Is there a progress in philosophy?
I just observed that the topic "Is there an external material world?" at the moment of writing this has reached 33 pages and is very close to 1000 responses!
I really wonder and cannot believe how could such a question without real value or use --for me, of course-- the answer to which is more than obvious, could arise such a huge interest and create such a huge discussion ...
But this is only one of many similar questions that a lot of "thinkers", in here and other philosophical fora and communities, have and often they also post as topics", which are equally "empty" or valueless. They usually ask whether something about which people use to talk a lot in philosophy exists or not, like "Is there a free will?", "Is there consciousness?", "Do we live in a simulated world?", and so on. The answer to all these questions --by a rational human being-- is, "Of course!" I certainly do not want offend those who ask such questions and call the irrational. They can be very rational. But they are most probably confused about or do not know well the specific subject they have doubt on or even they are just out of real and useful questions etc. And then, the certainty of the "Of course!" answer does not come from taking the existence of these things as granted, but they simply do not make any sense. I mean, "Do I exist?". Really?
There are things the existence of which one can doubt --and sometimes one should-- and things one cannot be certain about or even answer at all. But not things that have been answered eons ago and their existence is beyond reasonable doubt. And the existence of an external world is one them!
I have read a lot of texts (books, articles, etc.) of philosophical context from many philosophers --as most of you have-- and I have never met a single philosopher --old or modern-- wondering about and/or talking about such valueless things! What they do instead --and what should every philosopher do-- is instead, asking about and working on the essence and nature of things, like the external world, the physical universe, consciousness, free will etc. Because they know they exist; it would be useless if not stupid to doubt about them and waste time in worthless thinking.
***
So, I wonder, where has philosophy --in general, as we know and talk about it through the ages-- been led and where is it going? Is it growing, advancing, progressing, improving? Or has it gone stale? Do people who practice philosophy have new --but valuable and useful-- answers to old questions? Or have those questions been answered satisfactorily --even from different points of view-- and any effort to provide better answers is actually wasted? And if some questions remain always unanswered, a mystery --e.g. what is the nature of consciousness and how it works-- are there hopes that current knowledge --i.e. "thinkers" of our era-- would answer them?
Heraclitus has described better than everyone --in his own way-- the nature of time. Yet we still ask and try to explain that subject. What do we have to offer? Only details and technicalities, if anything. But mostly, we offer useless and unfounded argumentations esp. on that subject.
I believe that the most important, basic questions related to philosophy have been already asked and answers already given, since the antiquity and through the ages since then. Most have been answered satisfactorily --considering different points of view, etc.-- and a few not at all. What can be expected from us today after that long To disprove answers already given or find answers to unanswered questions? And on what grounds? Have we become wiser?
Science is advancing. This is very obvious. But is philosophy?
I really wonder and cannot believe how could such a question without real value or use --for me, of course-- the answer to which is more than obvious, could arise such a huge interest and create such a huge discussion ...
But this is only one of many similar questions that a lot of "thinkers", in here and other philosophical fora and communities, have and often they also post as topics", which are equally "empty" or valueless. They usually ask whether something about which people use to talk a lot in philosophy exists or not, like "Is there a free will?", "Is there consciousness?", "Do we live in a simulated world?", and so on. The answer to all these questions --by a rational human being-- is, "Of course!" I certainly do not want offend those who ask such questions and call the irrational. They can be very rational. But they are most probably confused about or do not know well the specific subject they have doubt on or even they are just out of real and useful questions etc. And then, the certainty of the "Of course!" answer does not come from taking the existence of these things as granted, but they simply do not make any sense. I mean, "Do I exist?". Really?
There are things the existence of which one can doubt --and sometimes one should-- and things one cannot be certain about or even answer at all. But not things that have been answered eons ago and their existence is beyond reasonable doubt. And the existence of an external world is one them!
I have read a lot of texts (books, articles, etc.) of philosophical context from many philosophers --as most of you have-- and I have never met a single philosopher --old or modern-- wondering about and/or talking about such valueless things! What they do instead --and what should every philosopher do-- is instead, asking about and working on the essence and nature of things, like the external world, the physical universe, consciousness, free will etc. Because they know they exist; it would be useless if not stupid to doubt about them and waste time in worthless thinking.
***
So, I wonder, where has philosophy --in general, as we know and talk about it through the ages-- been led and where is it going? Is it growing, advancing, progressing, improving? Or has it gone stale? Do people who practice philosophy have new --but valuable and useful-- answers to old questions? Or have those questions been answered satisfactorily --even from different points of view-- and any effort to provide better answers is actually wasted? And if some questions remain always unanswered, a mystery --e.g. what is the nature of consciousness and how it works-- are there hopes that current knowledge --i.e. "thinkers" of our era-- would answer them?
Heraclitus has described better than everyone --in his own way-- the nature of time. Yet we still ask and try to explain that subject. What do we have to offer? Only details and technicalities, if anything. But mostly, we offer useless and unfounded argumentations esp. on that subject.
I believe that the most important, basic questions related to philosophy have been already asked and answers already given, since the antiquity and through the ages since then. Most have been answered satisfactorily --considering different points of view, etc.-- and a few not at all. What can be expected from us today after that long To disprove answers already given or find answers to unanswered questions? And on what grounds? Have we become wiser?
Science is advancing. This is very obvious. But is philosophy?
Comments (180)
Please, dont take this personally: I have just used a method that is extremely frequently used in philosophy, that is, applying statements to themselves and seeing what happens. Frequently the result is a paradox, like I am lying, or it can be an instrument for progress like Descartes doubting about his doubts and taking the result as a positive resource.
That's a tough question. I think there are at least three forum members who post here who have doctoral degrees in philosophy (perhaps more), so one might assume the ball is in their court.
Philosophy is not science.
Advances in philosophy do not look like advances in science. But if you care to look at the discussion in the thread you mentioned, you will see that they are not the same as the discussions between, say, Aristotelians and Platonists, or between supporters of Hume and Kant, while making reference back to those discussion, and building from them. It would be a misunderstanding to think that because much the same questions are bing addressed, progress has not ben made.
Nor is what you see in this forum much more than a shadow of philosophy amongst those who practice it for a living.
Remember that the discipline we now call "Science" is what Aristotle called "Natural Philosophy" or "physis" (growth or nature). As as the name implies, the subject of natural science evolves & progresses in an obvious manner, that we know via our physical senses. But, his second volume, under the same title, was actually concerned with what we now call "Culture" : opinions, activities & effects of the human Mind. Which we know only via our sixth sense of Reason (inference). So, we can't expect Metaphysical Cultural Science to make progress in the same sense as Physical Natural Science. Physics is about what is constantly changing, while Philosophy (Metaphysics) is all about eternal unchanging principles (digging for potatoes vs digging for gold).
Today, the cultural sciences -- Psychology (philosophy of mind), Anthropology, Sociology, History, etc -- are usually classified separately from the physical sciences, for obvious reasons. They definitely make progress, but lacking mathematical tools for measurement, it's not easy to evaluate & enumerate. Besides, most of their advances are built upon the physical evidence of Physics. For example, perhaps the most advanced philosophy of Mind/Consciousness is Integrated Information Theory, which is based on our experience with the mechanical minds we call computers.
One way to measure the "advancement" of human Culture (e.g. civilization), is to see how much of the modern world has been cultivated by homo sapiens, and how much remains unaffected by the expansive imagination of human minds. Philosophical Cynics tend view the effects of Culture on Nature as mostly negative & digressive. But, more sanguine philosophers see cultural progress as evolving incrementally, with two steps forward & one step back. And optimistic technological philosophers, like Ray Kurtzweil, seem to think that cultural technology will eventually supersede natural evolution (Mind over Matter).
As a species, our perspective & understanding evolves, but the underlying Truth doesn't change. Anyway, to compare the "advance" of Metaphysical Philosophy to the progress of Physical Science, is like weighing apples & oranges, or adding 2 + X = ?. :nerd:
1. Nature, according to Aristotle, is an inner principle of change and being at rest
[U]Philosophical Progress[/U] :
the mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead reportedly summed up the Greek thinker's accomplishments with the remark, All of Western philosophy is but a footnote to Plato.
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/contributors/plato
Philosophical Science vs Natural Science :
The main difference is in the way they work and treat knowledge. 2. Science is concerned with natural phenomena, while philosophy attempts to understand the nature of man, existence, and the relationship that exists between the two concepts.
http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/career-education/difference-between-science-and-philosophy/
CYNICAL COMPARISON OF PHILOSOPHY & SCIENCE
Working out how Chalmers is wrong is always amusing.
Note the discussion on disagreement, based on the evidence of the PhilPapers survey. Amusingly, the topic on which there was most agreement is the very on that inspired this thread - "non-skeptical realism about the external world... attracts over 80% support". So to som extent is being misled by the eccentricity of posters hereabouts who defend views that are quite uncommon amongst philosophers.
A joke in the department in which I worked briefly was that skepticism was presented in Philosophy 101 to weed out the weaklings. Those who could not successfully defend reality could go off and do the easy topics like linguistics or English Lit.
I do rather like the argument implicit at the top of p.15 that progress in philosophy might be measured not in agreement but in disagreement. That strikes me as about right.
Progress in philosophy? An excerpt from an old post:
Quoting 180 Proof
And furthermore ... https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/532685
Tough is good. :smile: Glad that I posted it. And thanks for responding.
