Is philosophy dead?

[Anonymous No.3125723]

Philosophy is dead, according to Steven Hawkings. Is he correct?

There is no (evidence for a) soul.
There is no (evidence for a) god.
Morality is subjective.

One argument for philosophy that i've heard is that science can't explain the subjective. But nothing can explain the subjective. Nothing can explain love.

I'm curious what the arguments for philosophy existing are in this day when the scientific method has been shown to be infinitely more useful.

[Anonymous No.3125738]

>>3125723
Well he'd be right if we allowed all forms of science to proceed regardless of ethics.

[Anonymous No.3125747]

>>3125738

philosophy can't and won't ever dictate human values. philosophy isn't prescriptive, it's descriptive.

[Anonymous No.3125755]

>>3125723
>nothing can explain love
Evolutionary biology, m'boy.
Though there'll always be philosophers to nitpick on what 'explain' means.

[Anonymous No.3125759]

>>3125755

i was talking about the 'subjective' experience of love that philosophers bs about when asked about the purpose of philosophy, my bad for not making it clearer.

[Anonymous No.3125764]

>>3125723

How is that an argument "for" philosophy?

And it's not as if those questions are the only ones philosophy bothers with.

How does one create a just society? Where do we draw the line at personal responsibility? Is there any?

While on the question, you're making a mistake if you think something that's ontological subjective has to be epistemological objective. As long as it's epistemological objective, you can make a science out of it.

[Anonymous No.3125765]

Stephen Hawking knows fuck all about philosophy.
/thread

[Anonymous No.3125774]

>>3125765
what is the point of it, then?

instead of being a smart ass, engage your brain a bit

[Anonymous No.3125775]

Didn't we just have this thread?

[Anonymous No.3125787]

>Morality is subjective.
This is not an argument against philosophy.
In learning philosophy, i.e. in learining about thoughts people have and had, I influence and extend my own ways, how I behave, act and what my moralities are.

To me, "doing philosophy" is not like proving the Atiyah–Singer index theorem, but more like socializing - a crucial and enjoyable process. Philosophy doesn't set out to find a true moral, but rather questions if such a thing would be even possible.

It can't be useless, because it influences how we operate in the short 100 years we have.
In the end, (even) if we all are machines and if time exists, then we still have to write "the code of our behavior".

[Anonymous No.3125797]

>>3125787
>Philosophy doesn't set out to find a true moral, but rather questions if such a thing would be even possible.

No, it's not. Because it's subjective.

>It can't be useless, because it influences how we operate in the short 100 years we have.

>billions of people have never opened a philosophy book, people philosophising in their head is perfectly acceptable and understandable. philosophy as a field is benign and pointless because it will never influence the thoughts of those people who will never ever give a shit.

[Anonymous No.3125800]

>>3125797
hurdurrr subjective

Human behavior is a real thing that happens in the real world, and the study of what factors make human systems succeed is not simply "subjective".

[Anonymous No.3125811]

>>3125800

>hurrdurr intentionally being dense

We know that human morality is a real phenomena but the significance of that morality is indeed a subjective issue.

[Anonymous No.3125813]

>>3125800
>>3125800

yes it is.

Society's define success as entirely different things.

People value different things. Some value money, others happiness, others the pursuit of women, others the pursuit of religious satisfaction, others the pursuit of satisfying their king. The society one grew up in determines the what set of ethics you inherited. We (I?) inhereted a set of ethics that allowed me to question everything. Other's didn't. To say that their values are anyless or more valuable than ours reveals your superiority complex. All morality is subjective.

[Anonymous No.3125822]

>There is no (evidence for a) soul.
There is no evidence against the existence of souls. The irrevocability of death fundamentally prevents a scientific investigation of what (if anything) awaits us beyond death. Philosophy wins.

>There is no (evidence for a) god.
Again, there is no evidence against the existence of god or gods, the same as its always been. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, can't prove a negative, etc. Philosophy again, bro.

>Morality is subjective.
The subjectivity of morality is precisely why philosophy is so important. If it were objective, we could just determine it scientifically and be done, but since it isn't, we must use reason and argument to arrive at some sort of working code of conduct for society.

[Anonymous No.3125825]

"Some people believe that there cannot be progress in Ethics, since everything has already been said.....I believe the opposite...Compared with the other sciences, Non-Religious ethics is the youngest and least advanced." -Derek Parfit

Philosophy cannot theoretically be dead, unless the quest for knowledge is dead.

And the argument of morality being subjective does not undermine the whole field of ethics. It simply means we need to find new methods/reasoning independent of absolute/divine ideas.

[Anonymous No.3125828]

>>3125774

What's the point of anything then? If we're going to say epistemology, and thus knowledge is useless, and ethics, and thus any moral and virtues, as useless, why would you ever need science?

And what kind of moron would do a science VS philosophy thing in the first place?

[Anonymous No.3125833]

>>3125813
Ultimate goals vary far less than the methods/principles we believe will best achieve them. There's room for legitimate research here, given those

We're all human. So while "what we want" is ultimately subjective, it is not arbitrary. It's in our biology.

[Anonymous No.3125839]

>>3125822

So what you're saying is that when nothing useful can be said about a subject, philosophy wins. Great.

Also HURRDURRR burden of proof.

[Anonymous No.3125843]

There is a god and his name is Hawking.

Fuck your shit, Harris.

[Anonymous No.3125850]

>>3125822
>There is no evidence against the existence of souls. The irrevocability of death fundamentally prevents a scientific investigation of what (if anything) awaits us beyond death. Philosophy wins.
Again, there is no evidence against the existence of god or gods, the same as its always been. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, can't prove a negative, etc. Philosophy again, bro.


As the one making the claim, the onus is on you to provide the evidence for god or a soul. In the same way we do not debate or discuss the probability that there may or may not be a real life garydos(*insert other mystical creature here) there is no need to even think about gods or souls in terms other than fairytales. There could be a god, or a soul, but until we even get a smidgeon of evidence, there's no reason to entertain the idea.

>The subjectivity of morality is precisely why philosophy is so important. If it were objective, we could just determine it scientifically and be done, but since it isn't, we must use reason and argument to arrive at some sort of working code of conduct for society.

