I agree. 'Qualitative' is nice. For me semantic holism is a key insight at the moment. Or in folksier terms, we don't see the forest by staring at individual trees. And as we look out on the forest(s), we ourselves are 'forests' with both a history and a future that exists as possibility. We aren't passive truth-detectors, though this is a role that we can include in a wider itself-non-passive project. — macrosoft
That's what it's like when people keep obsessing on epistemology... — Terrapin Station
The myth that science is necessarily reductionist needs to be put to rest... — fdrake
Sign on the door says 'philosophy forum'. — Wayfarer
Some realists do deny this, at least when it comes to perception. — Marchesk
Except that science still does frequently don the (lab) coat of moral authority. — Wayfarer
the role science plays in secular culture as the ‘arbiter of truth’ or ‘umpire of reality’ - i.e. as the final court of appeal for what ought to be considered real - a stance which Terrapin Station advocates. — Wayfarer
Some realists do deny this, at least when it comes to perception. Direct realism denies that there is an idea or sense impression in the mind mediating the thing itself. As such, you're aware of seeing the tree, not a mental image of the tree. — Marchesk
Not that I've payed much attention to the discussion, but this seemed nice to reply to. — fdrake
the role science plays in secular culture as the ‘arbiter of truth’ or ‘umpire of reality’ - i.e. as the final court of appeal for what ought to be considered real — Wayfarer
Among the many consequences that follow from what has been said, it is of importance to emphasis this, that knowledge is only real and can only be set forth fully in the form of science, in the form of system; and further, that a so-called fundamental proposition or first principle of philosophy, even if it is true, is yet none the less false just because and in so far as it is merely a fundamental proposition, merely a first principle. It is for that reason easily refuted. The refutation consists in bringing out its defective character, and it is defective because it is merely the universal, merely a principle, the beginning. — Hegel
Cant's see the forest for the trees' usually connotes the need for part-whole aspect shift. The connotation in macrosoft's post was that the observer and their theories should be seen as part of a corpuscle with the rest of reality and its behaviour; — fdrake
This is easily refeuted by pointing out the logical independent of things. — TheWillowOfDarkness
What is “familiarly known” is not properly known, just for the reason that it is “familiar”. When engaged in the process of knowing, it is the commonest form of self-deception, and a deception of other people as well, to assume something to be familiar, and give assent to it on that very account. Knowledge of that sort, with all its talk, never gets from the spot, but has no idea that this is the case. Subject and object, and so on, God, nature, understanding, sensibility, etc., are uncritically presupposed as familiar and something valid, and become fixed points from which to start and to which to return. The process of knowing flits between these secure points, and in consequence goes on merely along the surface. Apprehending and proving consist similarly in seeing whether every one finds what is said corresponding to his idea too, whether it is familiar and seems to him so and so or not.
— Hegel
Dogmatism as a way of thinking, whether in ordinary knowledge or in the study of philosophy, is nothing else but the view that truth consists in a proposition, which is a fixed and final result, or again which is directly known. — Hegel
Where could the inmost truth of a philosophical work be found better expressed than in its purposes and results? and in what way could these be more definitely known than through their distinction from what is produced during the same period by others working in the same field? If, however, such procedure is to pass for more than the beginning of knowledge, if it is to pass for actually knowing, then we must, in point of fact, look on it as a device for avoiding the real business at issue, an attempt to combine the appearance of being in earnest and taking trouble about the subject with an actual neglect of the subject altogether. For the real subject-matter is not exhausted in its purpose, but in working the matter out; nor is the mere result attained the concrete whole itself, but the result along with the process of arriving at it. The purpose of itself is a lifeless universal, just as the general drift is a mere activity in a certain direction, which is still without its concrete realization; and the naked result is the corpse of the system which has left its guiding tendency behind it. — Hegel
And (no big deal) but right away you read me out of context and lumped me into a group of your 'bad guys,' the 'bad guys' who think scientists are the 'bad guys.' I think we both agree that it's boring to be and see such cartoons. I am striving to avoid one-sided perspectives (such a striving is a decent description of philosophy itself.) — macrosoft
rehearsing the arche-fossil argument from Meillassoux; which you should look up if you are unfamiliar, — fdrake
excerpts from The Divine InexistenceWe have seen that the experimental sciences are unable to give an account of the qualitative excess of life beyond its material understanding, and clearly this is not their goal. They do not even aim at such an explanation, which is simply meaningless with respect to their procedures. We have none the less shown that the incapacity of experimental science to touch remotely on this problem does not doom every rational approach to it, as long as we accept the disjunction between reason and real necessity.
...
What we call divine ethics rests on the real possibility of immortality, a possibility guaranteed by factial ontology. ...Since the rebirth of bodies is not illogical it must also be possible; it cannot even be deemed either probable or improbable. For if rebirth suddenly occurs, it ought to occur suddenly in the very fashion in which a new Universe of cases suddenly appears in the midst of the non-Whole. Rebirth can thus be assimilated to the improbabilizable advent of a new constancy in the same manner in which life suddenly arises from matter...
Following the three Worlds of matter, life, and thought, the rebirth of humans ought to be distinguished as a fourth World: if a World were to arise beyond the three preceding ones, this World could only be that of the rebirth of humans.
...
The core of factial ethics thus consists in the immanent binding of philosophical astonishment and messianic hope...
Divine inexistence fulfills, for the first time, a condition of hope for the resurrection of the dead.
— Meillassoux
I'm still quite sure that there is an anti-'scientific metaphysics', through the opposition of scientific reductionism to some kind of ontological holism, operating in the response you had to Wayfarer. — fdrake
So yeah, apologies for a hasty reading of you. — fdrake
I am recontextualizing some nice passages from Hegel — macrosoft
A beautiful book, but hardly the last word. I think Meillassoux is subject to some of the criticisms above. Have you looked into his other work? He insists on the possibility of a resurrection of the dead. I refer to Harman's critical anthology, Philosophy in the Making. He seems like a strange theologian after all. I don't mind this. I say bring on the creative thinking. But he might not be your ideal go-to retort here in light of that. — macrosoft
Staying away from the continentalists is a good idea in general. :yum: — Terrapin Station
Ask yourself, is it really likely that they are all saying nothing of worth simply because you do not understand them? — fdrake
Well, and likewise, "Are they really saying something of worth/are they really worth studying just becasue they're well-entrenched in the field, where generation after generation studies them just because the generations before did?" — Terrapin Station
Hah. The only reason they're respected is that they're entrenched in the field! You can reject literally any scientific discourse with this. You can do the same thing with the analytics and the ancients. Is the only reason we still study Plato because his ideas are entrenched in the field? Is the only reason we still study Frege because his ideas are entrenched in the field? Come on, this is lazy argumentation and you know it. — fdrake
Quote me where I said that they're worth studying because I like them. — fdrake
Oh no, I was asking for textual evidence — fdrake
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