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Philosophy today is one of the most undervalued discipline. It doesn't yield any return on investment immediately and is mostly confusing at the beginning, so p
by eddd 9y ago
Philosophy today is one of the most undervalued discipline. It doesn't yield any return on investment immediately and is mostly confusing at the beginning, so people don't tend to have interest in it.
I think we have some sort global identity crisis because of that. Religions are not sufficient enough and science doesn't even try to answer the question of "why?" but rather "how?". In result of that, we ended up with no ideology and no tools to build one for ourselves.
This is laughably ironic, because we really want some change in the way we live and think and yet, we don't turn back and evaluate what people came out with in the history.
edit: if you want to start with it: http://philosophizethis.org/category/episode/ http://philosophizethis.org/category/episode/
- humanrebar 9y ago> Religions are not sufficient enough... I don't really draw such a strong distinction between religion and philosophy. I consider theology to be a school of philosophy that deals with certain metaphysical axioms and their implications. If investment in philosophy helps people understand how most controversy is downstream from assumptions they don't know they're making, they might be able to de-escalate from thier religious fervor (a popular "religion" these days is an unhealthy political divisiveness), I welcome that investment.
- eddd 9y agoReligion is a oversimplification of philosophy doctrines. Imagine Moses trying to communicate with regular folk his views on the world in a way that Socrates did. It was much more efficient to translate it to a set of stories that impose specific behavior. The closest religion to philosophy (I can think of) is Buddhism, it is basically a guide to learn about self and the world.
- elboru 9y agoI don't agree, maybe you have have a oversimplified view of religion, do you believe religion only consists of regular folks? Where would you put St. Thomas and his Summa Theologica
- marnett 9y agoReligion, like schools of philosophy, grow overtime as more theologians add to the thought. Here is a theologian's thought on modern secularism, it is essentially a philosophical essay: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/02/the-metaphysics-of-democracy https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/02/the-metaphysics-...
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Religion is a oversimplification of philosophy doctrines. No, it's not, though what most people are exposed to is, just as what most people exposed to philosophy by other means get is oversimplified. If you go beyond the surface, theology is no less deep than other philosophy.
- charlysl 9y agoRussel: Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge—so I should contend— belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy
- fjsolwmv 9y agoPhilosophy gets a bad rep for the same reason psychology and sociology and applied macroeconomics do: because there is no way to clearly distinguish right ideas from wrong ones, so the field is flooded with junk.
- jm__87 9y agoNot sure I would lump economics and psychology in there. Economics tries to explain some observable phenomenon which arises from human behavior which we don't fully understand. Psychology again, tries to understand human behavior. In theory, if we measured the correct things and the measurements were accurate, we'd be able to make accurate predictions based on those measurements in both fields. The problem is that we aren't able to do that currently. Philosophy is asking way more subjective questions, like "what should we do, and why?". The answer will always vary by context and individual and there will never be a "right" answer.
- mcguire 9y agoOk, I will say something. Economics had a problem in that it is partially descriptive, as you say, but it is also partially normative: it wants to say how things should be. Then it gets the two parts confused a lot, leading to homo economicus stuff. Behavioral economics is more relevant to both the fields you describe.
- jm__87 9y agoDo you mind giving an example?
- mcguire 9y agoIn Misbehaving, Richard Thaler describes a meeting of psychologists where he describes the best current thinking of economists as to what a "rational" person would do if the government were to give a payment to all citizens as an economic stimulus. I don't remember the details, but it involves the recognition that a citizen would have to pay the money back (as taxes) at some point, and that the citizen would have descendants in perpetuity---as a result, the economic stimulus would fail because the citizen would lock the payment into a 0-risk savings account. He had to have another economist at the meeting reassure everyone that that was indeed the current best economic thinking in order to stop them from laughing at him. He recalls telling the story to Some Fameous Economist and being told that (a) yes, that was the most rational thing to do in that situation, and (b) that it was indeed what everyone would do.