Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking
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Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking
#2I wonder if this an attempt to validate philosophy as a science in itself now that other sciences have invalidated many philosophical positions as being valid. My primary feeling about most philosophy is that it is a historical science instead of a systematic science, where the ideas of a certain philosopher are placed in the context of history. It also seems to me that the philosophers are more important than their ideas and that when a philosopher changes his ideas, they talk about the early and late.
Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking
#3[deleted]
Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking
#4I wonder if this an attempt to validate philosophy as a science in itself now that other sciences have invalidated many philosophical positions as being valid. My primary feeling about most philosophy is that it is a historical science instead of a systematic science, where the ideas of a certain philosopher are placed in the context of history. It also seems to me that the philosophers are more important than their…
There is an old joke that goes like this:
It is well know that the Math department is the second cheapest department at a university. The people there only need a pencil, paper, and rubbish bin.
But which is the cheapest department?
The Philosophy department. There you don't need the bin.
Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking
#5I wonder if this an attempt to validate philosophy as a science in itself now that other sciences have invalidated many philosophical positions as being valid. My primary feeling about most philosophy is that it is a historical science instead of a systematic science, where the ideas of a certain philosopher are placed in the context of history. It also seems to me that the philosophers are more important than their…
I'm not sure how much philosophy and science can ever be connected. There is surely little biological basis for systems of ethics or epistemology. Abandoning that, we're left to wonder if they can apply to social systems in the aggregate.
There we find a wide variety of social systems in partial or complete disagreement on what constitutes ethics. In some systems murder is a sin; in others it is tolerated or necessary. Fidelity is variously required or shunned. Simpler things like truthful speaking are all over the map.
Even epistemology is in doubt. Secular science types love provable measurements and consistent theories. Others embrace inspiration, devine communication, even mushroom-induced hallucination as true sources.
So where does science impact philosophy? Perhaps as a tool for describing philosophies, like describing species of animal. That doesn't make philosophy a science, but a subject of scientific study.
Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking
#6I wonder if this an attempt to validate philosophy as a science in itself now that other sciences have invalidated many philosophical positions as being valid. My primary feeling about most philosophy is that it is a historical science instead of a systematic science, where the ideas of a certain philosopher are placed in the context of history. It also seems to me that the philosophers are more important than their…
The article isn't trying to "validate philosophy as a science".
To some degree science relies on certain philosophical assumptions to be viable and philosophy aims to make those assumptions explicit and to allow one to understand the choices one has made in accepting them.
I agree that certain philosophical positions have been encroached upon by science but that is not a process that can continue indefinitely. The realm of enquiry that science can operate on is by neccesity smaller than that which philosophy can act upon.
Many people are going to respond to the above by saying "If your statements aren't empirical and/or falsifiable then they are meaningless - therefore philosophy outside of the natural sciences is meaningless".
If that's your response then congratulations. You've just done some philosophy. Now take a step back and examine the assumptions that brought you here.
Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking
#7I wonder if this an attempt to validate philosophy as a science in itself now that other sciences have invalidated many philosophical positions as being valid. My primary feeling about most philosophy is that it is a historical science instead of a systematic science, where the ideas of a certain philosopher are placed in the context of history. It also seems to me that the philosophers are more important than their…
There is an old joke that goes like this: It is well know that the Math department is the second cheapest department at a university. The people there only need a pencil, paper, and rubbish bin. But which is the cheapest department? The Philosophy department. There you don't need the bin.
I've heard the same joke but as "pencils and erasers". That works well too.
Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking
#8In the Phaedrus, it was predicted that writing and reading in general (let alone specific examples such as pseudophilosophy) would eventually encourage confused, self-indulgent thinking.
> You offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.
Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking
#9I wonder if this an attempt to validate philosophy as a science in itself now that other sciences have invalidated many philosophical positions as being valid. My primary feeling about most philosophy is that it is a historical science instead of a systematic science, where the ideas of a certain philosopher are placed in the context of history. It also seems to me that the philosophers are more important than their…
My experience is exactly the opposite. My undergraduate philosophy degree had exactly one history class. Names of philosophers were important mostly to label ideas.
I'm not sure what you're talking about with respect to philosophical positions invalidated by science. I can't think of any myself.
Re: Pseudophilosophy encourages confused, self-indulgent thinking
#10This sort of thing is always by turns boring and frustrating to read, because there are good and interesting philosophical criticisms to be made of Foucault's epistemology, but the idea that for him facticity itself is questionable isn't one of them. Foucault is never really in doubt about what constitutes, e.g., an event, occurrence, or fact - actually his entire corpus very self-consciously relies on having a common set of texts that we agree constitute accounts of what happened in a given field of inquiry in a given time period. Foucault's epistemology strongly requires and insists on the objectivity of the archive. He wouldn't be able to make authoritative claims about the historical importance of Kantian representation, or Bentham's pantopticon, if he didn't think the archive of philosophical and scientific writings had some objective merit that wasn't in question. He's emphatically not the moral relativist he's made out to be by low-hanging fruit conservatism like this. What he - and a lot of his colleagues in France at the time - wanted to know was whether the system of interpretations that has accrued around this archive has gotten to the bottom of what our 19th century forebears were really up to when they were, for instance, busy examining the shapes of skulls to determine personality traits.