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> There are good reasons that most of academia moved on from philosophy. There are philosophy departments in almost every reputable University I know... Every

> There are good reasons that most of academia moved on from philosophy. There are philosophy departments in almost every reputable University I know... Everything that is non-STEM is underfunded, it doesn't matter if it is philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history, etc. This has nothing to do with academia itself, but with the managerial society we live in, where MBA-types decide on the value of everything with simplistic, dumb and short-sighted economic metrics. Science absolutely needs philosophy. Science is philosophy. There is not a lot of encouragement to do real science/philosophy these days, because this requires deep thinking and following all sorts of unknown paths. Everything must be justified in terms of what gadgets can be built with the discoveries. We are going through a profoundly anti-intellectual stage in western culture.

allovernow 7y ago
>Science is philosophy No. Philosophy does not speak the language of mathematics. Without that tool it's mostly just ego masturbation. I'm not saying it's not interesting, but it's fairly easy for an unusually intelligent person to build cohesive, rational arguments in favor of any arbitrary point. Without some measure of validity philosophers are condemned to continuously argue over the same ideas and assumptions. Philosophy evolved into science when quantifiable validation metrics were introduced. What's more, the hardest and most profound of sciences outside of applied math, physics, simply cannot be advanced without a skilled application of math, without which any amount of essays or books is worthless.
ilaksh 7y ago
To see the difference between science and philosophy, compare this article to a reputable scientific paper. You will see that science includes a testable hypothesis, experiments and/or analysis, and conclusions derived from the data. This essay contains none of that.
- wwweston 7y ago
  If philosophy is useless, then the good news is that we have no particular reason to believe that testable hypotheses, experiments, and data-derived conclusions are particularly useful either.
  - mannykannot 7y ago
    The reasons remain the same, regardless of how you label them.
- normalnorm 7y ago
  Philosophy encompasses science. Testable hypothesis are a philosophical idea, justified on philosophical grounds. You can't justify the very idea of "testable hypothesis and experiments" by using testable hypothesis and experiments. There is a branch of philosophy devoted to this type of question, called "philosophy of science". One very famous philosopher of science, Karl Popper, gave us the idea that for something to be considered a scientific theory, it must be possible to devise and experiment that could, in principle, falsify the theory. Still, the issue is not settled and there are alternative positions. These are deep questions. One interesting thing to retain here is that science provides empirical knowledge, but there are other forms of knowledge. You alluded to "testable hypothesis", and so you in fact deployed non-empirical knowledge. The scientific method gave birth to a branch of philosophy, first known as "natural philosophy", and modernly known as "science".
  - mannykannot 7y ago
    I do not think there is any value in disparaging philosophy, but in responding to such attitudes in the current context, it would be more useful to discuss what the branch known as philosophy of mind is achieving now, rather than the significance of philosophy in the foundation of science.
mannykannot 7y ago
>Everything that is non-STEM is underfunded, it doesn't matter if it is philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history, etc. ... >Science is philosophy. If you are going to justify philosophy by subsuming science, then you can not consistently claim that it is underfunded. By any reasonable standard, pure scientific research is respectably, if not ideally, funded. What's missing here, of course, is any consideration for those branches of philosophy that are not science. This strategy of showing the importance of philosophy by invoking the success of science is short-sighted, and does a disservice to fields such as ethics.

allovernow 7y ago

>Science is philosophy No. Philosophy does not speak the language of mathematics. Without that tool it's mostly just ego masturbation. I'm not saying it's not interesting, but it's fairly easy for an unusually intelligent person to build cohesive, rational arguments in favor of any arbitrary point. Without some measure of validity philosophers are condemned to continuously argue over the same ideas and assumptions. Philosophy evolved into science when quantifiable validation metrics were introduced. What's more, the hardest and most profound of sciences outside of applied math, physics, simply cannot be advanced without a skilled application of math, without which any amount of essays or books is worthless.

ilaksh 7y ago

To see the difference between science and philosophy, compare this article to a reputable scientific paper. You will see that science includes a testable hypothesis, experiments and/or analysis, and conclusions derived from the data. This essay contains none of that.

wwweston 7y ago
If philosophy is useless, then the good news is that we have no particular reason to believe that testable hypotheses, experiments, and data-derived conclusions are particularly useful either.
- mannykannot 7y ago
  The reasons remain the same, regardless of how you label them.
normalnorm 7y ago
Philosophy encompasses science. Testable hypothesis are a philosophical idea, justified on philosophical grounds. You can't justify the very idea of "testable hypothesis and experiments" by using testable hypothesis and experiments. There is a branch of philosophy devoted to this type of question, called "philosophy of science". One very famous philosopher of science, Karl Popper, gave us the idea that for something to be considered a scientific theory, it must be possible to devise and experiment that could, in principle, falsify the theory. Still, the issue is not settled and there are alternative positions. These are deep questions. One interesting thing to retain here is that science provides empirical knowledge, but there are other forms of knowledge. You alluded to "testable hypothesis", and so you in fact deployed non-empirical knowledge. The scientific method gave birth to a branch of philosophy, first known as "natural philosophy", and modernly known as "science".
- mannykannot 7y ago
  I do not think there is any value in disparaging philosophy, but in responding to such attitudes in the current context, it would be more useful to discuss what the branch known as philosophy of mind is achieving now, rather than the significance of philosophy in the foundation of science.

mannykannot 7y ago

>Everything that is non-STEM is underfunded, it doesn't matter if it is philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history, etc. ... >Science is philosophy. If you are going to justify philosophy by subsuming science, then you can not consistently claim that it is underfunded. By any reasonable standard, pure scientific research is respectably, if not ideally, funded. What's missing here, of course, is any consideration for those branches of philosophy that are not science. This strategy of showing the importance of philosophy by invoking the success of science is short-sighted, and does a disservice to fields such as ethics.