Value of Philosophy

[Ella S.]

Continued from here:
Objective Morality Without God

Good God! Don't make me defend philosophy. As you might imagine, I think it's an incredibly important pursuit.

I don't intend to attack philosophy as a whole, just the majority of modern academic philosophy.

I'm not saying you didn't make good points, but there is more to the story than the measurable value it has to society (which, I grant you might not be that much). Nor do I think everyone ought to study it or that it is more important than, say, math or science.

It is incredibly intellectually stimulating for certain students to study philosophy. And not just "bone deep" philosophers like me. A regular attendant of my philosophy classes back in school was a psych major who became incredibly interested in philosophy. I can't relay all the details of this person without going into laborious detail, but suffice it to say, I think his interest in philosophy probably helped him become a better psychologist. It's difficult to measure an impact like that, and I think there definitely was an impact in this case.

This is a great counter-argument, but not because I care about what people find intellectually stimulating. It's because the field of psychology genuinely is closely wound up in philosophy.

Contextualism influences ACT. Existentialism influences logotherapy. Determinism and naturalism both influence behaviorism.

However, I think this is more of a flaw in psychology than a benefit of philosophy. It demonstrates an ongoing problem within psychology to demonstrate and support its models empirically. Because when you can't actually demonstrate the truth of something, you BS it, and that's what most of philosophy does.

I hate to quote Plotinus after sh***ing on Neoplatonism in my last post, but he said: "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited." (I love that quote.) Philosophy is capable of igniting that fire in many rarified minds. And that speaks to its value. Not just general value, but specifically academic value. Exposure to philosophy prompts some students to think critically in a way they probably never would had they not been exposed to it. You just can't put a price tag on something like that.

Critical thinking is fantastic! The fact that they learned critical thinking in philosophy courses is concerning. That should really be something they teach in science and history.

Then again, most of the people I know that take philosophy courses do not end up learning critical thinking from them, just as most people don't seem to learn it from science or math, either.

And even though I have dozens more objections to your criticism of philosophy, I think I can leave you with this remark: philosophy when read alone and thought about alone may resemble masturbation. But when you have skilled teachers challenging students to think in a better way, it becomes more akin to intercourse.

I really don't think confusing people into adopting nonsense like Platonic Idealism is teaching people to think in a better way. Philosophy can teach people to think better, but mostly I think it just makes poor thinkers more pretentious.

Academic philosophy is "tested" philosophy. You can't just rant ideas like an idiot and expect academic philosophers to follow suite.

Philosophy has one of the lowest standards for peer review out of any academic discipline that I've seen. Have you read any of the rubbish being published by post-modernists?

I suppose you're right that you can't expect other philosophers to follow suite, but that's pretty much regardless of the quality of what you have to say. Only in philosophy have I seen people celebrate the lack of academic consensus as a virtue, where every attempt to build some sort of common ground is met with the incidental creation of more division in response and philosophies long considered dead are constantly resurrected. Could you imagine if scientists went back to considering miasma theory?

Granted, important philosophy can and does happen outside academia, but we shouldn't dispense with academic philosophy. Well-trained academicians are good at criticizing one another's ideas. They are gatekeepers who refuse to let weak ideas pass, and only begrudgingly do they accept strong ideas. We need that in our society which is, for the most part, guided by weak ideas and falsehoods. It's just a bastion of truth. And who knows but some day we might really need to have a bastion of truth around. It might not have measurable value like other disciplines, but I think its absence would be felt were it ever to disappear.

If you want strong ideas and truth, you turn to the natural sciences, which are in the habit of consistently debunking metaphysicians and ontologists to the point of making those entire fields of philosophy more or less irrelevant. The rest of academia has pretty much accepted naturalism, for instance; it is only the philosophers who obscure this with their diverse range of alternative metaphysical theories.

I would hardly call that a bastion of truth. It's a bastion of chaos.

Plenty more objections: what would history look like with no philosophy? Would we have ever discovered liberalism without John Locke? Would we have been able to criticize capitalism with out Marx or Hegel? But I'm just gonna let all those go. Start a thread if you want the full compliment of my objections to your thesis

Well, I'm certainly not arguing for the abolishment of philosophy! But if I was a public funder I would stop giving money to people publishing papers questioning their own existence and instead send it to food pantries and medical research.

I'll end with a synopsis of Alder's Razor: "If something cannot be settled by experiment or observation, then it is not worthy of debate"

This is because you have no grounds from which to debate from. When you do, then you are likely to be looking at science, not philosophy. Some philosophy is grounded, but the vast majority of it is not and fails this razor.

