Realist!

I can't understand why Veeky Forums has such an aversion to philosophy. Science is not the answer to everything. There are many questions that you can answer extremely effectively with the scientific method, and others which we can only make sense of with philosophy. This "lul philosophy" meme needs to die.

Science is to philosophy, what ornithology is to bears.

Science can solve some problems. Philosophy can solve none.

>others which we can only make sense of with philosophy

Name one.

This.

Logical problems for one.

I think there is a place for professional philosophers in the biological and medical sciences. Our Genetics department actually has a resident philosopher/ethicist and she does consulting with the NIH and publishes papers that influence which genetic diseases should be included on newborn screening panels. As long as they are scientifically literate enough to inform their opinions I think having ethicists in the decision-making process of certain areas of policy is helpful.

it is totally unnecessary to study philosophy to conduct cutting edge or breakthrough science.

what are the most important theorems from philosophy from the past 150 years?

Can you name any?

the fall back position with you people is always making the claim that any sensible problem solving thought process is philosophy, which is stupid not only because it defines hilosophy so broadly as to be meaningless but also because if the claim is true it is saying that you do not need to ever spend time studying philosophy in order to use it.

the continued full time study of philosophy is of very low utility to the human race.

logic is useful but the thing is that most philosophy students actually hate logic and try to avoid studying it as soon as they can so instead they can write waffly, opinion-laden essays about feminism and post-structuralism and other pointless, stupid shit resulting in there being many more mathematicians and computer scientists who know about formal systems and other topics in non-introductory logic than actual philosophers.

Which logical problems are you referring to?

Anything having to do with ethics.

Whether it's possible to have a set of consistent axioms that describe all of mathematics. Russel tried to prove the basis of mathematics through logic, but later Gödel showed that it's impossible.

Ethics

what does someone who studied philosophy know better about medical ethics than a doctor?

All ethics is is deciding what your order of priorities is in your value system. Once you have decided on what you prioritise most highly the decision making process is trivial (the actual decision of what would be the best thing to do is likely not to be clear due to uncertainty in the information , but the process to arrive at that decision is trivial).

deciding the value system itself is totally arbitrary,

there .
that is all of ethics

that's false.

I have never studied philosophy and I can solve any ethics problem.

Oh yeah, I don't support long-term study in the field of philosophy whatsoever, it most definitely is meme. But what I'm saying is that the field itself isn't a meme, philosophy led to the formation of modern day science, so a understanding of philosophy is commendable and has connotations in science but it should not be pursued as a field.

Science can address this.

That's mathematics.

You make it sound a lot simpler than it actually is. Take self-driving cars for example, there are a number of ethical problems to solve before we can fully implement them in society.

Logic is where mathematics and philosophy meet, you can't say that logic isn't philosophy.

I suspect that by "philosophy" you actually mean "philosophy I disagree with"

>I have never studied philosophy and I can solve any ethics problem.

That sentence alone tells me you are either trolling or dont understand ethics.

You can't say that Focault is mathematics

Hahaha, tough luck kiddo, I am a Math Phd., thereby I can easily muster any topic that's below my subject.

All philosophers are Focault now?

Mathematics is symbolic logical reasoning.

It's a tool used to describe the world around us and enhance our reasoning abilities.

Science is the process of drawing up informally and formally logical - falsifiable - models of reality, which are then tested via experimentation and the gathering of observational evidence.

What is philosophy?

Which ethics problem has been solved by philosophy?

philosophy is great but belongs on Veeky Forums

99% of philosophers are not mathematics

>what are the most important theorems from philosophy from the past 150 years?

Not him but logical positivism is a pretty big one.

try me.

I can solve any problem relating to the ethics of self-driving cars.

posean ethical problem to me and I will solve it without much difficulty.

the facts that there will be far more mathematicians and computer scientists who are familiar with formal systems and that most students studying philosophy do not pursue logic but actually hate logic because it reminds them of maths and so try to drop it as soon as possible tell us that while logic is part of philosophy, really its become the territory of maths.

