Quote:
Originally Posted by Brutha  No, you can still make decisions and life your life without philosophy. Ethics philosophers aren't more ethical (and they are the people that set the standards) than other people as study show and as a result you don't lose much. You don't lose anything that improves behavior if you throw out the study of ethics. |
First of all, ethics is but one tiny sliver of philosophy. But more importantly, how on earth are you going to make reasoned decisions without philosophy? Take away all of philosophy, and you're not allowed to use logical reasoning (aka philosophizing), and you're not allowed to assign reasoned value judgments to the various considerations. [Using logical reasoning, value judgments, etc is an exercise in philosophy, so if you need to use them, you're proving my point about you needing them.]
There would be no judgments of better/worse, good/bad, right/wrong etc unless you support them with an ethical theory of some sort.
Also, take away philosophy and there's no United States (constitutions and social systems are based on political philosophies).
At a more abstract level, take away philosophy/philosophizing, and there would be no reflective thought of any kind. Seriously, try to imagine the scope of that. Every reasoned action that you take is the result of philosophizing (aka reasoning) about what you should do. And guess what? The very rules of reasoning itself are under the domain of philosophy, so without them, you have to give up all the tools for proper reasoning.
Take away philosophy from humanity, and you'd be left with purely unjustified randomness...which would quickly lead to mass extinction and degeneration to a non-thinking animalistic state of affairs.
And BTW, most logic work is done by logicians, and logicians are philosophers. They can also be mathematicians, but they're first and foremost logicians, which makes them first and foremost philosophers.