Why read old philosophers

[renbri]

I've previously dismissed philosophy –at least the descriptive side
-metaphysics and epistemology- as being futile and having been made
redundant by science, as people like Hawking and the great Richard Feynman
would have us believe. But it struck me that, if that is so, I should be
able to construct a sound argument to back it, and in the meantime I can
play devil's advocate and have some fun in the forums. I suspect that my
reluctance to drop it altogether is down to old Bertie (Russell). He was a
bit of a hero of mine when I was a youth and I always said that when my
hair was as white as that –as it now is- I'd like to have acquired some
wisdom and have the same twinkle in my eye that he had.
I've bought this book, [i:1tdsrl41]Reading Philosophy –Selected Texts with a Method for
Beginners [/i:1tdsrl41]by Guttenplan et al, and it looks pretty good. It's
basically a guide to argument analysis using short extracts from mostly
"modern" philosphers. At the moment I'm struggling to pull apart the first
text, which is Descartes' [i:1tdsrl41]First Meditation:What Can be Called
into Doubt.[/i:1tdsrl41]I can't blame the language for my difficulties
because the translation is in reasonably modern English so I put it down to
the deteriorating grey matter of a slippered pantaloon and gird my withered
loins for another attempt.

However, I'm haunted by the prejudices I've acquired –probably through
reading too much "pop" science. Descartes, like many of the great
philosophers before him, was a genius (his mathematics alone entitles him
to that sobriquet) but he did not have access to the findings of 20th and
21st century science and so his ideas about how the brain works, especially
that weird dualistic model he created, were simply wrong. And so many
earlier philosophers present us with this problem: they mostly seem to have
operated alone and generated a lot of a priori ideas which are obscure if
not obscurantist (like Leibniz's monads; anyone for monads?). Scientists,
on the other hand, generally work in teams and always expect to have their
theories tested and retested by other scientists coming from different
cultures across the world. They do not pursue absolute truth because that
is, almost by definition, a fruitless exercise, but they continually
revisit their theories and attain exceedingly high probablity for the good
ones. A very important one is the theory of evolution which has been
attacked vigorously for over a century (because it threatens religions and
maybe some philosophies! ) yet remains the supreme achievement and now the
backbone of biology. And, when you read a modern science textbook, it may
give a deferential nod to Newton or Darwin in the introductory chapter but
certainly won't suggest that you go back and read their writings because
they have become completely outdated.

I'm rambling somewhat but I hope you'll forgive an old codger trying to
come to grips with a very basic problem which must trouble many a younger
student as well. Why go to the trouble of untangling arguments by long dead
philosophers who knew so little about science? (I accept that you can read
them as "literature" but I tend to prefer the likes of Tolstoy or Kafka for
that.)

[Impenitent]

why reinvent the wheel?

-Imp

[hammock]

Why go to the trouble of untangling arguments by long dead
philosophers who knew so little about science?

Science deals with the phenomenal world or orderly system of nature, and thereby actually has no impact upon the intelligible domain of platonic tradition. Which the later metaphysical projects of Berkeley, Leibniz, Kant, etc, still concerned themselves with. The neo-Kantian schools of the 19th century [which Poincare was only an influenced tail-end of] conflated the noumena of Greek / Konigsberg fame with the entities of scientific realism; and thus began the intermittent error of treating atoms, fields, mass, spacetime and other natural affairs as if they were things in themselves. (I recollect a poster here some weeks / months ago who contributed to this manner of confusion.)

One can simply dismiss transcendent metaphysics as having any value or importance, as Hume and positivism did; and dwell solely upon an "internal metaphysics" directed at the experienced cosmos. The latter likewise being expressed in Kant's rehabilitation of speculative [theoretical] philosophy, which for all and intents and purposes has since been displaced by the inferences and experiments of theoretical physics. However, the same Prussian's practical philosophy boils down to securing the "possibility" of a territory that provides a freedom from the constraints of the conditioned world of outer sense; and therein seems to be the lingering use for or surviving interest in a meta-phenomenal "stratum" for some folks (aside from Plato's original purposes).

