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Philosophy as a public service

nautil.us

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Re: Philosophy as a public service

#71

Post by xamuel »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #61
xamuel wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what happened in the 2nd half of your post, it kind of went off the rails. But the in the 1st half, you're basically getting at the ordinal numbers. Now just drop the "philosophy" from it (which is just a placeholder, since you could replace it with anything else whatsoever and still get the same chains) and focus on the underlying structure---infinite chains of infinite chains, etc.---and you're actually st…

I think philosophical conjectures are ultimately useless. You can talk about abstract concepts all you want but you don't get anywhere unless you have rigor or formalism. This is why philosophy can do things like talk about logic and ethics and science and religion. The post is ultimately a trap. I introduce a bit of a simplistic but semi-mind-bending concept but then when you get to the end you realize my true thoug…

Everything seems useless if you don't understand it. Open a giant page of mathematical number crunching (with integrals and infinite series and everything) and it'll seem totally useless if you don't have the prerequisites for it.

The difference in philosophy is there are no pages full of integrals and infinite series, it's all just words, many of which look familiar to you, so you don't even realize that you don't have the prerequisites for it.

Re: Philosophy as a public service

#72

Post by crimsonalucard »

xamuel wrote: post #71
crimsonalucard wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think philosophical conjectures are ultimately useless. You can talk about abstract concepts all you want but you don't get anywhere unless you have rigor or formalism. This is why philosophy can do things like talk about logic and ethics and science and religion. The post is ultimately a trap. I introduce a bit of a simplistic but semi-mind-bending concept but then when you get to the end you realize my true thoug…

Everything seems useless if you don't understand it. Open a giant page of mathematical number crunching (with integrals and infinite series and everything) and it'll seem totally useless if you don't have the prerequisites for it. The difference in philosophy is there are no pages full of integrals and infinite series, it's all just words, many of which look familiar to you, so you don't even realize that you don't h…

I have the prerequisites. Philosophy is an art and therefore inexact and open to bias. It's more similar to literature than it is to number theory.

I'm not a chemist so if I open an advanced chemistry book, all the symbols are magic. But I do know that there's a hard science and logic behind chemistry and therefore I don't view it the same way I view the humanities. Philosophy is a humanity... an art.

Re: Philosophy as a public service

#73

Post by GauntletWizard »

philwelch wrote: post #49
jcims wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is 'begs the question' is not an intuitive phrase to describe the formal definition, so we're going to be stuck with this correction forever. At this point I feel it has only survived as a form of shibboleth.

You’d think that, but we pedants managed to rescue the word “ironic” at one point.

But you've figuratively lost "literally".

Re: Philosophy as a public service

#75

Post by jeliotj »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #70
claudiawerner wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In no other field that I have studied have people suggested that my first introduction to the field must be a book written decades ago, forget two millennia ago. No other field is philosophy. Philosophy, in some respects, is special - at least according to Socrates as relayed by Plato. As Socrates says, each science (or even activity) has its object, but what of the science which has science as its object? The troub…

> What do you mean by "a better way"? Einstein was the first person to discover relativity, and how he stated those ideas is merely one way of countless different ways of expressing them. People learned what Einstein said, taught it to others and used those ideas in further development of physics. In the process they learned ways of expressing these ideas that are much more conducive to teaching novice physicists, an…

Philosophy is precisely what is needed to question what we mean by progress. I think the interpretation of what Plato meant is an eternally foundational question for one who seeks to know.

