/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.6261989]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_wars

This is one of the most terrible things I have read, just a total rejection of objective scientific facts is not only taken seriously - but pushed and accepted.
I thought this was just something religious people did.

>The science wars were a series of intellectual exchanges, between scientific realists and postmodernist critics, about the nature of scientific theory and intellectual inquiry. They took place principally in the United States in the 1990s in the academic and mainstream press. The scientific realists accused the postmodernists of having effectively rejected scientific objectivity, the scientific method, and scientific knowledge. Scientific realists (such as Norman Levitt, Paul R. Gross, Jean Bricmont and Alan Sokal) argued that scientific knowledge is real, and that postmodernists thought that it is not real. Though much of the theory associated with 'postmodernism' (see poststructuralism) did not make any interventions into the natural sciences, the scientific realists took aim at its general influence. The scientific realists argued that large swaths of scholarship, amounting to a rejection of objectivity and realism, had been influenced by major 20th Century poststructuralist philosophers (such as Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard and others), whose work they declared to be incomprehensible or meaningless. They implicated a broad range of fields in this trend, including cultural studies, cultural anthropology, feminist studies, comparative literature, media studies, and science and technology studies. They accused those postmodernist critics who did actually discuss science of having a limited understanding of it.

[Anonymous No.6262001]

>>6261989
That whole discussion is stupid.
The question they should be asking is:

What works?

The scientific method works and unless the postmodern philosophers can show a better method, it remains king of the hill.

[Anonymous No.6262005]

postmodernists are just total human scum, creationists are the enemy you can see but the former by and large is just an absolute disease to any objective discussion

>>6262001
the problem with these sorts of discussions is post modernist types will go "oh it works because you made the system! how do we know up from down? that 2 and 2 dont in fact make 5?"

it's a whirlpool of sophism and logical fallicies that never goes anywhere and constantly wallows in it's own shit

normally i think rational people would dismiss it as lunatic ravings but it's taken very seriously, to be honest i view it as a religion as it functions just like one

[Anonymous No.6262009]

Religious people have actually contributed a massive amount to science. Postmodernists don't really contribute anything

[Anonymous No.6262017]

>>6262009
yeah, that's fair - i'm still an atheist and always will be

postmodernists actually are one step worse since they actively work to undermine many fields in a way much more insidious than christian, jewish, islamic creationists

[Anonymous No.6262046]

>>6262043
Heh, I'm remembering that.

[Anonymous No.6262043]

>>6262005
Philip K. Dick said it best:
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

[Anonymous No.6262065]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_technoscience

[Anonymous No.6262074]

So what do I do when a feminist tells me that gender and sex are social constructs?

It happened once. Both of us walked out of the room sure that the other one of us was wrong, apparently, so I must have failed...

[Anonymous No.6262075]

I want to believe these people are just some fringe minority of powerless nobodies but I know they actually have serious influence and not only that actively work to get themselves into positions of influence.

Hard science is almost entirely immune to their brain poison but these ideas actively undermine everything else.

[notOpie No.6262086]

>>6261989
>I thought this was just something religious people did.
nope, scientists are human... with all the jealousy envy and greed attached. Why ruin your gravy train by telling the truth?

[Anonymous No.6262081]

>>6262074
Tell them that gender =/= sex and that gender is largely influenced by societal values and norms while sex is purely biological.

[Anonymous No.6262082]

>>6262074
Sex isn't a social construct.
Some smaller aspects of gender might be, such as fashion or men having shorter hair than women.

[Anonymous No.6262083]

>>6262074
You might get that thing where they try and say sex and gender are different whereas most people who are unaware of these types of people just use the words interchangeably.

Failing that you can show them the evidence that humans are sexually dimorphic, males and females.
Just hope you dont encounter the rare smartass that brings up hermaphrodites and tries to say "see! we're all fluid!".

[Anonymous No.6262089]

>>6262065
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_technoscience

da fuq?

[Anonymous No.6262101]

>>6262081
I did that. Didn't convince her.

>>6262082
That's exactly what I tried.

>>6262083
Yes, she brought up hermaphrodites... I proposed putting hermaphrodites in a third, asexual category since they're not capable of sexual reproduction and then I was somehow worse than Hitler.

[Anonymous No.6262116]

>>6262101
Have you considered mentioning that hermaphrodites are genetic disorders, and form such a tiny, tiny minority of the population that they shouldn't even be considered for this debate?

[Anonymous No.6262114]

>>6262101
>and then I was somehow worse than Hitler.

Yeah there is not much you can really do there, since they're religious cultists anybody who can show how wrong they are is a heretic.

[Anonymous No.6262120]

>>6262116
I said something along the lines of that. At that point she shouted at me that there's nothing wrong with them.

[Anonymous No.6262121]

u cant no nuthn

[Anonymous No.6262143]

I did meet somebody once you suggested just confronting this bullshit full on, not even with objective facts (as these people are clearly immune to them) but to instead outbullshit them.

Just hammering into them with "oh so how are you more right than me? are you objective? how do you know? it's just a construct inside your mind!" and going onto bigger things from there.

Eventually the other side can just throw their hands up and go "oh well i guess nobody is wrong or right and we're totally equal!" and really just fatiguing them or getting them into a circle of sophism and fallacies. Circular logic loops just like you see in religious textbooks like "this is real because it says it is real" but instead "you are not right because nobody can be right! but i'm not right either because nobody can be right!".

It's like how people fuck with Tumblr and other such sites using "logic" exactly like that.

[Anonymous No.6262151]

>>6262143
>just like you see in religious textbooks

Such as?

[Anonymous No.6262160]

>>6262151
>the bible/koran/whatever is right because the it says everything in it is right, it is the inspired word of god and god is all knowing

[Anonymous No.6262166]

>>6262160
Christians and Muslims wouldn't say that their books are true because they are true, they would say that they're true because it is historically probable that those events occurred (i.e. Jesus performed the miracles, and Mohammed was inspired)

[Anonymous No.6262168]

>>6262166
but they would say that god is always right and that their textbooks are the inspired word of god (who is always right)
anyway, i think we're getting off point here

[Anonymous No.6262172]

>>6262168
Then that isn't circular reasoning

The book is true for x reasons, therefore I'll do what the book says.

[Anonymous No.6262181]

>>6262172
>god is always right
>god wrote/inspired this book through his agents
>this book is right because god is always right

circular reasoning

[Anonymous No.6262186]

>>6262181
Circular reasoning would be this: "God is always right. I know that because he said so, and he is always right."

Muslim/Christian/Jewish reasoning is: "We have x logical and historical evidences for believing that these supernatural events occurred. This book is therefore true."

[Anonymous No.6262203]

>>6262181
The third step should be "it says in the book that god is always right, therefore god is always right"

[Anonymous No.6262204]

This is why philosophy isn't a real science.

>YOU CAN'T KNOW NUFFIN'!

[Anonymous No.6262205]

>>6262186
so the argument presented in this image does not occur?

[Anonymous No.6262208]

>>6262186
No amount of historical evidence could possibly be enough to believe in the book if they weren't already believing supernatural god-sent events could occur.

