What are you taking this semester?

[Elok]

Complaining about the worthlessness of philosophy on this forum is kinda like protesting lowbrow programming during a guest appearance on South Park. If you don't like endless argument over abstract and possibly irrelevant truths, what are you doing here?

[Asher]

Originally posted by GePap
Hmm, perhaps by the rigor of the studies, by the wuality of the professors, by the intellectual output of the faculty?

Well done, GePaP!

Now you get to explain how you measure those, particularly with a department that is purely subjective like Philosophy.

But then again, what is the point of arguing about the value of the foundational science of western thought with someone like Asher? Now that is an interesting philosophical question.

The only reason I'm still arguing it is because no one here has succeeded in proving its usefulness, not even teachers at the university level.

They always seem to squirm around it and point to 3,000 years ago when so-and-so successfully predicted something that as scientist proved 1000 years later.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Elok
Complaining about the worthlessness of philosophy on this forum is kinda like protesting lowbrow programming during a guest appearance on South Park. If you don't like endless argument over abstract and possibly irrelevant truths, what are you doing here?

I mainly stick to the computer threads, where it's not abstract and irrelevant truths, but based with cold, hard facts. But it is also oh-so-much-fun to troll Agathon and other socialsciency people occasionally.

[Japher]

But then again, what is the point of arguing about the value of the foundational science of western thought with someone like Asher? Now that is an interesting philosophical question.

Pretty simple really; for some good sig material!

[GePap]

One day Aser you will see that not everything can be quantified and dealt with digitally. That might be a very interesting day.
Given that your "annalysis" of philosohpy is based on ingrained prejudices on a whole host of issues, and that currently you are unwilling to examine any of those prejudices in any valid way, to attempt to argue with you on the subject is akin to trying to get a hippo to write down its name, a waste of time. What astounds me is that agathon is foolish enough to attept to do it every time you take the obligatory and irrelevant cheap shot at the basis of western thought.

[Asher]

Perhaps that is the point in and of itself, that someone who is teaching philosophy has demonstrated incredible foolishness.

1) Arguing with me about it all the time
2) Predicting computers will cease to exist in 100 years



BTW, what are my prejudices here?

And all I'm asking for is a simple post which chronicals the contributions philosophy departments have made in the past 50 years. It shouldn't be that hard, unless, of course, there are none. At which point the best course of action would be to ignore it, as everyone has conveniently done...

[Japher]

The point I think Asher is making, GePap, is that thinking about thinking serves no purpose except to trap yourself in a delussional conundrum. (wow I used a big word)... Now, if philospohy would only put that thought into practical usefulness and begin to actually think on something other than a 3,000 year old theory called Western Thought then maybe they could actually supply something to society...again.

In my experiences I find philosophy quite useful, but only when explaining chemical reactions and making predictions of such...

[GePap]

He didn't predict that computers would be obselete in 100 years, he predicted that the types of hardware and software that you are learning to use, manipuate, perhaps build, so forth and so on will be obselete in 100 years, and thus all the technical information you are recieving will be as usefull in a century as studies about punchcards are today. This while the same philosophy class taught today could be transplanted to 2103 and remain equally as valid, informative, educational.

That seemed a simple enough thing to understand from what he wrote.

[Elok]

Philosophy can do incredible things. In case you didn't notice, it created common ground between myself and GePap...curing AIDS is only a matter of time.
With that aside, philosophy is the fancy word we use for the attitude our civilization is built on. Leaving Archimedes and other "useful" philosophers out of the argument, the attitude of inquisitiveness towards the world around you and the desire to test your own assumptions and those of others are such a basic part of science and pretty much every worthwhile intellectual process that they are taken for granted. We do not need to know them and the way they came about any more than we need to know history, or art. But Philosophy is, after all, the tradition we ultimately owe computers to. Logic. Ethics. That other industrious-thought stuff. You needn't bad-mouth it.
After all, it gives you a free civilization advance...

[Asher]

Originally posted by GePap
He didn't predict that computers would be obselete in 100 years, he predicted that the types of hardware and software that you are learning to use, manipuate, perhaps build, so forth and so on will be obselete in 100 years, and thus all the technical information you are recieving will be as usefull in a century as studies about punchcards are today. This while the same philosophy class taught today could be transplanted to 2103 and remain equally as valid, informative, educational.

