Philosophy and How I Talked Myself Out Of It.

Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 11:42 am

Before I start, let me say that I really do love philosophy. I always have and I think I always will. I like reading it. I like talking it. I like thinking about it. It is just too bad that I no longer really take it seriously, or, more specifically, as much more than a fun way to pass the time.

As many will attest, a few years ago I was very much into philosophy. On the boards, I would debate with people about philosophy and often, the debates got quite heated. Heated debate is a sure sign that the two or more parties involved take it seriously. And I did that!

But about two years ago, several things happened that, in tandem, caused me to lose my desire of pursuing philosophy as anything other than a secondary pursuit.

First, I began gradually talking myself out of the bedrock idea of philosophy: that reason, on its own, can solve problems. Philosophers tend to believe - or else they wouldn't be ONLY philosophers - that thinking alone can solve REAL problems. Well, I talked myself out of that. Thinking can do a lot, and it can help us in the day to day. But in the world, thinking cannot solve anything unless backed by observation and data (and then it is science, not philosophy) or action (and then it is activism, politics, or some such thing that is more than philosophy).

Philosophy, I reasoned, is fun, but not productive. It is no exaggeration, I think, to say that no problem has ever actually been solved conclusively by philosophy. So, at one point, I really thought that philosophy mattered. Now, I think it matters only insofar as it relies on other things - activism, science, etc. - to make things happen.

Author Stanley Fish wrote an essay that had much influence on me where he postulates what would happen if all the moral philosophers suddenly ceased to exist and there was no more moral philosophy. (Let's extend that to any philosophy at all.) What would happen? He very rightly pointed out that the world would keep on going just as it was. People would behave in similar ways, and we would all reflect about it. The only difference is that there would be no class of people that got paid to reflect. All reflection would doubtless be done by people who do and reflect in tandem: emphatically not what a philosopher does.

Second, I simply got tired of the bickering. That is what philosophers do - they bicker. As referred to above, I once thought that philosophic bickering was serious debate, but now I think that it is largely bickering. When philosophers disagree as to the best metaethical system, how we know that we exist, or whether the brain can be said to give rise to the mind, it doesn't seem like anything that matters is really getting solved. It is fun to talk about, and it is clear that the interlocutors are having fun, but does reason alone solve these problems? And if so - if reason ALONE can solve a problem - is it a problem worth solving?

So, here I am. Part of me would love to be a professional philosopher, spending my days teaching undergraduates about the pragmatists, the existentialists, the empiricists, etc.

But then there is the part of me that is really glad that I am not that, becaue I would not be able to avoid the feeling that I am not really doing anything of lasting value.

Thoughts?

Master of Logic Joined: Oct 04, 2003 Posts: 9384

Glad you came to that conclusion. "Thinking alone" is merely mental masterbation. This is a long since debunked concept first postulated by the ancient Greeks, and while nice window dressing, is not a solution.

One of my favorite stories, and it is just that, a story, is Plato's alligory of the Cave. As a Philisophical "what if" it does make you think. But the reality is that you DONT simply look at the wall, you, in reality leave the cave. It's funny, but it demonstrates that to find reality, you have to put thinking into action. BUT it fails to go the distance by including that how one thinks|(not included in the story) is just as important. That is where the story fails, and the shows the gap that Plato had in his "thinking".

Thinking is not all there is. You have to plug in solid data into a standard to get good solid data out. Good critical thought skills, good logic skills and SOLID DATA to plug into those skills and solid scientific method(action applied with standards), goes with "thinking". If any one of those ellements is flawed the data resulting from it will be flawed.

That deficite most humans still have today allows them to think absurd things and because of their merely "thinking" with no standards to apply that thought to.

I got ticked at a fellow atheist for postulating the "Star Trec" transporter because scientists were able to move a photon. It is still a gap argument. There is a huge differance between moving an atom or a photon, and deconstructing and reconstructing an entire human body, or making a copy of a human body, including the thoughts.

