The philosophy thread general discussion

Blegh. So I am giving classes now (Technical - not University level), about Research. The class is supposed to give students an introduction to Research and is very much a staple in several university courses.

Students come mostly from far off places if not poorer marginalized areas, so of course the level of education is incredibly sub par. I would not say they do not know how to read but their reading comprehension is abyssmal.

For this matter I've decided to add to the courses an unorthodox series of things to teach, which I was not thaught at my college but had to read about myself: Formal logic. I say unorthodox because of all the private university courses I've seen in my country, none of them teach this: they hop straight to teaching the different kinds of investigation and the elements to analyze (instrument valdity etc).

I will introduce and give examples and exercises for the students regarding the most basic forms of logic. I will not get into Rhetoric, however, as the goal is for them to be able to grasp an idea, and communicate it. Not how to argue it in a public forum.

I have the handle on how to teach them APA Style and Vancouver, as well as several ways to help them find information (from Google Scholar to Sci Hub). But they need to complement that with how to use the fact they can quote somebody.

For the Logic part, I am basing myself on three books:

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Introduction to logic, by Irving M. Copi and Carl Cohen and Introduction to logic and critical thinking by Matthew J. Van Cleave

I am introducing basic concepts such as validity, the informal test of validity, soundness, Deductive v Inductive arguments, Standard format, what Van Cleave refers to as the "Seven virtues" (I liked how he framed it, even though falsifiability is Popper's).

I will not show truth tables, how to translate it to notations, fallacies (the last thing we need are more people on Facebook screaming STRAWMAN, STRAWMAN! because of a single 3 hour cursory lecture...), formal ways to evaluate arguments (Venn Diagrams, etc), or the different types of arguments.

In y'all's opinion, would these help at all? I can dedicate one, at most two weeks to these subjects before I have to move on to the other subjects of the course (They need to be guided into how to make a basic research paper). I am confident that with my examples and homeworks I can make it engaging and such, even in virtual format, but I just want a second opinion on whether or not these subjects will help people in any way shape or form.

Addendum: Forgot to add that the students all belong to "Lab Assistant" role (again, tech level, not university level). So I am not super strict in grading, but I still don't think people who are related to healthcare fields should be allowed to fucking base what they think on webmd dot com and argue like a fucking aviator sunglass'd and red cap'd boomer facebook profile picture.

Edited by Aszur on Sep 3rd 2020 at 9:53:12 PM

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

When I teach research methods the hardest part is helping them figure out what a variable is, and how you operationally define it so that it can be measured objectively. They can't understand what a hypothesis is until they grok what kind of questions can be answered empirically and what kind can't. They also can't tell the difference between a work of journalism and a scientific paper, except by how it's formatted. So I typically focus on the practical aspects, as opposed to the formal operations side of it.

Oh yes I am NOT looking forward to having to point them out that "VALIDITY" is a very specific term with a distinct meaning and purpose and does not just mean "This study sounds about right" and then contrast it with a "Valid argument"...

I asked them that question on a homework (The definition of validity alone) and 98% of them choked on it hard. So I know it is going to be something that will need a tonne more examples...

But yeah the whole point of this is that teaching logic lends itself to plenty of fun argumentations, analysis, and reading comprehension. I can leave them a speech from a movie or somesuch, and have them break down its arguments, for exaple, which is a slightly more dynamic, and fun way of leaving homework than paragaphs full of random stuff.

I was just wondering what this sort of approach sounded like to some of you. Because as I said, no other curriculum I have seen that isn't already a philosophy one teaches this.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

Your students might find this site helpful. Note that the link takes you to the introduction, there are five other sections that you can access via the left hand menu (I've also used the section on "Establishing Arguments").

Sadly, my students do not speak english.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

Ah, never mind then.

So, for those of us looking for an interesting philosophical quandary, PBS Space Time delivers: Do the Past and Future Exist? Of course, this isn't presented as a philosophical question, but rather a matter of physics.

