What Is Philosophy?

[pood]

How many -isms and -ologies are there in philosophy?

I thought I was going to be clever and coin the term philosohism, but it already exists when I checked.

So does the term scientism.

It’s the claim that the only meaningful statements are scientific ones.

It is ironically self-refuting, since the statement itself is not a scientific one.

 

[steve_bank]

Scientism is yet another -ism crafted to make a point and serve a purpose. Commonly used by theism to argue science equates to religion.

-isms and -ologies have cultural and political purposes. There is also a context, beyond quoting dictionary definitions.

I thumbed through Hegel years back. What I thought he was saying was there is more to philopshy thn debate.. There is a goal.

Pole invoke philosophy the way Christians invoke god. They can't dine god but he is the agent of all things.

 

[steve_bank]

Most scientists, many of whom disdain philosophy, identify as “naturalists.” But what is naturalism? It’s a metaphysical assumption. Strictly it is even called metaphysical naturalism, and usually this is in counterpoint to metaphysical supernaturalism. But those are not the ony two metaphysics on offer. There are also metaphysical idealism, monism, dualism, etc. So science aso has its isms and ologies, obviously. BiOLOGY, anyone? NaturalISM, anyone?

Categories are essential. I generally identify with naturalism, and free thought,

You make my point, you are debating definitions.

In your own words, what do you mean by philosophy?

There is morality-ethics, logic-debate, metaphysics, aesthetics.

Science, language, psychology are independent disciplines. Logic is in computer science and electrical engineering. Symbolic systems of logic.

 

[Politesse]

They can't dine god but he is the agent of all things.

Actually Christians are, if anything, the premiere experts of dining on God.

 

[DBT]

Is observing the world in order to learn how things works a matter of philosophy?

 

[Politesse]

Of course. How better could one demonstrate a love of wisdom than by carefully observing and cultivating greater understanding of the world around us?

 

[DBT]

'Wisdom' may be a sticky point?

 

[Politesse]

If it were easily won, it would not be such a tempting target.

 

[pood]

Most scientists, many of whom disdain philosophy, identify as “naturalists.” But what is naturalism? It’s a metaphysical assumption. Strictly it is even called metaphysical naturalism, and usually this is in counterpoint to metaphysical supernaturalism. But those are not the ony two metaphysics on offer. There are also metaphysical idealism, monism, dualism, etc. So science aso has its isms and ologies, obviously. BiOLOGY, anyone? NaturalISM, anyone?

Categories are essential. I generally identify with naturalism, and free thought,

Naturalism is a philosophical assumption, so you are doing philosophy by default.

You make my point, you are debating definitions.

I am pointing out that definitions have philosophical underpinnings and hidden assumptions.

In your own words, what do you mean by philosophy?

I have already explained that. I also started an entire thread on how science and philosophy are intertwined and how much the former owes to the latter.

There is morality-ethics, logic-debate, metaphysics, aesthetics.

Right. Those are all parts of philosophy.

Science, language, psychology are independent disciplines. Logic is in computer science and electrical engineering. Symbolic systems of logic.

Computer science derives logic from philosophy. Long before computers existed, there was logic. Science is a tangle of philosophy: theory underdetermination, the demarcation problem, adjustment of auxiliary assumptions, and on and on. The fact that you, as an engineer, didn’t directly need to consider philosophy in your everyday job does not mean philosophy is irrelevant to science.

 

[pood]

I guess I should point out too that while it is true that philosophers are not scientists (though science is derived from philosophy), neither are engineers. Engineers apply science, which is derived from philosophy.

 

[pood]

A current example of science and philosophy intermingling: On one side we have the biologist P.Z. Myers (among many other biologists) holding that sex is not binary, but a continuum. One the other side we have the biologists Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins (among many other biologists) holding that sex is strictly binary. The dispute has gotten nasty, with Coyne deriding Myers as a “miscreant” while Myers has repeatedly and personally castigated Coyne and Dawkins, in highly personal terms.

Who is right? If scientism were true —only scientific statements have meaning and get at truth — this dispute would not e possible. Hence, scientism is false. The dispute, of course, is philosophical. Philosophy is at the very heart of science.