You can fanticise all you want about anything, but if you have no data, or bad data, or a GAP in your argument it is an utterance and nothing more. "Thinking" is not the solution. Good critical thought, good logical skills, applied to a standard with solid data going into that standard.

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:02 am

Thinking and philosophizing pulled me out of theism and allowed me to think more critically. Now.. due to philosophy. I have helped free many thousands of minds around the world who are now open to new scientific ideas and ways to view the world.

I'd say it's very productive.

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 4:12 am

It was years ago that I first said, "The only philosophy left is philosophy of science" which I think is pretty much what you're saying.

I mentioned this once to Bob Spence also, and we basically agreed.

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 6:49 am

infidelguy wrote:

Thinking and philosophizing pulled me out of theism and allowed me to think more critically. Now.. due to philosophy. I have helped free many thousands of minds around the world who are now open to new scientific ideas and ways to view the world.

I'd say it's very productive.

It is productive in the sense that it can help change someone's mind about something. But that is the same usefulness that things like rhetoric carry. It means that self-help authors have as much usefulness as philosophers, and as a former student in philosophy, I am used to philosophers claiming much more for their discipline.

And the other problem is that bandying about on, say, the philosophy of religion and whether god makes sense philosophically does nothing to clear up the issue of whether god exists. Likewise, bandying about on the issue of whether a certain ethical view makes philosophic sense does nothing to tell us about whether a moral stance makes actual sesne in real life.

In other words, reason does not solve problems on its own. In order to find out whether god exists, philosophy won't do it alone. It is an existential question that can only be answered by collecting evidence and looking outward rather than inward. And finding out whether, say, ethics are objective or subjective cannot be solved by philosophic speculation - it can only be solved (if at all) by looking for evidence and looking outward, rather than inward.

So, yes, philosophy is useful AS rhetoric and has the same use that speeches by politicians on public policy issues do - to change someone's mind and spur on reflection. But philosophy can never solve actual real-world problems because the real world does not stand and fall on logical consistency.

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 6:52 am

kmisho wrote:

It was years ago that I first said, "The only philosophy left is philosophy of science" which I think is pretty much what you're saying.

I mentioned this once to Bob Spence also, and we basically agreed.

I don't even buy that. Philosophy of science is great fun, but it has as much value in affecting science as armchair quarterbacking affects football, or political commentary on CNN Sunday affects politics. It is a group of people talking about what scientists do and how they do it, but the problem is that scientists do what they do first and the speculation comes after.

Don't get me wrong! I actually love the philosophy of science and have great fun reading and contemplating it. But I am really no longer under the illusion that philosophy of science affects what science does, philosophy of mind affects what neuroscience does, ethical philosophy affects what people morally do, or political philosophy affects politics.

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 8:04 am

First I'd like to say, welcome back Kevin! I've missed reading your wonderfully written, eloquent posts.

Quote:

Philosophy, I reasoned, is fun, but not productive. It is no exaggeration, I think, to say that no problem has ever actually been solved conclusively by philosophy. So, at one point, I really thought that philosophy mattered. Now, I think it matters only insofar as it relies on other things - activism, science, etc. - to make things happen.

I agree that philosophy is dependant on other activities, but without the rational examination of that of which we believe as truth (philosophy) we'd never be truly productive at activities like science, etc. So I prefer to not discount either the action or the mental side of the equation. It’s seems both depend on each other to be useful and affective.

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 9:24 pm

MockingGods wrote:

I agree that philosophy is dependant on other activities, but without the rational examination of that of which we believe as truth (philosophy) we'd never be truly productive at activities like science, etc. So I prefer to not discount either the action or the mental side of the equation. It’s seems both depend on each other to be useful and affective.

Thanks for the welcome back. It is good to be dialoguing again.

I am not sure. I agree that thinking and acting are a circular thing, with one always dependent on the other.

