You guys all seem to have a pretty dry view on it. It's like anything. So what a lot of philosophy doesn't apply to real life (will someone remind me what that type of life is anyway?), but so what. It's part of human nature to look beyond the mundane, IMO. If we didn't, we'd only be left with the rather boring and monotonous side of life, which is gotta be draining after a while. Like quantum string theory - which is basically a philosophy, since there is, according to many scientists, no real way to ever test prodictions - this has stupid amounts of funding to find out, well, stuff that isn't going to affect real life. So we can discuss whether a fermion string wiggles anticlockwise, right, but the nature of truth, thats a no-go area. They're just about to finish this big atom smasher at CERN, Switzerland, which will enable us to pry even deeper in to the fabric of quantum states, and even research the "graviton". Seriously, this is going to be exciting. But does this big atom smasher have the ability to work out that, if a tree falls and no-one hears it, will it make a sound? Or more scientifically (maybe this can be done at CERN), can a Higgs Boson inwardly collapse in a Higgs Field close to a supermassive blackhole at the centre of the galaxy even if no-one has a Stupidly Large International Radio Telescope (SLIRT) watching it with beady eyes? What i'm basically saying is that stuff is being researched that has no real effect on much of our lives (well, with this atom smashing stuff, we can only wait and see!), but it's still being researched, and it's still talked about. It's at this point that Shrodinger's cat explodes, no-one's been watching it...
Philosophy?
- Thread starter JColtrane
- Start date
LDGuy said:
I like your perspective on this. Essentially I take the view of Wittegenstein, add Popper (who disagreed with Wittegenstein on the ability to know something in science), the Pre-Socratics and Pyrrho. As you said, even science in essence is truly unknowable and rests on faith--as in the case of string theory, and pretty much every other scientific theory. All is uncertain in a postmodern world. Philosophy is no more uncertain than any other subject. And if anything, philosophy is a stimulating mental and internal exercise.
And I know, what the critics to this will say: " this is because you dont understand it, or it is beyond you," they have been saying the same thing for 2,500 years, and still, not one thing in philosophy has been proven since pyrrho stated it was impossible to know anything.
What is most distressing is to read current acadmeic scholarship on philosophy. Of course the same trend is true in every subject, but still, it is almost comical to read many of these professors ramblings on what they think certain things mean, and how to interpret certain philosophers like them, in totally obtuse language that does nothing more than shield them from the truth they subconciously realize--that they are full of shit.
In defense of diverting funds to string theory, it could help us understand the quantum level of matter, and how to potentially use it to our benefit. Such discoveries are far from today, but the initial seeds of knowledge must be set for them to be discovered and their potential realized. Philosophy is masturbation of the brain, and while some of it is applicable to life, much of it is not.
Cythraul
Active Member
- Dec 10, 2003
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Iridium said:
This suggests to me that you don't know much about philosophy.
What's your point? Why should the discipline have to answer to people like you? I don't think many people have any illusions as to where philosophy fits into the bigger picture. I could name tons of shit that people do that I could claim is equally as superfluous, at least going by your line of reasoning. At the broadest level it's merely the questioning of norms, assumptions and beliefs. Yeah, I guess that doesn't really mean shit, does it.
You misassumed: I enjoy philosophy (I don't claim to be an expert, but I do have some knowledge of it), but individuals who master it cannot change the world in our time and it does not make a product, so it is economically useless. What you quoted was my point - I don't see what the rest of your apology was for.
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