RE: Generally speaking, is philosophy a worthwhile subject of study?
February 22, 2022 at 6:19 am
(This post was last modified: February 22, 2022 at 6:25 am by GrandizerII.)
(February 21, 2022 at 4:34 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: A better (but slightly ambiguous) way to define philosophy is "critical thinking about fundamental issues." But that has the problem of including cosmologists and physicists. -shrug- Perhaps there is some overlap in the two fields
There has to be, you can't completely separate the two so that there is no intersection. Theories that are developed in science often involves having to think deeply about fundamental stuff. Agree with Angrboda there.
When Einstein wrote his work on relativity, there was little experimental work on his part. He was basically doing philosophy albeit accompanied with advanced mathematical calculations. * Physicists today who hold to any interpretation of quantum mechanics that goes beyond just "shut up and calculate" are also doing philosophy and they don't typically do this just for the fun of it, they actually make arguments for these views and explain why other opposing views are wrong or unlikely, despite the lack of empirical data conclusively supporting any of these views. And there's nothing wrong with that anyway. I would personally say to be a great scientist, you have to be a great philosopher as well. You have to go beyond just following a system faithfully and not thinking too much about (or not appreciating) the history of thinking and current philosophies that underlie it.
Yes, science is awesome, so is philosophy in general and metaphysics specifically.
* What I mean here is that he was doing both philosophy and science, not just science, not just philosophy (metaphysics).
