On The Philosophy of, well, Philosophy

See above. I've been explaining it throughout. NJ, how do you think you would run an economy? I mean, you're in the economy. Did you have to get permission from Alan Greenspan before you bought a cheeseburger at McDonalds?Why not, if he's "running the economy"?I think that the fact that you've completely uncritically accepted the idea that the Chairman of the Federal Bank is somehow "in charge" of the economy is indicative of there being no rigor in economics. Or, at least, no rigor that people choose to apply. What deals with mathematics? Look, I can use mathematics to do numerology if I wanted; math can be looked at as a kind of tool. The rigor of mathematics doesn't automatically extend full rigor to the things that it's used to do.Economists may very well add and subtract as well as anybody else. That, by itself, does not insert rigor into their field. Not everything that can be studied adds to human knowledge by doing so. What's the merit of dragonology? Unicorn-ology? I can define unicornology as the study of the physiology of unicorns, but since there's no such things as unicorns, of what merit is that field of inquiry?Are we to accept phrenology as valid simply because it says "ology" at the end? By epistemology's very nature, it cannot come by truth. It's the "thus!" in "I refute it thus!"

I'll see your "great minds of democracy" and raise you one Norman Borlaug, who saved 1.5 billion human lives with the rigorous application of the scientific method to solve a real human problem.While your guys were arguing that people should be free, Borlaug was figuring out how to make it possible for them to be fed.

I don't understand why I'm continually being asked to define "rigor" when I've been doing that, consistently, throughout.I tell you what, Ang. Go back and read all the posts that you've clearly skipped over, and then we can debate meaningfully about which fields contribute to human knowledge, and which fields have other benefits. But it's abundantly obvious that you have not been keeping up with the arguments in this thread.And also - if you want me to take a test, do me a favor and don't try to answer it for me. Although if you're so willing to play both participants in the debate, why don't you just go off and play with yourself?

I'm sorry that it wasn't obvious enough to you that I was showing you what it really looks like to contribute meaningfully to solving human problems. Saving the lives of billions with science compared to Gandhi's self-righteous, hypocritical preening mystic bullshit?Yes, it really is apples to oranges, isn't it?

It's so charming that you think that's what just happened, here.

Only everything, as far as I can tell. You presented what you thought were the headlining acts of philosophy; I made it clear that the best philosophy has to offer pales in comparison to the human contributions of science.You had a bitch-fit, whining that it was unfair to compare Gandhi's minuscule contributions to those of a giant like Borlaug's; I agreed with you that Borlaug's work was in a completely different class than the "work" of the people you mentioned. You seem to think that invalidates my argument, but you overlook that it is yours that is destroyed.And now you're trying to pretend like none of that happened. That about sums it up from my perspective.

As much as I'd like to go back and forth where we both say how right we are and what a dumbass the other person is - because that really sounds like a great use of my time, honestly - I think I'll save my efforts for those who have tried to defend philosophy in a constructive way.But, honestly, be less of a sorehead, Subbie. You rolled up in here with a weak-ass argument, and you got spanked for it. Get over it. Move on. Picking out a line or two of your post that I didn't directly quote and then construing that as a "dodge" is pretty transparent, really.I don't expect you to agree, of course. The problem with adopting such a posture is that you really can't be seen to admit what a posture it is, no matter what. In the future, I'd suggest refraining from such agressive tactics, at least when the facts aren't on your side.

Er, no. Philosophers of science have not created the philosophy of science; they simply described what scientists were already doing. Into someone who gives philosophers credit for the work of others?

Or, we could just recognize that you're equivocating on the term "philosophy" - which, like most things academic, is used in the context of "PhD" to refer to its medieval definition, not its modern definition.In other words - once again you're improperly attributing to philosophy that which it did not accomplish.Again, I have to ask you - why isn't it possible to defend philosophy without being dishonest?

