Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why read old philosophy?

meteuphoric.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 99 posts

Re: Why read old philosophy?

#81

Post by Matticus_Rex »

pyrale wrote: post #67
Matticus_Rex wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not suggesting anything excessive; I'm suggesting (based on a fairly large academic literature) that we know for a fact that a large amount of what is done in our education system does not provide any benefits that we can measure in any way (and not for lack of trying), and that for most of the knowledge that is taught for which we can't find tangible benefits, nearly none of it is retained (which invalidates arg…

> we know for a fact that a large amount of what is done in our education system does not provide any benefits that we can measure in any way I strongly disagree here. Unless you can provide conclusive studies separating useful and useless knowledge, my facts tend to show that education is profitable, and my opinion is that the value of any knowledge is largely up to the learner's personal preference. > Most argument…

I highly recommend The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan (https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/d...). It's one of the more careful social science books I've ever read, and while it comes to controversial conclusions, even if you disagree with them you'll learn a lot about the issues by reading it. The assumption that education can be assumed to be profitable for society simply isn't supported by the evidence.

Re: Why read old philosophy?

#82

Post by westoncb »

Senderman wrote: post #79
westoncb wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I was just writing about this yesterday: If the book's ideas were of lasting consequence, it's a near certainty that more clear statements of them have been produced in the intervening years. You may lose some of the aesthetics of the original—but often times the true aesthetic value is debatable (or at least relative), and if it's truly there it still may not be worth losing the increased clarity and fu…

I have to disagree with the author of that paragraph. Concepts usually get diluted as they pass from person to person, not more clear. They also mention there is often times a "debatable" aesthetic value - to me, that's all the more reason to at least look at the original work and make your own interpretation.

> Concepts usually get diluted as they pass from person to person, not more clear.

That is only possible if the concept has no practical utility. If the concept is being used, the historical pattern is improving refinement.

The author of the article provides a nice list of reasons why that would be the case (Bob is a modern day expositor of Alice's older, original idea):

Alice’s understanding of the Alice effect is probably the most confused understanding of it in all of history, being the first ‘understanding of the Alice effect’ to set itself apart from ‘confusion and ignorance about the Alice effect’.

In the billions of lifetimes that have passed since Alice’s time, the world has probably thought substantially more about The Alice Effect than Alice managed to in her lifetime, at least if it is important at all.

Alice’s very first account of the effect probably contained imperfections. Bob can write about the theory as it stood after years of adjustment.

Even if Alice’s account was perfectly correct, it was probably not perfectly well explained, unless she happens to have been a great explainer as well as a great physicist.

Physics has made many discoveries since Alice’s time, such as Claire forces, Evan motion and Roger fields. It might be easier to understand all of this by starting with the Roger fields, and explaining the Alice effect as a consequence. However literature from the likes of Alice is constrained to cover topics chronologically by date of discovery.

Bob speaks a similar version of English to me

Bob can be selected for having particular skill at writing and explanation, whereas Alice must be selected for having the scientific prowess to make the discovery.

Bob is actually trying to explain the thing to a 21st Century reader, while Alice is writing to pique the interest of some seventeenth century noblemen who lack modern intellectual machinery and are interested in issues like whether this is compatible with religion. An accurate impression of a 21st Century reader would probably cause Alice to fall over.

Re: Why read old philosophy?

#83

Post by goatlover »

jhbadger wrote: post #21
ahtu123 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Philosophy is a cumulative field just like programming. If you're only involved with the most modern framework, there is a lot of magic happening underneath the surface. Most of the value to me seems to be in understanding an idea and then reading and understanding someone refute it later. That's basically my whole experience in reading philosophy "chronologically".

Is it though? Has philosophy actually made any advances in understanding the "great questions" of the meaning of life and what not? Perhaps the reason that people find reading Plato and Aristotle worthwhile is that people are still beating their heads against the same unanswerable questions.

Philosophy advances the discussion of the great questions, exploring them from different angles and with different twists. This sometimes leads to new questions.

Re: Why read old philosophy?

#84

Post by Senderman »

westoncb wrote: post #82
Senderman wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree with the author of that paragraph. Concepts usually get diluted as they pass from person to person, not more clear. They also mention there is often times a "debatable" aesthetic value - to me, that's all the more reason to at least look at the original work and make your own interpretation.

> Concepts usually get diluted as they pass from person to person, not more clear. That is only possible if the concept has no practical utility. If the concept is being used , the historical pattern is improving refinement. The author of the article provides a nice list of reasons why that would be the case (Bob is a modern day expositor of Alice's older, original idea): Alice’s understanding of the Alice effect is…

I see your point. I had never thought of 'clarity' as being synonymous with 'utility', but I can't argue with it.

Re: Why read old philosophy?

#85

Post by rwnspace »

jhbadger wrote: post #48
empath75 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It’s just that when they do, it becomes known as logic or science and philosophers get less interested in continuing to think about it. Almost all of the early work in what we’d call computer science was done by philosophers before computers even existed.

But that's just because philosophy originally meant all scholarly pursuits. All of science was called "natural philosophy" before it got its own name. That doesn't mean that what we'd call science today is the same as what we call philosophy, even if some ancients like Aristotle did both.

