The philosophy thread general discussion

[[quotation]]I don't think most people associate the chain of logic (and logical fallacies) with philosophy either.[[/quotation]] True, and the same is true for epistemology, too.

Sometimes I have the feeling that most people takes science as a 'given', and its procedures as unproblematic. It seems to me that methodological awareness is lacking (at least in the general public).

The difficulty lies in my opinion that the 'usefulness' of philosophy lies more in how it impacts other activities (science, politics and so on), by furnishing concepts methods etc. It is really hard to show how it could impact directly the life of the single man. And part of the responsibilities have to be given to the philosophers themselves, in my opinion. (I apologize if my opinion sounds negative, it is not; but the topic is very important to me and a full exposition of what I mean would be very long I fear).

Often, when one group of experts dismisses or denegrates the insights or conclusions of another group, a lack of understanding is sometimes part of it. I suspect in this case the scientists react badly to philosophy's main conclusion- that few of the deep, meaningful questions that humanity has been asking for millenial have simple, objective answers.

Philosophy is the most important thing in the world. But that doesn't mean you should devote your life to it. In fact a cursory study of philosophy suggests you should devote your life to either science or politics, because of the economic and social force of these things respectively.

But you wouldn't know this for sure without first studying philosophy.

Clever, but Im not sure its true.

Considering how history and historiography are not fully solved matters (beyond the basics), I also have noticed some stigmatization of history as well (though not to the level of philosophy as you said, indeed).

This. Very much this.

I'm still trying to understand why do some claim that science can solve, for example, morality as whole (or even the whole area of metaphysics - I find such claims to be incredibly arrogant, and without truly major evidence or proof). I don't get scientism and its proponents, most of the time.

Yes, methodological awareness (especially in regards to the both the possibilities and limits of empiricism or rationalism) is definitely needed (especially considering the way the common media report any scientific findings, which is then reported as if it were absolute, unquestionable truth).

So, basically, there needs to be philosophy educators (in much the same way there are science educators/presenters like Bill Nye, who help to convey concepts and methods in a more appealing way), right?

Well, as long as they're not Alain de Botton (I usually take pop-philosophy books with a few grains of salt), I'm ok with that.

I assume the use of philosophical jargon (some of which is, imo, a bit impenetrable) might contribute to that perception as well from some scientists.

I think there were a few cities in Nordic Europe and some companies in Europe which specifically employed philosophers (in order to either have someone who can explain the deeper social context in certain minority communities or, in the case of the latter, to have a way of thinking 'outside the box' in regards to creativity and/or marketing).

If there were more philosophers employed in different areas outside of academia, maybe that would partially dissipate the perception of philosophers as 'ivory tower intellectuals' (I guess).

edited 10th Dec '16 3:59:59 PM by Quag15

I think one problem with philosophy educators, is there are no universally accepted concepts or ideas. So that would be a short lecture.

You study philosophy to develop thinking skills.

I you want to understand as much as possible, without accidentally missing out on anything, you kind of need that mindset, imho. Trying to figure something out and repeatedly failing is nowhere near as bad as ignoring an entire field of study because it's "beyond our understanding" or whatever.

I'm personally pretty convinced that morality is entirely subjective, but if someone thinks that they can prove me wrong, I will listen.

Yeah, that is definitely true. Collectively, science is the rational (as opposed to artistic) study of things that can be studied. An ever growing collection. Philosophy is an ongoing effort to expand this collection. As stuff becomes empirically measurable, or otherwise measurable, it falls out of the domain of philosophy and into the domain of science.

It's an unhealthy mindset (and one which has become often too associated with the tying ot science to political, economical and ideological forces - because scientists are, like all other modern humans, ideological in one way or another, and may easily ignore their biases and their erroneous conclusions if it suits their particular worldview - this is especially true in both capitalism and communism, as well as in other -isms), imo. (Case in point: Adam Curtis' documentaries Pandora's Box, The Way of All Flesh and All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace).

Also, I never said the part about 'ignoring an entire field because it's beyond our understanding'. I pointed out one extreme attitude, you pointed out another extreme attitude.

edited 11th Dec '16 9:16:29 AM by Quag15

I'm not quite sure what your point is to be honest. "I can understand everything" is not nearly the same as "I do understand everything, and I'm Right^TM." Of course scientists can be biased, but that's what other scientists are for. It's an ongoing process, not just some one-off revelation that can never be questioned.

@Quag: "I assume the use of philosophical jargon (some of which is, imo, a bit impenetrable) might contribute to that perception as well from some scientists."