In the Newtonian world-view, all events occur at a common "now" that is the same for everything everywhere in the universe. All events proceed by definite sequences of cause and effect, tracing paths through three-dimensional space and one-dimensional time. If one could look outside the universe, one might see the present as an infinitely thin slice of eternity, moving forward at a predictable rate. Such a universe is of course completely deterministic.

General relativity, on the other hand, says that we are each at the center of our own little wedge of existence, projecting a light-cone forward to describe our future and backward to describe our past. In the relativistic world, it is not possible for independent observers to ascribe a common "now" to any sequence of events, only a sequence of cause and effect. They can mutually agree that A happens before B — that is, A "causes" B — but cannot agree on a single clock upon which all events can be transcribed.

We aren't used to seeing this in our ordinary lives, although it is easily measurable even on scales that we're familiar with. For example, the latency in an Internet connection isn't just about signals being processed by computers, but represents the physical reality that something you do at this very instant is some number of milliseconds in someone else's future, and vice versa.

So, how do we find a "future" again? Quantum mechanics... but that's for the next episode.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 13th 2020 at 7:16:21 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Overly Sarcastic Productions recently did a video on Greek Wise-Guys (the Philosophers and the Sophists) and two of which stood out. Who I think are the direct ancestors of Ben Shapiro/the alternative facts crowd and every shitposter on the planet, respectively.

Those two are, Gorgias, who is a Sophist that master his art of rhetoric and as I joked in the OSP thread, the grandpappy of post-truth, and Diogenes who seemed to loathe everyone in Athens and proceed to mock both Philosophy and Sophistry both (inclusion bringing a plucked chicken to a meeting and proclaiming it to be a Man).

I'm interested in the history of those two men and if my earlier assessments about them (re: Shapiro, post-truth and shitposting) were accurate to any extent.

I'm also wondering if the Sophists in general were considered an Acceptable Target to those in Greece besides Plato an Aristole

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Oct 18th 2020 at 1:53:52 AM

I will give it a shot with Diogenes.

We know fuckall about Diogenes.

Ok, but seriously, no writings of Diogenes himself remain, but we seriously do know stories about him and they were severely influential. Some of his most well known story are the following:

• It is said Diogenes was ascetic (as part of cynical thought that said man should live according to nature). Allegedly, he lived in a large clay wine jar, and one of his stories involve how he discarded one of his few possessions - a wooden bowl, once he saw a child drinking from the hollow of his hands. "Fool that I am, to have been carrying superfluous baggage all this time!", he is attributed to have said then.
• He once, allegedly, roamed the streets of Athens with an oil lamp. When asked why, he said he was looking for "An honest man", and never found one.
• Supposedly, he once met with Alexander the Great. Alexander, aware of Diogenes' fame, asked him if there was something he could do for him. "Yes", said Diogenes. "Stand out of my sunlight". Alexander then said that "If he were not Alexander, then he would wish to be Diogenes".
• Diogenes was invited to a wealthy man's house for a party. When the man was showing his luxurious house to Diogenes, Diogenes spit on his face. When asked why he'd do that, Diogenes said that the house was so nice, he couldn't find anywhere worse to spit.
• Near the time of his death, Diogenes was asked what should be done with his body. He requested for his body to be thrown outside of the walls so wild animals could feast on his body. When asked if he'd mind he said "So long as you give me a stick to chase the animals away I'll be fine". When asked how he'd use a stick while dead and unaware he asked back why would he care about being eaten if he had no awareness to feel it.

Little is known about Diogenes and apart from his alleged stint in Corinth as a slave, we don't know him having led a school. We just know the stories about him. However, he is considered one of the founders of Cynicism. Diogenes, more than teaching about Cynicism, is narrated in stories where he embodies the ideals of Cynicism. Apart from Cynics he is regarded highly by Stoics.

So to clear out the first one, Cynicism's main tenets were the following (summarized ofc):

• The goal of life is Happiness and freedom from deceit
• Life in accordance to nature as understood by logos (reason)
• Self-sufficiency and avoiding of vices
• Shamelessness and impudence, and being contrarian to the norms of society

It is important to point out that Cynicism concerns itself with ethics and not episthemology, so basically, the school of Cynicism per se is mostly about trying to differentiate right vs wrong more than episthemological ones. In trope language, it would be why The Cynic is not Agent Scully.

