(February 5, 2014 at 11:01 pm)Napoléon Wrote: Well if the absurdly obvious answers the actual question I asked in the first place I'd say you do.
Which they in fact did.
Quote:Well, for starters, a couple of those weren't exactly obvious (I'll admit I'm having a dumb day so apologies if I'm the only one who thinks so). For seconds, I'd argue that for each and every question you could have a wildly different answer, and each one would be just as philosophically accurate (or true/viable whatever word you wish to use) as the next. And this is my problem with philosophy in general.
To be honest, this is a sort of trap I laid for you, which you will see in a mo'. Lol, internet 'traps'.
Quote:For instance, for "What is knowledge", you say "knowledge is a justified true belief" as the definitive answer. As though there are no others.
My contention? There could be many different answers to this question of "What is knowledge", and in fact philosophers themselves aren't in agreement over this very thing.
I'm well aware of that, seeing as I actually happen to be studying epistemology in school at the moment. But firstly, where did I say I gave the ONLY answer to the relevant question? No where, and here's where you've trapped yourself. You asked me for questions that philosophy has answered. You didn't ask me for questions philosophy has definitively answered. Now, you may think I'm just been lawyerish here, but I'm not because there's a crucial point to get here: Science does the exact same thing. Science answers questions, but ALWAYS (effectively) probabilistically, not with certainty. Ask a physicist what view of the nature of time physics holds to, and they'll say it holds to a relativistic, B-theoretic view of time as per Einstein. Go back, say, 120 years and ask a physicist that question, and he'll answer that physics holds to an absolute (A-theoretic view) of time, as per Newton and common experience. Now what has happened here? Science answers a question (what is the nature of time), but that question is tentative and depends on the assumptions held by the relevant scientists and the empirical evidence (with their interpretation being guided by the former). And not even all physicists agree with this view of time, so the question could easily be answered differently, yet you hold this double standard without even realizing it. Science can give tentative answers that change over time, but if philosophy doesn't provide answers to questions that are always correct, philosophy's doing something wrong.
Quote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge
Yeah I'm quoting a wiki article. So what.
Well, I don't really care. The bit you quoted is kind of irrelevant, but at least it points out the biggest problem with defining knowledge as a "justified true belief": the Gettier cases.
Quote:My point is, philosophy is great posing questions, exploring the possible answers and coming up with theories. I'm not here bashing it for that, my only main gripe with philosophy as a form of discerning anything true about the world is that it can't really give you a definitive answer. It's only really good at asking questions. Science on the other hand, can provide you with answers, by way of testable, provable and predictable hypothesis. Can you 'test' the answers philosophy gives? Can you prove them? Can you predict results with them? Not from any brand of philosophy I've seen. So in essence, I'm not all that interested in any answers philosophy does attempt to give me.
Again, you're making the same mistake Min is making, in that you're asking philosophers, who aren't always talking about things amenable to experimentation, to use said inapplicable method. I'll repeat a question I posed earlier (to whom, I forget) that went unanswered and drives home my point: If I want to answer "What is truth?", tell me the scientific experiment I would run to answer it? You should quickly realize why it would be stupid to actually try to answer that question ("what is truth?") by a scientific experiment. And again, you're playing that double standard again: Scientists will openly admit that science provides probabilistic "proofs", but not actual ones. Hence, science can and does change (for the better), as we learn more and correct our models. But oh, when it comes to philosophy it's a problem if it doesn't have some resolute, unyielding answers that can't be disputed, which even science does pretend to attain.