Heh. Scientists themselves are guilty of this as well.

@war877: "I think one problem with philosophy educators, is there are no universally accepted concepts or ideas. So that would be a short lecture."

There is an entire cannon of accepted conclusions (given certain premises). Philosophy lectures last quite long, as I can personally attest. Thinking skills actually fall under cognitive psychology.

@Corvidae: The thing is, even scientists are supposed to defer to the recognized experts in any given field. Biologists seldom challenge the conclusions of astro-physicists. There are a group of physicists, however, who seem not to recognize the credibility of professional scholars who have studied moral philosophy for their entire careers (if they had, they might avoid some of the more common errors).

Alright, what kind of errors?

This article about a book by Sam Harris explains it. Shermer, Dawkins and Krause have made similar claims.

By definition I wouldn't expect that science can answer ethical dilemmas.

Sscientific pursuits are descriptive. Ethical dilemmas are by definition about things that are prescriptive.

Can you prove that you cannot convert between descriptive and prescriptive statements?

More importantly, what advantage does a philosopher have in answering prescriptive questions?

When you said "errors", I sort of assumed you meant that the people in question had been wrong about something that had already been empirically proven beyond reasonable doubt.

To be fair though, I also believe that science can't answer those particular questions. Mostly because they're silly questions without objective answers.

To you, they're silly. To me (and a fair few ethicists and moral philosophers), ethical problems influence policy making, which, in turn, affect people's lives (and sometimes, beyond the control of scientists and technocrats).

By the way, the use of the word 'silly' kinda proves one of my earlier points about some scientists' suspicion (and, more importantly, the dismissive attitude some of them have) of philosophy. Besides, someone who could theoretically 'understand everything' (your words) would understand the intricacies of ethical problems and the various perspectives humans have about specific subject matters^note which would actually help to both build a better research and a better policy - in theory, mind you, because, as history shows, scientists, politicians, economists, and various analysts have not truly understood all the complexities of the world and its peoples and tried to simplify things too much.

Also, to go back a bit, I do think that scientists can't understand everything. They're humans, and, as such, are limited creatures like the rest of us. They can understand part(s) of what composes everything (like the rest of us, to a greater or lesser extent), but that's about it.

On a matter other than morality and ethics (but which can be partially related to), Neil de Grasse Tyson would be another example of a scientist who is clearly out of his depth when interacting with subject matters he does not fully (or even truly) understand, such as the whole 'Rationalia' thing (Tyson should definitely stay out of politics and policy making).

A greater ability to think of all possible implications (depending on the answers), especially when it comes ot abstract or outside-of-the-box thinking would be one such advantage, imo. At least, depending on one's personality and how one's varied worldview is.

edited 11th Dec '16 12:31:04 PM by Quag15

It's the questions themselves I find silly, not the ethical problems that they're connected to.

IMO, the ethics question comes in two parts, and the likes of Harris sometimes miss the first part.

First, you have to decide what, on the most fundamental level, is important. That becomes the core of your moral system. (Morals, to me, are not objective at this level.) That's the subjective part. Again, IMO, you get the most useful moral systems by leaving this part as general as possible. It shouldn't be a long list of items - something like "minimise suffering first, then maximise quality of life for everyone" might be fine.

Then, you use science and reason to discover the relevant facts and develop the relevant rules and technology and so on to serve the moral code you established at step 1.

Usually, when a scientist says morality is scientific, they mean - without noticing how much they omit - that after you've done step 1, the rest of the process is scientific. Harris, for instance, will take as one of his axioms in his conversations about "scientific" morality that unnecessary suffering is to be minimised. He does make that statement, but he doesn't try to justify it and doesn't really discuss the fact that he's taken it as an axiom. He then talks about the follow through to realise that maxim as a scientific process, as if the axiom, itself, was scientific. It's not; it's subjective.

The other sense in which morality is sometimes said to be "scientific" is the same sense in which the "reason" for the origin of life is scientific. That's when you take what's formed as a "why" question ("why is there life?" or "why is there morality?") and answer it as a "how" question: "life probably came to be through these processes" and "moral behaviour evolves as selection favours genes that are present in groups that include selfless sacrifice over ones that are present in groups without selfless sacrifice" and so on).

For the record, and as most/all of you know by now, I do consider the "why" version of "why is there life?" a silly question. There is a "how" (whether we discover it or not), but there is no "why". There is no "purpose" - it just happened, as a result of other things that just happened, with no plan or anything. (Well, to be precise, I can't assert for a fact that there is no "why"; what I'm trying to say is, absent a reason to think that there's a "why" - and I've never heard of anything even vaguely promising in that regard - there's no reason to think there's a "why", so the default working assumption is that it's not relevant, so for practical reasons, there's no "why".)

