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

151–160 of 192 posts

Re: Whither philosophy?

#151

Post by dventimi »

defrost wrote: post #150
dventimi wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which in no way negates the claim [about physics and philosophy] Whether that claim is true or not depends on the meanings people assign to the terms "physics" and "philosophy." Newton may have called himself a philosopher but we're not obliged to follow suit. If the fruits of his labor today are taught as physics but not as philosophy, that supports the argument that today we should regard him as a physicist by to…

Are you claiming that modern physics is not a branch of past philosophy? Myself and a number of others who have studied and work in physics|mathematics regard it as such and thus regard physics as an example of something worthwhile that arose from philosophy. Similarly one can regard modern 20th century logical philosophy in the same light and embarce the work of Russell, Godel, Turing, Church, et al as worthwhile de…

No. Among other things I'm claiming Newton, for instance, would typically be classified by modern standards not as a philosopher but as a physicist. I further claim that regardless of their historical provenance, modern physics is very distinct from modern philosophy. This claim is supported if we accept that a training in philosophy alone does not equip a person at all to work as a professional physicist. Moreover, I make these claims and arguments without reference to our personal biographies, yours or mine, which I regard as irrelevant. After all, you don't know what my experience with physics is anymore than I know what yours is.

As for Godel, Turing, and Church, if they were philosophers they were also mathematicians, which means we can't rule out the possibility that their contributions owe more to the latter than the former. It doesn't help us evaluate philosophy in isolation, as distinct from math, physics, or computing. To do that, we would be helped by examples of laudable contributions from people who were ONLY philosophers.

Re: Whither philosophy?

#152

Post by GoblinSlayer »

dventimi wrote: post #131
fastaguy88 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

That doesn't look like an independent verification: it's done by humans engrossed in math. If math was verified by someone who doesn't believe in math, that would be independent. But such things don't happen, naturally stuff are verified by people already interested in the topic. If you don't believe in math, you won't bother to verify it.

Re: Whither philosophy?

#153

Post by GoblinSlayer »

dventimi wrote: post #146
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1687 Isaac Newton wrote a book "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica", where he describes laws of motion and gravitation.

Yet today the branch of physics that bears his name and still embodies his ideas and methods is typically taught within the physics department but not the philosophy department.

Previously laws of motion were proposed by Aristotle, Newton only did better quantitative analysis of observation and proposed more precise laws.

Re: Whither philosophy?

#154

Post by defrost »

dventimi wrote: post #151
defrost wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you claiming that modern physics is not a branch of past philosophy? Myself and a number of others who have studied and work in physics|mathematics regard it as such and thus regard physics as an example of something worthwhile that arose from philosophy. Similarly one can regard modern 20th century logical philosophy in the same light and embarce the work of Russell, Godel, Turing, Church, et al as worthwhile de…

No. Among other things I'm claiming Newton, for instance, would typically be classified by modern standards not as a philosopher but as a physicist. I further claim that regardless of their historical provenance, modern physics is very distinct from modern philosophy. This claim is supported if we accept that a training in philosophy alone does not equip a person at all to work as a professional physicist. Moreover,…

The argument I advanced was that physics is an offshoot, a product, of philosophy.

You haven't negated that claim in any form that I recognise.

> As for Godel, Turing, and Church, ...

Interestinglly I have a degree in mathematics, I was present when Tao met Erdős in Australia, and while I studied Group Theory, Functional Analysis, and other such things as part of the mathematics curriculum I had to go to the Philosophy department to study 20th Century Logical Philosophy under Graham Priest alongside fellow students one who now heads a Physics Department, another who heads a Philosophy Department (and, incidently also studied undergraduate mathematics alongside myself and the physicist).

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

> Moreover, I make these claims and arguments without reference to our personal biographies, yours or mine

Sadly I only have my own personal experience of the world, informed to a degree by the thoughts of those I've met and worked with.

> It doesn't help us evaluate philosophy in isolation, as distinct from math, physics, or computing.

Why on earth would you want to do that, these things are all intertwined.

> To do that, we would be helped by examples of laudable contributions from people who were ONLY philosophers.

We should then also reject papers on black holes by physicists that also studied philosophy?

I fear you're advancing your own private Idaho by means of a True Scotsman Philosopher whom I've not personally met.

Re: Whither philosophy?

#155

Post by GoblinSlayer »

dventimi wrote: post #151
defrost wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you claiming that modern physics is not a branch of past philosophy? Myself and a number of others who have studied and work in physics|mathematics regard it as such and thus regard physics as an example of something worthwhile that arose from philosophy. Similarly one can regard modern 20th century logical philosophy in the same light and embarce the work of Russell, Godel, Turing, Church, et al as worthwhile de…

No. Among other things I'm claiming Newton, for instance, would typically be classified by modern standards not as a philosopher but as a physicist. I further claim that regardless of their historical provenance, modern physics is very distinct from modern philosophy. This claim is supported if we accept that a training in philosophy alone does not equip a person at all to work as a professional physicist. Moreover,…

>I further claim that regardless of their historical provenance, modern physics is very distinct from modern philosophy.