I can't help feel that philosophy think's it's far more important than it actually is in determmining it's influence on society. Politicians neglect their principles when making laws, the ordinary person doesn't give a shit. It's only in the group-jerking world of philosophy that people think that the clever things they say actually have an influence on society. I won't deny that it did have a role to play in the atheist/secular revolutions but it really has died a whimpering death.

[Krakengineer !!5XY+x7grkpt No.3125857]

What Hawking was talking about was natural philosophy. These were people who would figure out science stuff by just thinking about the world instead of doing experiments. Einstein's "thought experiments" were in this category. Things like QM are so counter-intuitive that this isn't a viable way forward anymore.

There are numerous other forms of philosophy that are of importance. Law for example is a field of philosophy. We need laws which are well thought out (aka philosophized).

[Anonymous No.3125863]

>>3125833
For instance, communism with centralized political power is provably a bad idea, for any goal that has anything to do with "welfare of humans". We've done this experiment many times now.

[Anonymous No.3125868]

>>3125863
However, basic communist political ideology with centralized power, while employing a capitalistic economy, is working fairly well in China.

[Anonymous No.3125878]

>>3125868

No its not working quite well. Most people are living in poverty.

[Anonymous No.3125882]

>>3125857

I respect this point of view. And fully acknowledge that law and political philosophy are useful. But to have a subject like epistomology:

"Epistemology ( pronunciation (help·info)) (from Greek ἐπιστήμη (epistēmē), meaning "knowledge, science", and λόγος (logos), meaning "study of") is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge.[1] It addresses the questions:
What is knowledge?
How is knowledge acquired?
How do we know what we know?"

which is so so fundamentally pointless or asking pointless questions such as 'do we exist' to which the answer is always 'to the best of our knowledge, yes' undermines lots of the credibility that philosophy gains. I fear it's treated far too much as a hobby by people looking for an intellectual challenge rather than a serious quest for knowedledge.

[Anonymous No.3125886]

Philosophy is basically about ethics - what should be done, and about figuring out things based on existing evidence without experimenting because experimentation in these circumstances is impossible.

Think of the fact, for a moment, that you have absolutely no reason to live on. Some may say evolution programmed you for that, but then you get an overly simplistic picture since plenty of people purposefuly defy evolution, such as actively resisting the chance to reproduce - anathema to the concept.

No, we do what we do for reasons for more complex, and philosophy, in an overlap with psychology, studies the reasoning people give for their actions.

Science can give you tools, but it cannot give you a reason to use them. It is not any more logical to live than it is to die. It is not any more logical to seek to reproduce than to not. It is not any more logical to avoid pain. We all do it for fundementally philosophical reasons at our base.

[Anonymous No.3125887]

Not all philosophy is about morality and religion.

[Anonymous No.3125890]

>>3125887

i've always asked this question of philosophers and i've never ever had a decent response:

give me one question in philosophy, that is unanswerable, by me, right here, right now.

[Anonymous No.3125891]

>>3125723
OP, are you trolling or are you just plain fucking retarded?
butthatswrongyoufuckingretard.jpg

The scientific method IS fucking philosophy. Philosophy isn't some dusty old book you can get rid of. Modern philosophy is critical thinking - ergo, philosophy will always be a part of science.

[Anonymous No.3125896]

>>3125891

>referring to the academic field of philosophy, you dickwad

[Anonymous No.3125897]

>>3125890
Why do you exist?

pwned

inb4 "I just do"

[Anonymous No.3125898]

>>3125891
>OP, are you trolling or are you just plain fucking retarded?
He's quoting Hawking.

[Anonymous No.3125902]

>>3125878
Look at the past 50 years in China, or at least after Mao. That rate of progress is not an accident.

It's irrelevant to say "much of China is poor" when the point is "their standard of living is improving at an unreal pace since the economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping".

[Anonymous No.3125905]

>>3125897

stupidest fucking question in the world.

there is no reason for existence. implying there is a reason for existence implies a superior will. which there is no evidence for.

what a fucking shitting stupid question.

next.

[Anonymous No.3125906]

>>3125897
Maybe he meant a question that's answerable by philosophy, but not by him off the cuff. I could be wrong, though.

[Anonymous No.3125908]

>Hawking
>Doing half baked philosophy all the time- Philosophical statements everywhere, model dependent reality etc.
>Proclaims philosophy is dead in a popsci book
>Aspies take statement literally and form their beliefs completely out of context of the book

If you've read the book and inferred from context, when he said philosophy is dead he means when it comes to finding out the laws of nature, mere armchair philosophizing is obsolete since all the mature sciences operate under a successful paradigm, essentially branching them off in specialized fields apart from its progenitor discipline, philosophy.

[Anonymous No.3125919]

>>3125908
Yeah, that's already been pointed out. Maybe you should have read the thread before greentexting.

[Anonymous No.3125921]

>>3125890
A girl spends her entire life color blind, but she has studied the science behind color completely. Does she understand what color is? Will she learn something new if her eyes are fixed?

There is one life raft for a sinking ship. Anyone who doesn't get on it will die. It can only fit: One of the worlds most brilliant scientist, one child, one pregnant women, or the last pair of some almost extinct species.
Who should get on the life raft?

[Anonymous No.3125923]

>>3125908
And thereby sucking all the useful bits out of it. Hawking tells us what is left of philosophy is not going to bring us anywhere.

[Anonymous No.3125925]

>>3125921
>Does she understand what color is?
Only in a cognitive sense. She knows what color *is*, but she does not know what sensing color is *like* (subjective perception).
>Will she learn something new if her eyes are fixed?
Yes, she will learn what the subjective perception of color feels like.

Damn, is that supposed to be hard?

[Anonymous No.3125928]

>>3125921
>Does she understand what color is?
Only conceptually.

>Will she learn something new if her eyes are fixed?
Yes.

>There is one life raft for a sinking ship.
The scientist.

[Anonymous No.3125931]

>>3125921
It's these kind of unimaginably farfetched kind of situations that Hawking is complaining about.
Answers are:
Yes
The scientist

[Anonymous No.3125933]

>>3125921
>There is one life raft for a sinking ship. Anyone who doesn't get on it will die. It can only fit: One of the worlds most brilliant scientist, one child, one pregnant women, or the last pair of some almost extinct species. Who should get on the life raft?
It depends on what you value. That's all that's being tested here. IMO it should be the scientist, as his likely contribution to human well-being is the highest. There's an argument for the species, but it depends on the species' utility to humans. And besides, a single pair isn't really viable (probably).

