it's spelled "perl"
Umm, no, it isn't. He's talking about Judea Pearl, the developer of Bayesian networks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judea_Pearl
Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant
41–50 of 129 posts
Re: Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant
#42this is worse than that ayn rand post a while back
Re: Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant
#43So the author argues for some kind of long in the tooth peculiar positivism? Had he studied just some 20th century philosophy and its problems (from positivism to analytic philosophy to post-analytic), he wouldn't make such tiresome arguments.
Re: Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Other classic (and similarly short-sighted) ideas along those lines would be: "Stop (all) basic research while there's still applied science to be done." "We shouldn't be spending money on space exploration while there are still people that are starving/homeless/poor." "Why are people working on a cure for >, when we still don't have a cure for cancer?"
I am really curious: did you read the example abstracts in the post? If so, can you help me understand why things like that should be funded?
I would imagine that the article about how atheists experience and connect with religion-inspired works would be relevant to someone trying to design a marketing strategy for a movie based on the Christian musical Les Miserables.
Re: Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant
#45The argument is absurd. Claiming that universities are "poisoning minds" by teaching Aristotle and Descartes in 101 Intro to Philosophy courses is just silly. Those same universities teach modern philosophy courses that deal with the intersection of science and philosophy – judging by my one or two philosophy friends, philosophers are much more interested in the practical discoveries of psychology, math, and science…
>[Philosophy's real purpose] is to constantly search for deeper underlying truth. What "truth" has philosophy itself produced from that search which is well-defined, non-trivial, and correct?
Many philosophers have questioned the scientific definition of "correctness". For example Heidegger who argued that scientific truth is an approximation and measurement of things that we already presume to exist. These discoveries may be correct, and they may be true. But what about the more primordial truth (i.e. being) which we take for granted before we even begin a scientific inquiry? This is what he investigates, so pretty much all scientific definitions of correctness don't apply here. But it is very hard to convince followers of scientism that this investigation has any meaning, because they've already closed their minds to this form of thinking.
Re: Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Notably absent from this guy's syllabus is anything concerning ethics, morality, values, or right and wrong. That's because all morality is relative, one of the few things philosophy got right. The universe is morally neutral, which means that, to the degree that we fully grasp reality, to the same degree we discover that morality is a human invention, malleable across time and place. Not to discount notions of mor…
> That's because all morality is relative, one of the few things philosophy got right. As far as I know, there is no consensus in the philosophical community that relativism is right. In fact, my impression is that there's a stigma against relativism, as it's hard to come up with a satisfactory relativistic theory. For example, if relativism is true, it might be the case that we can't judge other societies or other t…
>because nature isn't a thinking thing that can care.
This isn't commonly accepted even now. Many people think that good things happen to good people because nature/god cares.
Re: Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant
#47The modern mis-use of the term philosopher is annoying.
A philosopher isn't a philosophy professor. A philosopher is someone who lives by and espouses there own belief system.
Re: Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant
#48The argument is absurd. Claiming that universities are "poisoning minds" by teaching Aristotle and Descartes in 101 Intro to Philosophy courses is just silly. Those same universities teach modern philosophy courses that deal with the intersection of science and philosophy – judging by my one or two philosophy friends, philosophers are much more interested in the practical discoveries of psychology, math, and science…
Lovely argument that I would like to second. I think you're the first person outside of my former research group that I've seen reference the Nature of Order . That made me very happy. It's too bad the books are so expensive – they deserve to be circulated more widely: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0972652914/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...
I'm making my way through The Process of Creating Life. It's one of only two books that I've read in recent years that I can't read too much of at once – I get three pages in and have to stop, because of how excited I am about his arguments and its implications.
I was debating, at one point, scanning its pages and making a digital copy for my friends' sakes, but the work is so tremendous that I feel bad distributing it for free. I would love to work on a digital copy of the book formatted specifically for computers – seriously, if I know if any book that I'd recommend everybody read, it's this one.
Re: Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant
#49The argument is absurd. Claiming that universities are "poisoning minds" by teaching Aristotle and Descartes in 101 Intro to Philosophy courses is just silly. Those same universities teach modern philosophy courses that deal with the intersection of science and philosophy – judging by my one or two philosophy friends, philosophers are much more interested in the practical discoveries of psychology, math, and science…
What a fantastic response! I'm so heartened to see this as the top comment. The article is completely absurd, of course, but unfortunately represents a bizarre sort of anti-intellectualism that is running rampant through academic communities which are coming closer and closer to declaring outright that philosophy as a discipline, and not just particular philosophers, is irrelevant and has been superseded by a specific form of dogmatic, reductionist science.
The breathtaking category mistake in this sentiment is not only disturbing from an abstract point of view, it is cause for deep concern for the future of human inquiry, if we continue to naively demand that all knowledge of the world be communicated in one form or another of bayesian/cartesian modeling, under a watered-down, diluted Popperian epistemological regime (exemplified in the OP's blog title, "Less Wrong".)
I have to take issue with one aspect of your response, though. I lay the blame for this trend, unsurprisingly, at the feet of Descartes himself. The article's sentiment towards Aristotle and Plato and indeed all previous philosophy is first expressed, with nearly the same dismissive arrogance (albeit couched much more subtly for political reasons) in Descartes' Discourse on Method. The Discourse is in fact a much more eloquent (naturally) and far-reaching version of the exact same argument in the OP. It is Descartes' naive dualism and reductionism, as well as his not-so-subtle dismissal of medieval and ancient philosophy, for precisely the same reasons found in this article, that laid the groundwork for the current large anti-intellectual, naively reductionistic trend.
Kudos on the Alexander citation -- I think if you dig deeply into his philosophical and metaphysical roots, you'll find a similar suspicion of naive Cartesian dualism, and a rejection of the simplistic mechanistic metaphors that animate it.
I believe it is in fact this rejection, coupled with a return to more confidence in formal realities, closer to the specific philosophical bent of works like Aristotle's Poetics, that is the basis Alexander's entire project. Note that Alexander has received more attention in many ways outside of his discipline (such as in the software community), for precisely his criticism of the radicalized Cartesian/modernist tendencies in contemporary architecture.
Re: Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
>[Philosophy's real purpose] is to constantly search for deeper underlying truth. What "truth" has philosophy itself produced from that search which is well-defined, non-trivial, and correct?
Many philosophers have questioned the scientific definition of "correctness". For example Heidegger who argued that scientific truth is an approximation and measurement of things that we already presume to exist. These discoveries may be correct, and they may be true. But what about the more primordial truth (i.e. being) which we take for granted before we even begin a scientific inquiry? This is what he investigates…
Maybe they'd be more open to these ideas if you didn't refer to them as "followers of scientism".