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If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

nytimes.com

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Re: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

#181

Post by shanacarp »

a_humean wrote: post #130
adrianratnapala wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then I stand corrected on what philosophers (at least analytic ones) believe. I even agree that mathematics is the closest thing to Analytic philosophy. But it is still very telling that in your third para, you list names instead of theorems. And you are right to do so, for the reasons I explained in my post above. When you talk of current research, then sure, you talk of modern philosophers. But that's still st…

Because I was leading to my point about citation networks and didn't want to bore you to death about theory names like causal theories of reference and semantic externalism in philosophy of language.

which would you recommend for a beginner to read. looks interesting

Re: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

#182

Post by [deleted] »

dwaxe wrote: post #56
whack wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author addresses your exact point in the article. "Others might argue against renaming on the grounds that it is unfair to single out philosophy: We do not have departments of Euro-American Mathematics or Physics. This is nothing but shabby sophistry. Non-European philosophical traditions offer distinctive solutions to problems discussed within European and American philosophy, raise or frame problems not address…

The article's point is very well-made. During my two-year-long stint as a philosophy major at Berkeley, at least two courses spent absurd lengths of time on the vagary specificities of Descartes' cogito which, while important, could have easily been a place to at least peer into other traditions' basic arguments over the existence of a soul, like Avicenna's Flying Man or the concepts of Gautama Buddha. The fact that…

[deleted]

Re: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

#183

Post by Chris2048 »

dwaxe wrote: post #56
whack wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author addresses your exact point in the article. "Others might argue against renaming on the grounds that it is unfair to single out philosophy: We do not have departments of Euro-American Mathematics or Physics. This is nothing but shabby sophistry. Non-European philosophical traditions offer distinctive solutions to problems discussed within European and American philosophy, raise or frame problems not address…

The article's point is very well-made. During my two-year-long stint as a philosophy major at Berkeley, at least two courses spent absurd lengths of time on the vagary specificities of Descartes' cogito which, while important, could have easily been a place to at least peer into other traditions' basic arguments over the existence of a soul, like Avicenna's Flying Man or the concepts of Gautama Buddha. The fact that…

> wove non-European traditions into its historical tapestry

History is fixed, and if we're making new history, I'd sooner do away with this kind of philosophical thought altogether. Academia may well study theology, it needn't produce it.

Re: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

#184

Post by a_humean »

hackeyed wrote: post #163
a_humean wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I am not sure that philosophers believe they are doing work like mathematics" As someone with a postgraduate background in Philosophy I can say that, within at least the Western Analytic (mostly anglophone) tradition, that many do in fact think exactly that and I would tend to agree. Many Philosopher see their closest relations reside in Mathematics and to a lesser extent the hard sciences. They prize deductive reas…

I realize you are replying to part of the discussion but your comment seems to be a nice point in support of the original article and I would like to see if you agree. You mention one strand of western philosophy, "the Western Analytic (mostly anglophone) tradition" that believes its work is most closely related to math but then also point out that, while practitioners from that school are open to participation from…

Two things. Firstly, well I suppose I should strip the pretense. There is the added difficulty that we lack enough willing partners, or "practitioners" , on the other side to bridge the gap. There aren't many working philosophers, as opposed to scholars, to talk to. My old department had relationships with departments in Iran and China that included staff transfers, but what they encountered in these departments were practising philosophers working on Western philosophical projects segregated from the larger faculty, which acted as cultural custodians rather than engaged practitioners. Secondly, most philosophers want to do philosophy, not get bogged down in anthropological reconstruction of what an obscure historical figure might have said - which like most things, is probably either false or not new. The few that do actually go to the effort find it very hard to get anyone to pay attention unless you can draw a direct connection to an active problem without the any baggage in terms of conceptual or ontological commitments.

I'm not going to pretend that there isn't some real problem with engagement with other cultures as you only need to look at the ongoing divide between the Analytic and continental traditions. That divide is partly artificial driven by politics and events in early 20th century Europe. At the same time, its is a misunderstanding of what philosophy is if you think its just about cultural preservation. Philosophy in the West is an active and living discipline that is not standing still. A philosophy wants to know what is true, not necessarily what Kant thought was true.

Re: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

#185

Post by bobwaycott »

altendo wrote: post #144
yummyfajitas wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, it wasn't "clearly inferior" historically. Liebniz' arguments why it was valid were heavily based on infinitesimals and monadology, which were not known at the time to be valid. (In fact, many of Liebniz' arguments weren't valid, although the conclusions turned out to be.) Secondly, if biases exist, one need not argue for diversity in order to achieve it. Liebniz notation didn't win because someone argu…

> Liebniz notation didn't win because someone argued that anglos were biased and diversity was needed, it won because mathematical arguments demonstrated it was better. > Unfortunately the authors of this piece don't actually make that latter argument. Is this to imply there is a more-correct philosophy? I have no formal training in philosophy but I feel that to claim one philosophy is objectively better than another…

Keeping it as simple as possible, there are certainly more-correct philosophies across such metrics as soundness of logic, reasoning, explanatory power, internal consistency, as well as the intellectual tributaries that follow and expand upon it.

