I have often ranted about philosophy in the past, more so about people who think that they are doing philosophy because they string along some arbitrary premises to reach a specific conclusion without ever applying it to the real world. All the while dressing it up as something erudite and intellectual by defining things in meaningless ways and sticking -ism on the end of words. Or maybe they use obsolete philosophy which made sense two millennium ago in the time of Aristotle say but which is now obsolete
I know that science was born out of philosophy, but why then do we still need philosophy as a field? As far as I can see philosophy is trying to do what science does but without referring to any evidence or backing up what it asserts. And when performed by amateur arm chair philosophers, without any relevance to the real world either.
You could say that philosophy asks the questions that science is incapable of asking, until that is science is capable of answering them. But these same questions can also be discussed in a scientific paper. You can write a position paper for example that does not produce any new results but references the scientific literature and then publish it in a scientific journal. When I write papers myself, I always have experiments and results to demonstrate that the idea is logically consistent, but that doesn't stop me waffling on about stuff that would in another time have been considered philosophy. In my mind it's a science paper, even when presented in a symposium on computing and philosophy. The point is that scientists can still reason about the nature or reality as part of doing science. And no matter what new technique you are presenting, you still need to ground it in the literature and justify why you are researching it.
It's not that I have a complete downer on philosophy when done properly. I have read and referenced papers published in philosophy journals that have been extremely useful. The papers though could just have easily been published as a position paper in a scientific journal. Looking through my bibtex file of references I now realise that quite a few papers I have found useful in the past have actually been published in collections of works that use the word 'Philosophy' in their title. As far as I can tell though they are called this to signify that the focus is on discussing the current progress of the field and where it should go next rather than presenting new techniques. But this happens anyway as part of the scientific process and seems a far cry from what I see referred to solely as philosophy. Should this now be the extent of the use of the word 'philosophy' ?
So can or should philosophy continue to exist as a field in its own right or should it be restricted to be part of the scientific process? What's the practical use of pure philosophy when it is not part of the scientific process? Other than, that is, it's use as a form of mental exercise.
Or is my view jaded by all the religionists I see bastardising obsolete philosophy in order to spread their parasitic infection?
There are two jokes I have heard:
A philosophy degree makes you philosophical enough to work in McDonalds afterwards.
What's the difference between a pure Mathematician and a pizza? The pizza can feed a family of four.
Both are essentially saying the same thing, but at least the pure Mathematician has the potential to apply their work. Can the same be said of a pure Philosopher? (Directly that is, not as some transferable skill)
I know that science was born out of philosophy, but why then do we still need philosophy as a field? As far as I can see philosophy is trying to do what science does but without referring to any evidence or backing up what it asserts. And when performed by amateur arm chair philosophers, without any relevance to the real world either.
You could say that philosophy asks the questions that science is incapable of asking, until that is science is capable of answering them. But these same questions can also be discussed in a scientific paper. You can write a position paper for example that does not produce any new results but references the scientific literature and then publish it in a scientific journal. When I write papers myself, I always have experiments and results to demonstrate that the idea is logically consistent, but that doesn't stop me waffling on about stuff that would in another time have been considered philosophy. In my mind it's a science paper, even when presented in a symposium on computing and philosophy. The point is that scientists can still reason about the nature or reality as part of doing science. And no matter what new technique you are presenting, you still need to ground it in the literature and justify why you are researching it.
It's not that I have a complete downer on philosophy when done properly. I have read and referenced papers published in philosophy journals that have been extremely useful. The papers though could just have easily been published as a position paper in a scientific journal. Looking through my bibtex file of references I now realise that quite a few papers I have found useful in the past have actually been published in collections of works that use the word 'Philosophy' in their title. As far as I can tell though they are called this to signify that the focus is on discussing the current progress of the field and where it should go next rather than presenting new techniques. But this happens anyway as part of the scientific process and seems a far cry from what I see referred to solely as philosophy. Should this now be the extent of the use of the word 'philosophy' ?
So can or should philosophy continue to exist as a field in its own right or should it be restricted to be part of the scientific process? What's the practical use of pure philosophy when it is not part of the scientific process? Other than, that is, it's use as a form of mental exercise.
Or is my view jaded by all the religionists I see bastardising obsolete philosophy in order to spread their parasitic infection?
There are two jokes I have heard:
A philosophy degree makes you philosophical enough to work in McDonalds afterwards.
What's the difference between a pure Mathematician and a pizza? The pizza can feed a family of four.
Both are essentially saying the same thing, but at least the pure Mathematician has the potential to apply their work. Can the same be said of a pure Philosopher? (Directly that is, not as some transferable skill)