I hope that interesting things will pop up, esp. from the more knowledgeable in the subject people in here, as you mentioned.
OK. Thanks for responding to the topic.
Thank you for your long and productive response to the topic.
Yes, certainly I remember that science and philosophy were once one thing. I have talked about that in many discussions. Some believe that they are still one thing, calling science as "natural philosophy". But let's be pragmatic. Science started to be a separate subject a long time ago, even before the term "science" was formulated in the 19th century, acquiring such names as "epistemology" in early 16th century, etc. So, today they are two different fields of knowledge.
Quoting Gnomon
Just a note about Psychology (which I have studied and "watched" its progress) : I cannnot call psychology a philosophy. And, although it maybe started as a science, using experiments and so on, today it can be hardly called a science. BTW, philosophy of mind has nothing to do with psychology. I have studied Psycology. The "mind "for Psychology is the "brain". For those who have studied and know what mind is --I am among them-- "laugh" with this idea. But one does not even have to study it; one has only to look what the "philosophy of mind" is.
Quoting Gnomon
Great quote! Thanks for bring it :up:
Quoting Gnomon
Excellent description! :up:
Thanks for your contribution to the topic.
Thank you for your response to the topic.
Interesting quote and older post.
The 'big questions' (can we know there is an external world? etc) are based on misconceptions and false analogies. To ask how we know whether there is an external world sounds like the question 'How do we know the Earth's distance from the Sun?' But the questions are only superficially alike. Their deep grammar is different. The second question is clear and answerable. The first is mystified and mystifying. Philosophy's job is not to answer the 'big questions' and progress is not to be measured by any answers given. Philosophy's job is to provide the tools to innoculate us against the mystification caused by deep grammatical trickery.
Naturally people are still flocking to PF to wonder about the existence of the external world. They have not had their vaccination or their booster. To ask why we are still stuck on these big questions and to think that means lack of progress is like asking why we still need measles jabs after so many decades. "Why hasn't vaccination worked?" It has worked. But here comes a whole new generation of people needing the jab. To send students away because they are wrestling with generalised scepticism is like refusing to let sick people into your clinic. These are the people who need the treatment. The ones who shrug and say 'whatever' don't need philosophy. Further down the line, when they get embroiled in arguments about driverless cars and trans rights and the truthiness of politics or of science, they might find that they needed it after all.
Well written, Sir.
:clap: :100:
Curious what @Fooloso4 and @Manuel have to say. :chin:
Quoting Cuthbert
:fire:
The existence of an external world may be without doubt but its nature can and should be doubted by all philosophers. Just because common sense makes it obvious, patting itself on the back, that we know the external world to be of objects exactly as we say doesn't make it so.
In the Sophist Plato makes this simple case for a world of objects about which truth and falsity can be told. But he doesn't tell us that these external entities are in fact identical to their appearance. To tell the truth about what seems to me does not prove that what seems to me is objectively the same for everyone else, and further that what seems is exactly as it appears to be. Modern philosophy still insists on this stretched presumption. This is where progress ends.
Not too much, and the steps of progress are hindered by counter-arguments, but the hindering is done mainly by lay philosophers, not by professional ones.
Steps I know of:
1. rejection of deities' ruling the world and supernatural forces exerting influence on the natural world.
2. rejection of our perception of reality as a reliable thing to depend on to know what's out there. (Plato.)
3. "Cogito Ergo Sum" -- the only thing that is empirical knowledge yet it is proven to be necessarily true.
4. recognition of causation being a potentially mistaken effect, due to recurring coincidences. (Hume.)
5. recognition of empirical methods being useful. I can't tie it to one single philosopher.
6. Darwin's and the newer scientific neo-Darwinist evolution-theory. Evolution is a mechanism, in principle, and it's applied to living things, in practice.
7. recognition of illogical events in the real world, that defy the law of non-contradiction, and the law of the excluded middle. (Quantum theory.) This has given rise to the thought that the a priori truths we all accept as infallible are a product of our evolutionary minds. Our evolutionary minds never had to deal with things, because they never observed them, like going from place A to place B without traversing the distance between A and B.
I am not a professional philosopher. The professionals mainly deal (in my imagination, and I need to be corrected if necessary) with micro-issues in philosophy, such as "if the Earth was a breast, where would its nipple be?" (originally asked by my teacher and master, Paul. A. S.)
Thank you for your response to the topic.
Right. But you are almost repeating my words! :smile: I don't know if this is your way of agreeing or you didn't read my whole description of the topic or you just missed these points ...
Quoting magritte
Good point.
:fire:
Thank you for your response to the topic.
You are right as far as philosophical quests are concerned. Doubts should always exist, but they should serve as a path in establishing truths and knowledge. Isn't this the purpose of philosophy and the philosophers?
But my "Of course!" was not a philosophical reply. It is a response from an individual who is very certain about something and his certitude concerns his reality. If he were always and constantly in doubt about everything, he would be a mentally ill person.
There's also something else: if I live in a constant doubt, it means that I would also doubt that I doubt. Which leads to vicious circle. And then of course to an asylum.
I think this is what Descartes meant by saying "We cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt".
Yet, the same philosopher also maintained that doubting one's own existence served as a proof of the existence of one's own mind and therefore of himself. But whis was meant as a mental "experiment". It didn't mean that we must always doubt our existence!
A persons's reality may include doubts but it cannot be built on doubting evertyting. It is mainly build on knowledge and certitudes. That is, on "Of course!"'es. :smile:
Thank you for your response to the topic.
I agree. Only that I consider it as a result or product of getting involved in the field of philosophy, not philosophy itself..
Quoting Alkis Piskas
If science is advancing, then so is philosophy. There is no way to categorically distinguish between what science is and does, and what philosophy is and does. The history of science and philosophy is completely entangled and interdependent.
Since when?
I assume youre paraphrasing Wittgenstein. That was not always the way that philosophy understood its job. And Wittgensteins conception of philosophy did not originate with him. He was part of a movement in philosophy that goes back at least as far as Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer. Is philosophys job as Witt understands it compatible with sciences job as it understands it? That depends. Wittgensteinian philosophy is critical both of traditional views of science and of philosophy. But what of postmodern science( yes, there is such a thing)?
I suggest these newer approaches to science, coming both from philosophers of science and scientists themselves, internalize your description of the job of philosophy as Witt sees it.
Even if "philosophy of mathematics" is considred by some a branch of philosophy, I personally don't consider it a philosophy per se. Because we also talk about "philosophy of life", "philosophy of marriage", "philosopy of education", "philosophy of music" and so on. These actually refer to a general attitude towards or philosophical view of life, marriage, education, music etc.
Thank you for your response to the topic.
These too. The may be based in a lot of things --even nonsese-- but not a real interest or quest for truth and knowledge. Nor a way to exercise critical thinking and other processes involved in philosophy.
Quoting Cuthbert
I would also say "semantical". A large part of the mystification is inability to grasp concepts nor even lacking them. There are a lot of people, even in here, whod don't care about defining the terms they use and if one insists they do, they come up with none. I you cannot define a term, don't use it, man!
Quoting Cuthbert
I know what you mean. But this was just an example and a sparking for my launching of this topic. I gave a few more exapmles and one can meet dozens of them in philosophical forums and communities. They just make you wonder, "Aren't there more substantial, meaningful, productive questions to ask?" and that kind of things. This, as well as the so meny repetitive questions (variations), or questions that keep coming back each now and then, maybe dressed in a different cloak, as well as non-philosophical questions treated as philosophical ones, and so on, makes you wondering whether there's actually a progress in philosophy. And I am sure that in some more official philosophical forum --e.g. consisting of professional/certificated philosophers-- and various places holding philosophical lectures and official papers in philosophical magazies, end son on, such kind of questions won't exist at all. And that is also another thing I wanted to know by launching this topic, that is I trieds to atract more knowledgeable in the field. Maybe not in the best way, though! :smile:
Thank you for your response to the topic.
I think you are talking about the past, and in fact quite far back. I will quote myself from an earlier post: "Science started to be a separate subject a long time ago, even before the term "science" was formulated in the 19th century, acquiring such names as "epistemology" in early 16th century, etc. So, today they are two different fields of knowledge."
I dont think so. Establishing that the purpose of philosophy is establishing truths and knowledge means that these reference points will be treated as beyond dispute. But the history of philosophy gives evidence that the very existence of truth has been questioned since the beginning: think, for example, about the sophists, who tried to show how tricky our language and our thinking is; think about Heraclitus: if everything is becoming, then an established truth cannot exist, it will be becoming as well; think of Nietsche, who said that we dont know where to go, there is no up, no down, no orientation. You might object that all these positions can be considered as efforts to establish truth: the truth that truth is becoming, or even the truth that truth does not exist. But this objection works like a closed system: closed systems works always, independently from their content. For example, it is impossible to question that everything is number, because such a system will be always able to answer that any objection can be traced back to a structure of numbers. This way, even saying that the essence of reality is, lets say, tomatoes, or horses, is able to be an invulnerable system. For this reason, any invulnerable system is meaningless, because it is able to maintain anything and the opposite of anything. This means that the idea of truth itself is meaningless.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
I dont think so. I have adopted the perspective of doubting about everything for dozens of years now and I dont think I am mentally ill: currently I work at a hospital and I dont think they would allow a mentally ill person to work in my position.Quoting Alkis Piskas
Doubting of doubting is not a vicious, but a virtuous circle: it is a circle that reinforces itself, similar to certain phisical phenomenons, like the audio feedback effect in microphones. Doubting of doubting just confirms that I cannot trust anything, I cannot even trust my doubting. Not trusting my doubting means just that I cannot rest firmly and comfortably in a simple methodology of doubting: I need to always question my questioning as well. Where is the problem in this?
