colubridae wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:
Awww, Pop, do we HAFTA? Kidding aside, Jef, the actual circumstances under which people live and make decisions include the ability to apply the scientific method when it is applicable, and to not waste a lot of time wibbling when it isn't. In those cases where overtly discriminatory practices are in play, perhaps one may petition the government for redress. Lots of luck.

No, I don't pretend to apply the scientific method in expressing my tastes and dreams, but as you can see in this thread, only one of us is pursuing arguments that involve defending one's tastes. If someone is reluctant to appreciate the benefits of applying the scientific method, with an eye on the sour grapes of inconvenience in doing so, who am I to persuade him otherwise?

“Darn it Mr Cito yew use yer tongue prettier’n twenty dollar whore”

Cito di Pense wrote:

Jef wrote:Every time you test an assumption to breaking point, progress has been made in accordance with your stated aim. By importing an aim you imply the possibility of progress, and the criterion by which that progress may be measured.

Well, let's not get an individual's education mixed up with the progress of a field that hasn't really thought of any new assumptions to try to break in a long time. These days, people play at semantics with an aim to deconstruct everything. That deconstruction of scientific epistemology is done from the outside looking in is just part of the fun.

Jef wrote:As such by asserting that philosophy has an aim you're in contradiction of your assertion that progress in philosophy cannot be measured in any sense, and in the very next sentence too

I myself am not suffering confusion between progress in an individual's education, and progress in an intellectual domain as a whole.

Jef wrote:Why questions are questions of the motivations we ascribe to subjects. They are silly questions for scientists. They are not silly per se; unless you intend to assert that taking action on the basis of our beliefs is not possible.

Hence, psychobabble.

Jef wrote:

Jef wrote:If you're asking me, in effect, how can we have laws against racism and yet still have racists, I could reply that if we didn't have any racists we wouldn't need laws against racism.

We have laws against discriminatory practices based on ethnicity, matters which can be detected empirically. Racists go right on being racists, regardless. Life is too short to spend much time sincerely attempting to wring concessions out of people with whom you disagree on questions without definitive answers.

So your argument is what? That the fact that we don't punish thought crimes is an argument against philosophy?

I've given my critique. Pay attention.

Jef wrote:

Jef wrote:What racism is a good example of, I hope you'll agree, is an example of a question that we can set aside as having been answered, despite that it is not ultimately a question of facts.

Nope, it's a fact that we have laws against discriminatory practices based on ethnicity (and in some places, gender preference as well, etc.). We still have plenty of racism, sexism and homophobia, because philosophical arguments against them are ineffective.

Philosophical arguments against them are the reason we have the laws.

Go ahead, don't mind me, just blow another unsupported assertion out your butt. It's fun, and makes interesting noises for the audience's delectation.

Jef wrote:

Jef wrote:Perhaps, an even better example is slavery.

Much as I hate to quibble, we have plenty of people in the 'developed nations' working for wages on which they cannot live decently. It's a kind of discrimination on the basis of ability; philosophers are surely standing by to solve that one.

There's no scientific reason why we should give a shit either way and, if it is purely a matter of personal preference or taste, no argument for change.

Have I made an argument for change? If this is about ethics, go tell someone who cares.

Jef wrote:

People use or do not use scientific methodology in their daily lives because, respectively, they do or do not know how it works.

...and because some questions are trivial.
...and because circumstances do not permit it.
...and because many questions are not scientific questions.
...and because for many questions which are scientific questions we already have reliable answers.

Yes, make a long list of all the naive assumptions, and make sure people ponder them.

Jef wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:

Jef wrote:Every time you test an assumption to breaking point, progress has been made in accordance with your stated aim. By importing an aim you imply the possibility of progress, and the criterion by which that progress may be measured.

Well, let's not get an individual's education mixed up with the progress of a field that hasn't really thought of any new assumptions to try to break in a long time. These days, people play at semantics with an aim to deconstruct everything. That deconstruction of scientific epistemology is done from the outside looking in is just part of the fun.

Depends upon what you mean for a very long time. Karl Popper, for example, has only been dead for twenty years.

Jef wrote:Scientific epistemology? "Is this a scientific question?", is not a scientific question.

Jef wrote:

Jef wrote:As such by asserting that philosophy has an aim you're in contradiction of your assertion that progress in philosophy cannot be measured in any sense, and in the very next sentence too

I myself am not suffering confusion between progress in an individual's education, and progress in an intellectual domain as a whole.

And now to escape your contradiction you've simply reverted to the double standard, and category error, which originally brought me to this thread. This ought to tell you something.

Jef wrote:

Jef wrote:Why questions are questions of the motivations we ascribe to subjects. They are silly questions for scientists. They are not silly per se; unless you intend to assert that taking action on the basis of our beliefs is not possible.

Hence, psychobabble.

Please explain.

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?
Plato: For the greater good.
Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.
Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.
Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.
Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!
Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.
Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.
Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.
Oliver North: National Security was at stake.
B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.
Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.
Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
Aristotle: To actualize its potential.
Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.
Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.
Salvador Dali: The Fish.
Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.
Epicurus: For fun.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.
Johann Friedrich von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.
Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.
David Hume: Out of custom and habit.
Saddam Hussein: This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.
Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it fucking wanted to. That's the fucking reason.
Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?
Ronald Reagan: I forget.
John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.
The Sphinx: You tell me.
Gertrude Stein: A chicken is a chicken is a chicken.
Mr. T: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!
Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.
Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
Molly Yard: It was a hen!
Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.
John Stuart Mill: Because the crossing did not impinge on any other chicken's individual rights, it was a legitimate exercise of Liberty, and collective coercive authority could not be employed to prevent it.

Jef wrote:what I do care about is whether our laws protect us from having their beliefs imposed upon the rest of us.

Cito di Pense wrote:
Well, philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.

romansh wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:
Well, philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.

And yet we still hear scientists say a particular hypothesis has been proven (or not). I can't help thinking a little bit of philosophy of science would not have hurt these scientists.

SpeedOfSound wrote:

colubridae wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:So. Any such activity to diagram a belief is Progress. Every pen stroke is progress.

Very, very grudgingly then ok that may occasionally constitute progress, if and only if such a belief/argument requires clarification. And you assume that such beliefs/arguments necessarily require a diagram/clarification. Claiming that any such activity is progress is an assertion, and in any case simply clarifying/diagramming that which is not philosophy can’t be claimed as progress in philosophy. Errr I think.

Yeah. It's the kind of philosophy that I like. I use to rail against philosophy around here, mostly because I hadn't actually read any since I was an teenager. Then I found all of this material that attempted to structure thinking and arguments, more like math than what I had thought to be philosophy, and I was impressed.

Cito di Pense wrote:Well, philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.

seeker wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

colubridae wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:So. Any such activity to diagram a belief is Progress. Every pen stroke is progress.

Very, very grudgingly then ok that may occasionally constitute progress, if and only if such a belief/argument requires clarification. And you assume that such beliefs/arguments necessarily require a diagram/clarification. Claiming that any such activity is progress is an assertion, and in any case simply clarifying/diagramming that which is not philosophy can’t be claimed as progress in philosophy. Errr I think.

Yeah. It's the kind of philosophy that I like. I use to rail against philosophy around here, mostly because I hadn't actually read any since I was an teenager. Then I found all of this material that attempted to structure thinking and arguments, more like math than what I had thought to be philosophy, and I was impressed.

SpeedOfSound: can you give some examples/references of what you mean by "material that attempted to structure thinking and arguments, more like math than what I had thought to be philosophy"?

Cito di Pense wrote:
Don't tell me this is about another circular trip around the dictionary.