Philosophy is a hobby. No. It is a way of life.

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You'll have to explain your first statement. "More complex than its derivation". I guess if you're trying to say that "complex things arise out of simpler things", but... this is a trend, not a necessity. So, people create hammers. Which is more complicated? The people. Biochemical molecules over time create living organisms through the process of evolution. Which is more complicated? The living organisms.

I don't think the scientific method has to be regarded as "born from the socratic method", and the reason that is, is because many philosophers were not dialectical or negative. Some philosophers simply start off with plausible intuitions, rather than trying to weed out implausible theories.

I really don't think that the scientific method is a derivation of the socratic method. I mean, the socratic method actually isn't the only way to do philosophy, and in modern times, it really isn't the common. Most philosophers do not write out philosophical dialogues, and I frankly thank them for not doing so.

I really don't know how to answer the question of complexity, honestly. I mean... one of the weird things about scientific practice is the degree to which methodology is shaped by the practitioners of an individual discipline. Behaviorism wasn't just a theory, but also a claim about method to be used in that science. Do we regard this alteration as part of "scientific method" or distinct from it? Other disciplines have had their own methodological struggles as well. You'll have to be clear in what you are talking about.

I don't know what all of this means. I think you're asking the wrong questions, and for that reason are getting a bizarre answer.

The issue in terms of application though, is not just breadth, but success. It would be silly to write scientific research papers with an explicit dialectic. A lot of philosophers also come to silly conclusions, including the historical ones, such as Plato who used this method. Finally, narrowness could be one of the reasons for success. Certain questions are more likely to have a good answer. Now, scientific method may be an efficient and sphere-specific method, and thus lack general power, but that's not a reason to regard it as less good than another method, or multiple other methods in conjunction.

Do you agree? If not, which statement specifically do you disagree with and why?


HA HA HA HA!

Also, don't you think it is odd to argue the supremacy of philosophy only to argue that philosophy is a subset of science?


No, it makes the field marginal, and a marginal field will be very suspect as a lot of things are marginalized for good reason(like Dr. Gene Ray's timecube). If wikipedia hasn't caught on yet though, that suggests that the field is potentially non-existent and possibly even just a fool's fantasy.


Actually, "if yes" then we have a self-fulfilling cycle. The unpopularity of Scientific Philosophy means it is not valuable, which means it ought to be unpopular. My suggestion is that popularity suggests value, so part of how we know that quantum physics is valuable because it's really caught on quite a bit with physicists. (at least if we can't validate it directly)


Well... the problem is that philosophers disagree. Jesus is a metaphysical question that some philosophers would promote. Platonic forms are a metaphysical notion used to explain certain ideas. Now, they might not be plausible to us non-philosophers, but... the field carries baggage and this baggage has been hard for it to drop. I mean, anti-metaphysical philosophy has existed since David Hume made his famous statement on the matter.

I think this is confused. You want to promote that philosophy matters only if philosophy is scientific, but that scientific method is derived from philosophy? Aren't you in effect basically saying that science trumps philosophy, and that basically science was successful, and other philosophies were not, so we need to model philosophy after science and in essence, cast away the centuries of nonsense.

Even further, are you holding to TWO methods? After all, science, while having argumentative issues is not explicitly dialectical like the Socratic method.


But even then, that still gives us little reason to regard philosopher proper much at all, or traditional philosophical questions, or anything else. Even further, your statement still commits us to the bizarre conclusion that biology is philosophy, when biology, despite involving systems of critical thought, really isn't usefully called philosophy unless we want to conflate evolution with the Platonic forms.


I am not aware of any empirical evidence.


You do realize that any halfway competent thinker, philosopher or no, recognizes that what you stated is absolute BS.

First of all: You have to prove your claim. I don't need to have much grounding to reject an unproved claim I find implausible, as you carry the burden of proof.

Second of all: Personal mastery proves nothing in this circumstance. You didn't state "Any and all people who master Socratic Method dramatically increase their intelligence", and science NEVER states anything like that, meaning that any personal, anecdotal experience could really just be an outlier.

Third of all: I actually don't need to specifically test a particular method to come to the conclusion that this is likely not true. If most things learned do not alter intelligence significantly, then if someone comes up to me saying "Come on, this learned thing will increase intelligence significantly", I have inductive evidence to dissent. Just like if I find that 200,000 different chickens lack the ability to speak, I really have a good reason to think that the next chicken I run across will not be able to speak. I could be wrong, but, I still have good reason. Most studies I am aware of suggest that IQ is highly genetic and does not alter significantly across one's life. Certain activities can cause a short-term boost, but when such actions are ended, then IQ will cease to be enhanced.


No, I only think a concept that will dramatically increase intelligence could be worth it. "Could" is a squishy term. The Nigerian e-mail COULD actually not be a scam, but what really matters is only accepting non-scam Nigerian e-mails.

