Alpha Centauri has a planet

[Angst]

I'm not sure why those things preclude the possibility of the existence of other sapient beings. And since human philosophy is, well, about humans, I don't see why it must include ruminations about other sapient beings. There might be some truths that are applicable to other sapient beings, but such universality isn't all that important and I wouldn't expect everything that is now accepted as true about human beings to be rendered invalid just because they are not true for other sapient beings.



See above. It would be far from the total destruction of philosophy or literature or the arts as they are.



There'll be new things to study, yes, but the predominant emotion, I'd imagine, would be excitement. Hardly something that would cause scholars to collapse with an acute existentialist crisis.



Alien ethics and epistemology might well be very different from human beings', but that's fine, unless you're some kind of hardcore absolutist or rationalist that cannot accept such differences at all.

I guess I did write the bolded part more or less like that, which might ironically have been an overstatement in my own excitement. In case, please allow me to retract my argument slightly, tone it down. Then we're at my point: You will reread your literature. You will check if your philosophy is still correct. You will add to it. You will. ಠ_ಠ

 

[Winner]

Didn't see any counterarguments in the rest of your post,

Let's try this again (simplified version):

You: "Discovery of alien life/intelligence will totally change the way we see ourselves and the world around us. At the very least philosophers will go nuts."
I: "It won't (because we've been preparing ourselves for this for a long time through various means, especially the sci-fi genre in literature and cinema) and nobody will care if the philosophers go nuts."

I'm not that guy. Please don't be rude.

I wasn't the one who started throwing around condescending and insulting remarks, but I have no desire in continuing in it.

1) The humanities will get a sharp kick in the butt upon finding alien life as they are by humans for humans about defining human things compared to other things.
2) I think everyone will generally be overwhelmed by the findings of life in the universe, but I admit I have no premise for it; I have nothing against conceding that point. I will be surprised myself at least.

And I'll repeat that it entirely depends on the nature of the contact. The mere confirmation that there is other life, or that there are other thinking beings, won't change much in neither the academia nor the general public's views.

3) Peripherical humanities don't really exist as their influential sphere is always great.

I think you greatly overestimate their impact. Of course some branches are more influential then others, I'll give you that. Philosophy as it exist today isn't one of them.

And on that, I'm honestly completely baffled that you study humanities, though. I did not expect that from you, especially with your strange responses.

Science is just a hobby for me, if that's what you mean.

We're part of different schools, I guess? You're still in the Czech Republic, right? I was there a short while ago visiting my ex' cousin - according to what I heard of your schools, you had a much (bear with my terminology here, I'm going to expand on it) stricter and more mechanical view of things. Saying that "philosophy is peripheral" is something quite different from what I'm hearing here, where it is said that influences of everything from philosophy to poetry slam makes... ripples in the cultural waves, so to speak, having an interweaved indirect effect on everything when produced. It's a basic humanist argument I hear when they want to cut down funding for the state-subsidized cultural and subcultural institutions we have: ranging from universities to classical orchestras to poetry cafés to private artists to street performance schools. Basically, cultural influences from the humanities promote creativity or different thought.

Don't take this personally, I am not saying this is your case. But, you sound like a 1st year philosophy student who is trying to rationalize the fact that he's wasting taxpayers money studying something that has zero practical purpose and will in the best case qualify him to serve french fries with ketchup at the nearest fast food joint.

Even funnier, I used to say similar things 4-5 years ago. Yes, humanities/social 'sciences' are not "useless" in the way culturally illiterate maths geeks and engineering students sometimes think. The problem is that they're not nearly as relevant to the society's everyday functioning as people who've devoted their time to them often tend to think.

 

[Angst]

Let's try this again (simplified version):

You: "Discovery of alien life/intelligence will totally change the way we see ourselves and the world around us. At the very least philosophers will go nuts."
I: "It won't (because we've been preparing ourselves for this for a long time through various means, especially the sci-fi genre in literature and cinema) and nobody will care if the philosophers go nuts."

I understood that. But I had nothing more to add to my argument that would have made it fundamentally different, you added nothing to your argument that made it fundamentally different, there was nothing new, therefore spending time on replying to it would be going in circles which isn't productive.

Don't take this personally, I am not saying this is your case. But, you sound like a 1st year philosophy student who is trying to rationalize the fact that he's wasting taxpayers money studying something that has zero practical purpose and will in the best case qualify him to serve french fries with ketchup at the nearest fast food joint.

Even funnier, I used to say similar things 4-5 years ago. Yes, humanities/social 'sciences' are not "useless" in the way culturally illiterate maths geeks and engineering students sometimes think. The problem is that they're not nearly as relevant to the society's everyday functioning as people who've devoted their time to them often tend to think.

No offense taken, I'm actually quoting humanities' PhD professors defending their faculties in the media during a recession razor. Your relation to the humanities (wasting taxpayer's money...) is strange to me. Here it is, as you point out, echoed by some scientists and mathematicians and a few businessmen. You know, people who don't actually produce cultural texts as might be fairly understood as culture in this context.

I would attribute it to a machinal view on education and culture (and "effeciency") which really isn't as present in Denmark, not with the humanities at least. I feel it must be different in the Czech republic and it saddens me that you seem to attribute perspective to intellectual immaturity, but I would assume it was a product of an educational system valuing definite answers (again, machinal "effeciency") over abstractions. :/

 

[aelf]

And frankly, I couldn't care less what philosophers might come up with, the relevance of their field to the world of today is peripheral at best.

Don't take this personally, I am not saying this is your case. But, you sound like a 1st year philosophy student who is trying to rationalize the fact that he's wasting taxpayers money studying something that has zero practical purpose and will in the best case qualify him to serve french fries with ketchup at the nearest fast food joint.

Even funnier, I used to say similar things 4-5 years ago. Yes, humanities/social 'sciences' are not "useless" in the way culturally illiterate maths geeks and engineering students sometimes think. The problem is that they're not nearly as relevant to the society's everyday functioning as people who've devoted their time to them often tend to think.

The problem with your conjecture is that although average Joes like you may not care about what philosophers say, people who have power and influence over society, directly or indirectly, may - and that obviously has implications on your life, even if like an ant you may not normally perceive the giant movements around you.

 

[Takhisis]

<reads thread>
<head asplodes>