Dodgy Reasoning and Stupid Assumptions
The fourth of July is a perfect time to rededicate ourselves to the 'philosophical' attitude our founders exhibited, and to avoid the "dodgy reasoning and stupid assumption-making that the unwashed masses" often use.
Julian Baginni put it well in a recent BBC Night Waves program discussing his book The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: And Ninety Nine Other Thought Experiments
I think it's possible to read a hell of a lot of philosophy, it's possible to be a professional philosopher, and not have a philosophical attitude. I think the philophical attitude is this kind of constant questioning, and I think that sometimes people find philosophy, they love it, and they latch onto a few of their favourite philosophers, and they become as entrenched in a particular form of philosophy as any unphilosophical person becomes entrenched in their assumptions; philosophers are actually subject to the delusion in fact because their subject is officially the 'queen of the sciences,' the discipline which questions assumptions more than any other, they kind of feel that they themselves are immune to the kind of dodgy reasoning and stupid assumption-making that the unwashed masses do, and I think that's a terrible risk of doing philosophyThanks to OB for the transcript
Quicktime Audio 1.9MB 7'58
Quicktime Required (free download)
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Comments
Thought some of you might enjoy this audio of Henry Miller (about 10 meg.):
http://brutusworks.com/henry-miller.mp3
Posted by: kali yuga | July 4, 2005 9:51 PM
I thought mathematics, not philosophy, was the queen of the sciences. At least, Gauss and Einstein thought so.
Speaking of the sciences, there is a lengthy collection of articles in the most recent issue of Science on "125 Questions: What Don't We Know?" I recommend these pdf files (better layout than the html): intro.pdf, essay.pdf, 125questions.pdf.
"Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know." —Bertrand Russell
Posted by: Lara Inis | July 5, 2005 2:57 AM
Philosophy has no place in the modern world. Science can provide better answers, or sketches of future theories, than philosophy is capable of.
Posted by: anon | July 5, 2005 4:23 AM