 

[Debater Slayer]

I'll end with a synopsis of Alder's Razor: "If something cannot be settled by experiment or observation, then it is not worthy of debate"

Is this also supposed to apply to mathematical questions whose answers rely on proofs and other formal or abstract methods rather than experiment or observation? I can see a lot of situations where it is important to debate questions that can't be settled by observation or experiment, unless observation and experiment are understood to also include formal logic and mathematics.

 

[Alien826]

From Monty Python's the Meaning of Life.

WAITER: Good evening! Uhh, would you care for something to... talk about?

MR. HENDY: Oh, that would be wonderful.

[....]

MR. HENDY: What is this one here?

WAITER: Uhh, that's 'philosophy'.

MRS. HENDY: Is that a sport?

WAITER: Aah, no, it's more of an attempt to, uh, construct a viable hypothesis to, uh, explain the meaning of life.

[....]

MR. HENDY: Oh, that sounds wonderful. Would you like to talk about the meaning of life, darling?

MRS. HENDY: Sure. Why not?

WAITER: Philosophy for two?

MR. HENDY: Right.

WAITER: Room?

MR. HENDY: Two-five-nine.

WAITER: Two-five-nine.

MR. HENDY: Yup. Uhh,-- uh, h-- how do we--

WAITER: Oh, uhh, you folks want me to start you off?

MR. HENDY: Oh, really, we'd appreciate that.

WAITER: Okay!

MR. HENDY: Yeah.

WAITER: Well, ehh,...

MR. HENDY: Mhmm.

WAITER: ...look. Have you ever wondered... just why you're here?

MR. HENDY: Well, we went to Miami last year and California the year before that, and we've--

WAITER: No, no, no. I mean, uh, w-- why we're here... on this planet.

MR. HENDY: Hmmm. No.

WAITER: Right! Aaah, you ever wanted to know what it's all about?

MR. HENDY: Nope.

MRS. HENDY: No. No.

WAITER: Right-o! Aah, well, uh, see, throughout history,...

MR. HENDY: M-hmm.

WAITER: ...there have been certain men and women who have tried to find the solution to the mysteries of existence,...

MRS. HENDY: G-reat.

WAITER: ...and we call these guys 'philosophers'!

MR. HENDY: Ohh.

MRS. HENDY: And that's what we're talking about.

WAITER: Right!

MR. HENDY: Yeah.

MRS. HENDY: Ohh, that's neat!

WAITER: Well, you look like you're getting the idea, so why don't I give you these, uh, conversation cards? They'll tell you a little about philosophical method,...

MR. HENDY: Oh.

WAITER: ...names of famous philosophers,-- Uh, there you are. Uhh, have a nice conversation!

MR. HENDY: Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.

MRS. HENDY: He's cute.

MR. HENDY: Yeah, real--

MRS. HENDY: Yeah.

MR. HENDY: Real understanding. Mmm.

MRS. HENDY: Oh! I never knew Schopenhauer was a philosopher!

MR. HENDY: Oh, yeah! He's the one that begins with an 'S'.

MRS. HENDY: Oh.

MR. HENDY: Umm, like, uh, 'Nietzsche'.

MRS. HENDY: Does 'Nietzsche' begin with an 'S'?

MR. HENDY: Uh, there's an 's' in 'Nietzsche'.

MRS. HENDY: Oh, wow. Yes, there is. Do all philosophers have an 's' in them?

MR. HENDY: Uh, yeah! I think most of 'em do.

MRS. HENDY: Oh. Does that mean Selina Jones is a philosopher?

MR. HENDY: Yeah! Right! She could be! She sings about the meaning of life.

MRS. HENDY: Yeah. That's right, but I don't think she writes her own material.

MR. HENDY: No. Oh, maybe Schopenhauer writes her material.

MRS. HENDY: No. Burt Bacharach writes it.

MR. HENDY: But there's no 's' in 'Burt Bacharach'.

MRS. HENDY: Or in 'Hal David'.

MR. HENDY: Who's Hal David?

MRS. HENDY: He writes the lyrics. Burt just writes the tunes, only now, he's married to Carole Bayer Sager.

MR. HENDY: Oh, waiter. This conversation isn't very good.

 

[Jimmy]

Confucius say.....

 

[The Hammer]

“The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty."
-Bertrand Russell

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Continued from here:
Objective Morality Without God

@Ella S., I'd like to ask you just one question, before continuing. What do you think the term "objective morality" actually means?

