand. Correct me if I am wrong but Einstein himself harboured doubts for a long time. Now of course quantum theory is correct in some sense. The double slit experiment and the action at a distance (entanglement) experiments have shown that quantum theory gives the right results. The results are shocking and bizarre but there is still a lot of unresolved issue, I'm sure you will agree, about the fundamentals.

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Thu Jan 31, 2002 7:08 am

Re: Aptitude for philosophy test?

Originally posted by C Elegans
Considering the vast problems we have had with the concept of intelligence and measuring it, I doubt that any meaningful test of philosophical aptitude could be constructed other that what Ned says: life

I feel almost patronised

You know how bad i am at that thing called life

The first problem is always: How do we define the concept we want to measure? The next problem is: How do we define it in a meaningful way?

I never have been a great believer in the intelligence tests, i have had varying scores from 155 down to 112, i am not inclined to believe any of them

It seems they are dependent on factors which do not necessarily refer to actual abilities.

I see you point

and i think several others have also made similar references, so i will consider myself told

Hm, very difficult to know. I would guess that many people who start studying philosophy does it because they want to learn methods of thinking, of reasoning and examining everything else. There is also the historical aspect - the history of philosophy is an important part of the history of mankind and man's society. I think understanding the world and oneself might be one motive, but when people have come as far as choosing philosophy as a profession, I believe those goals have dimished and goals more directed at society in general are more dominating.

Do philosophers also presume that their works are going to make a difference, or are they merely doing a job like any regular joe?

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Thu Jan 31, 2002 7:20 am

Originally posted by Curdis
I have even heard it argued that modern philosophy has become nothing more than linquistics! Modern philosphy has really fallen in a hole due to scisms in the hierarcy on fundamental issues like 'is anything real' and 'is anything *actually* real'. Definition debates are the norm and no apparent progress of knowledge has been occuring for sometime.

Who's fault would you presume this this to be? The tutors or the possibly narrow minded students?

Contextualism (which some here have argued is needed to interpert the works of individual philosophers)

I would agree with that line of thinking, i can not see how a person can just assume so much from reading a few lines of text, it is to me like reading just the last chapter of a book, you don't understand what brought the characters to this point, you have no grasp of relationships and other important plot effects, you just know the outcome.

A lot of people, who should have known better, started to say that as a result a polar bear was incapable of writing penguin history because they were a polar bear and had hostile biases. To accept this arguement is to end the possibility of any discourse, by anyone, about anything, ever (see modern philosphy has fallen into a hole).

That is total nonesense. It also brings up issues of culture and country divides, which if that was believed would drastically alter the current integration of societies.

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Thu Jan 31, 2002 7:27 am

Originally posted by Tom
There are philosophical concerns about quantum theory that cant be dismissed out of hand. Correct me if I am wrong but Einstein himself harboured doubts for a long time. Now of course quantum theory is correct in some sense. The double slit experiment and the action at a distance (entanglement) experiments have shown that quantum theory gives the right results. The results are shocking and bizarre but there is still a lot of unresolved issue, I'm sure you will agree, about the fundamentals.

Do you think perhaps that some people strive too hard for the larger and more epic quandries rather that looking for the simple groundwork?

It always amazes me how before volume displacement was suggested by a scientist (can't remember his name at the moment) that no one had considered such things. Did it take his intellect or perhaps his grounding in science to understand the ramifications of the simple things?

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Thu Jan 31, 2002 7:54 am

Just some Steven Wright quotes i have, i thought them appropriate

I was in a job interview and I opened a book and started reading. Then I said to the guy 'Let me ask you a question. If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?' He said 'I don't know'. I said 'I don't want your job'.

I have a map of the united states .... it's original size ... it says one mile equals one mile.

I bought a house, on a one-way dead-end road; I don't know how I got there.

I installed a skylight in my apartment.... The people who live above me are furious!

I was once walking through the forest alone. A tree fell right in front of me -- and I didn't hear it.

C Elegans · Post by **C Elegans** » Thu Jan 31, 2002 10:44 am

But how?

Originally posted by Tom
I have to say I think that science can pretty much develop with out a lot of philosophical asumptions. In the same way philosophy can develop quit well with out science. Of course they have in fact developed together and influenced each other and that seems most natural.

Interesting note - how do you think science could develop without philosophy? I can't really see how it would not stagnate, maybe because the two of them have been so intertwined historically, so I can't differentiate between them. The principles of modern science has developed under heavy influence from philosophers such as Popper and Kuhn, although many some principles are of course much older.

C Elegans · Post by **C Elegans** » Thu Jan 31, 2002 10:54 am

Re: Re: Aptitude for philosophy test?

@Sleep: Honestly I believe you are better than most at the philosophy aptitude test life. Your sceptic view of IQ-tests awarded you an extra point in my book

Originally posted by Mr Sleep

Do philosophers also presume that their works are going to make a difference, or are they merely doing a job like any regular joe?

Gee, I have no idea, but my guess is that making a difference will become your job just as for the regular joe. I know lots of people who do jobs that really could make a difference, but most of them seem to view it "doing their job", just as firefighters or surgeons seem to do.

Waverly · Post by **Waverly** » Thu Jan 31, 2002 11:30 am

Re: Philosophy and science:

The are obviously not one and the same, but are more closely related than one might think. Some might argue Skeptism itself is a philosophy, and most good science requires a healthy dose of it.

Many classical philosophers, including Socrates himself pondered how to best answer life’s questions.