Talk:Pseudophilosophy

From the article:

A search on google.com for pseudophilosophy will produce (at the time of writing) several dozen hits – many of them referring to Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. It will be clear from reading most of these entries that the writer does not like Ayn Rand’s views and considers them unworthy of philosophical studies. However the quality of explanations for this dislike will generally be below what is generally considered acceptable in philosophical writing.

This kind of search engine research should not be discussed in the article, only the conclusions. --Eloquence 08:36 19 May 2003 (UTC)

I am not sure why this would be inappropriate - this provides an example of an (alleged) philosophical system that many people consider to be a pseudophilosophy. There is no departure from facts and, IFAICS, no departure from NPOV - since there is no suggestion that this view has any justification beyond the emotional state of the writers. --Michael Voytinsky

I'm restoring this, with some rewording, on the grounds that what is being shown in this paragraph is not "research" being "discussed" but instead an example of how the term "pseudophilosophy" is used in the real world using a real world example. Looking into other encyclopaedia resources I have available, it seems to be standard operating procedure to cite examples of social phenomena. -- Michael 12:28 20 May 2003 (UTC)

I'd still wonder, though, that the bit about the quality of explanations for this dislike will generally be below what is generally considered acceptable in philosophical writing. This does seem to be a partisan POV bit: the quality of Ayn Rand's own works is also generally below what is considered acceptable in philosophical writing; not surprising that she gets ranting in response as well. -- IHCOYC 15:53 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I've heard this term used to describe the new Matrix movie quite a bit lately. -- goatasaur

Well, our professor in "History of Philosophy" has used it several times in order to explain the views of historical thinkers, such as Descartes' solipsism. Anyway, this is a matter of discussion and probably not suitable in an article about the term, allthough the so-called philosophy of the brothers behind Matrix clearly is questionable. I haven't read any of what they've written, though.. -- Sigg3.net 16:41, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Of course I'm a solipsist. Isn't everybody?

What? If you're a solipsist, 'everybody' doesn't exist, hence "isn't everybody?" is an invalid question.- Sigg3.net 19:00, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

AAR, Descartean solipsism (or Berkelian idealism) and The Matrix strike me as staking out extremely similar, if not identical, positions. It's "pseudo" in the sense that a persistent, consistent fantasy is "just as good as" a "real" external world; it doesn't make any difference whether it "really" exists or not. -- Smerdis of Tlön 00:49, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Anything comparing external reality (Das Welt an Sich, to use Kant) to dreams, computergames etc. can be called solipsism. The mathematics, however, "proves" or states that everything follows the same order of numbers, I don't remember what the theory was all about but we had it in High School. Really interesting, actually. Matrix could just as well build on that, and not solipsistic ideas, or both (the one to prove the other etc.).. - Sigg3.net 19:00, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

By the way, is astrology pseudoscience? Check out umbrellaology: http://physics.weber.edu/johnston/astro/umbrellaology.htm and the "solution": http://physics.weber.edu/johnston/astro/soln1030_umbrellaology.htm

- Sigg3.net 19:08, 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

A recent poster removed a reference to falsifiability, stating that this is philosophy, not science. I would tend to disagree, but before starting a WikiWar :-) with the poster, I would like to get others' opinions on this.

I would say that falsifiability is part of philosophy as well as science. Whenever someone makes a claim in the form "X is true", it is reasonable to ask "How do you know that X is true?". If there is no answer to that, "X is true" is netierh philosophy nor science.

If we can meaningfully ask "How do you know that this is true?" it implies "What would it take to show that it is not true?", and thus implies falsifiability.

To suggest that philosophical claims are not subject to falsfiability is to place them on par with claims of astrology or personal religious faith.

---Michael Voytinsky 01:32, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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. 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. 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.

-Seth Mahoney 02:08, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)