It's called science.

Here's an ethical problem: should we keep smallpox samples, or destroy them to be safe?

How is that an ethical problem?
It's a probability problem.

>what is more likely to cause a future inconvenience?

>cause a future inconvenience
The inconvenience being people getting harmed. That's ethics.

I have a minor in philosophy.
Courses on logic and argument were fun.
Didn't really enjoy the required Ancient and Modern philosophy.

>implying a philosopher knows how to calculate probabilities

Well if it's such a trivial question you should be able to solve it.

How about: should doctors disclose non-paternity (cuckolding) when it is an incidental finding in a medical genetic test?

the ethics of the problem is simple, the only possible principle involved is which course of action minises as much human suffering as possible and you do this by choosing whichever has the higher expected value in terms of utility.

calculating the expected value is as the other person said difficult because it is difficult to assess the probability of a lab accident, the probability of future research involving the samples being useful, etc.

the ethics part of the problem is straightforward, it is the practical considerations which are non-straightforward.

POWNED

Yes, for virology research.

No, it's irrelevant to the treatment.

Doctors are there to treat medical problems, not interfere with the mating strategies of hairless apes.

This.

I love this thread.

The ethics of microbiology aren't simple at all when you factor in the fact that even relatively benign research can be misused. Research that might help people by shedding light on the nature of infectious disease could also be applied to the creation of bioweapons. This is the problem a pot of people have with recent gain-of-function research on avian flu. In any case, risk is very difficult to assess properly in infectious disease scenarios because chance factors could mean the difference between a local epidemic and a global pandemic. In cases where there is a pot of uncertainty, the ethical dilemma becomes 'to what degree should we err on the side of caution, howuch research should be kept secret, and what constitutes 'acceptable risk'?' These questions aren't trivial at all.

depends on whether you value transparency on the one hand or the welfare of the people involved on the other hand.

the choice of value system is arbitrary, an ethical decision is only capable of being right or wrong once you have chosen your value system.

once you have chosen your value system you simply perform the expected value calculation for the possible decision and choose whichever decision maximises the things you value (as specified in your value system).

You just confirmed exactly what the other user said.

It's a matter of probabilities, which is the domain of mathematicians and more specifically statisticians.

BTFO!

>it's a math autists can't into philosophy episode

Nope. Philosophy tards can't accept the extinction of their discipline.

But this is why having an ethicist would be valuable, because they actually understand the differences between different ethical frameworks. Someone who has spent their entire career studying the nuances of consequentialism, utilitarianism, deontology, etc would be better able to point out some fallacy or oversight than a researcher or policymaker with only introductory knowledge of philosophy. Surely you can at least concede that they add some value.

in this case you must also choose in your value system specify your risk-aversion, which is another arbitrary part of the value system.

one investor might arbitrarily decide that he only wants to be exposed to a 5% chance of losing money but wants to do whatever is expected to maximise his money as long as the probability of him losing money under this scheme is less than or equal to 5%

another investor might arbitrarily decide he wants to do whatever maximises his expected returns no matter what the probability of him losing money is.

both of these are arbitrary value systems and no one can say that one is necessarily more right or moral in our case than the other.

it is only once you have decided on a value system that then it is possible to say that one course of action is worse than another

OP here.

Philosophy is a relic, but some interesting points have been made.

Ethics.

Ethics committees around the world are made up of medical professionals and educated medical-lay people, many of who are professional ethicists.

So, is ethics the last bastion of philosophy?

Or should we just call it ethics and sat that philosophy is dead?

Science, maths and ethics; philosophy BTFO.

Sounds good to me.

if you tell me a value system then I or any other sensible person can tell you what to do to go about finding out which decision is best.

deciding which value system is best is totally arbitrary, having spent your time studying philosophy does not change that.

