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You're using the word "philosophy" in it's everyday sense. My life philosophy might be to take risks, live it to the fullest, and enjoy ice cream, because ice c

by mlinsey 18y ago

You're using the word "philosophy" in it's everyday sense. My life philosophy might be to take risks, live it to the fullest, and enjoy ice cream, because ice cream is nice. Those are extra-scientific statements. Philosophy, the discipline taught in academic departments, is something else entirely. It's a bit ironic that you contrasted philosophy to "better-defined and more rigorous logic", because the formal study logic is a sub-discipline of philosophy. At least at my college, if you're a math major and want to learn about logic, you take a course listed in the Philosophy department. Now, sometimes philosophy does rest on premises which are either extra-scientific or which should be scientifically testable but are not proven rigorously by a philosopher. For example, I could make an argument about whether or not free will is compatible with determinism. In doing so I might make some assumptions about "free will" and the nature of mind which probably should be sanity-checked by a neuroscientist sometime down the road. But those are just problems with my assumptions: whether or not my argument is good Philosophy depends on how well I make the argument, in other words whether it is valid, in the technical sense of the term. Hagel and other Continental Philosophers get a bad rap for being light on rigor, and we can have a whole separate debate about that, but to say that philosophy consists of quasi-true statements that can't be logically evaluated is just insane. (I'd be particularly interested in which of Hegel's arguments you thought were "nonsensical" or "along the lines of ice cream is nice"! Although I admit I only have any familiarity with Philosophy of Right, anything I know about his other works is secondhand)

DanielBMarkham 18y ago
No. I am using philosophy in its historical sense. The heavy use of predicate logic is a very recent occurrence dating to early in the last century or so. Hegel's a bit thick for me, but I'd make the argument that Popper did with Marx that Hegel failed to provide a bold, falsifiable prediction. From what I understand, he made some great observations about how spirit evolves, but there was nothing you could hang your hat on -- not enough definition to make useful predictions or prove one way or another. No matter what happened, it could be explained as part of the historical dialectic. Hey that's great philosophy, but it's not science. It is not provable in any fashion. You're right that the use of predicate logic has grown so in philosophy departments that one would think that philosophy is based on it. The jury is still out, in my opinion. The problem of induction (particularly Nelson Goodman's take) raises questions about whether predicate statements like if-then or a or ~b have real, applicable meaning. Oddly enough, this is exactly the point I am making -- that a knowledge of the people and history of a subject bears direct relation to current problems in the field. That by saying "oh we don't teach X anymore, he was wrong." -- especially in philosophy -- we're acting a bit foolish.

by mlinsey 18y ago

DanielBMarkham 18y ago

No. I am using philosophy in its historical sense. The heavy use of predicate logic is a very recent occurrence dating to early in the last century or so. Hegel's a bit thick for me, but I'd make the argument that Popper did with Marx that Hegel failed to provide a bold, falsifiable prediction. From what I understand, he made some great observations about how spirit evolves, but there was nothing you could hang your hat on -- not enough definition to make useful predictions or prove one way or another. No matter what happened, it could be explained as part of the historical dialectic. Hey that's great philosophy, but it's not science. It is not provable in any fashion. You're right that the use of predicate logic has grown so in philosophy departments that one would think that philosophy is based on it. The jury is still out, in my opinion. The problem of induction (particularly Nelson Goodman's take) raises questions about whether predicate statements like if-then or a or ~b have real, applicable meaning. Oddly enough, this is exactly the point I am making -- that a knowledge of the people and history of a subject bears direct relation to current problems in the field. That by saying "oh we don't teach X anymore, he was wrong." -- especially in philosophy -- we're acting a bit foolish.