joigus

Some of that.

Good question. +1. I suppose modern psychometric techniques are getting us closer to it.

I think you're living the "deductive only" delusion. Either that, or completely missing the essential connection between induction and deduction. Plus, may I say, everything most people are telling you here. There's a common understanding in science and rational thinking that apparently you're not privy to: All thinking starts with induction/observation (that comes first) Then: --> inference of patterns --> proposing definitions and laws --> deduction of both seen and previously unforeseen consequences --> Testing --> Refinement of induction --> confirmation/rejection of theory --> formulation of new theory or refinement of previous one. Something like that. It's long, it's arduous; it takes time, effort, money, and many brains working together. That is the process. You need to get over the axiomatic dream, or the illusion that induction and deduction occur in completely separate levels that don't talk to each other. That's not how it works. And the absolutely essential piece that closes the circle is experiment. As to connecting experiment, religion, and common sense as different motifs for "belief"... I think you've really lost your bearings there. Evidence and belief are not the same thing. It is true that the evidence is always affected by the theory as to its format; the language, if you will, in which the answer is presented. But the process by which we acquire evidence, and the one by which we acquire belief; plus the degree of certainty of both, the objectivity the achieve... It could hardly be more different.

You make some very good points here. +1. You also introduce an element which must have slipped my mind, which is the one of usefulness. This element of usefulness actually had more to do with the original meaning of my question. The ethical question, important though it is, was not what I had in mind. That doesn't mean I don't welcome any other aspects that other members may have in mind. I do. Also, I'm not saying that the ethical question is out of reach for rational thinking, which I think it is. Concepts such as common sense, equanimity and the like are quite useful (again) to get to working standards for ethics. Golden rule is the best example. I agree that potential for harm should not be the criterion upon which we base what we ought to know and what we oughtn't.

And a take-home lesson about diet. Maybe bad science is science unchecked by philosophical concerns?

Trying to use reason to understand the internal arguments of religion is as hopeless as trying to thread a needle through a loop.

I would just add "degrees of certainty" to your list, which I just assume you've thought about before. How you grade concepts in a meaningful and useful way is another matter, of course. I'm trying to get closer to precisely this concept you mention. Namely: What would be a good criterion for a "philosophy of science"?

Or maybe he just spent too many hours in the company of ovine mammals.

Thank you. +1 This connects with your observation on @studiot's post about some standards for good OP's: Please, keep working on it. I'm very interested in coming up with good standards for what aspects of philosophy scientists and engineers (whether they be experimentalists, theorists or computation-driven) would be well advised to be aware of. I know only too well that certain philosophies are too disconnected, too willing to disregard inductive principles, too vague, to be considered of interest for scientifically-minded people. Nothing to be sorry about. Fuzzy thinking has some value. You could even say that any rigorous thinking must start with fuzzy notions. I spent 10+ years living in a small village and became friends with a shepherd. Sometimes we'd start a casual conversation and he'd say, "why are we here?", "what's the meaning of life?" LOL I may be taking the whole for the part, but I think this guy is a representative example that illustrates your point pretty well. I think you're dead right. Your reputation is well deserved. Just one caveat: Some pretty bold, but pretty good, ideas have been trashed and then re-considered. When you think about it, Darwin's dangerous idea () was trashed ad nauseam in its day by a considerable number of people in academia. Who's to say that a new idea is to be trashed? Sorry for the rhetorical question.

Thank you all for very good points. Let me clarify further. The options could be re-phrased as, 0. Philosophy is never worth undertaking or learning about 1. Philosophy is always worth undertaking or learning about 3. Philosophy is worth undertaking or learning about only after a quality criterion has caught your attention in one of its many theories I didn't mean these categories to have Boolean closure, so to speak, but to be demographically/socially/statistically significant. If you think I've left something out that is significant, please tell me. Yes. Although a quantum Boolean Hamlet would have considered "to be and not to be" as a possibility. Or maybe "neither to be nor not to be".

Very nice. Thank you. +1

You're going a bit blurry here, in spite of my efforts to be concrete. Does philosophy make you uncomfortable? I sympathize (if not necessarily agree), but I can't do what you do. Philosophy always distracts me. +1. @Sensei is Boolean in nature.

