Philosophy as a science....

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

over the last 400 years, there has been an attempt
to make philosophy as secure as science… in fact, to
turn philosophy into a science…from Descartes to
to the 20th century Analytically philosophy…

The well known Vienna circle tried to say,
that the only meaningful philosophical problems are
those which can be solved by logical analysis…
thus questions of what is ART or what is ethical, or what is beauty,
these questions lay outside of philosophy proper…

so we ask, is philosophy a Science or is it something different?

I hold that philosophy combines both science and artistic
values…in other words, many philosophical issues cannot be
solved by just logic or mathematical reasoning…

the path to solving many philosophical issues is through the use of values,
of ethical considerations, of aesthetical considerations…
logic can solve some problems, but not all philosophical problems…

So, to my mind, threads like the ''0.999…===1 is a waste of time.

it can tell us what is true, but that has no impact on our day to day
lives…it doesn’t answer any sort of philosophical problems
that truly impact our lives… ethical, aesthetical, political,
or social problems…
it doesn’t even solve the fake issues of the cultural wars,
CRT or is homosexuality ‘‘immoral?’’

if you discuss the 0.999 = 1 crap, you may as well be writing
about the Kardashian’s, for all the good that will do…

it has bearing on the real philosophical matters such as
the question of the last 150 years, what does the ethical mean
when we know that ‘‘god is dead’’… how else are we going
to have an understanding of what human ethics means,
when we don’t have some metaphysical reasoning
behind ethics? What does it mean to be ethical given
we don’t have any way to judge ethical matters by human standards…

our understanding of what it means to be moral/ethical
has come from metaphysical/religious standards…
what does being ethical mean when it revolve around human standards,
and not religious standards?

if god is dead, then what is being ethical, moral actually mean?

Kropotkin

2

another aspect of philosophy as science…

I take science to be about weighing, measuring, sizing, taking
experience and being able to make a measurement of it…

I see the sun rising… I can turn that into science…
or watching an apple fall… Newton turned that into physics…

but what about experience that we cannot weigh or measure?
What about justice for example? how do we weigh or measure
the experience of justice? How do we measure equality?
How do we see the experience of love? and what does
that experience of love actually mean?

The question of love is as individual to a person as the fingerprint
is to a person… we each experience love independently of each other…
my experience of love cannot be done scientifically…
we cannot weigh it or measure it or understand it as an experience
like we can with the sunset or an apple falling…

Some of the most important experiences of being human, cannot
be explained scientifically… for we cannot quantify what love is…
it cannot be measured or weighed or timed, what exactly
love is… how do we study something that is so individual as love…

and yet, millions including Jesus has made love a prime reason
for living and yet, we cannot even truly describe it…
How do we test love as we test speed or motion or weight?

we cannot… so much of what philosophy is cannot be weighed
or measure or timed…so how do we come to understand it,
if we cannot study it scientifically?

Love is and always will be, beyond science and beyond philosophy
and beyond experience… for each of us experience love differently…

but can we time, measure, weigh such philosophical words
justice or absolute, abstract or perhaps absurd… aesthetics,
or even ascetic…and those are the A words…

much of philosophy we are unable to weigh or measure or time…
and that is what separates philosophy from science…

our engagement with things that cannot be timed, or weigh or
measured…

Kropotkin

3

And neither does sleeping. But you don’t have problem with that, don’t you? The reason people participate in that thread isn’t because they think that whether or not 0.999… equals 1 is an important question that has to be answered (it isn’t) but because it is a way for them to practice their reasoning skills.

Your mistake lies in thinking that art, ethics and beauty somehow cannot be logically analyzed.