PanLeo
Sophomore
@saoradh
Posts: 919
Likes: 53
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Post by PanLeo on Jun 2, 2017 11:33:03 GMT
-thing?
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Post by Terrapin Station on Jun 2, 2017 11:44:47 GMT
Philosophers do actually agree on plenty of things, but you don't see much discussion about that, because agreement in philosophy doesn't lend itself to discussion near as well.
And scientists do disagree on plenty of things, but one tends to be aware of that much more when one is immersed in the sciences (if one is in academia, if one is regularly reading academic journals, etc.)
However, it's reasonable to note that there's often much more of a consensus in the sciences than there is in philosophy. The reason for that is that in the sciences, it's generally accepted that empirical experimentation is the ultimate arbiter, and empirical experimentation tends to be fairly uniform. That's one of the methodological differences between philosophy and the sciences. Philosophy isn't empirical experiment-oriented. That's partially because it can't be--it's often dealing with things on a very abstract level that can't be tested for empirically. But it's also because it's often logic-oriented, and logic, like mathematics, isn't an empirical science. Plus philosophy is very focused on examining and challenging the most core assumptions, including the foundations of things like empirical experimentation, and including the assumptions that other philosophers made in their work--and everyone must make some assumptions to get on with anything. Challenging assumptions in that manner is a valuable exercise, and in that regard, it's an asset of philosophy that there's not more widespread consensus than there is. That's a lot of the value of it.
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Post by Terrapin Station on Jun 2, 2017 12:01:03 GMT
Think of it this way: the goal of philosophy is its critical method. The goal isn't to come to solutions that everyone agrees on. That's rather contrary to the critical method that's the gist of the discipline.
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Post by general313 on Jun 2, 2017 15:23:48 GMT
In my opinion it's because in general philosophy, like religion is missing that reality check component. In many cases philosophical arguments revolve around distinctions that are untestable and make no predictions of any observable differences dependent on a particular philosophy in the world we live in.
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