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Is Philosophy an Art?

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Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#71

Post by [deleted] »

Thursday24 wrote: post #65
neonological wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘A probing speculative mind” is the rule for what goes into philosophy? I’m sure that the people who came up with a technical basis for creationism also were probing and quite speculative making creationism a philosophy. Some vague “ a probing speculative mind” is not a good definition for a field of study. It’s way to broad and lacks preciseness.

Philosophy is a PROCESS of enquiry (hopefully "skilled"). It is difficult to compress a long-running & haphazard process into precise definition. You can label the process, talk about various aspects of the process, share examples and so on, but it is perhaps not sensible to define it too precisely. Theories you get at the end of any process of enquiry, whether they are workable or not, are PRODUCTS. Products by thei…

[deleted]

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#72

Post by qsort »

bobthechef wrote: post #64
qsort wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language vs. meta-language. I completely subscribe to parent's point of view: because concepts expressed in natural language are so massively overloaded, it's very hard to make precise statements. When disciplines acquire their own method and formal language, they tend to splinter off philosophy. Think about mathematics, physics, biology, economics...

> Language vs. meta-language. I do not understand what this is supposed to mean or demonstrate. > because concepts expressed in natural language are so massively overloaded, it's very hard to make precise statements. That's why philosophers clarify meanings and ask for clarification for terms when they think are vague. That something is "overloaded" (amphiboly) doesn't mean you can't determine which meaning is used o…

> I do not understand what this is supposed to mean or demonstrate.

Parent said 'Stating "there is no way to refute or evaluate philosophy" while then going on to do the same seems incongruent'. I was just refuting this. It's essentially the same argument as "everything is philosophy" or "everything is politics", technically true but only in a vacuous sense.

> That something is "overloaded" (amphiboly)

I don't mean this. If I say "automorphism", I mean one thing and one thing only, because formal languages allow us to have precise definitions. Natural language doesn't have that. Words like 'truth', 'beauty', 'justice' are vague, imprecise meshes of meaning, so much that making precise statements about them is extremely problematic even conceptually.

> Formalization isn't magic. To formalize something, you have to get to a place where you have a clear enough and correct enough understanding so that you can express it in that language.

I completely agree. One of the major contributions of philosophy is that it attempts to untangle the mess. I have already said that I find this useful and productive. I'm not bashing philosophers, here.

> And in any case, philosophers do employ formalization when they think it useful. It isn't always. Frankly, even mathematicians, practitioners of the most formal of sciences, don't use formal methods to express their _reasoning_ in most cases.

I don't think these two cases are even remotely comparable. Mathematicians certainly do write informally when they write proofs, but that's only a way of communicating the result to another human. Any proof could be, given enough time, be rewritten completely formally, for example in a way that could be checked by a machine. If it can't, then it's wrong.

Formalization employed by philosophers is essentially just a writing device they are using in order to prove a point. The subtext "we could break this down to a deduction tree, but it's too boring to actually do that" that underlies a mathematical proof is completely missing.

Many authors have written literature using mathematical notation. It doesn't make their books math, for the same reason.

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#73

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

bobthechef wrote: post #64
qsort wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language vs. meta-language. I completely subscribe to parent's point of view: because concepts expressed in natural language are so massively overloaded, it's very hard to make precise statements. When disciplines acquire their own method and formal language, they tend to splinter off philosophy. Think about mathematics, physics, biology, economics...

> Language vs. meta-language. I do not understand what this is supposed to mean or demonstrate. > because concepts expressed in natural language are so massively overloaded, it's very hard to make precise statements. That's why philosophers clarify meanings and ask for clarification for terms when they think are vague. That something is "overloaded" (amphiboly) doesn't mean you can't determine which meaning is used o…

The problem isn't that it's possible to un-overload natural language - it's that the overloading is unconscious. In reality there are different meta-languages of relationships and assumptions built into natural language at every level of use and sophistication.

Formalisation will not fix this. It's just as likely to bake the unconscious assumptions into a formal language as to remove them.

Philosophy done well can un-overload those assumptions, but done badly it can also provide rhetorical frameworks for perpetuating assumptions that should really be questioned.