Quoting Alkis Piskas
I agree that we need some kind of asylum, but not because of any philosophical principle. We need some kind of asylum because we are humans, we are not machines, we get tired, our emotions need to find some kind of rest on something. But, since this is not a philosophical, but a human need, the solution is not any philosophical thought, but some practical instruments, like periodically going to bed, having experiences of love and friendship, having a home, or a tent, having periods of rest.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
I think here again you confuse philosophical with human needs. If I go shopping, I cannot answer the teller You dont know if the things in my bag exists, you dont know if my money exists. I just need to pay. But this is a human and practical need, not a philosophical one. Practically I need just to pay and not to create problems to the teller, but all the doubts I expressed are true (I know I used the word true now, but this is needed by language, not by philosophy).
There is a solution that is better than certitudes and knowledge, that actually are very misleading concepts. The solution is trust. Although everything is exposed to doubt, my being human forces me to trust a lot of things and people. So, I pay my money to the teller not because I have any certainty that my money or the teller exist, but because my human condition forces me to trust some practical assumptions and treat them as if they were something true. I dont know if fire would burn my hand, but my human condition forces me to treat it as if it was something true.
This is (pace those people here who want me to be severe, exact and giving strict evidence of my statements :grin: ) Heidegger: being does not exist; being is our human condition of being immersed in time, in our needs, in our mental limits.
I saw your quote , and I am not talking about the past. There have been , and always will be empirical accounts that are or less philosophical, more or less theoretical , more or less applied. Science doesnt differ from philosophy in terms of method , such as objectivity or testability, given that there are no universally shared methods among scientists. It is a matter of the conventionality of the language, how deeply the presuppositions underlying ones account are explicitly articulated in the account.
Every major historical advance in the sciences is paralleled (and usually preceded) by a corresponding advance in philosophy. If science and philosophy were on independent tracks this could not be the case.
A patent lack of discipline to stay with the topic or even bother about the topic. Everyone instead just blathers on about anything that comes to their mind.
This is philosophy at its best.
Quoting hypericin
Only certain approaches to philosophy are concerned with , or believe in , the value or coherence of logical certainty. On the whole the history of philosophy runs in parallel with the history of science , so if one progresses, the other must also. They are joined at the hip.
What was the answer?
It was not THE answer; it was AN answer.
Quoting god must be atheist
It might be a lot simpler just to list the paradigm shifts in empirical science over the past 400 years. If you examine the changing presuppositions underlying these shifts in scientific understanding closely enough you will realize that you are looking at none other than the history of progress in philosophy.
Assume for a moment that science is a huge ocean liner moving slowly through a deep sea. Where do you see philosophy in this picture?
Thats a hard picture for me to swallow. I prefer to think of the history of science as a succession of different crafts , each more complex and sophisticated than the previous. The succession of crafts does not simply represent changes in the theoretical content of science, but also changes in the self-conception of scientific practice and method( e.g. hypothetico-inductive vs deductive).
Now let us imagine this historical succession of crafts not as a single line but as a series of parallel lines. Each craft can see similar boats on the port and starboard sides.
What makes the parallel boats similar is that they express variations on a common philosophical theme that marks the unity of an era of science and philosophy. What makes them different is that the language they use to express these ideas can be more or less conventional, operational, instrumental. At one extreme is a boat expressing the grand philosophical narratives of the era. At the other extreme is a boat expressing the applied technologies of the era. Each is a variation on a common theme.
Analogously, I see philosophy as the Ship of Theseus (i.e. continuously repairing itself in dry dock by replacing worn-out parts) and science as Neurath's Boat (i.e. continuously rebuilding itself while at sea by replacing more suboptimal parts with less suboptimal parts).
Quoting Joshs
e.g.
Copernican heliocentricity?
Newton's gravity?
Darwinian evolution?
Germ theory of disease?
Boltzman's thermodynamics?
Einsteinian Relativity theories?
Hubble's Red Shift (expanding universe)?
Heisenberg's quantum uncertainty?
Universal Turing Machine?
Shannon's Information Entropy?
Frick and Watson's double helix?
The "corresponding advances in philosophy"? :chin:
There have been theses written about the philosophical underpinnings of all of these scientific advances, such as the association between Newton and Descartes, Einstein and Kant, Darwin , Hegel and Schelling, Nietzsche and Freud, Watson and Peirce, Turing and Leibnitz.
why did I not think of that. Anyhow, 180 proof did precisely that, so we owe him a thanks.
Fish. I didn't put frozen fish on the shopping order.
I posted some nonsense in that thread. I think the advantage of those threads, is that it gives us living philosophers occassion to test our understanding of the history of philosophy and retread classical debates. But nothing new comes from it, it is more of an exercise to sharpen one's philosophical acumen.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
There have been very few significant philosophical advances in the past 100 years. At this point in history, philosophy is definitely not advancing.
So that must mean there must have been very few significant scientific advances in the past 100 years. Either that or your knowledge of philosophical advances over the past century(Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, Kuhn, Rorty, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Wittgenstein) is poor.
Name five contributions from any of those philosophers that have significantly advanced philosophy. Then we can argue about what constitutes a significant philosophical advancement.
Quoting Joshs
I disagree. I would be interested to see how you came up with that meaning from what i wrote.
Aporia, when was that? Just follow this thread until it dies a natural death and report back.
:smirk: :up:
Sophists had other purposes than establishing truths! I think you know what ...
Quoting Angelo Cannata
Heractlitus was not taking about abtract ideas like "truth". He was talking mainly about the physical universe. His famous statement, "No man ever steps in the same river twice" refers to time and change in the physical universe. You can also think of this: if his statement was referring also to abtract ideas, like "truth", then the "ever changing" feature would apply to his statement itself, and he would be thus contradicting himself, because he certainly considered his statement as a truth!
There's another thing. maybe more important than the above: You seem quite certain about the things you say, and I'm sure you are considering them true, yet you maintain that you must always doubt about truths. Isn't this a loud contradiction?
No, you cannot always and constantly doubt. This is insane. Fortutately, you are only talking about it but you don't do it! :smile:
There's no objectivity in philosopy. It's all subjective: opinions, viewpoints, arguments etc. Your above statement is based on your reality, your knowledge, your reasoning and your experience.
As for "testability" in philosophy, I can only see logical and reasoning testing to prove that something is either true or false. But this has nothing to do with scientific testing. Maybe you are talking about "psychology". You can find there a lot of testimg and experimentation.
I would be glad to hear about any other substantial testing carried out in philosophy ...
Quoting Joshs
Examples, please.
OK.
BTW, what other thread are you referring to besides "Is there an external material world?" ?
The contradiction is not in me, it is in the idea of truth. My reasoning starts from adopting the idea that truth exists and then I show that this adoption leads us to doubt, skepticism and agnosticism about truth. In other words, the reasoning that I show is: if truth exists, then the consequence of this is that it doesn't exist.
OK
The principle of non-contradiction is "subjective"?
Logical fallacies are "subjective"?
The problem of the criterion is "subjective"?
The problem of induction is "subjective"?
Valid / sound inferences are "subjective"?
Speech acts are "subjective"?
Aporia are "subjective"?
Human facticity (i.e. natality-agency-fatality) is "subjective"?
Uncertainty is "subjective"?
Alienation is "subjective"?
... etcetera :chin:
:up:
No philosophical debate has been resolved to the satisfaction of all parties - there's theism and there's atheism, both thrive and this, quite obviously, can't be because both are objectively true (~?). That however doesn't mean we can't objectively decide which of two opposing ideas is true - it can be done, but not now and I don't havta spell it out why. Ad interim our worldview is gonna havta be subjectively determined, oui monsieur?
Of course they are subjective: are you able to think of them without automatically conditioning them with your brain? In other words: are you able to think of them without using your brain, that is, to think of them without thinking?
All these are either methods/tools or principles. I have never said that there aren't. In fact, I have referred to them in general when I said "I can only see logical and reasoning testing to prove that something is either true or false." And then I said "But this has nothing to do with scientific testing". My response was to @Joshs statement that "Science doesn't differ from philosophy in terms of method, such as objectivity or testability."
Therefore, I was talking about viewpoints, opinions, reasoning, argumentation and other subjective functions and processes that are involved in practising philosophy. If all these were objective, then philosophers would (have to) agree among them in almost everything, as is the case, in general, with scientists. There would not be all these endless differences among schools of Philosophy, philosophers or people carrying out philosophical discussions. Maybe we wouldn't even be in this place communicating to each other, because there wouldn't be actually a reason for.
As for the principles, I have rarily seen them beeing used in common philosophical discussions, as in here. I cannot say if and how often are used in academic circles. Maybe, because most of them are quite obsolote and also ar based on assumptions that are totally unrealistic for our times. (E.g. Aristotles "Mean" principle, which is about dualities such as Good vs Evil, God vs Satan, and other unsubstantial --at least today-- elements.)
You missed my whole point. And you wasted your time listing a dozen of methods and principles ...
