9 ms·

>[Philosophy's real purpose] is to constantly search for deeper underlying truth. What "truth" has philosophy itself produced from that search which is well-de

>[Philosophy's real purpose] is to constantly search for deeper underlying truth. What "truth" has philosophy itself produced from that search which is well-defined, non-trivial, and correct?

mburney 14y ago
Many philosophers have questioned the scientific definition of "correctness". For example Heidegger who argued that scientific truth is an approximation and measurement of things that we already presume to exist. These discoveries may be correct, and they may be true. But what about the more primordial truth (i.e. being) which we take for granted before we even begin a scientific inquiry? This is what he investigates, so pretty much all scientific definitions of correctness don't apply here. But it is very hard to convince followers of scientism that this investigation has any meaning, because they've already closed their minds to this form of thinking.
- mikeash 14y ago
  Maybe they'd be more open to these ideas if you didn't refer to them as "followers of scientism".
- dean 14y ago
  "These discoveries may be correct, and they may be true." This is the problem with Philosophy. You can take something correct and true, and disregard it. Worse, it is disregarded in favor of what is essentially an opinion.
- lutusp 14y ago
  > Many philosophers have questioned the scientific definition of "correctness". This concisely and aptly summarizes the reason for philosophy's low standing among intellectual disciplines. Philosophers are manifestly unqualified to debate the scientific definition of anything, much less "correctness". Beyond this, a suitable definition is too short to be of interest to a philosopher, someone for whom the number of words uttered is always ranked higher than the intellectual content of each word taken separately. A scientific idea is "correct" if it can be successfully compared to reality. How hard is that? I hasten to add that no scientific idea ever becomes true for all time -- all such ideas are subject to falsification by new evidence, by new comparisons to reality. > But it is very hard to convince followers of scientism... Ah, yes, the "science is just another religion" gambit. It speaks volumes about the depth of modern philosophical thought. Philosophers compare their ideas to those of other philosophers. Scientists compare their ideas to reality.
  - mburney 14y ago
    > A scientific idea is "correct" if it can be successfully compared to reality. But this is similar to saying what is real is what corresponds to reality. Do you see the circularity here? The philosophers who engage in questioning the "real" are not doing it for the reasons scientists engage in discovering "correct" phenomena. The longing for a deeper meaning and clarity beyond scientific inquiry is a spiritual longing. These philosophers are trying to describe ways in which human beings fit in the world, how we can deal with the groundlessness of our existence, what choices we have in light of the anguish that comes from our mortality. The problem is that many people view this as a competition against science or "exact" thinking. It is not. I think this quote from Leo Strauss sums up my point: "Men are constantly attracted and deluded by two opposite charms: the charm of competence which is engendered by mathematics and everything akin to mathematics, and the charm of humble awe, which is engendered by meditation on the human soul and its experiences. Philosophy is characterized by the gentle, if firm, refusal to succumb to either charm. It is the highest form of the mating of courage and moderation. In spite of its highness or nobility, it could appear as Sisyphean or ugly, when one contrasts its achievement with its goal. Yet it is necessarily accompanied, sustained and elevated by eros. It is graced by nature's grace."
    - lutusp 14y ago
      > But this is similar to saying what is real is what corresponds to reality. Do you see the circularity here? The circularity is in your wording, not in the thing itself. A scientist has an idea, one expressed clearly enough that two or more similarly trained individuals can understand the claim. The idea is tested against reality, in a way (again) that similarly equipped observers can agree that the result means what it seems to mean. The outcome is either that the original idea is supported by, or falsified by, the comparison to reality. And the distinction between the idea, and its test against reality, is nowhere confused -- not among scientists, anyway. > The philosophers who engage in questioning the "real" are not doing it for the reasons scientists engage in discovering "correct" phenomena. That's for sure -- philosophers much prefer arguing about the meaning of reality, to dealing with reality on its own terms. Many modern philosophers, following this trend, slide into deconstructive postmodernism without ever realizing that they've crossed the threshold of absurdity (by posing the argument that all experience is subjective and there is no objective reality as scientists claim, but without realizing that their argument justly applies first to the words they've just uttered).
fatbird 14y ago
No philosopher worth her salt would try to answer this question as formed because of the large number of buried assumptions in it that presuppose the form of the correct answer, and that answers not meeting that form are, by definition, incorrect. Your question is a sophisticated version of "have you stopped beating your wife?"
- sold 14y ago
  Let's look at this question: What "truth" has mathematics itself produced from that search which is well-defined, non-trivial, and correct? Is it a loaded question? I think it isn't, and it has a lot of valid answers. Here are some recent ones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_mathematics#Problems_solved_recently http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_ma.... Why the corresponding question for philosophers should be loaded? Are they exempt from settling things?
