Philosophy is Bunk!

[DrZoidberg]

Science is part of philosophy. Every academic subject started as philosophy, and is an off-shoot of a branch of philosophy.

So if you claim that philosophy is bunk you claim that all human knowledge is bunk.

It's funny when people who are utterly and completely clueless about history and the meaning of words have strong opinions

[Iolo]

[quote=""DrZoidberg""]Science is part of philosophy. Every academic subject started as philosophy, and is an off-shoot of a branch of philosophy.

So if you claim that philosophy is bunk you claim that all human knowledge is bunk.

It's funny when people who are utterly and completely clueless about history and the meaning of words have strong opinions [/quote]

Science grew out of the search for 'wisdom', but learned that experiment was a lot more useful than a debate about language, I think. I think that philosophy similarly grew out of religion but is much more abstract. I think that worrying the concept 'truth' is pretty pointless myself: it is based on a false notion of life-experience.

[subsymbolic]

[quote=""Grendel""]

What's a paradigm? Because outside of a very specific meaning in philosophy of science it's just a word in bullshit bingo. You want to use the term please demonstrate you know what it means. Because otherwise...

House.

I used that word in it's bullshit bingo interpretation.[/QUOTE]

I know.

[subsymbolic]

[quote=""Grendel""]

So science, a composite entity, shows that our, a composite entity, ideas, a composite entity, are bunk?
.

Basically, yes. Your ideas on composite are clearly different to mine. But even using your definition a composite entity is not incapable of understanding it's component parts.[/QUOTE]

Try to remember how you were trying to slag down philosophy:

Science shows that our ideas of composite entities are bunk.

MInd you, the amount o hidden premises and metaphysical assumptions you smuggle in in that short sentence is impressive.

[subsymbolic]

[quote=""Iolo""]

Science is part of philosophy. Every academic subject started as philosophy, and is an off-shoot of a branch of philosophy.

So if you claim that philosophy is bunk you claim that all human knowledge is bunk.

It's funny when people who are utterly and completely clueless about history and the meaning of words have strong opinions

Science grew out of the search for 'wisdom', but learned that experiment was a lot more useful than a debate about language, I think. I think that philosophy similarly grew out of religion but is much more abstract. I think that worrying the concept 'truth' is pretty pointless myself: it is based on a false notion of life-experience.[/QUOTE]

You do realise that you are appealing to the very idea you are trying to reject in your rejection. There's a word for that. Meanwhile, perhaps you could give a timeline for your history of all this?

[subsymbolic]

[quote=""DrZoidberg""]Science is part of philosophy. Every academic subject started as philosophy, and is an off-shoot of a branch of philosophy.

So if you claim that philosophy is bunk you claim that all human knowledge is bunk.

It's funny when people who are utterly and completely clueless about history and the meaning of words have strong opinions [/quote]

Not after the first five hundred times...

I'm now firmly of the opinion that Trump isn't an aberration, merely a representative sample.

[plebian]

[quote=""subsymbolic""]

Science is part of philosophy. Every academic subject started as philosophy, and is an off-shoot of a branch of philosophy.

So if you claim that philosophy is bunk you claim that all human knowledge is bunk.

It's funny when people who are utterly and completely clueless about history and the meaning of words have strong opinions

Not after the first five hundred times...[/QUOTE]

This is a slow medium for acquiring education for those who believe they are teaching.

[subsymbolic]

[quote=""plebian""]

Science is part of philosophy. Every academic subject started as philosophy, and is an off-shoot of a branch of philosophy.

So if you claim that philosophy is bunk you claim that all human knowledge is bunk.

It's funny when people who are utterly and completely clueless about history and the meaning of words have strong opinions

Not after the first five hundred times...

This is a slow medium for acquiring education for those who believe they are teaching.[/QUOTE]

Through the process of erosion.