You would first have to have read and understood these writers, or those contributing today to the leading edge of empirical research who find the work of these philosophers indispensable to their investigations. My simply naming contributions, which I could easily do, would make no sense otherwise.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
You assume science advances but philosophy hasnt in the past 100 years. I am arguing that all scientific paradigms are examples of philosophical discourse , worldviews rendered into a more conventional language.
So the advance of science presupposes the advance of philosophy. Furthermore, in any historical period one can find cross-over writers who move back and forth between a scientific and philosophical form of exposition, showing the rest of us the relevance of philosophical work to science. Today there are numerous such writers working on important advances in psychological theory pertaining to everything from neuroscientific modeling ( Varela, Thompson) to schizophrenia, ptsd, autism, depression , grief, models of emotions , skilled action, perceptual recognition, psycholinguistics, consciousness studies and empathy (Shaun Gallagher, Matthew Ratcliffe , Andy Clark, Michel Bitbol, Dan Zahavi, Jan Slaby, Alva Noe, Thomas Fuchs, Hanne De Jaegher). We can add to this list philosophers of science like Joseph Rouse.
These writers have written often of the crucial importance to their work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, the American Pragmatists, Heidegger, Kuhn, Wittgenstein and others I mentioned.
I havent even mentioned current physicists who recognize the vital relevance of philosophy for the sciences:
Ill end with this quote from Lee Smolen:
Philosophers of the past sometimes understood the problems we face more deeply than many of my colleagues today. For example, Leibniz was, to my understanding, the first to struggle with the main question that we face in trying to make a quantum theory of gravity-how to make a background independent description of a closed universe that contains both all its causes and all its observers. And Peirce was the first to articulate and try to solve the puzzle at the heart of the current debates in cosmology and string theory: what chose the laws that govern our universe? And what chose the initial conditions?
in many cases philosophers are working on the same questions I work on-and developing ideas related to the ideas I hope to establish-but from a bracingly different perspective.
fundamental physics has been in a crisis, due to the evident need for new revolutionary ideas-which becomes more evident with each failure of experiment to confirm fashionable theories, and the inability of those trained in a pragmatic, anti- philosophical style of research to free themselves from fashion and invent those new ideas. To aspire to be a revolutionary in physics, I would claim, it is helpful to make contact with the tradition of past revolutionaries. But the lessons of that tradition are maintained not in the communities of fashionable science, with their narrow education and outlook, but in the philosophical community and tradition.
Excuses eh? Can't even name one? Doesn't make for a very strong argument for your position.
Quoting Joshs
That is a stretch. Science and philosophy are completely separate. That is why universities usually have separate buildings for each. In your reasoning, there is no reason we cant say the same of advances in art and music or althetics - as rendering philosophy into more conventional language.
Quoting Joshs
No, it does not presuppose the advance of philosophy, because while science continues to advance, philosophy is going nowhere. A philosopher-scientist can go to the science building and make the most innovative and novel discoveries, but when he returns to the philosophy building, they will be covering the same old material as always. Any correlation one can percieve between scientific and philosophical progress is pure contrivance.
Wtf I can't think without using my brain, or without thinking, can you? Gibberish.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
So, we should not discuss mathematics or physics, because there are no fundamental disagreements? That philosophy also has the gristle of opinions since Plato et al we've sought to keep trimming the fat of sophistry as much as possible in no way reduces philosophy to nothing but opinions, prejudices, worldviews, dogmas, etc. It's "methods, tools" are not subjective, as you concede, which is my point; the difference is that science produces objective claims about nature whereas philosophy proposes objective "methods, tools" of which sciences can be paradigmatically composed and by which their observational and/or experimental results can be interpreted.
Ok, heres some contrivance for you:
The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, Francisco J. Varela Evan Thompson Eleanor Rosch
Conversations in Postmodern Hermeneutics, Shaun Gallagher, Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences
Critical Neuroscience, A Handbook of the Social and Cultural Contexts of Neuroscience,Edited by S. Choudhury and Jan Slaby
Heidegger and social cognition , Shaun Gallagher
Phenomenological Contributions to a Theory of Social Cognition, SHAUN GALLAGHER,Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences University of Central Florida
Redrawing the Map and Resetting the Time: Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Shaun Gallagher
Neurophilosophy and neurophenomenology, Shaun GALLAGHER
Heidegger's attunement and the neuropsychology of emotion, MATTHEW RATCLIFFE
Phenomenology, Naturalism and the Sense of Reality, MATTHEW RATCLIFFE
What Are Cultural Studies of Scientific Knowledge? Joseph Rouse Wesleyan University
FROM REALISM OR ANTI-REALISM TO SCIENCE AS SOLIDARITY Joseph Rouse, Wesleyan University
Postmodernism and our understanding of science, Joseph Rouse
Heidegger on Science and Naturalism, Joseph Rouse
Merleau-Ponty and the Existential Conception of Science, Joseph Rouse
Mind in Life: BIOLOGY, PHENOMENOLOGY, AND THE SCIENCES OF MIND , Evan Thompson
Consciousness in the Neurosciences: A conversation of Sergio Benvenuto with Francisco Varela
The Tangled Dialectic of Body and Consciousness: A Metaphysical Counterpart of Radical Neurophenomenology:Michel Bitbol
And this from Evan Thompsons book, Mind in Life:
One common thread running through the following chapters is a re-liance on the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, inaugurated by Edmund Husserl and developed in various directions by numerous others, most notably for my purposes by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Moran 2000; Sokolowski 2000; Spiegelberg 1994). 1 ( ) My aim, however, is not to repeat this tradition's analyses, as they are found in this or that author or text, but to present them anew in light of present-day con-cerns in the sciences of mind. Thus this book can be seen as con-tributing to the work of a new generation of phenomenologists who strive to "naturalize" phenomenology (Petitot et al. 1999). The project of naturalizing phenomenology can be understood in different ways, and my own way of thinking about it will emerge later in this book. The basic idea for the moment is that it is not enough for phenomenology simply to describe and philosophically analyze lived experience; phe-nomenology needs to be able to understand and interpret its investiga-tions in relation to those of biology and mind science.
Yet mind science has much to learn from the analyses of lived expe-rience accomplished by phenomenologists. Indeed, once science turns its attention to subjectivity and consciousness, to experience as it is lived, then it cannot do without phenomenology, which thus needs to be recognized and cultivated as an indispensable partner to the ex-perimental sciences of mind and life. As we will see, this scientific turn to phenomenology leads as much to a renewed understanding of na-ture, life, and mind as to a naturalization of phenomenology (Zahavi 2004b).
dialectical-materialism is a recent one
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Science and philosophy are completely separate because they have different buildings? Their textbooks are different colors, too. As for the arts and music , ever wonder why historical movements like Classical era, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Modernist and postmodernist includes the sciences, philosophy ,the arts, music and literature? Because all these cultural
modes of creativity are interdependent;reciprocally sharing, translating and reproducing what the others are producing via their one vocabulary.
And this from Evan Thompsons book, Mind in Life:
One common thread running through the following chapters is a re-liance on the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, inaugurated by Edmund Husserl and developed in various directions by numerous others, most notably for my purposes by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Moran 2000; Sokolowski 2000; Spiegelberg 1994). 1 ( ) My aim, however, is not to repeat this tradition's analyses, as they are found in this or that author or text, but to present them anew in light of present-day con-cerns in the sciences of mind. Thus this book can be seen as con-tributing to the work of a new generation of phenomenologists who strive to "naturalize" phenomenology (Petitot et al. 1999). The project of naturalizing phenomenology can be understood in different ways, and my own way of thinking about it will emerge later in this book. The basic idea for the moment is that it is not enough for phenomenology simply to describe and philosophically analyze lived experience; phe-nomenology needs to be able to understand and interpret its investiga-tions in relation to those of biology and mind science.
Yet mind science has much to learn from the analyses of lived expe-rience accomplished by phenomenologists. Indeed, once science turns its attention to subjectivity and consciousness, to experience as it is lived, then it cannot do without phenomenology, which thus needs to be recognized and cultivated as an indispensable partner to the ex-perimental sciences of mind and life. As we will see, this scientific turn to phenomenology leads as much to a renewed understanding of na-ture, life, and mind as to a naturalization of phenomenology (Zahavi 2004b).
Yes, they are put in separate books for a reason, because they are separate disciplines. Just because a cutting edge scientists is philosophically minded, it does not make him a cutting edge philosopher
Quoting Joshs
But they do not all advance at the same rate. I would go so far as to argue that philosophy and art have declined over the past century, all while scientific advances have increased extensively. I see this reflected in the decadence of our generation, with this schizoid culture whose technology is far outrunning its wisdom.
What is this one vocabulary you speak of?
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
I believe that the root of our disagreement is that you and I are not reading the same philosophers or scientists. Tell me what you think constitutes the last significant innovation in philosophy, and the most important recent advances in the sciences (not technology, but basic theoretical models like Relativity or Darwinian evolution).
It's not surprising these are in the general area of cognitive sciences, a more or less scientific discipline that combines aspects of philosophy with subjects like artificial intelligence and linguistics. Although neuroscience is in this grouping, the models relating to it are not biologically compatible.
I'd rather see Max Tegmark's speculations mentioned. When you throw philosophy in with traditional science the primary question is one of competence: Does philosophy of science require a considerable depth of knowledge in that scientific discipline?
How has art declined in the past century? Can you give some examples?