  - fatbird 14y ago
    First, Goedl's Incompleteness Theorem comes out of philosophy through the early 20th century's focus on logic and positivism. I'm sure you consider that well-defined, non-trivial, and correct. Second, there is no requirement for philosophers to "settle things", and it's undemonstrated that, in order to settle things, the answer must be well-defined, non-trivial, and correct. One example of that is Wittgenstein's dismissal of a significant number of previous philosophical problems as empty language games. The field advances; it doesn't "settle things" in the sense that mathematics lays down proofs upon which the edifice later builds. Sometimes the advance is dismissing large portions of what went before as mistaken.
    - sold 14y ago
      I don't consider Godel's theorem to be philosophy. Its status is similar to Cantor's theorem stating that reals are uncountable. Surely is inspired by philosophy and has philosophical consequences, but it is a part of mathematics. Trivia: Godel used the Chinese remainder theorem in his proof http://mathoverflow.net/questions/19857/has-decidability-got-something-to-do-with-primes http://mathoverflow.net/questions/19857/has-decidability-got.... I acknowledge that philosophy can be inspiration for mathematics, but this is rather unsatiating, as very many things can be. In the meantime, I found a very good defense of philosophy here: http://www.ditext.com/russell/rus15.html http://www.ditext.com/russell/rus15.html
kitbrennan 14y ago
Looking for philosophical truths that are well-defined and correct is a bad starting point. If something can be described of as correct or incorrect, then there would not be much of a philosophical discussion since you would be able to find the answer. Philosophy is looking to ask the deeper questions: the questions that do not have a yes/no answer, and cannot be well defined (or to put it more accurately: truths that can be well defined, but in so many different ways that it is difficult to choose one definition). However, just because these questions do not have yes/no answers and are not well-defined, does not make them trivial! A great example of where philosophy affects your life daily is political philosophy. Ask yourself if you are liberal, conservative or something else? None of these schools of thought can be described as 'right' or 'wrong'. They are all different ways of looking at the question of how a society should function. Yet discussing this question is incredibly important, and the discussions that political philosophers have trickle down into your mainstream politics (a fantastic recent example that we are all aware of is the Tea Party Movement, which itself is saying that we should use the philosophy of hardline conservatism). Political parties did not just sprout out of nowhere: they involved people having incredibly thoughtful discussions. You may be saying that although some philosophy affects your life (eg. politics), other stuff just seems to be pointless. For example, you might argue that discussing the meaning of 'right or wrong' is pointless and that we should just get on with life. However, the way that we treat someone that has done a 'wrong' will depend on our political system (for example, you may follow a school of thought that says we should place rehabilitation before punishment, or vice versa), and therefore to ask how our political system should treat these people that has done a 'wrong', we should ask what it means to say that something is 'wrong' in the first place (eg. if you do not intend an outcome, have you done a wrong?), or what it means to place 'blame' on someone (eg. does blame mean that we do not approve of their action, or that they should not approve of their own action?). These are not just abstract thoughts, but practical considerations that filter through to the very political system that you live in. If you would like some other examples of philosophy affecting your day to day life, then I would recommend looking up these topics: * Medical ethics: when does life start (conception? a heart beat? birth?)? Is it right to take the life of a featus after life has started? What about when rape is involved? What about when the mother is at risk of death if a pregnancy is to go ahead? * What is a person? Should we follow someones directives after a personality change (what change would a person need to make before they invalidate their own do not resuscitate order)? If a person has changed, are their contracts or will still valid? * What does it mean to say we are free? Is freedom something we should strive to achieve? Is freedom a human right? Is privacy something we should strive to achieve? Is privacy a human right? What about where these rights conflict? * What is law? When do we say something has lawful authority? Does law need to be moral? Does law need to be fair? Is it ok to follow the law, even if we think it will do something that is morally wrong? I'm happy to give more examples, or to go into more detail about why these questions are important. NOTE: I studied law at university and decided to take a module on moral philosophy and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Philosophy is about having discussions on difficult questions and gives you the skills to do so; this has affected everything I have done since. Once you start asking philosophical questions, they will start popping up in everything you do. I regularly find myself asking questions about nature and philosophy when coding just because I can see how it can trickle down to have a tangible impact on what I'm creating. If there is one thing I would urge you to do this christmas holiday, it would be to read a philosophy book (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a great place to start), it might just change your life.