I'll try to help you out a little, if I can. From my point of view, it would seem to mean that there is some moral position that is always right (or always wrong) irrespective of the parties on either side of the position, and also irrespective of the context in which the moral question arises.

Now, I find it very, very difficult to find anything that would fit. Is it morally wrong to kill? Yes, a lot of the time, but if you kill somebody who will kill you if you don't -- well, maybe not. Is it morally wrong to withhold food from a starving person? You'd think so, wouldn't you, unless they were in urgent need of stomach surgery before they could eat and benefit from any food at all.

I think what philosophers have done on this question is fairly simple: they have discovered that the complexities of life in our human world are such that they will and must always remain subjective -- for the very simple reason that we are all the subjective players in this drama that we call "life on earth."

I'd ask another question, really -- where was the "objective morality" in God ordering the slaughter of the Canaanites -- their children, their animals, husbands, wives and everybody -- with the singular exception of the virgin girls, for whom one must suppose God (and the Israelites) could conceive another purpose?

I do not find "God" to be of much help in any of this. My own humanity is what permits me to know what is right and wrong -- what is "moral," if you will.

Were there no "subjective" responses to this by the virgin girls? Or the little boys who were simply slaughtered? Or the parents of both who had to witness both the deaths and rape of their own children?

 

[vulcanlogician]

Critical thinking is fantastic! The fact that they learned critical thinking in philosophy courses is concerning.

Why? Do you think other disciplines answer the question of why critical thinking is good better than philosophy?

If a student asks the question: why should I think critically about something? -- do you think she will find an answer from other disciplines? And if she happens to find a satisfying answer in philosophy, why is that concerning? I think it's fine.

 

[Nakosis]

Continued from here:
Objective Morality Without God



I don't intend to attack philosophy as a whole, just the majority of modern academic philosophy.



This is a great counter-argument, but not because I care about what people find intellectually stimulating. It's because the field of psychology genuinely is closely wound up in philosophy.

Contextualism influences ACT. Existentialism influences logotherapy. Determinism and naturalism both influence behaviorism.

However, I think this is more of a flaw in psychology than a benefit of philosophy. It demonstrates an ongoing problem within psychology to demonstrate and support its models empirically. Because when you can't actually demonstrate the truth of something, you BS it, and that's what most of philosophy does.



Critical thinking is fantastic! The fact that they learned critical thinking in philosophy courses is concerning. That should really be something they teach in science and history.

Then again, most of the people I know that take philosophy courses do not end up learning critical thinking from them, just as most people don't seem to learn it from science or math, either.



I really don't think confusing people into adopting nonsense like Platonic Idealism is teaching people to think in a better way. Philosophy can teach people to think better, but mostly I think it just makes poor thinkers more pretentious.



Philosophy has one of the lowest standards for peer review out of any academic discipline that I've seen. Have you read any of the rubbish being published by post-modernists?

I suppose you're right that you can't expect other philosophers to follow suite, but that's pretty much regardless of the quality of what you have to say. Only in philosophy have I seen people celebrate the lack of academic consensus as a virtue, where every attempt to build some sort of common ground is met with the incidental creation of more division in response and philosophies long considered dead are constantly resurrected. Could you imagine if scientists went back to considering miasma theory?



If you want strong ideas and truth, you turn to the natural sciences, which are in the habit of consistently debunking metaphysicians and ontologists to the point of making those entire fields of philosophy more or less irrelevant. The rest of academia has pretty much accepted naturalism, for instance; it is only the philosophers who obscure this with their diverse range of alternative metaphysical theories.

I would hardly call that a bastion of truth. It's a bastion of chaos.



Well, I'm certainly not arguing for the abolishment of philosophy! But if I was a public funder I would stop giving money to people publishing papers questioning their own existence and instead send it to food pantries and medical research.

I'll end with a synopsis of Alder's Razor: "If something cannot be settled by experiment or observation, then it is not worthy of debate"

This is because you have no grounds from which to debate from. When you do, then you are likely to be looking at science, not philosophy. Some philosophy is grounded, but the vast majority of it is not and fails this razor.

I see philosophy as something similar to religious theology.

Its value is that is that people can entertain themselves with it when they find actual life/living too boring.

My self, I'd rather live and experience life in the moment. Not to say I don't get bored, but I am usually bored when I'm not out there experiencing life.

 

[Heyo]

“The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty."
-Bertrand Russell

“We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty.” - Vroomfondel

 

[rational experiences]

Man's use of mechanical maths places all his subjective reasoning as destroyed only.