You realize that ethics is the SOLUTION

I mean, you can't be that braindead can you?

The existence of ethics is the solved.

Cool, so you just pick a value system

>some death is better than a lot of death
>some risk is better than a lot of risk
>some gain is not better than a lot of gain

ethics seems easy

>the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline.
Philosophy can't die until all humans die.

any ethics problem has an ethics part which is easy and a practical part which is often not easy.

ethical and political questions can only be fairly addressed by people who have studied a lot of human thought on the matters.

e.g. when the supreme court makes a ruling, it's not so much a question of the law itself in many cases as the discourse of philosophers who work with the constitution, its amendments and they're personal education on ethical and political matters which results in a weighted decision. this is a philosophical process.

e.g. when politicians formulate their basic concepts of society - conservative vs. progressive being the most simple and obvious of these concepts - they should (and in many cases, looking at a global scale) base their decisions in part on their philosophical education or their capabilities of philosophical reasoning. bipartisanship in particular acknowledges that different philosophies can try to reach the same goal, voting determines the weight each is given and decisions are made in cooperation, where the philosophy currently carrying more weight has greater say. (admittedly, this is currently and has also in the past decade not shown very much in the political process).

these are problems which can be addressed philosophically but not scientifically. that is not to say that science doesn't have its part; science needs to do the research to provide data so as to eliminate doubt, as in "is there evidence that this decision could have substantial negative effects" or "will the decision help reaching the goal it claims it is trying to reach". however, the basic groundwork needs to come from somewhere else.

e.g. science can tell you the economic effect social welfare has on a society and thus provide a corridor of freedom for policy to work within, but the tendency within this corridor needs to be addressed philosophically, that is, through debate and consensus.

(these are just a few examples. there is plenty more you fuckers have no clue about yet and since i assume quite the number of you to be autists, maybe never will.)

and the practical part isn't solved by philosophers

so what's the point of philosophers? the ethics "problems" are so simple that someone with no background in ethics could solve them

Yeah but even if we say that value systems are totally arbitrary (though I'm not sure I entirely agree) an ethicist could help you understand just what options are on the table when it comes to building a coherent ethical framework and, if they have a good background in the history of medical ethics what the common pitfalls are in these scenarios.

Science has made all other approaches obsolete.

it is, though. philosophers are often involved in policy drafting and policy making. many more are journalists, which is part of the political process as well and needs to be guided by rules rooted in philosophy.

"Philosophy" is just a term, meaning "the art of analytical thinking" essentially. what's taught in universities is mostly just reasoning, debate, logic, formal writing, the theory behind it. the field itself, with many people contributing who have not studied the formal subject, treats many more subjects than that.

Hello, can somebody sum up ethics for me?

The three main systems in the West are virtue ethics, deontology, and utilitarianism.

>philosophers are often bureaucrats
>philosophers are reporters

We could get by without you, you know?

user, economically specialized human societies are based around the desires of the socially dominant.

Wealth and power disparity exists everywhere, the only thing that varies is the degree of severity.

We're social primates that live in social hierarchies.

It's not that simple, but it's a lot simpler than it's made out to be.

Political philosophy is delusion, as whenever it's applied you end up with some variant of the same system that proceeded it and that will succeed it.

We're hairless apes and are not very dissimilar to our chimp and bonobo cousins.

So it's a load of bollocks then?

...

nobody in here has a phd and you're getting trolled

philosofags are so fucking easy to troll i swear to god you people need to stop caring so fucking much

didn't say philosophers were bureaucrats.

if you think you could get by without bureaucrats, reporters, philosophers and the like, you probably also think taxation is theft, mind control through chemtrails is real and such nonsense. we're not animals, we live in a society.

in times like these, you don't see much of philosophic influence on policy, and political philosophy, since 1. the system is already working (fairly) okay and changes are rather minor tweaks to the whole shebang and 2. there really hasn't been a big change of philosophy since neoliberalism took over from the free deal. look up the history of neoliberal theory, all the think tanks and lobbyists etc were philosophers in great number. we would need a shift, something like the likes of Bernie Sanders are proposing, but the time isn't yet. it's coming, though; Trump (and similar movements worldwide) have shown it's coming.

if you think we have constitutions, value systems with humanist ethics, basically all the ground work required for our societies to work, despite and not because philosophy exists, you're delusional. philosophy is the reason our ruling systems and societies aren't based on fucking religion anymore.

