A few classes I had to take to graduate and occasionally reflect on at work, specifically "Why am I here?" or "If a manager speaks but nobody listens, is he still wrong?"
What is philosophy to you?
- Thread starter WayOutThere
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Oh, you have a degree in philosophy? Cool. Tell me, am I going to far when I say "Any matter to be debated that is not about existence claims is the realm of philosophy."Mr Wednesday said:
Yes, in fact, you've stated the exact opposite of what philosophy is.WayOutThere said:
Politics is a philosophy, science is a particular kind of philsophy, economics is definately a philosophy. What you've stated there is mysticism, or at best, the furthest end of philosophy, a school most people don't go near anymore, metaphysics. That's what most people mean when they bang on about the irrelvance of philosophy.
To make that mistake is to discredit all of biology because some people occasionally look for the Loch Ness monster.
None I've ever really found convincing.Aphroditty said:
Philosophy can make for some good kindling. And don't get me wrong, I'm not an idiot; I've read a lot of philosophy. The problem with most philosophy is that it usually sets out ideological extremes namely because in the lack of pragmatic constraints that philosophical writing and thinking allows, we don't have to get caught up with annoying things like what would happen if we actually did these things.WayOutThere said:
One example of this problem is John Locke - In one part of his 2nd Treatise, he argues that reason leads to the conclusion that a democratic, libertarian society based on the "social contract theory" is inherently optimal. He also argues elsewhere that anyone who does not enter into that social contract is a threat to those in it since they lack reason (else they would have joined into the social contract!). Locke's whole argument presumes (here's the important part) that there can only ever be ONE NATION IN THE WORLD because those people in that nation have license to kill everyone outside of it.
There's also a part of the argument that contradicts the literal "kill 'furiners'!" bit, but I won't get into that. The real point is that philosophy often lacks real-world workability unless you really change it from what the author meant into something else.
You seem to have misunderstood me. I'm saying that philosophy CAN'T tackle existence claims. Philosophy does not try to explain physical reality, that is for science to do. I reject metaphysics (and mysticsm) as valid. I'm NOT saying philosophy and science are just two ways to learn about reality. There are plenty of matters to be debated that aren't about physical reality but instead about how we think about the world. Comparing philosophy to science (and science is indeed a philosophy) was just and easy way to explain my thoughts.Mr Wednesday said:
Also, I don't see how economics is a philosophy. Objectivism was a philosophy to be sure but economics makes none of the value judments objectivism did. Economics is about describing what happens given different scenerios. It is a science, a soft science perhaps, but a science. Now, have we based economics around a philosophy? Yeah. We seek to know the unemployment rate because we have philosophically decided people going without jobs and hence food and shelter is a bad thing.
Edit: The philosophy of science describes how science works. Science is informed by philosophy (ex. non-falsifiable hypothesis aren't scientific) and philosophy is informed by science (ex.is cloning wrong?). Metaphysics tried to prove existence claims through only reason and that is why it failed. Only physical evidence can establish the existence of something. The methods of science are philosophical in nature but the results of science are not.