[Anonymous No.3125936]

>>3125890

Prove to me that you exist as subjective mind.

[Anonymous No.3125938]

WHATS THE SOUND OF A TREE THAT FALLS IN THE WOODS WHEN THERES NO ONE IN SPACE TO HEAR YOU SCREAM WITH ONE HAND??

[Anonymous No.3125939]

>>3125890
You are taken apart, atom by atom, and reassembled elsewhere.

You die in the process, just like any person that is torn to shreds. When you are reassembled, is it the same consciousness? read below before answering.

For an uncertain amount of time your consciousness was non-existent, and your body was indistinguishable from all other building materials in the cosmos. Lets say that the exact set of materials you are made from is taken from elsewhere, and you are reassembled. Is it the same consciousness?

If not, why? the end result is identical in both cases, and for the moment what used to be your body indistinguishable from the cosmos. If yes, that would imply a non-physical aspect to the mind and the existence of such a ridiculous thing as a soul, and would impact on the very first example: it would mean that if you are taken apart and rebuild, 'the spirit' of the original dies, and a new one is created, or some other metaphysical tripe.

[Anonymous No.3125941]

>>3125936
That's a demand, not a question.

The "problem" of other minds is pointless anyway.

[Anonymous No.3125943]

>>3125921

>A girl spends her entire life color blind, but she has studied the science behind color completely. Does she understand what color is? Will she learn something new if her eyes are fixed?

she doesn't understand what colour is. she will when she opens her eyes. in the way humans with sight do. because she's never recieved the sensory stimuli. she will recieve the sensory stimuli if and when her eyes get fixed so ofcourse she will 'learn' (awful word in this context) something new.

>There is one life raft for a sinking ship. Anyone who doesn't get on it will die. It can only fit: One of the worlds most brilliant scientist, one child, one pregnant women, or the last pair of some almost extinct species.
Who should get on the life raft?

I could not tell you. Neither could philosophy. It could weigh up the positives and negatives and tell you that animals are just as precious as human beings. It could be tell you the scientist has the most value to society. The answer is that there is no correct answer, only a reflection of your values, and philosophy can't dictate ones values, because they're entirely subjective.

[Anonymous No.3125950]

>>3125939
Not that guy, but:

Consciousness is a process. An exact replica of a person produces dynamics that are an exact replica of the original - hence it is an equivalent consciousness. Further questions that insist on unique identity or continuity for a consciousness are fallacious (the question is nonsensical).

Hence, in the only sense that matters, it is the "same" consciousness (having the same properties).

[Anonymous No.3125951]

great album btw

>Philosophy is dead, [APPEAL TO AUTHORITY]. Is he correct?

if i think so, no. if i don't think so, no.

[Anonymous No.3125954]

>>3125941

Pedant.

I don't see how it isn't pointless to try and verify that there are other minds. I think it's a question that's unanswerable but one that it would be wonderful to know the answer to.

[Anonymous No.3125955]

>>3125928
>>3125931
>>3125933
>>3125943
/sci/, I am proud.

[Anonymous No.3125957]

>>3125723
By me it would be the pair of species going extinct - there's is always a chance the life will once again evolve into sentience.
Choosing a single human is a dead end for life as we know it on Earth.

[Anonymous No.3125964]

>>3125938
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=If+a+tree+falls+in+a+forest+and+no+one+is+around+to+hear+it%2C+
does+it+make+a+sound%3F

[Anonymous No.3125965]

>>3125954
>I don't see how it isn't pointless to try and verify that there are other minds. I think it's a question that's unanswerable
There you go. You answered your own question.

I'd like to have an oracle than can answer the halting problem whenever I want. But as far as we can tell, that is impossible.

The problem of "are there other minds" is even MORE fundamentally impossible to answer, therefore the attempt is a waste of time.

[Anonymous No.3125967]

>>3125954
Whoops, double negative. Forgive me, I'm tired.

[Anonymous No.3125968]

>>3125957
The life raft isn't the only life left on the planet. Otherwise I would agree with you.

[Anonymous No.3125974]

>>3125939
You are taken apart, atom by atom, and reassembled elsewhere.

You die in the process, just like any person that is torn to shreds. When you are reassembled, is it the same consciousness? read below before answering.

>For an uncertain amount of time your consciousness was non-existent, and your body was indistinguishable from all other building materials in the cosmos. Lets say that the exact set of materials you are made from is taken from elsewhere, and you are reassembled. Is it the same consciousness?

Yes. To the individual. Because the individual's reality is all he knows and to him, he is still alive and perfect. Your question also presumes that the conscious is one soul like entity which is nonsensical. If the computer that is your brain is deassembled and then reassembled to make you, exactly as you were, you are the same person. Even if you die in the process.

>If yes, that would imply a non-physical aspect to the mind and the existence of such a ridiculous thing as a soul, and would impact on the very first example: it would mean that if you are taken apart and rebuild, 'the spirit' of the original dies, and a new one is created, or some other metaphysical tripe.

No it doesn't mean that at all. The chemicals, cells and neurones which create your memories and your personality, will still be the same. It's not immatierial or soullike. It's perfectly tangible, just at the moment science doesn't have full knowledge of it.

[Anonymous No.3125976]

>>3125954
>>3125965
I'm as certain that there are other minds as I am that the gravity will still be an attractive force tomorrow. Both the fundamental problem of induction and the problem of other minds don't really offer much in return for spending time on them.

[Anonymous No.3125979]

>>3125965

200 years ago it would have seemed fundamentally impossible to realise the beginning of the universe.

[Anonymous No.3125980]

>>3125957
On second thought - all the bacteria human carries in his body would possess enough genetic material to carry on with evolution once again and evolve possibly all the way into complex life forms.
In that case choosing the little child would be life a symbol. The symbol of potential to become more.

[Anonymous No.3125981]

>>3125950
Having the same properties does not makes it the same object, however. if I make a pair of identical cubes made of wood, colored red, they are still different by 1) origin and 2) location.