(religion is also a philosophy, but it exists in such a 2000yrs ago and non-literal way that it's not suited to guide society any longer)

Are the people defending philosophy philosophy students, though? I've been arguing on the pro-philosophy side and I'm a genetics grad student.

i'm this guy:
compsci and theoretical physics, not philosophy

i also do agree that quite a number of things in philosophy is complete bollocks, but to dismiss the entire field is just plain stupid. also, there's plenty of bollocks in other fields as well, so yeah, there's that.

>Ignoring the fact that a PhD is a graduation from scientist to philosopher

Science is unironically the answer to every question worth asking.

>It's an 'undergrads dismiss entire fields of study that have been around for more centuries than years they've been alive' episode

Dismissing the value of philosophy is a meme.

you don't even know what worth is, friendo.

>Philosophy students
I know what these terms means, and I'm not a student.

The problem with you people (which would be better off dead or doing grunt work in labor camps, in my opinion) is you're stuck in an education mentality. You think everything is about studying and sponging up "the material", the notion of self derived thought is lost to you. You've been made mindless sensors, which is akin to intellectual castration.

Complaining about philosophy means you don't understand what it is. This mentality has always existed but modern media culture has greatly overexpressed it.

Found the NEET guys.

Not even close.

Found the undergrad!

Nope.
Enjoy your colorless life my eunuch friend.

Science can't answer the big picture questions about the very reality it is grounded in, not to mention questions that quantitatively irreducible, questions that apply to one's consciousness and his relationship with other people in the world. "where is the pleasure center of the brain?" and "what makes me happy?" are completely different questions and only an autist thinks the latter can be answered with a few studies and a textbook.

The only part I've distinctly neglected to mention is that these people are employing philosophical thought and operating on philosophical principles (that have been defined) constantly, they're just not able, or willing, to be aware of it. Most of it is derived from an embedded stigma.

So they're not just intellectually castrated, they're slaves.

Even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which science presents for
our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home.
That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving;
that his origin, his growth, his fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of
accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and
feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages,
all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are
destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temper of
Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins —
all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy
which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only
on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be
safely built.

Look at this trash and tell me STEMlords haven't made a God out of objectivity and projected the sterility and mechanism of their discipline onto everything.

user, neoliberalism is not in practice.

It's yet another delusion.

Government tax breaks, bonds, grants and bailouts are antithetical to neoliberalism, yet they dominate the economies of supposedly neoliberal societies.

Philosophies all you like about which societal system to implement; you'll just end up with the same thing.

>it exists in such a 2000yrs ago and non-literal way that it's not suited to guide society any longer

Top kek that's philosophy lad m8.

Black and white mangas are the best though...

It's all about contrast, user.

Philosophy = informal + formal logic reasoning

Science = informal and formal logic reasoning + falsifiability + experimentation + evidence.

It's over user, philosophy is dead.

Science is a formalized subset of philosophy.

>science can tell you the economic effect social welfare has on a society and thus provide a corridor of freedom for policy to work within, but the tendency within this corridor needs to be addressed philosophically, that is, through debate and consensus.

We've compartmentalized that form of thinking into the fields of political science and policymaking though. When people refer to philosophy in its current form, they're talking about epistemology, not constructive debate.

philosophy = synthesis, holism, intuition, deduction
science = analysis, autism, contingent, formulaic

Yes, user.

Science is the conclusion to millennia of philosophical pursuit.