What useful stuff has *modern* philosophy accomplished for man-kind?

[WAB]

I can't help but recoil at 'average joe-blow welder'. I'm a blue-collar worker, and have worked among blue-collar workers my whole life. To be flatly honest here, without trying to be insulting: I have no reason to think that the people I've worked with are any dumber than the people I've associated with at FRDB and here over the past ten years. I've had many discussions about science and philosophy with my workmates, many political/religious discussions, etc. I know many wage earners who are extremely well-read and very bright.

Contrarily, I was in management for two years, and I met other department heads who couldn't compose a coherent sentence. Career choice probably doesn't have much to do with native intelligence. It boils down to ambition and opportunity, I think. And some people are forced to excel and succeed by overbearing parents.

Not to mention the fact that welding is damn hard and not just any joe-schmo can do it well. It's probably harder than a lot of administrative work. I've done administrative work, paper work, had a desk and all that. It was a breeze compared to some of the joe-jobs I've held.

Sorry, just venting, but that's a sore spot for me. I know you didn't mean anything demeaning by it, rousseau.

Yea, I literally didn't. The point was that the average person has no real need for philosophy, not that the average person is dumb.

I disagree. The everyday, day to day working through of common problems requires some sort of application of reason, of conceptualizing, and thinking in general. We all need philosophy, and we all do philosophy, on various levels of sophistication.

There is no such thing as "the average person".

 

[WAB]

Oh, and I should have added: not reading anything from Hume would be a good thing, intellectually. Hume is one of the reasons there is so much confusion in modern philosophy.

Is it not that each philosopher is one reason that there is so much confusion in modern philosophy?

I like Hume's observation that one cannot rationalise the sense of causality we have (I guess he must have meant "through introspection alone" if he didn't actually say it).

So what was Hume's main contribution to confusion do you think?
EB

Where to begin? I can't possibly dismantle Hume better than Thomas Reid did, a contemporary and occasional friend of Hume's. I agree with Hume's mother, who was quoted as saying something like, "He's a nice boy, but uncommon simple."

I know you might say I'm appealing to someone else to make my argument, and in this particular case you'd be right. But that's okay, because I'd rather that someone reads Thomas Reid than listen to my unprofessional, unscholarly peanut-gallery opinions.

Just DO NOT read any of the half-baked 'modernizations' of Reid's original text, because I know of at least one person, whose name escapes me at the moment, who decided to butcher the original to suit his own ego. I suppose I can try and look him up.

- - - Updated - - -

***NOTE: this is NOT to say that scientists can't be artists and poets who think and feel. Of course they can! And they are. Let's hope it stays that way.

Yeah, Einstein played the violin... I guess his woman meanwhile did the cooking and the laundry.
EB

Now where did that come from?

 

[rousseau]

Yea, I literally didn't. The point was that the average person has no real need for philosophy, not that the average person is dumb.

I disagree. The everyday, day to day working through of common problems requires some sort of application of reason, of conceptualizing, and thinking in general. We all need philosophy, and we all do philosophy, on various levels of sophistication.

There is no such thing as "the average person".

You're missing my point again.

The point is that the guy waiting tables at the pub down the road has no need for Heidegger or Foucault, not the need to philosophize as a general action.

 

[WAB]

I haven't missed your point. I do understand what you're saying! All I caution against is this generalization:

the guy waiting tables at the pub down the road

This guy could very well be someone who's never cracked open a book, let alone a book of philosophy. However, he could also be someone who knows MORE about Heidegger or Foucault than you do. Are you open to that possibility?

***I realize your point is that, regardless of his knowledge or lack thereof, he doesn't need philosophy.***

I understand that you're referring to people in general who haven't read philosophy and who literally do not need it in their lives. I understand that, rousseau, I really do. All I'm saying is, this notion of 'the ignorant masses' is a vestige of the past. I talk with a lot of people in the UK at the poetry site I frequent, most of them upper middle 'class'. Class being income bracket and nothing more. There are people in the UK, poets no less, and ones with a fairly liberal worldwiew and political orientation, who still refer to the 'working class' in derogatory ways. A lot of them have this traditional class-system mentality deeply ingrained, and it's hard to shake loose from it.

I see a lot of posters here with what I consider to be an outdated, outmoded concept of class. The irony is that most of them are progressive liberals who claim to be on the side of the poor.

Sorry for any implication on my part that you had some kind of class-system mentality, but even though you don't, the terms you use, and your language, can easily give the impression that you do.

That's OK, and maybe it's just that I'm touchy on that subject! My posts here and at other places are often misinterpreted as well. I know it's frustrating, believe me.

