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I swear as I get older philosophy feels more and more like religion for intellectuals. If you want to talk about cognition or time you should study science, no

I swear as I get older philosophy feels more and more like religion for intellectuals. If you want to talk about cognition or time you should study science, not philosophy. You’re not going to learn about the universe in any significant way by studying hegel or aristotle or kant harder.

svieira 2y ago
Funnily enough, the scholastics thought of philosophy as the handmaid of theology. Ultimately, it's in the name (love-of-wisdom). You can learn wisdom from science, but that body of wisdom eventually becomes a philosophy. And the older philosophers definitely saw something, even if they are not completely correct.
bbor 2y ago
Why are you so confident that Philosophy isn't the superclass to "science"? How could you hope to start on any science without philosophy, much less arrive at a definition for the term? I could maybe see mathematics without philosophy, as I mentioned above, but physical science/physics/"science" is inherently subjective. That doesn't mean truth doesn't exist, of course -- but I'd have to get into philosophy to explain why I think all of that ;). The best defense for philosophy by far is that you can't criticize it without engaging in it, and "it all seems obvious to me, just use common sense"-style citations are much less convincing than ones to long famous books. More provacatively: have you engaged with it? I know that's a big ask, but it's also a bit unfair IMO to write off a field without taking the time to understand it. For example, Aristotle founded multiple scientific fields, including the big two -- Physics and Biology -- and established a theory of mind that still has immense sway in the west to this day. Kant was a reknowned scientist before he started into philosophy (even having a good claim to "first to show the existence of galaxies"), and the quote above is from A Critique of Pure Reason (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4280/4280-h/4280-h.htm#chap10 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4280/4280-h/4280-h.htm#chap1...) where he establishes cognitive science: From all that has been said, there results the idea of a particular science, which may be called the Critique of Pure Reason.... Such a science must not be called a doctrine, but only a critique of pure reason; and its use, in regard to speculation, would be only negative, not to enlarge the bounds of, but to purify, our reason, and to shield it against error—which alone is no little gain. Hegel built on this directly with his famous book The Phenomenology of Mind, of which I highly recommend the short preface titled On Scientific Cognition. I don't think there could be a more clear piece of evidence that these were the leading thinkers of their time on matters of systematic thought, aka science. Without the academy, we'd have no Francis Bacon, no Newton or Liebniz, no Einstein or Bohr, and definitely no Popper, Kuhn, Carnap, Wittgenstein, Chomsky, or any of the other amazing modern thinkers on how to improve our scientific endeavors. This one's less verifiable but I imagine it hits home the most: I don't even think we'd have Turing without Boole, Russell, and Whitehead to draw from. ...sorry, clearly I'm a bit sensitive ;) It's frustrating being valued for your puzzle solving abilities (aka SWE) much more highly than your engagement with science, as I'm sure you can relate to or imagine!
_yb2s 2y ago
Science is philosophy, albeit just a branch of it- specifically the part concerned with learning how the universe works physically. Other branches of philosophy study other things, and are good at understanding those things they are about. Moreover, philosophy has progressed and branched out quite a bit since those philosophers you mentioned. I spend a lot of time reading philosophy for fun, and have found many of the ideas practically useful in regular life- but am not a fan of any of the philosophers you mentioned, and find their work mostly useless or outdated.

svieira 2y ago

Funnily enough, the scholastics thought of philosophy as the handmaid of theology. Ultimately, it's in the name (love-of-wisdom). You can learn wisdom from science, but that body of wisdom eventually becomes a philosophy. And the older philosophers definitely saw something, even if they are not completely correct.

bbor 2y ago

Why are you so confident that Philosophy isn't the superclass to "science"? How could you hope to start on any science without philosophy, much less arrive at a definition for the term? I could maybe see mathematics without philosophy, as I mentioned above, but physical science/physics/"science" is inherently subjective. That doesn't mean truth doesn't exist, of course -- but I'd have to get into philosophy to explain why I think all of that ;). The best defense for philosophy by far is that you can't criticize it without engaging in it, and "it all seems obvious to me, just use common sense"-style citations are much less convincing than ones to long famous books. More provacatively: have you engaged with it? I know that's a big ask, but it's also a bit unfair IMO to write off a field without taking the time to understand it. For example, Aristotle founded multiple scientific fields, including the big two -- Physics and Biology -- and established a theory of mind that still has immense sway in the west to this day. Kant was a reknowned scientist before he started into philosophy (even having a good claim to "first to show the existence of galaxies"), and the quote above is from A Critique of Pure Reason (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4280/4280-h/4280-h.htm#chap10 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4280/4280-h/4280-h.htm#chap1...) where he establishes cognitive science: From all that has been said, there results the idea of a particular science, which may be called the Critique of Pure Reason.... Such a science must not be called a doctrine, but only a critique of pure reason; and its use, in regard to speculation, would be only negative, not to enlarge the bounds of, but to purify, our reason, and to shield it against error—which alone is no little gain. Hegel built on this directly with his famous book The Phenomenology of Mind, of which I highly recommend the short preface titled On Scientific Cognition. I don't think there could be a more clear piece of evidence that these were the leading thinkers of their time on matters of systematic thought, aka science. Without the academy, we'd have no Francis Bacon, no Newton or Liebniz, no Einstein or Bohr, and definitely no Popper, Kuhn, Carnap, Wittgenstein, Chomsky, or any of the other amazing modern thinkers on how to improve our scientific endeavors. This one's less verifiable but I imagine it hits home the most: I don't even think we'd have Turing without Boole, Russell, and Whitehead to draw from. ...sorry, clearly I'm a bit sensitive ;) It's frustrating being valued for your puzzle solving abilities (aka SWE) much more highly than your engagement with science, as I'm sure you can relate to or imagine!

_yb2s 2y ago

Science is philosophy, albeit just a branch of it- specifically the part concerned with learning how the universe works physically. Other branches of philosophy study other things, and are good at understanding those things they are about. Moreover, philosophy has progressed and branched out quite a bit since those philosophers you mentioned. I spend a lot of time reading philosophy for fun, and have found many of the ideas practically useful in regular life- but am not a fan of any of the philosophers you mentioned, and find their work mostly useless or outdated.