[HN Gopher] Is Philosophy an Art?
___________________________________________________________________
Is Philosophy an Art?
Author : diodorus
Score : 40 points
Date : 2021-03-14 15:35 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nybooks.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nybooks.com)
| nathias wrote:
| philosophy's questions and proposed answers can not be easily
| formalized, as such they appear as art to lesser minds
| bobthechef wrote:
| Nonsense.
|
| Sure, if you want to spite the bullshit artists in the field by
| calling what they're doing "performance art", that's fine. But if
| you're a real philosopher, then you are ultimately interested in
| the truth by definition, while recognizing that it isn't always
| easy to get to, that it might take a lot of effort to even put
| together a sensible response or claim in the first place, and
| even more time refining the position in an engagement with other
| philosophers. So in that sense, the philosophical disciplines are
| sciences, and in fact, the highest and most general sciences. No
| other science can answer metaphysical questions, for example.
| Sure, other sciences can inform the discussion, but they cannot
| replace the philosophical science that draws from them.
|
| The article is behind a paywall, so I could not read beyond the
| first couple pages or so, but from the comments I sense that
| there is some strange conviction that philosophy is ultimately an
| obsolete kind of wankery that the empirical sciences have long
| since superseded. Of course, this is rather a sign of profound
| ignorance and philistinism rather than a statement about how
| things actually are.
| neonological wrote:
| Philosophy can be thought of as a field of study akin to psuedo
| science. Think about it. There is a philosophy of aesthetics and
| religion along with a philosophy of science and logic.
|
| Science and logic attempt to describe something central to the
| universe while religion and aesthetics are central to only the
| human experience. To place the two in the same box is a huge
| category error akin trying to scientifically derive creationism.
|
| Philosophy is essentially just a mish mash of deep thoughts and
| ponderings of unrelated topics. There is no deeper overarching
| connection here. Academia came to realize later that certain deep
| thoughts were "better" then others and formalized those deep
| thoughts into math and science.
|
| Historically things like science and math and logic comes from
| "philosophy" but ultimately philosophy is just an old way of
| thinking in the sense that we as humans now have enough
| information to understand that aesthetics, religion and science
| don't belong in the same category. Philosophy is a outmoded
| concept that only is still around for the same reason technical
| debt in software is still around.
|
| The inevitable philosophers response to this is that all
| experience is technically human in nature. We cannot experience
| the universe without human bias injected into the observation
| thus it is not a category error to place Christianity in a field
| side by side with number theory because it's all human made up
| stuff anyway.
|
| To which I respond that all of academia is structured around
| hypothetical axioms. We can't prove anything is real but we
| assume it's all real. We can't prove that there is any other way
| to experience the universe outside of the human experience yet we
| still assume and structure our science such that the human
| experience is not central to the universe. Our observations of
| the universe lead us to believe that the human experience is just
| a random phenomena in the corner of some galaxy and that is the
| best available information we have. To discuss anything outside
| of what we know is like trying to ask someone who is born blind
| to describe color.
| ThomPete wrote:
| Philosophy when done right, teaches you how to think and that
| gives you and advantage that other fields don't.
| neonological wrote:
| Sure but teaching you how to think doesn't address the
| category error I'm describing here.
|
| A lot of religious people ascribe to a religion because some
| aspect of that religion helped the in some way. Does this
| make all aspects of the religion the absolute truth? People
| following this flawed wisdom end up supporting creationism as
| the one and only truth. Are people doing the same thing with
| philosophy?
|
| Sure you can learn logic from a philosophy class, but that
| logic cannot in turn explain why "aesthetics", "religion" and
| "ethics" is a sibling philosophical field of study to
| "science".
| dschuessler wrote:
| > Science and logic attempt to describe something central to
| the universe while religion and aesthetics are central to only
| the human experience. To place the two in the same box is a
| huge category error akin trying to scientifically derive
| creationism.
|
| I do not see in what respect this might be a category error.
| The ,,box" all these things are put into is the box of things
| we can ask questions of the form ,,What do we mean when we talk
| about X?" about. This is possible for religion, science,
| aesthetics and logic likewise. And that's what philosophers are
| doing.
|
| In that sense your own post is engaging in the very philosophy
| you deem obsolete. Not only do you reflect on what we actually
| refer to when we talk about philosophy - thus engaging in
| metaphilosophy - your entire last paragraph is full of
| metaphysical and epistemological theses about the world and our
| knowledge of it. This is the problem of most critics who want
| to reject philosophy as a whole. They cannot argue for their
| thesis without already starting to philosophize themselves.
| neonological wrote:
| Classic. Every philosopher responds with "your argument is
| philosophy, it's ironic."
|
| Sure if you classify all deep thought as philosophy then any
| argument against philosophy that is deep is in itself
| philosophy. It's just meta games with words no point in
| bringing it up.
|
| Your argument basically says philosophy is an umbrella term
| for everything in existence. There's no point for such a term
| that asks "what do we mean when we talk about x". In fact
| such a term already exists without the pretentiousness. It's
| called "definition" you can look up the definition of science
| and religion on Wikipedia. Does that make Wikipedia a
| philosophy web site?
| dschuessler wrote:
| > Sure if you classify all deep thought as philosophy then
| any argument against philosophy that is deep is in itself
| philosophy. It's just meta games with words no point in
| bringing it up.