Likewise, you could produce a pair of computers. If both run the same program, while they are functionally the same, they are not the same object. If you go by the most deterministic 'particles jumping in a box' view, they are identical the people (automata that give output to each respective input).

[Anonymous No.3125984]

>>3125928
>>3125943
So you guys admit that there are qualias?

[Anonymous No.3125990]

>>3125974

Would you still have subjective sensations though?

You'd think you did, but subjectivity is one of those things that you can't really prove, problem of other minds etc.

There would be someone having experiences but would it be the same 'you' that had the previous experiences?

[Anonymous No.3125994]

>>3125890

What's knowledge?

[Anonymous No.3125996]

>>3125979
Not really. The "other minds" problem is a form of solipsism, and it is inherently nonfalsifiable. These things aren't considered on the basis of "woah that sounds fancy and outlandish to attempt to answer". When the counter-arguments that remain to support an idea become fundamentally unfalsifiable (not just infeasible to test), there is no further benefit in considering the question.

[Anonymous No.3126000]

OH FUCK GEOGADDI IS MY FAVOURITE ALBUM I LOVE YOU OP

[Anonymous No.3125991]

>>3125774
The point of philosophy? The point of philosophy is to do philosophy. What's the fucking point of knowing anything? To know it. If you want a way to make better technology, well, it contributes to that too, but that's not the point of it.

[Anonymous No.3126001]

>>3125943 I could not tell you. Neither could philosophy..... because they're entirely subjective.

Keep in mind that any concept invented by humans is defined by humans, not something in the world which can be objectively measured. This makes it subjective. Some concepts humans have invented: The Scientific method, right & Wrong, law, freedom, etc.

These are all subjective concepts, but humans and societies need to study make up their minds about them. Philosophy is the study of such problems.

[Anonymous No.3126002]

>>3125974
If you take a computer apart, however, any processes it is currently running will cease. When you reassemble it and run it again, a new process is created, that functions in an identical manner.

In other words, while the result is identical, the process that was 'killed' is not recreated elsewhere - it is a replica.

[Anonymous No.3126006]

>>3125976
You're a fucking blowhard assbag. You have no idea what these questions would return for spending time with them.

[Anonymous No.3126010]

>>3125996
Just because a question has no answer doesn't make it an interesting question to ask.

I mean, look at this thread, it's more interesting than a lot of the shit on /sci/, and there hasn't been a single question that had a proper answer asked in it.

[Anonymous No.3126014]

>>3125990
>There would be someone having experiences but would it be the same 'you' that had the previous experiences?
I deny that this question has meaning. You're assuming that a consciousness is fundamentally unique, and this axiom is false.

Otherwise, tell me: what does "same 'you'" mean? If you mean "having equivalent properties", then the answer is yes. This is a functional definition of consciousness, and pretty much the only one that makes sense to me. And under this definition, the consciousness we call "you" is not inherently unique, is potentially copyable, and may be both created and destroyed (organized and disorganized) from matter.

[Anonymous No.3126023]

>>3126002

NUMERICAL AND QUALITATIVE IDENTITY!

AS Philosophy is coming back to me :)

[Anonymous No.3126028]

i'm bored of this. no one's convinced me otherwise.

all philosophy is bs apart from the bits that are useful.

i'm outta here. laters.

[Anonymous No.3126035]

>>3125996
You could not be more wrong. The problem of other minds is not a form of solipsism. The problem of other minds is the problem of what observations support the conclusion that phenomena are being directed by a mind. This is a real problem and you do not know the answer to it. Of course we know that other people have other minds, but it's not obvious HOW we know it. And we feel quite sure that plants don't have minds, but it's not so easy to say why that's true. Turing proposed a conversational test for machine intelligence--is that right? Would that justify believing that a machine had a mind? Is there any other way to tell? It's a real question. Asshole.

[Anonymous No.3126036]

>>3126006
>You have no idea what these questions would return for spending time with them.
On the contrary. These specific questions have been considered for quite some time, and what benefit has come of it? I won't say there's none, but we've long ago hit diminishing returns.

When you start running into arguments that can't be falsified, even in principle, just what do you expect to do next? My answer is "drop it and move on".

[Anonymous No.3126042]

>>3126014

You're assuming that consciousness isn't unique. I certainly feel my consciousness to be unique. I can't conceive of the idea that if you built an exact clone of me, down to the individual atoms, we would share conciousness.

[Anonymous No.3126043]

>>3126014
That wasn't the guy who asked the question, but I'll respond to that anyhow.

Say you open your browser, and go to /sci/. You surf about for a while, then close your browser. Later on, you open it again.

Is the new browser the old process? and the answer is: no. It is a copy of said process, since each individual process can only occur uniquely due to its position in time and space. There cannot be an identical process to it - only one that runs the same mechanically, either elswhere, later, or both.

When a process is terminated, it is gone for good. A new one can be created, but it would have no connection to the other.

[Anonymous No.3126045]

>>3126042
Well, you experiencing your consciousness is just an illusion, that's why you believe they way you do. Your mind is only inputs and outputs.

[Anonymous No.3126048]

>>3126028
>Ask for a question.
>Run when it takes over a post to respond to
endless summer

[Anonymous No.3126050]

>>3126045

this is the assumed position in neuroscience. and get this, they've got evidence for it.

[Anonymous No.3126052]

Philosophy isn't dead and Hawking is an arrogant dick. A genius, but a dick.
Philosophy isn't a different way of doing something, it's a different thing to do. No scientific field incorporates it, and without an understanding of the importance of science through philosophy, I don't understand how you can operate. If Hawking means philosophy in the sense of having souls, then I would agree that the position is redundant.

[Anonymous No.3126056]

>>3125980
For crying out loud:
If you care about re-evolving species, pick the scientist, he's got more and more diverse bacteria, living on cafetaria food for years on end.
If you care about benefit for the rest of the humans, pick the scientist, he'll create value and useful stuff.

[Anonymous No.3126057]

>/sci/: "philosophy is stupid and dead lolz"
>philosophy threads everywhere
>always engage in philosophical discussions more seriously than they do with discussing actual science

[Anonymous No.3126059]

>>3126045
See >>3126043
Even in a machine - that is universally agreed on being a deterministic input/output system - this holds true.

[Anonymous No.3126060]

>>3126045

How does a lot of processes create an illusion of consciousness? What property is there that turns a load of biochemistry into a mind with the illusion of subjectivity?