Agent Scully as we know would be concerned about how we attain knowledge, and at the sighting of aliens is highly skeptic, potentially abrasively so, and would be moved by evidence. The Cynic would probably wonder if the Aliens are truly happy with their newfangled technology if they feel a pressing need to invade other "lesser" species - and about their place in nature.

So go to back to your comparison, I have to say I do not agree that Diogenes would be a modern time shitposter. Diogenes was certainly brash, rude, and deliberately so: he spared no expense in mocking, insulting, or berating others regardless of their position (The wealthy man, Alexander). He masturbated in public, ate in places where people generally did not eat, and even mocked people by appearing to be busy while everyone else was just to show how everyone was all worked up about something stupid. Or at least, that the reasons why they deemed certain things evil was not necesarily because they were evil, but because their traditions marked them as evil, and that's dumb.

And that's the thing about cynicism and Diogenes. Cynics aim to ask an Armor-Piercing Question in a manner as rude as possible that makes you doubt about tradition, culture and their necesity. This makes more sense if you take into account that their logical framework is that nature is good. Whether or not you'd think an environmentalist approach is a modern take on cynicism is another thing, but Diogenes himself was known to take things to the extreme (remember he even destroyed a fucking bowl of wood).

Shitposting is not done because the shitposter wants to make you think. Shitposting is done because you're bored, or as a deliberate attempt to derail from a topic because it is awkward, because it is strategically viable to do so, or because the person finds the subject a difficult one to deal with and would rather avoid it.

Yes, shitposting has an ironic component to it that would sometimes make you question the situation in general but overall, shitposting is supposed to end a conversation whether by saturating it with useless shit until the original point is lost, or just derailing it to uselessness. It's not one that's supposed to leave you a question.

Cynicism wants you to think about whether or not the situation is in accord to the natural laws. A Cynicist may tell you that Cynics are The Gadfly to societal traditions - free from the vices that society breeds and thus not bound by them.

And no, "reject your humanity, embrace monkeh" is not a cynical meme. It's a shitpost as it's held as a humoruous means of escapism.

Well that's my take on Diogenes as a Shitposter, hope it helps. Maybe someone else can correct me and do their work on the Sophists.

Edited by Aszur on Oct 21st 2020 at 8:07:46 AM

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

That was excellent, Azure, thank you.

That was a fascinating answer, one that has me wondering if the two (philosophical cynics and shitposters) would be opposed to each other (as one seeks to have others question certain things, and this foster things that would start conversions while the others try to end conversations or at least avoid them)? On top on my existing queries of whether Gorgias was the grandfather of post-truth and if the Sophists in general were seen as Athens' (or at least their philosophers') black sheeps.

Your post also seems to highlight the difference between Cynics and general Pessimists.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Oct 20th 2020 at 11:49:15 AM

Frankly, the only philosophical position that I think is consistent with "shitposting" is some sort of nihilism. A really shallow, superficial kind. And that's being generous.

There are dialectical techniques that involve "poking holes" in arguments with well-timed barbs designed to shock participants out of their comfort zones, but I'm not sure those constitute a complete philosophy in and of themselves.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Traditional Cynicism means all that. The colloquial version, that is, the one understood by most, took hold by Christian interpretation of Cynicism. They of course don't take kindly to anyone doubting tradition. Hence many of the current tropes we have regarding Cynicism are mostly about somone "broken" or "distrustful", because that's how Cynicism got reinterpreted from its roots.

But Diogenes himself was a quote unquote true Cynicist, alongside his master Antisthenes.

And yeah I agree with Marquis and Fighteer: Shitposting is not so much a position and more like. Avoiding having any position, really. Cynical thought wouldn't bother with that cuz' it's frankly, fucking stupid.