|
| I did not classify all deep thought as philosophy but a
| very specific subset of thought: answers on questions of
| the form ,,What do we mean when we talk about X?".
| Reflections on our own concepts if you will. The point of
| bringing it up is that as far as I can see you are taking a
| self-contradictory position.
|
| I agree that you can answer the question ,,What do we mean
| when we talk about X?" with a definition. That is one way
| of understanding the question. Yet we judge definitions to
| be inappropriate when it doesn't capture what we _actually_
| mean when we talk about X (just as your rhetorical question
| suggests that defining Wikipedia to be a ,,philosophy web
| site" is inappropriate). So there is obviously a second
| meaning to the question ,,What do we mean when we talk
| about X?", one that is not asking for a definition of X but
| for our concept of X on which we judge definitions to be
| appropriate or inappropriate. It is this latter sense in
| which I consider philosophy to be concerned with that
| question.
| neonological wrote:
| X can be anything on the face of the universe. 'What do
| we mean when we talk about all deep thought?" It is not a
| subset, it's the set of all things that can be x. It's
| really just a huge black hole whenever philosophers act
| smug and bring this up.
|
| Basically by placing "logic" under philosophy all logical
| arguments against philosophy become contradictory. Just
| make up a field called religionology and have logic and
| worshipping a cat god as it's main tenants. Then any
| "logical" argument against it is part of "religionology"
| and therefore contradictory. Let's all worship cats now
| because no logical argument can prove religionology
| wrong.
|
| > one that is not asking for a definition of X but for
| our concept of X on which we judge definitions to be
| appropriate or inappropriate.
|
| It's still too broad. You can still apply this question
| to a rock on the ground. What do I really mean by that?
| Call it the philosophy of the rock and study it like I
| study science. Clearly there is a category error here as
| studying what I mean when I talk about that rock is not
| actually a philosophy.
| dschuessler wrote:
| Even if X could be "anything on the face of the universe"
| (which I did not contend) it does not follow that
| philosophy is concerned with ,,the set of all things that
| can be x" (which you seem to imply). I rather clearly
| stated that philosophy is instead concerned with the
| answers to questions of the form ,,What do we mean when
| we talk about X?"
|
| Your ,,religionology" argument surely has a point. The
| critic of religionology would have to specifically
| criticize the worshipping of the cat rather than
| religionology as a whole. So you as a critic of
| philosophy would likewise have to target those aspects of
| philosophy you don't practice yourself in the very moment
| you are arguing against it. That is indeed my point when
| claiming that you contradict yourself. I believe your
| criticism would benefit from nuance.
|
| > studying what I mean when I talk about that rock is not
| actually a philosophy.
|
| I agree. I think the misunderstanding lies in your belief
| that X can be anything on the face of the universe. Not
| everything is equally worth asking the question what we
| mean when we talk about it. By popular convention,
| religion, science, aesthetics and logic are worth it.
| Philosophy therefore turns to them rather than rocks.
|
| EDIT: Rephrased first sentence.
| neonological wrote:
| >(which I did not contend)
|
| By contending nothing (YOU) imply anything. You need to
| type class your variable, otherwise it's assumed to be of
| type Any.
|
| >That is indeed my point when claiming that you
| contradict yourself. I believe your criticism would
| benefit from nuance.
|
| The nuance is just missed by you. I did address this.
| Multiple times. My initial post did mention that science
| and logic arose out of philosophy (and by implication is
| a part of it). The failure in this case is technically
| not on me.
|
| >I agree. I think the misunderstanding lies in your
| belief that X can be anything on the face of the
| universe. Not everything is equally worth asking the
| question what we mean when we talk about it. By popular
| convention, religion, science, aesthetics and logic are
| worth it. Philosophy therefore turns to them rather than
| rocks.
|
| And my claim, which you don't agree with, is that
| aesthetics is just like the rock when compared to
| philosophy of science. That is the category error. If you
| can lump science with religion then you can lump it with
| rocks too.
|
| If you claim X is not anything that can possibly. Then
| type class X for me. Formalize your claim. This is the
| essence of the argument. My claim is basically X is typed
| really poorly and arbitrarily with little formalism let
| alone sense.
| namero999 wrote:
| Science and philosophy are complementary to each other, but it
| would be a mistake to take science as the ultimate arbiter of
| what reality is. That is not science business, that is exactly
| philosophy business. Science is the practice of finding
| theories which can predict the patterns of blinking lights and
| ticking sounds of our sensors and instruments. In other words,
| it describes the behavior of the universe, while being agnostic
| on its nature. Philosophy on the other hand is concerned with
| what the universe intimately is.
|
| They are complementary because they inform each other and
| philosophy must stay coherent with empirical findings, but we
| also do science driven by certain assumptions which come from
| philosophy (materialism is a world-view, aka a philosophy).
|
| Science and philosophy have very different validity
| constraints, for instance, while science should be predictive,
| philosophy only needs to be internally consistent and
| parsimonious.
|
| They are the sides of the same coin, the what and the how.
|
| I think it's ludicrous to think that evolved monkeys will
| "figure out reality". No, the best we can do is to create for
| ourselves a coherent, empirically verified, integral and
| parsimonious world-view, and we will call that reality. This
| will come from philosophy, it will be informed by science sure,
| but those very scientists will be doing philosophy when
| interpreting their behavioral findings.