In research it's always the same answer not a living human.

The philosophy of why no man is a God...energy mass.

 

[RestlessSoul]

I once had the vague notion that philosophy was mostly pontification without foundation. This, by the way, though it might cause some observers to doubt it's value, did not invalidate philosophy in my eyes in any way. But in any case, I was wrong; when I did an online course on philosophy of science, I discovered what a demanding academic discipline philosophy is. And certainly no more without foundation than the natural sciences, where "every theory is an open-ended hypothesis which ipso facto has to be at least potentially false." - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Karl Popper

 

[Mock Turtle]

The value of philosophy, apart from perhaps developing critical thinking skills (questioning even the most basic of assumptions), is in at least learning something about logic and fallacies so as to spot bad arguments readily - hopefully at least. Plus, philosophers do at least try to explore all the alternatives as to existence and the human part of such - even if one might just have to choose that explanation which one prefers - or not. But much like religious beliefs too.

 

[wellwisher]

@Ella S., I'd like to ask you just one question, before continuing. What do you think the term "objective morality" actually means?

I'll try to help you out a little, if I can. From my point of view, it would seem to mean that there is some moral position that is always right (or always wrong) irrespective of the parties on either side of the position, and also irrespective of the context in which the moral question arises.

Now, I find it very, very difficult to find anything that would fit. Is it morally wrong to kill? Yes, a lot of the time, but if you kill somebody who will kill you if you don't -- well, maybe not. Is it morally wrong to withhold food from a starving person? You'd think so, wouldn't you, unless they were in urgent need of stomach surgery before they could eat and benefit from any food at all.

I think what philosophers have done on this question is fairly simple: they have discovered that the complexities of life in our human world are such that they will and must always remain subjective -- for the very simple reason that we are all the subjective players in this drama that we call "life on earth."

I'd ask another question, really -- where was the "objective morality" in God ordering the slaughter of the Canaanites -- their children, their animals, husbands, wives and everybody -- with the singular exception of the virgin girls, for whom one must suppose God (and the Israelites) could conceive another purpose?

I do not find "God" to be of much help in any of this. My own humanity is what permits me to know what is right and wrong -- what is "moral," if you will.

Were there no "subjective" responses to this by the virgin girls? Or the little boys who were simply slaughtered? Or the parents of both who had to witness both the deaths and rape of their own children?

Objective morality is based on optimizing the team; culture. It is not about optimizing the individual, at least until the team becomes more that the sum of its parts. Only then will all the egos advance; they win the championship and have a type of social pride that adds to all aspects of their lives. In sports, even if your home team wins the championship, that team pride extends to the fans; best of times.

Philosophy is more connected to ego preferences and optimizing the individual; philosophy of life. However, one cannot optimize any team, if everyone on the team has their own philosophy. A team requires a coach, who may need to compromise individual philosophies, to allow all the pieces to work together. The players who have an Epicurean philosophy; pleasure is key, will still have to meet curfew, to make the team better, or they will be traded.

The analogy for the contrast between team; morality, and ego; philosophy, is having a huge crate with all the parts needed to build a race car. The parts in the crate are all the egos; individuals, connected to a new forming team, each with their own philosophy of life and play; distinct part. If we can assemble these parts, properly, to form a fully functional auto, a whole new quantum level of capabilities will appear, since the team is now more than the sum of its parts. We have the exact same parts, but each part now has a proper place, determined by the finished auto, and not by the parts themselves; individual philosophies.

If we left it up to the parts to decide, how to assemble as a team; auto, each part would try to explain why it should become center stage; build around me. Should we build the car around the glovebox, since they make the strongest philosophical arguments? If all the ego's decide that, the next question is would making the center stage part; Glovebox, even better and more functional, make the final car even better?

The answer is no to both questions. If the new and improved glove box is too large, it may be the most awesome glove box you ever saw, but it may not fit properly to the dashboard, implied by all parts in the crate. Philosophy is about the ego gloveboxes and radiators, trying to optimize themselves, but not always to the needs of the final implied design for a winning team. The winning team is the final auto configuration that can integrate all the different parts, into a winning race car.

Morality was originally designed to build a strong team. The egos; parts, had to make sacrifices for the team. The small country of Israel, in the Old Testament; King Solomon, was very rich and very advanced. The level of their moral system could be determined by simple objective criteria; least use of resources, economies of scale and prosperity. Their race car checked all the boxes, with all the egos parts enjoying the team success.

