Poll: Philosophy: Important or a Waste of Time?

[Vhite]

I'm gonna go with first option because if you look at our place in universe without philosophy then we ARE nothing.

 

[Togs]

Nice. Perhaps you'd do me a little favour Togs, if you will?

Look at your screen. Now rotate your head 90 degrees.

Did you see any motion blur?

Why not?

What part of your mind is fooling you? That's your "navel-gazing" in action. Quite important if you're driving, for instance.

No doubt Im gonna get shouted down for saying this, but how is that an example of applied philsophy? If anything thats neurology and anatomy.

 

[The Eyeball Moose]

Philosophy scares me.

When I start thinking about how we came to be and if we serve a purpose, I eventually flip the fuck out.

 

[CarlMin]

Philosophy is by far the most important subject we have.

Philosophy dictates science, math, the fine arts, everything. Philosophy is ideology, which can build and destroy nations. A simple philosophy affects the mentality of the entire human population. History have taught us this over and over again.

Arguably, you'd have to be pretty damn ignorant to question the role of philosophy in our human society.

 

[Alon Shechter]

A gut feeling is telling me that all the greatest philosophers were also scientists...
An example coming to my mind is Albert Einstein, the guy has some brilliant quotes that are not related to science in any way.

 

[funguy2121]

Then, pfff, just as you didn't care enough to thoughtfully read my response and so didn't understand it, you're still not grasping that you're arguing science while ignoring scientific method.

(1) Ohhh, yeah! I totally am, because for me science has long being more than just the scientific method.

I am basing that on a couple of books by Poincare, and some Russell references; however i am not too deep into philosophy of science.

(2) And the reason is basically that reality is impossible to know, and thinking that you can get fact or trout is totally crap, a priory any idea is just an approximation no inherently better than any other we can dream while wasted. (3)If we only take the scientific method, then most of quantum physics and all math aren't (4)science, which is something i don't like, so i take a different approach.

(1) Live long, and being prosperous.
(2) Epistemological nihilism, a reality that you claim to know, which states that reality is impossible to know.
(3) You don't understand math if you think it doesn't use scientific method, and even if that statement were true it wouldn't do anything to diminish the validity of scientific method.
(4) A very powerful component of the epistemology in which you arbitrarily choose not to believe (denial) is the force with which what we want to believe colors what we actually do. Many people don't believe in certain things simply because they don't want to; at least you admit it.

 

[Vorpals]

As it's been said, philosophy is what structures and gives value to other things. The only reason you think science is awesome is because of some value structure you've set up in your mind, and that is a philosophy per se. The field of philosophy seeks out to justify and test those value structures for validity and soundness (meta-ethics), so saying that it's not valuable is literally just begging the question.

The reason you can think science is important and be right (or be right about ANYTHING being good or bad) is because of some philosophical theory somewhere.

 

[Grimbold]

Metaphysics is bullshit.
But rational thinking and ethical philosophy is very important and there are too many people who have no idea about those. So I would say the importance philosophy could have is too underrated.

 

[oktalist]

Philosophy is a gigantic subject, covering fields like ethics, politics, logic, law, language and the mind. So you really have to be clear what you're talking about. Clearly it is essential to all human reason. Though I do think it is time for it to be broken up into separate subjects, like in an antitrust suit.

It's already been pointed out to you that all science and maths originated with philosophy. Philosopher simply means lover of wisdom.

 

[funguy2121]

Vastly interesting. However, even Wittgenstein said that a man should learn philosophy for a short time, then leave it.

Personally I much prefer the Existentialists to the Stoics and so on, while Kant can just feck off, given the amount of evenings in university where my friends bored the tits off me discussing it at the pub when I was trying to have a drink.

Well, you Kant always get what you want...


..what was that, Mr. Eggers?

 

[Falconsgyre]

Hey guys. I have to take a Philosophy class this year, so I've been reading the required book over the summer, and OH MY GOD IS THIS THE STUPIDEST SUBJECT EVER!

Regardless of anything else, philosophy will teach you two things if you pay attention:

1) How to think critically.

2) How to disagree amiably.

These are two things everyone could use more of.

 

[Bloodstain]

It seems to me you don't understand what Philosophy is.

To me, Philosophy is one of the most important subjects of mankind.

 

[Zarmi]

Society as we know it today is build from philosophy. Need I say more?

 

[Findlebob]

I once failed a philosophy exam, i didnt believe the test was real.

 

[LongAndShort]

Speaking as someone whose done a fair few philosophy classes covering a fairly broad range of Philosophical subjects I honestly believe the world would be a better place if everyone had to take courses on political philosophy and practical ethics (course I'm doing now and course I've done in the past).

 

[spartan231490]

Philosophy is more important than science. Not by much, but by a little. It is the subject of self-examination and self-understanding. It is how we understand ourselves and others. While understanding the world around us is important, it is far more important that we learn to understand each-other.

yeah, it's hard to take a class in, but it's important.