[Anonymous No.3126055]

>>3126036
You have no idea what return has come from asking these questions, because you don't know anything about the field of study you're gassing on about. The problem of induction turns out to have significant bearing on the question of which concepts denote properties suitable for scientific research and which do not, for example. The problem of other minds has been fruitful in leading to the question of cognitivism vs behaviorism in psychology. You take for granted that our ways of looking at the world are just there, as if they had always been there or as if we thought them up. They haven't, and we didn't. They emerged out of centuries of difficult thought, much of which took place under the heading of philosophy.

[Anonymous No.3126064]

>>3126048
>>3126048

some people have other things to do with their lives.

This was fun.

[Anonymous No.3126067]

>>3126057
If you have to choose between the nth homework thread and some liberal arts bashing, noone hesitates.

[Anonymous No.3126069]

>>3126057

distinguish between philosophy as an academic pursuit and philosophy as an armchair hobby, MATE

[Anonymous No.3126070]

>>3126035
>You could not be more wrong. The problem of other minds is not a form of solipsism. The problem of other minds is the problem of what observations support the conclusion that phenomena are being directed by a mind.
What is a mind? A thing like "me"? Then you have what everyone else has - evidence from experience. There is nothing more available to anyone. All evidence suggests that you and I are both minds, and that's good enough for me. Just what do you expect to happen after you consider this question longer?

I don't mean to dismiss the study of intelligence, not at all. I think it's massively important. But wondering whether other minds exist or not? Yeah, have fun. "Intelligence is as intelligence does". It's all just dynamics - input/output, etc.
>Turing proposed a conversational test for machine intelligence--is that right? Would that justify believing that a machine had a mind? Is there any other way to tell? It's a real question. Asshole.
Oh, I fully agree. You think I don't think this is important? I'm dismissing the faggots who say "hurdurr prove to me that you think". Fuck them, the evidence is right in front of them and it will never be good enough.

As for the Turing Test, it's on the right track but it's fundamentally flawed. For example, one of the best strategies for passing the Turing test is to act like a moron and refuse to hold a coherent conversation.

However, finding a concrete alternative isn't easy. I wouldn't like to define intelligence on the basis of carrying on conversation, though that certainly helps. What about a robot that can device novel tools, or novel uses for existing tools? It becomes similar to studying intelligence in animals, at that point.

[Anonymous No.3126074]

>>3126060

science can't tell you that right now. but it is our best hope for knowledge. even suggesting that philosophy has the answer to this question is laughable.

[Anonymous No.3126079]

>>3126042
> I can't conceive of the idea that if you built an exact clone of me, down to the individual atoms, we would share conciousness.
WHAT? No. You'd be two separate people, but with identical minds. Due to your separate experiences however, your properties would begin to diverge.

Where the hell did the idea of a shared consciousness come from? Your brains aren't connected by any mechanism.

[Anonymous No.3126081]

>>3126045
How can it be an illusion unless it appears to us one way while it's actually another way? How can it appear to us one way without our being conscious of it in that way? There are no illusions without consciousness.

[Anonymous No.3126084]

>>3126067

I wouldn't call philosophy a liberal arts subject, it may be useless for your career to have a degree in it but it's not exactly painting. There's more to philosophy than 'hurr durr solipsism'.

[Anonymous No.3126091]

>>3126079
>Seperate people, identical mind
Finally, someone got it right instead of herpderp mechanism its the same or herpderp soul its the same

[Anonymous No.3126095]

>>3126074
Science will never answer this question without philosophy because it lacks the proper concepts to address it with hypothesis and observation. Listen to scientists talk about consciousness: their speech is littered with metaphors and analogies. Those are the tools of theorizing, but to form a testable hypothesis you must be speaking literally. This cannot be done without philosophy.

[Anonymous No.3126097]

>>3126074

If philosophy had the answer to the questions it asked it would be science.

Philosophy doesn't aim to solve puzzles objectively, it aims to allow individuals to come to their own conclusions on the topics that science can't come to the conclusions for them on.

[Anonymous No.3126102]

>>3126055
Perhaps my statements have been overly broad. What I'm really rejecting is radical skepticism.

Our knowledge asymptotically approaches Truth (assuming the universe is logical and the universe has continuity of patterns etc etc.) and that's good enough for me. If the universe shows actual evidence of violating what were assumed constants (like gravity being attractive), then you can study the evidence.

[Anonymous No.3126105]

>>3126097
Exactly. Science can never answer a question like 'Should I be X or Y?' given the goals are inherently subjective.

[Anonymous No.3126108]

>>3126081

I second bits of this. Subjectivity is necessary for illusion. You can't say that subjectivity itself is an illusion, that's a paradox

[Anonymous No.3126110]

>>3126091

providing evidnence that the endless books on stupid ass questions philosophers ask are answerable by one silly thread on /sci/.

philosophy as a field is extinct. it should be absolved into psychology, neuroscience, theology, politics and law.

The subject itself needs to disintegrate as an academic pursuit.

[Anonymous No.3126111]

>>3126069
Philosophy as an armchair pursuit is done poorly and without the benefit of learning from work that has been done in the past. That's why /sci/entists criticizing philosophy are so distinctly full of shit: they literally do not know what they are criticizing. It would be like painters trying to build a bridge and then when they bridge fell down criticizing engineering because bridges don't work. THEIR bridges don't work. YOUR philosophizing leads nowhere.

[Anonymous No.3126112]

>>3126097
Exactly:
>Their own conclusions
There is no way to know they are correct. So why bother?

[Anonymous No.3126114]

>>3126105

Indeed sir.

Philosophy aims to give us all the possibilities for us to choose from ourselves.

[Anonymous No.3126119]

>>3126111
>YOUR philosophizing leads nowhere.

neither does modern philosophy. increasingly diminishing returns.

[Anonymous No.3126120]

>>3126108
Congratulations. You disproved a quasi-scientific hypothesis using only the analysis of concepts. You have just done a little philosophy.

[Anonymous No.3126121]

>>3126110
You aren't the one who got the answer right, though, but rather claimed you were leaving and sticked around when you couldn't answer it.

If I ask a question in mathematics, and it is solved in a thread on /sci/, does it means that mathematics are no longer needed and must be dissolved?