 

[Juma]

What has good has come from philosophy?
Modern law.
Human value.
Standardisation.
Modern Government.
Civilization
Science

 

[WAB]

What has good has come from philosophy?
Modern law.
Human value.
Standardisation.
Modern Government.
Civilization
Science

Bingo!

 

[DBT]

Now all you have to do is connect all of these things specifically to the work of philosophy.

 

[No Robots]

Well I guess philosophy is never going to accomplish anything then.

To re-iterate the point: philosophy is useful, but not often necessary. If the masses were capable of critical thought and understanding deep philosophical theory, or if they even cared, and there was a way to spread useful philosophical theory, we might progress a bit faster as a society, but such a people isn't reality. So we're left with a situation where philosophy helps some people some times, but if someone chooses to not read any philosophy at all over the course of their life, while they might be at a disadvantage, they can still lead their life successfully.

The point of connection between the commonality and the spiritual elite is on the ground of science. Philosophy must assume control of science. This should be done in biology on the basis of the doctrine of forms/attributes/genera. It involves an attack on the reigning orthodoxy of mutation, selection and descent in favour of variation, adaptation and metamorphosis.

 

[Kharakov]

There are people in the UK, poets no less, and ones with a fairly liberal worldwiew and political orientation, who still refer to the 'working class' in derogatory ways. A lot of them have this traditional class-system mentality deeply ingrained, and it's hard to shake loose from it.

Probably had their ass kicked by a lower class person who kicked the upper class poet's ass because an upper class individual or group behaved ignorantly towards the lower class in the past.

Flip side? Treat all well, push the a-whole out of the a-hole into the holy hole in the treat well that's all well.

 

[Speakpigeon]

So what was Hume's main contribution to confusion do you think?

I can't possibly dismantle Hume better than Thomas Reid did, a contemporary and occasional friend of Hume's.
<snip>
I'd rather that someone reads Thomas Reid than listen to my unprofessional, unscholarly peanut-gallery opinions.

A simple question could not get a simple answer.

Yeah, Einstein played the violin... I guess his woman meanwhile did the cooking and the laundry.
EB

Now where did that come from?

What, that Einstein played the violin? You suggested scientists can be artists. I agree.

The rest came from me, as the "I guess" I think made it plain.

I do have read something nasty about that, in some reasonably good book, but I'm not going to be able to give any reference or quote. Is that Ok?
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

What has good has come from philosophy?
Modern law.
Human value.
Standardisation.
Modern Government.
Civilization
Science

I would agree with that but I hope you're not suggesting you could support your claim convincingly with specific data!

I guess it could be argued that the U.S.A's constitution was inspired in a large part by the philosophers of the Enlightenment and that this constitution is the DNA of American political and social order. The totalitarian Soviet system was defeated when crowds in East Germany brought the Berlin Wall down and crowds in Poland brought the Iron Curtain down. All these people wanted was to live in the kind of democracy examplified by the U.S.A. So, was the soviet system essentially inspired by philosophy, that of Marx and Lenin? Was that civilisation too? And if the U.S. constitution mattered so much, why did it take so long for America to legitimise the role of African Americans or Native Americans in the social and political realm in the 1960's? (Negroes who voluntered for active duty in 1917 in World War I had to be put under the orders of a French commander because no American commander was willing to take this role. Why? Incidentally, the Germans never managed to break through their lines. Called them "Hell's fighters".)

Me I think it's all too fuzzy to make a decent case. It will always come down to your own prejudices in the end.

Unless history can be said to be a scientific discipline?
EB

 

[Juma]

What has good has come from philosophy?
Modern law.
Human value.
Standardisation.
Modern Government.
Civilization
Science

I would agree with that but I hope you're not suggesting you could support your claim convincingly with specific data!

I think definitely it can be done, but i dont think i am the one capable of doing such a enormous task.

I think this thread shows how easy it is to forget the impact of "great" thinkers. A lot of what we today beleive and how we reason are a direct result of that some, not very many, individuals sat down and thought things, more or less, through.

 

[rousseau]

I haven't missed your point. I do understand what you're saying! All I caution against is this generalization:

the guy waiting tables at the pub down the road

This guy could very well be someone who's never cracked open a book, let alone a book of philosophy. However, he could also be someone who knows MORE about Heidegger or Foucault than you do. Are you open to that possibility?