[Grendel]

[quote=""plebian""]

First, Spacetime is an element of a model. It is not "an asymetry". Dimensions are not measurements. They are also elements of models. Continua in this case. Spacetime is described using geometry. It requires measurement in order to use either GR as a predictive model or even just to calculate a Minkowski light cone sort of thing. [/quote]

I think we're off topic. Spacetime is an asymmetry. In fact it is spacetime that allows us to make distinction. All dimensions are measurements, asymmetric measurements. We can disagree on this. Your view is classical.

This thread is not defending Science. That's a given. You can start a thread if you like. You can call it 'GRENDEL'S SCIENCE IS BUNK'

The four force fields did not exist prior to the phase transition that broke symmetry, a single field existed in a state of symmetry. The four fields we are familar with were created AFTER that phase transition. To be exact they appeared after the Planck Epoch 10(-43) seconds and had separated from the one field by 10(-36) seconds. Prior to that the universe was the 'size' of a single particle (I wonder where all that map-territory of space and time fitted? )

However whether we agree on the process or not, there are a whole host of physicists who know much more than us ... it has nothing to do with philosophy and it is not in question.

As for not being able to speak prior to time zero, we have a photo of the universe when it was very small taken from what you would say was outside it's parameters.

I'm sorry if my views are all mack-daddy errors, your free to form your own abstract views on how the universe came to be. It's not on topic, and I'm not the right person to defend it.

[Grendel]

[quote=""DrZoidberg""]Science is part of philosophy. Every academic subject started as philosophy, and is an off-shoot of a branch of philosophy.
[/quote]

O phuck! I suppose someone had to say that purely for formality. Nothing changes.

[plebian]

[quote=""Grendel""]

First, Spacetime is an element of a model. It is not "an asymetry". Dimensions are not measurements. They are also elements of models. Continua in this case. Spacetime is described using geometry. It requires measurement in order to use either GR as a predictive model or even just to calculate a Minkowski light cone sort of thing.

I think we're off topic. Spacetime is an asymmetry. In fact it is spacetime that allows us to make distinction. All dimensions are measurements, asymmetric measurements. We can disagree on this. Your view is classical. [/QUOTE]
you entirely missed my point. I wasn't being clear enough. My view is not classical or neoclassical or even Freudian. My view is that you are making mack-daddy map-territory errors by entirely equivocating the actual universe with the elements of our current model of the physics we use to predict it. Spacetime is a word which refers to an element of a model we use to predict future experience. Spacetime is not that experience. Spacetime=map. Universe=territory. Likewise, Dimensions=map. Measurements=the data that fills in bits of the map. Actually measuring something=territory.

For a guy who wants to school philosophy departments on the futility of applying rigid boundaries to our physical definitions, it seems to me like you might be violating your own edict.

This thread is not defending Science. That's a given. You can start a thread if you like. You can call it 'GRENDEL'S SCIENCE IS BUNK'

I am not defending nor attacking science. It is a methodology. I am saying that the models we currently apply do not lend themselves to any metaphysics at all in any easy way. If you really go down your road, I suppose you could adopt the Tegmark approach and say that since our models produce mathematics, that the universe actually is math. But again, the map-territory error there is like parking your giant tractor trailer on a printout of an address from google maps. Suit yourself though. At any rate, the metaphysics are hardly worked out for anything.

The four force fields did not exist prior to the phase transition that broke symmetry, a single field existed in a state of symmetry. The four fields we are familar with were created AFTER that phase transition. To be exact they appeared after the Planck Epoch 10(-43) seconds and had separated from the one field by 10(-36) seconds. Prior to that the universe was the 'size' of a single particle (I wonder where all that map-territory of space and time fitted? )

Right in your hand. All you have there is a map.

However whether we agree on the process or not, there are a whole host of physicists who know much more than us ... it has nothing to do with philosophy and it is not in question.

It has everything to do with philosophy and nothing at all to do with physics or any other science. You are looking exclusively at a map and calling it the territory. You have wholesale replaced the territory with the map. What you need to sort that out is philosophy, not science.

