z8000783 wrote:
In other words is philosophy just another non subject just like theology.

John

Importance of philosophy cannot be ignored or undermined; as I undestand, first it was Philosophy which gave birth to Mathematics and then other natural sciences sprang up; I mean Physics, Astronomy Etc

Calilasseia wrote:The problem is this. Those parts of what was once termed 'philosophy' that contained substantive knowledge, have moved on and been subsumed into other disciplines. Logic, for example, is now effectively a branch of pure mathematics. What was once termed 'natural philosophy' has become science. Most, if not all, of the testable products of philosophy have either become part of something else, or evolved into disciplines in their own right. What's been left behind, in the main, has been those parts of philosophy that Nietzsche was so scathing about, namely, the parts that involve erecting grandiose assertions, followed by pretending that reality rearranges itself to conform to those assertions. Usually motivated by a need to prop up presuppositions.

In part, this is a result of how the taxonomy of the sciences and scholarly fields works - if this taxonomy were more like that used by cladistics, maths etc all are kinds of philosophy. (And such a use of terminology would be rather reasonable, really.) "Natural philosophy" hasn't so much become science, as changed its name. There wasn't a whopping transformation of it, there more was a case of natural philosophy applying for a name change at the magistrate and getting that name change granted. Still doesn't change its relationship or where it originated. Evolving into a discipline in its own right - fuck, every subset of philosophy does that. It's just, some garner enough attention to, as it were, split from philosophy. This doesn't make them less philosophical in any reasonable sense, they just

Alas, the name "philosophy" has been tarnished a bit by association to the leftovers that for various reasons (often lack of rigor, lack of relevance, lack of ...) never 'split' from philosophy. But philosophers proper have had great impact on other scholarly and scientific fields even despite this - some of the most important realizations in linguistics in the previous century come from philosophy (Wittgenstein), sociology and political science have got good contributions (Popper, also of relevance to philosophy of science), and I bet there's other fields as well.

As for the various assertions concerning 'contingent' and 'necessary' entities, all too frequently, they remain mere assertions. At the moment, the only entity that appears to be necessary in a genuine sense, is a metrical frame within which all the other entities can exist. In other words, spacetime. It's rather difficult to conceive how any entity can exist without a metrical frame of some sort within which it can be embedded.

Certainly existence without spacetime is possible - if we accept that maths is true, maths somehow exists outside of any spacetime (but its manner of existence obviously is different from the manner in which this coffee mug I hold in my other hand exists).

Actually, they aren't assertions, they're definitions. A thing is contingent iff it is not necessary, and a thing is necessary iff it is not contingent - saying this is not batty, it's not a groundless assertion, it's a way of stating that "these are the terms we're going to use, and things that belong to the category 'contingent things' have these properties, ...' . The problem is that these people have no method of checking whether a thing is contingent or not, and they claim unproven or even unprovable conclusions about the necessary things.

Moonwatcher wrote:I would not say that ALL philosophy is garbage. .... The specific types of philosophies that are a load of garbage are those that, much like Creationism and I.D., start out ...

Just doing a bit of word association here with the concepts of (1) criticism of philosophy and (2) Creationism, readers may find the following interesting.

Philosopher of science Massimo Pigliucci, who also has doctorates in genetics and botany and worked as a scientist before becoming a philosopher, reports that in the Dover trial that forbade attempts to introduce ID into Pennsylvania classrooms, both biologists and philosophers of science testified for the scientific side. In his judgement the judge quoted most from one of the philosophers of science (I forget the name). Pigliucci surmises, and I suspect he's right, that that is because philosophers study, and hence clearly understand, the structure of arguments and the nature of logical fallacies. Hence they are better able to explain their position and dismantle the position of their opponent. It would appear that the schoolchildren of Dover Pennsylvania, at least, have reason to be grateful that there are practitioners of philosophy.

There's more on that topic in this podcast.
http://www.rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs35-what-is-philosophy-of-science-good-for.html

Zwaarddijk wrote:if we accept that maths is true, maths somehow exists outside of any spacetime .

I read sometimes ago, if I remember correctly in the National Geographic, that there is a tribe in Africa; they don't know Mathematics beyond the number four; they never needed it; where there was a need Mathematics was there. Indian sub-continent from the ancient times were good in Mathematics; they needed it.

I myself was brought in a villages where twenty was the last number that was needed by them; as on those days a goat will cost less than twenty rupees and a cow or a buffalow was five twenties or a hunderd rupees and like that; the whole village economy ran on barter; currecy was seldom needed; the vilage was self-sufficient in almost everything; it was a way beautiful to live with them; loving and frank people; no artificiality ; close to the nature.