Edited by Aszur on Oct 20th 2020 at 12:56:35 PM

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

@Fighteer: That's known as the "Socratic Method". There is an entire pedagogy built around it.

Right, but is that a complete philosophy? I'm genuinely asking.

At least we can be clear that "shitposting" and other forms of trolling are not Socratic: they are not meant to elicit new understanding in a conversation, just to disrupt it.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Depends on what you mean by "philosophy". It's an approach to the proper acquisition of knowledge, so I suppose it's a sub-field of epistemology.

You can look at socratic dialogue as a tool, but I am not sure it alone is a philosophical position on its own

Edited by Aszur on Oct 21st 2020 at 8:10:33 AM

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

PBS Space Time continues to weigh in on the question of free will from a physics perspective. The conclusion reached is that it's not really a question of determinism vs. randomness, but of whether any physical system allows new information to spontaneously emerge. Everything we know of physics says that this is not possible: that there is nothing fundamentally different at a quantum level between a patch of space time that happens to include a human brain and one that does not.

However, Matt considers the question itself to be badly formulated and thus invalid because it relies on definitions of terms that are not themselves rooted in physics or even scientifically verified truth. In other words, we're asking the wrong question.

What we think of as consciousness and free will appears to be an emergent phenomenon from complex underlying systems that are themselves not "thinking" or doing anything other than following basic chemical and physical principles.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 11th 2020 at 1:15:27 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Those conclusions are consistent with our previous conversations in this thread. The entire argument has always hinged on whether or not systems can in any way demonstrate behavior that is not in some sense pre-determined. Physics has always assumed that the answer has to be "no", and all their experimental evidence is consistent with that. There are only two outs: one is a supernatural source of new information—if God has anything to do with it then experimental physics is right out the window. The other is the possibility that certain types of system might demonstrate non-linear behavior "in reality" (and not just because we can't collect enough data to determine the outcome ahead of time). This comes out of so-called "Chaos Theory" (technically nonlinear systems theory). If, say, three body systems can produce semi-random behavior that stays within the parameters of physical laws, but is otherwise indeterminate ahead of time, then experimental physics is incomplete.

I would be remiss in not mentioning one more possible "out", which doesn't stand on it's own but could contribute to either of the ones I listed above. As it says in the video clip, space and time can seem eternally determined from the point of view of a hypothetical "outside observer" who is free from the constraints of the system he is viewing. However, obviously, humankind is not in that position, we are rather elements of the system we are embedded in. Therefore, one could argue that for free will to exist, it does not have to introduce new information from the point of view of an outside observer, but only from the point of view of local space-time. If we cant, even in theory, pre-determine our own behavior, then one could consider it free for all practical purposes (which the video acknowledged).

Otherwise, science pretty much has to treat free will as an illusion. Consciousness is a completely different sort of problem—it obviously exists, the question is what role it plays in determining behavior.

Ok, just finished the video. Surprisingly optimistic, in that he claims that there are ways in which certain definitions of free will might be compatible with quantum physics as we know it.

Edited by DeMarquis on Nov 11th 2020 at 4:17:36 AM

Even in chaos theory, if the emergent behavior of a system is genuinely random because it's too complex to predict, that's not the same as "free will"; am I exercising choice when I pick between a blueberry or strawberry pancake, or is my brain rolling metaphorical dice on a weighted table of possible outcomes? Philosophically, I don't see that the concept of free will is compatible with defining "choice" as being at the output end of an enormously complex pseudorandom number generator.

As for supernatural influence, Matt covers that too: it means that we have to expand our system of cause and effect to include additional realms of reality without changing the basic problem. It simply punts the question of where the causative influence originates.

I think we have to use the definition you cited: that our consciousness is too complex to perfectly predict and thus it might as well be treated as free.

