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Ah, the ignorent American consumer/cattle has something to tell a philosopher...
"Get a Life"
What is that, some sort of slogan for a new weight-loss product? Ha, "Get a life". Who cares about real issues, right? Instead let's all go to Wal Mart and look for cool new stuffs and then eat some McDonalds and complain about NASCAR and how people are always so this and that... and let's go see Die Hard 4 in theaters, and let's talk on our cellphones about what we always talk over and over again to all of our myfavs and let's watch FOX news and the O'Reilly Factor, and listen to how our father "George W" is saving the world from all those "ignant" terrorist who just hate us because we are free...
Yeah, a philosopher would like you to think that he is boring.
Ah, Bradford, you seem to think you are the sole authority on both the subjects of philosophy and science. Such arrogance usually implies ignorance. And your ad hominem attack on the "Ignorant American" is rather childish and, once again, ignorant. I agree that philosophy is not dead, for only philosophy can claim it's own death, and therefore re-direct it's avenue of thought. As Bertrand Russell put it (in his Unpopular Essays), "contempt for philosophy, if developed to the point at which it becomes systematic, is itself a philosophy."
Science has indeed eclipsed philosophy in many realms. The modern scientific method had provided us with concrete answers to many of the classical philosophical postulates that were once unknowable in pre-technoligical societies. If you state that philosophy is alive in anyone that questions the unknowable metaphysical questions that all thinking people eventually ask themselves, then the practice of philosophy cannot die as long as there is intelligent life to ponder these things. Quite frankly, I find philosophy pleasurable as a form of mental masturbation, but its actual utility has been overshadowed by scientific pursuit of The Knowable. All else is speculation. A theory that cannot be tested is not a scientific theory. So lighten up, you take yourself a bit too seriously I think. Go and actually do something to help people in a concrete way instead of thinking of clever snipes for those who disagree with you. You may find it more fulfilling and lose some of your venom.
Die Hard, Die Harder, and Die Hard: With a Vengeance were rad. Die Hard 4.0 was a pile of PG-13, kiddish, CGI, unimaginative bullshit that pissed all over my fuzzy memories of John McLane. Die Hard 4.0 can go fuck itself.
Some scientific debate requires philosophical investigation. For example, the Anthropic Principle has been used by physicists in the last 50 years to support various cosmological models, notably bubble nucleation. It is becoming a heated debate whether or not such arguments are in any way valid, pursued through mathematics and philosophy together (which are essentially the same thing).
Other problems in philosophy come right out of mathematical logic. Certain problems in the most widely-used formulation of mathematics are undecidable, so what if we're pursuing a line of thought that needs to use that problem? What do we assume to make it true? Some mathematicians still get pissy about assuming the Axiom of Choice - what is "true" in our world?
And finally, there's still plenty of room for political, economic, and social philosophy. Not everything is metaphysical BS.
If philosophy is greek for "love of knowledge" or "love of wisdom", then surely it cannot be dead.
Philosophy is at the very edge of every scientific front. It is the imagination that thinks "what if" in the face of the science's ever so solid factual certainty.
Without philosophy, there would be no mathematics capable of proving M theory, which is the new "Theory of everything" that we are struggling with today... the theory that Einstein was working on to find the one single concept that could explain everything in existence and even how something like the universe can come from seemingly nothing.
Philosophy is at the center of psychology, government, physics, blah blah blah... and without it, how would we get anywhere?
How do you think, without one's pure and untainted love of knowledge and discovery, they would be so driven to find the knowledge that we find so common place today?
No, my friends, philosophy is not dead, it's just that you rarely see a true philosopher that calls himself a philosopher before calling himself a scientist, or a mathematician, or an engineer, or a lawyer, or whatever else they specialize in...
No, that's imagination and speculation. Philosophy has simply been replaced by science. Philosophy as a term can be dropped and we'd lose none of our intellectual vision.
You don't know a thing about philosophy do you? What about Science? Do you actually know anything about either?
First off, from Wikipedia, so that you can see it for yourself if you want:
"Contemporary philosophy (c. 1960 – present)
In the last hundred years, philosophy has increasingly become an activity practiced within the modern research university, and accordingly it has grown more specialized and more distinct from the natural sciences. Much of philosophy in this period concerns itself with explaining the relation between the theories of the natural sciences and the ideas of the humanities or common sense.