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#74

Post by [deleted] »

routerl wrote: post #70
neonological wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sorry, what are you referring to? Where do these things sit side by side? Animism sits side by side with metaphysics under philosophy. >... When I say meta Without “physics” as a suffix I mean anything from metareligion to metagrassonyourlawn. You can even metameta. I’m saying the legitimacy of talking about metaphysics is different from the legitimacy of say metatoilets. Animism is a philosophy btw. And it’s still…

You're really just arguing against an imagined opponent, at this point. > Animism is a philosophy btw. And it’s still a philosophy to this very day. No it isn't. I'm talking about professional philosophers. > it is a school of thought discussed side by side with the philosophy of science. No it isn't. Not by anyone that matters. > When I say meta Without “physics” as a suffix I mean anything from metareligion to meta…

[deleted]

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#75

Post by neonological »

routerl wrote: post #70
neonological wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sorry, what are you referring to? Where do these things sit side by side? Animism sits side by side with metaphysics under philosophy. >... When I say meta Without “physics” as a suffix I mean anything from metareligion to metagrassonyourlawn. You can even metameta. I’m saying the legitimacy of talking about metaphysics is different from the legitimacy of say metatoilets. Animism is a philosophy btw. And it’s still…

You're really just arguing against an imagined opponent, at this point. > Animism is a philosophy btw. And it’s still a philosophy to this very day. No it isn't. I'm talking about professional philosophers. > it is a school of thought discussed side by side with the philosophy of science. No it isn't. Not by anyone that matters. > When I say meta Without “physics” as a suffix I mean anything from metareligion to meta…

Animism is still discussed under a new pseudonym: Philosophy of religion.

> You're really just arguing against an imagined opponent, at this point.

Nonsensical statement. You're either calling yourself imaginary or your saying you completely agree with me and I'm completely right and therefore I am arguing with no one.

Please try to keep this conversational logical.

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#76

Post by neonological »

Thursday24 wrote: post #65
neonological wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘A probing speculative mind” is the rule for what goes into philosophy? I’m sure that the people who came up with a technical basis for creationism also were probing and quite speculative making creationism a philosophy. Some vague “ a probing speculative mind” is not a good definition for a field of study. It’s way to broad and lacks preciseness.

Philosophy is a PROCESS of enquiry (hopefully "skilled"). It is difficult to compress a long-running & haphazard process into precise definition. You can label the process, talk about various aspects of the process, share examples and so on, but it is perhaps not sensible to define it too precisely. Theories you get at the end of any process of enquiry, whether they are workable or not, are PRODUCTS. Products by thei…

I mean given that "creationsim" is an emerging science it classifies as a process which still fits your definition of philosophy.

Heck anything that is a "process" that involves speculative probing is a philosophy according to that definition.

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#77

Post by dschuessler »

neonological wrote: post #59
dschuessler wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I did not classify all deep thought as philosophy but a very specific subset of thought: answers on questions of the form „What do we mean when we talk about X?“. Reflections on our own concepts if you will. The point of bringing i…

X can be anything on the face of the universe. ‘What do we mean when we talk about all deep thought?” It is not a subset, it’s the set of all things that can be x. It’s really just a huge black hole whenever philosophers act smug and bring this up. Basically by placing “logic” under philosophy all logical arguments against philosophy become contradictory. Just make up a field called religionology and have logic and w…

Even if X could be "anything on the face of the universe“ (which I did not contend) it does not follow that philosophy is concerned with „the set of all things that can be x“ (which you seem to imply). I rather clearly stated that philosophy is instead concerned with the answers to questions of the form „What do we mean when we talk about X?“

Your „religionology“ argument surely has a point. The critic of religionology would have to specifically criticize the worshipping of the cat rather than religionology as a whole. So you as a critic of philosophy would likewise have to target those aspects of philosophy you don’t practice yourself in the very moment you are arguing against it. That is indeed my point when claiming that you contradict yourself. I believe your criticism would benefit from nuance.

> studying what I mean when I talk about that rock is not actually a philosophy.

I agree. I think the misunderstanding lies in your belief that X can be anything on the face of the universe. Not everything is equally worth asking the question what we mean when we talk about it. By popular convention, religion, science, aesthetics and logic are worth it. Philosophy therefore turns to them rather than rocks.

EDIT: Rephrased first sentence.

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#78

Post by neonological »

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.

That's the problem with philosophy. It's archaic. It doesn't self improve. Christianity and Muslims have been around almost as long as philosophy. It doesn't make their opposing views automatically valid nor does it eliminate the randomness of some arbitrary beliefs in each respective religion (why is jesus named jesus, for example).

