The philosophy of philosophy as I understand is called the science? of Metaphilosophy
I would say that philosophy as such is an empirical discipline but what is the classification of metaphilosophy is it as empirical as philosophy or is it more akin to science
If we have to study the methods of philosophy we have to study it in a scientisfic manner
then I trust the philosophy of philosphy is defintely a science
although philosohy itself many would argue is ntoa science
Sorry, your statements are very confusing and constitute what Philosophers call a "category error". You are confusing a number of things which are not the same at all.
Philosophy is definitely NOT a science, at least in the modern sense of an empirical study. Of course the roots of both science and philosophy are in seeking to expand knowledge. Early Greek thinkers such as Aristotle would probably consider them the same, but science was not empirical in a comprehensive way in his time.
Philosophy itself could include a meta-science component, which would consist of reasoning (and perhaps speculating) about the nature and limitations of science. Ordinarily a subject does not include a meta- of the same subject, because meta- implies looking from a different viewpoint. As far as I know, there can be no meta-philosophy because any thought about philosophy would be part of philosophy.
Perhaps Epistemology, the study of meaning, would come closest to your idea. A reference, should you want to investigate further, is www.science.uva.nl/~seop/entries/epistemology/ . | SonLight wrote: |
Sorry, your statements are very confusing and constitute what Philosophers call a "category error". You are confusing a number of things which are not the same at all.
Philosophy is definitely NOT a science, at least in the modern sense of an empirical study. Of course the roots of both science and philosophy are in seeking to expand knowledge. Early Greek thinkers such as Aristotle would probably consider them the same, but science was not empirical in a comprehensive way in his time.
Philosophy itself could include a meta-science component, which would consist of reasoning (and perhaps speculating) about the nature and limitations of science. Ordinarily a subject does not include a meta- of the same subject, because meta- implies looking from a different viewpoint. As far as I know, there can be no meta-philosophy because any thought about philosophy would be part of philosophy.
Perhaps Epistemology, the study of meaning, would come closest to your idea. A reference, should you want to investigate further, is www.science.uva.nl/~seop/entries/epistemology/ . |
Well is metaphilosophy a real philosophy? It would be neat to refine philosopy to a science if that is possible: there is a lot of junk philosophy. | TBSC wrote: |
| Well is metaphilosophy a real philosophy? |
Oh yes, it's real. Everything is open to question in philosophy, including the hows and whys of philosophy itself. This goes all the way back to Plato, who quotes Socrates musing about what the duty of a philosopher and the point of philosophy is (right before he's sentenced to death for corrupting the youth of Athens with philosophy... was he right to accept that judgement rather than fleeing? Yet another question open to debate, dun dun dun!).
You can take on metaphilosophy from several different angles. You can take it right by the horns and ask, "why philosophize?" Or you can skip that step and move on to, "how should one go about philosophizing?" Or you can skip that step and move on to studying the ways we do go about it (rather than how we should), and the types or categories of philosophy.
| TBSC wrote: |
| It would be neat to refine philosopy to a science if that is possible |
Think so?
^_^; i'm not going to say that you're right or wrong, because i don't know. That's outside of my field of expertise. (Note that i'm understanding what you mean as: you would like philosophy to have mathematical rigour, not that you want it to be completely empirical. Correct me if i'm wrong.)
My favourite philosophers are philosophers that are very "scientific" in their methods and their philosophies, right up to Bertrand Russell and modern analytic philosophers like J. L. Mackie and Galen Strawson, so i would tend to agree with you.
However! ^_^;
If someone can do good philosophy without mathematical rigour (take someone like Nietzsche as an example), i would not begrudge them that. A little flexibility is ok by me, as long as they present a good argument, and back it up well.
So i suppose you could put me in the analytic camp, but i'm agnostic on whether that should be the only way philosophy should be done.
| TBSC wrote: |
| there is a lot of junk philosophy. |
True, but there is also a lot of junk science. Adding scientific rigour would not get rid of that.
Besides, if nothing else, they're always good for a laugh.
"Sokal announced in another publication, Lingua Franca, that the article was a hoax, calling his paper 'a pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense', which was 'structured around the silliest quotations I could find about mathematics and physics' made by humanities academics."
Ha! This cracked me up. If I were any of the publicists or editors of Social Text I would be too embarrassed to even continue working on the journal. Seriously! This troubles me a fair amount because whenever I help write articles or even when I was back in school writing an essay/research paper, I ALWAYS took my writing seriously. This meant that I thoroughly researched anything I put in them, and made sure that it was relevant. It makes me sad that they would put an article deliberately written out of non-sense in their journal. Very sad.
On the other hand, you were right. It was good for a laugh. | roxys_art wrote: |
[...]