| neonological wrote:
| Science is not the ultimate arbiter. There is no arbiter,
| foundational science rests on axiomatic assumptions and even
| with these assumptions in place it is not possible to prove a
| any statement to be true within the framework of science.
| Disproof is even technically not possible due to limited
| accuracy of our observational tools.
|
| You have a limited fuzzy understanding of science and I
| believe it is interfering with how you interpret the fusion
| of philosophy and science how it generates category errors.
| namero999 wrote:
| The same can be said of your understanding of philosophy
| and the ranking of your comments is telling.
|
| There is no category error. You are just simulacring one to
| put science on a higher pedestal because it is evident you
| have vested interest. If you'd actually analyze why you
| consider science superior to philosophy, you would be hard
| pressed not to notice that they are both endeavor of the
| human intellect that simply happen to use different axioms
| and validity constraints. It is just as "random", and as
| you mention in your very last comment, ultimately non
| falsifiable. How can there be a category error when they
| share such fundamental characteristics? The only thing that
| leaks out of your arguments is that you just "don't like"
| philosophy.
| neonological wrote:
| > How can there be a category error when they share such
| fundamental characteristics? The only thing that leaks
| out of your arguments is that you just "don't like"
| philosophy.
|
| Because every possible thing you can think of as a
| statement in the universe is unfalsifiable. Every single
| religion, to theory, to poem uttered by a little kid. Yet
| although they share the same flaw, Not all of these
| things are worth studying nor are they worth placing in
| the same random category.
|
| Only specific things line up with observation
| consistently according to our best available
| observations. Religion and ethics are not among these
| things. Logic and probability is. So why place these two
| things side by side and call it philosophy? It's like
| randomly creating the philosophy of the paint on that
| wall and studying it as much as science. Both are
| completely arbitrary choices.
| Thursday24 wrote:
| That's perhaps a bit too harsh an assessment of the field.
| Betrand Russell, in his "A history of western philosophy"
| defines Philosophy as a no man's land or speculative region
| between religion/theology and science. It is a bucket of
| thought which is sceptical, probing, speculative of itself and
| the world. It can sometimes turn into science, and sometimes
| otherwise. Essentially it can be seen as an expression of human
| curiosity, which is the seed of definite knowledge.
| neonological wrote:
| How can my judgement seem harsh when you basically said the
| same thing I said? Philosophy is artistic pseudo scientific
| speculations and we are both in 100% agreement here.
|
| Can such speculations lead to real science? Sure. Does this
| continue to make the philosophy of religion and the
| philosophy of science being placed in the same "philosophy"
| bucket a category error? Yes. You can still speculate on
| science within science and you can still speculate on
| religion within religion. No need to classify both under
| "philosophy"
| Thursday24 wrote:
| Pseudo refers to pretensions/shams. Philosophy need not
| pretend to be science, it can openly speculate, without the
| rigors of the scientific method. In science, a hypothesis
| can be made, but that has very many parameters restricting
| what can be said through it.
| neonological wrote:
| I believe it is a bit pretentious. The word philosophy
| lends extra weight to what is otherwise random
| speculations. Many philosophers in fact claim that
| science is a just sub field of philosophy and that
| philosophy is "above" it.
|
| I highly disagree with this.
|
| A statement made on the basis of logic or science has
| more weight then any sort of random speculation made in
| "aesthetics" yet philosophy places them on equal grounds.
| There is a clear error in hierarchy here similar to the
| phylum based nomenclature in biology.
| routerl wrote:
| > Many philosophers in fact claim that science is a just
| sub field of philosophy and that philosophy is "above"
| it.
|
| You've really totally misunderstood what they were
| describing. Metaphysics is "above" physics because it is
| about what the word "physics" even means. For example,
| Newton's first big intellectual accomplishment was to
| have a strongly opinionated metaphysics which supported
| his experimental and theoretical approach.
|
| In the contemporary world, proper metaphysics (as
| described above) is mostly done by physicists themselves,
| occasionally in cooperation with philosophers. See [1]
| for a fairly recent example. Similarly, proper
| metamathematics is most often done by mathematicians,
| with occasional contributions from philosophers, e.g.
| [2].
|
| Any time a physicist is writing about the fundamental
| methodology of the discipline, or about a topic that is
| not, for now, empirically testable, he is doing
| metaphysics, often with a hefty dose of mathematics.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singular_Universe_a
| nd_the_...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_and_Refutations#
| Impact_...
| neonological wrote:
| The problem here is you have the philosophy of animism
| sitting side by side with metaphysics as if there's some
| meta category that encapsulates the two.
|
| Yeah I can meta the entire universe together if I wanted
| to. What's the set of all things that can be talked
| about? Metaphysics and the Milesian school of thought are
| both elements in that set. There's no point in this
| categorization however compelling you find the arguments
| within their respective fields.
| routerl wrote:
| > you have the philosophy of animism sitting side by side
| with metaphysics as if there's some meta category that
| encapsulates the two.
|
| Sorry, what are you referring to? Where do these things
| sit side by side?
|
| > Yeah I can meta the entire universe together
|
| Metaphysics is very specifically about the underlying
| assumptions of physics. It always has been, even though
| the meaning of the word physics has changed wildly over
| time. The current meaning of "physics" dictates that it
| is a metaphysical question whether, for example, quantum
| theory or string theory are correct. This is metaphysical
| because it is about underlying assumptions which cannot
| yet be tested experimentally.
