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Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

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Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#41

Post by Emma_Goldman »

nyc111 wrote: post #2

> Philosophy, in its purest form, contains the study of what it is to live a good human life. I don't think this a properly general definition of philosophy (although he says "contains",maybe he is not after generality). I would say philosophy is the science of definitions. This is why it is fundamental.

Why do you think this? Philosophers don't write dictionaries; they write huge, creative and systematic theoretical treatises.

Of course, that requires a certain amount of conceptual innovation - but so did Shakespeare's plays, and that doesn't mean that Macbeth is, in reality, just a very odd dictionary.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#42

Post by nyc111 »

charlysl wrote: post #5
nyc111 wrote: post #2

> Philosophy, in its purest form, contains the study of what it is to live a good human life. I don't think this a properly general definition of philosophy (although he says "contains",maybe he is not after generality). I would say philosophy is the science of definitions. This is why it is fundamental.

Bertrand Russell: Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge—so I should contend— belongs to science…

This seems a qoute from the Introduction of his History of western philosophy [1]. But I think the next sentence is important too:

Almost all the questions of most interest to speculative minds are such as science cannot answer, and the confident answers of theologians no longer seem so convincing as they did in former centuries. [...]

To such questions no answer can be found in the laboratory. Theologies have professed to give answers, all too definite; but their very definiteness causes modern minds to view them with suspicion. The studying of these questions, if not the answering of them, is the business of philosophy.

But I’m surprised that he considers that “all definite knowledge ... belongs to science.” Science, at least physics and astronomy, by definition, accept that their type of knowledge is provisional, always, and not definite.

[1] https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/51485/in-whic...

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#43

Post by n4r9 »

opaque wrote: post #32

> So pure theory is not for everyone. But if you love theory, philosophy is the top of the heap of all the disciplines. I think calling philosophy "theory" is a bit of a reach. Theories (Relativity, Quantum, Evolution) draw on, and can be falsified by, direct evidence. Philosophy is more argumentation on subjects that won't have scientific basis (morality, meaning of life) or don't yet have one and may never (conscio…

"Theory" is a much broader term than "scientific theory", which is what you're defining. For example, in mathematics you have the "theory of natural numbers", or in art you have the "anti-essentialist theory". These aren't required to be hypotheses about the real-world. Rather they are like frameworks or languages which enable us to discuss and explore complex structures.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#44

Post by MrScruff »

skissane wrote: post #20
MrScruff wrote: post #13

Could someone with better understanding explain compatibalism to me? I’m struggling to grasp how it can allow for both determinism and free will.

There is no single universally agreed definition of the term "free will". So, it is possible to define "free will" in such a way that it is compatible with determinism (e.g., "my will is free if its decisions are the product of my ordinary processes of thinking–even if those ordinary processes are determined by natural laws–as opposed to the product of any extraordinary external interference such as drugs, brainwashi…

So it seems the crux of the matter is how we regard the process of a person making a decision.

A compatibilist would say that for the purposes of discussion we describe this event as the exercising of will, even though from a physics perspective the outcome could be predetermined.

Is that correct?

If so that seems similar to a recent discussion on Bohr's view of the irreducibility of biology to physics.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18104508

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#45

Post by brobdingnagians »

Sounds like a clever, witty, and charming guy. Would be very interesting to talk to him; I like his style of talking. Curiously ironic that he cites a consensus in personal belief in atheism and agnostics among philosophers (at least, modern philosophers, most philosophers in history believed in God..) as a good reason for philosophy not accepting the existence of God, which appears to be a popularity contest (and echo-chamber), then later in discussing a scientific belief says "This I do believe, but have no proof." Sounds like some faith to me... (and I agree that there is probably a surprisingly simple and elegant theory underlying all of physics, based on what I understand and see of the universe) Of course, I've found that most atheists tend to have faith in science without actually understanding science (though plenty do understand the science) and have some personal, emotional reason for not believing in God rather than a well-thought out chain of reasoning; but most people believe things for personal and emotional reasons, so it isn't surprising. It is always a bit humorous to ask them why they believe in science or what it is they believe and get back answers based on a fanatical devotion to, and blind trust in, the priesthood of "pseudo-"scientists like Dawkins, who makes all sorts of unsupported meta-physical claims in his books. I would always encourage atheists to investigating with an open mind, and to learn more about their system of beliefs, and more about logic. They should do what they believe is correct, and should always seek the truth, but be open to discovery of truth even when they may not like it. Most real scientists have a healthy skepticism towards the correctness of at least part of their own theories.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#46

Post by Ephem »

Ephem wrote: post #36
MrScruff wrote: post #13

Could someone with better understanding explain compatibalism to me? I’m struggling to grasp how it can allow for both determinism and free will.