Ah, but if we went image by image, movie by movie, and examined each, we might very well find much on your hard drive that you thought was porn but I didn't feel rose to that level. For instance:See, I'd call this something like "cheesecake", but someone from a much stricter culture would certainly decry it as pornographic. That was the recognition of the Supreme Court in the famous ruling; what determines "pornography" may not be expressible in words, but we know it when we see it. Sure, by accident it can give "accurate" predictions. That's not accuracy, though, that's luck. If you try to use the geocentric model to predict where most of the mass in the Solar System is located, of course, then you find your predictions very inaccurate.That's the point. When you take all of the predictions of genocentrism, instead of just cherry-picking examples that were right by accident, you find that most of them are highly inaccurate. Thus, geocentrism can be rejected.Look, if you disagree, take it up with your local astronomy department. I assure you that they're not going to pay much attention when you tell them "just because a model gives bad predictions in almost every case, that's no reason to think it's a bad model." I know that philosophy considers empiricism to be fallacious (and, no, I'm not doing philosophy just because I happen to remember something about it); I'm of the opinion that empiricism is true, which is something completely different than philosophy. We look, and see. "I refute it thus!"You're still asking for a philosophical justification of empiricism, but you must know by now that none can be provided. You think that's a failure of empiricism, but it's obviously a failure of philosophy. You said that in response to us talking about empiricism, so I just assumed you misspoke.Why are you trying to change the subject? I don't know what "verificationism" is supposed to be, Firefox doesn't even recognize it as a word, and I can't for the life of me see how it came up in discussion. I rebutted this point. Even the religions and cultures that consider reality to be "truly" an illusion still recognize that treating reality as real is obvious; they just assert that it's incorrect to do so.But I'm not sure that it is. Every human culture in the world understands that the simplest mode of thought is to take experience at face value, not to load it up with preconceptions or ignore reality in favor of dogma or ideology. (You know, like "mature theology.") When someone approaches the world around them with an open mind, free of preconceptions, we say that that person is "childlike", representing that children typically act this way simply because they haven't had the time to form a buch of preconceptions about things before they experience them. Anybody who's ever seen a child learn has seen how they occasionally approach problems from radically different angles, simply because they have no idea yet what is the "wrong" way to do things.So, again, you're completely wrong. All human cultures recognize that treating reality as real is the simplest, most childlike way to approach the world. Those cultures differ on whether or not that's the "right" way to approach the world, but they all recognize that it's the simplest way to do so. That's my point. They don't say that piercing the veil is obvious, they say that it takes decades of dedication and meditation. Not piercing the veil is what they consider obvious. Seeing reality as an illusion is what they consider a mystery. That's why they're "mystics", get it? Try not to forget that my position is that philosophy has no valid methodology, ok? Remember? No rigor? Of course philosophy isn't a single methodology. It has an arbitrary number of methodologies, because without rigor, there's no way to discard the invalid methodologies.Philosophy is like a Polish swiss army knife - it has a hundred blades but none of them are sharp. It contains an arbitrary number of different ways to think about things, but no means to reject the invalid tools. The only problem is one of wasted time, I guess. If you want to waste your time in philosophy, asking questions that can't be answered, unless you're using it to get laid I can't possibly see the merit in doing so.But then plenty of people spend their time doing things I can't see the merit in. Just don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining, ok? Don't expect me to consider it anything but a waste of time. Don't expect me to give all deference when you act like you've accomplished something. I'm not saying that its a right philosophy. I'm saying that it's true. Philosophy can't tell me that empiricism is right. Empiricism tells me that empiricism is right. Philosophy tells me that's circular.Well, that's philosophy's problem, not empiricism's. Except we can't learn from philosophy if we can't distinguish truth from fiction in it. With no rigor, it might as well be the Library of Babel. Sure, on its infinite shelves (where every finite sequence of letters can be found) you might find a book called "The capitals of American States", but since every possible book can be found in this great imaginary library, including one called "The capitals of American States" that doesn't actually have the right capitals in it, you can't have any confidence at all that you're going to get the right information from the book. Because you have no way to tell, a priori, that the statements of this book represent real information about American capitals. Yes - thanks to philosophy. Philosophy was the origin of the idea that empiricism wasn't reliable, that it was childish, that even though it was obvious that reality is real, it actually wasn't. People didn't just start up with mystical thinking on their own, they were taught to think that way by the earliest philosophers.

Neither the abolition of slavery, nor emancipation of women, nor freedom and democracy contributed anything to human problems until they were put into practice, and that was the work of lawmakers, lawyers, and politicians - people actually implementing solutions.It's the easiest thing in the world to have an idea like "people should be free", but the idea is essentially useless. Writing a Constitution that guarantees freedom is very hard all by itself, and then creating a country that uses that document to govern is even harder. But that's what it takes to solve the problem of human slavery - not just thinking "people should be free."

Logic is properly considered a branch of mathematics, not philosophy. Of course it's a tautology, philosophically. That's the critical failure of philosophy - the only justification it can provide for empiricism is tautological.That's my point. If tautological justification - which is no justification at all - is the best philosophy can provide, then greater's the failure of philosophy.

Principia Mathematica, Vols 1-3 by Russel and Whitehead, 1910-1913, and then all subsequent work in mathematics. It's not necessary, or likely possible, to define what every infant is born knowing how to do. That's the basis on which your argument immediately fails. To define empiricism - as opposed to using it - is to be engaging in philosophy, which cannot justify empiricism.Empiricism is justified by empiricism, not by definition or philosophy. That's been my point throughout. Are you paying attention?

I have defined philosophy, throughout. Remember?Why am I continually being asked to define words that I have already defined? It's like you all aren't paying attention. What leads you to believe that philosophy can distinguish truth from fiction? It seems to me that I've given ample evidence that it cannot. Indeed, you and others have repeatedly agreed with me on that.So what's going on, here? As much as you've asked me to define the term "philosophy", you seem to forget that you have already done so, often, and that "telling truth from fiction" was not a feature of any of those definitions.

Says you. Since philosophy can't do that, as we both agree, why would I believe you? Your quotation proves my point, Mod.