dmb quoted from Peter Hacker's article, "Why Study Philosophy?":
"The study of philosophy cultivates a healthy scepticism about the moral
opinions, political arguments and economic reasonings with which we are daily
bombarded by ideologues, churchmen, politicians and economists. It teaches one
to detect ‘higher forms of nonsense’, to identify humbug, to weed out
hypocrisy, and to spot invalid reasoning. It curbs our taste for nonsense, and
gives us a nose for it instead. It teaches us not to rush to affirm or deny
assertions, but to raise questions about them. Even more importantly, it
teaches us to raise questions about questions, to probe for their tacit
assumptions and presuppositions, and to challenge these when warranted. In this
way it gives us a distance from passion-provoking issues – a degree of
detachment that is conducive to reason and reasonableness."
Ian replied:
"Healthy scepticism" is indeed a requirement of any worthwhile discourse. But
of course it's neither the point, nor the whole of such discourse. Having
cultivated a healthy scepticism, the point is constructive creativity towards
new meaningful hypotheses. It's crude "scientism" to think the way to arrive at
truth is falsification and critical thinking, that's simply a way to test
potential truths. The easy bit.
Ron replied to Ian:
In order for hypothesis to be meaningful, conceptualization must be skillful.
It's a guide to belief and action. You seem to be saying that the whole point
of discourse is to arrive at truth. The whole point is to arrive at meaning, if
you don't have the skills it's highly unlikely your hypothesis, no matter how
creative, will have any significant meaning.
"The National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking (a non-profit
organisation based in the U.S.) defines critical thinking as the intellectually
disciplined process of actively and skilfully conceptualizing, applying,
analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or
generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication,
as a guide to belief and action."
dmb says:
At least two of Ian's claims are baseless. 1) Hacker never said that skepticism
is "the whole of such discourse" - and he said nothing to preclude creative
thinking either. 2) Hacker never said falsification was the way to arrive at
truth. (I believe "falsification" was Popper's baby.)
While it's true that Hacker (and the National Council of Excellence in Critical
Thinking) has very well described critical thinking - or what Pirsig simply
calls "the skilled manipulation of abstract symbols - this is no way a "crude
scientism". It's not scientism at all. There is plenty of it going around this
days but I do not see any in Hacker's article.
Ian's response is a great example of what happens in the absence of critical
thinking skills. Like Hacker said, philosophy teaches critical thinking. It
"teaches one to detect ‘higher forms of nonsense’, to identify humbug, to weed
out hypocrisy, and to spot invalid reasoning. It curbs our taste for nonsense,
and gives us a nose for it instead."
Some people do not understand how this process is supposed to work and,
apparently, cannot take any kind of criticism as anything other than a personal
assault. It does matter if the criticism is a legitimate response to comments
in a discussion posted in a discussion group because finding fault is not
critical thinking to these people. It's personal abuse. How is it possible to
have a reasonable debate in that situation? Again, it's like showing up at the
chess club with a tennis racket.
If you resent these demands or feel injured by criticism when you fail to meet
them, then get a different hobby. There is no way to escape it if you want to
discuss anything at all with people who do care about the rules of this game.
It's childish and unrealistic to think otherwise.
Wikipedia's definition of Scientism:
Scientism is a term used to refer to belief in the universal applicability of
the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science
constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human
learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints.[1] It has been defined as "the
view that the characteristic inductive methods of the natural sciences are the
only source of genuine factual knowledge and, in particular, that they alone
can yield true knowledge about man and society."[2] The term scientism
frequently implies a critique of the more extreme expressions of logical
positivism[3][4] and has been used by social scientists such as Friedrich
Hayek,[5] philosophers of science such as Karl Popper,[6] and philosophers such
as Hilary Putnam[7] and Tzvetan Todorov[8] to describe the dogmatic endorsement
of scientific methodology and the reduction of all knowledge to only that which
is measurable.
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