Timeline for Are we studying philosophy or philosophers?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
33 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 3 at 10:34 | answer | added | Baby_philosopher | timeline score: -1 | |
| Sep 23, 2016 at 1:51 | answer | added | Keith Nicholas | timeline score: 3 | |
| Sep 22, 2016 at 22:42 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackPhilosophy/status/779088405540048896 | ||
| Sep 22, 2016 at 22:15 | answer | added | Demo | timeline score: 0 | |
| Sep 22, 2016 at 18:21 | answer | added | Dave | timeline score: 3 | |
| Sep 22, 2016 at 16:54 | history | edited | Chris Sunami | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Sep 22, 2016 at 16:51 | answer | added | Chris Sunami | timeline score: 0 | |
| Sep 19, 2016 at 21:22 | comment | added | Little Alien | Indeed, my question particularly, what is the difference between inventation and discovery was banned because I refused to give the name of philosopher. I am sure that we define these notions without reference to any philosophic dicks. But, it seems impossible to ask anything here without grounding your thought to a 'great mind' of the past | |
| Sep 19, 2016 at 20:30 | answer | added | Ram Tobolski | timeline score: 3 | |
| Sep 17, 2016 at 7:51 | comment | added | user22791 | @Philip Klocking You seem to be suggesting that the conflicts of scientists and the conflicts of philosophers are somewhat similar and that anyone heralding the scientific process as being in any way better should show some humility. Scientists work towards an ever more accurate definition of the world using evidence from data to verify their theories, those that are no longer verified by the data are discarded, no matter how popular the scientist was at the time. It is ruthless. I have yet to have anyone explain how any similar process happens in philosophy. | |
| Sep 16, 2016 at 22:54 | comment | added | Alexander S King | @Isaacson check edits to my answer. | |
| Sep 16, 2016 at 18:55 | comment | added | Philip Klöcking♦ | Do you really and actually think that scientists agree these days? See how many interpretations of QM are out there! Or how many interpretations of the Big Bang Theory. And in 200 years, people will say the theories (looking into the details!) were crap, no matter the interpretation. Ask a physicist if he agrees with Newton and he will probably disagree. Nevertheless Newton's Laws are still in use today and the best way to calculate gravity within certain boundaries. The same with Bohr's atomic model. Don't pretend that 'the sciences' were consistent in all cases. Show a bit of humbleness. | |
| Sep 16, 2016 at 18:39 | answer | added | Alexander S King | timeline score: 2 | |
| Sep 16, 2016 at 17:52 | history | reopened | user2953 | ||
| Sep 16, 2016 at 17:20 | review | Reopen votes | |||
| Sep 16, 2016 at 17:52 | |||||
| Sep 16, 2016 at 17:04 | history | edited | user22791 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Sep 16, 2016 at 16:34 | comment | added | user22791 | The point is not that some ancient philosophers are still relevant, it's that they still contradict each other. If philosophy hasn't managed to resolve those contradictions after a few thousand years, surely one has to question either it's methods or it's motives. | |
| Sep 16, 2016 at 16:25 | comment | added | Philip Klöcking♦ | I think you severely underestimate the number of philosophers that lived within the last over 2.000 years. It's not like we reference every philosopher who ever lived and has written on a certain topic. But as you should cover every notable work of a chemist who has contributed to the specific topic of an essay without being blatantly wrong or completely falsified by empirical data, we should cover the corresponding philosophers as well. We can't help there were people writing important and correct things this early in our subject. | |
| Sep 16, 2016 at 15:51 | history | closed |
John Am virmaior jeroenk user2953 |
Needs details or clarity | |
| Sep 16, 2016 at 11:51 | comment | added | Dennis | Here's another way to put it, a philosopher is not just wrong simpliciter. He's wrong on certain places and perhaps right on other places, and some places the solution is still being worked upon. Kripke's book takes issue with Kant's philosophy, and works from there. Does that mean he shouldn't be taught? No. The point of someone being famous is irrelevant to the point of the truth of a proposition. Similarly, Russell had a lot of incarnations, there's only one correct metaphysic, and all others are wrong. Do a subject oriented study, and you'll see how it goes. | |
| Sep 16, 2016 at 11:42 | comment | added | Dennis | "A simple refutation of my argument would be the name of a philosopher and the subject on which he was proven wrong." -- This seems to either miss-out or ignore my point about arguments and hypothesis usually being inductive in nature. Here's Bill F. Vallicella "As magnificent a subject as philosophy is, grappling as it does with the ultimate concerns of human existence, and thus surpassing in nobility any other human pursuit, it is also miserable in that nothing goes uncontested, and nothing ever gets established to the satisfaction of all competent practitioners." | |