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#79

Post by neonological »

dschuessler wrote: post #77
neonological wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

X can be anything on the face of the universe. ‘What do we mean when we talk about all deep thought?” It is not a subset, it’s the set of all things that can be x. It’s really just a huge black hole whenever philosophers act smug and bring this up. Basically by placing “logic” under philosophy all logical arguments against philosophy become contradictory. Just make up a field called religionology and have logic and w…

Even if X could be "anything on the face of the universe“ (which I did not contend) it does not follow that philosophy is concerned with „the set of all things that can be x“ (which you seem to imply). I rather clearly stated that philosophy is instead concerned with the answers to questions of the form „What do we mean when we talk about X?“ Your „religionology“ argument surely has a point. The critic of religionolo…

>(which I did not contend)

By contending nothing (YOU) imply anything. You need to type class your variable, otherwise it's assumed to be of type Any.

>That is indeed my point when claiming that you contradict yourself. I believe your criticism would benefit from nuance.

The nuance is just missed by you. I did address this. Multiple times. My initial post did mention that science and logic arose out of philosophy (and by implication is a part of it). The failure in this case is technically not on me, it's on your usage of the argument.

>I agree. I think the misunderstanding lies in your belief that X can be anything on the face of the universe. Not everything is equally worth asking the question what we mean when we talk about it. By popular convention, religion, science, aesthetics and logic are worth it. Philosophy therefore turns to them rather than rocks.

And my claim, which you don't agree with, is that aesthetics is just like the rock when compared to philosophy of science. That is the category error. If you can lump science with religion then you can lump it with rocks too.

If you claim X is not anything that can possibly exist. Then type class X for me. What is it? Formalize your claim. Because by not type classing X you've basically said anything goes or you have not said anything meaningful at all. It's equivalent to saying "My argument is X" and then not defining it.

This is the essence of the argument. My claim is basically X is typed really poorly and arbitrarily with little formalism let alone sense.

Re: Is Philosophy an Art?

#80

Post by dschuessler »

neonological wrote: post #79
dschuessler wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if X could be "anything on the face of the universe“ (which I did not contend) it does not follow that philosophy is concerned with „the set of all things that can be x“ (which you seem to imply). I rather clearly stated that philosophy is instead concerned with the answers to questions of the form „What do we mean when we talk about X?“ Your „religionology“ argument surely has a point. The critic of religionolo…

>(which I did not contend) By contending nothing (YOU) imply anything. You need to type class your variable, otherwise it's assumed to be of type Any. >That is indeed my point when claiming that you contradict yourself. I believe your criticism would benefit from nuance. The nuance is just missed by you. I did address this. Multiple times. My initial post did mention that science and logic arose out of philosophy (an…

> By contending nothing (YOU) imply anything.

I did not say that I contend nothing but that I did not contend that X could be „anything on the face of the universe“. But even if I did contend nothing I certainly wouldn’t imply anything. How does contending nothing imply something? What kind of reasoning is this?

> The nuance is just missed by you. I did address this. Multiple times. My initial post did mention that science and logic arose out of philosophy (and by implication is a part of it). The failure in this case is technically not on me, it's on your usage of the argument.

You are criticizing philosophy (as a whole) as „essentially just a mish mash of deep thoughts and ponderings of unrelated topics“, „archaic“ and „just an old way of thinking“. Now you insist that you meant science and logic to be by implication a part of philosophy. So are you saying that they are archaic as well? You can’t have it both ways. If you don’t include science and logic in your criticism you should clarify which parts of philosophy you reject. That would be the nuance I am missing.

> If you claim X is not anything that can possibly exist. Then type class X for me.

I attempted to type class X in my last comment: X is what – by popular convention – is worth asking the question what we mean when we talk about it. So I have to concede: That could indeed be anything. But in fact it isn’t. So I’m still failing to grasp the relevance of your argument. One day you could probably ask yourself what you mean when talking about a rock and call that philosophy because it would be considered worthwhile. So what?

> This is the essence of the argument. My claim is basically X is typed really poorly and arbitrarily with little formalism let alone sense.

Do you have the same demands on your own area of expertise? Would you mind formalizing it non-arbitrarily? I guess that would help me understand your expectations.

EDIT: Removed a remark that was due to a misunderstanding.

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