(February 5, 2014 at 11:01 pm)Napoléon Wrote: 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.
I agree with you that philosophy doesn't give us as definite answers as science does. But again, you can't separate philosophy from science because oftentimes science requires criticism and evaluation, which are philosophical aspects. Without philosophy, there would be just bits of data floating in our heads and no way to combine them into a reasonable framework. Without philosophy, Einstein may have never even come up with the Theory of Relativity. Without philosophy we wouldn't even be talking about the notion of a "Big Bang" today, as we so often do. Therefore, philosophy allows us to ask questions, create the right experiments, and then logically connect the dots after gathering all the facts we obtained as a result.
Philosophy doesn't have definite answers, yes, but I don't think that's a bad thing because that produces a wider range of perspectives and more discussion, which in turn produces more new ideas. Then, we use those ideas to solve problems and/or to understand something better. Most importantly, philosophy allows us to contemplate on the essence of things, the value of things, the beauty of this universe, and is an integral part of our self-understanding. All of that is philosophy.