More applicable does not mean more important. Approximations are frequently more important than the more general theories. I don't think that dialectic is very generally useful at all. Generally, we're better off with heuristic-feedback methods, NOT general purpose methods.

No. The Socratic Method is a philosophy. And it does not conform to the Scientific Method. So no I'm not saying that Science trumps philosophy. The Socratic Method trumps everything.

Thats right. But a scientist who has learned the Socratic Method, will have improved his own quesitioning methods, thereby improving his ability to understand his own Scientific work, thus improving his work.

No I haven't claimed that Biology is Philosophy. But a scientist who has learned the Socratic Method, will have improved his own line of questioning, thereby improving his ability to understand his own Scientific work, thus improving his work.

Read my journal. That is empirical evidence. Note that empirical evidence simply means evidence that is retrieved from the senses. It does not consider the idea that we must have others criticize our conjectures. So empirical evidence would not be enough to *know* that my statement is true. We would need others to test my hypothesis. Are you ready to test my hypothesis?

Its not a matter of recognizing that my conjecture is BS. Its a matter of criticizing it. Can you offer a criticism? Telling me that others would disagree does not suffice as a criticism.

Excellent. Its time for you to see my empirical evidence. Please read my journal. That is my empirical evidence. Also, all my employees are evidence. All of them are dramatically more intelligent. Now if you want to question what I really mean by more intelligent, then please read my Theory of Knowledge. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ztt ... t?hl=en_US

Good point. I've done it with all my employees. 13 people. And yes this is still only empirical. That is why its time for some real criticism. Please try it and provide your empirical evidence as to the success or failure of the test.

Your thought experiment is fallacious. Chickens are not able to read or learn. They do not have intuition. They are not able to create universal explanations of the universe they live in. We are able to. And when we learn a logic, then that logic is able to be applied in future situations, even in completely different situations in different fields. So every logic that we learn, increases the number of situations that we are able to reason through. More logic learned, equates to more intelligence. This is the main point of my theory. To be clear, the Socratic Method is a logic.

Good point. But in my case, there is empirical evidence. And I only say *could* because I imagine that some people might have trouble learning just from reading on their own. Some people might need 1-1 attention. And since I can't provide that, I say *could*.

Last edited by rombomb2 on 16 Dec 2011, 12:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

Living organism were not *derived* from biochemical molecules. Consider mathematics. When you derive an theorem from another theorem, the original holds in more situations then the derivation, thus the parent method is more complex.

How do philosophers and how they do things enter into this argument? I'm speaking of the method, not about how people employed the method. The Scientific Method is a tweak of the Socratic Method. It restricts a part of the Socratic Method. So the Socratic Method can be used in more situations, but the Scientific Method is more suited for situations that involve the ability to mechanically measure.[/quote]

I don't see how philosophy enters into this argument. Philosophical dialogues? What does this have to do with the Socratic Method? It doesn't. The Socratic Method is a method of questioning. We could be questioning anything. If an employee asks me a question, instead of answering him, I ask him a question that leads him to the answer. In this way, I've taught him how to get to the answer himself so that next time, he doesn't need to consult me with such requests. In this way, each time that I interact with an employee, they learn something and they never consult with me about the issue again. This is how I reduce entropy in HR. And it took learning the Socratic Method to be able to do this.

Back to my point, I am claiming that the Socratic Method was the mother of the Scientific Method. It does not matter whether philosophers did or did not employ the Socratic Method; this is absolutely irrelevant to this point.

What questions should we be asking instead?

That is correct. But I have not made such claims. I have not said that the Socratic Method should be used in place of the Scientific Method. The Scientific Method has its uses; it works very well for situations where we are able to mechanically measure.

Again you must think about the number of situations that each method can be applied to. The Socratic Method can be applied to all situations. But the Scientific Method can only be applied to situations where we are able to mechanically measure. So which method can be applied to more situations? The answer is the more useful one. Are you doing Scientific work? If not, then the Scientific Method can not help you; unless you are only considering the past Scientific work that has improved all our lives. But if you make this stance, then I will say, 'The Scientific Method would not have been created without the Socratic Method,' and thus some of the credit goes to the Socratic Method.


You trust wikipedia that much? I don't even want to ask any questions about this. I do read wikipedia a lot. But I don't trust it in the way you seem to. Wikipedia is just a bunch of people like us. Just because other people are ignorant of a field, does not make the field less valid. Realize the time factor. Things take time to be known. And in this day and age where the institution of Universities is so very much market-driven, there's no wonder there is a snails-pace with respect to how fast things change. Universities are about NOT changing. They resist change. And this is what I want to fix.


Yes your right. I unintentionally employed a fallacy. I should have read it again before pressing submit. Thanks for catching my error.


Why is this a problem? I'm speaking of philosophy, not philosophers. And philosophers that question metaphysics are ignorant.

I think you are confusing my original point. I'm not suggesting that anyone go to school to learn philosophy. I don't even suggest for people to go to school at all.

