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You can’t pick your favourite bad argument and ridicule an entire field. You are incidentally using ideas from several different old, influential philosophies t
by Rd6n6 5y ago
You can’t pick your favourite bad argument and ridicule an entire field. You are incidentally using ideas from several different old, influential philosophies to even formulate Luther comment
Philosophy includes questions like “how do we decide whether something is true or trustworthy,” or “what constitutes a good or a bad way to make a case for something.” If you’re going to throw philosophy out, you can’t question anything any more
- imbnwa 5y agoScience used to be called 'natural philosophy'
- threatofrain 5y agoPhilosophy may refer to the specific branch in academia and its current practice, as opposed to any philosophical inquiry. Every field already pursues their own philosophical inquiry, and yet philosophers and mathematicians are in separate departments. Such is the current practice and organization of academics. If we were to consider mathematics and computer science as part of philosophy, then we might say that as a mode of inquiry, philosophy has had great success in achieving multidisciplinary consensus and international impact. But if we were to consider philosophy as a specific branch of academic organization, then we might be disappointed at the fruits emerging from that field.
- a-dub 5y agoto bring it full circle and tear apart the original argument above, one could argue that the relatively simple laws of logic from philosophy give rise to all of digital computing (like... what is directly expressed in digital logic design). yet the emergent complexity of all computerdom is far beyond the complexity of the basic rules of logic coming from philosophy. more to the point here, computer science and mathematics are very similar to philosophy in that authors invent a set of abstractions and then construct rules for how they interact in a self-consistent manner.
- threatofrain 5y agoRelating computer science and mathematics to philosophy is already a fair and understandable argument. Yet, as separate divisions of professional academic labor, why do the fruits they bear look so different in terms of their ability to generate frameworks for multi-disciplinary consensus and international impact?
- a-dub 5y agocomputer science, mathematics, science and many other technical fields borrow logic and formalized reasoning from philosophy and subsets of those fields have direct applications in the system of production, therefore i think that's why they're elevated in terms of perceived impact. i've always sort of seen pure philosophy as an art for exercising rhetorical and general reasoning skills, which then seem to have the most natural applications in fields like law and politics. i think where it can go sideways is cases where philosophers will attempt to apply reasoning to premises or fields that they don't fully understand. that said, as we march into the post truth era, perhaps philosophy will have another moment to shine as a framework for training reasoning skills in an uncertain world.
- a-dub 5y agofair, it's the first step towards trying to construct formalism around reasoning... but then it often jumps off into the abstract based on synthetic premises... that's when it makes the leap to art. and who said anything about ridicule? art is important! perceptive exercises and exploration of ideas strengthen our skills for reasoning.