 

[Jarhyn]

A current example of science and philosophy intermingling: On one side we have the biologist P.Z. Myers (among many other biologists) holding that sex is not binary, but a continuum. One the other side we have the biologists Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins (among many other biologists) holding that sex is strictly binary. The dispute has gotten nasty, with Coyne deriding Myers as a “miscreant” while Myers has repeatedly and personally castigated Coyne and Dawkins, in highly personal terms.

Who is right? If scientism were true —only scientific statements have meaning and get at truth — this dispute would not e possible. Hence, scientism is false. The dispute, of course, is philosophical. Philosophy is at the very heart of science.

Well, a lot of it has to do with the fact that Dawkins is just plain wrong: nature carries "conditions", not "disease", and every individual represents a distinct totality of conditions.

We could as well call them "states", to be handled neutrally until someone identifies, for themselves, their unease.

 

[pood]

A current example of science and philosophy intermingling: On one side we have the biologist P.Z. Myers (among many other biologists) holding that sex is not binary, but a continuum. One the other side we have the biologists Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins (among many other biologists) holding that sex is strictly binary. The dispute has gotten nasty, with Coyne deriding Myers as a “miscreant” while Myers has repeatedly and personally castigated Coyne and Dawkins, in highly personal terms.

Who is right? If scientism were true —only scientific statements have meaning and get at truth — this dispute would not e possible. Hence, scientism is false. The dispute, of course, is philosophical. Philosophy is at the very heart of science.

Well, a lot of it has to do with the fact that Dawkins is just plain wrong: nature carries "conditions", not "disease", and every individual represents a distinct totality of conditions.

We could as well call them "states", to be handled neutrally until someone identifies, for themselves, their unease.

I think Dawkins is wrong too because I think Myers has the better argument, but the point is that this is fundamentally a clash of values and priorities and emphasis, and disproves scientism as a valid thesis. This is because science is value-laden and not some neutral, wholly objective enterprise.

 

[Jarhyn]

A current example of science and philosophy intermingling: On one side we have the biologist P.Z. Myers (among many other biologists) holding that sex is not binary, but a continuum. One the other side we have the biologists Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins (among many other biologists) holding that sex is strictly binary. The dispute has gotten nasty, with Coyne deriding Myers as a “miscreant” while Myers has repeatedly and personally castigated Coyne and Dawkins, in highly personal terms.

Who is right? If scientism were true —only scientific statements have meaning and get at truth — this dispute would not e possible. Hence, scientism is false. The dispute, of course, is philosophical. Philosophy is at the very heart of science.

Well, a lot of it has to do with the fact that Dawkins is just plain wrong: nature carries "conditions", not "disease", and every individual represents a distinct totality of conditions.

We could as well call them "states", to be handled neutrally until someone identifies, for themselves, their unease.

I think Dawkins is wrong too because I think Myers has the better argument, but the point is that this is fundamentally a clash of values and priorities and emphasis, and disproves scientism as a valid thesis. This is because science is value-laden and not some neutral, wholly objective enterprise.

Science in and of itself isn't "value-laden" so much? That's more something people project onto it, in the same way responsibility isn't "morality-laden", except when a moral rule comes into it.

Dawkins should be expected to tender his moral rule which inflects science so, and justify it.

He's going up against the is/ought problem, and it's going to grind him down to nothing.

In my entire search of philosophy, I found ONE way to get to ONE moral rule, and that travels through the line from Cogito through to *prohibiting* unilateral imposition. Since it deals with the symmetry of 'primal justification', nobody has the "momentum" to get over that curve and proclaim their goals "correct" above all others. It "tops out" at a point where no individual rises above another.

 

[pood]

Scientism is yet another -ism crafted to make a point and serve a purpose. Commonly used by theism to argue science equates to religion.

While it is true that some theists do this, it’s not germane to scientism. Scientism is the claim that only scientific statements have validity or converge on truth. I’ve already pointed out that the statement is self-refuting.

The Folly of Scientism is a long article that I have not finished reading yet. Early on, the author brings up Popper and falsification, and while the author is clearly against scientism, he seems to commend falsification.

But first, notice that Popper was a philosopher, not a scientist. So right off the bat if scientists embrace falsification, they are embracing a philosophical notion even if they disdain philosophy.

And second, if you take a statement like, “falsification is a necessary and sufficient condition for science,” what kind of statement is that? It’s surely not scientific — is there some kind of scientific test that could be done to falsify falsification?

