A Defense of Philosophy (against Paul Graham)

Philosophy, at one point, was the catch-all phrase for any type of thought. Mathematics was philosophy. Science was philosophy. Law was philosophy. Economics was philosophy. Every form of thought (more or less) was philosophy. Over the course of history, these fields have spun off from philosophy, and achieved various degrees of relevance; their earliest works were done by "philosophers" because these fields did not yet exist, but in modern times they are studied independently. The question then becomes, in modern times, what is a person studying when they study philosophy? They are not studying any of the fields that spun off of philosophy, or else they would no longer be classified as philosophers. So, the question becomes (answering your point 5) what problems that other fields care about are still answered by philosophers? The critique in the OP correctly identifies that some philosophers still concern themselves with problems related to cognitive science, which still answer questions from psychology. But once cognitive science becomes its own independent field, there may be nothing left within the realm of philosophy.

We might not have had modern political science without Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Hobbes. But we would have had Hobbes even if he had not been classified as a philosopher, and thus we would have had the rest of them.

We might not have had modern economics without Smith, Pareto, and Mill. But we would have had Smith even if he had not been classified as a philosopher, and thus we would have had the rest.

We might not have had modern sociology without Marx and Gramsci. But we would have had Comte even if he hadn't been classified as a philosopher, and thus we would have had the rest.

I mention these three individuals' work because they (1) fundamentally began what came to eventually be their fields, and (2) did not really build these fields incrementally out of the rest of the philosophical body of knowledge at the time. This demonstrates that it isn't some kind of unifying thread within the study of philosophy that causes these fields to spin off from them; philosophy was just what you called it when you were studying problems that weren't in their own field yet. This no longer occurs in modern times, so we don't see philosophy spinning off new fields in the way that it used to; computer science (as a whole) sees its roots in modern mathematics, not philosophy. Psychoanalysis, as a modern field (unlike psychology as a whole, which also often refers to much older studies), clearly descends from biology. Electrical engineering. Nuclear physics even has it in the title.

The study of the works of "philosophers" can still be relevant within other fields, but to study philosophy is to spend one's time looking at what's left. It is this study, in modern times, that pg and I are attacking as vague, useless, and prone to wars of semantics.

As a programmer, you don't see obvious practical use in understanding results in number theory? These have importance in a wide variety of computer applications.

What about linear algebra? Do you really think that understanding its applications in computer graphics doesn't/wouldn't improve your employability?

Certainly, if you're a janitor, having studied philosophy vs. mathematics does not significantly affect how you do your job (though it probably does affect how easy it is for you to get a different job). But mathematics--even advanced mathematics--has more and more obvious applications than philosophy.

Above you say that this is an honest request to know more so I will treat it as such.

In philosophy a method proposed by Descartes to find the foundations of knowledge was to doubt everything that possibly could be doubted which includes the external world. Wittgenstein in his Tractatus similarly starts from a blank slate and tries to define and describe the world without crossing his own boundaries and definitions of what can be considered sensible to say (and fails. To objectively describe the world is an attempt to step outside it and his bounds of sense).

I would also like to note that this early is work very different from his later work where he completely rejected the Tractatus, writing with a different style and focus. His later work (especially Philosophical Investigations) has some extremely interesting ideas regarding language, its use and development which I believe would interest those working in the areas of semantic web and NLP.

Yet this failure to agree on semantics is in part because of the difficulty in providing solid, incontrovertible justifications for these meanings. Consider the new branches of mathematics that were [created|discovered] when Euclid's definition of a straight line were questioned.

That mathematics corresponds so well to the world we perceive is amazing. Why should this be the case? How can we be sure that mathematics and science holds for all cases which we do not observe or that they will continue to do so? Can rigorous justifications be given for these questions that do not rely on circular arguments and blind faith?

Thanks for your critical thoughts. That's holds for you as well as gambling8nt, straiberman and kragen.

I'll try to answer some of your objections.

(1) You're right that "sample of 1" is an expression found in experimental science. But how do we know that a small sample is no sufficient reason to accept a hypothese if not by using logic?

Also: Read PG's essay once more and tell me: What reasons did he present to support his hypotheses, other than merely: "I didn't understand philosophy, therefore all current philosophy is useless"? He's basically making an appeal to authority, namely his own authority. Hardly a good reason.

2) PG asserts that early philosophy was inspired by maths. But was it, really? How does PG know? In fact, both fields probably inspired each other. This is one of the examples that makes some philosophy useful -- examples that PG simply ignored.

3) Just because you agree with PG (or had a similar experience) doesn't make any of you right. However, I agree that philosophy has had a quality problem every now and then. But that doesn't render all philosophy (or its method) useless.

Also: I'm wasn't trying to say: "I think he's wrong". I say: "Where are his arguments to believe his assertions that he can find a quick way?" Even the more practical sciences have had some really strange ideas when looking at them in hindsight. If usefulness is such a good guide, why did they run into these errors?

4) Indeed, all kind of thinking produces more thinking. Homo sapiens is about 40.000 years old. Then, what did they do the first 37.000 years if mere thinking is sufficient to find the meaningful and true statements?

Finally, attacking the presentation is often the same thing as dismissing the argument. For what are his arguments? PG can point to some bad philosophy, granted. Everybody can do this for all kind of fields. I can point at some really bad software. Is therefore all software engineering useless?

PG wants us to believe his assertions that the philosophical method is inherently flawed. But he presents no arguments other than his own experience, some selected examples and that's about it.

If you want to know what's useful about philosophy, look no further than Socrates: His way to ask people critical questions about the meaning of words, the reasons why they do have the believes they have, and his way to find the differences between good and bad reasons (namely by debate) still is what philosophy is all about. We need the bad thinking to find out why it's bad. Philosophy proceeds by discussing and recording these issues.

You might call it as well critical thinking.

Our small discussion here hopefully shows why this is useful. Trying to dismiss arguments makes you a better thinker.