|
| You seem to be taking anyone who uses the word
| "metaphysics" as actually doing metaphysics, but no
| professional physicist or philosopher believes this. Some
| people may well call themselves "physicists" and then
| talk about ghosts, but it is nonetheless widely
| understood in the profession that physics is in no way
| about ghosts. This is similarly true of metaphysics and
| animism.
|
| When we speak of historical beliefs that are no longer
| current in civilization, then sure, animism might show up
| and be presented as "metaphysical", but so what? Newton
| was wrong about corpuscles being the fundamental unit of
| matter, but that doesn't mean he wasn't doing physics. It
| just means he was wrong about part of his system of
| thought, which is always to be expected when looking at
| past thinkers.
| neonological wrote:
| > sorry, what are you referring to? Where do these things
| sit side by side?
|
| Animism sits side by side with metaphysics under
| philosophy.
|
| >...
|
| When I say meta Without "physics" as a suffix I mean
| anything from metareligion to metagrassonyourlawn. You
| can even metameta. I'm saying the legitimacy of talking
| about metaphysics is different from the legitimacy of say
| metatoilets.
|
| Animism is a philosophy btw. And it's still a philosophy
| to this very day. This isn't history class that I'm
| talking about here. If some scientist is wrong about
| something, that hypothesis is discarded from science.
| Animism has not been discarded... it is a school of
| thought discussed side by side with the philosophy of
| science. This is the category error I'm talking about.
| routerl wrote:
| You're really just arguing against an imagined opponent,
| at this point.
|
| > Animism is a philosophy btw. And it's still a
| philosophy to this very day.
|
| No it isn't. I'm talking about professional philosophers.
|
| > it is a school of thought discussed side by side with
| the philosophy of science.
|
| No it isn't. Not by anyone that matters.
|
| > When I say meta Without "physics" as a suffix I mean
| anything from metareligion to metagrassonyourlawn.
|
| I don't care. Metaphysics is where "meta" comes from, and
| it has a specific meaning and interpretation, within
| professional philosophy. You are not referring to this
| specific meaning, and so I don't care what your thoughts
| are anymore.
|
| You're tilting at windmills my friend.
| neonological wrote:
| Animism is still discussed under a new pseudonym:
| Philosophy of religion.
|
| > You're really just arguing against an imagined
| opponent, at this point.
|
| Nonsensical statement. You're either calling yourself
| imaginary or your saying you completely agree with me and
| I'm completely right and therefore I am arguing with no
| one.
|
| Please try to keep this conversational logical.
| [deleted]
| namero999 wrote:
| Random speculations? Certain philosophies at least
| survived the test of time (we are talking about
| millennia) while we still have to see a scientific theory
| survive a handful of centuries...
|
| Of course I'm pushing back with my statement, but really
| claiming philosophy is "random speculations" sounds
| really uninformed and naive.
| [deleted]
| neonological wrote:
| That's the problem with philosophy. It's archaic. It
| doesn't self improve. Christianity and Muslims have been
| around almost as long as philosophy. It doesn't make
| their opposing views automatically valid nor does it make
| some arbitrary beliefs in each respective religion
| strangely random (why is jesus named jesus, for example).
| Thursday24 wrote:
| > I believe it is a bit pretentious. The word philosophy
| lends extra weight to what is otherwise random
| speculations. Many philosophers in fact claim that
| science is a just sub field of philosophy and that
| philosophy is "above" it.
|
| It can be above, below, side-by-side, wherever. Or
| nowhere. Or maybe impossible to say. Whatever the
| relation is, where is the possibility of pretension here?
| Philosophers make claims, scientists make claims too. But
| that is the characteristic of the practitioners, not the
| field of study.
| neonological wrote:
| Effort. You can create a field called the "philosophy of
| this rock sitting on my lawn." And this field would fit
| your definition of philosophy. But there is a clear
| hierarchy here that is not being obeyed.
|
| Religion from certain perspectives is just made up
| stories. Should these made up stories be made into a
| field of study that is a sibling branch of science? Call
| it the study of religion or made up stories, no point in
| calling it a philosophy and giving it the same weight as
| science.
| Thursday24 wrote:
| Consider Newton. He pursued physical theories, alchemy
| and theological studies with similar amount scholarship
| and zest. His physical theories obtained popularity due
| to its utility. And his theological and alchemical
| studies didn't give the world any material benefits and
| so the world calls those areas of his output "random
| speculations". But at the core of all these three
| attempts is a probing, speculative mind. That is my
| definition of philosophy, that there is an intensely
| curious mind, which will pour forth effort in
| understanding the world (including oneself). Newton's
| subject area was called "Natural Philosophy" for nothing.
| There are less "successful" philosophers and streams of
| philosophy, of course.
| neonological wrote:
| 'A probing speculative mind" is the rule for what goes
| into philosophy? I'm sure that the people who came up
| with a technical basis for creationism also were probing
| and quite speculative making creationism a philosophy.
|
| Some vague " a probing speculative mind" is not a good
| definition for a field of study. It's way to broad and
| lacks preciseness.
| Thursday24 wrote:
| Philosophy is a PROCESS of enquiry (hopefully "skilled").