Third, it may be that falsification is neither necessary nor sufficient to do science. Theory underdetermination contests falsification. Just because a theory has been falsified, doesn’t make it false. And just because a theory has survived numerous tests, doesn’t make it true. There are numerous historical examples of both. Einstein, who felt indebted to Hume (a philosopher) for relativity theory, anticipated the limits of falsification even before Popper proposed it. When asked what he would say if the first experimental test of relativity showed it to be false, he replied, “Then I should be sorry for the good lord, because the theory is correct.”

 

[pood]

A current example of science and philosophy intermingling: On one side we have the biologist P.Z. Myers (among many other biologists) holding that sex is not binary, but a continuum. One the other side we have the biologists Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins (among many other biologists) holding that sex is strictly binary. The dispute has gotten nasty, with Coyne deriding Myers as a “miscreant” while Myers has repeatedly and personally castigated Coyne and Dawkins, in highly personal terms.

Who is right? If scientism were true —only scientific statements have meaning and get at truth — this dispute would not e possible. Hence, scientism is false. The dispute, of course, is philosophical. Philosophy is at the very heart of science.

Well, a lot of it has to do with the fact that Dawkins is just plain wrong: nature carries "conditions", not "disease", and every individual represents a distinct totality of conditions.

We could as well call them "states", to be handled neutrally until someone identifies, for themselves, their unease.

I think Dawkins is wrong too because I think Myers has the better argument, but the point is that this is fundamentally a clash of values and priorities and emphasis, and disproves scientism as a valid thesis. This is because science is value-laden and not some neutral, wholly objective enterprise.

Science in and of itself isn't "value-laden" so much? That's more something people project onto it, in the same way responsibility isn't "morality-laden", except when a moral rule comes into it.

Dawkins should be expected to tender his moral rule which inflects science so, and justify it.

He's going up against the is/ought problem, and it's going to grind him down to nothing.

In my entire search of philosophy, I found ONE way to get to ONE moral rule, and that travels through the line from Cogito through to *prohibiting* unilateral imposition. Since it deals with the symmetry of 'primal justification', nobody has the "momentum" to get over that curve and proclaim their goals "correct" above all others. It "tops out" at a point where no individual rises above another.

I think science is certainly value-laden, in so many ways. Values and priorities underpin what scientists choose to study and how they study it, and values and priorities drive the institutional awarding of research grants. The dispute between Myers on the one hand, and Dawkins and Coyne on the other, is a dispute over values, priorities, and interpretations of facts available to all, and hence cannot be resolved by any scientific experiment. So this refutes scientism.

 

[Jarhyn]

A current example of science and philosophy intermingling: On one side we have the biologist P.Z. Myers (among many other biologists) holding that sex is not binary, but a continuum. One the other side we have the biologists Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins (among many other biologists) holding that sex is strictly binary. The dispute has gotten nasty, with Coyne deriding Myers as a “miscreant” while Myers has repeatedly and personally castigated Coyne and Dawkins, in highly personal terms.

Who is right? If scientism were true —only scientific statements have meaning and get at truth — this dispute would not e possible. Hence, scientism is false. The dispute, of course, is philosophical. Philosophy is at the very heart of science.

Well, a lot of it has to do with the fact that Dawkins is just plain wrong: nature carries "conditions", not "disease", and every individual represents a distinct totality of conditions.

We could as well call them "states", to be handled neutrally until someone identifies, for themselves, their unease.

I think Dawkins is wrong too because I think Myers has the better argument, but the point is that this is fundamentally a clash of values and priorities and emphasis, and disproves scientism as a valid thesis. This is because science is value-laden and not some neutral, wholly objective enterprise.

Science in and of itself isn't "value-laden" so much? That's more something people project onto it, in the same way responsibility isn't "morality-laden", except when a moral rule comes into it.

Dawkins should be expected to tender his moral rule which inflects science so, and justify it.

He's going up against the is/ought problem, and it's going to grind him down to nothing.

In my entire search of philosophy, I found ONE way to get to ONE moral rule, and that travels through the line from Cogito through to *prohibiting* unilateral imposition. Since it deals with the symmetry of 'primal justification', nobody has the "momentum" to get over that curve and proclaim their goals "correct" above all others. It "tops out" at a point where no individual rises above another.