[Anonymous No.6262210]

>>6262208
True. An atheist would say "Well without God, supernatural events couldn't occur." But a theist would say "Good thing God exists then"

It's not like theists say "God exists because the Bible says so. Checkmate!" or at least any serious theists

[Anonymous No.6262227]

>>6262210
Nah, but I've met one who referred to excerpts found by archaeological expeditions. Apparently some really old documents have been found that correspond surprisingly well to the stuff in the Bible.

[Anonymous No.6262235]

>>6262227
>Nah

Nah to what point exactly

[Anonymous No.6262237]

Ok, back on topic.

Screw post modernism.

[Anonymous No.6262239]

>>6262235
>It's not like blah blah and so on

>>6262237
Yeah. They're a bunch of intellectually dishonest faggots.

[Anonymous No.6262244]

>>6262239
>Nah
>argument is literally just "No"

it's been a great thread

[Anonymous No.6262245]

How did this mindless crap even gain serious traction in the modern era?

[Anonymous No.6262249]

>>6262244
I wonder whether you're autistic or I really formulated my response that badly.

[Anonymous No.6262253]

>>6262249
You didn't really formulate a response, you just said "Nah" as in "That isn't true" but you didn't say why realy

[Anonymous No.6262268]

>scientific theory
Two words scientists took for themselves and warped it into a meaning that fits their needs so they can't be proven wrong. This is what is wrong with the world today

[Anonymous No.6262272]

>>6262268
When we build planes based on science they fly, when we build them based on the assumption that 2 and 2 can make anything they would be lucky if they even got in the air.

Also you might want to look up what the word "theory" means in science.

[Anonymous No.6262277]

>>6262272
>means in science.
That's my point. you took a word and warped it into your own meaning. Theory, in the general and true term means something farm different than what you folks made it to be.

[Anonymous No.6262278]

Ya'll know about the Sokal Affair, right? Dude called them all out on their bullshit and rustled Derrida's jimmies something fierce. Some people claim Sokal's cavalier attitude about it hurt science's reputation/image by making it seem hostile to criticism but when criticism is based on absolutely nothing then hostility or disinterestedness is the way to go imo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

[Anonymous No.6262280]

>>6262277
>arguing semantics

So you dont really have an argument, do you?

You can make up your own entirely new language to communicate these concepts if you like. Will that change whether objective facts are true or false?

Will you float up into the sky if you decide the theory of gravity is against your religious beliefs?

[Anonymous No.6262283]

>>6262278
>The Sokal affair, also known as the Sokal hoax,[1] was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies. The submission was an experiment to test the journal's intellectual rigor and, specifically, to investigate whether "a leading North American journal of cultural studies – whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross – [would] publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions".[2]

>The article, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", was published in the Social Text Spring/Summer 1996 "Science Wars" issue. It proposed that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. At that time, the journal did not practice academic peer review and it did not submit the article for outside expert review by a physicist.[3][4] On its date of publication (May 1996), Sokal revealed in Lingua Franca that the article was a hoax, identifying it as "a pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense...structured around the silliest quotations [by postmodernist academics] he could find about mathematics and physics".[2]

Burned.

[Anonymous No.6262285]

>>6262245
it gained traction in the post-modern era

[Anonymous No.6262287]

>>6262278
>>6262283
Sokal is a master troll

[Anonymous No.6262289]

>>6262283
#rekt

[Anonymous No.6262290]

>>6262280
>Will you float up into the sky if you decide the theory of gravity is against your religious beliefs?

Now you're just being irrational, and illogical. When you use the term Theory in anything, it means it has not been proven fact. What You have does is taken that word, and warped it into to "Scientific Theory" Which turns it into a meaning for scientists to use for their own purpose. Making fact of whatever subject they so please without any real proof. Laws of nature, fact. Laws of Physics, facts. Thermodynamics, you name it, it can be proven or disproven. But once something is labeled Scientific Theory, then by some messed up twist of fate, no one can argue.

[Anonymous No.6262288]

>took place principally in the Untied States
figured as much

[Anonymous No.6262293]

>>6262290
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sokal#Quotes

>Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor.)

You're not going to put this to the test, of course.

>But once something is labeled Scientific Theory, then by some messed up twist of fate, no one can argue.

This is objectively false, you can prove currently established theories incorrect.

[Anonymous No.6262297]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

I read this article and I have a chuckle, but then I read the "background" section and I just get annoyed. The entire notion of what science even is is just getting shat on by these awful pieces of human garbage who honestly believe their feelings are more important than facts and move themselves into academic positions (positions of authority) to fuck up the minds of aspiring students and this filters down into society as a whole.

[Anonymous No.6262299]

>>6262280
>theory of gravity

Gravity is NOT a theory. It's the LAW.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gravitation

How do you know "theory" is a word that was warped into something that scientists use for their own purpose? I'll bet the word "theory" was invented by scientists.

[Anonymous No.6262301]

>>6262299
Yes I surmise it was as scientists needed words to codify to one another what it was they were talking about.

[Anonymous No.6262302]

There is so much I want to say, but I'm afraid you will all dismiss me.

Look into the Frankfurt School.
Look into interpretivism.

Longer post incoming...

[Anonymous No.6262305]

>>6262302
>Look into the Frankfurt School

Take off your tinfoil hat and go back to /pol/

[Anonymous No.6262307]

>>6262302
>>6262305
Look lets not talk about those guys ok.
Just stick to what a bunch of garbage post modernism is and we can all go from there.

[Anonymous No.6262308]

>>6262305
I'm not being anti-Semitic.
Debunk me.

[Anonymous No.6262312]

>>6262302
When I read OP, the first thing I thought of was the Frankfurt School too.

/pol/ is always right, the nose knows.

[Anonymous No.6262323]

When I hear of "anti intellectualism" in the west I can add post modernism to the list of big examples of it alongside religious studies and mocking intelligence in TV shows.

[Anonymous No.6262329]

>>6262043
Which, while an accurate definition, does nothing to prove reality as defined exists

Empiricism and the scientific method are useful in describing models and patterns of what we observe, but there is no cause to believe that anything observed describes an independent, objective reality.

That's not to say one doesn't exist, it just means that believing it does is just as baseless as believing it doesn't

[Anonymous No.6262333]

>>6262329
This is just a total waste of time really, you can sit around saying "nothing is right or wrong!" over and over again (and trying to persecute/mock anybody who calls you out on this obvious bullshit) or you can work with what you have and can observe.

[Anonymous No.6262339]

>>6262333
it is true that from some sense of utility hard sciences are far more useful, but if we don't acknowledge what we can and can't do with the discipline you get a relationship to science that rightfully should not occur if all the factors are considered.

If the goal here is to define what is true, which is usually the stated mission of science and practically all academic disciplines, we have to acknowledge that EVERYTHING is studied after agreeing on the axiom that "what appears true to our senses is true" which is, terrifyingly, baseless

[Anonymous No.6262336]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_postmodernism

Philosopher Noam Chomsky has argued that postmodernism is meaningless because it adds nothing to analytical or empirical knowledge. He asks why postmodernist intellectuals won't respond like people in other fields when asked:

>Seriously, what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc? These are fair requests for anyone to make. If they can't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in similar circumstances: to the flames.[1]

In a similar vein, Richard Dawkins writes in a favorable review of Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's Intellectual Impostures:[2]

>Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content.