A few applicable quotes:

Poincaré's structuralism had a Kantian flavour. In particular, he thought that the unobservable entities postulated by scientific theories were Kant's noumena or things in themselves. He revised Kant's view by arguing that the latter can be known indirectly rather than not at all because it is possible to know the relations into which they enter.
JAMES LADYMAN, *STRUCTURAL REALISM, STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY*

The ground of the confusion lies in a misunderstood monadology, which does not belong to the explanation of natural phenomena, but is a platonic conception of the world, carried out by Leibnitz. ... Hence Leibnitz’s opinion, so far as I understand, [did not consist] in explaining space by the arrangement of simple entities side by side, but rather in [regarding it] as corresponding to a merely intelligible, for us unknown, world by its side, and maintained nothing more than what has elsewhere been shown, namely, that space, together with matter of which it is the form, comprises, not the world of things in themselves, but only the phenomenon of this [world], and is itself only the form of our sensuous intuition.
KANT, *METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS OF NATURAL SCIENCE*

Theoretical philosophy is concerned solely with conceptions of nature; in other words, it deals with those pure conceptions or categories which are essential to the constitution of the orderly system of phenomena [nature]. The conception of freedom, on the other hand, is merely a negative principle of theoretical knowledge; i.e., it only tells us that a free subject, if such a subject exists, must be independent of all sensuous desire. But this conception also enables us, through the consciousness of the moral law, to enlarge the sphere of the will, and the will is simply practical reason. These two conceptions, then, when they are grasped clearly, enable us to keep theoretical philosophy and moral philosophy perfectly distinct. The former is the philosophy of nature, the latter the philosophy of the free or moral subject. These terms, however, have not been consistently employed, but a confusion has been introduced by an ambiguous use of the term "practical," which has been applied both to sciences that are occupied with nature and also to the free or moral subject. Now, the former application is obviously illegitimate, when we consider that in the proper sense nothing is "practical" except those actions which proceed from a free moral subject .

Desire as such is simply one of the many causes which belong to the world of phenomena; in other words, our own actions, so long as we look at them from the phenomenal point of view, are events of the same character as other events, and as such come under the same laws. More particularly, desire must be viewed as subject to the law of mechanical causation. If an attempt is made to remove desire from the sphere of nature on the ground that our actions are preceded by an idea of the object to be attained, Kant answers that this of itself does not introduce any fundamental distinction; for, the mere fact that an act is preceded by an idea does not show that it is taken out of the sphere of phenomena. So far as it is regarded as an event, desire belongs to the sphere of nature, and therefore it obviously falls within the domain of theoretical philosophy. On the other hand, when we look at our acts from the point of view of the noumenal self, the self as free, they must be regarded as practically possible or practically necessary; i.e., they must be regarded as the self-determination of a rational or free subject. So regarded our actions fall within the sphere of moral philosophy. The true contrast, then, is between events that are brought under the law of natural causation and actions that proceed from the free subject.
JOHN WATSON, *THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT EXPLAINED*

[renbri]

Well, of course; everybody knows that.

Lucky for the cephalopods, they operate in the intelligible domain.
Not all humans do.

[Blaggard]

why reinvent the wheel?

-Imp

The wheel was independently invented by almost all cultures on Earth even ones who had no practical use for it such as the Incas who used them on toys only because their landscape was mostly mountains and carts and wot not were impractical, why reinvent the self repeating rifle would probably be a better analogy...

[hammock]

Well, of course; everybody knows that.

If only that was the case. Creationists apparently suffer such amnesia of past philosophy's flexible accommodation of both natural methodology and religious beliefs that they are compelled to inject their pseudoscience and pseudo-historical biblical events into the same sensory realm that science studies, disrupting proper biology classes in the States and other countries. If they've become so myopically confined to the jabber of the last century, I wish fundamentalists would at least latch onto a decades-deceased, schizoid pop-culture prophet like PKD. His crude sci-fi / metaphysical bastardization might similarly allow them to at least "get along" with science, of at least minimizing their interfering ways. Though one would then have to listen to a droning overemphasis on the experienced world being a well-regulated deception (little hope of them of adopting an ersatz version of Kant's empirical realism).

I had the acute, overwhelming certitude (and still have) that despite all the change we see, a specific permanent landscape underlies the world of change: and that this invisible underlying landscape is that of the Bible; it, specifically, is the period immediately following the death and resurrection of Christ; it is, in other words, the time period of the Book of Acts.

Parmenides would be proud of me. I have gazed at a constantly changing world and declared that underneath it lies the eternal, the unchanging, the absolutely real. but how has this come about? If the real time is circa A.D. 50, then why do we see A.D. 1978? And if we are really living in the Roman Empire, somewhere in Syria, why do we see the United States?

During the Middle Ages, a curious theory arose, which I will now present to you for what it is worth. It is the theory that the Evil One·Satan·is the "Ape of God." That he creates spurious imitations of creation, of God's authentic creation, and then interpolates them for that authentic creation. Does this odd theory help explain my experience? Are we to believe that we are occluded, that we are deceived, that it is not 1978 but A.D. 50... and Satan has spun a counterfeit reality to wither our faith in the return of Christ?
SOURCE

[HexHammer]

why reinvent the wheel?