It is arguable that later modern philosophy ended with contemporary philosophy's shift of focus from 19th century philosophers to 20th century philosophers. Philosophers such as Heidegger, the later Wittgenstein, and Dewey, occupied philosophical discourses exemplified in thinkers such as Derrida, Quine, Kripke, and Rorty."
... Eh, you know, it's apparent you need to read more, so here's everything you need to do the work yourself.
Wikipedia to Philosophy (I recommend you look into every branch of philosophy)
You'll find that there is a lot of philosophy behind science, but not so much science behind philosophy because philosophy is more like the foundation of science.
Demeaning someone else's point of view in order to prop up your own casts a shadow on your knowledge about the issue. Expecting someone to bandwagon because you present yourself as an "authority" on the issue is a fallacy that you should know to avoid if you are the philosophy expert that you say you are. Have some humility if you are trying to educate someone else who is less knowledgeable on the topic.
Secondly, suggesting Wikipedia as a source for others to use hardly speaks to your own credibility as far as research is concerned. A professor would have a field day with those references. If you're going to use an encylopedia, try Princeton or Stanford addendum.
Philosophy is not dead because we need to evaluate old questions under the new light of our era. These include evaluating how our conceptions of knowledge are changing in an era of rapidly flowing and continuously amassing information, the construction of identity through the multiplicity of anonymous accounts online, the ethics of statistical arbitrage and high frequency trading in futures markets, conceptions about understanding about the splitting of our attention through multi-tasking, the use of red-herrings in political arguments to persuade the public, etc. Philosophy is far from dead. The new era is dawning
And I suppose we should trust Wikipedia, as it is your only source. In fact, pretty much all of your argument is a copy-paste from an uncredible source.
Most of my last argument, the one that you are posting on, is copy-paste from wikipedia... DUH! I even said that's where it's from, I left what I copied and pasted in quotation marks, and I stated a reason for doing so, and no, I will not spend all day arguing this near needless debate on the internet.
So, rather than shipping the poor man my book collection and renting a scientist out to his address, I'll quote wikipedia and link to it. As I've already made clear, that's all I need to do in order to make my point. If he wants, he can learn everything I know on his own, but I doubt he will, seeing as he's already so uninterested in philosophy that he thinks it's "dead".
Also, what I did (in linking to wikipedia and quoting it) is far more than you did in trying to show me what I did... you don't need to hold my cock while I piss.
Contemporary philosophical study is two things: the history of philosophy i.e. the analysis of scientific enquiry before an adequate scientific framework was available and manifold philosophy i.e. thoughtful consideration of an array of scientific disciplines. Basically, it's science.
Those are mostly nonsense words. For example, Phenomenology as defined in Wiktionary: "A philosophy based on the intuitive experience of phenomena, and on the premise that reality consists of objects and events as consciously perceived by conscious beings."
Well, you have done nothing to understand what I'm trying to convey...
So now I believe philosophy is dead to those who cannot comprehend what they are reading.
At this point I cannot tell if you're purposely dumbing yourself down to annoy me or you actually cannot understand a thing you read. This thread is dead, I will not reply to it, and if this debate ends up with more people saying philosophy dead than not, I'll take my degree and wipe my ass with it.
You're not conveying anything other than to list philosophical terms which I'm not sure you understand. If you spend some time reading up on them, you will come to the conclusion sooner or later that it's all just pseudo-intellectual waffle encrusting a level of abstraction which rubs shoulders with religion, intelligent design and other non-reality based subjects. Classical philosophy was humankind's attempt to make sense of the world. The sciences do this now, from evolutionary psychology to sociology to physics and chemistry and everything between.
Nono, you buffoon. I asked you to equate the list of philosophical terms to that found in science because you said science has taken the place of philosophy... for that to be true, you would be able to find those things in science, if you knew what you were talking about... you failed to do this and now you're just trying to sound like you know what you're talking about by proclaiming that these important branches of philosophy that so many brilliant people must be wasting their time on thinking about, is completely meaningless.
Logically, if what you're saying is "Philosophy is intellectual bullshit", but that science has replaced it, which means to take it's place, then science is what you're calling the new intellectual bullshit. What difference does it make? Isn't it all the same old shit?