| It is difficult to compress a long-running & haphazard
| process into precise definition. You can label the
| process, talk about various aspects of the process, share
| examples and so on, but it is perhaps not sensible to
| define it too precisely. Theories you get at the end of
| any process of enquiry, whether they are workable or not,
| are PRODUCTS. Products by their very nature will be well-
| defined or precise.
| neonological wrote:
| I mean given that "creationsim" is an emerging science it
| classifies as a process which still fits your definition
| of philosophy.
|
| Heck anything that is a "process" that involves
| speculative probing is a philosophy according to that
| definition.
| [deleted]
| 13415 wrote:
| Personally, I do "formal philosophy" at least to some extent/in
| some papers, i.e., lots of logic, decision theory, a bit of
| applied mathematics. This kind of analytic philosophy
| superficially looks like science, at least to people who don't
| know much about the STEM fields. However, in my opinion it is
| clearly not science.
|
| IMHO, it's best to take philosophy as a discipline on its own. If
| I am pressed to decide between art and science, I'd call it an
| art, if not to annoy those people who erroneously believe that
| philosophy is a science. I personally find it hard to accept any
| discipline that does not follow the scientific method a science.
| Many other parts of the humanities in my opinion do not really
| qualify as science either. Or, perhaps they could be called "soft
| sciences" or "intellectual studies."
|
| However, philosophy is in the same boat as mathematics in this
| respect, which is also traditionally not considered a science but
| rather a discipline of its own, pursued for its own sake and with
| its own evaluation criteria. Few would call mathematics an art,
| though, or would they? I'm not sure.
| routerl wrote:
| > Few would call mathematics an art, though, or would they? I'm
| not sure.
|
| Many would, precisely because it is not empirical, as indicated
| by the fact that mathematics departments are often in Arts
| faculties.
|
| As Sir Michael Atiyah put it: "The art in good mathematics, and
| mathematics is an art, is to identify and tackle problems that
| are both interesting and solvable."
|
| Mathematicians will often wax philosophical when speaking about
| mathematical beauty and elegance, which is widely considered to
| be a central pursuit of mathematics, second only to
| correctness.
|
| The problem here is that too many people are trying to use the
| word "science" to mean "the only thing that produces
| knowledge", in which case "mathematics is not a science, but
| does produce knowledge" is a heretical statement, even though a
| sizable portion of mathematicians would agree with it.
| idoubtit wrote:
| I think of philosophy of the art of words and ideas, just like
| literature is generally the art of words and stories. But, for
| historical reasons, many people and most philosophers claim
| philosophy is much more than this.
|
| Spinoza was convinced he was "engaged in the pursuit of truth",
| as the article writes, and he probably thought he had built a
| logical proof of the existence of god. But his concepts are
| fuzzy, so his reasoning is unprovable, and his apparent
| rigorousness is not at all scientific. Many philosophers disagree
| with his theories, and none of them are wrong or better or worse
| than Spinoza, since there is no way to refute or evaluate
| philosophy.
|
| Apart from these points (proof, progress, consensus), there are
| many indices for classifying philosophy among the arts. No one
| would claim to be an expert of a philosopher without reading and
| studying his book and articles. But, if the substance was more
| important than the form, it should not matter. One can master
| Gauss' mathematics or Einstein's physics without reading the
| original works.
| bobthechef wrote:
| > many people and most philosophers claim philosophy is much
| more than this.
|
| Yes, philosophy is ultimately motivated by the search for
| truth. (Art, too, if we are talking about something like
| literature, is motivated by expressing the truth, otherwise it
| is worthless.)
|
| > Spinoza was convinced he was "engaged in the pursuit of
| truth", as the article writes, and he probably thought he had
| built a logical proof of the existence of god [sic]. But his
| concepts are fuzzy, so his reasoning is unprovable, and his
| apparent rigorousness is not at all scientific.
|
| Putting aside the question of whether this is true, let us
| assume it is. So what? This is what philosophical discourse
| will involve: clarifying what needs clarifying, arguing,
| counterarguing, etc. Second, you've fallen prey to the mystique
| surrounding the word "scientific" as if science were somehow
| more definitive or competent or whatever, or that none of these
| problems afflict science. And of course, that in itself is a
| philosophical assertion!
|
| > Many philosophers disagree with his theories, and none of
| them are wrong or better or worse than Spinoza, since there is
| no way to refute or evaluate philosophy.
|
| They aren't? That, again, is a philosophical assertion. And the
| very act of defending it would tacitly presuppose that _your_
| philosophical argument is better than Spinoza's, which would
| make it self-refuting. Because if it's all the same, then so
| your argument.
|
| > Apart from these points (proof, progress, consensus),
|
| What is a proof? An argument. People disagree over those.
|
| What is progress? You assume there isn't contentious.
|
| How does consensus make something true? (It doesn't.)
|
| > No one would claim to be an expert of a philosopher without
| reading and studying his book and articles. But, if the
| substance was more important than the form, it should not
| matter. One can master Gauss' mathematics or Einstein's physics
| without reading the original works.
|
| This is neither here no there. The reason an expert on Spinoza
| should have read Spinoza is because everything that is about
| Spinoza's work is commentary and all commentary involves
| interpretation. So, yeah, if you're a scholar of Spinoza, and
| we have surviving works by Spinoza, it would seem rather odd if
| you didn't know what Spinoza said and only what others have
| said about Spinoza. You might disagree. The same would hold if
| you were a scholar of Einstein. A physicist, however, is not a
| scholar of Einstein, and as such, is not so interested in what
| he thought per se, however illuminating the original texts
| might be.
