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As an undergrad there was a brief point where I got really into philosophy i.e. its core disciplines such as metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, beca

As an undergrad there was a brief point where I got really into philosophy i.e. its core disciplines such as metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, ethics, because I had never encountered it before but after about a year and a half I got completely sick of all the confused vagueness and have never returned. The impracticality of the whole discipline is what frustrated me in the end, and is why all my free reading to this day is about maths, physics, engineering, computer science, etc. topics that are applicable in the real world and help me solve problems. I suppose that if you plop logic, game theory, and enough other formal science disciplines under the philosophy rubric you can make philosophy seem more reasonable but to me that's just mathematics and you're fooling yourself calling it philosophy. I know many will disagree, but IMO there is hardly a discipline more pointless than philosophy, its continually losing ground to science in every area and its methods are questionable at best i.e. armchair I think its so so its so.

red75prime 10y ago
I like Richard Feynman's position. He attended one philosophical seminar, complimented cleverness of arguments, then he hadn't attended philosophical seminars anymore.
ritchiea 10y ago
Do you also find things like art, literature and film pointless because they don't help you solve problems? Humans have wants and needs that exist outside of the type of problems that can be solved with CS & engineering. Present day science isn't even very useful in helping us understand human emotion. Your attitude reminds me of traditional economics, anything that doesn't fit neatly in the model we might as well pretend doesn't exist.
- jfaucett 10y ago
  > Do you also find things like art, literature and film pointless because they don't help you solve problems? The point of philosophy is to discover answers to questions. Such as how does the mind work? Is there a mind? What is the right action in a given situation? How do we know we know something? etc. This is not even remotely related to the goals and reasons for art, literature, and film, which exist for aesthetic enjoyment. My point is that for answering most of the questions philosophy tries to answer the best method is the scientific method and its framework of approach.
  - ritchiea 10y ago
    Serious question: Does science have an answer for what is the right action in a given situation? Is that something we can determine from a study or a calculation? That actually sounds like the perfect question for modern philosophy.
    - charles-salvia 10y ago
      It can if you define desired goals or outcomes.
      - betenoire 10y ago
        "I want to stop feeling bad about myself and the world around me" ...
        int_19h 10y ago
        A purely scientific approach to that would be a pair of electrodes inserted into the pleasure center of your brain. Philosophy (or parts of it, anyway) studies why this isn't actually a desirable approach for most of us.
  - olavk 10y ago
    So why do you know the scientific method is the best method or even a valid method? Any answer you give to this question will be a philosophical answer. You are doing philosophy whether you like it or not.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - woodruffw 10y ago
    The scientific method tells you how to approach and reason through questions, but now how to ask questions in the first place. The latter is the "point" of philosophy, not the former.
kitbrennan 10y ago
> its continually losing ground to science in every area and its methods are questionable at best Philosophy is a very broad school and many areas do not lose out to science. While science helps answer such things as the free will debate, it cannot answer the question of morality or the debate over how to govern society correctly. Often science can bring us closer to understanding the world but not provide an answer on how to act. The classic example is abortion. Science can tell us when the heartbeat starts, or brainwaves begin firing, or when we feel pain; but it cannot begin to answer whether it is ok to take a life before/after any of those biological points - that is where philosophy comes in. I'd go as far as arguing that it is one of the most practical disciplines. It gave me answers on how to act rather than relying on pure feeling. Too many of us support the same political parties as our parents or having the same moral code as our peers, without questioning whether that is actually the ideal way to act. These philosophical arguments go to the heart of society, morality, politics and law.
- charles-salvia 10y ago
  Science can settle (or at least inform) a debate over how to govern society correctly if you define certain tangible features or goals that a correct society should have. If you agree upfront that a correct society should seek to e.g. maximize individual happiness, or maximize economic output, or whatever, there are scientific arguments that would support one policy over another. It's also worth noting that a lot of what Aristotle (as opposed to Plato) as well as many of the Pre-Socratics actually wrote about would today be considered scientific topics. Aristotle speculated about physics and natural systems using abstract reasoning. Many of his conclusions are empirically falsifiable and have been falsified. It's simply that empiricism itself as an epistemological tool had not yet been fully appreciated in Classical Greece.
  - woodruffw 10y ago
    > If you agree upfront that a correct society should seek to e.g. maximize individual happiness, or maximize economic output, or whatever, there are scientific arguments that would support one policy over another. These are both utilitarian concessions, building upon a philosophical model of the Right in terms of a maximized final Good. You may be able to find a "scientific" answer within them (Bentham did exactly that), but you'll be hard pressed to conclude that such an answer is reasonable in any of the ways that we would expect a theory of perfect government to be.
olavk 10y ago
Science and logic are products of philosophy, so I would hardly call philosophy useless. By "armchar" I presume you mean philosophy is not empirical. This is true to some extent, but you could level the same criticism against math, and math still turn out to be usable to solve problems in the real world.
wanda 10y ago
My response exceeds the character limit for HN comments. https://paste.sh/E9PffNWX#AZXcIrCSKFfooOhxEW0-E0Ot https://paste.sh/E9PffNWX#AZXcIrCSKFfooOhxEW0-E0Ot

red75prime 10y ago

I like Richard Feynman's position. He attended one philosophical seminar, complimented cleverness of arguments, then he hadn't attended philosophical seminars anymore.

