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Is Philosophy an Art?

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Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#31

Post by neonological »

ThomPete wrote: post #26
neonological wrote: post #23

Philosophy can be thought of as a field of study akin to psuedo science. Think about it. There is a philosophy of aesthetics and religion along with a philosophy of science and logic. Science and logic attempt to describe something central to the universe while religion and aesthetics are central to only the human experience. To place the two in the same box is a huge category error akin trying to scientifically deri…

Philosophy when done right, teaches you how to think and that gives you and advantage that other fields don't.

Sure but teaching you how to think doesn’t address the category error I’m describing here.

A lot of religious people ascribe to a religion because some aspect of that religion helped the in some way. Does this make all aspects of the religion the absolute truth? People following this flawed wisdom end up supporting creationism as the one and only truth. Are people doing the same thing with philosophy?

Sure you can learn logic from a philosophy class, but that logic cannot in turn explain why “aesthetics”, “religion” and “ethics” is a sibling philosophical field of study to “science”.

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#32

Post by neonological »

Thursday24 wrote: post #30
neonological wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can my judgement seem harsh when you basically said the same thing I said? Philosophy is artistic pseudo scientific speculations and we are both in 100% agreement here. Can such speculations lead to real science? Sure. Does this continue to make the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of science being placed in the same “philosophy” bucket a category error? Yes. You can still speculate on science within sci…

Pseudo refers to pretensions/shams. Philosophy need not pretend to be science, it can openly speculate, without the rigors of the scientific method. In science, a hypothesis can be made, but that has very many parameters restricting what can be said through it.

I believe it is a bit pretentious. The word philosophy lends extra weight to what is otherwise random speculations. Many philosophers in fact claim that science is a just sub field of philosophy and that philosophy is “above” it.

I highly disagree with this.

A statement made on the basis of logic or science has more weight then any sort of random speculation made in “aesthetics” yet philosophy places them on equal grounds. There is a clear error in hierarchy here similar to the phylum based nomenclature in biology.

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#33

Post by mac_was »

qsort wrote: post #27
camjohnson26 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add some nuance, the boundary between science and philosophy is always changing as we get more information about how the world works. Philosophical truths help us make better decisions about the future. DNA and quantum mechanics are 2 areas where the boundary between philosophy and science has shifted over time. All the modern talk about multiverses, universe simulations, and AGI seem philosophical, but might beco…

At the cost of being extremely annoying for the second time today, what does "a truth we can't empirically prove" look like? > All the modern talk about multiverses, universe simulations, and AGI None of the things you mention are "philosophical truths". The first is one of many interpretations of QM, the second is a meme, the third is a vague, unclear teleological goal of computer science. I'm not objecting to the f…

Wasn't the black hole a truth you can't prove for a pretty long time? Scientists 'believed' that they are true and tried to prove their existence. See: https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/who-really-discovered-bla...

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#34

Post by Thursday24 »

Thursday24 wrote: post #30
neonological wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can my judgement seem harsh when you basically said the same thing I said? Philosophy is artistic pseudo scientific speculations and we are both in 100% agreement here. Can such speculations lead to real science? Sure. Does this continue to make the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of science being placed in the same “philosophy” bucket a category error? Yes. You can still speculate on science within sci…

Pseudo refers to pretensions/shams. Philosophy need not pretend to be science, it can openly speculate, without the rigors of the scientific method. In science, a hypothesis can be made, but that has very many parameters restricting what can be said through it.

> I believe it is a bit pretentious. The word philosophy lends extra weight to what is otherwise random speculations. Many philosophers in fact claim that science is a just sub field of philosophy and that philosophy is “above” it.

It can be above, below, side-by-side, wherever. Or nowhere. Or maybe impossible to say. Whatever the relation is, where is the possibility of pretension here? Philosophers make claims, scientists make claims too. But that is the characteristic of the practitioners, not the field of study.