It's not reinventing the wheel, it's improving on it.

Right now there's only alot of cozy chatters on various fora, and less than a handful of actual philosophers at each site.

It's about making philosophy relevant again, to make philosphers sought after by big buisnesses.

[tbieter]

I follow Professor James V. Schall who contends that a university that does not teach Plato is not a true university.

I would argue that one should read Plato and Aristotle continually during one's lifetime.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dperA9b3Re0

[HexHammer]

I follow Professor James V. Schall who contends that a university that does not teach Plato is not a true university.

I would argue that one should read Plato and Aristotle continually during one's lifetime.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dperA9b3Re0

Uhmm, Plato did have some good points, but I don't see the relevance of wasting much time on him.

In general it seems philosophy likes to waste time on outdated philosophers.

[Blaggard]

I follow Professor James V. Schall who contends that a university that does not teach Plato is not a true university.

I would argue that one should read Plato and Aristotle continually during one's lifetime.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dperA9b3Re0

Uhmm, Plato did have some good points, but I don't see the relevance of wasting much time on him.

In general it seems philosophy likes to waste time on outdated philosophers.

Actually I think hex a lot of degree courses like to establish philosophy on the fundamentals, and those of course all come from old philosophers and later they move on to more relevant and modern times, which draw upon the old questions there were before, and expound upon them, so that people can see how a subject has progressed or indeed if it has not; this would give a student some perspective and enable him to see the mistakes of the past at least, thus widening his field so that he could counter mistakes in philosophical discourse. I can see why people think past history is not that useful but I fail to see it is useless... Those who don't know mistakes or good arguments and why from the past, know really little. Philosophy I feel, and may be wrong on this, is about the broader picture not the narrow picture of how it is now, all progress is based on knowing error, all downfalls of man have been based on ignoring mistakes.

[uwot]

It's worth understanding that the last two and a half thousand years of western thinking has been dominated by the examples of three men: Thales, Pythagoras and Parmenides. We take for granted that useful thinking is a combination of observation, mathematics and logic, but it is salient to see examples of what happens when any of them are relied on too heavily.
Thales was the first to point out that mythology, any particular version of god, makes no difference to what happens, and if you want to understand the world, look at what happens. However, there is only so far that you can see, the Ancient Greeks were dependent on the naked eye, but even with the Hubble telescope and the Large Hadron Collider, that is still true.
If you want to make sense of the world, even the bits you can't see, you have to put it into a logical structure, which is what Parmenides tried to do. You might be persuaded by his arguments, certainly Zeno, whose paradoxes you may know, was. What is more extraordinary is that Parmenides believed his own vision. Generally, it is worth understanding that, as Descartes pointed out, no idea is so ridiculous that some philosopher hasn't held it. People believe things often for the flimsiest reasons, and can get very upset by people who don't.
If you want to make use of the world, you need to be able to control it, for which you need mathematics; Pythagoras understood this, but over egged it by turning mathematics into a cult and believing in the existence of mathematical objects. I suspect this is what string theorists have done, for example. I may be wrong, but I think their grasp of ontology is ethereal.
Socrates' main contribution was to point out that what really matters is how we live, which will always be an issue. How we treat each other and how we live well is something you cannot get too much good advice on.
In modern times the rationalists have favoured the Parmenidian approach, whereas empiricists have followed Thales' example. Everyone does a bit of Pythagoras, some even to the extent that they believe in mathematics. Any philosopher worth their salt will have something to say about what to do about it and the more you read, the better you will understand how and why you and others think.

[HexHammer]

Any philosopher worth their salt will have something to say about what to do about it and the more you read, the better you will understand how and why you and others think.

Thinking is partially psychology, and what has math to do with psychology?

[uwot]

Any philosopher worth their salt will have something to say about what to do about it and the more you read, the better you will understand how and why you and others think.

Thinking is partially psychology, and what has math to do with psychology?

Of course, some people you will never understand.

[HexHammer]

Any philosopher worth their salt will have something to say about what to do about it and the more you read, the better you will understand how and why you and others think.

Thinking is partially psychology, and what has math to do with psychology?

Of course, some people you will never understand.

Then please enlighten me.
If you can't explain it, then there's something wrong.

[uwot]

Then please enlighten me.
If you can't explain it, then there's something wrong.

I don't doubt it, Mr Hammer.