(February 4, 2014 at 7:37 pm)Minimalist Wrote: I coined the "mental masturbation" phrase. I'm sticking with it.
Philosophy is a mechanism for speaking endlessly about nothing.
Can't get any less correct than that. Unless you're going to say that the topics of truth, knowledge, morality, politics, mind, language and metaphysics are "nothing".
(February 4, 2014 at 7:42 pm)pineapplebunnybounce Wrote: I don't understand philosophy. I took a logic test that TEGH shared here once and scored nearly perfect on it, so I guess I can't suck that bad. But when I talk to people about philosophy, they say things I do not understand. And I don't know why they do that. When people ask me about science I always explain it in laymen terms and make sure I cut out the technical stuff, unless I'm talking to my classmates. But every time I talk to someone about philosophy, can't go beyond like 5 sentences before I have to ask for definitions :/. So yea, I'm not interested in it, plus you can never prove if you're right or wrong in philosophy, you don't experiment, it's all in your head.
If you were less familiar with science, you'd run into the exact same problem. Asking for definitions of words being used isn't a problem, so that's no more an obstacle in philosophy than any other discipline.
(February 4, 2014 at 10:31 pm)pineapplebunnybounce Wrote: Actually science functions by having people make hypothesis logically and then checking if they're real. Philosophy stops right before the checking. What's the point? I can certainly make up theories that are logically sound, but if I cannot test it out, it contributes nothing.
That's both conceptually flawed and empirically false. Science surely has aspects of "hypothesizing and investigating", bit that's certainly not all of it. There are assumptions, postulations of unobservables to explain data and abstract theoretical speculations far in extent of what can be found at that time (think the Big Bang singularity).
And what do you mean philosophy stops without checking? Have you ever read Ethical philosophy or epistemology, or any bit of philosophical literature? That's complete baloney, unless you count logical deductions and theory-building (also a part of science, I should add) "stopping before checking".
(February 4, 2014 at 10:35 pm)Napoléon Wrote: For me philosophy is simply a way of forming interesting questions. Science is what actually answers them.
Do you really think philosophical has never answered questions and just stops at inforimg them? I mean come on man. :/
Clearly, I've shown where I lay. I like philosophy because it's often about conceptual investigation and clarification. It's so varied and it shows how a lot of people don't necessarily know exactly what they're talking about many of the time. Got me interested and I made it my second major.