[Anonymous No.6262341]

Sure is pol in here.

[Anonymous No.6262345]

>>6262341
Cite your source.

[Anonymous No.6262349]

>>6262339
No, these are based on what we can see and what we can objectively observe in repeated experiments.

What is baseless is your assertion that it's baseless because you think/believe that we might not be seeing what we think we are seeing while you have little evidence of any of this. It's pseudo intellectualism posing as science, trying to hide in as nebulous an area as possible.

Even that recently article making waves of "we may all be in a projection of another universe" was discovered with hard science, pic related for another example.

You can look at the quotes in >>6262336

It's the academic equivalent of shitposting in real life.

[Anonymous No.6262357]

>>6262339
Not the poster you respond to, but I have to say you are just trying to sound profound.

You're stuck in the "you can't know 'nuffin" fallacy. Get over it, or take a step out of Sokal's apartment window to prove your point.

[Anonymous No.6262367]

>>6262345
it criticizes the academically bankrupt disciplines known as the humanities, long ago destroyed by a certain cultural academic movement, and because it does--it is clearly 'conspiratorial,' 'racist,' and one only knows what other appellations might be affixed for stating the bald, naked Truth.

1. notice the capitalization.
2. have a good laugh.
3. ;_; comfort the offended
4 ?????
5. profit.

>>6262349
>It's the academic equivalent of shitposting in real life.
Not theory, but fact. Sorry, I'm just being cheeky.

[Anonymous No.6262372]

>>6262349
I'm not testing anything, so I'm definitely not using science right now, I suppose this is philosophy.

>you have little evidence of any of this

Reread what I wrote, because you're confirming what I was just saying. You assert that I must provide evidence to prove that observation does not describe objective reality, and by doing so you further reinforce the axiom that it observation IS descriptive of objective reality. There is no reason to believe this. I'm not making some anti-empiricist remarks (hell, science is my passion) I'm discussing the limits of our ability to describe reality from the vantage point we're in.

NOTE: I am not saying that observation is wrong or not describing reality, I'm saying that holding fast to the belief that it IS is not a scientific belief to have. The correct position is a kind of agnosticism, but behaving as if it is so, while acknowledging the true limits of the circumstance.

It sounds like you believe I hold the burden of proof, but you are the one operating under that fundamental axiom. I'm saying that as an axiom, nothing following it can really be said to be true

[Anonymous No.6262384]

>>6262372
The scientific method can be applied regardless of your ontological assumptions. It's all about finding predictors of MEASURABLE outputs (whether they be "real" or not). So take your mental masturbation elsewhere.

[Anonymous No.6262388]

>>6262372
>I'm not testing anything, so I'm definitely not using science right now, I suppose this is philosophy.

So it's a waste of time, what you're saying.
You are trying desperately to sound profound when all you are engaging in is pointless sophism.

>There is no reason to believe this

There is every reason to believe it if we can make repeated factual observations of these and then make scientific advancements based on these findings.

I'd restate what Chomsky said.
>Seriously, what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc? These are fair requests for anyone to make. If they can't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in similar circumstances: to the flames.

These ideas dont really add much to discussion.

[Anonymous No.6262394]

>>6261989
>They implicated a broad range of fields in this trend, including cultural studies, cultural anthropology, feminist studies, comparative literature, media studies, and science and technology studies

I hate these fields so much. Cultural studies and feminist studies are definitely the two worst offenders by a very large margin though. In those fields there is no process by which you test your hypothesis by trying to prove it wrong. Instead you come up with an idea that you want to be true and then you try to prove it with words. There is no experimentation, there is no falsifiability, there's no rigorous debate, it's just "here's what I think is true and therefore it is true". These fields aren't academic, they're just there to give bitter individuals a soap box and validation of their victim complex.

The professors in the women's studies and cultural studies departments are always the dumbest motherfuckers on campus. You listen to one give a speech and you'll go crazy from having to listen to them spew idiotic and unsupported claims as if they're facts.

IMO all universities should eliminate their X studies departments/majors. They go against everything academia stands for.

[Anonymous No.6262392]

>>6262384
I never said anything against this, in fact I said the same thing in my first post (>>6262329)
>the scientific method is useful in describing models and patterns of what we observe

I don't think we disagree there

[Anonymous No.6262400]

>>6262392
>I am not saying that observation is wrong or not describing reality, I'm saying that holding fast to the belief that it IS is not a scientific belief to have

The Scientific Method is falsification attempts of MEASUREMENT prediction and nothing more. You are contradicting yourself when you say the definition of science is not science. Hence, science works WITHOUT ontological assumptions.

[Anonymous No.6262403]

>>6262394
I'd add to this post by saying it's about finding other dumbasses that agree with you and then saying "well there is a group of us now, we're all right!".

This was even mocked in >>6262283

Where actual scientists took those fuckheads for a ruse cruise just to prove a point.

[Anonymous No.6262405]

>>6262394
capped

[Anonymous No.6262422]

>>6262400
>You are contradicting yourself when you say the definition of science is not science
That was my fault for causally using the word science where I should have been using the word empiricism. At the end of the day, when approached from a position of neutrality, there is no cause to believe that anything we observe is "real" and there is no way of knowing either way. It is useful to behave as if it is real, as that thought has, according to our observations, improved the world, but if we are rigorous in our intellectual honesty, there is no reason to believe any of it is actually there.

No, this idea doesn't have implications in utility or benefit of anyone, but if we're trying to discern the truth, due to the nature of our observing, the brain in a vat is just as plausible as anything else

[Anonymous No.6262439]

>>6262422
Thanks for not being a troll. We all know what you're saying, and it needs not be said (ever again).

If you are serious about science, just apply the sci. method with as much rigor as you would a mathematical proof, and forget about all the philosophical humdrum.

[Anonymous No.6262449]

>>6262388
>>6262388

This is one of those situations where I'm not seeking to just get mad and argue, I want this to come to a conclusion where one of us sees a fault in our reasoning

>There is every reason to believe it if we can make repeated factual observations of these and then make scientific advancements based on these findings.
I AGREE WITH THIS. I never said anything against it. Hence "behaving as if it [observation describing objective reality] is so, while acknowledging the true limits of the circumstance" The scientific method is productive, and has proven itself so.

I'm saying take a step back. Look at the bigger picture. Nothing can truly be said with any degree of certainty as everything goes forth from the assumption (read:not verifiable nor falsifiable) that observation reflects reality. You may think this is a useless statement, sure, irrelevant. But is it untrue?

The burden of proof lies on the one who posits that he knows the actual state of the universe that is independent of human observation. By the nature of human observation this is impossible.

And Chomsky is criticizing postmodernism, this is far from postmodernism, if anything it is closer to Cartesian doubt, evil demon, etc.