My problem with philosophy is that it only does the one and doesn't do the other. Science does both. It hypothesizes and ruminates, while also doing fieldwork and experimentation. But philosophy ruminates and thinks that their job is done and that ruminating alone can solve problems.

I am just not sure it can.

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 12:59 am

Kevinthepragmaticist wrote:

infidelguy wrote:

Thinking and philosophizing pulled me out of theism and allowed me to think more critically. Now.. due to philosophy. I have helped free many thousands of minds around the world who are now open to new scientific ideas and ways to view the world.

I'd say it's very productive.

It is productive in the sense that it can help change someone's mind about something. But that is the same usefulness that things like rhetoric carry. It means that self-help authors have as much usefulness as philosophers, and as a former student in philosophy, I am used to philosophers claiming much more for their discipline.

And the other problem is that bandying about on, say, the philosophy of religion and whether god makes sense philosophically does nothing to clear up the issue of whether god exists. Likewise, bandying about on the issue of whether a certain ethical view makes philosophic sense does nothing to tell us about whether a moral stance makes actual sesne in real life.

In other words, reason does not solve problems on its own. In order to find out whether god exists, philosophy won't do it alone. It is an existential question that can only be answered by collecting evidence and looking outward rather than inward. And finding out whether, say, ethics are objective or subjective cannot be solved by philosophic speculation - it can only be solved (if at all) by looking for evidence and looking outward, rather than inward.

So, yes, philosophy is useful AS rhetoric and has the same use that speeches by politicians on public policy issues do - to change someone's mind and spur on reflection. But philosophy can never solve actual real-world problems because the real world does not stand and fall on logical consistency.

I'm quite confused here. Rhetoric need not be logical or consistent. So.. I don't agree. Many God's have been disproven via strict philosophy alone. In dialoguing with the many folks I run into almost daily, they change their minds about particular god concepts due to philosophy alone and no science.

So again, waste of time? Nah.. I don't think so.

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 2:28 am

infidelguy wrote:

I'm quite confused here. Rhetoric need not be logical or consistent. So.. I don't agree. .

]

And I have seen a great many people change their minds about things via rhetoric. (I don't like to say it, but I think more people per year are brought to religion by rhetoric and apologetics than brought out by philosophy.)

Does that suffice to show that rhetoric can solve problems?

No. So why should the fact that philosophy has changed peolpes' minds suffice to show that it is useful in solving problems.

I certainly grant that philosophy is good as a persuasive tool to those willing to listen to it. But I still don't see how that is different from rhetoric being useful for doing the same thing. And, if that is true, then philosophy and rhetoric stand on par (and I would argue that rhetoric is superior, as I think it has shown to be a better mind-changing tool.)

As far as logical consistency, two things. First of all, philosophy need not be logically consistent. It is nice when it is. (It is very impressive when a philosopher comes up with a logically consistent work, because that means she has thought of all the angles.) Look at existentialism, postmodernism, Hegelianism, and all of the books written by the Romantics philosophers. No logical consistency. Yet, Rousseau and Hegal still get much love from the philosophy community.

Logical consistency is not, to borrow a philosophy phrase, a necessary or sufficient condition to qualify something as philosophy rather than rhetoric.

Secondly, logical consistency is nowhere near an indicator of how valid something is. It is the philosoopher's mistake to think that it is!

Look at the whole sorry field of moral philosophy! Everyone is ruminating about how reason can tell us how best to make moral judgments and scrambling to find the most logically consisten argument for ethics. If it is not logically consistent, they say, then it is an argument against that particular system.

Can anyone tell me with a straight face, though, that our ethical intuitions and makeup, evolved as it was over thousands upon thousands of years of trial and error, must be - or is - logically consistent????

Only philosophers - only some philosophers - think so. Hell, a moral problem IS a moral problem because we tend to have very conflicting moral intuitions in those situations. (If I shoot one person to save 3, is that moral? If I rip out a smoker's heart against her to give it to a baby with a bad heart, is that morally justified?) See, conflicting intuitions is part of the deal! No logical consistency there! And no system of philosophy could resolve this matter in a way that is completely logically consistent because any solution, by definition, has to ignore some ethical intuitions to satisfy others.