I disagree. Phenomenologically informed enactivist models of neural functioning complement what Michael James Bennett calls a veritable sea change in the study of life. Over the past several decades evolutionary biology was shaken with a series of shockwaves that would culminate in what theorists today are starting to call an Extended' and even Postmodern' Evolutionary Synthesis in order to mark it off from the Modern Synthesis still dominant in the 1980s (Laland et al. 2015; Brucker and Bordenstein 2014). The hologenome theory of evolution which posits that the organism and its micro-biome form a single, multifaceted unit of selection signals perhaps better than any other theoretical development the advent of a new evolutionary synthesis. This is a synthesis founded in the increasingly important role afforded to symbiosis in explanations of the evolution of cells and species, from the endosymbiotic relationships responsible for the genesis of mitochondria from out of ancient bacterial alli-ances to the phylosymbiotic relationships between host species and their associated microbial communities constitutive of speciation as such (Brooks et al. 2017). One important consequence of these developments is a newfound appreciation for horizontal gene transfer and aparallel evolution in microorganisms, as well as cytoplasmic, environmental, behavioural and symbolic forms of transmission in almost everything else (Rosenberg and Zilber-Rosenberg 2016). These new directions' work to disrupt and disperse two distinctions long taken to be self-evident and indispensable to evolutionary theory: between the organism and its genes, and between the organism and its environment. The critique and complication of each finds its positive complement in a new set of developments as well. Criticisms of genetic reductionism and the pan-adaptationist programme correspond to the elaboration of decentralised accounts of causality and transmission in Developmental Systems Theory and Evo/Devo' (Oyama 2000); and criticisms of autonomous biological individuals, distinct genetic lineages and strictly vertical models of inheritance have developed alongside a newfound appreciation for the ubiquity of symbiosis, microbial alliances and horizontal gene transfer both as features of constituted organisms and as a source for variation and evolutionary discontinuities in the history of life as well (Gilbert et al. 2012).
I should mention that one of the key figures in enactivist approaches to cogntivie science was Francisco Varela, who introduced the model of neurophenomenology:
Varela was trained as a biologist, mathematician and philosopher through the influence of different teachers, Humberto Maturana and Torsten Wiesel.
He wrote and edited a number of books and numerous journal articles in biology, neurology, cognitive science, mathematics, and philosophy. He founded, with others, the Integral Institute, a thinktank dedicated to the cross-fertilization of ideas and disciplines.
Varela supported embodied philosophy, viewing human cognition and consciousness in terms of the enactive structures in which they arise. These comprise the body (as a biological system and as personally experienced) and the physical world which it enacts.[5]
Varela's work popularized within the field of neuroscience the concept of neurophenomenology. This concept combined the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, with "first-person science." Neurophenomenology requires observers to examine their own conscious experience using scientifically verifiable methods.
In the 1996 popular book The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems, physicist Fritjof Capra makes extensive reference to Varela and Maturana's theory of autopoiesis as part of a new, systems-based scientific approach for describing the interrelationships and interdependence of psychological, biological, physical, social, and cultural phenomena.[6] Written for a general audience, The Web of Life helped popularize the work of Varela and Maturana, as well as that of Ilya Prigogine and Gregory Bateson.[7]
Varela's 1991 book The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, co-authored with Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch, is considered a classic in the field of cognitive science, offering pioneering phenomenological connections and introducing the Buddhism-informed enactivist and embodied cognition approach.[8] A revised edition of The Embodied Mind was published in 2017, featuring substantive introductions by the surviving authors, as well as a preface by Jon Kabat-Zinn.
I suppose it depends on who is doing the philosophizing. I am very impressed with the work of Joseph Rouse. I can assure you his grasp of the physical and biological
sciences is quite substantial. I also like the work of Arthur Fine:
Distinguished philosopher of science esteemed for work on the foundations of physics (particularly quantum mechanics) and for his studies of Einstein.
Having studied physics, philosophy, and mathematics, Fine graduated from the University of Chicago in 1958 with a Bachelor of Science in mathematics. He then, in 1960, earned a Master of Science in mathematics from the Illinois Institute of Technology with a thesis supervised by Karl Menger,[1]
Fine earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1963 under the direction of Henry Mehlberg.[2] Before moving to the University of Washington, Fine taught for many years at Northwestern University and, before that, at Cornell University and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a past president of the American Philosophical Association and the Philosophy of Science Association and has for many years been on the editorial board of the journal Philosophy of Science, one of the leading publications in the field.In 2014, Fine was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
I also recommend Michel Bitbol:
His research interests are mainly focused on the influence of quantum physics on philosophy. He first worked on Erwin Schrödinger's metaphysics and philosophy of physics.[3]
Using theorems demonstrated by Jean-Louis Destouches, Paulette Destouches-Février, and R.I.G. Hughes, he pointed out that the structure of quantum mechanics may be derived to a large extent from the assumption that microscopic phenomena cannot be dissociated from their experimental context.[4] His views on quantum mechanics converge with ideas developed by Julian Schwinger[5] and Asher Peres,[6] according to whom quantum mechanics is a "symbolism of atomic measurements", rather than a description of atomic objects. He also defends ideas close to Anton Zeilinger's, by claiming that quantum laws do not express the nature of physical objects, but only the bounds of experimental information.
Along with this view, quantum mechanics is no longer considered as a physical theory in the ordinary sense, but rather as a background framework for physical theories, since it goes back to the most elementary conditions which allow us to formulate any physical theory whatsoever. Some reviewers suggested half-seriously to call this view of physics "Kantum physics". Indeed, Michel Bitbol often refers to the philosophy of I. Kant, according to whom one can understand the contents of knowledge only by analyzing the (sensorial, instrumental, and rational) conditions of possibility of such knowledge.[7]
He was granted an award by the French "Académie des sciences morales et politiques" in 1997, for his work in the philosophy of quantum mechanics.
Later on, he concentrated on the philosophy of mind and consciousness,[8] defending a strongly anti-reductionist[9] and neo-Wittgensteinian view.[10] He collaborated with Francisco Varela on this subject.
I think that the perception of philosophical "advance" (whatever that might mean) is being colored by this belief. If advancement is understood to mean "be like the sciences" and philosophy is understood to mean "whatever it is, it's not science" then we shouldn't be surprised that we don't feel like philosophical advancement hasn't happened. That's just how we set up how to use our words.
Paraphrase:
"My empirical knowledge is increasing, but is my understanding and wisdom increasing?"
I doubt many users on TPF are reading the same material as you and I.
Lets not jump ahead. You have been avoiding the issue I raised earlier.
If your position is remotely correct, you should easily be able to name at least one significant contribution made by eight world class philosophers.
I thought I did.
this from Evan Thompsons book, Mind in Life:
One common thread running through the following chapters is a re-liance on the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, inaugurated by Edmund Husserl and developed in various directions by numerous others, most notably for my purposes by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Moran 2000; Sokolowski 2000; Spiegelberg 1994). 1 ( ) My aim, however, is not to repeat this tradition's analyses, as they are found in this or that author or text, but to present them anew in light of present-day con-cerns in the sciences of mind. Thus this book can be seen as con-tributing to the work of a new generation of phenomenologists who strive to "naturalize" phenomenology (Petitot et al. 1999). The project of naturalizing phenomenology can be understood in different ways, and my own way of thinking about it will emerge later in this book. The basic idea for the moment is that it is not enough for phenomenology simply to describe and philosophically analyze lived experience; phe-nomenology needs to be able to understand and interpret its investiga-tions in relation to those of biology and mind science.
Yet mind science has much to learn from the analyses of lived expe-rience accomplished by phenomenologists. Indeed, once science turns its attention to subjectivity and consciousness, to experience as it is lived, then it cannot do without phenomenology, which thus needs to be recognized and cultivated as an indispensable partner to the ex-perimental sciences of mind and life. As we will see, this scientific turn to phenomenology leads as much to a renewed understanding of na-ture, life, and mind as to a naturalization of phenomenology (Zahavi 2004b).
I like that. :up:
My own peculiar paraphrase:
"Theoretical models are increasing in explanatory power, but are reasonable criteria of judgment and/or conceptual problematics increasing in parsimony?"
I'm a little skeptical of a "science of mind".
(Wiki)
However, this thread has made me aware of a new kind of mathematics supporting cognitive science,
Denotational Mathematics, created by a gentleman named Wang. It seems so peripheral that it doesn't even have a Wikipedia page (24,000 math topics do). It could be classified as a form of abstract alegbra, which has become a kind of jumbled mess IMO.
Quoting Joshs
I was there at that time. I missed knowing Fine, but I did go climbing with Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, who later wrote extensively about a subject I discussed occasionally with him: "flow" in human activities. In particular, in gymnastics and climbing.
It's a perfectly valid philosophical concern, the fact that it strikes the man in the street as obvious or pointless notwithstanding. Besides, if talking about it is pointless, then talking about talking about it is even more so.
If talking about it is a waste of time, then talking about talking about it won't be a waste of time if it cures you of the habit of talking about it. :wink:
Did you ever cross paths with Eugene Gendlin, who arrived at U. of C. in 1963?
Like any language, some are more proficient at it than others.
Quoting Joshs
Nietzsche's dionysian is the last great philosophical contribution.
More recently, the human genome project was pretty significant.
Methodology plays a major factor. The scientific method is much stricter than any methodology philosophy has to offer, and for that reason its progress is more apparent. Moreover, philosophy challenges its own methods and becomes mired in its own complexities, often leading to mind twisting paradoxes, whereas science takes its method and moves forward, achieving concrete results.