There are many things in modern philosophy. You don't make claims based on ignorance, do you? How modern physics is different from such a modern philosophic idea as compatibilism?

>This claim is supported if we accept that a training in philosophy alone does not equip a person at all to work as a professional physicist.

There are many kinds of professional physicists too. Some can live without philosophy, some can live without much math too: the computer will do math for them. Arguably philosophic ignorance delays development of fundamental physics.

Re: Whither philosophy?

#156

Post by GoblinSlayer »

dventimi wrote: post #144
jfengel wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The book "Physics" was written by Aristotle, who is so much of a philosopher that he's often called "The Philosopher". He's also the author of a book called "Metaphysics", pretty much the quintessential field of philosophy. The entire point of this conversation was that some fields, including physics, get split off from philosophy, leaving behind a mishmash. But many scientific fields absolutely began as aspects of p…

That "book" whoever wrote it, is utterly useless for practicing modern physics.

Not at all, quantum mechanics is based on Aristotle's ideas. The postulate of wavefunction collapse is proposed ad hoc solely to explain one observed phenomenon and not connected to the rest of the theory. It's similar to Aristotle's postulate that stars are made of aether which naturally tends to move in circles around the heavens, this nicely explains motion of stars in geocentric model, and is postulated just for this. The postulate of wavefunction collapse is justified as directly observable phenomenon, anything else is thus not supported by observation. Aristotle used the same argument: that geocentrism is directly observable, thus heliocentrism is not supported by observation.

You're right that science can be done better, but that's the state of modern science.

Re: Whither philosophy?

#157

Post by fastaguy88 »

dventimi wrote: post #131
fastaguy88 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

I don't think I said that philosophy taught me things that the "rest of us" find useful. I said it taught me things that I found useful. And I'm happy to argue that many non-technical subjects that I might not consider useful are useful to people in other disciplines (including disciplines that measure success by income levels).

Re: Whither philosophy?

#158

Post by GoblinSlayer »

_yb2s wrote: post #48
b450 wrote: post #7

The argument is sometimes made that philosophy is the mother of all other academic traditions - once a philosophical idea reaches a sufficient level of promise or maturity, it spins off into its own discipline, as in the speciation of "natural philosophy" into specialized hard sciences. One might even point to psychology (or even more contentiously and partially, computer science) as a 20th century offshoots of philo…

> the view that philosophy is supposed to be therapeutic I think this is what is missing from most modern philosophy, that makes it so easy to dismiss as useless. In Ancient Greece most of the philosophers were strong people, that had personally done great things, or endured incredible hardships with the aid of their philosophy, and these real world tests stood as evidence of its value. People strove to become a Stoi…

I don't think there are philosophic problems that require strength. There are pessimistic misconceptions indeed, but therapy here is finding optimistic truth, then there's no reason for pessimism anymore.

Re: Whither philosophy?

#159

Post by vehemenz »

keiferski wrote: post #53
vehemenz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll get no argument from me about Jordan Peterson. However, I'm having trouble reconciling your apparent reverence for "the actual academic field," when Sam Harris thinks and argues like so many of them, including the philosophers he has on his podcast. Blaming him for courting controversy is no different than blaming professional philosophers for avoiding it. Necessities of the trade. I don't think that objection…

Harris is not taken seriously as a philosopher by the academic philosophy community. https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/search/?q=Sam+Harris+...

1. There are plenty of comments in those threads that support my position, as well as the standard gatekeeping positions.

2. This subreddit isn't as representative of professional philosophers as you think. Its demographic skews toward inexperienced grad students who (surprise) use Reddit.

3. I wrote this subreddit off 5 or 6 years ago because it was too concerned with the academic lifecycle and of existing literature of questionable quality. Appealing to authority only works if there is an authority present.

4. Again—you can't have it both ways. There are loads of philosophers who engage with the field who are deeply unserious for reasons more indictable than Harris.

Edit: I should add that I don't think Harris is a particularly good philosopher, especially when it comes to his argument for moral realism. But if having bad arguments disqualifies one for being a philosopher, then we'd be committed to rejecting a huge number of contemporary academic philosophers, which doesn't strike me as your position.

Re: Whither philosophy?

#160

Post by jjgreen »

hilbert42 wrote: post #100

Philosophy is very dear to me and I loved studying it, so I cannot let this story stand without having commented. I'm not going to come to its defense other than to point to several references as the works of many philosophers over several thousands years have done so much more eloquently through their philosophical works than anything that I could even dream to equal. I'll just say that studying the works Plato, Ari…

Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being — like a worm
Post reply on HN