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

Whither philosophy?

aeon.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 192 posts

Re: Whither philosophy?

#131

Post by dventimi »

fastaguy88 wrote: post #125
dventimi wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not expensive. There are evidently ~10k philosophy professors in the US and the average salary is ~100k. That's ~$1 billion. I think college is already an expensive waste but if it has to exist and if those professors are mostly entertaining undergraduates I suppose ~0.004% of GDP to pay camp counselors at a playground that's going to exist anyway, isn't all that expensive. I rate your coment as "mostly true."

I am not particularly knowledgeable about philosophy as a modern discipline, but taking philosophy courses as an undergraduate taught me a lot, particularly about the limits of knowledge and scientific enquiry. I'm happy to argue that there are a lot of courses taught at university that are considerably less useful than philosophy -- but I'm sure there are lawyers (classics and rhetoric) and screen writers (comparati…

The trouble is, we have to take your word for it that philosophy taught you a lot that the rest of us find useful, as there's little Independent verification. At least with math, or physics, or engineering, there are some fairly standard means for independent verification (tests, job interviews, work product, etc.)

Re: Whither philosophy?

#132

Post by kbrkbr »

mistermann wrote: post #118
kbrkbr wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope we can all agree that science works reasonably well in gathering knowledge. Because we can use it to do things. You are saying metaphysics is about the "why" of this. I agree. I disagree that there has been a way or method of producing metaphysics that seems to work well. The evidence is that we have so many incompatible systems that all claim to be true.

> The evidence is that we have so many incompatible systems that all claim to be true. Imagine the mess science would be if it brought this level of accuracy and epistemology to the table when thinking.

I probably don't understand clearly enough. Physics, chemistry, biology, even psychology have textbooks. Pick one, it doesn't matter much. It will teach you roughly the same basic things.

Philosophy on the other hand. Pick Searle or Derrida, pick Quine or the late Heidegger, and it is hard to conceive that they are even doing the same thing ("philosophy").

Re: Whither philosophy?

#133

Post by dragonwriter »

kbrkbr wrote: post #132
mistermann wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The evidence is that we have so many incompatible systems that all claim to be true. Imagine the mess science would be if it brought this level of accuracy and epistemology to the table when thinking.

I probably don't understand clearly enough. Physics, chemistry, biology, even psychology have textbooks. Pick one, it doesn't matter much. It will teach you roughly the same basic things. Philosophy on the other hand. Pick Searle or Derrida, pick Quine or the late Heidegger, and it is hard to conceive that they are even doing the same thing ("philosophy").

Philosophy used to include all of physics, chemistry, biology, etc.

What it retains is everything that hasn't gotten pulled out into its own named discipline. Which is something of a jumble, sure.

Re: Whither philosophy?

#134

Post by Larrikin »

mistermann wrote: post #120
keiferski wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people insist on reading the absolute worst interpretation of every comment on the internet? Honestly. It is so tiresome. If I had to pick a favorite philosopher, it would be Nietzsche. No other thinker has influenced me more, and if you spent half a second searching Nietzsche and my username on HN, you’d see that. But if the man were alive today, he’d be writing a blog with 50 subscribers - because that’s abo…

>Why do people insist on reading the absolute worst interpretation of every comment on the internet? Honestly. It is so tiresome. Do you feel similarly about the rigor of the scientific method?

If you check his comment history, whenever someone calls out one of his not well thought out arguments, he plays the victim and says that the person calling him out should have considered all the points he didn't actually make or say and then leaves it up to other person to imagine them.

Re: Whither philosophy?

#135

Post by JonChesterfield »

dventimi wrote: post #124
hotnfresh wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn’t pay off?

It's not a philosophical notion.

In a literal sense it is no longer considered philosophy because it did pay off.

The field is somewhat doomed to only contain the good ideas of the future and the bad ideas of the present, because as soon as they are identified as good ideas they get their own branding and are no longer part of philosophy.

For example, my current distraction is homotopy type theory which is a way to reason about computable functions without error, amenable to machine checked proof. That is, it's a credible path to building software that actually works. Here is is under the philosophy department of Cornell. https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/philosophy/hott/

Re: Whither philosophy?

#136

Post by _yb2s »

kbrkbr wrote: post #102
_yb2s wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I am mostly talking about Stoicism, but the older philosophers that the Stoics revered like Socrates were often discussed or admired by Stoics more in the context of their personal lives, rather than their philosophy. Socrates, Xenophon, and Plato were all soldiers or military leaders. Epictetus was a slave that was crippled from abuse. Viktor Frankl and James Stockdale are both fairly modern people that survive…

That seems to be an argument also for religion. Plenty of people also survived extreme hardship using their beliefs. Not saying there is anything wrong with this thesis, but I want to point out that this is not what philosophy usually thinks of itself, and it may not transfer. The philosophy the helped X may not help Y under similar circumstances.

