Veeky Forums - History & Humanities

>aesthetics and beauty
most species have mating preferences based on how their partner looks
>friendship or love
we're a social species, if we didn't have these things we'd die out
>bravery
survival instinct and the desire to protect one's own group, again, social things
>honor
it's a morality thing, morality is required for a social species, a lot of species have what could be defined as morals, from wolves to crows

NEXT

I'd rather have an answer that's imperfect than an answer that appears perfect but could easily be false because either someone else rused me or my dumbass brain deceived me

those few examples don't change the fact that science is more practical than anything else

>its a thing and we have thing, okay done, NEXT

...

>religion and philosophy.
they give us no actual answers

Science's strength is skepticism so scientism runs contrary to science.

I'm sorry, what the fuck do you want from me again? I just explained where these things came from. The answer is almost always "they evolved because they were helpful for survival". Sorry if you don't like it.

Only if you choose to define "actual answers" as "something other than religion and philosophy".
This is as much of a copout as the faithful defining God as "something outside science" and asking scientists to refute it.

"Lungs evolved" is not the extent of knowledge we have on anatomy, yet it is for some reason enough to say science explained beauty?
And mating strategies are why I like the orange-blue contrast, or italian cars, or red wood desks, or the metal pattern on old swords?

what answers does philosophy give us?

It's not a good answer if you don't have a leg to stand on in terms of facts, so some other asshole can just come along and sweep aside your mighty wisdom with his mighty wisdom. Just because he got everyone else to agree with him because of bullshit reasons and sophistry.

You don't see the connection between "I find certain aesthetic traits in potential mates pleasing" and "I find certain aesthetic traits in other things pleasing"?

One example is the idea that "beauty" exists as a constant, has existed before human civilization, and we have, as our culture and sophistication developed, discovered it.
Thus we don't define it, it defines us, and our views and civilization developed around discovering and utilizing such constants.

This is like gods/deities minus the personification. The virtues, or ideals, or ideas, exist regardless of us, and we discover them, in the same way that gravity existed long before we were aware of it.

Well that's bullshit. "Beauty" is an entirely human devised concept. Things aren't beautiful except in the eyes of the observer.

Men like black. How has natural selection led to this? Did men who select to have sex with women with tissue necrosis end up producing the most offspring?

Do you have a single fact to back that up?

Veeky Forumsentist here.
Literally no single scientist i have ever spoken with has any notion of scientism, positivism, the philosophical foundations of science. They all know the scientific method pretty well through experience and education and are in general very logical/rational in a very specific field, but there is no understanding of the overlying issue.
Most have tendencies to agree with positivism and scientism, but are the first to admit inherent faults in their fields, the institutions, the constricts of their science. Most also kinda treat the humanities in a banter- ridiculing fashion, but that's not contempt based, the rivalry stems more from uni-grants.

doesn't have much to do with the discussion here, just wanted to throw it out there

>"beauty" exists as a constant
how can you tell such thing?

How can you refute such things?

Here you're gonna have to turn to an actual scientist. Aesthetic preferences may have developed from mating preferences, but as for the things people actually prefer today, I don't fucking know. The human brain and the human consciousness is amazingly complex. I'd actually like to know that myself.

If it's untestable and unfalsifiable you might as well fuck off with it. What are you gonna do, go to some spiritual thought realm and ask things if they're beautiful on their own, with no conscious observer to judge them?

i can't refute unsubstantiated claims

Pure pwnage

Why do students of the humanities have such a large chip on their shoulders?

You mean like dropping the PWNAGE! memes while quoting a very low effort post?

To restart the thread in good favor, consider this instead:

Is there any truth other than scientific truth?
Is there a fact that is not a scientific fact, but some other kind of absolute truth?

>Faith not grounded in reality can never be a good thing or in any way useful.
I love the arrogance that modern man has, thinking himself the greatest version of man to ever exist. Just because we are in the present day, and thus at the peak technological advancement that humans have ever been at, does not mean that we are at the peak intellectual advancement that humans have ever been at. To assume so is a fallacy. I'm starting to think Gasset was right in "Revolt of the Masses" in his characterization of modernity. Really, the modern man is a barbarian that has invaded an elaborate civilization created by those before him; and knowing nothing about the machinations of intellect that he finds himself among, he imagines himself a god.

Faith is the ultimate in useful philosophy. Religion, from a practical and aesthetic standpoint, turns man into a work of art. What man is, by nature, does not matter in religion. Only what matters is what a man should be, an ideal. Watch this video:
youtube.com/watch?v=GBT9LasyC3E

When one chooses not to believe in something greater, to have faith in a higher power, one does two things: one, man (in his natural state) becomes the highest of all creatures. Two, one concedes that the ultimate end of all things is death. These two things, when combined, can only lead to Nihilism. If man is the highest thing, and will naturally progress as time moves forward, but individually our end is the grave, then there is no reason to achieve anything in one's life. There is no higher purpose, or reason to move civilization forward at all. To convince yourself otherwise, you'd have to lie to yourself.

>Certainty is always more important than wonder and mystery.

But it legitimately is you dumb faggot. Get a job.

>Faith not grounded in reality can never be a good thing or in any way useful.

No, but it can be dangerous as an easy way to flatter your existing preconceptions while living in la-la-land. I'm not just talking about religious faith either.

>scientific truth
no such thing

it was the masonic JUICE all along.

>All those points
How do you know it doesn't just seem that way because some kind of malicious demon is infecting your thoughts?

If you don't trust your faculties, you can't make any conclusions, since they may be flawed based on your flawed faculty to reason.

And Descartes' horrible conclusion that "things be like this, because God wouldn't make it otherwise" is retarded.
The man set out to prove God, but only laid down the foundations for skepticism and atheist reasoning.

I didn't ask why you think so, I asked how you know.

Disregard the part about God, I suck dicks.

>All practical and important problems are scientific problems.
Factually wrong.

Science gets primacy because it actually works. It may never achieve true objectivity, but it does actually get results. Whereas other forms of reasoning and knowledge tend to go in circles and are still mulling over the same old questions they've always mulled over.

>Science gets primacy because it actually works.
So do power tools.
Yet i've yet to meet someone who wishes to restructure society according to the perspectives of Bob who's handy with a hammer, or claim there aren't problems that can't be resolved by a team of construction workers(or if there are, those are insignificant), as crucial as his role is to the building you sit in not collapsing on you, or "but he can make a table, unlike you, lel"

The only people that want to do that are loony technocrats on the internet.

When I meant it gets primacy, I meant that people default to it when another field of knowledge conflicts with it because it can typically be demonstrated to be correct in a tangible manner.

>"important" knowledge
Not a scientific concept. What you call 'important' will vary based on non-scientific reasoning. Scientism shouldn't even aknowledge important vs unimportant knowledge
>"important" problems
Not a scientific concept. Plenty of problems can be addressed scientifically but science itself would have nothing to say about what problems are important or unimportant
>Scientific knowledge "should..."
Modal/moral concepts like "should" are not scientific concepts, pretty obviously.
>Certainty is always more important than wonder
What? Would any decent scientist think that wonder plays no significant role in scientific achievement (let alone any other kind of achievement)

Generally science would have to betray itself to offer up any list of "important" or "relevant" problems. And any non-scientific determination of what problems science should address would undermine the global practice of scientism by answering the question "What's important" unscientifically.