Your point is well taken. By "philosophies" (countable English noun) I mean each and every particular philosophical theory, irrespective of their merits, whatever criterion we use to measure those. By "philosophy" (uncountable English noun) I mean the activity itself, which more or less can be associated with the grouping together of all philosophical theories. The activity itself. I suppose you can do that without losing much specificity. It's true, e.g., that some people reject philosophy flat-out. Those would be the ones that subscribe to option 0. On the one hand, it's possible that they have considered each and every philosophical theory there is and reject them all but keep "hoping for the right one" (in that sense, they would reject all philosophies so far but wouldn't have given up yet on philosophy altogether). On the other hand, there's the possibility that these people, at some point, grow tired of looking for philosophical arguments and finally decide to give up on philosophy altogether. That goes to show that you're right in that a finer distinction could be made, so I admit that I'm simplifying a little bit. But I don't think that I'm overlooking any big demographics here by identifying all philosophies with philosophy in general. I'm subsuming people who don't like any philosophical theory at all into the group of people who just don't think philosophy should be paid much attention. Would it be good because it might be right or might it be right because it would be good? "Bad" or "good" are defined in a particular sense in the options for the poll. They are not described "for themselves". Good: useless/too arbitrary/self-serving... Bad: has something useful (interesting points to consider)

I'm testing my first poll today. I've scanned for similar topics but wasn't able to find collocations "good philosophy" or "bad philosophy". Especially if your option is the third one, I'm very interested in your criteria, exceptions, and so on. Thank you very much.

This is key, I think. There are several interpretations. They're not theories. The theory is quantum mechanics. You can bet that one is correct. Why it is correct being so mathematically ad hoc is another matter. That's where the different interpretations come up. IMO, the transactional interpretation is much more beautiful and parsimonious, although I must say I don't know it in detail. The one with empty amplitudes and occupied amplitudes is also more plausible IMO, even though it's somewhat ugly. The consistent histories approach is another one. As of today, I'm not aware that any of these have been finally confirmed or rejected experimentally or otherwise. There are claims in every which direction last time I looked, but I don't think there is unanimous thinking about that by any means. As we speak, more physicists are considering arguments about these interpretations, or maybe even other possible interpretations. Which means the problem is not settled. The elementary-particle-physicists' community favours the many-worlds interpretation, but that's all, as far as I understand. That's because their favourite toys (mainly the Wheeler-DeWitt eq.) are formulated within that framework. So it's a matter of heuristics and model-building, nothing else. And that's my two cents.

Good one! +1. True of all politicians. Only difference is who is more likely to get screwed.

Thanks, Sensei. Very interesting comments. +1. Yes, debris from supernova explosions that get ejected out of SN attraction "sphere". That makes a lot of sense. So do you suggest tracking BH as candidates for previously existing SN that gave rise to our solar system is (or could be) accomplished by some kind of signature method? If that's not what you're suggesting, can you think of ways that it could be done or is being done? Give you an example: Accretion disks of BH's having same isotopic signature than ours, therefore likely that we emerged from that particular BH? Also kinematics of "us" with respect with particular BH signaling more likely that we running away from them. Although if we came out with just escape velocity we would be considerably slowed down by now, so difficult to detect. Now that you mention Betelgeuse. I remember some 6 years ago going out late in the night to watch Orion in the small village where is was living. In the Summer in Spain it only comes out really very late (about 5AM). Once the police (the rural police is the "Guardia Civil") stopped me and asked me for ID. They asked what I was doing. I told them the truth: I was looking at the stars. But I didn't tell them that I was waiting for a supernova to go off, which is what I secretly was hoping for. They looked at me funny. But there were no more questions. 😌 PD: I have to read your wiki entry yet.

+1. This is a very interesting re-focusing of the question. Maybe the OP is interested in it? I don't think it can be done with our solar system because AFAIK remains of supernova explosions are seen as halos of dust (e.g., Crab Nebula). I surmise that our Solar System is much older than the Crab Nebula...

Totally concur with @Janus & @Endy0816. I'd like to know who said that too, @Strange. (+1)3 Let me offer you a complementary picture of why everything running away from one point doesn't work. If everything in the universe were running away from one point, we would look at the night sky and see something very special at that point. That would be the point we're running away from. Instead, what we see is a series of spherical layers older and older in every direction the farther away from us we look. Until we hit the very feeble, very dilute image of a primeval plasma state of the universe (this is called the surface of last scattering). A picture of the universe when it was opaque to radiation, because all the particles were ionized (plasma) so it didn't let radiation through. That's a picture of a pretty early universe. And it appears more or less the same in every direction. So, where is the original point? I hope that helps.

I think something that may help most people reading this post is to provide simple examples of what you mean just after you've introduced some of your definitions. Great philosophers (especially philosophers of science, like, e.g., Bertrand Russell) always set up explanatory examples after an abstract notion was introduced. Examples are like the "laboratory" of philosophy. Help your potential readers know that you mean business. On the whole, I don't think for a second that getting an idea of what a TOE will look like will be helped along by philosophical thinking alone. I'm pessimistic if you want.

