schele

Should Philosophy be a Science?#

• Science is not a slogan or a subject for exams in primary and secondary schools. It is the nature of propositions, roughly as follows:
  • Clear definition, the definition of the content of the topic under discussion is legitimate
    • The definition in the topic cannot have a dependency loop. Its definition must be interpretable. Counterexamples are as follows:

      "What is objective?" - "Objective is the opposite of subjective" - "What is subjective?" - "Subjective is the opposite of objective"
      "Objective refers to the existence outside of human consciousness, existing independently of human mind, and not subject to human will"

    • The definition in the topic cannot be vague or ambiguous/contradictory. It must be self-consistent. Counterexamples and analysis are as follows:
      • "What is objective?" - "Objective is the existence that does not depend on human mind, not subject to human will, such as natural laws, physical laws"
        • There are undefined concepts here
          • Is 'existence' in this case existence or establishment?
          • Does 'transfer' refer to a change in state or something else?
          • Are the two concepts of existence independent of human mind and not subject to human will an 'or' relationship or an 'and' relationship?
          • What exactly is human mind/will?
            • If I am a brain in a vat, and everything is a vivid dream simulated by myself, are you me, am I him, are you her, am I everything, then does this count as human mind?
        • This definition has flaws, and we have the following proof:
          • Proof 1:
            • If something depends on the existence of an objective thing, then obviously it meets the definition of objective
            • According to scientific common sense, human mind obviously does not depend on the existence of human mind
            • Here, let us temporarily consider transfer as a change in state of the object. Obviously, it is also 'not subject to human will'. The reasons are as follows:
              • If 'transfer' includes indirect influence here, then the fact that humans use tools to influence the physical environment will make the material world no longer objective, which violates the common sense that 'the material world is objective'
              • If 'transfer' does not include indirect influence here, obviously, human mind will only be influenced by itself and external input information, so strictly speaking, 'not subject to human will' is true
            • So human mind is objective, so everything is objective, subjective things are objective
          • Proof 2:
            • If I make any objective laws and objective facts not observed by me (suicide), then for me, everything objective changes because of my will, and their existence changes from established to unprovable. This method is universally applicable to all human minds, so everything objective is subjective
  • Reproducibility, the conclusion of the topic under discussion is reproducible, counterexamples are as follows:

    "As long as I step into that place in the river at the same time and in the same way, I can have a body that is immune to poison and invulnerable to knives and guns"

  • Verifiability, the conclusion of the topic under discussion is verifiable, counterexamples are as follows:

    "Here is a living paper girl that only I can see"

  • Logical and common sense compliance, the logic contained in the topic under discussion must be legal and comply with relevant common sense, counterexamples are as follows:

    "Drinking too much water will cause water poisoning, this is reproducible and verifiable, so we should not drink water"

• If a proposition under discussion does not have scientific properties, then discussing it will become a noisy argument about who is louder. We assume that a proposition should be scientific, and philosophical propositions are no exception. Otherwise, there is no need to discuss it.

Dialogue 1#

• "I think when we use the adjective 'objective', it means 'according to the facts', so I think 'objective' means 'facts'"
• "If we simply look at its literal meaning, obviously it should mean an extended meaning like 'observing like a guest'. I think it should mean a calm, rational perspective... By the way, the problem is whether the new definition can solve the problems caused by the original definition. Is human mind and will considered facts?"
• "I think so, but here comes a new problem. What is the definition of facts? I think we should first examine the true definition of facts. The explanation of facts on the Internet encyclopedia is events that actually happened, but is the difference between facts and events really in this actual occurrence? I think this should be described with a more rigorous definition"
• "Then how about 'anything proven to be true in the real world'? The naming of human mind and will as a phenomenon in the real world is obviously observed by everyone, it is a fact, even if we find out later that it is actually not the case, as long as it can be proven, then there is no problem"
• "I think this should be the correct answer, but if I commit suicide, everything will no longer be observed by me, and everything cannot be proven by me, so everything is no longer a fact, nor is it objective... Then there is another question, what is subjective? Things that cannot be proven?"
• "I think you are right, but not completely. We found through logical reasoning that the original definition of objective is wrong, it has been proven to be invalid... Oh wait, it is invalid, not unprovable, then there is no problem"
• "Then I have another question. Are mathematical theorems objective? Does a mathematical theorem exist in the real world?"
• "Then I also have a problem. Haven't we heard mathematicians talk about Gödel's ontological proof of the existence of God before? If the surrogate messenger actually exists but we cannot prove it because of our lack of knowledge, is the existence of the surrogate messenger objective or subjective?"

