“Philosophy is dead”
Philosophy is not a quest for knowledge. Philosophy is on a quest for its own relevance. “Philosophy is dead.”- Stephen Hawking.
Try as I might to explain the irrelevance of philosophy in today’s world, these people continue to waste their time studying it. Philosophy asks questions like “what is the purpose of the universe?” among countless others. Questions like this are meaningless and there is no grounds to answer the question sufficiently. Philosophy is not science, otherwise it would have outgrown itself, instead of being the anachronism that it is.
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seidos said,
February 14, 2011 at 2:57 am
I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research. –Einstein
as long as philosophy drives scientific imagination, it should never die. science may be able to say what is, but how can it possibly ever say what ought to be?
tell me how this story ends. keep them fires burning.
cw1925 said,
February 14, 2011 at 8:32 am
Philosophy use to have relevance in the scientific community. I forget which year, but once philosophy diverged from science, it was no longer necessary to ponder over useless questions such as said “what is the purpose of the universe?”
I get the Einstein quote, but philosophy is far outdated. Religious people for the most part turn to philosophy for their fix, while secularists turn to science for their fix. I would say that most of philosophy is outdated. I have never ever turned to philosophy, I don’t really need to, other than for historical research purposes. Ethics and logic are two areas in philosophy that get the most respect, but logic is now a science, and ethics have been reclaimed by Sam Harris’s The Moral Landscape.
seidos said,
February 14, 2011 at 12:00 pm
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dg7 said,
April 21, 2011 at 10:18 pm
I wouldn’t dismiss it as totally useless now, I would say it’s more a lens through seeing the world we live in and trying to understand – better than reading a self-help book I’d say. Though science can solve many of our ‘problems’ in a pragmatic sense and bring about technological advancements in this day and age, it’s always in a categorization by putting together particulars. Philosophy is more about enriching the ‘soul’, not bad a endeavor, might be useless but, ‘so much time, so little to do’
Moltas said,
May 31, 2011 at 6:27 am
Lo, you realize that the statement that philosophy is dead is a philosophical statement? Actually the whole post is a philosophical reasoning because you can’t prove through science that philosophy is dead :)
Anonymous said,
July 22, 2011 at 11:20 pm
If you want to question every minor detail of life and miss the big picture, be my guest. Scientists place their trust in empirical knowledge (which proves to be the closest thing to truth we will ever know) not baseless philosophical ideas.
Anonymous said,
October 15, 2011 at 5:02 pm
Actually it’s the other way around. Empiricism itself is a philosophical concept about how best to arrive at truth, and it is amongst countless others, such as Rationality. If you want to really see the BIG picture, it would be best to not buy into fundamentalism if anything, and that includes Scientism and Physicalism. The Hawking quote comes from a perspective of a man who deeply relies on Science to validate his existence. The quote is simply the equivalent of something a pastor would say towards a viewpoint that doesn’t fit his line of reasoning. Philosophy can never be dead, for if it were to die, progress itself were to die also. Any type of imagination, explanation, or theory always will stem from philosophical inquiry first, such is the nature of thought. Every single academic field, every single invention is due in part, if not completely, to philosophical thinking. If you make the mistake of buying into Physicalism, as the majority of Atheists and Scientists do, you will be fulfilling the worry of many intellectuals of this day and age – Science is simply becoming the new religion for people in a post modern world. Religion as a train of thought is the polar enemy of philosophy – once again it is the other way around; it is the need to replace religion in people’s lives that causes the stupidity of Hawking’s fundamentalist quote and Scientism. Einstein himself also stated that Theoretical Physics is simply poor philosophy. Also, the question of Causation is very valid, for if we did not search for answers to big questions we would not have any progress – and certainly no Science. It’s solely from your emotional need to uphold your “answers” to life – such as Science, religion, and Atheism – they you would try to put down Metaphysical questions. Why? Because what you choose to “believe” in cannot ever answer these questions. You make the mistake of thinking that because Philosophy speaks of metaphysics that we somehow “believe” our theories. That would go against the entire grain of Philosophical inquiry. Philosophers are not afraid of being wrong, in fact, it’s Scientism that fears this, hence the reason they repel Metaphysics so heavily. Philosophy always embraces the unknown, and tries the understand more of the potential “truth” of this existence, the best Science can do is solely study matter, which is valid, but bears nothing on existential or philosophical matters. The only thing Atheists can do with Metaphysics is to do exactly what you guys are doing: huddling around and pretending you sound smart by negating questions that fly in the face of your doctrine – sounds beautifully just like what one would expect from someone who holds fundamentalists views. Also, the more you divorce an idea from it’s philosophical roots, the more susceptible you are to it’s becoming more fundamental – case in point, Science becomes Scientism, and Metaphysics becomes Religion. But it will ALWAYS be from the constant intermarriage between thought and Philosophy that humans will progress in the most optimal state possible. Science itself, ironically, is extremely steeped in Philosophy, in fact, every single viewpoint you could have, be it atheism, agnosticism, Scientism, Religion, the Scientific Method – literally, every single viewpoint – is nothing but utter Philosophy at its roots. If Philosophy is somehow baseless, then absolutely all ideas are baseless -for all ideas are simply different manifestations of Philosophy.
Paul Henne said,
July 26, 2011 at 1:01 am
http://implicatum.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/science-philosophy%E2%80%99s-frankensteinian-monster/