| Sep 16, 2016 at 11:39 | comment | added | Dennis | He's still taught because there could be still things that can be learnt from it. When you get down to studying "Underdetermination" you'll see why that's relevant. Try the stanford article. What argument have you made? You've simply asserted certain things that I've denied, to remedy that, you'd need to actually study philosophy. Your comment is something that requires a thorough examination of the field, that's my point. | |
| Sep 16, 2016 at 11:35 | comment | added | user22791 | I appreciate the suggestions, but it is not especially helpful to effectively paste an entire book into your comment. A simple refutation of my argument would be the name of a philosopher and the subject on which he was proven wrong. The example you've given seems to just prove my point. Heraclitus is still taught. His persistence is based entirely on the fact that he's famous (at least in philosophy), not on any objective measure of the quality of his philosophy. | |
| Sep 16, 2016 at 11:29 | review | Close votes | |||
| Sep 16, 2016 at 15:52 | |||||
| Sep 16, 2016 at 10:52 | comment | added | Dennis | There are things that I think are worth spending energy in, in the case I mentioned in the last sentence above, I don't think it is worth for certain topics. Basic failures in these topics constitute a lot of things, and certain basic failures are propounded upon, even though they are demonstrated (logically) to be wrong, endlessly. | |
| Sep 16, 2016 at 10:49 | comment | added | Dennis | For that I recommend James Franklin's book, The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability before Pascal. Metaphysics isn't like breakfast, it doesn't decay with time, however, it's also not a barrel of wine. Heraclitus's metaphysic is just as absurd now as thousands of years ago.The idea that there is some special wisdom (although there is much wisdom) in the classicist era is just classicist rhetoric warmed over renaissance. But then you have people who even fail to understand how "nothing" is the absence of anything/everything. So I refrained from actually posting. | |
| Sep 16, 2016 at 10:46 | comment | added | Dennis | Isaacson, I recommend the book, Scholastic Metaphysics by Edward Feser for a good history of Philosophy. To remedy this attitude, only a history of philosophy could do the trick. A recent advancement I can bring up is the notion of Phenomenalism and Truthmakers. Or the Post-analytic movement. "Naming & Necessity" by Saul Kripke. It's true that certain philosophies are still prolonged, but they are prolonged because most hypothesis are inductive arguments. They do not guarantee the conclusion, but only make it probable. | |
| Sep 16, 2016 at 10:42 | comment | added | user22791 | Basically, no-one in chemistry even mentions ancient Greek concepts of the four elements, nor does any study of medicine touch on "humours". It may be my ignorance but I have yet to hear of a similar case where a previously accepted philosophy has been abandoned and no longer taught because logical analysis has later shown it to the be wrong. | |
| Sep 16, 2016 at 10:35 | comment | added | Dennis | Contrary to what people think, Philosophy does decide between right and wrong answers. So I would contest that you're wrong on the notion (if you hold to it) that it doesn't. It does it via logic as its central tool, that's perhaps the key difference. There is an objective measure. We study Philosophers because we learn from them and move on. Metaphysics advanced in a trickle down fashion where if I came up with a problem, it'd only be started to worked upon 300 years from its advent. Why you, or anyone else thinks that Philosophy isn't in this business is beyond me. | |
| Sep 16, 2016 at 10:28 | comment | added | Mauro ALLEGRANZA | "ideas live outside of the books" How ? For sure, you can "study" your own ideas without books, but others' ideas (at least the "interesting" ones) lives in schools (i.e.teaching) and books. | |
| Sep 16, 2016 at 10:12 | comment | added | user22791 | Ideas are surely in everyone's heads and quite happily live outside of the books of philosophers. My point is not necessarily that all ideas are "natural facts" but that we should not confuse a purely academic, historical study of those which are not with a rational and useful study of those which are. | |
| Sep 16, 2016 at 10:05 | comment | added | Mauro ALLEGRANZA | "almost any philosophical question is answered with "According to...", and philosophy courses are generally divided into a study of what various philosophers have said." But DNA or chemistry are "natural facts" and we study them through scientific textbook (pease, note that no one "study DNA" naively, but only after a rigorous university training, with a lot of "books reading"). "Ideas" are not natural facts that live alone, outside of the books of philosophers. | |
| Sep 16, 2016 at 9:22 | history | asked | user22791 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |