Is philosophy mere imagination?

[tayla]

Atheists who object to anything non-material often refer to this as mere imagination. They say if you believe in God, that it is your imagination. Or if you believe in a spiritual realm, that it is your imagination. Or if you are a dualist thinking consciousness is apart from the material/physical universe, that it is your imagination.

That's what philosophy must be then, mere imagination. But yet the scientific method is based on philosophy, about the nature of knowledge and how you can know it and prove it, and what is the domain within which science operates. And the personhood and seemingly free will of scientists, that must be imagination also.

 

[Axe Elf]

Yeah, but some things we can imagine evidence for, and some things we can't.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Atheists who object to anything non-material often refer to this as mere imagination. They say if you believe in God, that it is your imagination. Or if you believe in a spiritual realm, that it is your imagination. Or if you are a dualist thinking consciousness is apart from the material/physical universe, that it is your imagination.

That's what philosophy must be then, mere imagination. But yet the scientific method is based on philosophy, about the nature of knowledge and how you can know it and prove it, and what is the domain within which science operates. And the personhood and seemingly free will of scientists, that must be imagination also.

Im having trouble understanding you. Philosophy, say Greek methods of medicine, has been tested and found repetitive results to work. A lot of our facts graduated from philosophy. So, it was someone's invention but not a figment of their imagination. In other words, they are theoris not fiction.

With god, it isnt proven just a lot of testimonies and experiences. I wouldnt use the word imagination because believers really do experience their beliefs etc. There are better ways to describe religious thought and conclusions.

Different criteria and foundation than science. Is there a way to "test tube" non-scientific nor psychologiical experiences? and by what criteria do you find results outside of ones testitmony and perosnal experience?

Its not fiction. I just have issues with presenting subjective information and as true for all. Thats probably what some atheist are annoyed with. If you said, In my opinion, there may be a bit lighter. If you said, this is a fact why dont you believe it (right in front of your face), of course there is backlash.

Can you prove it isnt your imagination?

 

[Duke_Leto]

Is mathematics mere imagination?

 

[Twilight Hue]

Atheists who object to anything non-material often refer to this as mere imagination. They say if you believe in God, that it is your imagination. Or if you believe in a spiritual realm, that it is your imagination. Or if you are a dualist thinking consciousness is apart from the material/physical universe, that it is your imagination.

That's what philosophy must be then, mere imagination. But yet the scientific method is based on philosophy, about the nature of knowledge and how you can know it and prove it, and what is the domain within which science operates. And the personhood and seemingly free will of scientists, that must be imagination also.

You would have to revisit what science actually is. Philosophy is not science.

 

[Augustus]

You would have to revisit what science actually is. Philosophy is not science.

Science is dependent on philosophy though.

What is science? What is not science? What can we know? What can we not know? What methodologies are sound? How should results be interpreted? How confident should we be in the results? What ethical issues should we consider regarding the sciences? etc. etc.

 

[Native]

"Philosophy" just refers to the very skills of "thinking for yourself" and "experience for yourself" and "in yourself" in combination to everything around you, included the cosmological realms. It´s just a fine intuitive communication with everything in the Creation itself. In the biblical terms, it´s just natural revelations.

 

[gnostic]

There hundreds of different philosophies since the Greeks, Indians and Chinese.

Different ways of thinking. Different geographical regions exhibited different cultures, which therefore produced philosophies. They can also change over times.

But are they all “right”?

They can’t be, since they (philosophers) often disagree with each other.

And philosophers can be as biased and defensive as any religious believer, and they can be wrong, or outdated.

Science has its root from natural philosophy that began with the Greeks, when the Greeks decided to use maths and/or empirical evidences to test their claims, instead of using superstitions. Natural philosophy is about leaving the gods out of equations when they attempt to explain what they see.

Of course, the Greek natural philosophy don’t alway work out, since for instance the geocentric model of Ptolemy won out against the heliocentric model of Aristarchus and Archimedes, and remained in the back burners for over 1500 years, when Nicolaus Copernicus revived heliocentric model, Galileo prove Copernican heliocentric model, and Kepler and Newton made more improvements on it.

Copernicus, Galileo and Newton kicked started the scientific revolution in Europe, which led to Age of Enlightenment, eventually turning natural philosophy into natural science, and later still the 20th century modern science.

Scientific method is best the tool in natural science, to test any prospective hypothesis, that weed out the bad hypotheses from the good, and far more reliable than any philosophy. The closest philosophies to what science do, are combination of Empiricism, Methodological Naturalism and Logical Positivism, because they embraced verification (empirical science) and falsification.