Re: Philosophy as a public service

#76

Post by claudiawerner »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #70
claudiawerner wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In no other field that I have studied have people suggested that my first introduction to the field must be a book written decades ago, forget two millennia ago. No other field is philosophy. Philosophy, in some respects, is special - at least according to Socrates as relayed by Plato. As Socrates says, each science (or even activity) has its object, but what of the science which has science as its object? The troub…

> What do you mean by "a better way"? Einstein was the first person to discover relativity, and how he stated those ideas is merely one way of countless different ways of expressing them. People learned what Einstein said, taught it to others and used those ideas in further development of physics. In the process they learned ways of expressing these ideas that are much more conducive to teaching novice physicists, an…

>A field has certain goals, certain questions it tries to answer. In most intellectual fields, newcomers start by learning the best possible answers to those questions found till now

Not so in philosophy. If philosophy has the aim (if one's idea is that science has some goal, or a goal outside of being done for the sake of being done) to create new answers to old questions, or create new questions which require new answers, one must know (1) what questions were previously asked, (2) why the questions do (or don't) have answers, or what the problems and advantages of the answers are, (3) what these answers were in their original form, such that we have the best access to the most complete argument.

Endless rephrasing of texts didn't get us from Newton to Einstein. Even if one accepts that philosophy makes progress (internally), it doesn't in any way imply that one can get away without reading both old (to see what remains uncovered, and there is plenty to this day) and new.

Re: Philosophy as a public service

#77

Post by elfexec »

xenologist wrote: post #50

I believe what the world needs now is philosophy. What we're experiencing is a crisis of meaning. Philosophy is a shield against meaninglessness and conceptual confusion. In an information environment full of overabundant conflicting and clashing signals, we need philosophy to straighten it out and confer order to the perceptual field. The fact that many people don't understand or hold philosophy in contempt is a maj…

> What we're experiencing is a crisis of meaning. Philosophy is a shield against meaninglessness and conceptual confusion.

This is simply not true. What you are describing is religion. Outside of the realm of logic, much of philosophy is a neverending open-ended question.

Philosophy is great because it exercises the brain and teaches you to think rationally and try to see things from as many angles as possible. But it doesn't provide any answers to "is there life after death", "does life have any meaning", "do I have a soul", etc. Philosophy just helps you think about these questions meaningfully and rationally.

Religion provides certainty. Philosophy is more honest and does not.

Re: Philosophy as a public service

#78

Post by shard972 »

elfexec wrote: post #77
xenologist wrote: post #50

I believe what the world needs now is philosophy. What we're experiencing is a crisis of meaning. Philosophy is a shield against meaninglessness and conceptual confusion. In an information environment full of overabundant conflicting and clashing signals, we need philosophy to straighten it out and confer order to the perceptual field. The fact that many people don't understand or hold philosophy in contempt is a maj…

> What we're experiencing is a crisis of meaning. Philosophy is a shield against meaninglessness and conceptual confusion. This is simply not true. What you are describing is religion. Outside of the realm of logic, much of philosophy is a neverending open-ended question. Philosophy is great because it exercises the brain and teaches you to think rationally and try to see things from as many angles as possible. But i…

What basis are you using to declare that question of meaning are confined the realm of religion and that they also are without logic?

Re: Philosophy as a public service

#79

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

xenologist wrote: post #50

I believe what the world needs now is philosophy. What we're experiencing is a crisis of meaning. Philosophy is a shield against meaninglessness and conceptual confusion. In an information environment full of overabundant conflicting and clashing signals, we need philosophy to straighten it out and confer order to the perceptual field. The fact that many people don't understand or hold philosophy in contempt is a maj…

> I believe what the world needs now is philosophy.

That and arsonists. Sheesh, most of our troubles come from applied philosophy - ideas translated into memes that went viral, such as salvation, enlightenment, communism, environmentalism, etc. That's where you get really large scale disturbances of the mob.

Otherwise people would be chewing the cud peacefully, give or take a few bashings of the nearest tribe.

Re: Philosophy as a public service

#80

Post by haecceity »

xenologist wrote: post #50

I believe what the world needs now is philosophy. What we're experiencing is a crisis of meaning. Philosophy is a shield against meaninglessness and conceptual confusion. In an information environment full of overabundant conflicting and clashing signals, we need philosophy to straighten it out and confer order to the perceptual field. The fact that many people don't understand or hold philosophy in contempt is a maj…

Crisis of meaning is so last century. I think there are more pressing crises today.
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