Philosophy is Dead

There is no defense, really... Some times people can live numb, if you would call that living... No one ever loves numb...

I have to disagree with him... Economic forms and legal forms take over when moral forms like sharing, and justice begin to die...Ethics as one of the major branches of philosophy tries to find the reason for moral behavior when the social forms that were the moral milieu have passed away... The thought that reason brought one closer to happiness is as old as the Greeks and Romans... That does not mean reason can help people to understand moral behavior once it has become unnatural to them... Nietzsche among others was correct to think human beings are not paragons of reason, but examples of irrationality... The 19th century was a period of correction in many respects, but as long as morals and moral forms present a problem there will be philosophers working at a solution... That does not mean they will find one with reason....

The universe is in perfect order. God is in total control of Science and the release of knowledge. He is in total control of good and evil, and free will is an illusion. God invented socialism and capitalism, Republicans and Democrats, Whigs and Tory, and he can control the Yin and the Yang, Right and Left, and if scientific or physical constants exist, God alone can change them. If secular agnostic socialist communists exist, or if a scientist fails to give all credit and glory to God, then he is like a common worker assigned to cleaning the toilets, and so long as he is not late for work, and if by intelligence alone he keeps his commandments and ancient covenants with the Creator, then he can mouth off and make false conclusions. Hawking and Mlodinow simply remind us that dogs loving to eat their own dung have opened up the great science of scatology, while other men specialize in diseases of the rectum. Such people are needed to design city sewers, and to maintain them.

For one thing, you don't understand the definition of "perfect order."
If you had, you wouldn't have written those ignorant prose following it.

Well, if you disdain this "scatology" so much, why don't you turn off your computer and go live in the stoneage? See how far your god-rant gets you then.

Wait I thought a idea could only die if no one believes in it?

Ideas do not need to be believed in. That's the reason many people are atheists even though many believe in one religion or another.

I could waffle on in a reply to them but after I posted a long thesis here I got flamed for being too long and not "dumbing it down". Just a brief quote.
"Scientists should come to terms with the fact that they are animals just like the ant and, like the ant, their powers of perception and reason are limited to that which Evolution deemed appropriate to their species. The only way the scientist can be sure of occupying the high ground of perception and reason in existence is to possess a soul and he doesn’t have one, does he? The ant has no concept of Mr. Fred Smith of 23 Acacia Avenue but Mr. Smith assuredly exists. "

As an ex-political cartoonist, I can certainly come up with a snide remarks.
Re: Messrs. Hawking and Mlodinow, I may say to them "And just how long is it before you came down from the trees and started to use a latrine?" If I could post cartoons, I would post my "Yahoos to Googles" one.
I get as irritated by religion as many others but I do think, for jumped-up man-apes, scientists think they know it all. For so-called intelligent men, they are arrogant and blinkered.
I quote from my article posted elsewhere here.
"..their (scientists') powers of perception and reason are limited to that which Evolution deemed appropriate to their species. The only way the scientist can be sure of occupying the high ground of perception and reason in existence is to possess a soul and he doesn’t have one, does he?"
Plenty more sarcasm on request.

If he doesn't then neither does anybody else. The argument is circular because you are defining "soul" to suit your stance.

The only way the scientist can be sure of occupying the high ground of perception and reason is that he claims to do, as he is entitled to , and that people believe his claim for which purpose he has a large battery of instruments at his disposal. Scientific magazines for example and media gimps who are in awe of him so that they can rub a little glitter off on themselves and pose as scientifically savvy when, in fact, they couldn't tell the difference between a surd and a turd.

When the trickle down effect works its magic with the teaching profession we are stuck with the claim.

Imagine a modern trawler captain who keeps the sonar and radar tracking of shoals to himself. When he detects a shoal he dons his shaman kit, does a dance, sacrifices the crew member he least loves, waves his arms in the air and chanting incomprehensible mantras at the sky, shouts "there are the feeshes" and lo and behold the nets are full as quick as you could read the list of the 100 largest cities in Russia.

Time after time. He has the best paid crew in the fleet and they worship him. He's irreplaceable whereas the company can easy train another radar screen reader.

That is an experimental metaphor and should not be taken seriously.

Um, I see my sarcasm has fallen on deaf ears. What I tried to say was this.
Scientists are one of two things.

A naturally evolved animal. A jumped up monkey whose qualifications to pontificate about Life, the Universe and Everything are, relatively speaking, only few notches up from the ant. If we were ants and we were discussing likely existence of the owner of the garden in which your colony was sited, what would you say?

Or some kind of demi-god who, unlike the ant and the monkey, is fitted with an app called the soul which gives him special qualifications to pontificate about the truths of the universe. Since the scientists deny the soul, they are the first: left scratching themselves and pontificating on the nature of bananas. No Apple jokes please.

Doesn't anyone interested in philosophy have a satirical sense of humor: particular about the Douglas Adams comic scale of it all? I personally find it hilarious. I guess Hawking must have lost his sense of humor to make the Philosophy is Dead remark. He did have a sense of humor once. He was lecturing to a class in the days he could just about speak naturally. They were discussing the boundary of the universe. Because he was hard to hear, a student at the board was relaying his stuff and demonstrating with a plastic cylinder. Suddenly, Hawking said "You have got it (the cylinder) upside down". The student blushed and hastily reversed it and Hawking cackled.

I wonder how Einstein would have reacted to such an arrogant and blinkered remark. He said that if you want to make your kids more intelligent, tell them fairy tales. Nature is a master illusionist. Hawking is like an adult with pre-conceived ideas at a conjuring show being deceived by its sleight of hand and keeping his eyes fixed on the Hat. Without open-minded childish wonder and curiosity, he is never going to spot the Rabbit.

What Douglas Adams did correctly was highlight the folly of anthropocentricity, but I think maybe you are setting up Hawking as a "straw man". It seems to me, in the manner of Richard Feynman that most of "scientists" simply avoid talking about the words "reality" or "existence" because something in their sub-conscious perhaps is working along the lines of Godel's incompleteness theorem in which at least one axiom must be stated without foundation. Nor is it in their career interests to indulge in "the esoteric" (as perhaps David Bohm or Rupert Sheldrake may have found out to their cost). The "success" of science and the reputation of scientists to a large extent measured by elegance, and its utility in prediction and control rather than its responses to epistemological or ontological questions which it signally sidesteps.

Has on Ignore eh?

"SCIENCE IS NOT ABOUT CERTAINTY: A PHILOSOPHY OF PHYSICS"
Link: http://www.edge.org/videos/topic/universe
(3 video in line)

As you may already know I think of you as an intellectual but I was wondering what you thought about another that I considered intellectual as well? I am not interested in your views about him in the past but rather interested in all of the fallacies that you think he is sharing in this video.

I would like to hear from all others as well who would like to challenge his thinking.

If others have not noticed Fido has not posted in a long time and to be honest I'm not sure that he is still alive but I do wish that others would take the time to research what he has shared with us in the past.

I found him to be very intellectual at times.

Knowledge does equate to understanding, however knowledge often leads to more questions, and thus, less understanding...
Let me ammend my earlier statement, TOTAL knowledge equates to understanding.

But the classic understanding of knowledge is, the more you know, it becomes evident that the less you know.

Do you think we should scrap the education system then ci?