Why is it the case that so many high profile intellectuals consider philosophy as "useless"?
Philosophy considered deprecated
>>494830
The only ones I've heard of doing that are edgy fedora tippers like Richard Dawkins
>>494841
>the oatmeal
>>494842
Pretty much this. Also calling Randi an intellectual is retarded
Because they think philosophy is something it's not. Philosophy is a way to live, not an academic pursuit.
>>494842
I don't think he considers it as useless, it's just that when he is debating with creationnists, he doesn't care for ethical or moral arguments being brought into the debate, he only wants to establish whether or not religions are describing objective reality accurately.
>>494842
Where is Dawkins say that on the whole philosophy was useless? Was there a specific context here or just generally useless?
I know Hawking is sometimes misrepresented along these lines, when he was really talking about the age where we are now in an age where armchair philosophers who don't have a thorough understanding of science can't make serious contributions.
Because they're sophists :^)
But really it probably has something to do with philosophy's historical role as a game-changer in academic discourse.
>>494841
Don't ever post this fucking picture again, you fucking cuckold
Because scientists are constantly putting out new material. It's certainly not groundbreaking or game changing, but even just finding new organic chemistry reactions, a new star, profiling a poorly known animal, or modifying a crop to grow in slightly less than favorable conditions is still furthering knowledge. Your average physics undergrad knows more about how the universe works than Newton ever did.
And there's nothing saying philosophy can't further human knowledge. It has. There's a vast depth and breadth that can be understood by philosophy. It's just that academia has cuckolded itself into a corner via delusional attachment to Marxism, post modernism, pretending they're still revolting against the system, and academic incest. Philosophy has stopped being about understanding the universe and is instead about promoting the lecturer's agenda. This can obviously happen in science as well, but is harder to pull off because at the end of the day experiments and data beat opinion (The Luminferous Aether, for example).
Because it is.
By how much will the GDP increase, how many treaties will be signed, how many people will leave hunger, how many more cars will be produced, how many more bridges built, how happier will the overall population be, how more effective will be tax collecting system be, how better will arts look, and so on, by saying completely useless shit like "wow morality doesn't exist its just a ghost inside you're head lulz haha"? I dare you to answer this. The only good thing to ever come out of philosophy was the scientific method.
>>494830
Because it's mostly "What if like... what if... Guys listen... like if... guys.... what if life is all a dream and like.. guys are you listening? What if we'remall a dream imagining ourselves!"
And then people lining up to suck their cock because of how deep and profound and earth shattering that revelation is.
>>495384
>>495371
>anarchism is useless
>communism is useless
>scientific method is useless
>defining what is art is useless
>finding out the meaning of life is useless
>finding out if a god exists is useless
>free market is useless
>defining what is the state is useless
>logic is useless
And nobody ever said it had to be useful. Philosophy can be taken like videogames, it's just fun debating.
>>495384
Yes, that is indeed the entire history of philosophy. Good job, anon.
>>495402
>implying it's not once you strip all the cock sucking away
>>494830
because it is.
if it had a function that function would be solved, those interested would stop being so and move on.
it is literally surplus intellectual resources. you don't want it for some purpose, you want it because having it is an indication that you're doing something right.
>>495413
Very much implying it's not. Metaphysics, maybe. What about political philosophy? Moral philosophy?
>>495384
Stop listening to stoners at parties
>>495415
Don't be so teleological. There's more to doing things than just their own function
>>495438
"useless" is literally in the OP. use-less.
this is a teleology thread. replying in a different way wouldn't address it.
>>495460
I guess I'd say philosophy attempts to address the fundamental questions that each man finds in his own mind if he examines his life enough
>>494830
Everything they say carries ontology
Everything they are is epistemology
All those "intellectuals" are philosophers just as much as philosophers, except only accidentally, and so they end up deploying stupid untested ideas
>>495467
no, that's something everyone does.
the value that is contained in philosophers and their writing is categorizing possible answers from clearly stupid to presentable enough that you can write about it while taking yourself seriously.
>>494841
This picture makes me angry because it is wrong and the person who made it is stupid
>>494830
>Is the chair red because it is of the color red, or is it of the color red because it is red?
>>494841
That picture is really dumb. The scientific method is a product of philosophy. One could argue that science itself is a subset of philosophy, building upon epistemological frameworks to advance knowledge.
Further, philosophy largely focuses on matters that cannot be explained in a scientific framework. Shit like what is goodness, beauty, the ideal life, etc.
>>495384
that's cute. try finishing freshman year
>>494830
in science, there is
-no perfect consensus on anything, not even in pure math [which logic to choose, what field is more important]
-the research is geared towards what scientist like and avoids what scientist dislike [say if you want to do research on perpetual movement, you cannot]
-science is hardly communicable [most people do not care, the few people who care cannot into science, and then the few who remain always fight on what model is right and what model is wrong]
-scientist and general population rely on faith towards other scientists who claim that such or such part of such or such model is ''verified'' in their laboratory
-then scientists say ''if we can claim that it hold a few times in our laboratory, then it hold everywhere, every time]
-there is no consensus on how to rank models/theories
which means that there is no consensus on what is true [in positing that science gives what is true]
-plenty of scientists say that predictions matter, but scientists cannot say why why predictions matter.
[and predictions are always flawed by their proper essence: to stem from an inductive process over initial abstractions[concepts] which are generalized through space and time]
they say that this question is for ''philosophers'' [which they despise, because philosophy does not give ''computers, cars, more pleasures, less pains''.
why do scientists get up in the morning ? nobody knows
why must we finance their activities ? nobody knows
yet scientists do not hesitate to ask for money again and again.
to be more precise, there is nothing beyond the ''striving of the scientist for more and more fine predictions''.
-you ask a scientist why predictions matter, he will not answer you.