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#35

Post by routerl »

neonological wrote: post #32
Thursday24 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pseudo refers to pretensions/shams. Philosophy need not pretend to be science, it can openly speculate, without the rigors of the scientific method. In science, a hypothesis can be made, but that has very many parameters restricting what can be said through it.

I believe it is a bit pretentious. The word philosophy lends extra weight to what is otherwise random speculations. Many philosophers in fact claim that science is a just sub field of philosophy and that philosophy is “above” it. I highly disagree with this. A statement made on the basis of logic or science has more weight then any sort of random speculation made in “aesthetics” yet philosophy places them on equal gr…

> Many philosophers in fact claim that science is a just sub field of philosophy and that philosophy is “above” it.

You've really totally misunderstood what they were describing. Metaphysics is "above" physics because it is about what the word "physics" even means. For example, Newton's first big intellectual accomplishment was to have a strongly opinionated metaphysics which supported his experimental and theoretical approach.

In the contemporary world, proper metaphysics (as described above) is mostly done by physicists themselves, occasionally in cooperation with philosophers. See [1] for a fairly recent example. Similarly, proper metamathematics is most often done by mathematicians, with occasional contributions from philosophers, e.g. [2].

Any time a physicist is writing about the fundamental methodology of the discipline, or about a topic that is not, for now, empirically testable, he is doing metaphysics, often with a hefty dose of mathematics.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singular_Universe_and_the_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_and_Refutations#Impact_...

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#36

Post by dschuessler »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #6
idoubtit wrote: post #3

I think of philosophy of the art of words and ideas, just like literature is generally the art of words and stories. But, for historical reasons, many people and most philosophers claim philosophy is much more than this. Spinoza was convinced he was "engaged in the pursuit of truth", as the article writes, and he probably thought he had built a logical proof of the existence of god. But his concepts are fuzzy, so his…

Wouldn’t that imply that no philosophy is true? I think of it as the search for truths that we can’t empirically prove, contrasted to science and math which are purely logical. But math and science have their bases in philosophy through universal laws and propositions, which are unprovable but necessary. Art is more concerned with human experience and seems like a different thing.

> Wouldn’t that imply that no philosophy is true?

I am a strong proponent of distinguishing „truth“ from „certainty“. That is to say, a theory (philosophical or not) might be true in the sense that it corresponds to the things it says something about. But since all human beings are fallible we can never be certain not to have made mistakes. So a philosophy can be true. But we can not be certain about it. EDIT: If OP writes that "there is no way to refute or evaluate philosophy" they might imply that no philosophy is true. Yet I would only agree that no philosophy is certain.

> I think of it as the search for truths that we can’t empirically prove, contrasted to science and math which are purely logical.

What (empirical) scientists usually mean when they call a theory or hypothesis „empirically proven“ is that there is evidence that meets some arbitrary criterion of strength. What mathematicians usually mean when they call a theorem proven is that it can be logically deduced from a set of axioms. So not only is the word "proof" used very differently in (empirical) science and mathematics, the way to obtain such proofs is usually very different as well. To lump these procedures together under the term "purely logical" seems to me to mix up important differences.

> But math and science have their bases in philosophy through universal laws and propositions, which are unprovable but necessary.

Neither the laws and propositions in math nor in the (empirical) sciences are necessary in the sense that practitioners are forced to assume them. Nothing prevents anyone from assuming something else whenever they wish to and important discoveries have been made that way (e.g. non-euclidean geometry, theory of relativity). Maybe you refer to some other kind of necessity though.

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#37

Post by neonological »

dschuessler wrote: post #29
neonological wrote: post #23

Philosophy can be thought of as a field of study akin to psuedo science. Think about it. There is a philosophy of aesthetics and religion along with a philosophy of science and logic. Science and logic attempt to describe something central to the universe while religion and aesthetics are central to only the human experience. To place the two in the same box is a huge category error akin trying to scientifically deri…

> Science and logic attempt to describe something central to the universe while religion and aesthetics are central to only the human experience. To place the two in the same box is a huge category error akin trying to scientifically derive creationism. I do not see in what respect this might be a category error. The „box“ all these things are put into is the box of things we can ask questions of the form „What do we…

Classic. Every philosopher responds with “your argument is philosophy, it’s ironic.”