 

[Native]

Scientific method is best the tool in natural science, to test any prospective hypothesis, that weed out the bad hypotheses from the good, and far more reliable than any philosophy. The closest philosophies to what science do, are combination of Empiricism, Methodological Naturalism and Logical Positivism, because they embraced verification (empirical science) and falsification.

"Science" is in this general sense excellent in many different scientific departments and specialeties, but regarding the modern scientific approach to the concept of "Cosmology", it is a question of whether this science have lost the ability of Natural Philosophical thinking compared to the ancient method which lead to the Greek philosopher´s discovery of the atom.

"Calculus" is also fine art, but when the perceptions and hypothesis are wrong, it lead the modern cosmology far astray in all kinds of pure speculations, also because of not acting accordingly to the strict scientific methods of changing hypothesis when directly contradicted by factual observations.

When the Newtonian perception and theory of celestial planetary motions was contradicted by the observed galactic rotation curve, cosmological scientists should have abandoned this perception and theory and revised the entire idea of "gravity" in order to follow the scientific method, but they didn´t.

Instead they invented "dark matter" and "black holes" in order to patch and hold onto their contradicted theory and calculus. They added some "metaphysical matters" which an ancient natural philosopher NEVER would have done. They would have looked everywhere in order to find natural patterns which could illustrate the orbital observed pattern in galaxies - and they would have found such a pattern in the motions of hurricanes and simple weather systems and based their theories on natural phenomenons and not on something "dark this or that" which wasn´t observed.

Modern cosmological science needs Natural Philosophy very soon before it ends up in the speculative nothingness and pure science fiction.

 

[ChristineM]

Atheists who object to anything non-material often refer to this as mere imagination. They say if you believe in God, that it is your imagination. Or if you believe in a spiritual realm, that it is your imagination. Or if you are a dualist thinking consciousness is apart from the material/physical universe, that it is your imagination.

That's what philosophy must be then, mere imagination. But yet the scientific method is based on philosophy, about the nature of knowledge and how you can know it and prove it, and what is the domain within which science operates. And the personhood and seemingly free will of scientists, that must be imagination also.

Atheist : a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods.

That in no way makes any statement about anything other than god or gods.

Where does the "anything non-material" come in to the definition?

What they say is there is no evidence to support a god.

 

[ChristineM]

"Science" is in this general sense excellent in many different scientific departments and specialeties, but regarding the modern scientific approach to the concept of "Cosmology", it is a question of whether this science have lost the ability of Natural Philosophical thinking compared to the ancient method which lead to the Greek philosopher´s discovery of the atom.

"Calculus" is also fine art, but when the perceptions and hypothesis are wrong, it lead the modern cosmology far astray in all kinds of pure speculations, also because of not acting accordingly to the strict scientific methods of changing hypothesis when directly contradicted by factual observations.

When the Newtonian perception and theory of celestial planetary motions was contradicted by the observed galactic rotation curve, cosmological scientists should have abandoned this perception and theory and revised the entire idea of "gravity" in order to follow the scientific method, but they didn´t.

Instead they invented "dark matter" and "black holes" in order to patch and hold onto their contradicted theory and calculus. They added some "metaphysical matters" which an ancient natural philosopher NEVER would have done. They would have looked everywhere in order to find natural patterns which could illustrate the orbital observed pattern in galaxies - and they would have found such a pattern in the motions of hurricanes and simple weather systems and based their theories on natural phenomenons and not on something "dark this or that" which wasn´t observed.

Modern cosmological science needs Natural Philosophy very soon before it ends up in the speculative nothingness and pure science fiction.

I guess you are talking cosmological hypothesis. Which are clearly identified as hypothesis. The thing is these hypothesis are founded on either mathematics or reality, (observable phenomena) or both.

I dont know about you but i consider observations to garner fundimental, natural knowledge.

 

[gnostic]

"Science" is in this general sense excellent in many different scientific departments and specialeties, but regarding the modern scientific approach to the concept of "Cosmology", it is a question of whether this science have lost the ability of Natural Philosophical thinking compared to the ancient method which lead to the Greek philosopher´s discovery of the atom.

"Calculus" is also fine art, but when the perceptions and hypothesis are wrong, it lead the modern cosmology far astray in all kinds of pure speculations, also because of not acting accordingly to the strict scientific methods of changing hypothesis when directly contradicted by factual observations.