Centuries of philosophical work are repeatedly refined, tested, contested, and expanded by subsequent thinkers. This interrogation of ideas leads to either strengthening or weakening certain schools. The effects can be seen in such topics as free will, materialism, dualism, ethics, political theory, epistemology, as well as the tracking of historical trends in what central ideas were under primary discussion, and when certain ideas were arguably considered "settled".

Within philosophy, it's often the case that accepting a certain argument as objectively better leads to digging deeper into the effects that ripple outward to other ideas an accepted better philosophy can inform and illuminate, often opening up new areas for philosophy to investigate that it hadn't before.

Re: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

#186

Post by Chris2048 »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #134
Chris2048 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it make more sense to either standardise the notation, or translate papers into both notations? I feel this is a poor analogy to cultural cross pollination: notation is not the same kind of 'idea' as those found in philosophical paper.

The fundamental dispute was not over the notation, but over whether the notation was misleading. I.e., is df/dx = (df/dz)(dz/dx) a real description of what is happening, and a valid calculus, or just a coincidence that sometimes won't work? Newton had a variety of arguments in favor of why his calculus worked, only some based on infinitesimals. Liebniz just asserted without proof that infinitesimals were fine, used t…

Then, both factions were fighting over pet bogosities?

I believe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(%CE%B5,_%CE%B4)-definition_of... and similar methods are used to show equivalence today. The subject seems more insulated from this kind of philosophy.

Re: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

#187

Post by gshubert17 »

Chris2048 wrote: post #117
EthanHeilman wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Nobody would ever dream of arguing against eurocentrism in number theory. There are strong cultural biases that show up in the history of mathematics. For instance the English mathematics community preferred Newton's notation over Leibniz due to a Anglocenteric bias in English mathematics community despite Newton's notation being clearly inferior. As wikipedia says: >"The priority dispute had an effect of separating…

The value added here was one culture dropped its inferior notational difference. There was no clear "cross-pollination", as each culture preferred its own notation, until reform came along. What is the equivalent in philosophical cross-pollination? Are some philosophies going to be dropped in favour of better ones? This doesn't even happen withing a lot of western cliques. The nearest equivalent to notational reform…

I was exposed to both notations in college when I was studying math and physics. The mathematicians preferred Leibnitz's notation and so did the physicists for some things. But we used Newton's dot or prime notation for derivatives in mechanics and for some differential equations.

It seems to me that Newton's notation and terminology lost market share but wasn't completely dropped.

Re: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

#189

Post by jmagoon »

wyager wrote: post #155
jmagoon wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both India and China have extremely rich philosophical logic traditions, along with extremely well developed philosophies of mind and epistemology. Attributing philosophy of mind as "western" is the problem the article is speaking to--our Philosophy departments are so ignorant of thousands of years of work that they often duplicate already solved problems or ignore perspective changing constructs. If people are actua…

Most of those thousands of years of work are not even remotely based on the scientific method. Such work is of historical relevance, and not much else.

This statement is, to me, demonstrative of a lack of understanding of the source material and an unwillingness to engage with 'new' ideas purely out of bias.

The scientific method is a way of approaching reality that has lead to extremely useful discoveries--but, in my opinion, the hard problem of consciousness cannot be solved via the scientific method because consciousness, the experience of qualia, is not externally observable.

Nagarjuna and Candrakirti were both experts in the observation of qualia, and their philosophies stem from that expertise. It's possible to even call their philosophical method 'scientific' if that is the materialist's sole judgement of the value of an idea.

Re: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is

#190

Post by jmagoon »

jessriedel wrote: post #156
jmagoon wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both India and China have extremely rich philosophical logic traditions, along with extremely well developed philosophies of mind and epistemology. Attributing philosophy of mind as "western" is the problem the article is speaking to--our Philosophy departments are so ignorant of thousands of years of work that they often duplicate already solved problems or ignore perspective changing constructs. If people are actua…

What do you think prevents people from engaging is modern philosophy-of-mind research by building on Nagarjuna or Candrakirti?

There are many neuroscience departments that actively perform meditation research (UCSB, Yale, UW-Madison), but my personal experience is that eastern philosophers who were experts in meditation, logic, or observation are sorely understudied in Philosophy departments, despite the extraordinarily clear parallels between modern neuroscience research and their philosophical propositions.
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