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What Is Philosophy?

Oh, I forgot, though I mentioned this before. There is a contemporary debate over whether sex is binary or a spectrum. It pits PZ Myers vs. Jerry Coyne and Dawkins. Many others are involved. It is a philosophical debate. It will not be answered with a mathematical equation. The truth is it will never be answered. So it goes, as Vonnegut said. .
 
FWIW I think PZ has the better argument, that sex is a spectrum. The point is that this part of the philosophy of biology.
 
Analysis is not philosophy. Logic, through used in both science and philosophy, is not philosophy.
Well yes. If you randomly define anything you don't like as "not philosophy", then "philosophy" will not describe anything you like. That is very trivially true. But why should anyone else accept your personal definition of philosophy as reasonable?

Just trying to sort out what may or may not be defined as philosophy.

For instance, people in prehistoric times were intelligent and had the ability to think and act logically, but can that ability be defined as philosophy?

Were they philosophers? Or is it just a matter of natural, practical logic?
That depends. Did they form a systematic, orderly approach to thought? If so, then yes, that is philosophy, and what century they did it in is irrelevant. If not, then no, and the century they did it in is still irrelevant.

Your terms "natural" and "practical" themselves need the deconstructive efforts of a philosopher, if I may say so. They are words often invoked, but are often found attached to very different referents, and both have their origins in classical philosophy.

I said prehistoric times because this period is not generally considered to be when philosophy was developed, that this was not a time for philosophy or philosophers. We tend to think of the Greeks and the progress they made in the field.
 
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Analysis is not philosophy. Logic, through used in both science and philosophy, is not philosophy.
Well yes. If you randomly define anything you don't like as "not philosophy", then "philosophy" will not describe anything you like. That is very trivially true. But why should anyone else accept your personal definition of philosophy as reasonable?

Just trying to sort out what may or may not be defined as philosophy.

For instance, people in prehistoric times were intelligent and had the ability to think and act logically, but can that ability be defined as philosophy?

Were they philosophers? Or is it just a matter of natural, practical logic?
That depends. Did they form a systematic, orderly approach to thought? If so, then yes, that is philosophy, and what century they did it in is irrelevant. If not, then no, and the century they did it in is still irrelevant.

Your terms "natural" and "practical" themselves need the deconstructive efforts of a philosopher, if I may say so. They are words often invoked, but are often found attached to very different referents, and both have their origins in classical philosophy.

I said prehistoric times because this period is not generally considered to be when philosophy was developed, that this was not a time for philosophy or philosophers. We tend to think of the Greeks and the progress they made in the field.
Well, if your measure of what philosophy is or isn't is "did the ancient Greeks call it philosophy?", then the question becomes exceedingly simple to resolve. The ancient Greeks did in fact consider science to be philosophy, and scientists to be philosophers.

So, that's the matter settled, kalimera!
 
Philosophy has been around as long as humans. As soon as immediate needs and wants were met, philosophizing was next. That still seems to be the case.
There are no rigorous rules governing philosophies, and little experimental data advising us how to evaluate them.
But in science, there is no way to decide what to pursue, what questions to ask, what concerns to try to address without a passionate need for an answer. Native curiosity without certain devotion to the problem, doesn’t usually move the scientific needle.
So to some extent, philosophic choices underlie scientific direction, whether or not science and philosophy are to be considered parts of the same thing.
 
To emphasize the point, PZ Myers (sex spectrum) and Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins (binary) are all highly reputable biologists who look at the same data and disagree over what those data mean. That’s philosophy!
 
Analysis is not philosophy. Logic, through used in both science and philosophy, is not philosophy.
Well yes. If you randomly define anything you don't like as "not philosophy", then "philosophy" will not describe anything you like. That is very trivially true. But why should anyone else accept your personal definition of philosophy as reasonable?

Just trying to sort out what may or may not be defined as philosophy.

For instance, people in prehistoric times were intelligent and had the ability to think and act logically, but can that ability be defined as philosophy?

Were they philosophers? Or is it just a matter of natural, practical logic?
That depends. Did they form a systematic, orderly approach to thought? If so, then yes, that is philosophy, and what century they did it in is irrelevant. If not, then no, and the century they did it in is still irrelevant.