I think the lines between a practical philosophy, a religion, and a psychotherapy technique are pretty blurry. In ancient Greece and Rome, people would often identify with a philosophical school in the same way people identify with religions nowadays, choose them based on the practical benefits, and practice them as a lifestyle or religion (instead of just conceptual understanding).

I don't think it's mysterious or hard to predict where techniques from a philosophy or religion will be useful in real life, and where they will not... it's pretty easy to understand what they are, and how they apply. Modern therapy techniques like CBT, ACT, and Mindfulness therapy are pretty much just extracting these ancient ideas and practices in a systematic way, so they can study the effects clinically and actually be able to say in which real world context they are reliably useful.

Re: Whither philosophy?

#137

Post by _yb2s »

jl6 wrote: post #45

Philosophy is mostly a maladaptive male response to childlessness. OK, OK, perhaps that’s unfair, but it’s surprising how male the discipline of philosophy is, and how many of the big names had no kids.

I think this might help explain that ;-)

Nietzsche tries speed dating https://existentialcomics.com/comic/150

Philosophical Pickup Lines https://existentialcomics.com/comic/523

Re: Whither philosophy?

#138

Post by greatNespresso »

Not a philosopher myself but this essay accurately captured my feelings regarding the state of philosophy indeed. It's hard for an amateur to find actual contemporary philosophy work that is not either some cryptic reexamination of classical work or gimmicky self-help books from trending gurus.

Also that quote hit the spot, at personal level:

"As MacMullan writes in ‘Jon Stewart and the New Public Intellectual’ (2007):

It’s much easier and more comfortable to speak to someone who shares your assumptions and uses your terms than someone who might challenge your assumptions in unexpected ways or ask you to explain what you mean."

Thank you to the author for this pleaser read!

Re: Whither philosophy?

#139

Post by Amezarak »

keiferski wrote: post #115
Amezarak wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A bit weird to use Nietzsche as an example here, considering that he had zero formal education in the discipline called "philosophy" and spent most of his life as a hermit writer with nearly-zero readers. Virtually no philosophers historically had a "formal education in the discipline of called philosophy" and most went unread. He received the sort of classical education that was regarded at the time as a sufficien…

Why do people insist on reading the absolute worst interpretation of every comment on the internet? Honestly. It is so tiresome. If I had to pick a favorite philosopher, it would be Nietzsche. No other thinker has influenced me more, and if you spent half a second searching Nietzsche and my username on HN, you’d see that. But if the man were alive today, he’d be writing a blog with 50 subscribers - because that’s abo…

Nietzsche looked with total disdain on academic philosophers. He calls them names like “dwarves” (as opposed to the true philosophers calling to each other across centuries), and “scholarly oxen”, calls the field the “harmless chatter of children and academics” and suggest that if modern man had any courage it would be banned outright. Thousands of papers are still published every year on philosophical subjects Nietzsche believed he proved moot or a mere confusion of ideas.

Very few modern academic philosophers are read better than Nietzsche in as in his lifetime. Few older ones were either: Nietzsche mentions the fate of Schoepenhaur and Spinoza. It’s a safe bet none alive now will be read in a hundred years.

You mention Sam Harris in another comment and say that he’s “not taken seriously as a philosopher” by academic philosophers. I know nothing about him other than that he’s some pop culture commentator and therefore probably not worth attention, but the idea that someone like Nietzsche or anyone serious would care about what “academic philosophers” think of someone is absolutely ludicrous, not only on its face but when you consider they do take people like John Rawls seriously.

Re: Whither philosophy?

#140

Post by rrsmtz »

keiferski wrote: post #97
FredPret wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree - it's only when you try to take ideas out of the textbook and put them in the real world where it is relevant to people that you run into the messy details that make or break ideas. If the ideas are about purely intellectual things, that's fine. But if the ideas are about people's lives or actions, or any complex system in the real world, then the idea isn't really fully fleshed out until someone starts t…

You seem to think that academics just sit in ivory towers and don’t factor in “the real world” to their arguments. That’s…not how it works, it’s just a poor anti-intellectual characterization. Your supposed “real world alternative” is pop-philosophy writers and loud, attention-seeking people on social media influencing what we ought to do about seriously complex issues like abortion.

Unlike other professions, academics rarely face consequences for being wrong. A doctor who makes a bad diagnosis risks malpractice, a civil engineer risks their license, and so on.

Academics only really need to worry about the perception of their work by other academics, which isn't inherently tied to results (a notable exception is the hard sciences, which are conceptually much closer to industry).

Post reply on HN