What Is Philosophy?

[Learner]

If they are doing that by their very nature, can it be defined as philosophy?

Why not? We do philosophy by our very nature too - unless you believe that philosophy is somehow supernatural?

Maybe biology would be a better word? They are wired to be cats.

Consequently they think and act like cats.

Sure. But humans aren’t cats. Hence we do philosophy automatically, because that is how we are wired. The first touch of sorrow on our faces is the start of philosophy.

It's still a matter of biology, just that with humans a greater range and depth of thought is enabled by the architecture of our brain.

The ability to think is not philosophy, nor is it science.

With a slight rearrangement of words in order. you could also add to the above, to make a little more clearer what we mean when using the word 'think' in context relating to philosophy - thus we have below:

Philosophy IS (also) the ability to think.

 

[Learner]

Pood

I still do not understand what you mean by the word philosophy and what you are trying to prove. Like when you say philosophy guides science.

I agree with pood.

Multiple theoriess of mind, knowledge, ad science.

I do not see how all that serve as any practical guide for living and doing. Philosophy as a who;e is about as consistent as Christianity.

So, when you say philosophy guides science or anything else, be specific. Which one and what is the causal link. In business speak what are the deliverables of a philosophy?

As I understand it philosophy is common for those headed to law school. It makes sense. Logic, ethics, knowledge theory, debate. rhetoric and so on.

We all think and have imagination. Call it whatever you like.

With Mozart we cal it music.
With Einstein we call it a theory.
With engineering we call it a bridge or a computer.
With philosophy we call it ethics, metaphysics …

Being HEAVILY infunced by modern science not metaphysics it all comes down to how our brains are wired.

Language, writing, speech and a philosophy are not need for sconce.
[...]

Humans controlled fore and figured out metallurgy with neither our concept of science or philosophies.

I see.... or do I?

Science requires experimentation. Experimentation requires philosophical minded individuals

It's of no coincidence that scientists have aptly named titles to them, I.e. having PhDs, or 'Doctor of Philosophy' titles, to state what should be a little obvious.

 

[DBT]

If they are doing that by their very nature, can it be defined as philosophy?

Why not? We do philosophy by our very nature too - unless you believe that philosophy is somehow supernatural?

Maybe biology would be a better word? They are wired to be cats.

Consequently they think and act like cats.

Sure. But humans aren’t cats. Hence we do philosophy automatically, because that is how we are wired. The first touch of sorrow on our faces is the start of philosophy.

It's still a matter of biology, just that with humans a greater range and depth of thought is enabled by the architecture of our brain.

The ability to think is not philosophy, nor is it science.

With a slight rearrangement of words in order. you could also add to the above, to make a little more clearer what we mean when using the word 'think' in context relating to philosophy - thus we have below:

Philosophy IS (also) the ability to think.

Obviously the ability to think is necessary for both philosophy and science. But that doesn't mean that all forms of thought are examples of philosophy or science.

 

[pood]

New study aligns with Aristotle’s idea of why time seems to pass faster for older people.

But no, philosophy and science have no relation.

 

[pood]

The ancient Greeks also posited the idea of randomness in nature and atomism, though their randomness views do line up exactly with modern quantum mechanics. The randomness idea was at odds with Aristotle, though the point here is that the ancient Greeks did pretty well for not having access to modern scientific methods or technology. Philosophy at work, always preceding science. Science is an outgrowth of and a branch of philosophy. It’s called natural philosophy, or also epistemology.

 

[pood]

Parmenides argued for a single, unchanging reality — which prefigures the modern Einstein/Minkowski block world. Heraclitus argued for constant change and flux, the modern idea of being and becoming. Heidegger wrote about this.

But it’s all just tedious and pompous I guess.

 

[steve_bank]

Meaning and knowledge.

By usage and an informal on census in English we use the word rock with an object. Other languages use different symbols IOW words.

Dictionaries periodically update to keep up with new words and changing meaning of existing words .

