On The Philosophy of, well, Philosophy

To which I haven't thought about this in depth and i am not much of a philosopher but suppose we built a bonfire containing all the works of divinity and metaphysics and lit it with the scrap of paper that Hume's argument was written on.Would that satisfy you? It probably would have satisfied David Hume!The next question, if this was done in what way would humanity be significantly diminished? as compared to burning Newton's Principia Mathematica and all related works. Edited by iceage, : No reason given.Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

Good lord man that is quite obvious!Compare the success of science/empiricism to divinity and metaphysics!

quote:

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Knowledge in most scientific domains is now doubling about every five years. How fast is it growing in religion? - Sam Harris

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Yeah but is it a suicide bomb? That is, if the statement is false does it take the rest of metaphysical machinations with it.Reexamining Hume's statement He is clearly using hyperbole for effect. I don't think he meant it as some clear cut axiom, but more of a general principle.For the Christian antagonist here, when Christ says "If you desire to be perfect go and sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and you shall have wealth in Heaven". You do not find many Christians following that axiom to the letter.Also Hume is a bit more concise and specifies "divinity or school metaphysics". The term "philosophy" is somewhat nebulous and I found no less than 8 different connotations in the definition. Therefore i don't believe references to Philosophy of Science really apply to this discussion.All this talk reminds me of a movie i recently watch with my wife on Father Damien and his work with lepers. My wife was quite impressed with this man's life and dedication. However when they mentioned that he thanked God very much for letting him die of the disease I realized that he was wallowing in the suffering for suffering sake. What I took from this story is that the true 'saints' where the men and women who discovered the cure to Leprosy using empirical methods and eliminated unimaginable suffering rendering faith-based workers unnecessary.This contrasts the usefulness of 'divinity' and the 'school metaphysics' to that of the empirical accretion of knowledge and understanding.

Ok maybe that was a bait and switch. It was late and i did not read all the prerequisite posts.Recently I heard someone describe Philosophers as intellectual plumbers that patch leaks in scientific reasoning, logic and assumptions. I can go with that.