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From: biep@cs.vu.nl (J. A. "Biep" Durieux)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Do philosophers need defending?
Message-ID: <825@klipper.cs.vu.nl>
Date: Wed, 22-Jul-87 11:27:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: klipper.825
Posted: Wed Jul 22 11:27:44 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Jul-87 06:07:07 EDT
References: <3219@eagle.ukc.ac.uk>
Reply-To: biep@cs.vu.nl (J. A. "Biep" Durieux)
Distribution: world
Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam
Lines: 67

[Warning: I am not a native speaker of English, and recent history shows
I do have difficulties in conveying ideas of a more abstract nature]

In article <816@klipper.cs.vu.nl> biep@cs.vu.nl (that's me) writes several
statements to the fact that philosophers don't know how to think.

Robin ??? [rn is having a hiccough] responds:
>OK, so which philosopher frightened your mother while she was pregnant?
(and statements in defense of philosophy)

OK, making oneself clear seems to be a major undertaking.

What I wanted to say was: philosophers have to work below the boundary of
methodical thought, as they have to *define* methodical thought. Scientists
can see whether some result in their discipline is scientific, because
philosophers have first defined the appropriate methodology for that field
of science. Now I would wish more people dug into the philosophical basis
of that methodology, so that they would become a little less confident in
yelling "it's scientifically proven!". Especially mathematics is seen by
many people as "absolute". If I tell them about things like intuitionism,
they don't seem to grasp that Brouwer did undermine the fundaments (and so
the reliabitity) of every-day results of mathematics.

If I had a grudge against philosophy, I wouldn't be promoting this newsgroup
the way I am doing. I only pointed out, that when the line of methodology
is crossed, one enters the realm of science, and leaves philosophy (as one
has stopped reflecting (is that the right word?) and starts thinking, i.e.
systematically applying rules to facts, and experimenting, i.e. gathering
facts from outside the mental world. Perhaps the confusion was also due to
the fact that I till now used "thinking" for both reflecting and thinking.

If I had a grudge against philosophy, I wouldn't both have studied math and
held that math was philosophy, not science (that was one of the two dis-
cussions I merged into the one about the definition of science and brought
here - the other was whether artificial intelligence was a science). If I
said that all unmethodical thinking could be called philosophy, I meant that,
because there is no philosophical methodology (there can't be: how would
that methodology be justified? By itself?), one can show a thought to be
non-scientific, but not non-philosophical. And in daily usage (at least in
Dutch, but I guess also in English), one can hear: "OK, that sounds nice,
but until you can prove it's true, it's mere/just/idle philosophy". I don't
receive talk.philosophy.misc (it doesn't get to Europe), but I understand
that the reason for that, and the reason for it being a "talk" group, is
exactly that it is filled with garbage, which no one can forbid, as there is
no criterium for "real philosophy".

Well, let's clearly state the point under discussion:

I state that there is no criterium for "real philosophy", other than
"the reflective work which must be performed before any science can
begin"

Warning: I have been attacked already by people who thought I meant "before"
temporally (I certainly do not), or who meant I said scientists couldn't be
philosophers (on the contrary, I think someone who is not a philosopher has
a hard time being a genial scientist). "before" here means something like
"the latter is built on the former". Yet another caveat: there are more ways
philosophy can run, which may end in disciplines like ethics and aesthetics.
These are philosophic in as far as no science could produce results in that
field.

Of course this criterium is a subjective one (that's what I've been defending
above). Besides discussion on my statement (which doesn't say my criterium
is right) I would welcome thoughts on my criterium.
-- 
						Biep.  (biep@cs.vu.nl via mcvax)
			Never confound beauty with truth!