>[Philosophy's real purpose] is to constantly search for deeper underlying truth. What "truth" has philosophy itself produced from that search which is well-defined, non-trivial, and correct?

mburney 14y ago

Many philosophers have questioned the scientific definition of "correctness". For example Heidegger who argued that scientific truth is an approximation and measurement of things that we already presume to exist. These discoveries may be correct, and they may be true. But what about the more primordial truth (i.e. being) which we take for granted before we even begin a scientific inquiry? This is what he investigates, so pretty much all scientific definitions of correctness don't apply here. But it is very hard to convince followers of scientism that this investigation has any meaning, because they've already closed their minds to this form of thinking.

mikeash 14y ago
Maybe they'd be more open to these ideas if you didn't refer to them as "followers of scientism".
dean 14y ago
"These discoveries may be correct, and they may be true." This is the problem with Philosophy. You can take something correct and true, and disregard it. Worse, it is disregarded in favor of what is essentially an opinion.
lutusp 14y ago
> Many philosophers have questioned the scientific definition of "correctness". This concisely and aptly summarizes the reason for philosophy's low standing among intellectual disciplines. Philosophers are manifestly unqualified to debate the scientific definition of anything, much less "correctness". Beyond this, a suitable definition is too short to be of interest to a philosopher, someone for whom the number of words uttered is always ranked higher than the intellectual content of each word taken separately. A scientific idea is "correct" if it can be successfully compared to reality. How hard is that? I hasten to add that no scientific idea ever becomes true for all time -- all such ideas are subject to falsification by new evidence, by new comparisons to reality. > But it is very hard to convince followers of scientism... Ah, yes, the "science is just another religion" gambit. It speaks volumes about the depth of modern philosophical thought. Philosophers compare their ideas to those of other philosophers. Scientists compare their ideas to reality.
- mburney 14y ago
  > A scientific idea is "correct" if it can be successfully compared to reality. But this is similar to saying what is real is what corresponds to reality. Do you see the circularity here? The philosophers who engage in questioning the "real" are not doing it for the reasons scientists engage in discovering "correct" phenomena. The longing for a deeper meaning and clarity beyond scientific inquiry is a spiritual longing. These philosophers are trying to describe ways in which human beings fit in the world, how we can deal with the groundlessness of our existence, what choices we have in light of the anguish that comes from our mortality. The problem is that many people view this as a competition against science or "exact" thinking. It is not. I think this quote from Leo Strauss sums up my point: "Men are constantly attracted and deluded by two opposite charms: the charm of competence which is engendered by mathematics and everything akin to mathematics, and the charm of humble awe, which is engendered by meditation on the human soul and its experiences. Philosophy is characterized by the gentle, if firm, refusal to succumb to either charm. It is the highest form of the mating of courage and moderation. In spite of its highness or nobility, it could appear as Sisyphean or ugly, when one contrasts its achievement with its goal. Yet it is necessarily accompanied, sustained and elevated by eros. It is graced by nature's grace."
  - lutusp 14y ago
    > But this is similar to saying what is real is what corresponds to reality. Do you see the circularity here? The circularity is in your wording, not in the thing itself. A scientist has an idea, one expressed clearly enough that two or more similarly trained individuals can understand the claim. The idea is tested against reality, in a way (again) that similarly equipped observers can agree that the result means what it seems to mean. The outcome is either that the original idea is supported by, or falsified by, the comparison to reality. And the distinction between the idea, and its test against reality, is nowhere confused -- not among scientists, anyway. > The philosophers who engage in questioning the "real" are not doing it for the reasons scientists engage in discovering "correct" phenomena. That's for sure -- philosophers much prefer arguing about the meaning of reality, to dealing with reality on its own terms. Many modern philosophers, following this trend, slide into deconstructive postmodernism without ever realizing that they've crossed the threshold of absurdity (by posing the argument that all experience is subjective and there is no objective reality as scientists claim, but without realizing that their argument justly applies first to the words they've just uttered).

fatbird 14y ago

No philosopher worth her salt would try to answer this question as formed because of the large number of buried assumptions in it that presuppose the form of the correct answer, and that answers not meeting that form are, by definition, incorrect. Your question is a sophisticated version of "have you stopped beating your wife?"