You think I give a fuck about sounding profound on an anonymous imageboard? I'm trying to have a conversation, so lets stick to the arguments and away from the ad hominems like calling me a sophist

[Anonymous No.6263269]

>>6262449
>This is one of those situations where I'm not seeking to just get mad and argue, I want this to come to a conclusion where one of us sees a fault in our reasoning

Then this would have to be yourself as everything is against you. You cant just throw your hands in the air and say "evidence is just a construct of our minds!" in a desperate attempt to appear correct.

>The burden of proof lies on the one who posits that he knows the actual state of the universe that is independent of human observation.
The burden of proof would lie on yourself to prove things that were previously believe to be true, as in fact untrue.

You cant do this of course because due to the fallacious nature of your argument you think this way of testing things objectively is in fact not objective.

>And Chomsky is criticizing postmodernism, this is far from postmodernism, if anything it is closer to Cartesian doubt, evil demon, etc.

Actually it's sophism for the most part with maybe a little bit of "brain in a vat".

>You think I give a fuck about sounding profound on an anonymous imageboard? I'm trying to have a conversation, so lets stick to the arguments and away from the ad hominems like calling me a sophist

You waste time and shitpost, this is your entire line of thought. You want to sound profound when really it's just verbal diarrhea. You retreat into this endless circle of "I can never be wrong because who is to say what wrong is!?" and you have no means of trying to show you are in fact wrong so your entire "argument" is a pointless waste of time not even worthy of /b/.

[Anonymous No.6263304]

>>6263269
the brain in a vat is just an updated name for the evil demon thought experiment. It is a form of Cartesian doubt and philosophical skepticism.

You're also using the word "shitpost" in a very unconventional way. it doesn't mean a post you disagree with, to my understanding it is a post that a poster consciously made poor and pointless, and even if you think this discussion is fruitless, it is far from the quality of a lot of shit on /sci/ today.

>The burden of proof would lie on yourself to prove things that were previously believe[d] to be true, as in fact untrue.
This seems to be your crux, but the problem is it is a faulty one. If we are being rigorous in our logic here, I don't think you would disagree that just because a statement was previously held it follows that that statement should be the neutral position of truth. Hell that same argument would apply to an enlightenment thinker's criticism of the existence of God, under that same statement ("The burden of proof would lie on yourself to prove things that were previously believe[d] to be true, as in fact untrue.") you would require an atheist to prove that god does not exist, when it is rationally agreed upon that the burden of proof falls on the person making the positive claim.

Also note that after several responses you have still not grasped that I AM NOT SAYING "evidence is just a construct of our minds!" I am saying that observation cannot be "proved" by any human means to actually describe reality. This does not imply that it doesn't, just that just that saying it does is a statement without backing, hence, an axiom.

[Anonymous No.6263311]

>>6263304
No, I'm just demonstrating to you that your entire line of reasoning is empty and vacuous. I know precisely what you are saying.

There is literally nothing to it, it shows "well how about this?"....well, what about it? There is nothing to it, there is nothing that can be done with it. It's an attempt at sounding stimulating backed by what ifs and borderline superstition.
Nothing is really advanced with these ideas and post after post you just repeat the same vacant argument trying to act like it's just too deep to understand.

[Anonymous No.6263316]

>>6263269
the most skeptical position possible that makes the least assumptions about anything is simply acknowledging the existence of thought. Anything more and you make a baseless assumption. Not that living with those assumptions isn't useful, it's actually the right thing to do, but it is impossible to prove those assumptions are right.

[Anonymous No.6263323]

>>6263316
I like that artist, who is he?

[Anonymous No.6263334]

>>6263311
>"well how about this?"....well, what about it?
You fail to say a god damn thing here. You literally just discard what I said of your own volition and claim victory. The statements I've made aren't unintelligible or fundamentally faulty (if they are you've failed to point out where)
>There is nothing to it, there is nothing that can be done with it
This, as well, doesn't mean a goddamn thing, nor does it contribute to the discussion. What the hell does "can be done with it" mean? Utility? falsifiability? Something else? These are not things you don't define when making a statement like that.

>borderline superstition
I am literally approaching from the very least possible unfounded beliefs being held. It is the polar opposite of superstition

>It's an attempt at sounding stimulating
I came into this thread because >>6262043 made an iffy statement. I don't know why you're clinging to this idea

>Nothing is really advanced with these ideas
I'd agree, and that is entirely irrelevant to their truth, which is the point of discussion, not their utility.

>act like it's just too deep to understand
It's a position held by most that have looked into it, and there's people on other /sci/threads nonchalantly accepting it as truth (see >>6262883 from a whole different thread)

>>6263323
Zach Weiner over at SMBC

[Anonymous No.6263338]

>>6263334
>The statements I've made aren't unintelligible or fundamentally faulty (if they are you've failed to point out where)

You can follow Chomsky in the test he suggested. Your statement is useless and you bring bad science into what should be an objective discussion.
How is it not superstition?
I could say there is a teacup orbiting pluto and when you say "well we can look and it's not there" i can say "oh well how do you know? your instrument made by other scientists with their own biases just says it's not there!".

>and there's people on other /sci/threads nonchalantly accepting it as truth

Getting other people who are as dim witted as yourself to agree with you does not make you correct, you need to come up with a hypothesis to prove this. All you have done this entire discussion is mentally jerk yourself off trying to imply that I should be impressed/stimulated/feel wrong because you provide nothing to back up your claims.

Zach Weiner, thanks.

[Anonymous No.6263359]

>>6263338

Not the guy you're bitching at, but you're not much of a free-thinker pal, nor one willing to exit his ego.

[Anonymous No.6263362]

>>6263338
You are fucking beyond the effort I'm willing to exert for an imageboard debate my friend. When you take a mandatory intro to philosophy class your first year of uni you will cringe at what you wrote in this thread, because you'll find nothing I've said is remotely controversial to anyone who has more than a passing interest in epistemology.

And its a teapot, not a teacup, it was a thought experiment by Bertrand Russel, which, while irrelevant in this instance (like a lot of things you've written) Russel fucking wrote tomes on the skeptical hypothesis, so if you've ever thought about reading the person who you're misremembering quotations from, you would find you're on the wrong side of the fence.

>bad science
this is not science, science has a very specific definition. And no, before you say anything, the fact that its not science does not make anything I say worthless. Math is not science. Strict empiricism is not science. Modal Logic is not science.

>objective discussion
The idea that you would unironically use this phrase has me questioning if you're a troll or just underaged

>you need to come up with a hypothesis to prove this
epistemologyfordummies.jpg

Browse SMBC for a few pages and you'll find that he, too acknowledges this (notice I say acknowledges, not believes, because it is fundamentally apparent to literally everyone who has studied it)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism

http://www.iep.utm.edu/skepcont/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_doubt

If you can solve the skeptical hypothesis like you think you can, write it in a paper, submit to the philosophy department of your choice, and be remembered as the most significant individual in the field since since fucking Socrates.

