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Is Philosophy an Art?

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Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#41

Post by namero999 »

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…

There are plenty of ways to refute the validity of a philosophical stance: internal logical consistency, conceptual parsimony, empirical adequacy...

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#42

Post by neonological »

Thursday24 wrote: post #34
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. 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, sci…

Effort. You can create a field called the “philosophy of this rock sitting on my lawn.” And this field would fit your definition of philosophy. But there is a clear hierarchy here that is not being obeyed.

Religion from certain perspectives is just made up stories. Should these made up stories be made into a field of study that is a sibling branch of science? Call it the study of religion or made up stories, no point in calling it a philosophy and giving it the same weight as science.

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#43

Post by 13415 »

Personally, I do "formal philosophy" at least to some extent/in some papers, i.e., lots of logic, decision theory, a bit of applied mathematics. This kind of analytic philosophy superficially looks like science, at least to people who don't know much about the STEM fields. However, in my opinion it is clearly not science.

IMHO, it's best to take philosophy as a discipline on its own. If I am pressed to decide between art and science, I'd call it an art, if not to annoy those people who erroneously believe that philosophy is a science. I personally find it hard to accept any discipline that does not follow the scientific method a science. Many other parts of the humanities in my opinion do not really qualify as science either. Or, perhaps they could be called "soft sciences" or "intellectual studies."

However, philosophy is in the same boat as mathematics in this respect, which is also traditionally not considered a science but rather a discipline of its own, pursued for its own sake and with its own evaluation criteria. Few would call mathematics an art, though, or would they? I'm not sure.

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#44

Post by namero999 »

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…

Random speculations? Certain philosophies at least survived the test of time (we are talking about millennia) while we still have to see a scientific theory survive a handful of centuries...

Of course I'm pushing back with my statement, but really claiming philosophy is "random speculations" sounds really uninformed and naive.

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#45

Post by neonological »

routerl wrote: post #35
neonological wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 theoretica…

The problem here is you have the philosophy of animism sitting side by side with metaphysics as if there’s some meta category that encapsulates the two.

Yeah I can meta the entire universe together if I wanted to. What’s the set of all things that can be talked about? Metaphysics and the Milesian school of thought are both elements in that set. There’s no point in this categorization however compelling you find the arguments within their respective fields.

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#46

Post by [deleted] »

routerl wrote: post #16
staticman2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt that they are breaching legal boundries. Doctors only have a monopoly on formal medical advise- they do not have a monopoly on "telling people how to live". Nobody thinks their local preacher or philosopher is giving formal medical advise- so there is unlikely to be any liability at all outside of gratuitously bad behavior like telling people to drink bleach.

There are mental health doctors as well.

[deleted]

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#47

Post by routerl »

13415 wrote: post #43

Personally, I do "formal philosophy" at least to some extent/in some papers, i.e., lots of logic, decision theory, a bit of applied mathematics. This kind of analytic philosophy superficially looks like science, at least to people who don't know much about the STEM fields. However, in my opinion it is clearly not science. IMHO, it's best to take philosophy as a discipline on its own. If I am pressed to decide between…

> Few would call mathematics an art, though, or would they? I'm not sure.

Many would, precisely because it is not empirical, as indicated by the fact that mathematics departments are often in Arts faculties.

As Sir Michael Atiyah put it: "The art in good mathematics, and mathematics is an art, is to identify and tackle problems that are both interesting and solvable."

Mathematicians will often wax philosophical when speaking about mathematical beauty and elegance, which is widely considered to be a central pursuit of mathematics, second only to correctness.

The problem here is that too many people are trying to use the word "science" to mean "the only thing that produces knowledge", in which case "mathematics is not a science, but does produce knowledge" is a heretical statement, even though a sizable portion of mathematicians would agree with it.

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#48

Post by [deleted] »

namero999 wrote: post #44
neonological wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Random speculations? Certain philosophies at least survived the test of time (we are talking about millennia) while we still have to see a scientific theory survive a handful of centuries... Of course I'm pushing back with my statement, but really claiming philosophy is "random speculations" sounds really uninformed and naive.

[deleted]

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#49

Post by Thursday24 »

neonological wrote: post #42
Thursday24 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, sci…

Effort. You can create a field called the “philosophy of this rock sitting on my lawn.” And this field would fit your definition of philosophy. But there is a clear hierarchy here that is not being obeyed. Religion from certain perspectives is just made up stories. Should these made up stories be made into a field of study that is a sibling branch of science? Call it the study of religion or made up stories, no point…

Consider Newton. He pursued physical theories, alchemy and theological studies with similar amount scholarship and zest. His physical theories obtained popularity due to its utility. And his theological and alchemical studies didn't give the world any material benefits and so the world calls those areas of his output "random speculations". But at the core of all these three attempts is a probing, speculative mind. That is my definition of philosophy, that there is an intensely curious mind, which will pour forth effort in understanding the world (including oneself). Newton's subject area was called "Natural Philosophy" for nothing. There are less "successful" philosophers and streams of philosophy, of course.

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#50

Post by neonological »

namero999 wrote: post #38
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 b…

Science is not the ultimate arbiter. There is no arbiter, foundational science rests on axiomatic assumptions and even with these assumptions in place it is not possible to prove a any statement to be true within the framework of science. Disproof is even technically not possible due to limited accuracy of our observational tools.

You have a limited fuzzy understanding of science and I believe it is interfering with how you interpret the fusion of philosophy and science how it generates category errors.

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