I think science is certainly value-laden, in so many ways. Values and priorities underpin what scientists choose to study and how they study it, and values and priorities drive the institutional awarding of research grants. The dispute between Myers on the one hand, and Dawkins and Coyne on the other, is a dispute over values, priorities, and interpretations of facts available to all, and hence cannot be resolved by any scientific experiment. So this refutes scientism.

That's not the science though. That's all "around" the science, meta and all that.

Sure, those things drive the ultimate exercise of it, but that's not the thing itself.

Science itself can even as you say be mistaken about what it is accomplishing a gradient descent or convergence towards (or what it is "intended" to uncover), but proper science also is supposed to be expected to leave biases at the door when evaluating information as far as "moral inflection" goes.

To be honest this isn't something resolvable by science but it is resolvable by math: Dawkins must be expected to tender the moral rule which extends "conditions" to "diseases" in a general non-subjective way such that he can call someone comfortable in their bodies and productive for society "diseased".

It's really that "implied obligation to treat and 'normalize'" that I take issue with because it implies an "ought", and those are hard to come by or justify in philosophy, and famously so.

 

[bilby]

A current example of science and philosophy intermingling: On one side we have the biologist P.Z. Myers (among many other biologists) holding that sex is not binary, but a continuum. One the other side we have the biologists Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins (among many other biologists) holding that sex is strictly binary. The dispute has gotten nasty, with Coyne deriding Myers as a “miscreant” while Myers has repeatedly and personally castigated Coyne and Dawkins, in highly personal terms.

Who is right? If scientism were true —only scientific statements have meaning and get at truth — this dispute would not e possible. Hence, scientism is false. The dispute, of course, is philosophical. Philosophy is at the very heart of science.

The dispute is (to be more specific) ideological - ideology being a (very stupid) form of philosophy.

There's an objective and scientific answer; Myers is right, and Dawkins and Coyne are wrong.

But ideology frequently trumps science, particularly when it comes to questions that have longstanding religious "answers" that are objectively wrong, but widely indoctrinated into children.

Science is, in a very real sense, the art of persuading oneself to accept that ones cherished beliefs may be objectively wrong. Humans, even those trained as scientists, are very, very bad at doing that.

 

[Jarhyn]

A current example of science and philosophy intermingling: On one side we have the biologist P.Z. Myers (among many other biologists) holding that sex is not binary, but a continuum. One the other side we have the biologists Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins (among many other biologists) holding that sex is strictly binary. The dispute has gotten nasty, with Coyne deriding Myers as a “miscreant” while Myers has repeatedly and personally castigated Coyne and Dawkins, in highly personal terms.

Who is right? If scientism were true —only scientific statements have meaning and get at truth — this dispute would not e possible. Hence, scientism is false. The dispute, of course, is philosophical. Philosophy is at the very heart of science.

The dispute is (to be more specific) ideological - ideology being a (very stupid) form of philosophy.

There's an objective and scientific answer; Myers is right, and Dawkins and Coyne are wrong.

But ideology frequently trumps science, particularly when it comes to questions that have longstanding religious "answers" that are objectively wrong, but widely indoctrinated into children.

Science is, in a very real sense, the art of persuading oneself to accept that ones cherished beliefs may be objectively wrong. Humans, even those trained as scientists, are very, very bad at doing that.

Thank you. Yes, this is where I was trying to get with my thoughts, specifically identifying "ideology".

I would say there is an answer... But it's not that the answer is scientific. The answer is just "the answer", and science is good at getting closer to answers than religion, perhaps as a better answer, but not "the" answer to the question.

Science indicates that through its methodologies it is incapable of supporting "the answer" as "the" answer. It's like the process of approximating a limit rather than taking the integral of the function and knowing the tangent exactly.

The only process capable of proving answers about physics is math, and only starting from given assumptions about how the universe functions.

This is broadly the purview of the engineer: to take some "good enough for this" model of the physical world, and using those principles to assemble something with a given structure that one has already "proven", from the assumptions, shall create the result they seek.

"Proof" only happens when we assume some things.

 

[Politesse]

That's not the science though. That's all "around" the science, meta and all that.

Isn't that constructing an ideal that does not exist? Without scientists, there is no Science. But scientists are people, situated in webs of cultute politics, funding... one thing that drives the appeal of science for me is its ability to undercit those biases, but it will always be an unfinished enterprise. There's always something you haven't realized you need to look at yet.