Even if science can integrate phenolenalism into naturalism and give birth to a new scientific paradigm that yeilds revolutionary new discoveries in the natural world, the deep philosophical problems of phenomenology will continue to remain unresolved. Hence, progress in philosophy is not correlated with advances in science.
In case that quote by Thompsons wasn't enough, I will organize contributions by contemporary philosophers in the form of a developmental hierarchy, beginning with the least advanced and ending with the most advanced thinkers. You focused on the past 100 years. Only one of the names on this list, Nietzsche, is disqualified.
Quine
Sellars
Putnam
Sartre
Wittgenstein
Kuhn
Rorty
Gergen
Nietzsche
Foucault
Deleuze
Husserl
Heidegger
Merleau-Ponty
Derrida
Lets begin with Quine, Sellars and Putnam. They dissolved the fact-value distinction by showing how all statements of fact about any aspect of the empirical
world presuppose a valuative account within which they are intelligible. This has important implications for the understanding of the relation between our concepts and the world. Based on this. Putnam argues that all concepts are relative, and there is no fact of the matter that has intrinsic existence independent of all accounts.
Kuhn , Rorty and Gergen take us into the postmodern realm, not only arguing for conceptual relativism , but ethical and valuative relativism. Phenomenologists like Sartre showed psychologists how to integrate cognition and emotion, which under positivism, behaviorism
and cognitivism had been treated separately , with emotions treated as secondary phenomena in relation to cognition. Phenomenology also contributed to self-organizing approaches within the biological sciences, and to embodied cognitive models of perception.
There is much more to be said here , but this is a starting point.
In sum, ideas from the last 100 of philosophical work have made possible entirely new approaches within psychology and to some extent biology.
This is an old view of what science and philosophy do, harking back to Kant. Poppers falsificationist philosophy of science is a representation of this modernist idea of scientific progress. With Putnam , Kuhn and Rorty we see a shift in thinking away from Kant toward a conceptual relativism that forms the basis of newer work in psychology. You are reading Nietzsche
as a modernist, but these days he tends to be read as a postmodernist.
I can agree that those are significant contributions of philosophical thought to science. But they did little to move philosophy forward like the Dionysian. To a much lesser degree, I would give Wittgenstein some credit for making a significant contribution with the tractatatus. But it was nowhere near as big as Nietzsche's. It's too bad Wittgenstein abandoned that line of thought, he was onto something big.
Popart and dadaism are two that come to mind.
The idea behind subjectivity-objectivity is bias and how to obviate/avoid it lest we distort the truth/fact and fool ourselves and others in the process.
Philosophy makes a big deal of objectivity and for the right reasons - we want the truth, we want to get to the facts, we want to know reality, not someone's opinion or fantasy.
Afraid I was gone by then. But reading about him I can see a connection with what Mihály made his life's work. Was there a common school of thought there about that time? Incidentally, about that time the physics department started teaching all the math courses for its majors. Must have been a bit of ill will between physics and math departments.
OK.
(Subjects like these are too heavy for me; can't digest them. :smile:)
and a splendid book it is, I've learned a ton from it.
Quoting Merkwurdichliebe
Agree. Andy Warhol makes me :vomit:
Thank you for responding to the topic.
"Advancing" means making progress, which is the subject of this topic. And the subject of progress in philosophy is discussed quite a lot. One of the many interesting articles is "Why Progress Is Slower In Philosophy Than In Science" ((https://dailynous.com/2017/06/02/progress-slower-philosophy-science/), published in a site about professional philosophy.
Ergo, we need to rethink what philosophical progress is. The low hanging fruit is ideas (sensu amplo). The number of philosophical ideas have ballooned from a handful to so many that the set of a philosophical polymaths is the null set.
Thank you for your response to the topic.
Why "empirical" knowledge only? Besides from experience --which I consider most important-- knowledge can be also acquired from learning (theory, facts) and reasoning (critical/logical thinking). All of them build ones's reality about a certain subject and in general.
One's undestanding and reality grow proportionally. The better one learns a foreign language (by reading or hearing it) the more and better one is able to undestand it.
Wisdom also grows proportionally. One has a better judgement about a subject the more experienced and knowledgeable one is on that subject.
I put all that under one umbrella: mind.
And I use to say, for myself, that if I ever stop evolving menttally, and esp. intellectually, I will be "dead",
Thank you for your response to the topic.
I assume that either yourself are not sure whether the external world actually exists or not, or you believe that there are strong reasons why someone else does. Is that so?
Whatever is the case, I will respect it.
I will refer you to my responses in the thread which this started from, rather than trying to re-state them again, in particular this one.
But in a more general sense, philosophy often consists of asking questions about matters which most people take for granted as being seemingly obvious or not worth questioning. 'Wisdom begins in wonder', according to the Socrates of Plato's dialogues (not, as the Bible says, with the fear of the Lord).
In sophistry that's the plan, but in philosophy it's
Fool >>> Lesser Fool. " :flower: "
Yeah! I wanna run something I've been mulling over for the past few weeks by you.
It's about the yin-yang dualistic model of reality. The classical example of duality is, to my reckoning, the light-dark pair.
Suppose now I bring math into the picture: I could construct a light scale as such: 0 - 10 with 0 being complete darkness and 10 being maximum luminosity. Notice what happens next. Darkness is just 0 light and I can discard it and say it's all light. We could do the same thing to light using a darkness scale: 0 (max light) - 10 (total darkness).
What sayest thou?
Archived for future reference! Danke!
You are give me too much work to do! I would be satisfied with a simple affirmation or negation oo what I have assumed.
Quoting Wayfarer
Not philosophy. Only people who are engaged in phillosophical discussions do that.
Re: 'Wisdom begins in wonder',: Certainly. But can you think of Socrates or Plato or any other great or important philosophers wondering whether the physical universe exists or not and that kind of silly questions or commonly accepted facts or truths? It would be totally ridiculous. And philosophy would have maybe not survived as a field of knowledge or whatever else.
Things need always to be put in their right perspective! One must always consider and recognize analogies and differences in importance.
Wondering whether or in what way the Universe is physical is by no means silly. Physics itself is radically incomplete, both on the level of the basic constituents of matter, and in respect of the origin and scope of the Cosmos.
The mind can go where the body can't; there seem to be risks though as often truth becomes a casualty or is knocked off its pedestal by coherence.
Well, Science works fine with the physical universe and produces great results without have to question its existence. Fortunately! And if some scientist does question it, I don't know if he could keep his job or even belong to the scientific community anymore. Not even any scientifically-oriented or well informed mind could question such a thing. Only some "philosophically-oriented" minds can. And in fact, they find support in that from other "philosophically-oriented" minds as I can see in this thread. But I don't think that such questions could stand in professional and academic philosophical circles and communities, as I have already mentioned.
So, that's it for me. It's too much already. I will stop trying to explain and talk about how idiotic and useless is the questioning of the existence of the external world is.
Just as well youre not in charge!
My thought is that there is neither progress in science or philosophy, really. "Progress" has some end-goal in mind, or at least a notion of how things ought to improve. And what scientists think of scientific progress isn't exactly the same as what the public at large thinks about scientific progress -- and as for philosophical progress, that simply depends upon the person speaking since there's no means for specifying, exactly, what progress consists in. Or, at least, one can do so -- but it will just be a stipulation.
I was suggesting, though, that the intension of "science" is "that which people tend to agree to" and the intension of "philosophy" is "that which people tend to disagree upon" in many uses -- but that the extension of those terms changes over time depending upon the state of a given science/philosophy. (basically the spin-off theory mentioned in your article. The other article linked there has a paywall, and I done read my free ones this month)
That is, what appears to Chalmer's to be an empirical proposition in his argument "There has not been large collective convergence on the big questions of philosophy.", while it may be true, and I think it's empirical in principle, in practice we wouldn't know how to determine the empirical truth of the proposition. So it boils down to dueling intuitions on the beliefs of others'.
Good point.
Progress however can mean or refer to various things. One is moving towards a destination or end-goal, as you say. Another is evolving towards an improved condition. A student is making progress. There's not necessarily an end point or goal. It also means developing gradually. One can be always moving forward, evolving. "Improvement" I think is the key word here. Also, developing a more workable theory or system --e.g. about ethics-- can be considered a progress in philosophy. However, such things happen quite rarely to talk about a "visible" progress in philosophy in general. As I said, what we can offer to philosophy is mainly details and technicalities. But this is not real progress. And they are nothing compared to what philosophy can offer to us. Which, is the reason we are in this place, afterall.
Quoting Moliere
Certainly. People see mainly the technological progress, the practical side, the applications of science. They cannot follow the scientific knowledge and general progress of science as a field of knowledge. How can they? It is too specialized a sector in life. Scientists consider a progress the discovery of a new particle, or a tiny dwarf in the space. These things go unnoticed in the public.
Quoting Moliere
Interesting point!
Re "the spin-off theory": Indeed, the lack of progress in philosophy may be an illusion.
Well, again, it depends on how one defines and what one considers as "progress" ...
Definitely. And I'm saying that philosophy often serves as a kind of creative ground for the creation of new sciences -- it's called philosophy when no one agrees and it sounds absurd (Galileo), and it's called science after someone shows how clever they are (by hook or by crook, but people are often persuaded by accurate predictions or things which satisfy their desires so those are frequently focused upon -- but note it's not the truth of propositions, but rather there persuasiveness that's being put forward here)
I don't think there's really an essence between the disciplines -- rather, more like a continuum that as things become uncontroversial scientists begin to step in and expand while holding some fundamentals constant.