-you ask a scientist why finer predictions matter, he will say as you said: because it has better applications than the applications than we have today.
>>495989
-you ask why having (better) applications than we have today matters, he either does not reply, or replies ''because easing the life of the humans matters''.
-and when you ask why ''easing the life of the humans matters'', there is no answer again.
the conclusion is that:
-science/technology has always been easing in our life, and conflating this explicit purpose with ''giving us knowledge in accessing truths about the objective reality'' and other realist-rationalist fantasies to legitimate the development of this field [pure hedonism having always bad press] have clearly failed.
at best, the rationalist falls back, from his faith in the concept of objectivity, on the faith in the concept of ''inter-subjectivity'' which is roughly the faith in the concept of ''objective criterion to rank personal choices, once that a person wishes to solve some problem''
-even without applications, pure predictions are nothing but a concept and having faith in it shows how much the humanity clings to the abstraction of certainty in a desperate attempt to refuse the contingency of events [and it is a choice, in the first place, to think in such terms of contingency/necessity of life/events].
=> thanks scientists for making humanity better hedonists.
any rationalist doctrine is based on the faith in the imagination [meaning induction, connecting abstractions between them] which would produce concepts, abstractions, fantasies and some of them connect back, according to the rationalist, to the empirical world.
>the question is then what deliriums connect back to the empirical world.
>>495990
any rationalist doctrine which is not solipsism also refute solipsism [which is a rationalist doctrine, since it stems from the imagination of a self, and a self more alive than something else, after taking the imagination seriously] which also brings problems since there is the question of faith in speeches by ''other humans''.
solipsism is not destroyed by solipsism nor any other rationalist doctrines since the notion of refutation of a rationalist doctrine is itself an abstraction.
the sole question of interest is why do you take your imagination seriously, knowing that, since you have so much faith in induction through space and time, people have been doing it for millenia and still have no clue on how to connect back their speculation/abstraction/delirium/fantasy back to empirical events, nor do they even know why they want to take seriously their speculation.
>>494830
umm what?
Didn't one of the Harvard Medical School Professors just write an OP-ed that explained how important philosophy was?
Because philosophy has devolved into a postmodernist circlejerk
>>494841
knew this pic would tigger pol autists fucking manchildren are pathetic
>>494841
STEMfags actually believe this
>>497515
>posting the oatmeal
>claiming everyone else is on the spectrum
Boy have I got news for you
>>494841
Game, set and rekt, philosophy can suck a dick.
>>494830
how are we defining useless here?
I think they're mostly commenting on philosophers rather than philosophy. A lot of modern philosophers like to pretend they have some special skill nobody else has and that others should defer to their opinions or thoughts. It's annoying; naturally, scientists are trying to put them in their place.
>>494841
ok
>>495394
>anarchism is useless
>communism is useless
They are
>>495192
I went to a talk he did a couple of months ago, and throughout he showed precisely as little philosophical awareness as I expected (even suggesting that moral principles may be reducible to evolutionary ones), and at one point said something along the lines of
>but that would be philosophy, and we all know how useful that is
at which point the audience chuckled in their euphoria, and fedoras were tipped by all, a national day of science was declared and Christmas was rescheduled to October (which is when modern research suggests Jesus was actually born you ignorant Christfags), opening up December for the heathen worship of the winter solstice, although at that point Black Science Guy showed up and informed everyone that the 21st of December is an astronomically insignificant date, though in all fairness pagan nature-worship is far more beautiful than monotheism from some desert. What is beauty? The fact that colours can be defined by the wavelength of the electromagnetic wave (that's light to you idiots) in question. Then we all pleasured ourselves and each other (cooperation is a biological virtue) to an episode of Carl Sagan's Cosmos and went home.
What's the point of philosophy if you can make it DISAPPEAR
>>502726
He mad.
Anyway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism
Philosophy's greatest product has been so colossally successful that most people who practice it aren't even aware of its history and origins.
On the other hand, some philosophers are butthurt that they're not seen as relevant by the world. Well, welcome to the academia mines - nobody gives a crap what you're doing unless it suddenly makes them a buck. Twas ever thus. There was a reason why wealthy merchants of buttons and string would be patrons of great thinkers and artists - because said savants would starve to death otherwise. If that's a problem for you, consider the exciting opportunities available in roofing and drywall. It's quite profitable.
>>495394
>communism is useless
It is, unless murdering off entire classes of people is your goal, then it's pretty useful.
This feels like it has quickly turned into a /pol/-grade thread
>>495394
This
>>502820
Most people who need to have something proven as objectively correct or else they'll throw a fit are /pol/tards
OH, it's another /phil/ thread
Philosophy is worthless drivel and the fact that philosophers are so desperate to gain recognition of scientists is just the evidence needed to prove it.
They don't want to appeal to the masses.
They don't want to appeal to the politicians.
They don't want to appeal to the engineers even.
They want to appeal to the guys that actually advance knowledge, that actually get shit done.
Philosophy was useful when it was the best method to gain knowledge around.
Now, it's a net negative. The whole field of ethics ( bioethics being the most obvious, but cyberethics are gaining ground faster and faster... ) for example is a child of philosophy.
>>502844
>Now, it's a net negative.
>The whole field of ethics ( bioethics being the most obvious, but cyberethics are gaining ground faster and faster... ) for example is a child of philosophy.
This sees contradictory. How can philosophy be worthless if it has valuable products like bioethics?
>>502844
I see nothing wrong with philosophy, most if not all its ideas can't be proven but its interesting to think about. Philosophical ideas are just a way of trying to understand the parts of the world we can't figure out. We have such little time alive, waiting on science to find an answer would be to slow. It is ridiculous to think philosophy is on the same level as science though.
>select all squares with gift boxes
