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Has philosophy answered anything?

yebiga
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Posted 09/10/09 - 08:09 PM:	#81
I am reminded of the distinction between strategy and tactics in warfare for example. One could say a particular strategy won the battle but it does not happen until it is implemented tactically. I think of philosophy as strategy and the rest of mans activity/knowledge as tactics. Unlike the battlefield the distance between strategy and tactics, a philosophy and its tactical deployment, can be over long periods of space time and as a result the relationship can be quite obscure. The space time between pre-socratic atomists and nuclear experimentation is for example truly vast. But the thread remains. Similarly, Plato is strategic and Christianity its tactical deployment. A slightly clearer relationships can be discerned between the utilitarians and the tactical deployment of transportation, hospitals, sewerage sytems etc. I am suggesting a philosophy (strategy) not only underpins every human field of action/knowledge (tactic) but that philosophy was the parent of this human action/knowledge. Thus every field of human activity/knowledge is an answer to a philosophical question and that answer was inspired by philosophy. Our consciousness of ourselves, our life is the primary philosophical question, everything we think or do is an answer to the question. It is never a perfect answer but it is an answer.

ClaudeHooper
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Posted 09/11/09 - 01:33 AM:	#82
TempletonEsquire wrote: His declaration against philosophy is purely philosophical. It seemed to me to be mostly historical. He gives example after example after example of instances where philosophical considerations had slowed the progress of physical discovery, and where the breakthrough was eventually made by someone who had thrown off the shackles of philosophy and managed to think "outside the box" of philosophical considerations.

Ghosthack
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Posted 09/11/09 - 09:30 AM:	#83
^^ I agree with yebiga.

TempletonEsquire
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Posted 09/11/09 - 01:55 PM:	#84
ClaudeHooper wrote: made by someone who had thrown off the shackles of philosophy and managed to think "outside the box" of philosophical considerations. That's a bit of a silly statement. I thank you for your paradox. I am also quite a lover of paradoxical statements. I think both you and Sir Weinberg are equating philosophy to a body of knowledge, which although there is a body of knowledge associated with philosophy, that is completely open for this kind of tact, unfortunately for the thesis, it does not strictly define philosophy.

180 Proof
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Posted 09/11/09 - 04:22 PM:	#85
As a philosophical skeptic (i.e. Pyrrhonian du jour) I'd answer the OP this way: - philosophy answers (only, or principally) questions of meaning. It's chief function is to interrogate (i.e. make explicit, or examine) the relevance of questions, the (purported) solutions to problems & the formulations of unsolvable problems. - symbolic, theoretical & applied practices, unlike philosophy, solve problems (i.e. knowledge). - philosophy is a hermeneutic, critical practice that produces methods and not knowledge (i.e. theories). - philosophy is more like Ariadne's Thread, which we unwind through (critically) exchanging reasons and use to find our way (via performative consistency) through the labyrinth of (our) concepts meanings & thoughts so that we don't become irreparably lost (e.g. mad or mystified or stupidifed), than "a strategy" to which all other intellectual endeavors are "tactics" if only because a "philosophy as strategy" analogy doesn't account for choosing either a specific strategy or the game in which it's applied (pace yebiga re: post no. 81 above). Edited by 180 Proof on 09/14/09 - 05:33 AM. Reason: Oh you know why ...
The question isn't "Which explanations do I believe?" but rather "Which explanations do I least disbelieve?" Absence of evidence THAT MUST BE THERE (i.e. implied by any claim, concept, or (its) predicates, that affects changes in/to the world) entails evidence of absence. [What cannot be done?[What cannot be hoped?[What cannot be known?]]]

Ghosthack
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Posted 09/11/09 - 04:33 PM:	#86
180 Proof wrote: ..."philosophy as strategy" analogy doesn't account for choosing either a specific strategy or the game in which it's applied What do you mean? You choose whichever strategy you believe gets you to the truth of the matter. The strategy may be occam's razor or it may be Cartesian skepticism. Then the strategy is applied when tackling any problem.

