Philosophy is what you do when you don't have data. The other thing to do would be to get data, but who would bother. Especially before lunch.
- Study people who are leading a good life? Circular: how do you identify them? - Ask people if they are leading a good life? Begs the question, since to decide they must have already answered it.
Do you believe the answer is unimportant? Self-evident? Relative to time and place? Naturally dictated and discoverable by reason? Primarily decided by social structure? Primarily determined by the individual?
All of those positions have been held by and forcefully defended, and all of them have also been forcefully attacked. By people studying philosophy, because that is at root what philosophy is.
It's a vital question because we can't measure the effectiveness of public policy or personal decisions without some notion of "good" to apply as a scale.
Just coming up with arguments without answers is nothing more than "structured pondering". It'd only seem useful to increasingly meta topics where data can't be found.
What if i point out that it commits a modal scope fallacy?
What data do you have to refute the statement: "A statement can be refuted without data"?
I tried to educate myself a bit to understand you. I've read: http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallaci... and failed.
First example claims that "(p => q, p) so q" is a fallacy by closely squinting at word "must". Second example claims that p => q where ~q => ~p is assumed is also a fallacy because they claim that one word that q consists of spills out and covers whole statement.
From this brief brush I'd say "modal scope fallacy" is just about some fuzzily defined semantic nuance of English language. So, no, I'd say you can't refute anything except bad grammar with this.
If you can write it down and the thing you want to refute, with symbols and prove their conjunction to be tautologically false with formal logic then I'd say you've refuted the claim. But as I said that's math not philosophy.
> What data do you have to refute the statement: "A statement can be refuted without data"?
Are you asking because you think I claimed to have refuted or wanted to refute that statement?
What refutation can you offer of the statement that data is needed to refute the statement: "A statement can be refuted without data"?
That's exactly the chain of pointless self, and cross referential statements that arise when you are trying to refute something without data and/or precise definition (which would make it math).
No it doesn't. You've formalized it incorrectly.
Doesn't matter, i might as well have said that the argument is affirming the consequent and we'd still have a problem since there is a deeper issue here. What you're saying is that the simple acts of either formalizing your arguments or precisely defining your premises somehow turns it into math and precludes it from being philosophy. Yet philosophers do exactly that all the time.
Is that the point you want to argue? Cause i am neither convinced or interested in pursuing it. It would seem to me like a pointless argument about definitions.
I haven't formalized anything, I just used notational short-hands.
Example goes:
If Debbie and TJ have two sons and two daughters, then they must have at least one son. Debbie and TJ have two sons and two daughters. Therefore, Debbie and TJ must have at least one son.
If I substitute string "Debbie and TJ have two sons and two daughters" with "p" and string "they must have at least one son" with "q" and write relation If ... then ... as ... => ... and implied conjunction between two first lines as ( ... , ... ) and substitute string "Therefore" with "so" (for no reason, I just like short syntax) I get what I wrote: (p=>q, p) so q
It's not formalization, it's just string substitution. What I implied later (mainly that the author of the example claims that something tautologically true is fallacy) assumes that we can agree to assign either true or false to the strings denoted by p and q and we use conventional logic.
The only way this could be incorrect is if words in one line of the example are defined to mean something else than exact same words in other line they occur. It's possible but without explicit definition of such bizarre behavior I won't be guessing what author had in mind.
> Doesn't matter
Oh, yes it matters. It's an excellent example of what remained of philosophy when natural philosophers left. Thinking so fuzzy that it lacks not only application but even meaning. Despite that appreciated and cited as a marvelous tool for argumentation.
> affirming the consequent
Much better. But that piece of philosophy was swallowed by math long time ago. Any statement about logic that philosophy can currently make is math, false or semantically fuzzy. You won't be trying to refute many arguments using reasoning of Zeno of Elea nowadays.
> What you're saying is that the simple acts of either formalizing your arguments or precisely defining your premises somehow turns it into math and precludes it from being philosophy. Yet philosophers do exactly that all the time.
Really? Could you point me to works of some, perhaps fairly modern, philosopher that defines what he ponders with accuracy that could be appreciated by a mathematician? But no cargo cult please. Preciseness and some actual meaning is what I'm looking for.
As i said, i don't really want to argue weather that is math or philosophy, especially when i see statements to the effect that affirming the consequent was once philosophy but math "swallowed" it so now pointing out that fallacy means you're doing math and things like that. Talk about imprecise and meaningless right there.
Fortunately technology advanced to the level that allowed us to gather some actual data and instead of just thinking blankly about the world we experience natural philosophers started to construct models of predictive utility. The rest is history ... of science. Other philosophers are still waiting for their technology refusing to think about something else till it arrives.
There's nothing wrong in philosophy but it's just recreation for the times you feel like thinking a bit but are too lazy to find something useful to think about.
> How do you collect data about what constitutes a good life?
You tempt me to think pointlessly for a while. It's really untimely because at the moment I should be thinking about stuff people need from me.
How can a philosopher find out meaning of "good" to give a question "what constitutes a good life?" enough meaning to even dream of arriving at an answer? I encourage you to listen to what Sam Harris has to say.