Philosophers, on the whole, don't hold concepts constant or agree upon what philosophy should be doing.
So it's a sociological theory as to why we believe these things are different: they're different because we treat them differently, on the basis of how much agreement there is.
Against that Chalmer's points out:
So that would seem to be, relative to his notion of progress (multiplicitous, but still concerned with true beliefs), a counter-argument to the claim.
I'd just say that these questions will change throughout history, except maybe the first one -- but I'd say the first one is a conceit of modern philosophy more than a real issue, so it's not a surprise that people agree on it. It's part of the culture of philosophy. It wouldn't be that interesting to discuss knowledge if we didn't know anything, right? So realism is a natural belief for people interested in philosophy, given that they care about such things. If someone were a skeptic, they likely wouldn't care too much about knowledge and metaphysics.
Excellent points :100:
Sometime in the ealy 20th century, the art world fell victim to slave morality.
First, I am an artist who knows a lot of art history. So, I am interested in what art you do like, which seems to be 19th century art.
And please explain what you mean by, "in the ealy 20th century, the art world fell victim to slave morality." What does any art have to do with slave morality?
What art do you like?
You mean Christianity?
To be fair he's right that my thesis would need more work than some hand-wavey allusions, so we're kind of in the same boat in that regard. So I can understand why someone whose looking for a reason for philosophy questions to be different to simply not see eye-to-eye with me, since I tend to see the activities as pretty similar, at least similar enough that there's not a strict distinction to be made. We can take examples for a basis of judgment and we kind of know what we're talking about in how they're different, but it's not anywhere near as clear as it needs to be for Chalmers' thesis, I think. But there it is -- dueling intuitions :D
EDIT: I should note I love Chalmers, even if this sounds disparaging. He's definitely one of my favorite living philosophers.
True. Philosophy has always been an incubator for scientific ideas and theories.
Quoting Moliere
True.
Quoting Moliere
Right. Agreement is a key element that separates Science from Philosophy, scientists from philosophers. It is very strong in one and very weak in the other. Obviously, since the first offers hard-to- be-denied proofs and the other not. The first uses hard-to-be-ignored physical experimentation and the other not. And so on.
Quoting Moliere
I wonder what Socrates would have to say on that! (Re: "The one thing I know is that I know nothing") :grin:
I think this is the one part where you and I differ. While I have a limiting view of philosophy, since I see the two as kind of doing the same thing more or less, that view applies to science as well.
Agreement? Disagreement? Why did that matter in the first place? Not sure.
I think that, at first blush, they look very different. But if you care about them and invest the time to figure out why one or the other works then that difference isn't as easy to pin down as it looked up front.
I am not sufficiently educated in the subject to identify any particular artist or school. As the saying goes, 'I don't know much about it but I know what I like.' I like the Impressionists. I like Marc Chagall. I don't much like abstract modernism. I like some classical works but I understand that they belong to a different historic period. As you mentioned a lot of 'pop art' is ephemeral trash. But I don't want to derail the thread.
Very good. Of, course we are debating about progress in philosophy, and I'm assuming a position opposite from your's, but I don't necessarily disagree with the point your making (after all, progress in philosophy could mean anything). If there is a solid argument for progress in philosophy, yours is as good as any. So keep it up, it is a philosophical delight speaking with you. Let's continue...
So then...I see philosophical theories like conceptual relativism, and see older philosophical ideas echoed in them (whether it is an idea rehashed in more contemporary language, or something implied that becomes fleshed out in greater detail.) Now, I will admit that conceptual relativism is a piece of top notch philosophy, and its inventors/discoverers are philosophical geniuses, but I would not say it advanced philosophy significantly. It is basically a synthesis of Nietzsche's perspectivism and Kant's a posterioiri knowledge.
In contrast, look at the supreme philosophers that advanced philosophy, Socrates, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche. The next tier would include guys like Plato, Locke, Hume, Hegel, and Wittgenstein. After that we have myriad philosophers that would have been included with the aforementioned (like Popper, Putnam, Kuhn and Rorty) but they were born too late. The (so-called) third tier philosophers have contributed some of the most original thought in philosophy, amazingly genius stuff, and perhaps some of their combined contributions have, at times, culminated in philosophical progress, but I would not say that any of their contributions alone have advanced philosophy in any significant way.
If only we could agree about what constitutes philosophical progress? But that would take another thread. I would prefer to digress here, if necessary.
You are so proper. Come on... live on the edge...Do it!
I'm an artist too. Yes, 19th cent art is amazing. Mainly, I like all art that has its foundations in the classical school. The only two art sites I visit are artstation and ARC. I also really appreciate graffiti. Sorry , I'm a bit of an art snob.
Quoting Jackson
I mean that the market began determining what was good art. Now anything can be art, and all art is equal. Something like this could never happen in science, but philosophy is always at risk of this.
Lol. That was closer to the third century up to about the 18th.
I imagine there were people like me back in the 19th century who thought: if art does not depict Christian themes, it was inferior.
Really, that's intriguing. I've heard of him on TPF before, but never investigated. I just read a few things about him, very interesting!
Common reality between two parts (entities) --two persons, a person and a group, two groups etc.-- is based on agreement between the two parts. And vice versa: different reality is based on disagreement. Communication is based on agreement. Understanding is based on agreement. Knowledge is based on agreement. In fact, our whole existence is based on agreement.
So, agreement does not only apply between two entities, but to a single entity as well. This is how our knowledge is acquired, our experience formed and our consciousness developed.
Agreement supports, favors life. Disagreement is against life. Both physically and mentally. Total agreement equals "immortality". Total disagreement equals "death".
You just gave me a good reason for not being interested: Marxism. I have left it behind me and never looked back since about 50 years ago! :smile:
Philosophy at a casual level does not take much to get into. All it requires is a child like approach to problems. Take X assumption and simply ask, "Why?" Watch a frustrated adult who does not have the time or inclination to atomically break down the exact reason, and the child is amused and might think they are clever. And there is nothing wrong with this. When getting into any field, it is child-like wonder and amusement that first drives us there. And as children in a field, we poke and prod topics that have long been discovered, but need to be discovered anew by taking that journey.
As you mature, you start to reach the walls in philosophy. Perhaps this is because its successes become settled or science, and there is not much left to talk about. When I was in academic philosophy, there were only a few viable topics which had mysteries that needed to be solved.
1. Epistemology - Definitely problems and issues here that need answers. In my opinion, the most important philosophical problem.
2. Morality - Currently there is no agreed upon and established secular morality.
3. Art - What is it, and why is it needed?
Some people might say "Mind", but that's honestly been taken over by neuroscience. The problem of course, is the answers to these questions have been considered for thousands of years, and are incredibly difficult to solve. Incredibly difficult problems are not very open to the public, or casual philosophers.
Epistemology is likely going to find its advances in AI where its solution will result in billions of dollars of profit. I think this is the most likely candidate for progress due to the money and demand for its solutions. Morality is what we "should" do, which is a question about the future, culture, and context; so its a difficult puzzle to find a formula that adapts to all three variables. Even if you did, morality is very personal to many people, as well as a means of power and control for others; so I would expect immense push back. Art is largely founded on the subjective, so pulling out an objective result faces its own challenges.
Good post!
If the answer is obvious, youre already wrong.
Quoting Philosophim
Then all of everyone's life is "subjective."
The goal or assumption of progress in philosophy might be regressive.
Philosophy is very different from science. In science people do not talk about past science. In philosophy, people still talk about Plato and Aristotle as live topics.
Some people think that the continued interest in Plato and Aristotle is regressive. I do not agree.
Most philosophy departments offer classes in ancient Greek philosophy.
I think the idea of progress is an idea coming from science and does not have much relevance to philosophy.
And some regard it as nothing more than quaint and misguided ideas that are primitive and from which he have progressed.
I think Heidegger was on the right track when he said that in the movement of thought some things are occluded. Hence the importance of retrieval.
Retrieve what?
Short answer: the truth (alethea) disclosed at a particular time and place.
Quoting Jackson
Quoting Fooloso4
I think the words of physicist Lee Smolen are relevant here.
fundamental physics has been in a crisis, due to the evident need for new revolutionary ideas-which becomes more evident with each failure of experiment to confirm fashionable theories, and the inability of those trained in a pragmatic, anti- philosophical style of research to free themselves from fashion and invent those new ideas. To aspire to be a revolutionary in physics, I would claim, it is helpful to make contact with the tradition of past revolutionaries. But the lessons of that tradition are maintained not in the communities of fashionable science, with their narrow education and outlook, but in the philosophical community and tradition.
Smolen is a big fan of Leibniz. He has pointed out that it is only fairly recently that scientists have ignored or disparaged philosophy. He points out that scientists of Einstein's generation had more than a passing interest in philosophy.
Perhaps there is a connection with the influence of logical positivism and its disregard for philosophy's past.
Bohr and Heisenberg actually wrote legitimate philosophy. Not just reflections.
https://hscif.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Hegel-Phil-of-Right.pdf
The idea of progress is the idea of movement towards something ever better. In the context of knowledge this means.more detailed, more comprehensive, more accurate.I think it is arguable that we see progress in this sense in science.
Hegel's conception of philosophy seems to be the expansion of comprehensive understanding via dialectic; but returning to the first basic idea of progress as the movement of betterment, is it plausible to say that the best philosophical understanding today is better than it was in the past, or is it merely more comprehensive?
