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You might enjoy reading at least a summary of existentialism. It is somewhat anti-scientific at its root - but like economics - philosophy exists in a somewhat

You might enjoy reading at least a summary of existentialism. It is somewhat anti-scientific at its root - but like economics - philosophy exists in a somewhat untestable area. One cannot make a laboratory of the mind or use human beings as it’s lab rats. Physics and maths tend to poopoo any line of thinking which considers human experience - and there is amazing utility in that! No opinions are important for calculation of a trajectory. However, human experience does exist, and operating rationally on it, despite the lack of ability to experiment, leads one into a world that mathematicians might scoff at, but is still a completely valid field of inquiry. People will say “philosophy is a soft science! No experiments!” Without understanding that experiments cannot be done in this realm. I recommend Michael Segrue on YouTube - his lectures are fantastic as an intro to philosophy. Particularly his into to Kierkegaard touches on the birth of existentialism out of the furnace of pure scientific rationality.

msla 4y ago
> One cannot make a laboratory of the mind or use human beings as it’s lab rats. That isn't the only way to subject philosophical ideas to empirical scrutiny, but whenever people use the historical evidence to determine things like how well different economic systems behave, for example, all of a sudden a lot of people get very angry and defensive and refuse to acknowledge the validity of prior experience. > People will say “philosophy is a soft science! No experiments!” Without understanding that experiments cannot be done in this realm. Some kinds of philosophy can be experimented on in some respects. For example: Does unquestioning obedience produce an ethical system that minimizes arbitrary killings? Well, I think we can look to the historical record and find the answer to that one, and conclude that it doesn't. More deeply, though, how do we conclude that we care about arbitrary killing? That's a kind of question that we can't answer through experimentation, because the world doesn't outright tell us what values we should adopt. The most we can do is reason through the problem and then use experimentation (even retrospective experiments, as in history) to try to figure out which ethical systems support those values best. That said... We're not blank slates. We're humans, we're social animals, so we care about certain things instinctively and, thus, some ethical systems are more humane than others in their outcomes.
- ttctciyf 4y ago
  > That's a kind of question that we can't answer through experimentation Kind of a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for a question to be a philosophical one.
- erulabs 4y ago
  > but whenever people use the historical evidence to determine things like how well different economic systems behave, for example, all of a sudden a lot of people get very angry I mean, I tend to agree here with the straw man! That's why, for example, when arguing against commonwealth planning, one can't point at the Soviet Union as an example. One instead has to start from epistemology[1]! Then, folks don't respond with anger, they respond with glazed eyes. [1] https://cdn.mises.org/economic_calculation_in_the_socialist_commonwealth.pdf https://cdn.mises.org/economic_calculation_in_the_socialist_...

msla 4y ago

> One cannot make a laboratory of the mind or use human beings as it’s lab rats. That isn't the only way to subject philosophical ideas to empirical scrutiny, but whenever people use the historical evidence to determine things like how well different economic systems behave, for example, all of a sudden a lot of people get very angry and defensive and refuse to acknowledge the validity of prior experience. > People will say “philosophy is a soft science! No experiments!” Without understanding that experiments cannot be done in this realm. Some kinds of philosophy can be experimented on in some respects. For example: Does unquestioning obedience produce an ethical system that minimizes arbitrary killings? Well, I think we can look to the historical record and find the answer to that one, and conclude that it doesn't. More deeply, though, how do we conclude that we care about arbitrary killing? That's a kind of question that we can't answer through experimentation, because the world doesn't outright tell us what values we should adopt. The most we can do is reason through the problem and then use experimentation (even retrospective experiments, as in history) to try to figure out which ethical systems support those values best. That said... We're not blank slates. We're humans, we're social animals, so we care about certain things instinctively and, thus, some ethical systems are more humane than others in their outcomes.

ttctciyf 4y ago
> That's a kind of question that we can't answer through experimentation Kind of a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for a question to be a philosophical one.
erulabs 4y ago
> but whenever people use the historical evidence to determine things like how well different economic systems behave, for example, all of a sudden a lot of people get very angry I mean, I tend to agree here with the straw man! That's why, for example, when arguing against commonwealth planning, one can't point at the Soviet Union as an example. One instead has to start from epistemology[1]! Then, folks don't respond with anger, they respond with glazed eyes. [1] https://cdn.mises.org/economic_calculation_in_the_socialist_commonwealth.pdf https://cdn.mises.org/economic_calculation_in_the_socialist_...