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Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#211

Post by Emma_Goldman »

visarga wrote: post #177
Emma_Goldman wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. What you say sounds like a perfectly interesting starting point for thinking about consciousness (although I'm not sure how it's supposed to fit with the fact that we're not computers, and have a distinct cognitive makeup, that mainstream psychology - 'cognitive psychology' - has committed itself to studying for several decades, with great profit). You would, in any case, have to specify what you mean by 'agent, environment, reward' - that sounds like a great deal of psychology.

But what I took objection to was the suggestion that philosophy is or should be primarily interested in clearing up some of the conceptual problems attendant to contemporary computer science and engineering.

I'm sure that's one interesting area of philosophy, but it is only one, modest area.

There is the philosophy of aesthetics and literature, of ethics and politics, of religion and science, of epistemology and knowledge, of the philosophy of history and the history of philosophy, and so on.

From what you said about existing philosophy ('Chinese room', qualia and 'hard problem' of consciousness) and the philosophy you would like to see (as doing the same thing as AI but worse), you completely discarded what the vast majority of what philosophers - now, and most certainly in the past - have actually done and been interested in.

That is why I said you had a parochial view of philosophy.

All that aside: I would be interested to hear how you think AI should change the philosophy of language and meaning.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#212

Post by vertexFarm »

lisper wrote: post #196
memonkey wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pointing out a single fallacy in the context of the whole argument seems pretty facile to me.

An elementary fallacy in the context of a discussion of whether or not philosophy has made progress seems pretty salient to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

Still irrelevant to the subject. It doesn't prove or disprove anything.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#213

Post by mfoy_ »

gumby wrote: post #207
brobdingnagians wrote: post #45

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 ec…

> Of course, I've found that most atheists ... have some personal, emotional reason for not believing in God rather than a well-thought out chain of reasoning I found this statement really fascinating: as you said "Of course" I take it that you presume that the belief in some number of gods to be innate? Do you think it an evolutionary advantage and manifestation? The part I elided (many atheists exhibit an essential…

Well, regardless of who is believing what, the issue is their reasons. I.e. why do they believe what they do.

Atheists/agnostics who do not understand science, yet believe it anyways likely do so because they are confident that they, or anyone else, could understand it if they put in the necessary effort to do so.

The same can not really be said of theists/deists. I'd be happy to be proven wrong here, of course.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#214

Post by foldr »

visarga wrote: post #177
Emma_Goldman wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=be...

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#215

Post by lisper »

vertexFarm wrote: post #212
lisper wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An elementary fallacy in the context of a discussion of whether or not philosophy has made progress seems pretty salient to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy Still irrelevant to the subject. It doesn't prove or disprove anything.

I'm trying to prove or disprove anything. I'm just saying that I think it's ironic.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#216

Post by boomboomsubban »

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 ?

Science is the practice of developing theories that best explain and are most able to predict natural phenomena given the evidence available. It is dissimilar to religion as at no point does it claim certainty, and new evidence can overturn any theory.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#217

Post by vec »

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…

> With Religion, there is nothing you can do to understand it. You can only "have faith". If your spiritual leader or holy book tells you the world is a certain way, you can only believe it, or disbelieve it, you cannot do anything to investigate the veracity of those claims. Truly, this is the most authoritarian of world views: Believe this because I tell you to!

There's a few thousand years of Talmudic scholarship you might want to read up on, just to pick one of the more obvious from among the many counterexamples.

Almost every religion is a much broader and much more intellectually diverse intellectual project than their respective fundamentalists would like you to believe.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#218

Post by fizx »

blueprint wrote: post #170
mfoy_ wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Science" is just a collection of tools and processes. "Scientisits" use those processes to attempt to arrive at true conclusions. This can be very difficult. Over time, "science" (the nebulous institution) can build up enough accrued "truths" that it can make interesting conclusions with a decent degree of confidence. (Note: scientific studies that are reported by clickbait headlines are not what I'm talking about.)…

That's not the definition. There are many tools and processes that do not constitute science. If you want to define science as that which uncovers truth, then, for that to be true, you must be able to define truth without resorting to tautology (that is, there must be a way to verify 'truth'). Excluding a subset of what's false doesn't necessarily lead you to discovering or being able to accept (integrate) the truth.

Science is the belief that the laws of nature are consistent, and therefore repeatable and testable.

From there the practice of science is repeating and testing claims about nature, and communicating these tests through various social processes such as peer reviewed journals or running through the streets naked shouting "Eureka!"

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#219

Post by vinceguidry »

wl wrote: post #119
malmsteen wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of science is that its supposed to be verifiable/ provable at least by someone. Its "trust" (in that "someone" or "group of people" who can prove it)... not "faith". Faith is when its literally unprovable by anyone but you still believe it. Its completely different.

It's unprovable that science is the best method to arrive at truth about the universe. Remember that science attempts to come up with the best explanation for the evidence we have, often using experimentation to resolve questions. The answers are always tentative—ready to be thrown out if better ones come along. Faith in science is not an unreasonable assumption—says me who holds that assumption—but it's faith noneth…

> It's unprovable that science is the best method to arrive at truth about the universe.

One would have to constrain the definition of "the universe" to a tautological one in order for science, the careful use of rigorous empirical analysis, to be the best at investigating it.

We use other forms of analysis to study different things, forms that may share some aspects with science, but aren't quite the same. Some things just aren't amenable to scientific study. The humanities, for instance.

Re: Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress

#220

Post by dragonwriter »

fizx wrote: post #218
blueprint wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the definition. There are many tools and processes that do not constitute science. If you want to define science as that which uncovers truth, then, for that to be true, you must be able to define truth without resorting to tautology (that is, there must be a way to verify 'truth'). Excluding a subset of what's false doesn't necessarily lead you to discovering or being able to accept (integrate) the truth.

Science is the belief that the laws of nature are consistent, and therefore repeatable and testable. From there the practice of science is repeating and testing claims about nature, and communicating these tests through various social processes such as peer reviewed journals or running through the streets naked shouting "Eureka!"

> Science is the belief that the laws of nature are consistent, and therefore repeatable and testable.

No, science is the practice of using the assumption of consistent laws of nature to build predictive models. In a way, it is more an elaborate extended test of the utility of the assumption than a belief in it (though obviously belief may support the practice and observed utility of the resulting models may create or reinforce belief.) But belief in the assumption is neither necessary to nor sufficient for science.

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