That seemed a simple enough thing to understand from what he wrote.

I'm not taught technical details in school

Are you confusing computer science with a computer programming or IT course at a community college?

Computer Science is about mathematics, computability theory, algorithm design, software design, etc. We're not taught anything technical past the first year. We're told we're going to be using X hardware and X programming language, and if we don't know it we have to go learn it ourselves.

Computer Science is useful in that it doesn't teach to technology, it teaches concepts and ideas that can be applied repeatedly as technology matures. That's why a CS degree is way more valuable than a twerp with a programming diploma.

[reismark]

CSCI 313 Data Structures
MATH 241 Introduction to Probability & Statistics
MEDS 245 Screenwriting
PHIL 105 Philosophy of Film: "Becoming a Person"
STPE 200 Introduction to Counseling & Advisement

[GePap]

Originally posted by Asher
Perhaps that is the point in and of itself, that someone who is teaching philosophy has demonstrated incredible foolishness.

1) Arguing with me about it all the time
2) Predicting computers will cease to exist in 100 years



BTW, what are my prejudices here?

And all I'm asking for is a simple post which chronicals the contributions philosophy departments have made in the past 50 years. It shouldn't be that hard, unless, of course, there are none. At which point the best course of action would be to ignore it, as everyone has conveniently done...

The problem Ahser is with your prejudice about what constitutes a contribution. It seems that for you, only if it lead to some thing (thing defined as either an object or another sort of non-corporial product) Can it be seen as a contribution. I would say that this is inherently utterly wrong. Lets take Neo-conservatism. This is an idea, an idea powerfull enough to drive national policy and thus have a direct effect on human lives, as dramatic and far reaching as any new advance in computing. Well, what the hell is Neo-conservatism? What makes it different from other conservatism? What makes conservatism different from liberalism? All these are just anmes for ideas, ideas that are built on the back of the iquiry of philosophers into what the object of human life is, what is happyness, what is the best possible human community, so forth and so on. Even the notion of "society" is a prodcut of philosophy, and given that you deal with it daily, its basis remains as important as it ever was.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Elok
But Philosophy is, after all, the tradition we ultimately owe computers to.

Complete rubbish.
Babbage, Turing, etc -- none of them were philosophers.

Not to mention you're only helping my point, by giving faulty examples hundreds of years old while ignoring what they're doing today.

Even Boole, who is often credited as a philosopher, was simply a mathematician. He was branded as a philosopher by philosophers who thought he introduced some fundamental ideas they could use. Then they started teaching "logic" based mostly on his work, and apparently now taking credit for it, as well.

[Asher]

Originally posted by reismark
PHIL 105 Philosophy of Film: "Becoming a Person"

Another totally useful philosophy class, I see.

[Asher]

Originally posted by GePap
The problem Ahser is with your prejudice about what constitutes a contribution. It seems that for you, only if it lead to some thing (thing defined as either an object or another sort of non-corporial product) Can it be seen as a contribution. I would say that this is inherently utterly wrong. Lets take Neo-conservatism. This is an idea, an idea powerfull enough to drive national policy and thus have a direct effect on human lives, as dramatic and far reaching as any new advance in computing. Well, what the hell is Neo-conservatism? What makes it different from other conservatism? What makes conservatism different from liberalism? All these are just anmes for ideas, ideas that are built on the back of the iquiry of philosophers into what the object of human life is, what is happyness, what is the best possible human community, so forth and so on. Even the notion of "society" is a prodcut of philosophy, and given that you deal with it daily, its basis remains as important as it ever was.

"What is happiness" -- this is an example of the bull**** they're spending my tax money on?
"What is the best possible human community?" How the hell would a snob in a beret know anything about what the best possible human community is?

Philosophy is just thinking, and you don't need to be a philosopher to think. The greatest "philosophers" are philosophers only because the philosophy people want to take credit for their work, and because they thought about things.

It still irks me how they take credit for computers, when all they did was overly complicate logic for the sake of semantic arguments with eachother.