Your terms "natural" and "practical" themselves need the deconstructive efforts of a philosopher, if I may say so. They are words often invoked, but are often found attached to very different referents, and both have their origins in classical philosophy.

I said prehistoric times because this period is not generally considered to be when philosophy was developed, that this was not a time for philosophy or philosophers. We tend to think of the Greeks and the progress they made in the field.
Well, if your measure of what philosophy is or isn't is "did the ancient Greeks call it philosophy?", then the question becomes exceedingly simple to resolve. The ancient Greeks did in fact consider science to be philosophy, and scientists to be philosophers.

So, that's the matter settled, kalimera!

The "love of wisdom/philosophy" alone doesn't design and build complex machinery, computers, satellites, rovers.....for that you need a method, and that method is called science.

The ancient Greeks did well enough with philosophy, but languished in science. Had social conditions been different, science may have flourished and we could had colonies on the moon and Mars by now.
 
From this it follows that at least in part, the idea that science consists of objectively reproducible data is a fallacy. The data must be interpreted. And science is full of controversy over how to interpret data.
 
Analysis is not philosophy. Logic, through used in both science and philosophy, is not philosophy.
Well yes. If you randomly define anything you don't like as "not philosophy", then "philosophy" will not describe anything you like. That is very trivially true. But why should anyone else accept your personal definition of philosophy as reasonable?

Just trying to sort out what may or may not be defined as philosophy.

For instance, people in prehistoric times were intelligent and had the ability to think and act logically, but can that ability be defined as philosophy?

Were they philosophers? Or is it just a matter of natural, practical logic?
That depends. Did they form a systematic, orderly approach to thought? If so, then yes, that is philosophy, and what century they did it in is irrelevant. If not, then no, and the century they did it in is still irrelevant.

Your terms "natural" and "practical" themselves need the deconstructive efforts of a philosopher, if I may say so. They are words often invoked, but are often found attached to very different referents, and both have their origins in classical philosophy.

I said prehistoric times because this period is not generally considered to be when philosophy was developed, that this was not a time for philosophy or philosophers. We tend to think of the Greeks and the progress they made in the field.
Well, if your measure of what philosophy is or isn't is "did the ancient Greeks call it philosophy?", then the question becomes exceedingly simple to resolve. The ancient Greeks did in fact consider science to be philosophy, and scientists to be philosophers.

So, that's the matter settled, kalimera!

The "love of wisdom/philosophy" alone doesn't design and build complex machinery, computers, satellites, rovers.....for that you need a method, and that method is called science.

The ancient Greeks did well enough with philosophy, but languished in science. Had social conditions been different, science may have flourished and we could had colonies on the moon and Mars by now.

And the methods to build those things is an outgrowth of philosophy — natural philosophy, or applied epistemology.

But also, you are confusing the remit of philosophy with that of science, should you choose to separate the two. Why would you think that the goal of philosophy is to build computers or satellites? What does that have to do with the love of wisdom?

Maybe it is even wise NOT to build those things?

But that is a philosophical question.
 
The idea that at least a couple of people here seem to be advancing is called scientism — a philosophical stance.
 
The "love of wisdom/philosophy" alone doesn't design and build complex machinery, computers, satellites, rovers.....for that you need a method, and that method is called science.
No, that's technology and engineering. Science alone doesn't design or build complex machinery, any more than philosophy does.

Indeed, politicians and rulers are prone to undervalue science (just as you are undervaluing philosophy), where its applications in technology and engineering are not yet obvious; Which, of course, is when it is most likely to be game-changingly useful.

One reason that Germany lost WWII was that Hitler ordered the cessation of any research that was not expected to lead to practical military applications within a year; He felt that pure science was of little use in the immediate term, and should be put on hold until victory was secured. That philosophical position cost his country its pre-war lead in military technology, as the Allies continued their basic science, leading to technologies that, perhaps surprisingly, had practical applications in the real world.

Japan faired even worse; Their philosophy of war was highly conservative, and their philosophy of government and military discipline, a microcosm of their sociological philosophy, led to an insistence that their setbacks later in the war, after a long period of remarkable success, was due to deviation from the earlier tactics and doctrines. The banzai charge with bayonet and sword had been psychologically terrifying to their enemies from 1938 through 1941, leading to astonishing successes, so their philosophy dictated that such tactics would still be effective between 1942 and 1945.