ritchiea 10y ago

Do you also find things like art, literature and film pointless because they don't help you solve problems? Humans have wants and needs that exist outside of the type of problems that can be solved with CS & engineering. Present day science isn't even very useful in helping us understand human emotion. Your attitude reminds me of traditional economics, anything that doesn't fit neatly in the model we might as well pretend doesn't exist.

jfaucett 10y ago
> Do you also find things like art, literature and film pointless because they don't help you solve problems? The point of philosophy is to discover answers to questions. Such as how does the mind work? Is there a mind? What is the right action in a given situation? How do we know we know something? etc. This is not even remotely related to the goals and reasons for art, literature, and film, which exist for aesthetic enjoyment. My point is that for answering most of the questions philosophy tries to answer the best method is the scientific method and its framework of approach.
- ritchiea 10y ago
  Serious question: Does science have an answer for what is the right action in a given situation? Is that something we can determine from a study or a calculation? That actually sounds like the perfect question for modern philosophy.
  - charles-salvia 10y ago
    It can if you define desired goals or outcomes.
    - betenoire 10y ago
      "I want to stop feeling bad about myself and the world around me" ...
      - int_19h 10y ago
        A purely scientific approach to that would be a pair of electrodes inserted into the pleasure center of your brain. Philosophy (or parts of it, anyway) studies why this isn't actually a desirable approach for most of us.
- olavk 10y ago
  So why do you know the scientific method is the best method or even a valid method? Any answer you give to this question will be a philosophical answer. You are doing philosophy whether you like it or not.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- woodruffw 10y ago
  The scientific method tells you how to approach and reason through questions, but now how to ask questions in the first place. The latter is the "point" of philosophy, not the former.

kitbrennan 10y ago

> its continually losing ground to science in every area and its methods are questionable at best Philosophy is a very broad school and many areas do not lose out to science. While science helps answer such things as the free will debate, it cannot answer the question of morality or the debate over how to govern society correctly. Often science can bring us closer to understanding the world but not provide an answer on how to act. The classic example is abortion. Science can tell us when the heartbeat starts, or brainwaves begin firing, or when we feel pain; but it cannot begin to answer whether it is ok to take a life before/after any of those biological points - that is where philosophy comes in. I'd go as far as arguing that it is one of the most practical disciplines. It gave me answers on how to act rather than relying on pure feeling. Too many of us support the same political parties as our parents or having the same moral code as our peers, without questioning whether that is actually the ideal way to act. These philosophical arguments go to the heart of society, morality, politics and law.

charles-salvia 10y ago
Science can settle (or at least inform) a debate over how to govern society correctly if you define certain tangible features or goals that a correct society should have. If you agree upfront that a correct society should seek to e.g. maximize individual happiness, or maximize economic output, or whatever, there are scientific arguments that would support one policy over another. It's also worth noting that a lot of what Aristotle (as opposed to Plato) as well as many of the Pre-Socratics actually wrote about would today be considered scientific topics. Aristotle speculated about physics and natural systems using abstract reasoning. Many of his conclusions are empirically falsifiable and have been falsified. It's simply that empiricism itself as an epistemological tool had not yet been fully appreciated in Classical Greece.
- woodruffw 10y ago
  > If you agree upfront that a correct society should seek to e.g. maximize individual happiness, or maximize economic output, or whatever, there are scientific arguments that would support one policy over another. These are both utilitarian concessions, building upon a philosophical model of the Right in terms of a maximized final Good. You may be able to find a "scientific" answer within them (Bentham did exactly that), but you'll be hard pressed to conclude that such an answer is reasonable in any of the ways that we would expect a theory of perfect government to be.

olavk 10y ago

Science and logic are products of philosophy, so I would hardly call philosophy useless. By "armchar" I presume you mean philosophy is not empirical. This is true to some extent, but you could level the same criticism against math, and math still turn out to be usable to solve problems in the real world.

wanda 10y ago

My response exceeds the character limit for HN comments. https://paste.sh/E9PffNWX#AZXcIrCSKFfooOhxEW0-E0Ot https://paste.sh/E9PffNWX#AZXcIrCSKFfooOhxEW0-E0Ot