As for not being able to speak prior to time zero, we have a photo of the universe when it was very small taken from what you would say was outside it's parameters.

No we don't. And even if we did, you would then be equating a bit of exposed photosensitive emulsion covered paper with ultimate reality. Kind of a drastic map-territory error if you think about it.

I'm sorry if my views are all mack-daddy errors, your free to form your own abstract views on how the universe came to be. It's not on topic, and I'm not the right person to defend it.

I'm not asking you to defend the particular physical models you like. They are model that describe and predict itty-bitty bits of infinity.They are precisely not the territory. They are maps. I'm saying that the process of translating maps into metaphysics has pretty much fallen down the "whoops we don't have any metaphors so I'm just going to drink to oblivion" hole. The only metaphysical stance that I can imagine being consistent with scientific models is that, at the scales we navigate and the concepts we reify, the universe appears to be consistent. That is, patterns seem to follow rules. The connections we may draw between the rules we currently use to predict events and the apparent consistency of the patterns include only this: models have utility in the service of our passions or they have no value at all. Anything else, any other conclusions we may wish to draw about the territory from our knowledge of the maps we ourselves have made in the past maybe 3000 years (which is approximately 2e-7% of the time our best field theory models suggest the universe has been similar to the way it is now) is the inductivist turkey at best. We can use those models to rule things out though, but not to rule things in.

[Grendel]

Your post is way to big to answer all at once. However, I'm hooked. So one thing at a time, I only got a little brain.

Quote Pleb: Spacetime is a word which refers to an element of a model we use to predict future experience. Spacetime is not that experience.

I don't really understand this. From my viewpoint Spacetime is a result of symmetry breaking. It is a product of expansion. It allows phase transitions to occur (expansion's affect on conservation) It is asymmetrical, it allows for distinction (measurements)

Spacetime=map.
Universe=territory.
Dimensions=map.
Measurements=the data that fills in bits of the map.
Actually measuring something=territory.

When you say spacetime is a map of the universe which is the territory that the map describes then did the Cassini craft travel to Saturn only on the map, but did not visit the territory?

Are the Voyager craft still existent in the territory, or only items on the map? Or do I just have no idea what your talking about?

But thanx for a good post, I'm still reading it.

[plebian]

[quote=""Grendel""]Your post is way to big to answer all at once. However, I'm hooked. So one thing at a time, I only got a little brain.

Quote Pleb: Spacetime is a word which refers to an element of a model we use to predict future experience. Spacetime is not that experience.

I don't really understand this. From my viewpoint Spacetime is a result of symmetry breaking. It is a product of expansion. It allows phase transitions to occur (expansion's affect on conservation) It is asymmetrical, it allows for distinction (measurements)

Spacetime=map.
Universe=territory.
Dimensions=map.
Measurements=the data that fills in bits of the map.
Actually measuring something=territory.

When you say spacetime is a map of the universe which is the territory that the map describes then did the Cassini craft travel to Saturn only on the map, but did not visit the territory?

Are the Voyager craft still existent in the territory, or only items on the map? Or do I just have no idea what your talking about?

But thanx for a good post, I'm still reading it.

[/quote]
Hey, yer welcome! It's a pet issue for me. I'd say that spacecraft travel and arrive mostly where they are predicted to arrive. We may use the word spacetime to refer to some number of geometric or otherwise numerical qualities we modeled in order to ensure that arrival but the word refers to how we model, not what we model. Poincare' made a case that our geometries are generally arbitrary other than that they are well suited to creatures such as we are. His point was that there are any number, possibly infinite, of ways to construct a model which, although they could probably be translated between, it would be exceedingly difficult and probably beyond our capacity. But, those seemingly dissimilar models could all predict to within a very fine degree of similar accuracy and so we have no possible way to consider models as anything more than instruments which predict. The only feature of a model that matters is the accuracy and salience of its predictions. But that creates a dilemma that drastically exacerbates map territory errors. It means that we consider as real only that which our models can predict.