As Wikipedia phrases Harry G. Frankfurt (1969): "A compatibilist can believe that a person can choose between many choices, but the choice is always determined by external factors" A bit sloppily put, a compatibilist believes a choice is free if the agent making it is not coerced or constrainted, even if the choice that the agent will make is determined. Different compatibilists approach this as either being descript…

Personally I would argue that we descriptively have different definitions of free before a choice and after.

Because the future has not yet happened, all possible future choices are indeed free in a sense, even if one of them is predetermined.

When we look back, I think we tend to think of free in a different way, that is, given that a choice has already been made, we can now say that it was the only choice that could have happened and did (determinism or not, I think we often tend to think this way in ordinary life).

When we judge moral responsibility, we tend to think of the actor in that moment of making the choice. At that moment the choice was still "free", because the future had not yet happened, and so we ascribe moral responsibility to these actions.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#47

Post by dghf »

> Hasn’t quantum mechanics demolished the hope that science will make reality intelligible?

> Not in the least. As Bell said, study Bohm’s pilot wave theory and you see that everything can be explained perfectly well, with no funny business at all logically or conceptually. We are stuck with non-locality, as Bell proved, but maybe in the end you need non-locality for the deep simplicity of law that I anticipate.

I'm not a physicist, but isn't dumping locality a bit of a bigger deal than this quote suggests?

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#48

Post by YorkshireSeason »

gepi79 wrote: post #10
visarga wrote: post #4

I don't think philosophy is keeping up with the progress in AI, neuroscience and game theory. If it did, there would be less discussion about the 'Chinese room', qualia and 'hard problem' of consciousness. Instead, we'd head about embodiment, rewards, agents vs environments, learning, representation, exploration-exploitation tradeoff, and such. There are theories of language and meaning in philosophy, but in AI there…

IMO, progress in philosophy leads to science. First you think and imagine (philosophy) then you try and know and have made progress (science). From the article: Yes (with qualification) and yes. Already in Republic (Plato again!) we have an argument—a clear and compelling rational argument—that even the highest political office should be open to women. The argument? List what it takes to be a good leader of the state…

   First you think and imagine 
   (philosophy)
I'd suggest that's not a good characterisation of philosophy, because according to that characterisation, everybody is a philosopher and doing philosophy all the time. That definition is not specific enough to do the question discussed in the article justice.

The article defends (whether successful or not I'll leave open) philosophy against the common charge of not having progressed much recently, Whitehead's famous The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato being perhaps the most popular form this criticism takes (whether that does Whitehead justice is another question I'd like to leave open here).

Here is a definition of philosophy that is much closer to the concept of philosophy the article defends: philosophy is what academics who work in philosophy departments do.

   philosophy leads to science
I make a strong counterclaim: all progress in philosophy comes from progress in the hard sciences. As examples for my claim I put forward: quantum mechanics, general relativity, non-euclidean geometry, set theory and type theory as foundations of mathematics, Goede's incompleteness theorems, theory of (economic) games (leading to the first substantial progress in moral philosophy since Kant), AI/ML.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#49

Post by MrScruff »

Ephem wrote: post #36
MrScruff wrote: post #13

Could someone with better understanding explain compatibalism to me? I’m struggling to grasp how it can allow for both determinism and free will.

As Wikipedia phrases Harry G. Frankfurt (1969): "A compatibilist can believe that a person can choose between many choices, but the choice is always determined by external factors" A bit sloppily put, a compatibilist believes a choice is free if the agent making it is not coerced or constrainted, even if the choice that the agent will make is determined. Different compatibilists approach this as either being descript…

So is it the case that the compatibilist imagines three possible classes of decision.

1) Where the decision is coerced.

2) Where the decision is not coerced and so ostensibly 'free' but determined by external factors (ie. the laws of Physics).

3) Where the decision is genuinely 'free', thus violating the laws of Physics as we know them.

Compatibilists would reject 3) but would describe 2) as the exercising of 'free will'.

Is that correct?

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#50

Post by boomboomsubban »

edna314 wrote: post #31
tmalsburg2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Could you please elaborate(

For example take this quote from Nietzsche on the sentence "I think" from Beyond Good and Evil: >"When I analyze the process that is expressed in this sentence, 'I think,' I find a whole series of daring assertions that would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove—for example, that it is I who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a…

I would guess that quote is Nietzsche attacking one of the most famous first principles in Western philosophy, Descartes' "I think, therefore I am." "I think" is too complex to be accepted a priori for him, he's not discounting definitions completely.
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