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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 philosoph

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.

Thursday24 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        > 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_and_the_Reality_of_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singular_Universe_and_the_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_and_Refutations#Impact_on_teaching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_and_Refutations#Impact_...
ThomPete 6y ago
Philosophy when done right, teaches you how to think and that gives you and advantage that other fields don't.
- neonological 6y ago
  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”.
  - ThomPete 6y ago
    its not trying to explain what they are its trying to ask the right questions.
    - neonological 6y ago
      Asking the right questions doesn't negate the fact that there's a category error here. Either way, "asking questions" is not what people classically think of when they talk about philosophy.
      - ThomPete 6y ago
        There is no category error. Again asking the right questions teaches you how to think about the world. The fact that people have misconception of what philosophy is doesn't change anything.
        neonological 6y ago
        The category error exists whether or not the questions are right or wrong, it is irrelevant to my point. Let me put it this way. Part of philosophy is the Milesian school of thought. The idea that everything is made of water. A completely ludicrous idea that I would argue makes the practitioner ask the wrong questions as we now know things are made of complex particles. Does this have anything to do with the category error I’m describing? No. Science and the Milesian school of thought simply don’t belong together regardless of what right or wrong questions your favorite field makes you ask.
dschuessler 6y ago
> 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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    > 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.
namero999 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.

Thursday24 6y ago

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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      > 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_and_the_Reality_of_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singular_Universe_and_the_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_and_Refutations#Impact_on_teaching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_and_Refutations#Impact_...

ThomPete 6y ago

Philosophy when done right, teaches you how to think and that gives you and advantage that other fields don't.

neonological 6y ago
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”.
- ThomPete 6y ago
  its not trying to explain what they are its trying to ask the right questions.
  - neonological 6y ago
    Asking the right questions doesn't negate the fact that there's a category error here. Either way, "asking questions" is not what people classically think of when they talk about philosophy.
    - ThomPete 6y ago
      There is no category error. Again asking the right questions teaches you how to think about the world. The fact that people have misconception of what philosophy is doesn't change anything.
      - neonological 6y ago
        The category error exists whether or not the questions are right or wrong, it is irrelevant to my point. Let me put it this way. Part of philosophy is the Milesian school of thought. The idea that everything is made of water. A completely ludicrous idea that I would argue makes the practitioner ask the wrong questions as we now know things are made of complex particles. Does this have anything to do with the category error I’m describing? No. Science and the Milesian school of thought simply don’t belong together regardless of what right or wrong questions your favorite field makes you ask.

dschuessler 6y ago

> 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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  > 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.

namero999 6y ago

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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.