In modern times, the Political Left and Political Right differ in philosophy, and therefore the size of government and resources they feel they need for their team. The Right prefers less government and more self reliance for the egos. The Political left assumes we need Big Government and dependent populations; which require higher deficits and debt. Morality systems; teams, can be objectively compared based on social costs and waste. The Super Bowl of Morality is the team with the lowest cost scores, and not the highest cost scores. Higher costs might get better ego and philosophy scores, but that is not always the best team model.

If members of culture lacks self sufficiency, then those who are self sufficient, will have to work harder to compensate for those, who do not provide for the team. Each hole in the ship; added costs, lets in water and the providers have to bail out the water. If there are too many holes and not enough bailers, the ship takes on more and more water; deficits and debt rise, until it sinks. This shows a poor moral system leading. Morality is not about the subjective lures of philosophy and ego, but about objective costs for all that anyone can measure;.

What is currently called relative morality by the Left is actually ego philosophy. The morality by the Right should not be about the ego of the leaders, but about the needs of the entire team. The team has objective measures; social costs. If these cost are too high, the team morality is not optimized. Debate about the deficit are coming up, and those who can do with less, have better coaches. All the needed parts are already in the box. Nothing more is needed, if you can see the final race car. If you cannot see, no amount of resource will enough.

 

[Mock Turtle]

^^^^^ Right-wing philosophy advert.

 

[wellwisher]

^^^^^ Right-wing philosophy advert.

Not all ego philosophy makes a good moral team; objectivity optimized. For example, say we all decided to embrace the Epicurean Philosophy, where our own ego pleasures are the highest good. This could be a good vacation for all the egos of the country. However, it has practical problems in that who will work to make logistics, while the rest, play? If everyone wants to play and nobody wishes to work, the fun and games cannot last once the seed potatoes is eaten. There are practical and objective considerations.

The historical compromise to this intoxicating philosophy, even by Religion, was to allow only the rich and powerful to practice this philosophy. They can afford to support their needs for pleasure, and they will still have extra resources; donations. This could be self sustaining for some, but this philosophy will not allow the egos of the entire team to have this option.

Self reliance; even at a small scale, offer more ways to satisfy the needs of the Epicurean Philosophy. as well as other philosophies, while still helping the team with taxes. This may not be enough to optimize the team, until one can learn not to waste too many resources on the whims of pleasure, since this will make hole in the ship that take in water; not morally optimized. The annual vacation may be chosen.

If we have a philosophy that life has no meaning; Existential nihilism, the team does not even count, since that is part of our useless life. Not all philosophy is team based. Often the bigger team divides into smaller and smaller teams, all the way down to the one ego; every man for themselves.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Not all ego philosophy makes a good moral team; objectivity optimized. For example, say we all decided to embrace the Epicurean Philosophy, where our own ego pleasures are the highest good. This could be a good vacation for all the egos of the country. However, it has practical problems in that who will work to make logistics, while the rest, play? If everyone wants to play and nobody wishes to work, the fun and games cannot last once the seed potatoes is eaten. There are practical and objective considerations.

The historical compromise to this intoxicating philosophy, even by Religion, was to allow only the rich and powerful to practice this philosophy. They can afford to support their needs for pleasure, and they will still have extra resources; donations. This could be self sustaining for some, but this philosophy will not allow the egos of the entire team to have this option.

Self reliance; even at a small scale, offer more ways to satisfy the needs of the Epicurean Philosophy. as well as other philosophies, while still helping the team with taxes. This may not be enough to optimize the team, until one can learn not to waste too many resources on the whims of pleasure, since this will make hole in the ship that take in water; not morally optimized. The annual vacation may be chosen.

If we have a philosophy that life has no meaning; Existential nihilism, the team does not even count, since that is part of our useless life. Not all philosophy is team based. Often the bigger team divides into smaller and smaller teams, all the way down to the one ego; every man for themselves.

I think more might be appreciative of this if the ones at the top of the pyramid weren't also depriving those lower down of the general wealth and/or lording it over them - as to expecting much more than they give. Teams in my experience tend to foster good relations rather than the opposite.

 

[Ella S.]

I once had the vague notion that philosophy was mostly pontification without foundation. This, by the way, though it might cause some observers to doubt it's value, did not invalidate philosophy in my eyes in any way. But in any case, I was wrong; when I did an online course on philosophy of science, I discovered what a demanding academic discipline philosophy is. And certainly no more without foundation than the natural sciences, where "every theory is an open-ended hypothesis which ipso facto has to be at least potentially false." - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Karl Popper

Most academic philosophy is not as rigorous or useful as the philosophy of science.