What are Objective and Subjective?#

• In fact, the painter's final question in the dialogue clarifies the last key point of the definitions of objective and subjective. That is, how should we define objective and subjective.
• Generally speaking, we consider the real world as a scope, and all propositions that can be proven true within this scope are facts, that is, objective. And propositions that cannot be proven true are biases. On top of this, propositions that cannot be proven true or false are subjective.

  In fact, we rarely use the term objective, because it is simply synonymous with facts.

  • Mathematical theorems are objective, the client who owes the painter money and blocked the painter is objective, and the fact that the screenwriter won the Nobel Prize in Literature is obviously biased. The content of most religious beliefs is subjective, just like you cannot prove that Schele can solve the proof given by mathematicians in the remaining 20 minutes, although Schele often fails.
• For non-general situations, how many facts there are and what facts are determined by the 'real world' we are studying. Here we can more clearly point out that this 'real world' is actually the current context. Facts within the context are objective, and things outside the context cannot be proven, so they are subjective.
  • But here we should specifically point out that when discussing what is a fact and what is not, we should always check which context we are in. For those who believe in religion, their context is not the real world, but the 'real world where religious content is true'.

Dialogue 2#

• "Um... Art is a subjective construct. We can map it based on facts... Subjectivity becomes a new fact after switching contexts..."
• "Now I feel that those so-called materialism and idealism that I heard before are things that should be thrown into the garbage dump"
• "Aren't those just excuses or jokes that some people use to comfort or deceive themselves after seeing something that scares them and is not 'scientific'?"

Everything is...#

• What is everything? How do we classify everything? In fact, we can classify it randomly, it doesn't matter how we classify it.
  • We can follow the common sense of biology and tell ourselves that everything is information, that everything we perceive is neural signals from the brain. Everything we perceive is a signal from the brain, so everything is information. Or we can simply divide everything into subjective and objective, and what can be proven is a fact, and what cannot be proven is subjective. Or even simpler, we can divide everything into this and that, but we can have more possibilities now because something can belong to different categories at the same time.
• But for those philosophers who are looking for the source of everything, this is not the answer they want. They not only want to classify everything, but also want to find out where everything comes from.
• So we have a classic and outdated question: "Does matter determine consciousness or does consciousness determine matter?" and its extended question "Is everything determined by matter?"
• Then, according to the usual style, we will use a scientific method to analyze this question.
  • Since consciousness/mind/spirit is a morpheme, and there are few corresponding scientific achievements at present, we have no way to scientifically analyze it from this aspect. So we analyze it from the physical definition of matter and the philosophical definition of matter.
    • It should be noted that we only know that the neural signals of the brain are closely related to the mind/thought, but the specific relationship is unknown, that is, it could be positive or negative, or there may be no direct relationship at all. We also don't know if replicating the brain's electrical signals will generate the same thoughts.
  • According to the classical physics and chemistry definition of matter, matter refers to things composed of atoms and molecules according to certain rules, with mass and volume. However, if we consider non-classical physics such as relativity, matter roughly refers to things with non-zero rest mass and non-zero volume. However, combining common sense, we can find some ridiculous contradictions.

    "In fact, physicists don't care about what matter is. They know that there is such a thing, and they only care about its properties."

    • Photons have neither rest mass nor volume, and it is obvious that they are neither 'matter' nor 'consciousness'. For a part of the mechanism of the world, physical laws are neither matter nor consciousness.
      • Even if we use 'facts' as the definition of matter and take physical laws as 'matter', we can find that the core of the debate on whether matter determines physical laws or consciousness determines physical laws is actually "whether the world perceived by people still exists when it is not perceived". However, we already know the answer, it is neither existence nor non-existence, but indeterminable.
    • After analyzing this, we found that this problem of who determines who is meaningless from a logical point of view, because there is simply no way to find any evidence to prove whether the world will disappear like a machine with the power turned off when you commit suicide. All discussions on this are subjective or even biased.
• After analysis, we found that if we analyze this question according to the definition of physics, it is meaningless. If we analyze it according to the definition of philosophy itself, the definition itself is problematic. Even if we ignore the problem of definition, we can only know that we currently have no way to know, at least objectively speaking, we don't know, if you use logical reasoning.