Philosophy is redundant

[eFestivals]

Another debate about the usefulness of Philosophy on Radio 4 this morning, this time whether philosophy can ever be populist….should philosophy be the preserve of academia, or whether philosophers have a responsibility to communicate with the general public…..basically can normal plebs really understand it ?

The gist being on the one side that they can't understand it and therefore do not have the skills to discuss or debate it, and on the other that by making philosophy populist it gives us plebs half a chance….. and stops us all barking up the wrong proverbial tree and making fools of ourselves….

It crossed my mind that the two debating philosophers had been up all night digesting this thread….

I was waiting for Worm to post his diatribe in response before I posted this but I got bored waiting....he must have some weighty tome to study....

It's all about the power grab.

Of course normal plebes understand it. It's what we all do all the time, philosophise.

People who claim themselves as philosophers are merely trying to claim it as their own special power, for which they feel they deserve special privileges, despite doing nothing extra to normal people. They have no special skills, just a formal version they subscribe to which they believe themselves right about.

Real people get to show that they're not right.

[worm]

Another debate about the usefulness of Philosophy on Radio 4 this morning, this time whether philosophy can ever be populist….should philosophy be the preserve of academia, or whether philosophers have a responsibility to communicate with the general public…..basically can normal plebs really understand it ?

The gist being on the one side that they can't understand it and therefore do not have the skills to discuss or debate it, and on the other that by making philosophy populist it gives us plebs half a chance….. and stops us all barking up the wrong proverbial tree and making fools of ourselves….

It crossed my mind that the two debating philosophers had been up all night digesting this thread….

I was waiting for Worm to post his diatribe in response before I posted this but I got bored waiting....he must have some weighty tome to study....

[worm]

Not completely accurate.

True science would say nothing of god unless asked about god. If asked it would say "there's no evidence of a god. Therefore there is no god until such time as there's evidence to suggest there might be one".

[eFestivals]

I still didn't need a scientist to get my chips.

yes you did. The scientist brought about your shoes to walk there in; he created a cooking method. Etc, etc.

Just as you didn't need a philosopher to get yours.

Correct. I just did what I do, for my own reasons (and not reasons proscribed by any philosopher faker).

For your information, a scientist doesn't make things as you seem to be implying. Inventors do. Scientists attempt to explain things and the resultant knowledge of that explanation is science. The inventor uses science to invent things.

Inventors invent off the back of science. They make shoes to keep feet dry and warm after scientific investigation has shown that things can be done to create warmth and dryness for feet in varying conditions.

An invention that doesn't achieve an objective has failed to be an invention (of any use, anyhow - so the person wouldn't be regarded as an inventor).

No one has to know why - to philosophise why - warm and dry feet are considered better than cold wet ones. Just being considered as better is all that's needed.

A scientist doesn't have to say why they keep your feet dry and warm. The fact that they do keep your feet warm and dry is all that's necessary to prove the science of keeping your feet warm and dry.

It's exactly the same for philosophy, only that is about why we need or want those things. This effects the inventor as it tells him what is worth inventing and what is not. It also tells the scientist what is worth working out and what is not.

except there is no necessity with chips to know why they're wanted; they are (or "they can be") 'just wanted'.

But they can't be had without the science to produce them in the first place.

So returning to the title of the thread, how is philosophy redundant in relation to your chip shop inventor? Surely he needs to know why people are consuming chips as well as how people are consuming chips. If he didn't know why they consume chips he might invent a chip shop that didn't sell fish. That wouldn't last very long would it.

He doesn't need to know why people want them. He just has to know that people do want them.

[eFestivals]

What I would say, and what has been said on this topic, is why are they picking on philosophy. Every school of thought and knowledge has expert technical language that 'plebs' find difficult to understand as well as language that is used in everyday life. It's exactly the same for science as it is for philosophy.

No it's not.

Science is something extra beyond what we already have, while philosophy isn't. We all have it by default.

The more I read this thread the more I believe that there is a general ignorance towards philosophy.

Not ignorance, dismissal.

If and when it brings us something useful people might credit it as worthwhile.

[eFestivals]

real people...?

Yes, the likes of you and me - and worm too.

Philosophy says we do particular things for particular reasons. Yet we all know that an amount of what it claims is utter bollox; it doesn't have the insight into every individual's brain that it claims to have, and the reasons it claims we sometimes know to be 100% wrong.