Pain is subjective. You can not point to it like you would a rock. You get a bruise and have an experience and cry. You see someone else get a bruise and cry. You assume you both have the same experience.

The meaning of pain is inferred not defined. A doctor will ask you to rate your pain from 0 none to 10 unbearable.

Mind and thought are subjective perceptions. Meaning is inferred not defined. Hence thousands of years of metaphysics trying to define them.

Modern science has found where functions occur in the brain like speech and logic.

Damage to known regions can cause speech problems or loss of impulse control.

I had a temporary loss of speech fro a subdural hemostat. I could think the words but nothing came out. Fluid accumulation depressed the speech center.

Philosophy is not dead, but it is diminished by thee loss of Natural Science and independent fields like linguistics and psychology. Both with sopme basis in physical science.

A philosophy teacher I had talked about what philosophy was like circa 18th century. A full philosophy professor was at the top of the food chain. When he walked around campus he might be in full academe regalia followed by his top students.

The good old days of academia in general. Pomp and circumstance.

Academic dress - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[steve_bank]

Parmenides argued for a single, unchanging reality — which prefigures the modern Einstein/Minkowski block world. Heraclitus argued for constant change and flux, the modern idea of being and becoming. Heidegger wrote about this.

But it’s all just tedious and pompous I guess.

Drop the word philosophy. Human thought has evolved. That ancient Greeks came up with the idea of a smallest particle of a substance that retains all the macro properties says what?

I believe Hindus came up with the same idea. Hinduism is the oldest tradition, I'd have to look up how it may have fed into the Greeks.

I don;t think the ancient Greeks had distinct categories as we have today.

 

[pood]

Here is more philosophy, from the modern physicist Max Tegmark:

Frog view: being and becoming.

Bird view: block world.

Going back to a debate that began some 2.400 years ago.

All tedious and pompous nonsense I guess.

 

[steve_bank]

Pood

I still do not understand what you mean by the word philosophy and what you are trying to prove. Like when you say philosophy guides science.

I agree with pood.

Multiple theoriess of mind, knowledge, ad science.

I do not see how all that serve as any practical guide for living and doing. Philosophy as a who;e is about as consistent as Christianity.

So, when you say philosophy guides science or anything else, be specific. Which one and what is the causal link. In business speak what are the deliverables of a philosophy?

As I understand it philosophy is common for those headed to law school. It makes sense. Logic, ethics, knowledge theory, debate. rhetoric and so on.

We all think and have imagination. Call it whatever you like.

With Mozart we cal it music.
With Einstein we call it a theory.
With engineering we call it a bridge or a computer.
With philosophy we call it ethics, metaphysics …

Being HEAVILY infunced by modern science not metaphysics it all comes down to how our brains are wired.

Language, writing, speech and a philosophy are not need for sconce.
[...]

Humans controlled fore and figured out metallurgy with neither our concept of science or philosophies.

I see.... or do I?

Science requires experimentation. Experimentation requires philosophical minded individuals

It's of no coincidence that scientists have aptly named titles to them, I.e. having PhDs, or 'Doctor of Philosophy' titles, to state what should be a little obvious.

Transnational there was Doctor Of Law, Doctor Of Medicine, Doctor Of Theology or Divinity, and the rest was Doctor Of Philosophy.

 

[pood]

Philosophy from the ancient Greeks but also other cultures (including the now-hated Muslims) laid the intellectual groundwork for what today we call science, which is also natural philosophy and epistemology — that is, applied philosophy.

 

[pood]

Now I have become interested in Heidegger’s phenomenology and Tegmark’s bird/frog view as it relates to the difference between Heraclitus and Parmenides. There seem to be similarities but not sure. More reading to do!

The latter does seem to have anticipated Minkowski by some 2,000 years.

 

[pood]

The Tegmark frog/bird view seems to be a diametrically opposite but actually wholly compatible view of the Minkowski block universe. Two sides of the same coin.