"What is moral?", fundamentally, is a "silly" question in the sense that it doesn't have an objective answer. If you formulate it as "Given moral axiom Y, what is moral?", then it is an objective question that can be answered with science. "If your goal is to minimise suffering, what is the moral decision regarding euthanasia?" would be a scientific question, IMO; but you need ethics to get the original assumption that suffering is to be minimised, and even after that, moral philosophers are experts at coming up with reasonable answers for these questions, as well as noticing ways in which apparently sensible answers might not be useful, after all.

I also want to mention that, while I did use the word "silly" above, I don't consider fundamental questions about morality silly, at all. An attempt to answer them as if the most fundamental layer was objective would qualify as a bit silly, for me - but generally, the task of identifying one's fundamental values and thinking about them so that one can best understand them and work to achieve them is an absolutely central part of the human experience, and one of the most important parts of being human. I would certainly not call that silly, nor would I belittle or ridicule any intellectual effort to come up with ways to practically achieve one's core moral principles.

This is one of the fields of philosophy that is not covered by any other field of human in a meaningful way.

(Yes, I do mean that I don't consider purely religious efforts to answer these questions meaningful. If you can't justify your system without invoking the supernatural, the best I can do with it is see if I can find something useful in it. For instance, if I can justify saving a life by using something like "do unto others" while you justify it by "God says so" or "get a place in heaven", I'll be glad that we're both saving lives, but I consider the system that gets that result without making unnecessary assumptions; and if I could have my way, religious philosophers would make the effort to come up with non-supernatural support for their systems to make them accessible to those who can't take the supernatural on faith. Philosophical models should be universally accessible on their own merit, and not dependent on the private experiences of potential adherents or critics.)

TL;DR: Scientists who criticise philosophers in ethics tend to make the mistake of assuming the core axioms of a philosophical model as if they're science, and then declaring everything that comes from it scientific, as well. The correct view, IMO, would be to take the core axioms as moral philosophy, and use science to get real-world results that comply with those non-objective axioms. Another mistake that scientists sometimes make is to take a conversation about ethics in the field of philosophy and start answering it as a scientific question of the origins of ethical thinking and behaviour, which is a scientific question, but not what was originally the subject of conversation.

I agree with most of that. The "silliness" comes from asking "Should I do A or B?" or "Is X right or wrong?" without specifying any moral axioms at all. I will remain open to the possibility of discovering some kind of objective, axiom-less morality on principle though, despite how little sense I think that concept makes.

I think you could examine how our brains process moral ideas. And that might make it easier to see how much room there is for argument. It's obvious people can change their minds about their so called axioms, but is there an ideal model for them to work out? If so how similar our different peoples ideal moral systems? If not how big is the range? Are there popular moral theories no one would hold if they heard the right case?

Welcome to cognitive philosophy. It's like cognitive science, except you get a BA, not a BSc, spend less time in the lab or swearing at statistical equations, but spend more time wrestling with e.g. the more esoteric aspects of cognitive closure or coming up with terms and ideas the cognitive scientists will want to strangle you for pushing forward, because it's going to be a lot of hard graft finding evidence for or against.

edited 11th Dec '16 5:15:07 PM by Euodiachloris

I think you can find an objective theory. But you will never find an axiom-free theory. Axioms are the ways that we select theories. Choose the axioms to choose the theory. Therefore there is only one theory with no axioms.

@Corvidae (4166): Harris and company do not regard the questions as silly, they offered positions on them that they expected to be taken seriously, despite having no background in the field. Though I dont agree with your assessment, it is, at least, more honest.

@Bestof: That is a very nice summary of the issues involved. I would assert, however, that a religious approach to answering these questions is often much more nuanced and thoughtful than "God said so."

@Corvidae: Any competent philosopher will, naturally, go to great effort to specify their axioms.

@Supermerlin: Many of our ethical and political conflicts seem to grow out of the fact that different groups of people hold systems of values that are internally self consistent, about equally sucessful as the basis of a society, yet contradict each other in fundemental ways. There appears to be no one "best" ethical system.

X12 That blogger up there has made a critical error by conflating science with natural science. This is a serious problem, because if you do that, it firmly and completely pushes ethics outside the domain of science. So he wins by cheating.

If ethics can be in the domain of science, it is within the domain of mathematical science. not empirical science.

edited 12th Dec '16 12:13:14 AM by war877