You say too, that philosophy deals with the "non-reality based subjects", have you ever taken a college course in pretty much anything? If you've taken sociology, psychology, political science, astronomy, you name it, etc., you must have read about tons of philosophers already... how do you suppose these philosophers have found there ways into "reality based" fields of research???
For example, Galileo "The father of modern science" was a philosopher, as was his ally in the argument with the church about the world not being the center of the universe, and his name was Descartes, which came up with "I think therefor I am" in the "Meditations on First Philosophy".
Ok, look at what you're saying here.
-Philosophy ≠ Science.
-Philosophy < Science.
At the same time you say that science has replaced philosophy.
This means that the only way the previous statements can be true is if Philosophy overlaps that of science, but science has something that philosophy doesn't which makes philosophy what it is. The lack of something that science has, makes philosophy what philosophy is.
Do you know how I came to that conclusion? Relational algebra? No?
If something overlaps another, but that they have the same parts in each, enough for one to completely take over the place of the other, that would mean that they are the same, but the overlapping thing has extra components that the other lacks.
Meaning that basically, science is nothing more than philosophy and extra. You say philosophy is dead. According to logic, what you are saying is that science is just an evolved version of philosophy, but science can do more than philosophy can which makes all of the difference. What can science do that philosophy cannot? This is all based on your reasoning, you should be able to come up with an answer for this...
What can science do that philosophy cannot?
Please give actual examples.
WHen you're done with that, come explain truth with science (please).
Just as Chemistry replaced Alchemy Science replaces Philosophy. You cannot find the nonsense words you listed in science because they have been exposed as vacuous. Things move on. Philosophy is history, literally.
You must not know the nature of philosophy, to be able to misunderstand it like this. Philosophy is behind everything.
You have to know of something's existence before you go looking for it. The data that you receive from observing anything means nothing if you're not looking for it.
Science is a very mechanical method of determining whether or not a theory is in accordance with reality. Where does the theory come from? Theories are not written into science. Look at the big bang. Sure, redshift, universal expansion in all directions, quasars, etc. They all give us data to analyze and to piece together, but so does EVERYTHING. You just have to know what to look for. The Big Bang theory was a philosophical suggestion, and what do you know, it makes sense with all of the available data that we can gather.
Science is only a mechanism for testing. Tests don't naturally come paired with answers. The only answers we can get from anything are the answers we are already looking for... because unless you are religious, it is pretty obvious to see that whatever understanding we can gain from the universe it is always human in nature.
Why did we look to the evidence though. I see what you're saying, don't think I'm confused, but I think that you're dismissing something that you shouldn't be. Why are we looking? Is it because we just... are so fucking bored that there's nothing to do but test in hopes of finding nothing?
Scientific inquiry begins with a desire to know something... that is philosophy.
"Scientific inquiry begins with a desire to know something... that is philosophy."
Just 'a desire to know something' will suffice. Adding the word 'philosophy' is redundant. Philosophy as any kind of discipline has simply been superceded.
Philosophy is never dead. There is a perception that philosophy was merely done many years ago, but it stills live today because ideas change and evolve.
Philosophy is knowing that science is nothing more than well calculated beliefs... It's used in unison with science to help more accurately calculate theories. Philosophy is wisdom and deep introspection. There's a HUGE difference between Intelligence and Wisdom... I just witnessed a person opposing Philosophy state it's "a bunch of old guys arguing and is pointless, get a life"... This is probably the most preposterous irrational statement i've ever seen. Philosophy places a very large emphases on perspective. It free's the mind of all predispositions and beliefs. It's the wisdom to break free from the constrains society has programmed into you since birth. Perception is EVERYTHING. If you venture throughout the world assuming you know everything you will time and time again miss vast amounts of knowledge and understanding that goes on right in front of you.
"All I know is I know nothing" -Socrates. This one quote demonstrates that all we as humans "know" is what has been left for us to decipher through and what we've witnessed throughout the course of our daily lives. The closer you get to reality (Philosophical enlightenment) the more you'll begin to see objects, places, people, and things for what it really is and not just how you've been taught to perceive it. There is no greater feeling than unleashing the chains of consciousness. This freedom will show you that your life is no more important than your fellow man. Philosophy is the tool to breaking free from the assumed cold and wretched perspective of man.
