Belindi wrote: ↑January 1st, 2021, 5:42 am
But most people cannot provide a proper "argumentative foundation" . A proper "argumentative foundation " is the result of studying critical judgement. Modern educationists can provide details of curriculums and teaching methods that promote critical judgement in the young in their care.
The best artists and entertainers are highly intelligent . They intuit the feelings, aspiration, and fears of their audiences.
It is why I advocate that philosophy may be essential to secure longer term survival and prosperity for humanity.
It appears that there is a general and established resistance to philosophy in science in which philosophy is placed on a level comparable with that of religions.
As an example, it is a generic
complaint that cosmology operates more like a philosophy than a science.
Some perspectives on philosophy by scientists on a forum from a University in Britain (Cambridge):
Philosophy is bunk.
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You may describe philosophy as a search for knowledge and truth. That is indeed vanity. Science is about the acquisition of knowledge, and most scientists avoid the use of "truth", preferring "repeatability" as more in line with our requisite humility in the face of observation.
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Philosophers always pretend that their work is important and fundamental. It isn't even consistent. You can't build science on a rickety, shifting, arbitrary foundation. It is arguable that Judaeo-Christianity catalysed the development of science by insisting that there is a rational plan to the universe, but we left that idea behind a long time ago because there is no evidence for it.
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Philosophy never provided a solution. But it has obstructed the march of science and the growth of understanding.
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Philosophy a retrospective discipline, trying to extract something that philosophers consider important from what scientists have done (not what scientists think - scientific writing is usually intellectually dishonest!). Science is a process, not a philosophy. Even the simplest linguistics confirms this: we "do" science, nobody "does" philosophy.
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Science is no more or less than the application of the process of observe, hypothesise, test, repeat. There's no suggestion of belief, philosophy or validity, any more than there is in the rules of cricket or the instructions on a bottle of shampoo: it's what distinguishes cricket from football, and how we wash hair. The value of science is in its utility. Philosophy is something else.
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Philosophers have indeed determined the best path forward for humanity. Every religion, communism, free market capitalism, Nazism, indeed every ism under the sun, all had their roots in philosophy, and have led to everlasting conflict and suffering. A philosopher can only make a living by disagreeing with everyone else, so what do you expect?
A part of the problem may be that with science, when practiced independently, scientists are essentially fulfilling the role of a philosopher. Logically, that would be based on a belief or dogma (e.g.
uniformitarianism) that legitimizes autonomous application of science (i.e. without further thinking about whether it is actually 'good' what is being done).
When it concerns morality (e.g. the question "what is 'good'?"), the scientific method may not be capable of guiding humanity in an optimal way.
My argument for philosophy:
Philosophy can test whether scientific beliefs / ideas or methodologies are plausible, and/or if they remain so upon new developments / discoveries. Philosophy can investigate questions that span multiple fields and connect the dots to find valuable insights that could be essential for determining what is "good" for the future of humans.
In the same time philosophy can be responsible. It will listen to scientists and anything that they pose can be challenged with no sort of dogmatic resistance. The rickety nature of philosophy could be a quality for flexibility and the prevention of dogma's. Instead of holding on to ideas, ideas can be changed if you can convince that it should.
My personal perspective/idea is that philosophy could be vital for humanity in the (near) future. To facilitate and structurize a return to the human wisdom "
think before you act". With modern day risks such as exponential growth, putting intelligence before practice may become increasingly essential.