| specialist wrote:
| > _philosophy of the art of words and ideas_
|
| Nice.
|
| Art is short for artifact, meaning human created. So of course
| philosophy is an art.
|
| The "what is art" debate gets turgid when it drifts into "fine
| art" vs "pop art". Whatever. It's all art. Making distinctions
| is sophistry.
| harperlee wrote:
| It is the converse: an artifact is made (factum) by art
| (arte).
| specialist wrote:
| Heh. Ya, that's better. Like saying universities
| (collections of scholars) produce scholarship. I love the
| idea of philosophers producing philosophy.
| namero999 wrote:
| There are plenty of ways to refute the validity of a
| philosophical stance: internal logical consistency, conceptual
| parsimony, empirical adequacy...
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| Wouldn't that imply that no philosophy is true? I think of it
| as the search for truths that we can't empirically prove,
| contrasted to science and math which are purely logical. But
| math and science have their bases in philosophy through
| universal laws and propositions, which are unprovable but
| necessary.
|
| Art is more concerned with human experience and seems like a
| different thing.
| qsort wrote:
| At the cost of being extremely annoying, what does "a truth
| we can't empirically prove" look like?
|
| > Art is more concerned with human experience and seems like
| a different thing.
|
| Isn't the same true for philosophy? Part of the reason why
| philosophy is a meaningful field of study as opposed to
| complete charlatanry is that it "points" towards parts of
| human experience that aren't quite captured by
| math/science/models. Philosophers trying to be natural
| scientists would make terrible philosophy and terrible
| science.
|
| Minor nitpick:
|
| > science and math
|
| Science and math are very different beasts. Math is a
| meaningless game you play with symbols. I'm not serious, but
| I'm not joking either. There are zero assumptions of any kind
| mathematics makes (except primitive concepts and axioms,
| which are themselves mathematical objects), as the old joke
| goes: science talks about _the_ universe, math talks about
| _a_ universe. Math is kind of unique in this respect, no
| other discipline is quite like it.
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| To add some nuance, the boundary between science and
| philosophy is always changing as we get more information
| about how the world works. Philosophical truths help us
| make better decisions about the future.
|
| DNA and quantum mechanics are 2 areas where the boundary
| between philosophy and science has shifted over time. All
| the modern talk about multiverses, universe simulations,
| and AGI seem philosophical, but might become scientific in
| the future. But people who believe in these concepts will
| take different actions than people who don't, so you can't
| say it just doesn't matter because we can't prove it yet.
|
| I wasn't trying to lump math and science together and agree
| they're very different, although both based on core
| propositional truths that are taken on faith.
| qsort wrote:
| At the cost of being extremely annoying for the second
| time today, what does "a truth we can't empirically
| prove" look like?
|
| > All the modern talk about multiverses, universe
| simulations, and AGI
|
| None of the things you mention are "philosophical
| truths". The first is one of many interpretations of QM,
| the second is a meme, the third is a vague, unclear
| teleological goal of computer science. I'm not objecting
| to the fact that you can speculate, I myself said that
| pointing to new things, as vague and undefined they may
| be, is generally useful and stimulating. I'm objecting to
| the idea that you can have "truths you can't prove".
|
| > I wasn't trying to lump math and science together and
| agree they're very different, although both based on core
| propositional truths that are taken on faith.
|
| Sorry, my fault. Tomato, tomato.
| batavian wrote:
| > what does "a truth we can't empirically prove" look
| like?
|
| Law of causation, Doomsday argument, complex processes
| that can't be recreated, historical processes which leave
| faint empirical markers, etc.
| mac_was wrote:
| Wasn't the black hole a truth you can't prove for a
| pretty long time? Scientists 'believed' that they are
| true and tried to prove their existence. See:
| https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/who-really-discovered-
| bla...
| qsort wrote:
| There's a difference between making a definite claim and
| pointing out that Newton's model allows the existence of
| such an object. I'm not going into "quid est veritas?"
| type of discussions because it's a bottomless pit that
| leads nowhere, but it seems to me like "black holes could
| exist" is a statement much like "an artificial general
| intelligence could exist". It's not ruled out by the
| model, but a-priori we have no idea.
| dschuessler wrote:
| > Wouldn't that imply that no philosophy is true?
|
| I am a strong proponent of distinguishing ,,truth" from
| ,,certainty". That is to say, a theory (philosophical or not)
| might be true in the sense that it corresponds to the things
| it says something about. But since all human beings are
| fallible we can never be certain not to have made mistakes.
| So a philosophy can be true. But we can not be certain about
| it. EDIT: If OP writes that "there is no way to refute or
| evaluate philosophy" they might imply that no philosophy is
| true. Yet I would only agree that no philosophy is certain.
|
| > I think of it as the search for truths that we can't
| empirically prove, contrasted to science and math which are
| purely logical.
|
| What (empirical) scientists usually mean when they call a
| theory or hypothesis ,,empirically proven" is that there is
| evidence that meets some arbitrary criterion of strength.
