Talk:Pseudophilosophy: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 01:55, 15 April 2004

Revision as of 02:08, 15 April 2004

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:I restored the bit about paranoid delusions --- the premise of ''The Matrix'' is a classic one. I do tend to agree that falsifiability of a sort --- in that you have to ask yourself, ''Does believing 'X' make a difference in anything?'' Given what we know of the energy requirements of computers, it seems unlikely that the apparent material universe is a verisimilar hallucination that runs off our body heat. But until we're handed the pill, choosing to say 'Yea' or 'Nay' to this belief system is a decision entirely free of consequence. [[User:Ihcoyc|Smerdis of Tlön]] 01:55, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The reasons I removed the reference to [[falsifiability]] are as follows:

# [[Karl Popper]] was talking about [[science]], in a book on the [[philosophy of science]] when he suggested the using [[falsifiability]] as a tool for judging the validity of a *scientific* theory. Philosophical theories are different. In fact, you will often hear it said (though this particular example is arguable) that [[superstring theory]] isn't science, but philosophy, because (at least as of yet) it is not falsifiable. Have a look at the falsifiability page.

# [[Philosophy]] isn't subject to the same sources of falsifiability that science is. If I can deduce that the sky is, in fact, a lovely shade of green, and my deduction stands up, it doesn't in the end matter if every time I look at the sky I see blue - the sky *must* be green.

# Philosophy sometimes deals with topics that aren't falsifiable, at least in the sense that Popper talks about: [[God]], [[noumena]], the human mind, etc. One of the things that makes philosophy valuable is that it can go beyond the immediately observable (and therefore immediately falsifiable).

# [[Skepticism]] is a problem in philosophy because, to date, there has been no satisfactory way around it. Since [[David Hume]], nearly every major philosopher has written a response to his skepticism. We have yet to come up with a reason that we should totally discount the idea that each (or even one, so long as the one of us in the vat is the one doing the experiencing) of us is just a [[brain-in-a-vat|brain in a vat]]. It may be useful to live our lives as if we aren't, but that doesn't mean that it isn't the case.

# As much as many people might like to state the contrary, philosophy is more exact than science. The requirement of falsifiability implies that there will never be a science that we can be sure exactly describes the universe (here comes that skepticism again). Ignoring for a moment the problem of deduction, this isn't the case for philosophy - moving from general truths to specific truths should be foolproof.

-[[User:Sethmahoney|Seth Mahoney]] 02:08, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)