sold 14y ago
Let's look at this question: What "truth" has mathematics itself produced from that search which is well-defined, non-trivial, and correct? Is it a loaded question? I think it isn't, and it has a lot of valid answers. Here are some recent ones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_mathematics#Problems_solved_recently http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_ma.... Why the corresponding question for philosophers should be loaded? Are they exempt from settling things?
- fatbird 14y ago
  First, Goedl's Incompleteness Theorem comes out of philosophy through the early 20th century's focus on logic and positivism. I'm sure you consider that well-defined, non-trivial, and correct. Second, there is no requirement for philosophers to "settle things", and it's undemonstrated that, in order to settle things, the answer must be well-defined, non-trivial, and correct. One example of that is Wittgenstein's dismissal of a significant number of previous philosophical problems as empty language games. The field advances; it doesn't "settle things" in the sense that mathematics lays down proofs upon which the edifice later builds. Sometimes the advance is dismissing large portions of what went before as mistaken.
  - sold 14y ago
    I don't consider Godel's theorem to be philosophy. Its status is similar to Cantor's theorem stating that reals are uncountable. Surely is inspired by philosophy and has philosophical consequences, but it is a part of mathematics. Trivia: Godel used the Chinese remainder theorem in his proof http://mathoverflow.net/questions/19857/has-decidability-got-something-to-do-with-primes http://mathoverflow.net/questions/19857/has-decidability-got.... I acknowledge that philosophy can be inspiration for mathematics, but this is rather unsatiating, as very many things can be. In the meantime, I found a very good defense of philosophy here: http://www.ditext.com/russell/rus15.html http://www.ditext.com/russell/rus15.html

kitbrennan 14y ago

Looking for philosophical truths that are well-defined and correct is a bad starting point. If something can be described of as correct or incorrect, then there would not be much of a philosophical discussion since you would be able to find the answer. Philosophy is looking to ask the deeper questions: the questions that do not have a yes/no answer, and cannot be well defined (or to put it more accurately: truths that can be well defined, but in so many different ways that it is difficult to choose one definition). However, just because these questions do not have yes/no answers and are not well-defined, does not make them trivial! A great example of where philosophy affects your life daily is political philosophy. Ask yourself if you are liberal, conservative or something else? None of these schools of thought can be described as 'right' or 'wrong'. They are all different ways of looking at the question of how a society should function. Yet discussing this question is incredibly important, and the discussions that political philosophers have trickle down into your mainstream politics (a fantastic recent example that we are all aware of is the Tea Party Movement, which itself is saying that we should use the philosophy of hardline conservatism). Political parties did not just sprout out of nowhere: they involved people having incredibly thoughtful discussions. You may be saying that although some philosophy affects your life (eg. politics), other stuff just seems to be pointless. For example, you might argue that discussing the meaning of 'right or wrong' is pointless and that we should just get on with life. However, the way that we treat someone that has done a 'wrong' will depend on our political system (for example, you may follow a school of thought that says we should place rehabilitation before punishment, or vice versa), and therefore to ask how our political system should treat these people that has done a 'wrong', we should ask what it means to say that something is 'wrong' in the first place (eg. if you do not intend an outcome, have you done a wrong?), or what it means to place 'blame' on someone (eg. does blame mean that we do not approve of their action, or that they should not approve of their own action?). These are not just abstract thoughts, but practical considerations that filter through to the very political system that you live in. If you would like some other examples of philosophy affecting your day to day life, then I would recommend looking up these topics: * Medical ethics: when does life start (conception? a heart beat? birth?)? Is it right to take the life of a featus after life has started? What about when rape is involved? What about when the mother is at risk of death if a pregnancy is to go ahead? * What is a person? Should we follow someones directives after a personality change (what change would a person need to make before they invalidate their own do not resuscitate order)? If a person has changed, are their contracts or will still valid? * What does it mean to say we are free? Is freedom something we should strive to achieve? Is freedom a human right? Is privacy something we should strive to achieve? Is privacy a human right? What about where these rights conflict? * What is law? When do we say something has lawful authority? Does law need to be moral? Does law need to be fair? Is it ok to follow the law, even if we think it will do something that is morally wrong? I'm happy to give more examples, or to go into more detail about why these questions are important. NOTE: I studied law at university and decided to take a module on moral philosophy and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Philosophy is about having discussions on difficult questions and gives you the skills to do so; this has affected everything I have done since. Once you start asking philosophical questions, they will start popping up in everything you do. I regularly find myself asking questions about nature and philosophy when coding just because I can see how it can trickle down to have a tangible impact on what I'm creating. If there is one thing I would urge you to do this christmas holiday, it would be to read a philosophy book (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a great place to start), it might just change your life.