Yes, but some are detrimental for the individual, while leaving the reproductive success of the species alone (those are the parasites that thrive); and others aren't. It is entirely possible. I just hope you're wrong, although it seems to be a well-informed guess. 😬

There are things the Bible doesn't say and almost everybody believes it does. There was no apple. It could have been a quince, or maybe a fig, as there were no apples back then in the Middle East. The Bible doesn't say it was an apple, actually. The Bible doesn't say Jonah was eaten by a whale either. The Bible doesn't say there was an angel at the Garden of Eden, but a cherub, which was a mythical animal represented very frequently in the gardens of palaces throughout the Middle East. The Hebrew Bible doesn't say that Mary was a virgin, but a "young woman." ------------------------------------------------ There are things the Bible says and few people know it does. The Bible talks about a pantheon of gods that are subservient to Yahweh. And names God both as Yahweh and El. Is it the same god? I'm not sure. Asherah, the wife of Yahweh, is also mentioned, but the interpretation was presumably changed, as it's mentioned as a synonym for "a stick" in very obscure passages, when she is known to have been a goddess, as archaeology has shown. The stick was one of the symbols of the goddess. Back to Adam and Eve: There's at least one thing the Bible says twice in different (incompatible) ways: Ezechiel 28. Two prophecies, one of them against the king of Tyre. There you can see that the king of Tyre is expelled from the Garden of Eden, on account of his sins. The cherub also appears. Very similar legend; two different narrative uses. Who was expelled from the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve or the king of Tyre? I'm not so sure. The authors of the Bible seem not to be either. Some scholars believe the Oracles against the king in Ezechiel 28 predate the Adam and Eve story in Genesis. ------------------------------------------------ There are things the Bible says that are taken from somewhere else: The Bible takes the story of Noah from The Epic of Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim , and adapts it to its own narrative needs. ------------------------------------------------ There are blatantly obvious things the Bible is silent about: Omri, big king of Samaria, was a very relevant character of the Assyrian domination period, but the Bible only mentions him in passing, as a baddie. The Bible also plays down the role of many other kings, like Manasseh, although he made Israel into an important olive oil factory and brought a period of peace, contrary to what Hezekiah, his father, did. ------------------------------------------------ And lastly, there are many things the Bible says that cannot be true. Josuah didn't conquer Jericho, as Kathleen Kenyon has proved. Jericho was uninhabited at the time. Plus the Egyptians were in control of Canaan and had the country strongly policed from Beit She'an. I don't believe God gave the law of gravity a suspension for some hours for the benefit of his people to the detriment of the Canaanites either. Plus the Canaanites and the Israelites were the same people: No difference in material culture or belief system, as Israel Finkelstein has shown. Abraham could not have possibly used camels. Camels were domesticated about 1000 years later.

Ok. It seems we disagree about this, even if only mildly. The arguments I've heard or read that have convinced me that some rituals and religious practices may have played a positive part in the remote past are those that contend that some kind of centralized authority, plus a set of rules to decide what to do could have been an efficient way for a group of people in which disagreement can easily emerge, to take a decision and stick to it. But things that stay with us don't have to be good. Parasitic entities have their own evolutionary "agenda." They grow and prosper among us. The only mistake they must avoid making is being so damaging to their host that they manage to extinguish it. Examples of it from biology are the common cold or the measles. Examples from the world of memes are faith-based religions and the Flat Earth Society.

If you allow me a to maintain my analogy a little longer; if the tumor is not malignant, it may just result in giving you an awesome tattoo that distinguishes you from the boring un-tattooed atheists. You are not enslaved and you keep your cool religious gear. What's not to like? I don't see mindfulness or the like as a variation; rather, as a much healthier substitute. But that's just how I view it.

I think religion is very much like a skin tumor. It's there for a reason different entirely from what humans need or wish. You get it or not more or less likely depending on your exposure to "the light" as much as on how strong your defense system is, and it can become just a quirk or turn into melanoma. But, as any other self-maintaining, replicating process in Nature, it couldn't care less about what you really want or need. It grows because it can. If you're lucky enough to weed it out, you can concentrate on the much more interesting problem of where it comes from and why it sticks in so many minds (some of them, curiously enough, anything but stupid,) or why it took the form it did in the particular part of the world where you were raised. Why the Bible took the form it did, I think can be understood largely in terms of history and archaeology.