When the Newtonian perception and theory of celestial planetary motions was contradicted by the observed galactic rotation curve, cosmological scientists should have abandoned this perception and theory and revised the entire idea of "gravity" in order to follow the scientific method, but they didn´t.

Instead they invented "dark matter" and "black holes" in order to patch and hold onto their contradicted theory and calculus. They added some "metaphysical matters" which an ancient natural philosopher NEVER would have done. They would have looked everywhere in order to find natural patterns which could illustrate the orbital observed pattern in galaxies - and they would have found such a pattern in the motions of hurricanes and simple weather systems and based their theories on natural phenomenons and not on something "dark this or that" which wasn´t observed.

Modern cosmological science needs Natural Philosophy very soon before it ends up in the speculative nothingness and pure science fiction.

That because you are assuming and confusing theoretical science with empirical/experimental natural science.

Theoretical science are not actual science, because they are untested, relying mostly on logic and mathematics, not evidences used in experimental science, following the falsification and scientific method.

Theoretical science are basically hypotheses, that are currently untestable. The only thing saving any theoretical models are their maths (proofs), but maths are not evidences, and they are not inerrant.

What you called speculation, is under the theoretical physics umbrella.

Some fields in theoretical physics do become experimental/empirical science. General Relativity, for instance, expanded/extended our knowledge on gravity, because the Newtonian gravity isn’t enough when it come to describing distant galaxies and other astronomical bodies.

A lot areas in astrophysics and cosmology are still unknown, but we have learned far more in the last two centuries than in Galileo’s and Newton’s days.

Cosmology is work in progress. You cannot expect science to know everything.

Philosophies cannot help anyone with cosmology. Philosophies are no better than religions when it comes to cosmology, because different factions in different philosophies, philosophers are constantly fighting each other over superiority against each other, doing know works.

And metaphysics is the worse of lot. It’s all talk but no work.

Metaphysics is like the very popular geocentric model of planetary motion, which ruled for millennia, since the Sumerian/Babylonian astronomy, but it was Ptolemy who made geocentric popular...but it was wrong.

Metaphysics is popular, but overrated just like the geocentric believers or the Flat Earth believers.

 

[gnostic]

When the Newtonian perception and theory of celestial planetary motions was contradicted by the observed galactic rotation curve, cosmological scientists should have abandoned this perception and theory and revised the entire idea of "gravity" in order to follow the scientific method, but they didn´t.

Native, you don’t know your history of astronomy, let alone understand astronomy.

In Newton’s days and in the centuries that followed, every astronomers thought the Milky Way was the only galaxy and that it was the entire galaxy.

Astronomers using their not so powerful telescopes and thought Andromeda and Triangulum were nebulas, not separate galaxies. They thought these nebulas were parts of the Milky Way. Newton knew no better than Charles Messier and William Herschel regarding to more galaxies out there in a much larger universe.

It was Edwin Hubble, in 1919, who made the discoveries that that there were other galaxies other than the Milky Way. Hubble only made this discovery, because of a lot larger telescope (the Hooker Telescope) was built. Since then other larger observatories were constructed, and than radio telescopes were used, discoveries more stars and galaxies.

It is matter of progress. Just because of Newton’s important contribution to physics and mathematics, doesn’t mean he knew everything there needs to know.

 

[Augustus]

Science has its root from natural philosophy that began with the Greeks, when the Greeks decided to use maths and/or empirical evidences to test their claims, instead of using superstitions. Natural philosophy is about leaving the gods out of equations when they attempt to explain what they see.

No it wasn't. God/theology played a role in natural philosophy up until the advent of modern science. Aristotle posited that natural philosophy was the handmaiden of theology. NP also was tied in to things such as virtue and ethics which is why seeing it as basically modern science under a different name is problematic

Also the Greeks rarely tested their claims as they assumed reason was enough to ascertain knowledge. The experimental testing of claims was something that developed c.17thC as people started to doubt their reason (arguably due to Christian theology of The Fall).

Scientific method is best the tool in natural science, to test any prospective hypothesis, that weed out the bad hypotheses from the good, and far more reliable than any philosophy. The closest philosophies to what science do, are combination of Empiricism, Methodological Naturalism and Logical Positivism, because they embraced verification (empirical science) and falsification.

Science is inseparable from philosophy, given that it dependent on it. What is science/not science? What is reliable? How should results be interpreted? What axiomatic assumptions are justifiable? etc. etc. are all philosophical questions.