Sure if you classify all deep thought as philosophy then any argument against philosophy that is deep is in itself philosophy. It’s just meta games with words no point in bringing it up.

Your argument basically says philosophy is an umbrella term for everything in existence. There’s no point for such a term that asks “what do we mean when we talk about x”. In fact such a term already exists without the pretentiousness. It’s called “definition” you can look up the definition of science and religion on Wikipedia. Does that make Wikipedia a philosophy web site?

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#38

Post by namero999 »

neonological wrote: post #23

Philosophy can be thought of as a field of study akin to psuedo science. Think about it. There is a philosophy of aesthetics and religion along with a philosophy of science and logic. Science and logic attempt to describe something central to the universe while religion and aesthetics are central to only the human experience. To place the two in the same box is a huge category error akin trying to scientifically deri…

Science and philosophy are complementary to each other, but it would be a mistake to take science as the ultimate arbiter of what reality is. That is not science business, that is exactly philosophy business. Science is the practice of finding theories which can predict the patterns of blinking lights and ticking sounds of our sensors and instruments. In other words, it describes the behavior of the universe, while being agnostic on its nature. Philosophy on the other hand is concerned with what the universe intimately is.

They are complementary because they inform each other and philosophy must stay coherent with empirical findings, but we also do science driven by certain assumptions which come from philosophy (materialism is a world-view, aka a philosophy).

Science and philosophy have very different validity constraints, for instance, while science should be predictive, philosophy only needs to be internally consistent and parsimonious.

They are the sides of the same coin, the what and the how.

I think it's ludicrous to think that evolved monkeys will "figure out reality". No, the best we can do is to create for ourselves a coherent, empirically verified, integral and parsimonious world-view, and we will call that reality. This will come from philosophy, it will be informed by science sure, but those very scientists will be doing philosophy when interpreting their behavioral findings.

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#39

Post by qsort »

mac_was wrote: post #33
qsort wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the cost of being extremely annoying for the second time today, what does "a truth we can't empirically prove" look like? > All the modern talk about multiverses, universe simulations, and AGI None of the things you mention are "philosophical truths". The first is one of many interpretations of QM, the second is a meme, the third is a vague, unclear teleological goal of computer science. I'm not objecting to the f…

Wasn't the black hole a truth you can't prove for a pretty long time? Scientists 'believed' that they are true and tried to prove their existence. See: https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/who-really-discovered-bla...

There's a difference between making a definite claim and pointing out that Newton's model allows the existence of such an object. I'm not going into "quid est veritas?" type of discussions because it's a bottomless pit that leads nowhere, but it seems to me like "black holes could exist" is a statement much like "an artificial general intelligence could exist". It's not ruled out by the model, but a-priori we have no idea.

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#40

Post by batavian »

qsort wrote: post #27
camjohnson26 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add some nuance, the boundary between science and philosophy is always changing as we get more information about how the world works. Philosophical truths help us make better decisions about the future. DNA and quantum mechanics are 2 areas where the boundary between philosophy and science has shifted over time. All the modern talk about multiverses, universe simulations, and AGI seem philosophical, but might beco…

At the cost of being extremely annoying for the second time today, what does "a truth we can't empirically prove" look like? > All the modern talk about multiverses, universe simulations, and AGI None of the things you mention are "philosophical truths". The first is one of many interpretations of QM, the second is a meme, the third is a vague, unclear teleological goal of computer science. I'm not objecting to the f…

> what does "a truth we can't empirically prove" look like?

Law of causation, Doomsday argument, complex processes that can't be recreated, historical processes which leave faint empirical markers, etc.

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