| What mathematicians usually mean when they call a theorem
| proven is that it can be logically deduced from a set of
| axioms. So not only is the word "proof" used very differently
| in (empirical) science and mathematics, the way to obtain
| such proofs is usually very different as well. To lump these
| procedures together under the term "purely logical" seems to
| me to mix up important differences.
|
| > But math and science have their bases in philosophy through
| universal laws and propositions, which are unprovable but
| necessary.
|
| Neither the laws and propositions in math nor in the
| (empirical) sciences are necessary in the sense that
| practitioners are forced to assume them. Nothing prevents
| anyone from assuming something else whenever they wish to and
| important discoveries have been made that way (e.g. non-
| euclidean geometry, theory of relativity). Maybe you refer to
| some other kind of necessity though.
| cardoni wrote:
| Stating "there is no way to refute or evaluate philosophy"
| while then going on to do the same seems incongruent.
| qsort wrote:
| Language vs. meta-language. I completely subscribe to
| parent's point of view: because concepts expressed in natural
| language are so massively overloaded, it's very hard to make
| precise statements.
|
| When disciplines acquire their own method and formal
| language, they tend to splinter off philosophy. Think about
| mathematics, physics, biology, economics...
| eevilspock wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/55/
| bobthechef wrote:
| > Language vs. meta-language.
|
| I do not understand what this is supposed to mean or
| demonstrate.
|
| > because concepts expressed in natural language are so
| massively overloaded, it's very hard to make precise
| statements.
|
| That's why philosophers clarify meanings and ask for
| clarification for terms when they think are vague. That
| something is "overloaded" (amphiboly) doesn't mean you
| can't determine which meaning is used or, right? When you
| read something, you're not grading papers. You're
| interpreting things in a sensible way.
|
| > When disciplines acquire their own method and formal
| language, they tend to splinter off philosophy. Think about
| mathematics, physics, biology, economics...
|
| Formalization isn't magic. To formalize something, you have
| to get to a place where you have a clear enough and correct
| enough understanding so that you can express it in that
| language. And in any case, philosophers do employ
| formalization when they think it useful. It isn't always.
| Frankly, even mathematicians, practitioners of the most
| formal of sciences, don't use formal methods to express
| their _reasoning_ in most cases.
| qsort wrote:
| > I do not understand what this is supposed to mean or
| demonstrate.
|
| Parent said 'Stating "there is no way to refute or
| evaluate philosophy" while then going on to do the same
| seems incongruent'. I was just refuting this. It's
| essentially the same argument as "everything is
| philosophy" or "everything is politics", technically true
| but only in a vacuous sense.
|
| > That something is "overloaded" (amphiboly)
|
| I don't mean this. If I say "automorphism", I mean one
| thing and one thing only, because formal languages allow
| us to have precise definitions. Natural language doesn't
| have that. Words like 'truth', 'beauty', 'justice' are
| vague, imprecise meshes of meaning, so much that making
| precise statements about them is extremely problematic
| even conceptually.
|
| > Formalization isn't magic. To formalize something, you
| have to get to a place where you have a clear enough and
| correct enough understanding so that you can express it
| in that language.
|
| I completely agree. One of the major contributions of
| philosophy is that it attempts to untangle the mess. I
| have already said that I find this useful and productive.
| I'm not bashing philosophers, here.
|
| > And in any case, philosophers do employ formalization
| when they think it useful. It isn't always. Frankly, even
| mathematicians, practitioners of the most formal of
| sciences, don't use formal methods to express their
| _reasoning_ in most cases.
|
| I don't think these two cases are even remotely
| comparable. Mathematicians certainly do write informally
| when they write proofs, but that's only a way of
| communicating the result to another human. Any proof
| could be, given enough time, be rewritten completely
| formally, for example in a way that could be checked by a
| machine. If it can't, then it's wrong.
|
| Formalization employed by philosophers is essentially
| just a writing device they are using in order to prove a
| point. The subtext "we could break this down to a
| deduction tree, but it's too boring to actually do that"
| that underlies a mathematical proof is completely
| missing.
|
| Many authors have written literature using mathematical
| notation. It doesn't make their books math, for the same
| reason.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The problem isn't that it's possible to un-overload
| natural language - it's that the overloading is
| unconscious. In reality there are different meta-
| languages of relationships and assumptions built into
| natural language at every level of use and
| sophistication.
|
| Formalisation will not fix this. It's just as likely to
| bake the unconscious assumptions into a formal language
| as to remove them.
|
| Philosophy done well can un-overload those assumptions,
| but done badly it can also provide rhetorical frameworks
| for perpetuating assumptions that should really be
| questioned.
| routerl wrote:
| > his apparent rigorousness is not at all scientific.
|
| It is more scientific than Galileo, just less empirical.
|
| Spinoza's contributions to thought lie on the logic axis, not
| the empirical axis. That didn't really get going until the
| British empiricists, culminating with Newton, who absolutely
| saw himself as a philosopher, and saw his physics as part of
| his philosophical work[1].
|
| But Spinoza's historical axis includes Leibniz, on whose work
| both Gottlieb Frege and Bertrand Russell saw themselves as
| building when they formalized mathematical logic as we now know
| it[2][3]. Turing is another few steps down this road, and knew
| it[4]. Further down Spinoza's road we also get Kant, who
| Einstein targeted when he was trying to understand what space
| actually is[5].
