Reason and Science in Danger.
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That is a sub discipline of general anatomy
I do not share a negative view of philosophy. Then, it comes back to defining one’s terms. For me, philosophy means simply the love of wisdom – the literal meaning.
At university I attended one meeting of the “Philosophy Society.” It was enough. To me, a lot of waffle and verbiage about what this and that academic expounded. It was intellectual snobbery. A variation of the preposterous and neutral “all views are valid” school. In short, the Philosophy Society had nothing to do with philosophy. I did not go a second time.
Philosophy I value as a tool for living.
The French phrase “soit philosophe” is to be commended in many life situations. “Remorse is useless” says La Mettrie – and it is. All it does is perpetuate suffering. So, soit philosophe!I am not a scientist, so I cannot argue with a creationist at my door using an arsenal of facts, when my acceptance of scientific facts is itself dependent on trust, i.e. trust in those who are scientists: astronomers, paleontologists, etc. The creationist will just respond that I too am taking things on faith.
So, as I am no scientist, I use philosophy instead, to show the creationist the illogical nature of his god. The illogicality of imposing human concerns on the cosmos; the absurdity of ghosts walking without legs, speaking without mouths and tongues, seeing without eyes, and so on.
So I value what for me is philosophy: a tool for living.
Atheism is older than religion, theology and creationism
Do you have proof of this?
Magic came before religion and theology (see Frazer).
There are two different senses of the word “philosophy”. The one you call “a tool for living”; the other is a theory of the nature of the world.
I suppose everybody has a philosophy of life even if only that “shit happens” or that “what will be, will be”. But philosophy in the other sense as “metaphysics” is useless and has been replaced by logic and the theory of knowledge and science. This is what Dietzgen meant by “the positive outcome of philosophy”, ie that this was science, and Marx by the contrast he made between “philosophy” and “the study of the actual world”. That’s why I think it’s dubious to talk about a “Marxist philosophy”, though as a tool for living I suppose it would be that philosophers only interpret the world but the point is to change it.
Marx’s correspondence with Engels and others shows that after 1845 he was not interested in philosophical theories but in scientific advances and inventions. Which of course makes sense as they change the world and pave the way for socialism as a society that can satisfy the material needs of all.
The term ‘philosophy’ is in contention and subject to the semiotic flux that most disciplines have experienced since the emergence of post-structural thought.
Some of you might have undertaken a PPE (no not a face mask): some kind of training in Politic Philosophy and Economics. Some might have many other forms of guild, Uni and experiential training.
Philosophy can be seen as modes of veridiction: kinds of methods of speaking a truth, according to training, purpose, and utility.
The ethical use of science is also a mode of veridiction, and it is simply a idea, a belief, in using a series of fact finding/fact using according to its discourse community.
To be an everyday philosopher is to liberate philosophy as a privileged mode of veridiction practiced by a controlling elite- and make possible a diverse knowledge system that can be occupied by many, interrogated, and talked about by a mass.
In its pure form, it is the software that drives our everyday activity (science, religion, meta and local narratives of life).
I am thankful that I have a local philosophy- when ‘shit happens’. It provides me with the veridiction to dare say a truth amid falsity or fake news.
Philosophies (plural) can be for, and not for science, but are signifying chains and organising principles linked and coupled to people’s beliefs (and their lived experiencing [real or fake ideology])
Philosophy and science are not at odds (they are locked in a relational dance) and one can’t be conceived without the other.
Better to say: who is the science in service to? and who is the philosophy in service of?- they are modes of truth telling, of veridiction. And they should be democratised, be openly available to all- not monetarised nor commodified, nor in the the hands of any ruling elite. They should not be subject to scorn either- by way of mocking dismissal.
Science and philosophy are subject to mock in these truth rhetor days- are these the first victims of ideological warfare in a battle for control…
If we ignore this, any argument is set to be an entrenched antagonism.
Science and the other (other than science) will always occupy the same space- it is why science and art are so crucial to society, and faith based practices too. To erase one mode of veridiction over another points to a elitism of one over another.