I think he said we're getting another video with that additional argument.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 11th 2020 at 5:13:19 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

That's not exactly how emergent phenomena work. In a non-linear system, behavior consists of small incremental changes, each of which are essentially random, in that they cannot be predicted ahead of time, except that the outcome is constrained by the initial condition of the system, the input. Each individual interaction is too small to have any discernable impact on the larger system, but over time the net result of all interactions is the result of many tiny random changes within a set of broad constraints that represents the beginning value of the system and the laws it follows. Take the weather, for example, a well known non-linear system. When two air masses meet, the interaction between their atoms is essentially random for any two atoms, any particular air molecule might gain energy or lose it, but each molecule of air begins with some initial energy value, and the result of an interaction might be to go up a little or down a little, the outcome of each interaction random but small, yet overall the two air masses will behave in a broadly predictable way, due to the constraints of their respective starting energies and the laws of physics. "Broadly predictable" in this context means that the system behaves at all times in a lawful way, but the end result is not predictable beyond a certain point.

The idea is that the brain might operate in a similar way: that is the outcome of any one neuron firing is too miniscule to have any discernable impact upon the brain as a whole (or upon behavior) but because each neuron is constrained by it's starting electrical potential and the overall neural architecture of the brain, the end result of a mass number of tiny random firings is that the mind acts at all times in a lawful manner, but the outcome is not predictable beyond a certain point.

Now the controversy concerns the question of whether these mathematical models work so well for these kinds of systems simply as a consequence of the lack of information we can have, or do these physical systems behave this way at the lowest level of interaction in actuality? If we comprehensively knew the energies and positions of each quantum particle of the air masses involved, could we perfectly predict the weather? We don't know, and the video you posted is suggesting that the answer might still be "No". Since there is some level of uncertainty at the quantum level, the laws of physics might not prevent conscious choices from acting like emergent phenomenon in this manner. Even if we knew as much as it is possible for observers to know about the particles and energies that make up a brain at any one point in time, we might in theory still be unable to predict whether that brain will decide to eat strawberries or blueberries for lunch. That could fulfill at least some of the requirements of a free will.

Recall that the video proposed four different restrictions we could place on a model of behavior that includes a free will: 1. Choices are nondeterministic, creating brand new quantum information 2. Choices may be deterministic, but are fundamentally unpredictable 3. Future is not predefined and is not singular 4. Choice is independent of any underlying, non-free willed, mechanistic process.

Emergent behavior meets restrictions 2 and 3, but not 1 or 4. If we ourselves can never predict our own behavior, even in theory, then that might be enough to call our will "free". Whether or not such a system truly qualifies as "free will" is largely a semantic argument, as the video also points out.

Yes, all of that is correct. If quantum mechanics is right, we can never know with perfect precision the quantum state of any given part of the universe, no matter how small. If this is true, it means that knowing the future (and by symmetry, the past) with perfect accuracy is literally impossible.

If we define the unpredictability of the future as "free will", then there we go, problem solved. Of course, that's a new problem because then a mote of dust drifting around the room has free will. We still haven't defined what that term actually means, only excluded certain contradictions.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 12th 2020 at 3:49:22 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Edit: I will ask in another thread.

Edit 2: I heard on a Youtube video once where it mentions that Friedrich Nietzsche mostly criticized previous thinkers and philosophers in his writings. What would be a modern day criticism of the previous philosophers?

Edited by GAP on Dec 10th 2020 at 4:57:32 AM

"We are just like Irregular Data. And that applies to you too, Ri CO. And as for you, Player... your job is to correct Irregular Data."

That's a reeeealy broad question, one that would take an entire graduate course on the history of philosophy to answer. Do you have a reason for asking, or is there some particular type of philosophy you are more interested in?

In most cases, it isn't that previous philosophers were wrong per se, but that as a result of further debate, we have moved beyond the initial questions. To take just one example more or less at random, we no longer care about the kind of questions that the Medieval Scolastics were trying to answer.

In other cases, our scientific understanding of how the universe works has improved to the point that previous theories are no longer tenable. No one believes in the four classic elements anymore.

In Nietzsche's case, I would disagree that he merely criticized previous philosophers, he in fact developed several ideas of his own beyond what anyone previous to him thought. This does not mean that very many people today think he was "right" (or not), but simply that he was original.