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How to Do Philosophy

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Do Philosophy

#201

Post by paulvonhippel »

It's a little misleading to say that philosophy is useless. You can get that feeling by looking at what's called philosophy today, but that's because branches of philosophy that became useful are now called something else.

Many useful studies started out as branches of philosophy. As a topic develops standards of evidence, it tends to calve off from philosophy. So natural philosophy turned into physics, biology, astronomy, etc. as practitioners got serious about observation and modeling. Likewise, logic and geometry grew into mathematics, parts of epistemology turned into psychology, and social theory is turning into social science. Today psychologists and evolutionary theorists are starting to take a fresh look at questions in ethics and aesthetics.

What's left in the philosophy department, then, are topics that have been hard, so far, to get purchase on. If you focus on these topics, you can get a feeling of futility, but it's like staring at the bare patch in an otherwise fertile garden.

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#202

Post by gregboutin »

excellent article Paul. I am part of those who changed their mind about a degree in philosophy after realizing that most debates were rooted in language imprecisions. I was leading the pack in my philosophy class. I studied commerce instead and don't regret one second to be an entrepreneur! thanks for the enlightening thoughts!

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#203

Post by rabagley »

lst wrote: post #172
twinings wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What problem do you have with 'millions of years'? Forget about proof. Just consider this: Imagine small changes, occurring continuously over millions of years. Would they still be 'small' changes after a while? Of course not. They would be small_changes * millions_of_years = big_changes Or do you disagree that millions of years passed?

I don't have personally any problem with 'millions of years', and I don't say that the evolution theory is wrong, but for me it simply stays a nice theory, which can't be proven, and which isn't able to explain everything. I do believe that the universe is millions of millions of years old, but I also believe that the humans arrived last (much later than any animal). And that humans have many attributes which can't b…

Evolution is an observed fact and even religious leaders 150 years ago did not argue this. Natural Selection is a theory which explains, without reference to any supernatural agent, how evolution might have happened. Darwin didn't posit evolution as it wasn't a subject that was very exciting. It happened, everyone agrees.

Natural Selection, on the other hand, is more than just a hypothesis (you're using the word "theory" incorrectly). It (with refinements) is one of the most widely established explanations for all of the observed phenomena of lineages, species differences. It also made a number of testable predictions that have since been borne out (it predicted DNA, among other things). More recently, natural selection has led to the development of new sciences, like evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary linguistics, etc. which are taking our understanding of biology and behavior further than ever.

Evolution is a fact. Natural Selection is a theory (and not a hypothesis). No scientists are "moving away" from natural selection. Anyone who told you that is uninformed or lying.

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#205

Post by pknz61 »

http://peter.allmedia.googlepages.com/pottedphilosophy

You talk about the "meaning of words" in a very English school way. Obviously the meaning of meaning is the branch where Wittgenstein left the British for dead and led to Heidegger and Derrida. Meaning of meaning is an important issue as we begin the task of programming computers that will be more intelligent than we are.

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#206

Post by tones »

Paul, Vico and Pirsig both address the problem you outline in constructive ways, Vico through a pragmatic view of history as a Science, an evolutionary philosophy if you will, and Pirsig by a link to anthropology and a distinction between philosophy and "philosophilogy" which is what is mostly going on today. Tones

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#208

Post by lst »

rabagley wrote: post #203
lst wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have personally any problem with 'millions of years', and I don't say that the evolution theory is wrong, but for me it simply stays a nice theory, which can't be proven, and which isn't able to explain everything. I do believe that the universe is millions of millions of years old, but I also believe that the humans arrived last (much later than any animal). And that humans have many attributes which can't b…

Evolution is an observed fact and even religious leaders 150 years ago did not argue this. Natural Selection is a theory which explains, without reference to any supernatural agent, how evolution might have happened. Darwin didn't posit evolution as it wasn't a subject that was very exciting. It happened, everyone agrees. Natural Selection, on the other hand, is more than just a hypothesis (you're using the word "the…

> Evolution is an observed fact [...]

Has it been 'observed' for a few years or for millions of years ;)

Again, it can't be observed for a period that would be sufficiently long to really prove for evidence.

Hence it's still a theory, sorry.

(Most 'scientists' need to learn philosophy, especially the greek one. It would help very much to understand logic, and to understand terms like 'theory'.)

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#210

Post by tigerthink »

How does self-improvement (ala lifehack.org) fit it? I personally think it fits very well. The trouble is that these sorts of personal development blogs are still mainly in it for the money and they aren't scientific enough (e.g. they'll tell you what to do and maybe how to do it, but not necessarily why to do it.)

Also, they often focus on superficial behaviors instead of underlying thinking patterns. For instance, here's a way of thinking that I've found to be useful: 99% of the time, there's no logical reason to feel fear in any social situation. Whatever happens, when all is said and done, it really doesn't matter what other people think of you. If that seems like a "no-duh" way of thinking to you, think back to when you were in high school.

A superficial example of this behavior is learning to meet new people. But someone who hasn't grasped the underlying concept will have a hard time meeting people, no matter how often they read about how to meet people on personal development blogs.

Besides money, another reason for this personal development blog bullshit is that a lot of the bloggers are themselves in the process of figuring out how to be successful, etc. It's much easier to write instructions for someone else than yourself, so they start blogging about what they think will work for them without necessarily having tried it for very long. Thus the field of personal development can be something like an echo chamber, where the same ideas are repeated over and over.

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