Sorry, doing philosophy now.

The idea here is that two contrary epistemologies can represent the same ontology from two different perspectives. If true if would follow there is no objective reality, only perspectives that mirror special relativity and relational QM.

 

[pood]

Maybe @1Heidegger1! would like to comment in this thread, I feel I can learn something from him. We also wrote a novel together, so there is that.

 

[southernhybrid]

https://forum.philosophynow.org/viewtopic.php?t=33744

I'm sorry but I couldn't help myself. I'm not really a fan of academic philosophy, but I did enjoy the book, "The philosophy of Humanism". The philosophers from the distant past never made much sense to me, although I did enjoy reading some Nietzsche several years ago for some reason. I prefer reading about many topics related to science or history. I'll try to stop with the animals philosophers. I just thought it was interesting to find a bunch of people discussing the philosophy of whales and dolphins. Some of this reminds me of the book by the late Frans de Waal, "Are we Smart Enough to Know how Smart Animals Are?"

Philosophy of whales and dolphins​

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theoryPosts: 84Joined: Tue May 11, 2021 7:43 pmContact:
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Philosophy of whales and dolphins​

Post by theory » Tue Oct 12, 2021 10:49 am

From both a genetic and physiological perspective, the brain neurons of whales are very similar to that of a human and whales have a 6x larger brain than humans.

When it concerns the question: what makes a whale brain different from that of a human? (why is a human more intelligent), the answer of science has been "cortical neurons" (grey matter).

More specifically, higher intelligence has been associated with larger cortical grey matter in the prefrontal and posterior temporal cortex in adults (cortical neurons).

A study in 2019 showed that killer whales have more cortical neurons than humans, and that they have them for millions of years longer, with more advanced brain structures as a result. This was only discovered recently. Before a few years ago, it was not known that whales also have those neurons.

Orca science wrote:The killer whale has more gray matter and more cortical neurons than any mammal, including humans.

Humpbacks have humanlike brain cells (spindle cortical neurons)
Humpback whales and killer whales have a type of brain cell seen only in humans, researchers reported on Monday.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna15920224

Whales boast the brain cells that 'make us human'
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn ... -us-human/

Are whales deep thinkers?

Whale and dolphin brains contain specialized brain cells called spindle neurons. These are associated with advanced abilities such as recognising, remembering, reasoning, communicating, perceiving, adapting to change, problem-solving and understanding. So it seems they are deep thinkers! Not only that, but the part of their brain which processes emotions (limbic system) appears to be more complex than our own.

At question would be: when it concerns the 'mind' for the use of science or philosophy, can it be said that whales and dolphins are incapable? If so, can that be made evident based on knowledge of the human brain or would it be a mere cultural / upraising barrier?

Feral children may provide a clue. The conclusion from research has been that socialization and culture are an important factor for 'humanity', the foundation for intelligence as seen from humanity's perspective (which would exclude potential advanced, deep and complex dreams and correlated thoughts that a feral child may have, which similarly may exist in whales and dolphins).

The Feral Child: Blurring the Boundary between the Human and the Animal
the process of becoming human and therefore being identified as human, is taught through socialization and culture.
Source: Animals and Society: human animal studies

--

Understanding whale language

An attempt to learn whale language has been initiated in April 2021 and it was noted that it requires philosophy, which may explain why a serious effort to understand whales and dolphins was never made until now.

Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) dates from 2017 from scientists who intended to dive into the subject, and apparently needed to start from scratch.

(2021) Groundbreaking effort launched to decode whale language
If humans were ever to decode the language of whales, or even determine if whales possessed something we might truly call language, we’d need to pair their clicks with the context, which would entail a challenging inter-specie philosophical endeavor.

‘They sound like Morse code’

The project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) started with a marine biologist. In 2017, while a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute, Gruber, a diver, became fascinated with after reading a book about free divers who study them. One day while listening to whale codas on his laptop, another Radcliffe fellow, Shafi Goldwasser, happened by.

