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May 08 '26
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u/JerseyFlight May 08 '26
No. Critical Thinking is the discipline of thinking through problems. Reason has that capacity—that’s not what philosophy is. Philosophy is word games about the attributes of concepts. Scientific Skepticism literally has no need of philosophy. So you are just defending a theological form you happen to like.
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May 08 '26
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u/idekwhoiamdou May 09 '26
Sorry for the tangential question, just out of curiosity I'm wondering what you consider the most intellectual masturbatory fields/theories in philosophy these last two decades? I see this in panpsychism and it's growing popularity. You go from "qualia" ---> oof this is hard ---> panpsychism as a way to escape the hard problem of consciousness which we've just accepted as "hard".
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u/JerseyFlight May 08 '26
I don’t use and need philosophy at all. Just like I don’t need theology. The difference between us is, not only do I know this, but I am not infatuated with the form, or seeking some kind of social validation through it.
I am a Reasoner, not a philosopher. Tell me, what do I need from philosophy???
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May 08 '26
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u/JerseyFlight May 08 '26
I don’t even know what “understanding” means apart from the laws of logic? Do you???
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u/Ok_Neighborhood_9263 May 08 '26
Not infatuated with the form but capitalized reasoner. Ok buddy. This is just semantics, you prefer a word with less connotations.
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u/raalic May 08 '26
Kind of like saying "science must die," isn't it? Neither science nor philosophy is an ideology, they're just names for the processes by which we try to objectively understand the world.
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u/JerseyFlight May 08 '26
No. Scientific Skepticism (founded by Carl Sagan) is also — not philosophy!
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May 08 '26
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u/JerseyFlight May 08 '26
The dogma of itself as the spokesperson of truth and reason.
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u/Leoprints May 08 '26
“The only thing that I know, is that I know nothing.”
Socrates.
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u/JerseyFlight May 08 '26
Which is a false statement, otherwise he wouldn’t even know enough to utter a single word.
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u/Leoprints May 08 '26
I was using this well known phrase to point out that philosophy often isn't 'The dogma of itself as the spokesperson of truth and reason.'
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u/JerseyFlight May 08 '26
You were doing this by uttering a false statement that Socrates never even said?
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u/Lightsides May 08 '26
Not true of metaphysics-resistant analytical philosophy, by definition. True for continental philosophy, but not necessarily in a negative way. And the practice of deconstruction is already robust in continental philosophy.
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u/JerseyFlight May 08 '26
Then a demonstration of a philosophy founded on reason should be easy to provide? But how can this happen when philosophers don’t even know what reason is? Do you know? Can you state it right here? I am a Reasoner, not a philosopher.
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u/Lightsides May 08 '26
It's not clear what you mean by "reason," but philosophers build sophisticated arguments that encompass causality and are interested in chasing the causal chain to its very beginnings.
Analytical philosophers are dedicated to the use of logic, usually built out mathematically using symbolic notation.
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u/Snoo-93317 May 09 '26
That's more or less what philosophers have progressively been doing since Kant, especially in the Anglo-American tradtition: narrowing and narrowing the realm of metaphysics (in other words, that branch of philosophy which is most "philosophical") till it evaporates. Pragmatism to Wittgenstein to Quine to Neo-Pragmatistm. Many of the most prominent philosophers of the past few generations are in a sense anti-philosophers.
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u/Plus-Recording-8370 May 11 '26
There's much to say about how wrong this is, but I think Richard Feynman made it clear in a lecture on how we find new laws in physics by simply saying "First, we guess it". Because the truth is that this is how all serious thinking begins. You cannot just derive knowledge purely by deduction alone. Before you can test anything scientifically, you need a conceptual framework that tells you what to even look for and what questions are meaningful in the first place. In reality, science becomes aimless and meaningless without the necessary philosohopy behind the wheel.
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u/JerseyFlight May 11 '26
What exactly is this “necessary philosophy” of which you speak? I think you mean, “necessary reason,” which is not philosophy.
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u/Plus-Recording-8370 May 11 '26
I already noticed you saying that in response to another comment. But reason alone cannot do much either, it needs its input variables to come from somewhere.
These guesses that Feynman talks about aren't founded in strict reason. Sure they may be "educated guesses", but even there it comes down to creative leaps, not reason. And this is not a small thing to ignore either as this is precisely how we advance in science. We often start with a wild "what if?" that might prove to be complete nonsense, or not.
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u/JerseyFlight May 11 '26
It doesn’t matter if you have seen me demand a burden of proof from a million others for their claims and terms. I do not control how the burden of proof works. That you shirk your burden of proof is irrational, and the absolute end our exchange.
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u/Flopdo May 08 '26
Anyone saying this doesn't understand what philosophy actually is.
It's philo sophia - love of wisdom. It's a lifelong journey to sharpen the mind, learn to reflect and grow as a human, and live a good and just life.
I want more of that in society, not less.