Get reading

Pic related, it's you, who zach wiener is making fun of

[Anonymous No.6263364]

>>6263359
I'm a free thinker, but being a free thinker does not mean you automatically accept everything put in front of you where it presents no serious logic to say it's correct and instead tries to attack the very notion of logic itself to hide in a nebulous space of "what ifs".

I guess Dawkins and Comsky are not free thinkers then either.

All that aside I'd say I've pretty conclusively won the point anyway.
>but who is to say what a win is? to be continued

[Anonymous No.6263370]

>>6262074
I can understand saying gender is a social construct to an extent; it dependson what aspect of gender you refer to: gender roles (constructed), gender expression or nuerobiology (both constucted and biological); but sex? What is that person smoking?

[Anonymous No.6263373]

>>6263362
>You are fucking beyond the effort I'm willing to exert for an imageboard debate my friend. When you take a mandatory intro to philosophy class your first year of uni you will cringe at what you wrote in this thread,

Dohohoho, I did do that actually. Then I realized what a waste of time any money it was when I could just spend far less money in borrowing books/reading online.

I have to say that I have quite enjoyed grinding you into the pavement as I have.
Your every argument is a waste of time as addressed in >>6263364. Literally nothing comes from this.

[Anonymous No.6263416]

>>6263362
hahahahahah this fucking mad guy

[Anonymous No.6263420]

>What science actually is:
2+2 = 4,

>What scientists think it is:
White males are evil! Oy vey this is another shoah! You don't believe in global warming, I mean climate change, I mean uh uhh..muh kyoto goy! Why do you hate the planet?! Look at muh muh polls of acceptance! Evolution is real stupid christian, but all people are exactly the same!!!!

[Anonymous No.6263428]

>>6261989

>postmodernists

aka "people whose opinions you should never take seriously"

[Anonymous No.6263430]

>>6263428
The only part of it I take seriously is the thought of people who control curriculum taking it seriously.

[Anonymous No.6263503]

>>6263420
go to bed /pol/

[Anonymous No.6263504]

>>6263503
ride a /pol/ like it's yor daddies tiny dick

[Anonymous No.6263542]

>>6263362

You can't expect scientists to acknowledge things that they can't poke.

[Anonymous No.6263543]

>>6263542
I dont think astrophysicists poke stars and planets.

[Anonymous No.6263546]

If you don't read Deleuze as literature you're doing it wrong.

[Anonymous No.6263548]

>>6263543
they can poke them with their telescopes

[Anonymous No.6263549]

>>6263548
I'll poke ur mum with my telescope.

[Anonymous No.6263552]

>>6263503
What /pol/ should really address is that all the "science wars" shit-flinging only benefits useless academics who have time to write about it (though it also serves a sop to bruised egos in a less quantifiable way).

[Anonymous No.6263550]

>>6263548

this. poking fucking everywhere. they'e even invented elaborate poking devices just to satisfy their poking needs.

[Anonymous No.6263551]

>>6263373

>2014
>being an autodidact

Enjoy your weak grasp of a narrow field, your inability to apply any kind of interdisciplinary knowledge to problems, and a lifetime of being the unwitting butt of jokes as you pronounce dozens of common words incorrectly.

[Anonymous No.6263555]

>>6263552

I'd say the /pol/ interpretation is that postmodernism serves to soften the minds of young American adults so that they will be more easily manipulated into accepting creeping white genocide.

[Anonymous No.6263558]

>>6263551
>I need somebody to tell me stuff because my own self worth is so low i dont trust myself to learn by myself

For more serious fields like physics, chemistry or medicine I'll be getting taught but if I want to learn philosophy I can sit down and read it on my own in my own time and discuss it with different people later (similar to how many actual famous philosophers did) or even with people here while studying another field.

Enjoy working in retail or another field completely unrelated to philosophy.

[Anonymous No.6263560]

>>6263558
Many entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are philosophy graduates. You don't visit tech websites like Techcrunch?

[Anonymous No.6263561]

>>6263555
>softening the mind for white genocide
Is this what /pol/ tards actually believe?

[Anonymous No.6263562]

>>6263555
>>6263552
Well I dont know what you two are on about but to me it's just a massive waste of time that really does not advance the species at all.

Since it knows it cant stand up logically and objectively, it instead tries to attack the very ideas of logic and objectivity as recent social constructs.
On the upside at least I get to laugh at retards who pay money to get taught this shit and end up with nothing. I'd feel sorry for them if they did not have a loathing for everybody and everything else.

[Anonymous No.6263565]

>>6263558

You better make sure you read journals as well to make sure you're not 30-50 out of date.

Oh, wait, those are extortionately expensive unless you're affiliated with a university. Ho hum.

[Anonymous No.6263568]

>>6263560
So are you going to make a startup?
These guys were smart in their own right before philosophy. Many others still are in fact dropouts!

Methinks you're trying to ride off coattails.

[Anonymous No.6263569]

>>6263562
>Since it knows it cant stand up logically and objectively, it instead tries to attack the very ideas of logic and objectivity as recent social constructs.

Does it? Because a great deal of Foucault's and Derrida's work centres on the concept of logos (logic, reason) as it functioned in Ancient Greece, close to the beginning of Western civilization.

[Anonymous No.6263570]

>>6263562
Postmodernism is not really a thing anymore. I hope you are aware of that. This is not the 60s-70s. The 80s killed most of postmodernism. Only postmodernist fiction literature is left, which is not unenjoyable if you ask.

[Anonymous No.6263571]

>>6263428
This board itself is a postmodern experience. If you have more than a vague idea of what postmodernity means, most anything that describes it would describe internet message boards. You can't escape the breakdown of grand narratives, not even by being willfully ignorant.

>>6263562
You're mistaken in thinking that postmodernity is a school of thought rather than a set of unavoidable conditions. I'm sorry you think so shallowly about things you suppose are irrelevant to you.

[Anonymous No.6263572]

>>6263570

Who, in your opinion, where the most significant figures and movements of the 80s?

[Anonymous No.6263573]

>>6263568
They were probably smart before studying Philosophy at Stanford, but their philosophy courses definitely didn't make them more stupid.

[Anonymous No.6263575]

>>6263570
>The 80s killed most of postmodernism

How did this happen?
Soviet funding dry up? huehheuhuehhueh

Ok seriously though.

[Anonymous No.6263574]

>>6263573

Then again, there was that Pirsig guy.

Philosophy can fuck you up worse than crack. Not even kidding.

[Anonymous No.6263578]

>>6263572

>where

hurr, were*. I dun goof'd.

[Anonymous No.6263580]

>>6263562
>that really does not advance the species at all.

Cringe.

[Anonymous No.6263583]

>>6263575
Soviet funding? I hope you are aware that communism, in the hard sense, hates everything postmodern? Have you ever seen socialist art? It's extremely realist. The Soviet hated most of the social sciences. Applied sciences and marxism were the only things taught. Even theoretical natural sciences had a hard time during Soviet time.

[Anonymous No.6263581]

>>6263574
It can suck in talented people who would be better placed elsewhere.
I've seen people lose friends to that shit, just made them a totally useless pain in the ass who I could tell had such great talent and were going into science but instead fucked about with shitty majors and took a long time to get back on track.