“‘Those are really interesting—they sound like Morse code,’” Gruber recalls Goldwasser saying.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/anim ... -of-whales

Philosopher John Lilly founded the Communication Research Institute in the late 1950's and published research suggesting that his attempts to talk to dolphins were working.

 

[pood]

The fact that whales and dolphins have not created a hierarchal civilization full of deep inequalities strikes me as evidence of their mental superiority to humans. I feel confident that they talk to each other and have deep conversations, one of which probably is, wtf is up with those fucked up bipeds on land?

 

[DBT]

I don't think that anyone is saying that there is no relationship between science and philosophy, just that science as a means of exploring the natural world split off into a distinct field of its own, which is why we have both science and philosophy, and not just philosophy.

 

[steve_bank]

The fact that whales and dolphins have not created a hierarchal civilization full of deep inequalities strikes me as evidence of their mental superiority to humans. I feel confident that they talk to each other and have deep conversations, one of which probably is, wtf is up with those fucked up bipeds on land?

Chimps, horses, and wolves have strict hierarchical structures.

A wolf pack has an alpha male and female.

In horse culture males do mortal combat for dominance. Control of females.

In some chimp groups the birth mother determines status of a new chimp.

From a video on gorillas.

A female and a male leave the group in different directions, meet and make woopie out of sight of the alpha male, ad returned from different directions. A gorilla soap opera.

There are monkeys who scavenge for nuts putting the in piles. One monkey was observed making false predator warning sound. The other monkeys ran away and he grabbed all the piles of nuts.

In an expedient two monkeys were put into side by side cages. When one monkey was gven grpes a proffered food and the other something else the other monkey got pissed.

On the flip side are Meerkats. Very social. They share and rotate guard duty watching for predators, food gathering, and caring for the young.

All that being said we are not other critters, we are humans.

Orcas are something to watch, I have seen pods breaching. If you watch video of them hunting seals they in our moral sense are quite brutal.

And that leads into a philosophical debate on morality.

A group of Orcas will coner a seal on a flatting block of ice. The sael knows it is over and is an agitaed panic. They flip the ice black tossing the seal in the water. The bloody seal is tossed in the air.

There is video of human seal huts on ice. They are clubbed to death. immoral?


If you want to draw on other species misogyny is the general norm.

 

[Politesse]

I don't think that anyone is saying that there is no relationship between science and philosophy, just that science as a means of exploring the natural world split off into a distinct field of its own, which is why we have both science and philosophy, and not just philosophy.

The confusion is thinking that this makes science autonomous from philosophy, and philosophy superfluous and unnecessary. It does not. Neuroscience is at present a distinct field, derived but independent from biology. Does that mean it would be prudent to studt neuroscience alone without a biological background? Certainly not! Nor can one engage in scientific enterprise without an understanding of the philosophy of science. If one does, one will make mistakes. Method and theory are in a complex relationship.

 

[steve_bank]

Again what is meant byinvoking philosophy?

Thousands of years of speculation and metaphysical abstractions that came and went.

How many Platonists are around today? Today Christianity by numbers is the global dominate moral philosophy. People are guided by it, right or wrong.

Below that is Islam and Hinduism and to a lessor degree Buddhism and Confucianism.

Plato and Aristotle are historical footnotes.

The core under philosophy of logic, ethics,metaphysics ,and epistemology are important. I had classes in logic and ethics. The ethics teacher was a pacifist. Someone who took a moral position with personal consequences, not abstract debate over morality.

Logic is taught under philosophy in context of reasoning in debate, but philosophy does own logic.

In technology systems of symbolic logic are independent disciplines.

What I have a problem with is the idea of a nebulous ill defined term philosophy having some kind of agency, as in a claim philosophy guides science.

Philosophy 101 ... define your terms. Be precise when making an argument or claim. Support the claim with specifics subject to critique.

If not you are just philosophizing with generalizations.