When an empirical approach would have shown that this tactic had ceased to work, the failure of Japanese Imperial philosophy to take an empirical stance meant that those in power could not admit it; Their philosophy was their downfall.

Meanwhile the allies held a philosophical position that despite (indeed because of) the need to win the war, basic research should go on.

Research intended to help metorologists track thunderstorms led to systems to track U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Efforts to design a 'Death Ray' weapon (rightly derided as impossible), neverthless resulted in a technology to track aircraft that was critical in the Battle of Britain.

Some guys mucking about with bacterial growths on petri dishes led to the discovery of antibiotics, which were revolutionary both in military medicine during the war, and later in medicine more widely - there's little doubt that the ability to cure septic wounds made a huge difference to the effective strength of allied armies.

Of course, Hitler's mistake wasn't a scientific one; It was a philosophical position, that (fortunately) was not shared by Churchill or FDR, both of whom continued to fund basic scientific research with no clear technological objective. That philosophy helped win the war - a war that was characterised by a strong difference of philosophical positions, making it one of the least morally ambiguous wars in human history.

Philosophy is fundamental to science, which is one of many branches of philosophy.

Science, a branch of philosophy, cannot lead to technology or engineering, without a philosophical decision to move in that direction; And the applications to which technologies are put are determined by such philosophical disciplines as ethics, logic, epistemology, and even aesthetics.

Technology depends on science (itself a branch of philosophy); Science depends on other branches of philosophy; Politics determines what technologies (and what scientific realms) are funded and put to use - and of course, politics is entirely about philosophy.

It's philosophy all the way down.
 
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The "love of wisdom/philosophy" alone doesn't design and build complex machinery, computers, satellites, rovers.....for that you need a method, and that method is called science.
No, that's technology and engineering. Science alone doesn't design or build complex machinery, any more than philosophy does.

Indeed, politicians and rulers are prone to undervalue science (just as you are undervaluing philosophy), where its applications in technology and engineering are not yet obvious; Which, of course, is when it is most likely to be game-changingly useful.

One reason that Germany lost WWII was that Hitler ordered the cessation of any research that was not expected to lead to practical military applications within a year; He felt that pure science was of little use in the immediate term, and should be put on hold until victory was secured. That philosophical position cost his country its pre-war lead in military technology, as the Allies continued their basic science, leading to technologies that, perhaps surprisingly, had practical applications in the real world.

Japan faired even worse; Their philosophy of war was highly conservative, and their philosophy of government and military discipline, a microcosm of their sociological philosophy, led to an insistence that their setbacks later in the war, after a long period of remarkable success, was due to deviation from the earlier tactics and doctrines. The banzai charge with bayonet and sword had been psychologically terrifying to their enemies from 1938 through 1941, leading to astonishing successes, so their philosophy dictated that such tactics would still be effective between 1942 and 1945.

When an empirical approach would have shown that this tactic had ceased to work, the failure of Japanese Imperial philosophy to take an empirical stance meant that those in power could not admit it; Their philosophy was their downfall.

Meanwhile the allies held a philosophical position that despite (indeed because of) the need to win the war, basic research should go on.

Research intended to help metorologists track thunderstorms led to systems to track U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Efforts to design a 'Death Ray' weapon (rightly derided as impossible), neverthless resulted in a technology to track aircraft that was critical in the Battle of Britain.

Some guys mucking about with bacterial growths on petri dishes led to the discovery of antibiotics, which were revolutionary both in military medicine during the war, and later in medicine more widely - there's little doubt that the ability to cure septic wounds made a huge difference to the effective strength of allied armies.

Of course, Hitler's mistake wasn't a scientific one; It was a philosophical position, that (fortunately) was not shared by Churchill or FDR, both of whom continued to fund basic scientific research with no clear technological objective. That philosophy helped win the war - a war that was characterised by a strong difference of philosophical positions, making it one of the least morally ambiguous wars in human history.

Philosophy is fundamental to science, which is one of many branches of philosophy.

Science, a branch of philosophy, cannot lead to technology or engineering, without a philosophical decision to move in that direction; And the applications to which technologies are put are determined by such philosophical disciplines as ethics, logic, epistemology, and even aesthetics.