|
| It's also worth mentioning that the whole logic thing starts
| with the Greek philosophers, who saw themselves as extending
| Euclid's geometry into other domains. Aristotle formalized
| several still accepted forms of logical inference and
| rigorously taxonomized fallacies, as well as inventing the
| notion of taxonomies (and biology) to begin with[6].
| Incidentally, much later, Descartes finished the work of
| applying Euclid's work to other domains, by marrying algebra
| and geometry[7], while trying to prove that God exists[8].
|
| > there is no way to refute or evaluate philosophy.
|
| This is plainly false. Every philosopher in the Western canon
| saw themselves as refuting earlier philosophers and traditions.
| Sometimes, these refutations were so spectacular that they
| became sciences.
|
| I don't know man. To me, even when these guys fuck up, they
| still produce an awful lot of cool tools.
|
| ---
|
| [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-philosophy/
|
| [2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/40693547?seq=1
|
| [3]
| https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-1-4020-524...
|
| [4] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing/#TurMacCom
|
| [5]
| https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/si...
|
| [6] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-biology/
|
| [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_geometry
|
| [8]
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/#FirResNewMisMe...
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >many people and most philosophers claim philosophy is much
| more than this.
|
| on the other hand many people and most artists claim art is
| much more than philosophy.
| slibhb wrote:
| John Gray's NY Review articles are great.
|
| Reading him, it's interesting how often "new ideas" are actually
| old ideas that have been forgotten and are now being recycled.
| specialist wrote:
| Ya. I started chewing thru History of Philosophy Without Any
| Gaps podcast last year. It's been great. Learning that many of
| our current debates are millennia old helped me calm down.
|
| Regrettably, since I skipped college, my awareness of the
| classics and liberal arts is very deficient.
|
| Now I firmly believe K-12 curriculum should include (age
| appropriate) ethics, civics, classics, logics, epistemology,
| etc. In response to "fake news", some progressives are
| advocating "media literacy". That's not nearly ambitious
| enough.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Relevant: http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Classically, philosophy is not about establishing truth. It is
| about better living.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Not true. Classically, philosophy was most certainly about the
| truth. How could you know what better living is without knowing
| the truth? What "better" or "living" really are? Ethics, which
| is about what a good life is, depends on an understanding of
| human nature.
|
| What do you think Socrates was doing when he attacked the
| sophists of Athens? Living better? I guess, if you like taking
| hemlock.
| beckingz wrote:
| Philosophy is not an Art.
|
| Deciding what to philosophize about is the real art.
| notretarded wrote:
| Yes. Next question.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Is art a philosophy?
| ironSkillet wrote:
| I'm reminded of a story from "Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman"
| where he asks a bunch of philosophy graduate students on what the
| definition of a certain phrase was, and everyone actually had a
| different idea. This ambiguity of language is why in my opinion
| philosophy is most certainly an art and not a science.
| karaterobot wrote:
| "Ahh," he said, steepling his fingers, "but what, after all, is
| Art?"
| ANarrativeApe wrote:
| Working on some inforgraphics tackling gender bias a while back,
| I was'accused' of producing data visualization art. I defended
| the intellectual rigor of my work, yet lost the argument - my
| 'accuser' turned out to be the curator of data visualization art
| at the Tate Modern. He won the argument by pointing out that the
| work, though based on hard data, was designed to evoke an
| emotional rather than an intellectual response. Ao much
| philosophy is taught as if it were a niche area of literary
| criticism, rather than as raw materials for the creation of
| algorithms for intentional living, it probably is fair to regard
| much philosophy as if art, or even art criticism.
| keenreed wrote:
| Well, processing data correctly is a form of art. Raw data
| contain systemic biases and are not ethical. It takes an artist
| to cleanse data, and present them without bias in an ethical
| and moral way.
| routerl wrote:
| There's something to be said for the notion that, in the modern
| world, anyone who is a "professional philosopher" is just
| incapable of doing the kind of "here's how you should live"
| work that dominates early Western and Asian philosophy. Among
| modern professions, the only ones that can bear the legal
| liability of such a line of inquiry are in the health sciences.
|
| In this sense, philosophy professors cannot be doing what
| Socrates thought he was doing, except while teaching. But, as a
| rule, teaching is not considered the "productive work" of any
| professors. The "serious" work of academics is to produce tomes
| and articles, and to manage their citations like investments.
| staticman2 wrote:
| I don't understand where you got the idea that people who
| tell others how to live have legal liability: if that were
| the case your local preacher would be in serious trouble.
| routerl wrote:
| There's a thin line between cult and religion, and a lot of
| it has to do with institutional age. Although, yeah, there
| are a lot of christian, and buddhist for that matter,
| cults. Often these do end up breaching legal boundaries, as
| I've described, but more often they merely offend common
| morality or decency, which also reveals the problem of
| trying to tell people how to live, outside of accepted
| avenues (i.e. health sciences and, as you've pointed out,
| established religions).
| staticman2 wrote:
| I highly doubt that they are breaching legal boundries.
| Doctors only have a monopoly on formal medical advise-
| they do not have a monopoly on "telling people how to
| live". Nobody thinks their local preacher or philosopher
| is giving formal medical advise- so there is unlikely to
| be any liability at all outside of gratuitously bad
| behavior like telling people to drink bleach.
| routerl wrote:
| There are mental health doctors as well.
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-14 23:01 UTC)