Think Will Hunting but even more of a fuckhead.

[Anonymous No.6263586]

>>6263583
I know I know, I was just making a snide reference to the soviets supporting many people who believed these things in the west but if they went to the USSR in a later time they would be put in a gulag or just dismissed as total morons.
I should have been more clear.

As for soviet art, yes I have quite a bit of it on my other computer - I think the stuff promoting their space program is actually really cool.

[Anonymous No.6263588]

>>6263581

Meanwhile I work in information technology (linguistics, computer science, AI) and it is obvious that these fields could not exist without extremely intelligent philosophers making huge strides in modal logic and semantics.

You enjoy your vitriol and petty academic tribalism though.

[Anonymous No.6263587]

>>6263575
Not that poster but the Reagan years made most academia feel useless in contrast to the more hopeful 60s. In the 80s there was more "practical" theory, or theory that tried to apply itself to more specific situations. I'm thinking of feminist theory (especially with the notion of intersectionality, attempting to move beyond "radical lesbian" feminism) and post-colonial theory. I'm not really that knowledgeable about the history of ideas, though

[Anonymous No.6263590]

>>6263583
> Even theoretical natural sciences had a hard time during Soviet time.
Vad de fickan

[Anonymous No.6263594]

>>6263581
Not really true. If you can only go to a mediocre university located in some flyover shithole, then yes, your only changes of success are by studying engineering or other applied sciences, but if you can go to an elite university (Caltech, MIT, Stanford, Ivy, UCLA, etc), then you are intelligent and "networked" enough to do everything in life that you want. There is a huge gulf in America between elite universities and their graduates and filler pleb colleges and their unfortunates.

[Anonymous No.6263593]

>>6263570
Nah man, Academic postmodernism thrived in 60s to 80s and peaked in 90s.

Literary died out in 80s tho.

[Anonymous No.6263597]

>>6262204
all science is philosophy

[Anonymous No.6263605]

>>6263597

Philosophy/linguistics student here.

If you make superficial equivalences like this you deprive both terms of their meaning.

Science is not philosophy, philosophy is not science. They share a number of interest areas and many academics work in both. However, in terms of their goals, approaches and rationales they are generally easy to distinguish from one another. Both contribute to civilization, and both are interesting in their own right.

[Anonymous No.6263606]

>>6263588
Well I'm happy for you, the problem with the overwhelming majority of philosophy majors I've met is they seem to think that because they read the works of insightful philosophers a little more than most people that this actually makes them insightful philosophers.

I'll respect Aristotle, Socrates and even Plato and other major names. Not posers who read their works among others and think they're now inspired masterminds able to comment on fields they know nothing about (and the less they know the more opinions they have).

>>6263594
>If you can only go to a mediocre university located in some flyover shithole, then yes

They're not in the US so I'm not sure how well it applies (your point would certainly still apply to them on some level though I would say). I think it was just a combination of confirmation bias with a professor who agreed with them and then not really spreading out to read things that might make them seriously uncomfortable.

As Aristotle said
>It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

[Anonymous No.6263607]

>>6262204
How intellectual of you to ignore three two millenniums of the most revered products of mankind that gave birth to "real" science just because you might have heard an exaggerated bottom line of Derrida or Baudillard, both philosophers from last fifty years.

[Anonymous No.6263611]

>>6263606

And there are certainly arrogant science students who haven't contributed anything, either. That you met a few people who had bad personalities doesn't reflect on the merits of philosophy as a pursuit.

>>6263607
>Baudillard

I just wanted to say that Baudrillard's last two books were really, really fucking good, like poetry almost. It's a shame he made his name with so much rabid bullshit earlier.

>muh war that didn't happen but then it did but oh wait no it didn't

[Anonymous No.6263612]

>>6262394
academia stands for whatever we attribute to it >hurr durr stop liking what i dont

[Anonymous No.6263613]

>>6263611
>>6263606

Or rather, on the merits of the STUDY of philosophy as a pursuit, either. Everyone is a student at some point, and even great thinkers continue learning their entire lives.

It really sounds as though your criticisms of philosophy are motivated by some weird personal vendetta rather than any substantial problem with philosophy itself.

[Anonymous No.6263614]

>>6262394
> They're stupid because they don't believe what I have been doctrined to believe about rhetorics!

[Anonymous No.6263618]

>>6263611
>>6263613
>And there are certainly arrogant science students who haven't contributed anything, either. That you met a few people who had bad personalities doesn't reflect on the merits of philosophy as a pursuit.

I can say pretty conclusively that of the science students I have met, philosophy majors have blown them out of the water in wankery. Many of them get to the ends of their degrees and just stop thinking (if they even did at all), they think they know it all and are content to just waste time getting high saying nobody could ever know anything and feeling like masterminds saying this.

Also in general many of the science students are much more reserved personality wise.

>It really sounds as though your criticisms of philosophy are motivated by some weird personal vendetta rather than any substantial problem with philosophy itself.

I dont hate the field as I recognize it's importance in getting us to where we are today. I sure as hell hate much of the current generation though.

[Anonymous No.6263620]

>>6263614
>implying the post modernists discussed and their followers have not been indoctrinated to stupid beliefs

No reaction image.

If I doubt by professors views on physics I can test the theories he puts out in a lab.

[Anonymous No.6263622]

>>6263618
>I can say pretty conclusively that of the science students I have met, philosophy majors have blown them out of the water in wankery.

This is the thing. The tiny fraction you have met aren't actually representative of either area of thought. This is basic critical thinking.

>>6263618
>I sure as hell hate much of the current generation though.

Are you referring to actual philosophers or what? Because, again, philosophy isn't represented by whatever douchebags did terrible things to make you despise philosophy so much.

[Anonymous No.6263626]

>>6263620
>If I doubt by professors views on physics I can test the theories he puts out in a lab.
That's not even true. I hope you are trolling...

[Anonymous No.6263624]

>>6263620
>implying the post modernists discussed and their followers have not been indoctrinated to stupid beliefs
I never said that though.

> If I doubt by professors views on physics I can test the theories he puts out in a lab.
So are you saying that you feel that the postmodern fields are not to your liking because you do not feel comfortable for not being able to test theories about stuff like history or woman studies?

[Anonymous No.6263627]

>>6263618
Why wouldn't a scientific thinker like you use anecdotal evidence to construct their world view?

[Anonymous No.6263629]

>>6263594
The gulf isn't that big actually for most majors. You can find employment for all applicable degrees going to a decent school. hard sciences and engineering more likely yes, but getting your MA in Psychology from a less renown school does not make it worthless

[Anonymous No.6263633]

>>6263624
So when you greentexted the other guy, you did it knowing the same idea applies to yourself?

>So are you saying that you feel that the postmodern fields are not to your liking because you do not feel comfortable for not being able to test theories about stuff like history or woman studies?

I don't like them because there is not really any principles to any of their theories and there is not an evidence based approach to what they do. In fact many of them would mock the very notion of evidence and objectivity yet it wants to think it is just as valid as actual science is.

It's a field for posers with very little usefulness left in it.