[Anonymous No.3126126]

>>3126112

Because when there is no definitive answer that applies to all we need to find the explanation that suits us best to get us towards our ultimate goal of happiness.

Philosophy helps us in that sense.

[Anonymous No.3126127]

>>3125905
You see? You can't even answer the simplest questions for existence.

[Anonymous No.3126129]

>>3126105

neither can philosophy. assuming that it can is so arrogant.

[Anonymous No.3126136]

>>3126121

it doesn't matter that i didn't silly man. thinking about it for a few more minutes meant i would've. i am currently sitting in the library with 18 books on the shelf behind me. what a waste of intelligence.

[Anonymous No.3126137]

>>3126129
...Then you have no idea what philosophy means, since it was created on the ground of trying to answer such questions -based on the subjective goals of different people-.

[Anonymous No.3126142]

>>3126136

*on the topic of souls etc

[Anonymous No.3126148]

>>3126110

>philosophy as a field is extinct. it should be absolved into psychology, neuroscience, theology, politics and law.
>should be absolved into psychology, neuroscience, theology, politics
>psychology, neuroscience, theology, politics
>theology
>implying theology is more relevant today than philosophy
>implying theology is more relevant than anything at all

LOL

[Anonymous No.3126151]

>>3126137
>>3126137

it can't answer such questions. it's just a cycle of infinitely more nuanced questions.

[Anonymous No.3126152]

>>3126136
>I COULD TOTALLY KICK HIS ASS I JUST DIDN'T WANT TO
> 18 books

[Anonymous No.3126154]

>>3126120
I wasn't aware that reductio ad absurdum fell exclusively within science or philosophy. It seems that this is becoming an unnecessary battle between labels.

[Anonymous No.3126160]

>>3126148
>>3126148

>suggesting discussions of gods and souls doesn't belong in theology.

[Anonymous No.3126161]

>>3126119
You have no fucking idea where it leads because you have never studied it. Hey, ever hear of Kurt Goedel, the greatest logician who ever lived? He was driven to prove the incompleteness of arithmetic by his philosophical conviction that numbers exist independently of the mind. How about Albert Einstein, the greatest physicist since Newton? He was led to the principle of invariance of physical law across frames of reference by philosophical considerations about the limits of empirical knowledge. But philosophy hasn't led anywhere, as far as you know, because you lack the intelligence or imagination even to consider that so many smart people might know something that you don't. Rock on!

[Anonymous No.3126167]

>>3126154
Well, science evolved from logic, which is based on philosophy (induction/deduction being at the base of all else).

[Anonymous No.3126170]

>>3126154
It's the conceptual analysis of "illusion" that did the trick.

[Anonymous No.3126176]

>>3126160

>implying philosophy is simply about Gods and souls
>implying that the majority of philosophers didn't rule out the existence of a soul a long time ago and just leave it for the religious ones to bullshit about

[Anonymous No.3126177]

>>3126167
Science did not evolve from logic, and logic is not based on philosophy. Sorry. I'm pro-philosophy, but both those statements are false.

[Anonymous No.3126178]

>>3126160
There was no question of souls - in fact, the original question ridiculed the concept, pointing it to absurd. There was a question of Process, which stands at the heart of modern computer science.

[Anonymous No.3126180]

>>3126148
It's where all the crappy bits would go.

[Anonymous No.3126185]

>>3126120

Congratulations. You just belittled someone's arguments without actually saying anything of value or substance to justify that belittlement

[Anonymous No.3126186]

>>3126161
lol u mad

Philosophy itself is not the problem, then - it is philosophical questions that offer a horrible cost/benefit ratio to human efforts to answer them. Some questions are just a waste of time ATM.

[Anonymous No.3126193]

>>3126177
All logic is based on deduction/induction. If you were placed in a world where logic behaved completely differently, you could still deduct and induct its internal laws through application of these principles.

[Anonymous No.3126194]

>>3126176

i didn't imply that at all, dipshit. learn to imply.

[Anonymous No.3126199]

>>3126129
You have no idea whether philosophy can determine which goals one ought to have. You just assume it can't. That makes you a bad philosopher. Congratulations! You're trying to prove that something is pointless by being bad at that very thing.

[Anonymous No.3126200]

>>3126186
That guy >>3126161 is pretty mad. He makes relatively valid points though.

[Anonymous No.3126207]

>>3126185
That guy. It wasn't belittlement. It was genuine. His argument was perfectly fine, and somewhat philosophical. I approve.

[Anonymous No.3126208]

>>3126186

What's the cost of people thinking?

Other than a few calories and the trees that their books are written on.

[Anonymous No.3126210]

>>3126193
Yeah, well, logic predates philosophy and is independent of it, which was the point.

[Anonymous No.3126224]

>>3126161

suggesting it matters whether numbers are intrinsic to nature or whether they're a human construct.

Also, great, einstein may have used philosophy in his pursuit of knowledge but ultimately it was science that evidenced his statements enough to grant them truth-status.

in the same way, scientists use logic and deductions through out society to make new ideas but they're not accepted as accepted knowledge until sufficient evidence has been gathered.

Modern philosophy, as an academic subjective, is running really really dry, in the amount of answers it's giving, and the questions it asks are horribly pointless.

[Anonymous No.3126225]

>>3126210
Logic is based on intuitions, that were formalized in the first philosophical texts. Mathematics existed before they were formalized, too - people could add 2 and 1, and knew, in an abstract notation, that it would be 3. Later on, however, mathematics was the formal subject that studied the 'why', and the rules that govern, base, and spring forth from these intuitions that we had even when we were mere apes.

[Anonymous No.3126228]

>>3126224

*subject

[Anonymous No.3126230]

>>3126102
Radical skepticism is worth rejecting, and it has been rejected in terms quite like yours (by Quine, for one). But the rejection of radical skepticism is, as your answer shows, a philosophical pursuit, not a scientific one.

[Anonymous No.3126244]

>>3126224
Most-anything not concerned with ethics has little result today, but sadly most people do not study what has already been done unless they are philosophers. If more people would read the philosophical texts of what has been done in the past, there would be little need for the countless people reinventing the wheel.