So, I don't see how logical consitency is a demarcating criterion to seperate philosophy from rhetoric. (I also suppose that if results are measured, more people are swayed by the latter than the former.)

Quote:

Many God's have been disproven via strict philosophy alone. In dialoguing with the many folks I run into almost daily, they change their minds about particular god concepts due to philosophy alone and no science.

So again, waste of time? Nah.. I don't think so.

I don't take issue with the fact that philosophy can change people's minds. But per my criticism above, I don't see that as anything special with philosophy. Self-help gurus and motivational speakers also change people's minds.

As for God's being disproved becasue of philosophy, I will concede a point here: philosophy can do things like disprove that the bible is inerrant (by pointing out contradictions), or that certain gods may be logically nonsensical.

As to the former, that is good.

As to the second point, it is really the philosopher's mistake to suggest that because something can be shown logically nonsensical that it has literally been disproven. To disprove that something exists requires more than pure thought. "X exists" is a question about an existant, and as such, can only be disproved by demonstrating that it does not ACTUALLY exist. The best philosophy can do is to show us that it is difficult to think about.

And since philosophers very subtly tend to fall into the error of making thought out to be much higher than the world of concretes, they WOULD often figure that if it is difficult to think about, it probably doesn't exist.

I will certainly admit that philosophy has done a lot to awaken people to the idea that maybe religion is nonsensical, maybe the bible is riddled with holes, and that maybe we should really question the apologetics.

But as to proving or disproving god, we need a whole lot more than philosophy. Do we not tell the theists - rightly - that proving god's existence requires more than philosophy and a statement that if it can be thought up, it must exist? Yes, we tell them that it would require actual sensory evidence.

So, why would we say that God must be proven with more than philosophy, but that god can be disproven with only philosophy?

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 2:39 am

Kevinthepragmaticist wrote:

kmisho wrote:

It was years ago that I first said, "The only philosophy left is philosophy of science" which I think is pretty much what you're saying.

I mentioned this once to Bob Spence also, and we basically agreed.

I don't even buy that. Philosophy of science is great fun, but it has as much value in affecting science as armchair quarterbacking affects football, or political commentary on CNN Sunday affects politics. It is a group of people talking about what scientists do and how they do it, but the problem is that scientists do what they do first and the speculation comes after.

Don't get me wrong! I actually love the philosophy of science and have great fun reading and contemplating it. But I am really no longer under the illusion that philosophy of science affects what science does, philosophy of mind affects what neuroscience does, ethical philosophy affects what people morally do, or political philosophy affects politics.

All I mean by the philosophy of science is whatever answers the question "what constitutes science and why?"

It sounds to me more like you're talking about philosophers than philosophy. Any ideas about how far we can trust the findings of science, the acceptable ways of collecting and analyzing data are philosophical questions.

Maybe the only difference between us is that you have discarded just slightly more of it than I have.

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 2:52 am

Kmisho,

Let me give a great example of why I think the philosophy of science is realtively unimportant to science itself.

Recently, I read an article on edge.com by a philosopher of science offering a wonderful critique of Popper's falsificationism. She suggests, probably rightly, that many things fit the criteria for falsification that are emphatically not science, and some things which don't fit the critiera of falsifiability are considered science. Long and short: Popper's falsificationism has less allignment to what scientists consider science than would be expected of an accurate description.

But here is the question: Do scientists, you think, reflect on their work by asking, "Does what I'm doing match up with Popper's critiera of science?" My guess is not so much. And the ones who do: do you think that if they end up with a negative answer to the question, they go into a fit and abandon their research? My guess: they go on with their research and let the philosophers of science talk about whether it fits the necessary and sufficient conditions of science.

In other words, I really doubt that if Popper's theory of falsificationism, or any other acting philosophy of science, were overthrown tomorrow, that science would change much if at all. I am not sure they would really even notice.