Taking, for example Pierre Hadot's notion of philosophy as being. most properly, a way of life, do philosophers today generally live their philosophical understandings better than philosophers in the past did, such as to be better, more ethical people? If philosophy is, as the etymology indicates, "love of wisdom" looking from that perspective should we think that philosophers today are wiser than the ancients?
If philosophers today really do "comprehend their own time in thoughts", does that mean they also comprehend how our own time and its thoughts were arrived at? If you want to say they do, would this be all philosophers, or only some, and if only some, then which ones?
I don't know if philosophers today would agree with Hegel. Especially the science based ones.
Fair enough, but that wasn't really one of the questions I asked.
To answer one of my own questions I think very few philosophers today understand philosophy, as I think Hegel did, to consist in a comprehensive understanding of the whole movement of its thought, and of the dialectical logic of that movement,
Philosophy today is much more comprehensive overall than in the past, but it is fragmented into myriad schools, each of which in their main focus and central concerns seem to have little understanding of, or interest in, the others.
I do not think we disagree.
There is indeed much fragmentation, but lets see which schools of thought are capable of mutual interchange, based on successful efforts in the past. I can think of such linkages connecting hermeneutics, Wittgensteinian ordinary language philosophy, Existentialism, phenomenology, deconstruction, social constructionism, poststructuralism , critical theory , Marxism,philosophy of mind, cultural studies and philosophy of science.
quote="Janus;717114"]The idea of progress is the idea of movement towards something ever better. In the context of knowledge this means.more detailed, more comprehensive, more accurate.I think it is arguable that we see progress in this sense in science.[/quote]
It may be better to say that most scientists
today still buy into a notion of a cumulative progress in science, but that may be changing.
So, would you say the Logical Positivists, and the Analytics whose main concern is with propositional and modal logic, are the odd ones out (are there others?) islands cut off from the diverse mainland of philosophy?
The positivists made everyone dumber. If you want to do science, do science.
I would say that any school of philosophy that understands its inquiry in isolation from the biological and cultural niches that produce it will erect arbitrary walls between it and other schools of philosophy.
I don't disagree. Both Wittgenstein and Popper, for quite different reasons, refused to be identified as part of that school.
Quoting Joshs
I can't argue with that!
Quoting Joshs
The difference between science and philosophy seems to be that science is a much greater complex of different investigative disciplines, and although there are changes of paradigm, in various ways within those disciplines, most of Science's progression seems to consists in building on the previous edifices of knowledge, and in shifts of focus, rather than in, so to speak, demolishing the whole building and reconstructing from scratch.
And Wittgenstein rejected those who thought they were following his agenda.
You're referring to those in the Vienna School who thought that?
I don't remember their names anymore. But it was a group which W. was attending and told them he did not agree with them.
Yes, that rings a bell. I remember reading somewhere that ( at least some) of the Positivists saw him as their mentor and wanted him to participate in their meetings, but he disabused them of the notion that they were doing something along the lines of what he was, I can't remember specific names either, and I can't be bothered looking it up.
Yes, exactly. That is what I was referring to.
I think it was in Monks biography of Witt
Wittgenstein, Tolstoy and the Folly of Logical Positivism, Stuart Greenstreet.
I think you misunderstood. Currently art is considered subjective. Finding an objective explanation for art is one of the challenges philosophy has to yet solve.
Quoting Philosophim
Unless of course both art and science are intersubjective, but in different ways, as Thomas Kuhn argues. Thats why he concludes that if the idea of progress in the arts is ambiguous, then it is in science also:
The most persuasive case for the concept of cumulativeness is made by the familiar contrast between the development of science and that of art. Both disciplines display continuity of historical development
neither could have reached its present state without its past yet the relation of present to past in these two fields is clearly distinct.
Einstein or Heisenberg could, we feel sure, have persuaded Newton that twentieth-century science has surpassed the science of the seventeenth century, but we anticipate no remotely similar conclusion from a debate between, say, Rembrandt and Picasso.
In the arts successive developmental stages are autonomous and self-complete: no obvious external standard is available for comparisons between them.
The creative idiom of a Rembrandt, Bach, or Shakespeare resolves all its aesthetic problems and prohibits the consideration of others. Fundamentally new modes of aesthetic expression emerge only in intimate conjunction with a new perception of the aesthetic problem that the new modes must aim to resolve. Except in the realm of technique, the transition between one stage of artistic development and the next is a transition between incommensurables. In science, on the other hand, problems seem to be set by nature and in advance, without reference to the idiom or taste of the scientific community. Apparently, therefore, successive stages of scientific development can be evaluated as successively better approximations to a full solution. That is why the present state of science always seems to embrace its past stages as parts, which is what the concept of cumulativeness means. Guided by that concept, we see in the development of science no equivalents for the total shift of artistic vision the shift from one integrated set of problems, images, techniques, and tastes to another.
Kuhn disagrees with this cumulate e model of science:
If we are to preserve any part of the metaphor which makes inventions and discoveries new bricks for the scientific edifice, and if we are simultaneously to give resistance and controversy an essential place in the development of science, then we may have to recognize that the addition of new bricks demands at least partial demolition of the existing structure, and that the new edifice erected to include the new brick is not just the old one plus, but a new building. We may, that is, be forced to recognize that new discoveries and new theories do not simply add to the stock of pre-existing scientific knowledge. They change it. (Kuhn M2, p. 7)19
Often a decision to embrace a new theory turns out to involve an implicit redefinition of the corresponding science. Old problems may be relegated to another science or may be declared entirely unscientific. Problems that, on the old theory, were non-existent
or trivial may, with a new theory, become the very archetypes of significant scientific achievement. And, as the problems change, so, often, does the standard that distinguishes a real scientific solution from a mere metaphysical speculation, word game, or mathematical play. It follows that, to a significant extent, the science that emerges from a scientific revolution is not only incompatible, but often actually incommensurable, with that which has gone before. Only as this is realized, can we grasp the full sense in which scientific revolutions are like those in the arts. (Kuhn M1, pp. 17)
By you. I see no argument for that.
What would be helpful is for you to point out objective measures of art. I can give one, "The golden ratio" for example. Of course, there's the question of why that's considered so appealing in art. What creates a situation where art is involved? What are the degrees of art. Why are some things considered more artistic than others? There are lots of questions that I am not aware of any definitive answers to them. Feel free to enlighten me!
Sure. The objective/subjective dichotomy is meaningless. If there were no subjects no art would exist because no humans would exist. So, humans make objects.
I don't even understand the question.
So what I mean by objective is something that exists apart from a human's personal experience. Think of a ruler for example. Whether I or someone else uses the ruler, the measurement will objectively be the same.
Back to art, what are the objective commonalities of art across all human experience? Why are a bunch of colored sguiggle lines slopped on a canvas considered art compared to a realistic picture of a lake? Is there a morality in art? Objectively good and bad art that we should encourage or inhibit? Questions like these had no objective answer back when I investigated years ago. Perhaps things have changed. If so, feel free to let me know, I'm always willing to hear of new things.
Art is about a human's personal experience.
Could you go into more detail? Does this mean all of my personal experiences are art? Is breathing an art? My heart beat? Driving my car to work? Try to engage with more than one sentence Jackson. We're here to think right? Its not about winning, losing, or being smart. We're just juggling ideas, no judgement.
Again, no idea what you are referring to by "slopped on a canvas considered art." Can you give an example?
What you are saying is extremely elementary and boring. Try to say something worth responding to. You want this?
If you're going to be a snide person who just cares about your ego, we're done. If you want to chat, engage without the insults.
Do you know what the word "about" means?!
You get what you ask for.
Philosophy is not "chat." And writing a bunch of questions is not having a dialogue.
[quote=Freddy Z. re: philosophy]There are no facts, only interpretations.[/quote]
This is a good point. Most science is iterative. When there is a major paradigm shift (ala Kuhn) though, it tends to be that philosophy or mathematics is getting involved more directly in science. For example, two of the biggest "revolutions" across the sciences since the second half of the 20th century have been the emergence of chaos theory and information science. Both have shaken firmly held convictions in multiple fields about "the way things are" and remade prevailing paradigms. For a specific example, information science has dramatically changed how biologists define life and challenged the central dogma of genetics (i.e. that genes are the primary, perhaps only movers in evolution).
In those two examples, philosophy played some role, but it was the introduction of new mathematics, a way of mathematically defining information on the one hand, and new mathematics for defining complex dynamical systems, fractional dimensions, etc. on the other that really fueled the "revolutions." However, Einstein's revolution, the replacement of Newtonian absolute space and time with space-time, seems to have a lot more to do with challenging previously unanalyzed philosophical preconceptions.
I think it's fair to say that work in mathematics and philosophy differs quite a bit from science. It's interesting how, despite being so different, the disciplines can support each other so well, even science supporting math; as computers have gotten more powerful, experimental mathematics has become a thing. Also, how science can plug away with the same methods, safely ignoring most of what goes on in academic mathematics and philosophy, building knowledge, until some limit is hit or a paradigm begins to show serious weaknesses. Then the three get back together to build something new.
That makes sense. Relativity theory is another example, where non-Euclidean geometry played a seminal part in its genesis. Evolutionary theory is an example where philosophy perhaps played a significant role in that the idea of a creator was already in question, and the valorization of empirical investigations;searching for material conditions to explain observed phenomena, well under way.