On the other hand, you were right. It was good for a laugh. |
i know, isn't it hilarious? ^_^;
The best part is, the more you know about physics and math in general and quantum mechanics in particular, the better it gets. But even without deeper knowledge of math and physics, there are a number of jokes that just about anyone can get once they disassemble the verbal diarrhoea.
Like this: "...the π of Euclid and the G of Newton, formerly thought to be constant and universal, are now perceived in their ineluctable historicity..." Strip out the ridiculously pretentious wording ("ineluctable"! i mean, really! ^_^; ) and you get the following claim: "π and G, formerly thought to be constant, can now be seen as observer dependent." ^_^; Yeah, right. So the value of π depends on the observer. Classic.
And the opening: "It has thus become increasingly apparent that physical "reality", no less than social "reality", is at bottom a social and linguistic construct...." Plain English: physical reality is nothing more than a product of our culture. ^_^; Awesome.
Wikipedia has the best quote of all, though: "Just as liberal feminists are frequently content with a minimal agenda of legal and social equality for women and 'pro-choice', so liberal (and even some socialist) mathematicians are often content to work within the hegemonic Zermelo-Fraenkel framework (which, reflecting its nineteenth-century liberal origins, already incorporates the axiom of equality) supplemented only by the axiom of choice." In English: ZFC is liberal because it has the axiom of equality, and modern mathematicians are "pro-choice" because they add the axiom of choice. ^_^; That's just gold.
| roxys_art wrote: |
| Ha! This cracked me up. If I were any of the publicists or editors of Social Text I would be too embarrassed to even continue working on the journal. Seriously! This troubles me a fair amount because whenever I help write articles or even when I was back in school writing an essay/research paper, I ALWAYS took my writing seriously. This meant that I thoroughly researched anything I put in them, and made sure that it was relevant. It makes me sad that they would put an article deliberately written out of non-sense in their journal. Very sad. |
Actually, what's sadder is their response.
As if their flagrant abuses of mathematics and physics to promote their pet social theories and political view weren't bad enough, the behaviour of the post-modernist "intellectuals" Sokal skewered once the hoax was revealed turned out to be downright reprehensible.
First, they said that Sokal was the fraud, not them, because they innocently and naively trusted that a legitimate physicist would not write crap, so they didn't bother to check. i suppose if you're an innocent and naively trusting soul, too, that sounds like a legitimate complaint. But to anyone who's not an idiot, it smells like bullshit. Just read it. It's idiotically comical! ^_^; It's got loads of jokes and word-plays in it that you need a good understanding of math and physics to understand, true, but it also has a ton of jokes that anyone with a degree should be able to get - even if it's a degree in social sciences - because the logic in the arguments is just so uniformly bad, it's funny. Either their objection is crap and Sokal is right that this nonsense is an example of the general level of crap in their work... or they didn't read it at all! "Physical reality is a social and linguistic construct?!" That's right in the second paragraph! How could they miss that?!
Then - and this is where it started to get really disgusting - they said that Sokal was a liar. They said that the article had been a legitimate attempt by Sokal to publish something about the social ramifications of his science work, but after it was published he chickened out and lied - saying that it was a hoax - to cover his academic butt. Yeah, right. ^_^;
And then they called Sokal an idiot - they said that he didn't understand the high-end deconstructionalist concepts that he was mocking, and so he was just a fool poking fun at something because it was different and beyond his ken. Yeah, right. ^_^; Ok, let's say that's true, and that Sokal really didn't understand the field, so his jokes are pointless. But... what about all of the quotes in his article from people in the field? Like this one: "How can one decide whether an observation made in a train about the behaviour of a falling stone can be made to coincide with the observation made of the same falling stone from the embankment? If there are only one, or even two, frames of reference, no solution can be found since the man in the train claims he observes a straight line and the man on the embankment a parabola." That's just rubbish. ^_^; A solution can't be found for the path of a falling stone by one observer? It is impossible to make solutions from two observers agree - a third is needed? Complete felgercarp! And that didn't come from Sokal, it came from one of the leaders of this field that Sokal supposedly does not understand because it's beyond him.I'm grateful to you for bringing this into my frame of reference - I hadn't come across it before.
As a lifelong 'leftie' I should be defensive of the journal's position but, instead, I find myself contemptuous of it. Their accusation that Sokal was guilty of an 'abuse of trust' because, at that time, the magazine was not peer reviewed, is perhaps their strongest defence. Even that defence is, however, humbug. Any professional journal of repute is inundated with junk papers and if there is no peer review (a fact which, in my mind, actually disqualifies it from being considered a 'journal of repute') then it behoves the editor to carefully consider articles for inclusion.
In this case it seems to me that the failure is less one of editorial control and more one of the whole perceived academic discipline being bollox.*
* A highly technical non-prejudicial, relative type of bollox which, when deconstructed, reveals the inherent dichotomy of non-informational paradigms in light of individual perception.
| Bikerman wrote: |
I'm grateful to you for bringing this into my frame of reference - I hadn't come across it before.
As a lifelong 'leftie' I should be defensive of the journal's position but, instead, I find myself contemptuous of it. Their accusation that Sokal was guilty of an 'abuse of trust' because, at that time, the magazine was not peer reviewed, is perhaps their strongest defence. Even that defence is, however, humbug. Any professional journal of repute is inundated with junk papers and if there is no peer review (a fact which, in my mind, actually disqualifies it from being considered a 'journal of repute') then it behoves the editor to carefully consider articles for inclusion.
In this case it seems to me that the failure is less one of editorial control and more one of the whole perceived academic discipline being bollox. |
That's my position. ^_^; i can grant that non-reviewed journals may accidentally print something plain wrong... but for the Sokal paper to get through, it's pretty plainly obvious that either no one read it at all, or all of the journal editors are frauds.
And i'm very forgiving. i will allow for gross incompetence and say, "Hey, maybe it really wasn't read at all. Maybe they just saw his credentials and shoved it in, without even looking at it. That's gross incompetence, but not fraud on their part. Maybe if they had read it, they would have spotted it and rejected it." Possibly true, and no one can prove otherwise to my knowledge.
However!
Several of the jokes in the Sokal paper were lifted verbatim from the writings of people in the field. Even if Social Text was both naive and incompetent (as they claim, and you know your case is bad when that's your defence), the fact remains that the kind of nonsense Sokal was poking fun at is real.Deleted due to wrong argument!
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<removed in deference to the poster deleting the offending posting>
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| Bikerman wrote: |
but you should then expect to be ignored, or treated with due contempt.
Bah! |
You already had the choice to do that ! but you choose to give an eloborate answer with wiki links ? Ha!
why is it that you choose not to ignore and whats more is are you indi's mouth piece or are you both the same! | yagnyavalkya wrote: |
| Bikerman wrote: | but you should then expect to be ignored, or treated with due contempt.
Bah! |
You already had the choice to do that ! but you choose to give an eloborate answer with wiki links ? Ha!
why is it that you choose not to ignore and whats more is are you indi's mouth piece or are you both the same! |
No..Indi is perfectly capable of speaking for himself, and I trust he will do so. We are completely separate people with our own views on things. Sometimes we disagree and sometimes we agree. When we do agree it is down to logical debate and rational consideration of the issues, nothing more. It is certainly not because either of us deploys straw-man arguments or misrepresents the other in debate. Since I was already involved in this debate, I chose to speak for myself, and reveal my own contempt for your dishonest debating style. This has nothing to do with Indi, who will no doubt express his own opinions and views on the matter - this is simply me expressing my opinion.Thanks you the right to have your opinions and you also have the choice to do what ever you want in the forum
So does Indi and everybody else
any way I think I did go a little bit too far in my postings in the last couple of days
I agree with everything you say including the sop called saw man tech but I was not dishonest
I was actually being provocative and in fact I am ashamed that I did succeed
Anyway I back on track
look forward for better and neat postings !
I have duly deleted the post on Junk science as it was obviously wrong argument!
| Bikerman wrote: |
| yagnyavalkya wrote: | | Bikerman wrote: | but you should then expect to be ignored, or treated with due contempt.
Bah! |
You already had the choice to do that ! but you choose to give an eloborate answer with wiki links ? Ha!
why is it that you choose not to ignore and whats more is are you indi's mouth piece or are you both the same! |
No..Indi is perfectly capable of speaking for himself, and I trust he will do so. We are completely separate people with our own views on things. Sometimes we disagree and sometimes we agree. When we do agree it is down to logical debate and rational consideration of the issues, nothing more. It is certainly not because either of us deploys straw-man arguments or misrepresents the other in debate. Since I was already involved in this debate, I chose to speak for myself, and reveal my own contempt for your dishonest debating style. This has nothing to do with Indi, who will no doubt express his own opinions and views on the matter - this is simply me expressing my opinion. |
i don't really know what else to express at this point. ^_^; i think this is a pretty plain-faced plonk case, if ever there was any. i don't really think it's worth wasting time on any more - i have had this neat idea for a topic on freedom of/from religion that i've been toying with, and there was something else (that slips my mind now) that anna had brought up at my birthday party a few weeks back that i've been meaning to give deeper thought to. i've also wanted to revive a topic we made a while back about the old Star Trek "Prime Directive" - only this time i'll be careful to avoid making Star Trek a focus so it doesn't get derailed by rabid Trekkies again.I have seen many a straw man debate here
Care to read your first post?