[Anonymous No.6263637]

some recommended reading for this thread.

Steven weinbergs "Against philosophy". he talks about the unreasonable ineffectiveness of philosophy

RIchard dawkins, "Post modernism disrobed", he gives post modernists a spanking

[Anonymous No.6263636]

>>6263633
> So when you greentexted the other guy, you did it knowing the same idea applies to yourself?
Yes.
> In fact many of them would mock the very notion of evidence and objectivity yet it wants to think it is just as valid as actual science is.
And you just have a different sentiment about its validity. Yeah. Opinions. Great. Why you gotta mock it?

[Anonymous No.6263640]

>>6263633
What about fields like psychology and sociology? They aren't considered hard sciences because their principles are based off of measured data. But they still have significant impact in their applied areas.

[Anonymous No.6263639]

>>6263629
You have employment and you have EMPLOYMENT. Good luck getting that job in a top multinational or institution based in NYC or SF with your degree from a low tier or mid tier college in Kansas.

Google and Facebook for example pretty much only accept Stanford, Caltech or MIT graduates. They don't even bother with the rest, they just throw their CV in the bin.

[Anonymous No.6263641]

>>6263637
Noam Chomsky was a good source on them too.
Quote.

>Seriously, what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc? These are fair requests for anyone to make. If they can't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in similar circumstances: to the flames

[Anonymous No.6263642]

>>6263637
I'll add the sokal affair, just to highlight how academically faulty postmodernists are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

[Anonymous No.6263643]

>>6263640
Denying the existence of psychological and sociological phenomena is beyond stupid. Sociology and psychology both use the scientific method to understand those phenomena. The problem is that there is a lot of badly practised science in those fields, but they are not inherently bad.

[Anonymous No.6263646]

>>6263639
You don't have to be employed at a top institution to be apart of a field you enjoy nor to get a means to a quality life.

Besides, don't top institutions also look at what degree you have and your actual experience too.

Stop disregarding 90% of college students

[Anonymous No.6263647]

>>6263640
Psychology taught in Anglosaxon and Nordic world is very much an empirical science.

In French World/Continental Europe/South America psychoanalysis is a larger field and is hardly empirical.

[Anonymous No.6263651]

>>6263562
advance the species
TOPKEK

[Anonymous No.6263654]

>>6263647
That's nonsense. Psychoanalysis is made popular by Americans (although I think it's German). It's still considered a very American thing in France. French people have never really been involved with psychology and it's probably the country where psychology is the least taken seriously in the world. The French are mainly interested in pure mathematics and philosophy.

[Anonymous No.6263652]

>>6263643
Most postmodern thought is grounded in Husserl's phenomenology, which itself took psychology away from Freudian "readings" into something with more thickness. These fields can't be separated into sheep and goats as some would like them to be.

[Anonymous No.6263655]

>>6263637
> Simulacra and Simulacrum
> On Grammatology
> Being and Time
> Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
> The Order of Things

[Anonymous No.6263656]

>>6263620
>i can test the capacity of the ideology i already know with the tools of the ideology i know!

[Anonymous No.6263659]

>>6263640
I much prefer neuroscience myself, I have a respect for psychology though but sociology I really feel "eh" towards.

I think neuroscience is going to come to really push those two out of the main arena. Not do away with them entirely however.

[Anonymous No.6263660]

>>6263655
oh you! just handing guys their asses

[Anonymous No.6263661]

>>6263655
i put steven there, because its a physicists view on philosophy, this isnt /lit/

[Anonymous No.6263663]

>>6263654
> Psychoanalysis is made popular by Americans
Psychoanalysis was popular in America in 50s and 60s but has died away slowly with the advent of more analytically oriented scientific psychology.
> although I think it's German
Freud was an Austrian Jew, Jung was Swiss.
> . French people have never really been involved with psychology and it's probably the country where psychology is the least taken
seriously in the world.
But the third most important character in psychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan, is French. You can still do courses of psychoanalysis there even at undergrad level, which is impossible in UK or US for example.

Again Psychology and Psychoanalysis should be divided as two fields here.

[Anonymous No.6263664]

>>6263661
> i put steven there, because its a physicists view on philosophy, this isnt /lit/
So? Isn't it important to know who oppose you and how? To get perspective from others?

[Anonymous No.6263665]

>>6263664
i agree, but this is /sci/ in addition, stevens views are relatively a fresh perspective.

[Anonymous No.6263666]

>>6263659
isn't neuroscience basically psychology with the ability to measure the activity triggered in the brain by whatever stimulus that's predicted to cause it?

[Anonymous No.6263670]

>>6263643
I remember I saw a psychiatrist once (because I'm cray) and I asked him about the people who want to say mental illness is not in fact mental illness and it's all just a construct of our views and blah blah fucking blah you know exactly how it goes.

The example illness was paranoid schizophrenia with auditory hallucinations. Right off the bat he's like "oh...those people". Basically, a person like this simply cannot function effectively in the wild/with a group of humans.

They'll come apart at the seams, think everybody is out to get them, believe total delusions and the suicide rate among them is something like fifty percent because they're just so fucked all the time with what their condition does to them and how miserable it makes them feel.

Now I'm reminded of this video, especially the last section where it has interviews with actual sufferers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR8ADuqrGx8

>>6263656
>implying scientists invented the physical laws of the universe

No, they just observed them.

Many of these early observations were even made by different, disconnected peoples with no relation to eachother and they found the same results.

If you want to become one of the most famous humans ever to exist you can disprove the entire notion of it and you cant hide behind "oh they'll just use their own field".

Alchemy was shown false by chemistry as was Phrenology by Psychiatry and Neroscience.

[Anonymous No.6263671]

>>6263663
I don't think psychanalysis is used for treating patients, it's just a somewhat obsessive method of reading. Lacan should be remembered above all else for shaping surrealist thought into something academically productive. Whether or not this is really productive or disruptive, it's probably also significant that surrealism was one of the earliest responses to fascism.

[Anonymous No.6263674]

Posting this comment from another thread.

>Science can not explain everything at the moment. We lack complete understanding over our brains. That's why philosophy is still important for things that science cannot give an answer to (mostly related to ethics and the "why" of things).
The only thing that will make philosophy completely obsolete is neuroscience.
>Unfortunately, not enough research funds are going towards neurobiology.

[Anonymous No.6263680]

>>6263670
"Illness" absolutely is a construct, you're just conditioned to read "construct" in an overly extreme way. Please don't use tumblr as an example of or comparison to academic thought. A better example is the use of ADD medication on children or even the overdiagnosis of autism in America or 4chan.

Alchemy was never a replacement for chemistry and it's frustrating that people are this poorly educated about history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chymical_Wedding_of_Christian_Rosenkreutz

[Anonymous No.6263681]

>>6263674
> The only thing that will make philosophy completely obsolete is neuroscience.
Will neuroscience answer questions like
"Are there objective morals?", "Can we distinguish real from a simulation of something real and what does that imply?" or "How could Marxist-Leninist dialectic be used efficiently to avoid dictatorship of the proletariat"?