[Anonymous No.3126245]

>>3126208
Opportunity cost.
It's not the face-value cost of pursuing certain philosophical questions which are probably unanswerable or even meaningless. It's the loss of all the things you *might have done instead*.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

[Anonymous No.3126247]

>>3126207

Wait, so was the first guy's point good or bad?

[Anonymous No.3126249]

>>3126244
Every adult should read Being and Time.

[Anonymous No.3126261]

>>3126245

Such as?

A scientist and a philosopher think very differently, if you put a load of philosophers in a room with all the scientific instruments they need they aren't going to solve world hunger, they'll be too busy contemplating whether the microscope exists or not.

[Anonymous No.3126265]

>>3126244

why can no one think of any new questions?

[Anonymous No.3126266]

Another question.

What of the value of political philosophy?

[Anonymous No.3126270]

>>3126081
>How can it be an illusion unless it appears to us one way while it's actually another way?
Let's take the pain for example. What is it? Can you even describe it to the person who have never experienced it? No, that's the point. It's just a reaction to a damage developed by evolution. Pain isn't inherently bad or good thing, any chemical reaction isn't inherently bad or good.

[Anonymous No.3126273]

>>3126265

Because the billions of people that existed before us thought of all the good ones first.

[Anonymous No.3126276]

>>3126261
>A scientist and a philosopher think very differently, if you put a load of scientists in a room with all the philosophical instruments they need they aren't going to solve ontological problems, they'll be too busy laying in chairs, folding paper hats.

[Anonymous No.3126297]

>>3126276

ontology is such bs it's unreal.

do i exist? yes
is this shit real? as far as i can tell, yes.

scientists don't fuck with stupid questions.

[Anonymous No.3126300]

>>3126270
It is input. Electrical signals and chemical reactions we use to udnerstand the outside world. There is a world outside, and we react to it. The lack of something being objectively good or bad does not makes it an illusion.

Seriously, whenever people hear chemicals they think 'fake'. Fuck no. WE ARE THE CHEMICALS AND THE CHEMICALS ARE US. This is how we look around and understand the world. If -YOU ARE- the illusion, is it an illusion? no, it is you, and all that exists for you.

[Anonymous No.3126302]

>>3126276

Your point here? Your wit escaped me.

[Anonymous No.3126308]

>>3126247
There was a first guy?

[Anonymous No.3126312]

>>3126270
Are you saying pain is an illusion? Or that my aversion to it is an illusion? Because of evolution? How bizarre.

[Anonymous No.3126315]

>>3126302
I mean absolutely positively nothing by it, if you're okay with that.

[Anonymous No.3126323]

>>3126300

After reading 'WE ARE THE CHEMICALS AND THE CHEMICALS ARE US' in big capital letters I was half expecting to see the word 'sheeple' further along the line.

But while we may be able to measure and qaulify and quantify this biochemistry and electrical signals we are unable to say at what point an electrical signal becomes emotion or vision. We can say that light hits the retina and the electrical signals are sent up this nerve to this point of the brain where the brain interprets it, but we can't say and this is where all these stimuli become the illusion of subjective sensation.

We can do an MRI and say 'look at this increased somewhere-lobal activity, he/she is feeling anger', but we can't point to the anger itself, we can't quantify or qualify subjective sensation.

[Anonymous No.3126325]

>>3126308

That >>3126108 one.

[Anonymous No.3126326]

>>3126300
No, I agree with you. I'm against the view that consciousness has some "immediate phenomenological qualities", that our minds aren't indistinguishable from the rest of the nature, that cannot be explained away by physics and science

[Anonymous No.3126331]

Philosophy graduate here.

The best things about philosophy are what it does to your mind: It opens up your imagination, disciplines you to articulate complex thoughts, sharpens your analytical skills, forces you to wrap your head around complex ideas, and gives you the best training in reason available. More often than not it forces you to look at the 'big picture', also.

I prefer to think of Philosophy as the most imaginative, creative and dizzying parts of other disciplines:

Philosophy of Psychology
Philosophy of Art
Philosophy of Economics
Philosophy of Computer Science

etc

[Anonymous No.3126333]

>>3126323

neither can philosophers

[Anonymous No.3126337]

>>3126300
No, I agree with you. I'm against the view that consciousness has some "immediate phenomenological qualities" that cannot be explained away by physics and science

[Anonymous No.3126339]

>>3126333

Just because philosophy can't answer a question doesn't mean science's explanation, or lack thereof, can.

[Anonymous No.3126347]

>>3126331
>>3126331

OP here.

This is also as far as I have surmised.

[Anonymous No.3126351]

>>3126347

Philosophy is of more use as a grindstone than as an axe then?

[Anonymous No.3126355]

Stephen Hawking appears to have no idea what Philosophy is. He's essentially hyper-/sci/.

How can science answer questions relating to the analyticity of a priori propositions?

[rimz !!mP/3/9/BIcp No.3126370]

>>3126339

so the question is redundant and philosophy proponents should stop bringing up subjectivity of emotion as an argument for philosophy being useful

[Anonymous No.3126371]

>>3126323
And.. how does experience translates into illusion? it is the result of - as you have said - well understood processes we can percieve - the end result of which is subjective experience that we cannot, at the moment, study.

[Anonymous No.3126378]

>>3126325
Yeah, I thought it was a good point, but then, the guy he was agreeing with was me. My point was, hey, you and I think the same way about this, and dude, it's a philosophical thought.

[Anonymous No.3126388]

>>3126323
>we can't quantify or qualify subjective sensation.
Are you sure that there even is anything to qualify in sensations?

you should read this http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/quinqual.htm Daniel Dennett ponders the same question.

[Anonymous No.3126418]

>>3126388
As much as I like Dennett, people need to stop using him so much.

[Anonymous No.3126421]

>>3126378

Ah, I got confused.
Now I look like a dick. Except I don't because we're all anonymous. Except tripfags.

[Anonymous No.3126422]

>>3126351
Philosopher here. That's not a bad analogy as far as it goes for most people, but make no mistake. I could never prove it to scientists, much less /sci/, but philosophy provides real insights into the nature of the world and how to live in it. It's weird that so many scientists find that so hard to accept, when so much of their thinking outside of scientific arenas is so much worse than what they demand in science. It's like, once they're not doing science, the chains come off and they just feel free to believe whatever the fuck they want. AND so many of them are such hopeless nerds, too--I don't know why they wouldn't want to apply focused thought to other parts of their lives. But without math and experiments, they're just helpless.