Quote:

It sounds to me more like you're talking about philosophers than philosophy. Any ideas about how far we can trust the findings of science, the acceptable ways of collecting and analyzing data are philosophical questions.

As a teacher of science classes to high schoolers, I can say this: teaching the methods of sceince, and how to use them to evaluate ideas is very, very, very important. So, if that is what you mean by saying that the philosophy of science is important, than I agree insofar as that goes.

But I still have a suspicion that philosophers of science can best be compared to Shannon Sharpe and Bill Cowher analyzing the game that just ended on TV. Just as Sharpe and Cowher's speculations do not affect how football is actually played (but can be instructive for those who want to learn more about football), the philosophy of science does not actually affect how science is done (but can still be constructive to those who want to learn about science.)

So, I do think that I am talking about philosophy rather than philosophers, and I really still do think that if all the philosophers of science fell off of the earth (but scientists survived), that science would just keep doing what it is doing and, as always, pay little attention to the philosophy of science.

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:32 am

Yes. "insofar as that goes"

Philosophy has for me also become gigantically tiny. In better days philosophy was a graveyard of isms, but has been on the decline.

In a similar vein, one of my favorite sayings is that "the Earth, for all practical purposes, does not exist" in comparison with what surrounds it. I think the effect of philosophy on science is somewhat greater than the effect of the Earth on the rest of the universe. It has to be employed when someone asks what is good about double-blind testing for instance. Surely you're not going to answer, "Just believe."

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:51 am

Kmisho wrote:

Philosophy has for me also become gigantically tiny. In better days philosophy was a graveyard of isms, but has been on the decline.

It really breaks my heart, because I absolutely love philosophy. I still read it, and wish - sometimes to tears - that I had pursued my PhD in it. (I had gained admissions to a decent school, but could not quite afford it and was not sure what the job prospects were.) So, it still occupies a spot in my heart and mind.

But whenever I look at the philosophy section at the bookstore, there are mixed emotions. On one hand, I get intellectually excited. On the other hand, I feel like a whole bunch of people are wasting their time doing something of very minimal importance. (And most of the recent books are those horrible "Philosophy and the Simpson's" collections that, as a testament to the decline of philosophy, try in vein to cajole people into philosophy.)

But the irony is that I love to read it, but then everytime I read it, I wish I were able to do it as a profession. But every time I think that, I lament my "loss of innocence" and the days where I used to think that it would be an exalted job.

Quote:

In a similar vein, one of my favorite sayings is that "the Earth, for all practical purposes, does not exist" in comparison with what surrounds it. I think the effect of philosophy on science is somewhat greater than the effect of the Earth on the rest of the universe. It has to be employed when someone asks what is good about double-blind testing for instance. Surely you're not going to answer, "Just believe."

Interesting. I like that analogy.

I think philosophy will one day have to content itself with the idea that it has about as much purpose as departments who study literary criticism. The literary world is not affected so much by literary criticism, but rather, literary critics have a job only because other literary critics like to read what they have to say. Thus, their affect is entirely internal to their own discipline.

I think philosophy is the same. I remember a few years ago talking online with a philosophy major and when asked what he wanted to do after his studies, he said, "I want to write reviews that no one will read about books that no one has read to appear in journals that no one will read."

I don't think he is far off.

As to the idea that the role of philosophers of science might be to explain why or how the scientific process works, that does seem to be what they do. And as an educator of high schoolers, I think it is very important to explain to students things like controls, double-blind studies, placebos, etc.

But again, that means that philosophers of science are not philosophizing so much as post-hoc commentating.

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 3:19 pm

Quote:

But again, that means that philosophers of science are not philosophizing so much as post-hoc commentating.

Not necessarily, Kevin. If anyone took Nancy Cartright's book "How The Laws Of Physics Lie", for instance, it would be a guiding force for how physicists do research.

But I do think that too much of philosophy is kinda bullshit.


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