[Anonymous No.6263683]

>>6263680
>Alchemy was never a replacement for chemistry
another anon here, but it hink he meant chemistry was a replacement for alchemy.
sort of like how relativity replaced newtons models of gravity.
or quantum physics changed our classical world view etc....

[Anonymous No.6263684]

>>6263637
I went and found the article.
>http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/824

That was actually a good read too. Not too long either.

>But don't the postmodernists claim only to be 'playing games'? Isn't it the whole point of their philosophy that anything goes, there is no absolute truth, anything written has the same status as anything else, no point of view is privileged? Given their own standards of relative truth, isn't it rather unfair to take them to task for fooling around with word-games, and playing little jokes on readers? Perhaps, but one is then left wondering why their writings are so stupefyingly boring. Shouldn't games at least be entertaining, not po-faced, solemn and pretentious? More tellingly, if they are only joking around, why do they react with such shrieks of dismay when somebody plays a joke at their expense. The genesis of Intellectual Impostures was a brilliant hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, and the stunning success of his coup was not greeted with the chuckles of delight that one might have hoped for after such a feat of deconstructive game playing. Apparently, when you've become the establishment, it ceases to be funny when somebody punctures the established bag of wind.

Heh.

[Anonymous No.6263687]

>>6263681
You would likely get an answer of "it depends on the brains you're working with".

Since different people think differently you could well put a group of minds together that can work effectively in a commune. A similar think would apply to the morality tale.

As for the "can we tell if we're in the matrix or not". I remember reading that some scientists were working on an experiment to test exactly that, cant find a link though.

[Anonymous No.6263690]

>>6263684
The only windbag here is a useless academic who's spent the past decades or so promoting atheism at the expense of science and himself at the expense of everything else. Nothing in the article addresses a single postmodern thinker, much less a thought. What did you read out of the article other than that postmodernists don't believe anything (according to Richard Dawkins, no citation needed) and that they're wrong?

[Anonymous No.6263691]

>>6263684
Postmodernism being boring is not a fact. I have enjoyed many postmodernist works, even though I know it's nonsense.

And don't underestimate the complexity of postmodernism, it's a game and it has its own rules. It's fiction, yes, but just like any game, you have those who win and those who lose. You cannot pretend that you understand postmodernism. Postmodernists master their own game.

Heck, 4chan sometimes seems like a postmodernist experiment.

[Anonymous No.6263693]

>>6263690
that they are idiots too far stuck up their ass, while being stuck up their ass would be ok, if they were ever useful or correct.

also showed me what the sokal affair was.

[Anonymous No.6263694]

>>6263690
You read the entire article in under four minutes?

>>6263691
>It's fiction, yes,

To be honest we're of the same view. It's just that we know it's exactly that, fiction.

[Anonymous No.6263695]

>>6263683
This is what I understood he was saying, but it's wrong. People made petty attempts at turning lead into gold, but by and large the body of works on alchemy are metaphorical, not literal. Since we've mentioned psychology, a lot of modern psychology (admittedly non-scientific; Jung is more of a hack than Lacan in some ways) is influenced by alchemy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigredo

[Anonymous No.6263698]

>>6263693
I'm glad you found validation for this but it would be nice if I know what was stuck in whose ass, and Dawkins isn't telling. Other than that it's just a somewhat comical reference point for the Sokal Hoax.

>>6263694
I've read it a few times before and I'm less impressed each time. Chomsky at least makes a suggestion that he's read Foucault and Derrida, but Dawkins' review makes no such suggestion. It just says that some undefined group of (French!) postmodernists are dumb and shouldn't be bothered with.

[Anonymous No.6263700]

>>6263698
It's funny because you're making the same argument religious types make when they get ground up and now you're attacking the person, Dawkins, instead of making serious points of merit.

Just pack your shitty new age religion and get out, fuckass. :)

[Anonymous No.6263703]

>>6263684
>The feminist 'philosopher' Luce Irigaray is another who is given whole chapter treatment by Sokal and Bricmont. In a passage reminiscent of a notorious feminist description of Newton's Principia (a 'rape manual') Irigaray argues that E=mc2 is a 'sexed equation'. Why? Because 'it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us' (my emphasis of what I am rapidly coming to learn is an in-word).

oh ffs

i thought this was all just a joke - it's actually fucking real

[Anonymous No.6263709]

>>6263700
Dawkins makes personal attacks without substance even in "Postmodernism Disrobed."
I know you're trolling or retarded but Dawkins uses scare quotes like a fiend in his critique. French "intellectuals," French "philosophy," "Cultural Studies." He talks about academic honesty but doesn't practice it very much.

[Anonymous No.6263713]

>>6263709
Mmm hmm, still seeing zero refutation and instead just butthurt.
Dont worry though, because who is to say your butthurt is a bad thing?

Your unhurt butt has had too much privilege over an unhurt one.

All of your arguments ("arguments") are made without evidence and thus can be dismissed without evidence.

[Anonymous No.6263718]

The real tragedy here is that the 'French rot' undermines the position of relativism (or scepticism), which is fucking correct.

[Anonymous No.6263719]

>>6263718
So how do you fix your community/field/whatever you want to call it?

[Anonymous No.6263723]

>>6263719
I won't. I don't think English departments should even exist in the format they have now. That shit is a glorified hobby and should be treated as such.

[Anonymous No.6263724]

>>6263723
Well I'm not asking you to go and fix them now, but if somebody else wanted to and came to you for advice what would you offer them?

>English departments should even exist in the format they have now

Whats wrong with them?
I'm asking this because I dont know, not because I disagree.

[Anonymous No.6263764]

"science" is a culturally biased and hierachical. When "Scientists" start dividing people into anointed ones and "laymen" then you know that it's finally becoming a religion.

[Anonymous No.6263801]

>>6263764
But different cultures can practice science and come to the same results.

I'm sure a physics institute in china would come to similar conclusions as one in the USA or Europe if they all performed the same experiment.
Or is this physics was invented by the penisocracy and now they're all running off the same penis loving, rape cultura data?

[Anonymous No.6263846]

[Anonymous No.6263872]

Ctrl+F for "instrumentalism", was disappointed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentalism

[Anonymous No.6264349]

>>6262074
All labels are social constructs.

[Anonymous No.6264366]

Mathematics always show the same results, as it is purely applied logic: a conceptual system possessing internal necessity that can only be so and by no means otherwise.

Scientific experiments propose guidelines and suggest outcomes, but those outcomes are not definite. We reason it may be so, but it is not necessarily so.

[Anonymous No.6265033]

The "realness" of reality cannot be proven or disproven, so the argument is moot.

I really don't care either way.

[Anonymous No.6265068]

>>6263373
...so college drop out who can't grasp the basics of science OR philosophy?

[Anonymous No.6265071]

>>6265033
>The "realness" of reality cannot be proven or disproven
that was the argument. The other person held that this statement was wrong, and that reality's "realness" was unquestionable.

[Anonymous No.6265494]

>>6265068
No, just knew a waste of money when I saw it.
Keep in mind I have not said waste of time.

Post modernists are pseudo intellectual charlatans and anybody with functioning grey matter can see it.