Mentioning Phil phD's

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
So arguments don't count as proof.

Duh.

Jesus Christ.

Argue this...

Of course things will never change from now on so common sense must be right.

What the hell kind of logic is this?
It's a simple observational fact that not everyone has the same code of ethics.

Nice try, but it won't work.

Why not?
Do you not understand that hospital policy (ie, what doctors are allowed to do under that hospital) are governed by the owners of said hospital?

Gee whiz, I'll tell that to the bunch of healthcare professionals I gave a series of lectures to back in New Zealand.

It sounds like one of the torturous mandatory lectures corproations and governments do to try to be more PC...

Twit.

Oh, just take me here and now...

Anyway, no more from me.

Thank God, you're one of the worst arguers on this board, and you claim to be a PhD student in a field that gets its rocks off about pointless arguments.

You wouldn't cut it in a real field, Agathon...

If you want to argue that philosophy is useful today, you need to do just that. You've argued about people in the BC times which theorized about things like the atomic theory, you've mentioned things like multiculturalism for god's sake.

You've been doing nothing but spinning around in circles thinking you're proving something.

Maybe all of this crap makes sense to you as a philosopher because subconsciously you've allowed this laughable argument to prove that philosophy is useful today because you want to feel like your job is important, but to me you've done nothing but confirm my idea that philosophers are pretentious ***** with too much time on their hand today.

Thank you.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Asher

Obviously not a master of logic, eh?
It was the passage I quoted, where I responded that (sorry if this is over your head). I'll repeat it again for you:

Missed the "seem" didn't you? I did not imply that this was your position, just that I thought you must mean something like this for the simple reason that you don't seem to be very forthcoming with your ideas, instead resorting to childish insults, irrelevancies, blatant falsehoods and abuse.

So technically speaking, it is not a straw man since I rmade it clear that this was my hesitant interpretation of what you said (on one point I might add). A real straw man requires unqualified attribution of this view to you - and that does not happen here.

Goodnight.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
So technically speaking, it is not a straw man since..blahblahblah

Perfect example of what I meant when I said philosophers are all too obsessed with semantics.

[The Vagabond]

Originally posted by Asher
I disagree that philosophy is about wisdom these days.

All of the modern-day philosophers I've met tend to be egotistical idiots who think they're everyone's intellectual superior.

It's not wise to equate philosophy at its best with some individual philosophers.

What has philosophy done for society in the past fifty years?

Again, it is unwise to assume that nothing has been done. Theory of Knowledge, Ethics, Philosophy of Science are all philosophical disciplines, and there has been a great deal of work to be done there. New physical theories such as quantum mechanics, relativity and cosmology gave rise to the need of revising the general world outlook, and philosophers have had a fair share in this effort. In Theory of Knowledge, a revolution was brought about by Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, and philosophers had a hell lot of work to do. Advances in biology and medicine evoked a lot of ethical questions. Someone has to think about them professionally. Eternal questions, such as who we are and why, are still on the agenda. Again, someone has to think about it! New theories on the interrelation of matter and conciousness have been developed. IIRC, the anthropological principles have been formulated fairly recently.

[Asher]

So in other words, philosophers are the waterboys of academia?

[The Vagabond]

Yes, and vice versa. It's a mutual benefit.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Philosophy should be developed by your own personal experience, not dictated to you by some academic.

Asher... isn't that... well, your own philosophy?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Asher... isn't that... well, your own philosophy?

You're damn right it is.
Nobody taught me this with tax-payer's dollars at a public institution.

I'm not slamming philosophy in general, I'm slamming philosophy as something funded by people's tax-payer dollars at public institutions. Modern day philosophy is just looking for possible uses in real life, they're lucky if they're barely relevant with much of anything, and I don't want my taxpayer dollars going to crap like that.

More importantly, I don't want my university spending money paying philosophy profs who just teach other people philosophy, so they can teach philosophy so others can teach philosophy...

I want new computers, damnit. 64-bit workstations!

[Seeker]

Let's keep the veneer of civilization in place guys....

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Asher
Which scientists have proven the atomic theory to be incorrect?

Hm, maybe you should know that "proofs" don't exist in the sciences?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Hm, maybe you should know that "proofs" don't exist in the sciences?

Yeah, I know that, in the sense you're talking about.
Things are "proved" in science by experimentation, observation.

[CyberGnu]

Yes, and vice versa. It's a mutual benefit

Not to my knowledge. I've yet to meet a scientist who have read a book about "philosohpy of science". From what I can tell about this field is that scientists have labored painstakingly to develop procedures for things such as peer review, proof of evidence etc etc, and some freeloading philosphers have consecutively observed the procedures.

Since they are the first ones to write a book about them, they claim they invented them...

So basically, philosophers are the waterboys of academia, but the players have all brought their own gatorade. The poor waterboys are forced to stick to the sidelines and pretend to be useful.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Asher
Yeah, I know that, in the sense you're talking about.
Things are "proved" in science by experimentation, observation.

Okay.

Lets not confuse the laymen by being not careful with terms. Theroies are adopted if they are better models of nature. It's not that Newtonian Physics is wrong, it just doesn't work as well as Relativity under some situations. But it works well enough for most situations that a lot of engineering branches are still based on it.

[CyberGnu]

Oh, in a throwback to a previous topic on this thread:

My girlfriend used to be a double major: pre-med and philospohy.

Pre-med is usually considered "science light". It's the easiest science major possible. Doesn't mean it is easy, though. After all, it is still science. Nevertheless, she got straight A's in her philo classes, and a mixture of A's and B's in the sciences. And this was a Notre Dame, I should add, a uni with a well respected philo department, IIUIC.

The reason was pretty obvious. You can't bull**** your way to an A in vertebrate biology. The professor doesn't care how eloquent you are, a fish is still a fish. It takes long hours of studying. Her philo classes, on the other hand, were usually dealt with in one long frenzied writing session 12 hours before deadline.

Did she gain something from philo, except a higher GPA? Sure. She can spit out a 15 page paper in as many hours, which I can only dream of. The question is: did she learn anything she couldn;t have learned in, say, english literature? I doubt it. Maybe she got a little bit of head start on her med school bioethics. Maybe not.

[CyberGnu]

Urban, it is just renamed. It's called "statistical mechanics" now