***I realize your point is that, regardless of his knowledge or lack thereof, he doesn't need philosophy.***

I understand that you're referring to people in general who haven't read philosophy and who literally do not need it in their lives. I understand that, rousseau, I really do. All I'm saying is, this notion of 'the ignorant masses' is a vestige of the past. I talk with a lot of people in the UK at the poetry site I frequent, most of them upper middle 'class'. Class being income bracket and nothing more. There are people in the UK, poets no less, and ones with a fairly liberal worldwiew and political orientation, who still refer to the 'working class' in derogatory ways. A lot of them have this traditional class-system mentality deeply ingrained, and it's hard to shake loose from it.

I see a lot of posters here with what I consider to be an outdated, outmoded concept of class. The irony is that most of them are progressive liberals who claim to be on the side of the poor.

Sorry for any implication on my part that you had some kind of class-system mentality, but even though you don't, the terms you use, and your language, can easily give the impression that you do.

That's OK, and maybe it's just that I'm touchy on that subject! My posts here and at other places are often misinterpreted as well. I know it's frustrating, believe me.

Yea I think you're projecting onto my words.

While I do believe that if you took 100 000 random people and averaged their intelligence it wouldn't be that high, I don't have any particular class-ist feelings. One of the smartest guys I know is a minimum wage worker.

By 'guy working down at the pub' and 'joe blow welder' I meant the every-day person, not a dumb blue collar worker.

 

[No Robots]

Unless history can be said to be a scientific discipline?

We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. The two sides are, however, inseparable; the history of nature and the history of men are dependent on each other so long as men exist. The history of nature, called natural science, does not concern us here; but we will have to examine the history of men, since almost the whole ideology amounts either to a distorted conception of this history or to a complete abstraction from it. Ideology is itself only one of the aspects of this history.--Marx / The German ideology​

 

[WAB]

Sorry, Speakpigeon. I could have given a simple answer, which would be:

I think the is-to-an-ought-problem is not a problem.

That's my simple answer, and since I've engaged in countless threads - as, no doubt, have you - on that very chestnut, I REALLY don't feel like cracking it back open.

Which means, if you ask me why I think etc, etc., I won't answer, because I don't want to discuss it. At least not at this time, or in this thread.

Peace! my French brother or sister!

 

[Philos]

Folks,

As always, philosophy's failure to come up with answers is it's greatest accomplishment. These days I think the failure of materialist reduction is significant.

Alex.

 

[Kharakov]

As always, philosophy's failure to come up with answers is it's greatest accomplishment.

Do answers really end a conversation? Metaquestion everything.

 

[rousseau]

Folks,

As always, philosophy's failure to come up with answers is it's greatest accomplishment. These days I think the failure of materialist reduction is significant.

Alex.

Failure of materialist reduction? I'm not sure what that means.

Science has taken our understanding of the universe and ourselves to extreme reductionist lengths, so I don't think that's any type of materialist reductive failure. The only real failure of philosophy in that respect is that no one seems to have made the findings and implications of science explicitly clear. That's probably a good thing, as you've alluded to before, but it doesn't mean we don't know ourselves, just that individuals have to connect the dots.

 

[Kharakov]

Unless history can be said to be a scientific discipline?

We know only a single science, the science of history.​

Each point in time can have multiple histories leading up to it, as well as multiple futures leading away from it. Our observation of specific histories, even natural laws, may provide a certain amount of inertia (for our particular viewpoint) towards a specific future outcome- at least as a group of observers acting as a single observer.

Selecting specific histories may join us to others who have selected similar specific histories out of the various possibilities. As in QM, the greater the mass (shorter wavelength) of something, the more it is bound to classical (non-wave like) mechanics.

Instead of physical mass being a determining factor of the wavefunction, it would be number of observers, and strength of observation of each observer.

So the number of and observational capacity of observers who observe a particular entity, past, set of laws, or whatever is the total observational mass of what is observed. The greater the amount of observers, the more something is observed, the more "real" it is (the more classical behavior it displays). Joining together in the observation of certain things in reality causes them to have greater magnitude of existence. More observation= more ordered, non chaotic behavior.

That's a nice little tangent. Need a bit of observation and input of observational mass.. wonder if words transmit observational mass?

Anyway, here is a paper by Stephen Hawking and Thomas Hertog from a few years back. Slightly similar to the ideas I've related, professionally written, with another unique take on the alternate histories approach : Populating the Landscape: A Top Down Approach. Some interesting ideas in it...

I tend to think that a certain amount of "inertial mass" is leading towards a good future. This thought can be completed as smiled.​

 

[No Robots]

^Today's science is largely obscurantist nonsense like the above. It is simply a replacement for the theology of past days, something to keep the masses ignorant and obedient.