I believe the author was referring to work done in reason, logic and 'natural philosophy' from the time of Kant/Hume/Leibniz onwards, so, 18thC+.

One of the reasons philosophy doesn't seem so well these days - I think - is because the value our society places on software engineers is so much higher. The same kinds of natural ability which help with reasoning about the behaviour of some function, help with reasoning about the shape of some concept in philosophy.

I don't particularly lament this shift, as a philosophy grad who is working on becoming a software engineer. I only lament that experimental and multi-disciplinary philosophy is becoming cool and interesting only in the past decade or so.

Re: Why read old philosophy?

#86

Post by AgentME »

westoncb wrote: post #75
weichi wrote: post #29

Most of the comments here are completely missing the point of the article. The article is not about whether the ideas espoused by old philosophers are worth learning about, or about whether old philosophers are worth reading. The article asks the question of why philosophers prefer to read the original works of old philosophers, instead of reading descriptions of these ideas by authors who have demonstrated competenc…

Interesting. I was just writing about this yesterday: If the book's ideas were of lasting consequence, it's a near certainty that more clear statements of them have been produced in the intervening years. You may lose some of the aesthetics of the original—but often times the true aesthetic value is debatable (or at least relative), and if it's truly there it still may not be worth losing the increased clarity and fu…

Sometimes it's useful to see the original version of an idea: it can be easier to see what line of thought led to it, and what necessity the idea addressed. Further refinements may improve the idea, but obscure the source and original context of the idea, which might make it harder to fully understand or appreciate.

Re: Why read old philosophy?

#87

Post by ianai »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #80
ianai wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what would be great? A society where people can knowingly disagree on fundamental concepts with one another and remain mutually respectful and cooperative. And studying philosophy is a gateway to that. Students have very few things in common with most philosophers because most philosophers lived hundreds and thousands of years ago. But reading philosophers will show them their points in common, to various ex…

> You know what would be great? A society where people can knowingly disagree on fundamental concepts with one another and remain mutually respectful and cooperative. I agree. > And studying philosophy is a gateway to that. For a very, very small number of students. Forcing every student to go through philosophy education because we can't figure out a better way to select out the students that will care about it is a…

Or maybe experiment with non cruddy ways of teaching people. Weighting a lot of a grade on a test is an excellent way to freak someone out and build resentment. Maximize teacher/student ratios, fund schools better, etc.

Re: Why read old philosophy?

#88

Post by pyrale »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #81
pyrale wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we know for a fact that a large amount of what is done in our education system does not provide any benefits that we can measure in any way I strongly disagree here. Unless you can provide conclusive studies separating useful and useless knowledge, my facts tend to show that education is profitable, and my opinion is that the value of any knowledge is largely up to the learner's personal preference. > Most argument…

I highly recommend The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan ( https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/d... ). It's one of the more careful social science books I've ever read, and while it comes to controversial conclusions, even if you disagree with them you'll learn a lot about the issues by reading it. The assumption that education can be assumed to be profitable for society simply isn't suppo…

So, by pointing out this book, are you saying that your only metric for education is economic value and wage marketability?

Re: Why read old philosophy?

#89

Post by bordercases »

There are two conditions I would want to see fulfilled by explanations of philosophy that would allow me to outmode reading older philosophers:

That the explanation adequately creates distinctions between the terms used by the philosopher and other such terms that are similar but must be distinguished.

That the viewpoint of the philosopher is contextualized by the diff between various other viewpoints on the same issue.

(Ian Hacking is a philosopher of statistics in science which is very good at this, and he didn't even have to invent statistics.)

But oftentimes when the explainer caste of writers seeks to summarize philosophy, they do so in a way that focuses on the conclusions and takes for granted the presuppositions that had to be explored in order to reach those conclusions.

When asking someone who has taken the summary to unpack each term in a sort of reverse-analysis, I think that they would have a difficult time because they didn't see the struggle that would have motivated the analysis in the first place.

The author of the OP is correct that there is resistance that makes philosophical explanations less fungible than, say physics methods. It's because the terms used by philosophers are not mathematical in a way that can be easily copied. Instead they are the thing that constructs the semantics of terms which are eventually reified by mathematical syntax.

Re: Why read old philosophy?

#90

Post by westoncb »

AgentME wrote: post #86
westoncb wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I was just writing about this yesterday: If the book's ideas were of lasting consequence, it's a near certainty that more clear statements of them have been produced in the intervening years. You may lose some of the aesthetics of the original—but often times the true aesthetic value is debatable (or at least relative), and if it's truly there it still may not be worth losing the increased clarity and fu…

Sometimes it's useful to see the original version of an idea: it can be easier to see what line of thought led to it, and what necessity the idea addressed. Further refinements may improve the idea, but obscure the source and original context of the idea, which might make it harder to fully understand or appreciate.

The basic idea there makes sense to me, but I actually think later writers will be better at putting it into context as well, partly because they have more information on the context, and partly because the tendency when someone is first developing a new idea is to just get it working, rather than immediately analyzing where it fits in the history of ideas.

That said, I think it's definitely valuable to go back and look at original sources after starting with a more efficient, contemporary exposition.

Post reply on HN