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Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#171

Post by lisper »

imh wrote: post #163
lisper wrote: post #147

"Popper was kind of an egocentric jerk." Oh, the staggering irony of responding to the charge that philosophers don't produce anything worthwhile with an ad hominem. Res ipsa loquitur.

You missed the "Nope, see above." part right before your quote.

No, I didn't miss it. The fact that the ad hominem was accompanied by another argument does not change the fact that it was an ad hominem.

(The other argument was also mostly bogus IMHO, but making that case would take a lot longer.)

UPDATE: actually, I've changed my mind. The other argument can also be dispensed with rather quickly:

"Only the philosophers always make a good choice, because the ultimate thing they study, at the end, is the Form of the Good itself. Philosophy, in its purest form, contains the study of what it is to live a good human life. As Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being."

And what if, after decades of study, you come to the realization that Socrates was wrong and you have actually wasted your life? What if "the good life" actually involves not worrying so much about what is "the good life" and just getting on with it, going to baseball games, hiking in the woods, building a shed in the back yard?

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#172

Post by blueprint »

Retric wrote: post #167
blueprint wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You employ a rhetorical move that some theists have used in the past -- namely, casting doubt on the veracity of scientific beliefs by painting them in the guise of religion. Are you not doing the same thing back to him ? If you disagree, then please tell me the definition of science.

Science is a methodology for defining how the universe operates. It’s sole assumption is the univers has some form of order, and holds zero other beliefs. Seriously, people question if time exists or how many dimensions their are. Consensus is what allows medicine to operate and people to build computers etc, but it’s not accepted Truth.

That's not the definition. What is the methodology ?

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#173

Post by blueprint »

salmonfamine wrote: post #166
blueprint wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You employ a rhetorical move that some theists have used in the past -- namely, casting doubt on the veracity of scientific beliefs by painting them in the guise of religion. Are you not doing the same thing back to him ? If you disagree, then please tell me the definition of science.

1) It’s hard to say “no” to this because it’s not clear what you mean. Do you mean to say that I’m painting religion in the guise of religion? 2) here are several definitions: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science

1. Him means the person you're replying to. Your argument is clearly to paint him in a religious light. You need something more substantial than "other theists say similar things". You need concrete proof to draw a conclusion.

2. The question is whether you can show that what the person you're replying to is arguing in favor of is not science. Pasting some definitions proves neither that you understand them nor that they apply.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#174

Post by JackFr »

mfoy_ wrote: post #160
FabHK wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, you are really equating * subscribing to an aesthetic hunch about fundamental physics (which has no consequences on how to lead our lives at all!), with * subscribing to an epistemology of revelation, and the ancient, unethical, incoherent scribblings of the Abrahamic religions (with big, bad consequences for our lives), as both being instances of some harmless, justified (or justifiable) "faith"? That's very wr…

Good response! To add to your points, GP also misses a really important distinction between science and religion and the way each system arrives at conclusions. Science is merely a set of tools and processes, nothing more. Seriously, NOTHING more. If, as GP says, you are taking it on faith that some "scientific conclusion" is true, you're merely deferring expertise on the matter. Much like when your tech support guy…

> Science is merely a set of tools and processes, nothing more. Seriously, NOTHING more.

Nonsense - that ignores that fundamentally science is a human activity. Because it is a human activity it is open to the same biases, self-deceptions, fads, groupthink and political pressures as any other human activity.

Apart from that, implicit in your defense of science and attack on religion is a belief that true knowledge can only be attained through the scientific method, and nothing which is true can be acquired outside of experiment and observation, which itself is a faith based (though pragmatic) argument.

That being said, I make no claims for the existence of a God, Abrahamic or otherwise. At the same time you could be a little more circumspect and humble about what you know to be true.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#175

Post by visarga »

sago wrote: post #33
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…

I am not a philosopher, but I would respectfully suggest the problem may be more that you not keeping up with philosophy. Your timescales also seem a bit strange. I was last in an academic context with philosophers of mind in the mid-90s, at which point Searle's Chinese room was already considered a tired argument (it was seen as an argument to incredulity). The hard problem of consciousness and qualia seem odd to pr…

Probably you're right, I might not be up to date. Can you recommend a good paper or author for reinforcement learning in philosophy?

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#176

Post by eli_gottlieb »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #38

Interesting interview. "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.' What is not specified here is the sense of 'rationality' that is required of moral realism. It is not enough that something be coherently deduced from stated premises, because we can state different premises, use different categories,…

>What is not specified here is the sense of 'rationality' that is required of moral realism. It is not enough that something be coherently deduced from stated premises, because we can state different premises, use different categories, and make different distinctions. What is required is that there is a sense in which we can all be rationally compelled through argumentation to adopt the same premises, categories and distinctions. And that is, frankly, absurd and untrue.

I'd think that defining "rationality" as "a sense in which one can be rationally compelled through argumentation to (verbally) adopt premises, categories, and distinctions" is circular. You end up sorta just defining "rational" as "the thing we do in the Agora".

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#177

Post by visarga »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #34
wwweston wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does seem that when one characterizes philosophy as engineering without the details, it's likely to look inferior to engineering.

Exactly. The OP has a very parochial view of philosophy, and what philosophers study.

Please point me to a paper treating consciousness from the point of view of agent, environment and rewards (reinforcement learning). I have searched and found very few papers taking this angle. I concluded that philosophers don't know about it.

In my view even using the word 'consciousness' is a bad thing because it is not well defined and has too much baggage (some people relate consciousness to spirit or soul, for example).

Instead we should use different concepts, the ones I enumerate above. They cover sensing, prediction of future rewards (emotion), acting and learning. All are concrete and well defined, with possible implementations in AI.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#178

Post by Retric »

blueprint wrote: post #172
Retric wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science is a methodology for defining how the universe operates. It’s sole assumption is the univers has some form of order, and holds zero other beliefs. Seriously, people question if time exists or how many dimensions their are. Consensus is what allows medicine to operate and people to build computers etc, but it’s not accepted Truth.

That's not the definition. What is the methodology ?

It’s a recursive definition. Methodology that works is science, that which fails is not. Things like peer review are accepted practice, but practice changes over time based on research.

People simplify things like to use hypothesis > experiment loop as Science. But, in practice simple observation is often used for things like Botany.

Ex: Philosophy is not science becase it does not work. You can’t argue from first principles and end up with a modern CPU.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#179

Post by geoka9 »

nyc111 wrote: post #42
charlysl wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 profes…

> physics .. accept that their type of knowledge is ... not definite

I think it's definite as long as the horse is spherical and in a vacuum. I mean a scientific theory that's built on such an assumption is definite knowledge, right?

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#180

Post by Emma_Goldman »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #176
Emma_Goldman wrote: post #38

Interesting interview. "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.' What is not specified here is the sense of 'rationality' that is required of moral realism. It is not enough that something be coherently deduced from stated premises, because we can state different premises, use different categories,…

>What is not specified here is the sense of 'rationality' that is required of moral realism. It is not enough that something be coherently deduced from stated premises, because we can state different premises, use different categories, and make different distinctions. What is required is that there is a sense in which we can all be rationally compelled through argumentation to adopt the same premises, categories and…

I don't follow. I meant to suggest that humans will never agree on the same structure of premises and argumentation, and that we simply cannot get past that, to a space above or beyond historical language, to an uncontested consensus. But if not, on what grounds can we possibly say that one particular conception of morality is True or Rational? That is what is required of moral realism - which I take, as an atheist, to be as odd and implausible as theism.
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