And, if the progress of science has taught us anything it's that there is lots more we don't know than there is we do know. So when we consider the modeled quality to be the thing itself, it means we are in fact intentionally blinding ourselves to potential sensations that we don't know to look for. We are in effect hiding reality from ourselves in plain sight. The only metaphysics I subscribe to are that we should try to avoid mistaking the model for the thing. We use the model to fill in reality and the parts we fill in are wrong because they are only what we expect. Hence the famous dictum that "All models are wrong". Predictions, however, as long as they are general enough, are either right or wrong and we use models to make predictions.

[Cheerful Charlie]

[quote=""Grendel""]

Science is part of philosophy. Every academic subject started as philosophy, and is an off-shoot of a branch of philosophy.

O phuck! I suppose someone had to say that purely for formality. Nothing changes.[/QUOTE]


Philosophy is to science as alchemy is to chemistry. One can be a perfectly competent chemist and not give a toss about metaphysics.

[BWE]

[quote=""Cheerful Charlie""]

Science is part of philosophy. Every academic subject started as philosophy, and is an off-shoot of a branch of philosophy.

O phuck! I suppose someone had to say that purely for formality. Nothing changes.

Philosophy is to science as alchemy is to chemistry. One can be a perfectly competent chemist and not give a toss about metaphysics.[/QUOTE]

This is true. Gotta love the institution. Also, plebian my man. Pretty good. You will be a Jedi yet.

[plebian]

Thank you. I do pay attention.

[Grendel]

[quote=""Cheerful Charlie""]

Science is part of philosophy. Every academic subject started as philosophy, and is an off-shoot of a branch of philosophy.

O phuck! I suppose someone had to say that purely for formality. Nothing changes.

Philosophy is to science as alchemy is to chemistry. One can be a perfectly competent chemist and not give a toss about metaphysics.[/QUOTE]

That's true. Or an engineer. But you cannot be a competant philosopher today without understanding physics. There are some who do, but the rest are paraphrasing legacy.

[DrZoidberg]

[quote=""Iolo""]

Science is part of philosophy. Every academic subject started as philosophy, and is an off-shoot of a branch of philosophy.

So if you claim that philosophy is bunk you claim that all human knowledge is bunk.

It's funny when people who are utterly and completely clueless about history and the meaning of words have strong opinions

Science grew out of the search for 'wisdom', but learned that experiment was a lot more useful than a debate about language, I think. I think that philosophy similarly grew out of religion but is much more abstract. I think that worrying the concept 'truth' is pretty pointless myself: it is based on a false notion of life-experience.[/QUOTE]

You're speculating. We don't need to speculate. We know the origins of science. What became modern science all started as academies.

Plato was the first to get the brilliant idea of a systematic and institutionalised system of learning.

To replace the ancient Greek system of mentorhood. Lots of people listening to one smart guy, was just a more efficient way to disseminate learning than a bunch of one-to-one lessons.

Which in turn was a result of the Greek democratic experiment which meant that every Greek citizen was dependent on all the other Greek citizens also being educated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_Academy

After Christianiasation these were then replaced by seminaries, or what we today call universities. Some of these are still around.

This btw, is why so many early scientists were priests. If you wanted to be a scientist and weren't filthy rich, becoming a priest was your only option. Gregor Mendel is one such example.

Modern science directly grew out of philosophy. From people like David Hume and Descartes. Philosophers formulated the scientific method.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science

BTW, this is an extremely short version. There's a whole bunch of important Arabs I've skipped. Indian and Chinese science is also interesting. As well as early Egyptian medical scientific work. Not to mention Galen. But all these are very tightly linked to religion, theology and also philosophy. These all considered themselves philosophers.

Adam Smith for example, wasn't an economist. He was a philosopher specialising in ethics.

I'd argue that the recent bad reputation of philosophy is the fault of postmodernism. When people disregard philosophy and think it is obsolete, they usually just have postmodernism in mind. Postmodernism was very popular from about 1970-2010. But it's now out of fashion again. So can we go back to respecting philosophy again? Please.