180 Proof
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Posted 09/11/09 - 06:00 PM:	#87
Ghosthack wrote: What do you mean? You choose whichever strategy you believe gets you to the truth of the matter. The strategy may be occam's razor or it may be Cartesian skepticism. Then the strategy is applied when tackling any problem. As you suggest, Ghosthack, the "choice" of strategy is based on a guess as to what might work. Furthermore, the "strategies" cannot be accounted for by other "strategies", (an) implication being that each "strategy" is merely an assembly of other (more primitive) guesses. I understand philosophy striving for more than mere guesswork.
The question isn't "Which explanations do I believe?" but rather "Which explanations do I least disbelieve?" Absence of evidence THAT MUST BE THERE (i.e. implied by any claim, concept, or (its) predicates, that affects changes in/to the world) entails evidence of absence. [What cannot be done?[What cannot be hoped?[What cannot be known?]]]

Ratheius Netheros
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Posted 09/11/09 - 07:03 PM:	#88
Because it does. I don't believe the truth of a theory follows necessarily from the evidence, even if all possible evidence has been collected and analyzed (because it is <i>always</i> logically possible to construct alternative explanations, no matter how improbable they may be). The best we can do is reach provisional confirmation based upon the evidence available at any given time. Some (as in a minute fraction) have produced practical benefits to society, but that is not what makes scientific theories true (though it definitely helps; if an engineering application can be made of some theory, it's nearly guaranteed to be at least approximately true). If it's your opinion that philosophy has solved some research problem(s), please provide examples. If you mean what "works" <i>psychologically</i>, I couldn't disagree more strenuously. Any definition of truth that does not involve correspondence to reality as a tenet is woefully misguided, in my opinion. Science is not a monolithic theory, enterprise, or way of thinking. Some scientific theories have met my criteria from post #45 and can be (at least provisionally) regarded as true, some have not (and are better classified as hypotheses). The idea that the truth is true because it's true is rather hard to justify. Why presume there is, in nature, some sort of thing that we can point at and say "that is truth." Isn't truth just the result of our observations, and our observations seem to be based of of methodologies that produce beneficial results. Although scientific method may not produce benefits on a case by case basis, the principle of following and believing scientific ideas seems to have served us well. Aside from the fact that scientific methodologies have been shown to be useful, as a result of their nature and ours, what is the methodology of science that produces "truth," as you described it? We rarely seem to be certain - only believing in matters of degree. What decides our level of confidence if not the repetition of success with that particular methodology, ie science. What does scientific method offer aside from pragmatics (or in correspondence) that compels us to believe it? If correspondence is the truth, I think we need reason to believe certain foundations are necessarily truth. What foundation is better to begin with than pragmatics? Don't we have an option when it comes to what we believe - despite the external unchanging reality. As for problems I would say philosophy has solved, in a matter of degrees not certainty, I would present the following: 1. If justice exists, racism is unjust. (All moral theories) 2. God does not exist. (Hume and others) 3. If justice exists, speciesism is unjust. (Singer) 4. Language is not pure. (Wittgenstein) 5. Idealism is false. There are others I'd probably put on the "likely side" but what I think is enough to be "true" is a relative viewpoint. Some others I would consider likely are that empiricism is true, determinism is true, and pride is a virtue. These will be likely picked apart. I left "justice" up in the air because I think solving ethical dilemmas is much easier than solving whether ethics and justice actually exist.

Ghosthack
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Posted 09/11/09 - 07:16 PM:	#89
But strategies strive for more than mere guesswork as well. Nobody would consider the strategies of a Sun Tzu, Napoleon, or Clausewitz as being mere guesswork. Each work aims at certain immutable truths about the best ways to fight a war or battle (economy of force, gaining psychological advantages on opponents etc.). And the correctness of each strategy is born out by the success of the war. But in the application of a strategy, tactics will come into play and the fidelity of the tactics to the strategy must be taken into account. In a similar way philosophy directs how the sciences proceed and the results of the sciences reflect on how well the philosophy accords with reality. I'll give a few examples: Pythagoreans believe that math is the language of the universe. This is a belief adopted by the physical sciences and the tactics are whatever math is used to solve particular problems. Nietzche is viewed by many as a proto-psychoanalyst. Freud talks in glowing terms about him. Many of the ideas of existentialism are employed in psychology. Bacon was a great proponent of experimentation. The importance of experimentation in the sciences is a relatively new idea, occurring largely within the past 500 years. The ancient greeks were more keen on rational deduction about how the world must be as opposed to how it is. Bacon's philosophy places emphasis on experimentation and the sciences employ experiments in practice. Edited by Ghosthack on 09/11/09 - 07:33 PM

Marquis
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Posted 09/12/09 - 10:37 AM:	#90
It's solved the problem of free time. Edited by Incision on 09/12/09 - 12:23 PM. Reason: capitalization, punctuation

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