I'm suggesting that people learn The Socratic Method, Aristotle's 14 classic fallacies, Scientific Philosophy, and that's about it. The rest is nonsense. And you don't need school or even a teacher to learn this stuff. You only need will.

--edit
Let me clarify. I'm not suggesting that philosophy of education or of politics is nonsense. I'm suggesting that we learn just a few philosophies because these things help us in our day-to-day lives; social life, science, business, introspection, raising a child, understanding politics, reading comprehension, etc.

To AG

"Scientific philosophy" seems to be some sort've weird offshoot of logical positivism.

http://scientific-philosophy.blogspot.com/

I agreed philosophical thinking is needed on life, it essentially help a lot. On the contrary, instead of process I take it as a guide, a motivator and basis to make a worth happy living life.

"The Socratic Method" is incompatible with "The Scientific Method".

I base this observation on the entry for "The Socratic Method" under "Plato" in "The Encyclopedia of Philosophy", Volume 6, page 317, Gilbert Ryle (1972), Paul Edwards, Editor in Chief.

The book "End the Biggest Educational and Intellectual Blunder in History: A $100,000 Challenge to Our Top Educational Leaders" by Norman W. Edmund (2005), gives a conclusion from a different vantage point.

Holding The Socratic Method as encompassing The Scientific Method is an unwelcomed regression to a pre-scientific era:
"The Socratic method and the scientific proceed by discovery, but whereas the scientific investigates the outer world, and regards the inner world as an externality as well, the Socratic seeks to discover the ultimate truth that lies within us."
From: "Noetics: The Science of Thinking and Knowing" by Krader & Levitt (2010), pages 232-233.

Tadzio

P.S.: This is False: "Chickens are not able to read or learn." Chickens are able to read & learn, as with using operant conditioning, chickens can be taught numbers and to perform arithmetic.

Can anything in philosophy ever proved wrong?

Don't know much about philosophy, but I did learn about utilitarianism, Kant, Aristotlean morals, and other moral systems as part of a course in legal systems. The different moral philosophies go about using very different ways to try and achieve (more or less) the same result, e.g. "murder is wrong". But there's no way to tell if any one of them is actually wrong. To my mind, that means that none of them are right either (because something can only be true if the impossibility of it being wrong has been proven. I believe Karl Popper was the progenitor of falsifiability, oh the irony.).

I hate to say this, but most of the arguments attacking philosophy can be applied to number theory as well. Number theory is my favourite field, just too bad it's also pretty much the most useless field of mathematics - precisely because it's "nothing but pure ideas".

Hi Sunshine,

Number Theory is the most important part of Encryption Techniques, and encryption is becoming more and more important, and very valuable ("The Little Book of Big Primes" by Paulo Ribenboim gave a famous example of Cryptography using Prime Number Theory).

Tadzio

You've misunderstood how knowledge is created. I'm included the link again below. This is in both Science and Philosophy. And philosophers and philosophies that don't do this are ignorant.

http://curi.us/1541-how-to-create-knowledge

No. The Socratic Method has nothing to do with 'seeking truth within'. The Socratic Method is purely a line of questioning. It can be used for anything and everything. Period. What you are quoting is somebodies "opinion" of what he thinks the Socratic Method is for. He is mistaken. He obviously doesn't realize that the Socratic Method is used to teach children, and in consulting. Are these "seeking truths within"? No. Its possible the author was saying something poetic. But it is absolutely false.

Oh thats cool, didn't know that. So I'll rephrase my statement. Only humans are able to create universal explanations of the world around us. Therefore using chickens in an argument as a comparison to humans with respect to learning, is fallacious. Please see The Beginning of Infinity to understand universal explanations and what that means for humans: http://beginningofinfinity.com/

I don't' see the distinction between *process* and *guide*. Could you explain?

I don't see how it is a motivator. It is only a line of questioning. And we use questions all day long. Imagine that your questions were more powerful. By more powerful, I mean that the answers you get from them are closer to what you wanted/expected.

I've been applying the Socratic Method to learn things I never learned in a book, or on wikipedia, or anywhere. I sit down next to someone knowledgeable in a field that I want to know about. And I ask a Socratic line of questions until I've learned the logic of that field, or rather until I learned what it was that I was interested about.

Without a Socratic line of questions, I would not be able to extract the knowledge from that person.

Looks like we should have defined the parameters for considering what is more important. So lets do that. By important, I mean how much a method can help you.

Can the Scientific Method help you in your day-to-day life? No.

Can the Socratic Method help you in your day-to-day life? Yes. It helps with every single human to human communication and with internal thinking.

Therefore, according to the parameters for considering what is more important, the Socratic Method is more important to you than the Scientific Method.

Using Mill's Methods to find out why your car won't start is a big help to you or your mechanic.

ruveyn

I don't' know Mill. But the Socratic Method will help you figure out why your car won't start. And it'll help you learn how cars work because you'll be able to ask better Socratic questions to your mechanic.