I like philosophical narratives, and really appreciate science.
Now how do I wrap this construct up- there is no closure!
LB
This from an email circular from comrade Alwyn Edgar is relevant:
The papers say that half of Americans will refuse to accept vaccination against covid-19. What is it with Americans? Andrew Wakefield took his bogus theory (that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine caused autism) to the States, and found a vast number to support him. (Trump, not yet president, accepted this baloney, and in fact – being Trump – claimed he thought of it first.) In America, millions believe that aliens are regular visitors (at any rate to the U.S.), that the “second coming” of Christ (“the Rapture”) will be here any day now, that the moon landing was all a hoax, etc. But it’s surely dangerous to reject vaccination.
When smallpox regularly killed 10% of the U.K. population, some clever clogs worked out why dairymaids didn’t get it (and therefore were noted for being pretty – not having the facial pockmarks left by smallpox). Instead they got cowpox from the cows – that is, a much milder variant of smallpox: and people who’d had cowpox didn’t get smallpox.
When I began 60 years ago (!) to write about the Highland clearances, I plunged into a survey of Scotland, parish by parish, written in the 1790s by the parish ministers (the “old Statistical Account”); I studied every report on the 162 Highland parishes, nearly all of which talked of this new idea of inoculation against smallpox. Some said the locals were against it, and there were still many deaths from smallpox; some said it was beginning to be accepted, and there were fewer deaths from smallpox; some said nearly everyone now had it, and there were hardly any deaths from smallpox. Short of accepting a plot among a pious crowd of Highland ministers to tell lies, this large batch of parish reports left a reader with no alternative: inoculation against smallpox worked.
But if many Americans refuse to accept vaccination (when a vaccine is found), even though everyone else in the globe accepted it, the disease would repeatedly spring up again. (Like smallpox did, for centuries before vaccination.)
American exceptionalism appears to be a widespread idea held by our fellow-workers in the USA.
They seem to believe they are exempt from science. They can land people on the moon but their religious beliefs still remain in the Dark Ages.
Oh dear, blame the “Dark” Ages, the Middle Ages, again. All a misconception.
As the documentary DARK AGES: AN AGE OF LIGHT showed, those were vibrant times, rich in art and achievement. So were the Middle Ages.
Modern creationists are post-darwinian recalcitrants and deniers of science and current knowledge. The people of the Middle Ages were not. There is no comparison!
Hmmm…so burning witches was part of the enlightenment…
But i was wrong …Dark Ages refers to several centuries pre 10th C…Middle Ages up to the 15th C …
As Renaissance occultism gained traction among the educated classes, the belief in witchcraft, which in the medieval period had been part of the folk religion of the uneducated rural population at best, was incorporated into an increasingly comprehensive theology of Satan as the ultimate source of all maleficium
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch-hunt
Newton may well have been the proponent of science but he was also the believer in alchemy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_studies
But i take your point that we can over-generalise a bit too much when there are many aspects of history that is nuanced.
Witch-burning was a Renaissance invention.
Are you falling into the loon trap of either-or with regard to Newton?
Is gravity a sham because Newton had bizarre beliefs?
Is David Attenborough to be debunked as a naturalist because he is welcomed by the Queen?
Is Roger Bacon to be put on a par with an American creationist today because he had no knowledge of natural selection?
Shall i repeat myself
“…we can over-generalise a bit too much when there are many aspects of history that is nuanced…”
Am i saying we dismiss Marxism because Engels fell for phrenology?
Simply making the point that denying proven science is a different thing from living in an era before that proof was made.
Also, modern American creationists are living within a specific set of conditions which are not those of medieval Europe but of 21st century America.
And my original point, no matter how badly expressed, is that a very significant section of the American population hold ideas that are not scientifically based and are intellectually backward compared with the progress shown in all other industrial developed countries, not just in religion but in politics and culture too. They are not in the majority but they are substantial and hold disproportionate political power.
For the evangelical Republicans they are denialism in a great number of positions. from rejection of systemic racism to climate change etc. etc.
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