 

[Ella S.]

Is this also supposed to apply to mathematical questions whose answers rely on proofs and other formal or abstract methods rather than experiment or observation? I can see a lot of situations where it is important to debate questions that can't be settled by observation or experiment, unless observation and experiment are understood to also include formal logic and mathematics.

Mathematics (and formal logic, which we can treat for the sake of argument as a part of mathematics through fields like Boolean algebra and propositional calculus) does deal in abstractions, that's true. Much of it derives from heavily formalized axioms which cannot be proven.

The difference is that mathematics does not claim that its axioms are real. Math is a tool that's often used to assist in experiment and observation, so it helps us discover truth as a method but it is not a truth in and of itself.

I would agree that analytical philosophy can be similarly useful when it takes similar approaches. For instance, even if Utilitarianism cannot demonstrate that its axioms are true, it can still show the pragmatic consequences of believing in their axioms or treating them as if they were true. This has practical value for someone who is trying to maximize total or average happiness, regardless of whether we can say that they ought to pursue that goal or not.

The issue I have is that most of philosophy does not really do this. They make axiomatic claims based on speculation and then defend the truth of those axioms without good evidence. There are exceptions, of course.

 

[Quintessence]

The issue I have is that most of philosophy does not really do this. They make axiomatic claims based on speculation and then defend the truth of those axioms without good evidence. There are exceptions, of course.

Could you describe to us your understanding of what it means for something to be axiomatic?

I ask because all arguments rest upon foundational (axiomatic) assumptions that are in of themselves speculations. This is one of the most important, if not the most important, lessons philosophy has to offer: that at some point one must simply grant certain assumptions and explore from there. There's never "good"* evidence for these foundational assumptions, but there is always "good"* reason for making them (e.g., for the sake of argument).

*"Good" - a declaration which is inevitably a subjective assessment that in of itself relies heavily on unprovable, axiomatic assumptions.

 

[Ostronomos]

Continued from here:
Objective Morality Without God



I don't intend to attack philosophy as a whole, just the majority of modern academic philosophy.





Critical thinking is fantastic! The fact that they learned critical thinking in philosophy courses is concerning. That should really be something they teach in science and history.

Then again, most of the people I know that take philosophy courses do not end up learning critical thinking from them, just as most people don't seem to learn it from science or math, either.



I really don't think confusing people into adopting nonsense like Platonic Idealism is teaching people to think in a better way. Philosophy can teach people to think better, but mostly I think it just makes poor thinkers more pretentious.



Philosophy has one of the lowest standards for peer review out of any academic discipline that I've seen. Have you read any of the rubbish being published by post-modernists?

I suppose you're right that you can't expect other philosophers to follow suite, but that's pretty much regardless of the quality of what you have to say. Only in philosophy have I seen people celebrate the lack of academic consensus as a virtue, where every attempt to build some sort of common ground is met with the incidental creation of more division in response and philosophies long considered dead are constantly resurrected. Could you imagine if scientists went back to considering miasma theory?



If you want strong ideas and truth, you turn to the natural sciences, which are in the habit of consistently debunking metaphysicians and ontologists to the point of making those entire fields of philosophy more or less irrelevant. The rest of academia has pretty much accepted naturalism, for instance; it is only the philosophers who obscure this with their diverse range of alternative metaphysical theories.

I would hardly call that a bastion of truth. It's a bastion of chaos.



Well, I'm certainly not arguing for the abolishment of philosophy! But if I was a public funder I would stop giving money to people publishing papers questioning their own existence and instead send it to food pantries and medical research.

I'll end with a synopsis of Alder's Razor: "If something cannot be settled by experiment or observation, then it is not worthy of debate"

This is because you have no grounds from which to debate from. When you do, then you are likely to be looking at science, not philosophy. Some philosophy is grounded, but the vast majority of it is not and fails this razor.

Either you are being pretentious or you are genuinely confused about the actual value of philosophy, which makes me question your intelligence.

Philosophy is the highest of pursuits. It is only through philosophy can we come to know God. Religion, math, science and art are all framed under its grandeur.

If and only if you value the art of contemplation do you value philosophy.

I defeated a diabolical genius by the name of Richard Parker who was leading humanity astray with his actual freedom website only by wielding Philosophy as a weapon.

Please, educate yourself in the future before regarding Philosophy with disdain.

And may I end with the statement, observation creates reality, a fact that began with Philosophy.