[Anonymous No.3126432]

>>3126388

Well I can be sure that I am having an experience, and electrical signals don't constitute an experience, so there must be something to qualify.

[Anonymous No.3126434]

>>3126421
No hard feelings, bro. There's a lot of fur flying around here. I'm calling someone an asshole in half my posts. WHOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOOOO!

[rimz !!mP/3/9/BIcp No.3126439]

>>3126422

adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom adhom

[Anonymous No.3126458]

>>3126422

I read philosophical books because I find them interesting, that's enough for me. I do maths, chemistry, biology, philosophy at college, I did philosophy thinking I'd enjoy it and I was right, I don't expect it to give me definitive answers in the same way science does does I believe it can give me insight into the way that I myself work, not on a physical level but in terms of my thoughts and feelings and how I can achieve my own maximum happiness. I like maths and science as well as philosophy, but for different reasons.

[Anonymous No.3126466]

>>3126432
Can you qualify the experience of seeing the color red? Nah, you can't without the help of the physical information, because there's nothing to qualify. There isn't qualitative properties in your subjective experiences.

[Anonymous No.3126467]

>>3126439

You don't know what an ad hom is. He isn't using 'scientists are nerds' to defend or prove a proposition, he's just being a cunt, and so it cannot be a fallacy.
Fallacies only exist when they're a premise of an argument. Observe the difference:

>You said that 2+2=5
>2+2=4
>Therefore you are wrong
>, you cunt

Not an ad hom, just cuntish.

>You say that 2+2=5
>but you're a cunt
>So what do you know?

Ad hom.

[Anonymous No.3126472]

>>3126434

I'm fairly confident that 70% of /sci/ is angsty teenagers and the rest is bitter neckbeards, so we're not going to have a sensible discussion without a good bit of bitchery. It's healthy if you ask me.

[Anonymous No.3126484]

>>3126466

I can qualify it in terms of the fact that I experience it.
I can say, this is my experience of the colour red. But I can't extract it from my head and say "look, here's my experience of the colour red" because it's impossible to objectively qualify something subjective. I can still subjectively qualify it.

[Anonymous No.3126487]

>>3126466
If the input is different and the subjective experience is different than the process must be different. Science is simply not advanced enough to tell everything apart as of yet.

[Anonymous No.3126494]

>>3126458
That guy, and I'm with you 100%. Philosophy does not yield the same kind of understanding that science does, and vice-versa. That's why I don't understand the anti-philosophy feeling among so many scientists. Interestingly, almost all philosophers love science, and learn about it, and use it in their daily lives, and rely on it in their philosophy where it applies, and think people who don't believe in science are irrational. They just don't think it's the only way to think seriously about the world.

[Anonymous No.3126498]

A lot of people are saying that somehow science gives 'definitive answers' whereas philosophy does not; this is remarkably ignorant.
Scientific claims are contingent. There are no definitive answers in science whatsoever. The most fundamental principles of science, such as Newtonian Mechanics, have time-and-again been shown to be only approximately true and often (in principle, if not in measurement) entirely false. There's nothing definitive about this at all.

Philosophy, on the other hand, gives answers which are far more universal and final than anything science has ever provided. The basic proofs of the falsity of infallibilism in Epistemology are such that it is utterly extinct. They are as insurmountable as the certainty of the irrationality of the square root of two.
That certainty ONLY exists in Mathematics and Philosophy, which are, at heart, far more similar than any other subjects. Their methods are the same, and yet you only discount one of these subjects due to a profound ignorance.

[Anonymous No.3126514]

>>3126467
>>3126439
You make me sad. It's like you don't even want scientists to have the chance to grow and develop as human beings.

[Anonymous No.3126545]

>using philosophical claims as evidence that philosophy is dead

[Anonymous No.3126576]

>>3126466

Subjective experiences are entirely qualitative, i believe you mean to say quantitative

[Anonymous No.3126593]

>>3126576
Nope. I checked it, I said it just right.

[Anonymous No.3126608]

>>3126432
> electrical signals don't constitute an experience
I deny your unsupported assumption.

[Anonymous No.3126611]

>>3126608
I support your unassuming denial.

[Dante !SamaOwO2P. No.3126666]

>>3126494


thats because all the philosophy you hear about is that postmodern crap.

whenever i talk to someone who just started his philosophy course its about how everything is subjective and thats why science cant prove shit etc etc....

or when i go to some artsfag or socialscience fag its often about how science opresses shit like homeopathy and natural medicine.


all in all i think its a minority of philosopher and people who call themselves that who are the loudest.

[Anonymous No.3126675]

>>3126666

Analytic Philosophy = God-tier subject.

[rimz !!mP/3/9/BIcp No.3127876]

>>3126467

Yeah sorry about that. I made a mistake.

[Anonymous No.3127901]

no, science is a philosophy

[Anonymous No.3128806]

>>3127901

This. Science is essentially a from of Philosophy. Certain questions such as "Do I exist" and "what is the meaning of life?" do no define Philosophy. These are just questions that people have used Philosophy to attempt to answer.

Philosophy is making an observation about something (i.e. a statement, question, thing, etc...), analyzing it, and attempting to deduce an answer about it. This is what the sciences do. Thus, science is philosophy.

I am not the best at arguing, so perhaps someone with better argumentative skills could comment on this.

[Anonymous No.3128830]

love is the attraction of MHC variability, this has been proven time and time again, and is apparent in all motile animals

take ur philosophical drivel to another board, there is no philosophical question left unanswered, and its useless in the wrong hands

the only valid philosophy is in evolutionary terms

[Anonymous No.3128847]

>>3128806

Same guy here. I forgot to add this: on the basis of these statements, I believe the sciences are more specific fields of philosophy. I.e. biologists ask, "What is life?" Chemists ask, "What is the universe?" Physicists ask, "How does the universe work?" And they all have very methodical ways of answering these questions. Philosophy itself tends to deal with the questions that we have not been able to find actual answers for l like these other fields of science, so they have not been categorized into a more specific 'philosophy' like biology or chemistry but rather remain in the realm of general philosophy.

I can't comment on ethics.