It's philosophy failing to understand people, not people failing to understand philosophy.

[eFestivals]

That's inaccurate as it defies the principle of falsifiability, as one poster has already told you.

Yet that principle is a worthless one, as demonstrated by real people in every moment.

It's again a case of philosophy failing to understand people, not people failing to understand philosophy.

[Kizzie]

The more I read this thread the more I believe that there is a general ignorance towards philosophy.

[eFestivals]

There is absolutely a general ignorance towards philosophy…most 'real people' ( sorry Darlin' ) discussing it haven't a clue what they're on about. There seems to be a general popular attitude that philosophy is fair game for debate, negating or just plain forgetting that aside from any popular consideration of the subject it is an academic discipline, a disciplined interogation, with a whole canon of accepted debate/ discourse underpinning and informing 'it' etc....which I'm not sure they would do with other disciplines.

A lot of 'real people' seem to think that they can pitch in at any point, be taken seriously and dismiss it as baseless theory….without having a clue what it is they are actually trying to dismiss.

I think I may be being an educated snob here….for that I apologise...I might duck now

Just because something has been formalised doesn't make it valid.

There's formality to all religions; there's formality to the ideas driving Al-Qaeda; there's formality to all myths.

Formalised philosophy is simply a power grab by saddos for something which was there anyway and working without any formality. Formalising it has added nothing, aside from the waaaaay off-tangent bollox ideas its invented as a further expression of its power for the suckers who fall for it.

Formalised philosophy (for those who buy into it) gives a validity to ideas that otherwise aren't given the time of day, and which takes human knowledge no further forwards. It gives a basis for the pointless; for things which only have a point within formalised philosophy but nowhere else in human existence.

The fact that it won't allow its ideas to be applied to itself because it kills itself if it does is all anyone needs to know about its worth.

[Kizzie]

Formalised philosophy is simply a power grab by saddos for something which was there anyway and working without any formality. Formalising it has added nothing, aside from the waaaaay off-tangent bollox ideas its invented as a further expression of its power for the suckers who fall for it.

[eFestivals]

Isn't that tantamount to dismissing any academism of a subject you happen to have little time for though, would that be the case for psychology or say historiography also ?

I'd feel very uncomfortable with the notion that I could get anywhere close to having enough 'knowledge' to totally disregard a recognised discipline.

I'd be much happier with a respectful scepticism……. once I'd studied the subject obviously....

The proof of anything is in its results. Just because something is said to exist doesn't automatically give it validity.

It comes down to something this simple: does modern philosophy bring anything new to the table, which we wouldn't have had without it being formalised? The answer is 'no'.

Formalising philosophy has only brought something new to formal philosophy, not to the wider world.

[worm]

Yet that principle is a worthless one

[worm]

The proof of anything is in its results. Just because something is said to exist doesn't automatically give it validity.

It comes down to something this simple: does modern philosophy bring anything new to the table, which we wouldn't have had without it being formalised? The answer is 'no'.

Formalising philosophy has only brought something new to formal philosophy, not to the wider world.

[worm]

yes you did. The scientist brought about your shoes to walk there in; he created a cooking method.

Edited September 17, 2010 by worm

[eFestivals]

She didn't say that she's accepted philosophy on the basis of it being formal. She said that you can't criticise it with any validity without an understanding of it. She's right and it applies to everything.

Yet there's no person on earth who doesn't, even if they don't know that. It's what we do.

A number of results from philosophy are maths, the removal of religion from power, the birth of science, the age of social rights, the age of technology and humanism to name but a tiny few.

yes, and the shit that comes out of your arse each morning too.

But all of these things can also rightly be claimed by far more distinct things too, and with far more relevance.

After all, it's hardly a surprise that something which claims the whole world as its own is laying claim to everything.

No it doesn't. It says why we do particular things for particular reasons. There's no disputing that we do them.

Typo, sorry.

And of course you're right - there's no disputing that we do them. But there is dispute about the why, which philosophy can be demonstrated to fail at.

[eFestivals]

No he didn't, an inventor did. I've just told you that.

You can tell me as many times as you like. It doesn't make you right.

Aside from the stumbled-upon inventions, the inventor is only able to invent using science.

