Philosophy is redundant

[Ed209]

I realy don't get it. I understand what you're saying, and probably agree with the above, cause it's impossible to get your head around nothing. How did the bang happen then do they think?

[rabid]

I remember vividly an experiment we did in physics where the teach put two metal spheres together and then sucked all the air out and they stayed together because there was nothing inside to act as a force pushing them apart. I still cant get my head round the idea that metal ball had nothing inside it. Bloody vacuums.

[Ed209]

I remember vividly an experiment we did in physics where the teach put two metal spheres together and then sucked all the air out and they stayed together because there was nothing inside to act as a force pushing them apart. I still cant get my head round the idea that metal ball had nothing inside it. Bloody vacuums.

[llcoolphil]

I realy don't get it. I understand what you're saying, and probably agree with the above, cause it's impossible to get your head around nothing. How did the bang happen then do they think?

Edited September 8, 2010 by llcoolphil

[llcoolphil]

But even a vacuum has something in it ... and that's time.

This nothingness doesn't even have time in it.

Don't think about it too long, i learnt a while ago its not good for mental health

[llcoolphil]

There wasn't even anything for there to be a vacuum in.

[rabid]

Look, you're not making any friends round here

[Pogues Mcgogues]

How does linguistics help you with this?

It's easy to see why people who aren't religous don't mind using the 'god did it' answer because it's so hard to get your head around.

[Ed209]

Time as a dimension is beyond my limit of understanding, let alone the idea that there might be 12 dimensions (or whatever the current figure is). When our lord Dr Brian Cox said that he thought it was cool that there was stuff he just couldn't possibly understand, I thought Id stop worrying about it to. Why have science fiction when you can have science fact!

[Ed209]

How does linguistics help you with this?

It's easy to see why people who aren't religous don't mind using the 'god did it' answer because it's so hard to get your head around.

[llcoolphil]

How does linguistics help you with this?

[Pogues Mcgogues]

In a technical sense, it doesn't at all. In a philosophical sense, it helps me understand that we are limited in what we can understand by the language we have - individually and collectively - to understand it. If you could suddenly understand what a lion was saying, it would still be un-understandable to you because your concept of the world and a lion's concept of the world are so different.

[llcoolphil]

See in star trek then, when they can talk to people from different planets, and their communications badge translates what they're saying. That's not possible because of the lion thing you just mentioned?

[Pogues Mcgogues]

How could it not be possible if it's been on a documentary?

[llcoolphil]

Eh?

[Pogues Mcgogues]

Youn asked a stupid question so I gave you a stupid answer

[Pogues Mcgogues]

Youn asked a stupid question so I gave you a stupid answer

[llcoolphil]

I asked a sensible question.

If we wouldn't understand the lion, does that mean the belief behind what is used in Star Trek is nonsense?

[Pogues Mcgogues]

Given that all the aliens on Star Trek have human emotions, traits and drives, Id say it would work. Now stop talking about Star Trek.

[eFestivals]

Didn't you ban him?

No.

[eFestivals]

Without knowing how gravity works there's nothing to *properly* suggest that it will *always* fall.

Yes there is: evidence.

Evidence isn't of the same importance to philosophy - that takes the view that if something can't be ruled out then it's ruled in.

Science requires evidence for something to be ruled in, and so as there's nothing to suggest that a rock might not fall, it's not in anyone's thinking until such time as there's something solid to suggest that a rock might not fall.

[eFestivals]

They all fall under the umbrella of interpretting reality as we see it.

Correct.

But all things under that umbrella are not identical things. A philosophical approach to anything is NOT the same approach as a scientific approach.

A philosophical approach gives a far greater weight to things which science considers to be as good as irrelevant.

A philosophical approach says that it's possible that a rock might not fall. A scientific approach says that until such time as there's evidence to suggest that a rock might not always fall then a rock always falls.

[eFestivals]

the possibility (that Hawkings might be wrong) isn't an option?

It is.

But given that Hawkings has a long history of being on the money while worm has spouted endless shite that he's often not long later completely contradicted - and that he's simply parroting with words of others - then I know which I'd put my money on, and I know which anyone with half a brain and more would put their money on too.

[eFestivals]

Before the Big Bang (or Big Expansion, whichever you want to call it), there was a state of affairs that would *always* be ie it was an infinite proposal. It seems that what would *always* be was actually a finite proposal. Before the Big Bang there was no gravity - there was no anything, after it there was. If we can accept that there has been no gravity and then gravity, I don't find it that hard a proposition that there might be no gravity again. Whilst it is scientifically acceptable to say that a dropped stone will always fall, it being scientifically acceptable and it being an absolute truth are very much not the same thing as far as our current understanding goes. No amount of scientific experimetation can ever prove that something will always happen. Especially when we don't even know why that something happens in the first place.

A scientific view is one where a thing is ruled out until there's something to suggest that it might be. That doesn't mean any scientific view is unalterable - it's always open to revision in the light of new evidence - but it *DOES* require that evidence.

If we have mass ie are solid objects, why do billions of neutrinos pass through our body, through the earth, through everything every single day like they aren't there?

I suggest you re-read the words you've written there, and I reckon you'll spot your error.

It's because you have a mid-placed view of what 'mass' or 'solid' is - because of course if it's something that is as solid as you're taking 'solid' to mean, then it's not possible for anything to pass thru.

[eFestivals]

That is 100% wrong. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN has been built entirely for the reason scientists have an idea of 'what might be' and entirely because they have no definitive proof of 'what is'.

They have lots and lots of extrapolated evidence that is saying to them that 'it is', not that 'it might be'. The point of the LHC is to prove in reality what they have proven in theory.

It's not a case of "it's one of perhaps a million possibilities, so we'll do those million hugely expensive experiments until one comes good".

Virtually everything we understand about sub-atomic particles is entirely theory held together by maths, not by observable science. And when scientists already know they have some of the maths wrong, it is entirely credible that they have some of the ideas wrong too.

It's still not evidence-free tho. There's heaps of evidence that points to the angle they take as being correct.

The non-falling rock has no evidence to point to it, just a hollow idea that one day it might possibly happen.

As our current understanding goes, there has to be more dark matter/energy in the universe than anything else in order for what we already 'know' to stand up. So in order for everything we know to stand up, we have to rely on the existence of something that scientists imagined must be there, even though the only evidence for it is that it makes everything else we know make sense. That is entirely science working on 'what might be'

No it's not.

Everything they're working on has things that point to what they're concluding as theory.

There's nothing at all that suggests a rock might not fall outside of people's imaginings.