Philosophy Now Forum

Lately, I've been having trouble explaining the problems of empiricism to empirical authorities. It seems to be a problem of incommensurable values. Not only do our values differ, but our values differ in such a way that merely discussing values doesn't work.

The problem is that the nature of empiricism creates problems in society due to having an unreliable sense of time:

a) People aren't born with access to 100% of facts in reality,
b) Everyone isn't born with equal access such that some have access to facts which others don't,
c) Just because people can learn from experience in reality about something that's possible doesn't mean people have learned about everything that's possible (whether we're talking about simultaneous happenings or alternate timelines), and
d) Access doesn't come for free.

The problem is that when discussing these issues with empirical authorities, their empiricism seems to get in the way of literally discussing the issue. They nitpick at details instead of realizing the big picture. For example, they might discuss point a) above while ignoring point b). They likewise might have the simplistic gall to merely ask for a dictionary definition of empiricism while ignoring that we're talking about the synthesis of empiricism with society, not just empiricism. If you bring up the personal boundaries of consciousness and how evidence of facts is experienced over different people's lifetimes, empirical authorities can, might, and will have the audacity to claim that society's the problem rather than acknowledging the issue with their ideology. They'll even claim that the definition of empiricism is being manipulated rather than acknowledging how the definition of empiricism is only part of what's being discussed.

These attitudes are fundamentally childish, immature, and provocative, and if you call them out on it, they accuse you of being offensive, and naturally, because they're authorities, they punish you.

I don't really find this much of a surprise because malicious prosecution goes hand in hand with the empirical outlook on time. Because empiricism has an unreliable sense of time, it doesn't mind having a provocative attitude and screwing around.

Put simply speaking, I'm not sure empiricists are even civil. If anything, they seem to rush in accusing others of being uncivil so they don't have to address their nasty attitude problems. Instead, they want to remain stuck in their ways to carry on with antics, and hide behind philosophy to do so.

The question is, "How do you persuade these people to change?"

I guess nobody has an answer?

Perhaps it's because modern philosophy has an ulterior motive at stake in being empirical because it overgeneralizes the abstract nature of religion, and it seeks to replace religion as a guiding force in society? Therefore, it keeps quiet on purpose whenever empiricism is questioned?

Perhaps it's because modern philosophy is built around language games in getting things wrong on purpose by carrying on tangents and bifurcating words, so it relishes in the unreliable nature of empiricism to continue these language games?

Daktoria wrote:I guess nobody has an answer?

Maybe nobody knows what you're talking about. I surely don't.

I don't know about that.

Philosophers are supposedly intelligent people, so they're more likely to be malicious than incompetent.

It seems more that they let things rot in silence because they don't discuss what they don't want to. They figure if they don't pay attention to things that things go away.

In reality, that's not how things work though. Problems fester over time.

Maybe philosophers like sitting the ivory tower to hide away from what they don't want to deal with? You see this especially in the scientific side of philosophy where philosophers seem to like to make excuses to protect scientists in the course of designing experiments that frame reality as appearing to be a way that it really isn't. Yea, they get biology, chemistry, physics, and astronomy right, but when it comes to society and humanity, they're completely off the wall.

The problem is modern philosophy doesn't care much for rational values, so it no longer has protection against anti-intellectuals who are stuck in their ways while believing in might makes right power politics. That's why scientists have to be so fatalist in their interpretation of humanity by materializing it rather than acknowledging free will. They end up sacrificing their fellow intellectuals to abusers just so they can selfishly protect themselves.

In a face to face scenario without third parties to sacrifice, modern philosophy would get eaten up in a second.

Soapboxes are generally made from the poorest quality wood and it is inadvisable for superior people to climb onto them for the purpose of lecturing the great unwashed who are so obviously their intellectual inferiors. Preachers have been known to fall off such insecure platforms and get splinters in their arses.

Obvious Leo wrote:Soapboxes are generally made from the poorest quality wood and it is inadvisable for superior people to climb onto them for the purpose of lecturing the great unwashed who are so obviously their intellectual inferiors. Preachers have been known to fall off such insecure platforms and get splinters in their arses.

That would explain it. When you take a lot of philosophers out of the ivory tower, they completely flop. The modern preaching of pragmatism and functionalism is hardly pragmatic and functional at all. In reality, the overgeneralizations that modern philosophers make from their fear of failure lead to them becoming utopians. They focus on how things can be used, and assume that's how things should be used. They ignore how things are used in a situational basis, so what's pragmatic or functional here and now isn't necessarily there and then.

Maybe philosophers should focus more on reliable abstract values instead of telling people how to concretely live their lives merely based on the evidence they've seen so far. After all, just because they've experienced something doesn't mean they've experienced everything.