[BWE]

[quote=""Grendel""]

Science is part of philosophy. Every academic subject started as philosophy, and is an off-shoot of a branch of philosophy.

O phuck! I suppose someone had to say that purely for formality. Nothing changes.

Philosophy is to science as alchemy is to chemistry. One can be a perfectly competent chemist and not give a toss about metaphysics.

That's true. Or an engineer. But you cannot be a competant philosopher today without understanding physics. There are some who do, but the rest are paraphrasing legacy.[/QUOTE]

[DrZoidberg]

[quote=""Grendel""]

Science is part of philosophy. Every academic subject started as philosophy, and is an off-shoot of a branch of philosophy.

O phuck! I suppose someone had to say that purely for formality. Nothing changes.[/QUOTE]

Formalities matter. How well do you think the scientific method would be working if we didn't care about the formalia?

[Grendel]

[quote=""DrZoidberg""]

Science is part of philosophy. Every academic subject started as philosophy, and is an off-shoot of a branch of philosophy.

O phuck! I suppose someone had to say that purely for formality. Nothing changes.

Formalities matter. How well do you think the scientific method would be working if we didn't care about the formalia?[/QUOTE]

It's a platitude surely? You could just as truthfully say that science is an offshoot of alchemy.

And if it is an offshoot of philosophy, still it's grown up. That doesn't bind it paterfamilias. That's what's being asked for in the quote. However, I apologise for that comment.

On another note I enjoyed your post that included the origins of science. One criticism. You said the history of science is known in response to Iolo's speculation. But then you skipped and went from academe to modern science.

Iolo speculated on science (plain) and it's not as clear as it used to be that Homo Sapiens was the first to practice it. I think both his points were valid.

[DrZoidberg]

[quote=""Grendel""]

Science is part of philosophy. Every academic subject started as philosophy, and is an off-shoot of a branch of philosophy.

O phuck! I suppose someone had to say that purely for formality. Nothing changes.

Formalities matter. How well do you think the scientific method would be working if we didn't care about the formalia?

It's a platitude surely? You could just as truthfully say that science is an offshoot of alchemy.

And if it is an offshoot of philosophy, still it's grown up. That doesn't bind it paterfamilias. That's what's being asked for in the quote. However, I apologise for that comment.

On another note I enjoyed your post that included the origins of science. One criticism. You said the history of science is known in response to Iolo's speculation. But then you skipped and went from academe to modern science.

Iolo speculated on science (plain) and it's not as clear as it used to be that Homo Sapiens was the first to practice it. I think both his points were valid.[/QUOTE]

What science is is still defined by philosophy of science. That's still true. The definition of pain or the definition of sickness is still very much philosophy. Psychology is still very much philosophy. I suggest reading Thomas Khun's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

What you are saying isn't new. At the beginning of the 20'th century we were in the scientific philosophical paradigm of scientific positivism. Or just "modernism" for short. A wing of this was "scientism". The idea that we don't need philosophy. We only need science. That didn't end well. Both Nazism and Soviet communism were scientistic projects.

I'm not trying to do any guilt by association. But science has limits. There's loads of things that science cannot have a say on. Science only deals with a quite limited scope of things. Beyond that it's philosophy. Beyond that it will always be philosophy.

Another way to look at philosophy is a collection of all those sort-of academic subjects that don't really fit anywhere. Philosophy is the storage for the odd bits and bobs we don't quite know what to do with, but which might one day be useful.

As soon as philosophers come up with anything that can be applied to anything, it gets broken out of philosophy and made into it's own subject. But all academic subjects all started as blue sky philosophy at some point.

It's also funny that you are having a go at philosophy today of all times. There's more interesting things happening today in philosophy, than it has for 50 years. It's an exciting field again.

And you're wrong... it's the other way around, alchemy is an off-shoot of philosophy. As all other disciplines. Theories explored and that fail, is also valuable information. We should be grateful to all the alchemists who have tried, and failed, to create gold. Thanks to people like that we now know it doesn't work.