Technology depends on science (itself a branch of philosophy); Science depends on other branches of philosophy; Politics determines what technologies (and what scientific realms) are funded and put to use - and of course, politics is entirely about philosophy.

It's philosophy all the way down.

I meant that science has been the foundation of our advances in technology. I don't mean, stonemasonry, building boats or bridges - which we have had for millennia - but advancement in high tech, the stuff that put man on the moon and rovers on Mars....which takes more than a drawing board and the nuts and bolts of engineering, or philosophy.
 
high tech
High tech isn't science. It's technology - albeit very high technology.

The clue is in the name.

High tech, space exploration, etc, is the result of scientific research. For instance, the moon landings duing the sixties brought about many advances in technology.

The moon landings, in turn, would not have been possible without scienctific research.

The relationship between science and technology;

Abstract​

''Science, technology and innovation each represent a successively larger category of activities which are highly interdependent but distinct. Science contributes to technology in at least six ways: (1) new knowledge which serves as a direct source of ideas for new technological possibilities; (2) source of tools and techniques for more efficient engineering design and a knowledge base for evaluation of feasibility of designs; (3) research instrumentation, laboratory techniques and analytical methods used in research that eventually find their way into design or industrial practices, often through intermediate disciplines; (4) practice of research as a source for development and assimilation of new human skills and capabilities eventually useful for technology; (5) creation of a knowledge base that becomes increasingly important in the assessment of technology in terms of its wider social and environmental impacts; (6) knowledge base that enables more efficient strategies of applied research, development, and refinement of new technologies.''

 
The Japanese also had a philosophy of kamikaze, or Divine Wind, based on shit that had happened some 800 years earlier, and a philosophy of death before dishonor. None of that changed the outcome of the war. According to Wikipedia — and I find this hard to believe — only 19 percent of kamikaze attacks were successful. Not sure what metric for success is being used here.
 
Research intended to help metorologists track thunderstorms led to systems to track U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic.
/derail alert
When I was building my recording studio ca 1979-80, I sent the acoustic engineer i was working with through a class that taught him how to use a “TEF (time/energy/frequency) Machine”. The federal government ran the class out of a secured site. The attendees were heavily vetted by fed security, housed in a hotel and daily transported by windowless van to a location in the Nevada desert, sworn to secrecy a dozen different ways.
The processing part of the device itself was about the size of a thick notebook computer, designed to fit through torpedo tubes. What it did, was emit a tone sweeping from 12Hz to 18Khz. The output was graphic, showing what frequencies returned at what strength from which direction after how long. Basically, the output was a 3D map of the sound reflectivity of the environment. Militarily it was for detecting submarines or anything else in the sub-sea environment. In the recording studio it enabled measurement and control over the scatter, amount of resonance of various frequencies, and let us “tune” the room for an average 4-7ms delay.
The room sounded phenomenal, with one natural rock wall for scatter, lead sheeting to prevent transmission, no opposing parallel surfaces …
I’m not sure how well the tech worked for tracking subs, but my audio guy ended up installing the current audio systems in both chambers of US Congress, several Disneyland locations and other zillion dollar projects. And it all started over my kitchen table, with a discussion about feedback suppression.
/derail
 
The Japanese also had a philosophy of kamikaze, or Divine Wind, based on shit that had happened some 800 years earlier, and a philosophy of death before dishonor. None of that changed the outcome of the war. According to Wikipedia — and I find this hard to believe — only 19 percent of kamikaze attacks were successful. Not sure what metric for success is being used here.
Those attacks were a desperation move. They were more successful as psychological warfare and propaganda than they were at actually sinking ships.
 
The Japanese also had a philosophy of kamikaze, or Divine Wind, based on shit that had happened some 800 years earlier, and a philosophy of death before dishonor. None of that changed the outcome of the war. According to Wikipedia — and I find this hard to believe — only 19 percent of kamikaze attacks were successful. Not sure what metric for success is being used here.
Those attacks were a desperation move. They were more successful as psychological warfare and propaganda than they were at actually sinking ships.

That’s what I gather on doing more research.
 
Your point applies well to the martial philosophy known as bushido, though, which greatly shaped Japanese history for centuries before being abruptly transformed under modernism.
 
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