Philosophy isn't something you learn in a class room, but rather by taking the walk of life.
But saying that it is more important then for instance physics then I must call you barking mad.

Philosophy is something you learn by thinking about things, not by living. Philosophy classes expose you to different ideas and can start or accelerate that process.

Philosophy helps us to understand each-other and ourselves, and that understanding is what helps us to not grind each-other into dust. It also helps elevate us, just barely, above our destructive, violent, selfish and violent instincts. Understanding is the very foundation of civilization, the cornerstone of humanity, and increasing that understanding is far more important than increasing our understanding of physics.

 

[int boom]

Without the outlandish beard stroking of a certain George Boole (whose absolute Yes or No logic was considered utterly useless by his peers), there would not have been an information age, causing this thread not to exist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_boole

Philosophy is pretty important.

 

[honestdiscussioner]

If you need to get technical, I merely have to amend my statement to say science as we know it wouldn't exist without philosophy. Testing, peer-review, double-blind studies, these things that we use to define science today would not be present without philosophy. If you want to say that classical Greek philosophy was not the beginning of people writing down observations, then so be it, but not everyone who writes down knowledge and observations is performing science.

However I don't have to go that route, I can cite wikipedia as you like and say science is "a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe." Your example does not fully satisfy this definition, as there was no testable explanations, merely descriptions of procedures.

If that isn't enough, why not play the xkcd Wikipedia game. Go to the medicine page, and click the first link that isn't in parenthesis, and then the first non-parenthesis link on that page, and so on. You eventually will get to philosophy.

Science is a philosophy. To say there can be science without philosophy is to say something can be a square without being a rectangle.

Going in paragraph order:

- That is quite the unscientific thing to say! Wouldn't exist? Why? Faith in that? But yeah, only recording observations is not science, however that book didn't did that.

- Got me there, however continuing the discussion about if philosophy was the first field of human knowledge or whether it predates the seminal works of other sciences seem sterile. (Spoiler, it does not)

- What for?

- Ohh... really? Wow, i will need to inform the real world about that. It's like saying you can't build Notre Dame without calculus, it certainly helps, but crap, its not required.

I never said faith. I require none for this belief. It has been philosophers that have formed scientific thinking. Before there was even a word for "science", and long before the scientific method (which was formed by what again? Right, philosophy), anyone who you'd consider a scientist would consider themselves a philosopher. It wasn't until the 17th century when they began to be considered separate.

Why the xkcd game? To show that everything we know and love is based in philosophy. Let's play that game and I'll show you. Capital words will be the first link. Medicine is a SCIENCE. Okay, Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes KNOWLEDGE. Okay, then knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something, that can include FACTS. Well facts can refer to TRUTHS which has a variety of meanings, such as the state of being in accord with REALITY. Which brings you right directly to philosophy.

Which brings me to your second and final points, that you think the seminal works medicine predate philosophical thought, and that my analogy is like saying you can't build Notre Dame without calculus, it certainly helps, but crap, its not required.

Okay, fine. Let's do some medicine, let's use the work you cite as well, the Edwin Smith Papyrus, with all it's lack of philosophy. Well, it goes over techniques to cover up a gaping wound. So in order to do that, you'd have to have an understanding that one thing causes another, that the bleeding stops when the bandage gets puts on directly because of the bandage. Hey, wait a second . . . that's PHILOSOPHY!

To get anywhere, you need philosophy. That isn't even the main point. The main point is that the OP said he's a hard sciency guy and doesn't thinks philosophy is stupid and unimportant. Since the scientific method was developed through philosophy, he owes his entire field and developed way of thinking to philosophy. If you'd like to disagree and say the scientific method is based in science, go ahead, but you're using circular reasoning in saying that science is valid because science proves science is valid through science.

 

[guntotingtomcat]

Hey guys. I have to take a Philosophy class this year, so I've been reading the required book over the summer, and OH MY GOD IS THIS THE STUPIDEST SUBJECT EVER!

See, I'm a very hard sciences kind of guy, so reading about dead Greeks' abstract theories on trivial bullshit (a lot of which have been proven false by modern science) seems like a complete waste of time to me. Why bother with high concept ideas that can't be proven and are inapplicable to real life?

What do you guys think about the subject? Are there any philosophy aficionados out there that can teach me the error of my ignorant ways?

EDIT: Just to clarify, I mean philosophy as in the academic subject as it currently exists, not the general school of thought.

Have you ever considered something 'right' or 'wrong'?
That is philosophy.
Also, science quantifies what our senses tell us about the world. It is actually a form of reasoning called 'induction', which is philosophy.
In fact, philosophy is often called the 'hand maiden' of science. It can be used to tell us the value of any given statement, in terms of truth.
A statement like 'Stealing is wrong', for example can only really be evaluated using philosophical techniques.