And this happens all the time. Thanks to all the phrenologists out there we know that bumps on the head aren't linked to behaviour.

[subsymbolic]

[quote=""Cheerful Charlie""]

Science is part of philosophy. Every academic subject started as philosophy, and is an off-shoot of a branch of philosophy.

O phuck! I suppose someone had to say that purely for formality. Nothing changes.

Philosophy is to science as alchemy is to chemistry. One can be a perfectly competent chemist and not give a toss about metaphysics.[/QUOTE]

If all the chemist is doing is the equivalent of engineering, following a path already set by others then you are perfectly correct. However, that's not doing science, that's just cooking.

If someone is a research chemist then the very idea of what a theory is has changed three times in the last century: starting with a hypothetico deductive model, followed by a falsificationist model which is now yielding slowly to a statistically based correspondence model. Each is a metaphysical stance on how to do science.

That someone might be a chemist who is unaware of this doesn't mean they don't need one, just that they have accepted one without understanding or questioning it. So just to pick the first two, if you don't know the difference between the two key types of hypothesis you ain't a scientist. If you do, you are making a metaphysical choice when you pick which one to test. (or someone made that choice for you and you are accepting it on faith.)

[plebian]

[quote=""subsymbolic""]

Science is part of philosophy. Every academic subject started as philosophy, and is an off-shoot of a branch of philosophy.

O phuck! I suppose someone had to say that purely for formality. Nothing changes.

Philosophy is to science as alchemy is to chemistry. One can be a perfectly competent chemist and not give a toss about metaphysics.

If all the chemist is doing is the equivalent of engineering, following a path already set by others then you are perfectly correct. However, that's not doing science, that's just cooking.

If someone is a research chemist then the very idea of what a theory is has changed three times in the last century: starting with a hypothetico deductive model, followed by a falsificationist model which is now yielding slowly to a statistically based correspondence model. Each is a metaphysical stance on how to do science.

That someone might be a chemist who is unaware of this doesn't mean they don't need one, just that they have accepted one without understanding or questioning it. So just to pick the first two, if you don't know the difference between the two key types of hypothesis you ain't a scientist. If you do, you are making a metaphysical choice when you pick which one to test. (or someone made that choice for you and you are accepting it on faith.)[/QUOTE]

I somehow missed the use of alchemy as a disparaging analogy. Heh. CheerfulCharlie made an excellent point about that though. It was a premise that was thoroughly tested and would have been pretty important if it had tuned out to be the way things really worked. Hindsight is blind most of the time, as they ought to say.

[BWE]

[quote=""Grendel""]

Science is part of philosophy. Every academic subject started as philosophy, and is an off-shoot of a branch of philosophy.

O phuck! I suppose someone had to say that purely for formality. Nothing changes.

Formalities matter. How well do you think the scientific method would be working if we didn't care about the formalia?

It's a platitude surely? You could just as truthfully say that science is an offshoot of alchemy.

And if it is an offshoot of philosophy, still it's grown up. That doesn't bind it paterfamilias. That's what's being asked for in the quote. However, I apologise for that comment.

On another note I enjoyed your post that included the origins of science. One criticism. You said the history of science is known in response to Iolo's speculation. But then you skipped and went from academe to modern science.

Iolo speculated on science (plain) and it's not as clear as it used to be that Homo Sapiens was the first to practice it. I think both his points were valid.[/QUOTE]

Science is applied philosophy. All fields of study are applied philosophy. Boiling down your objection to its simplest form, you are saying that there are branches of philosophy that challenge your worldview. But then, that's sort of the point of philosophy now, isn't it? Where I that vast landscape of field theory that you'd like everyone to use as the basis for their ontology do I find the bit about how we go about determining what goals individuals should be pursuing? And also, what formula do I apply to determine whether or not to challenge your ontology? Especially since my ontology doesn't give a toss about yours?