And someone also invented philosophy, somehow (in your laughable view) without using philosophising to do so. Yet using a scientific methodology to do so, despite philosophy not having been invented to be able to invent science.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, and tell me again what philosophy has done.

If you're using history, then a scientist influenced the inventor to make shoes and cook food. Just as a philosopher influenced him in what to do with the knowledge of shoes and cookery.

Not if the idea of philosophy hadn't first been 'invented' he didn't - and that's in the view of philosophers.

Yet people have been cooking since they first discovered fire, long before philosophy.

Why should the philosopher be forgotten in this history of invention, while the scientist be remembered?

If you (or anyone else in the world) can name the most important ones, I have fifty quid with your name on.

Simple fact is that the most important philosophising was done and dusted millennia before the concept of philosophy was invented. As each moment passes, the importance of philosophy decreases - to the point of irrelevance in some thinkers such as Hawkings, to get back to the original point. It's just a history lesson now.

[eFestivals]

Then you're calling science worthless.

No, I'm calling investigating the pointless as worthless, which is a firm view of science.

To quote you from earlier on...

True science would say nothing of God.

[worm]

No, I'm calling investigating the pointless as worthless, which is a firm view of science.

[feral chile]

Yet that principle is a worthless one, as demonstrated by real people in every moment.

It's again a case of philosophy failing to understand people, not people failing to understand philosophy.

Edited September 17, 2010 by feral chile

[feral chile]

Not if the idea of philosophy hadn't first been 'invented' he didn't - and that's in the view of philosophers.

Yet people have been cooking since they first discovered fire, long before philosophy.

If you (or anyone else in the world) can name the most important ones, I have fifty quid with your name on.

Simple fact is that the most important philosophising was done and dusted millennia before the concept of philosophy was invented. As each moment passes, the importance of philosophy decreases - to the point of irrelevance in some thinkers such as Hawkings, to get back to the original point. It's just a history lesson now.

Edited September 17, 2010 by feral chile

[Huevos y Bacon]

This made me smile. Just as well we finally got to the stage in our intellectual development as a species when Neil could say it was all bollocks, as if all those numerous attempts to understand 'stuff' hadn't contributed to the 'thought place' where he could do that.

[rfs]

Another debate about the usefulness of Philosophy on Radio 4 this morning, this time whether philosophy can ever be populist….should philosophy be the preserve of academia, or whether philosophers have a responsibility to communicate with the general public…..basically can normal plebs really understand it ?

The gist being on the one side that they can't understand it and therefore do not have the skills to discuss or debate it, and on the other that by making philosophy populist it gives us plebs half a chance….. and stops us all barking up the wrong proverbial tree and making fools of ourselves….

[feral chile]

Even though a lot of philosophy uses technical language/arguments I reckon that a lot of it is readily accessible to anyone who can read. I also agree when Neil says we all philosophise, even if we don't know what the academic terms are for what we think. The problem with philosophy is that it's very good at pointing out perfectly reasonable arguments against what you believe is right or obvious - it values refutation more than any other discipline. But people much prefer to be told what is or could be rather than what isn't or why you can't be sure. So I don't reckon it'll catch on like.

[feral chile]

You can tell me as many times as you like. It doesn't make you right.

Aside from the stumbled-upon inventions, the inventor is only able to invent using science.

And someone also invented philosophy, somehow (in your laughable view) without using philosophising to do so. Yet using a scientific methodology to do so, despite philosophy not having been invented to be able to invent science.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, and tell me again what philosophy has done.

Not if the idea of philosophy hadn't first been 'invented' he didn't - and that's in the view of philosophers.

Yet people have been cooking since they first discovered fire, long before philosophy.

If you (or anyone else in the world) can name the most important ones, I have fifty quid with your name on.

Simple fact is that the most important philosophising was done and dusted millennia before the concept of philosophy was invented. As each moment passes, the importance of philosophy decreases - to the point of irrelevance in some thinkers such as Hawkings, to get back to the original point. It's just a history lesson now.

Edited September 19, 2010 by feral chile

[rfs]

isn't that part of the role of philosophy though - to question established thinking? To challenge our preconceptions? Science advances human knowledge, and philosophy advances the ways in which we analyse that knowledge.

It's just a different form of knowledge - philosophy isn't necessarily anti scientific or anti common sense - on the contrary, by scrutinising our current state of knowledge, it can point out logical inconsistencies and thus make greater sense of our discoveries.