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What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

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Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#61

Post by hyperpape »

copsarebastards wrote: post #56
hyperpape wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much actual philosophy of science written since 1970 have you read? Right now, a constant conflict is that (many) non-philosophers of science think philosophy of science has gotten too empirical and too focused on particular scientific issues, to the detriment of philosophy (I don't believe this, but it shows how out of touch you are). Grad students in Phil Sci are expected to do graduate coursework in the scient…

How much of the philosophy of science written since 1970 was written by philosophers in the abstract, and how much of it was written by scientists? Just look at the "philosophers" mentioned on downthread from here; Carlo Rovelli: theoretical physicist, Noam Chomsky: linguist and cognitive scientist, Imre Lakatos: mathematician. All these people were formally trained in a more specialized field and later went into phi…

I feel confident in saying that most of it was written by philosophers. I don't have anything to cite for that, unfortunately.

When you say you're not criticizing philosophy, just academic philosophers, I wonder who are the people doing philosophy outside of academic philosophy that you're talking about?

Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#62

Post by barrkel »

javert wrote: post #60
hueving wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that have to do with the impact of Marx's philosophy?

He wants to defend Marx but there is no defense, so he does something to attack me instead. It's a classic disinformation tactic. I don't know that for certain, maybe he's just actually curious, that's why I just answered his question instead of saying this to him.

I think Marx's criticism of capitalism is valid in many ways; but more importantly, I don't think you can blame Stalin on Marx.

Many people think of communism when they hear the word "Marx". Few have read his arguments.

Of course, someone who quotes Objectivism in their profile is not in a strong position to talk about philosophy ;)

Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#63

Post by JoeAltmaier »

barrkel wrote: post #62
javert wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wants to defend Marx but there is no defense, so he does something to attack me instead. It's a classic disinformation tactic. I don't know that for certain, maybe he's just actually curious, that's why I just answered his question instead of saying this to him.

I think Marx's criticism of capitalism is valid in many ways; but more importantly, I don't think you can blame Stalin on Marx. Many people think of communism when they hear the word "Marx". Few have read his arguments. Of course, someone who quotes Objectivism in their profile is not in a strong position to talk about philosophy ;)

Blame Stalin on the myth of 'centralized planning' or whatever Marx dreamed up about more advanced forms of government. It was a pipe dream, because government is made up of people. And selfish, brutal sociopaths keep bubbling up into government. So the more control govt has, the more Stalin's we'll see.

Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#64

Post by barrkel »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #63
barrkel wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Marx's criticism of capitalism is valid in many ways; but more importantly, I don't think you can blame Stalin on Marx. Many people think of communism when they hear the word "Marx". Few have read his arguments. Of course, someone who quotes Objectivism in their profile is not in a strong position to talk about philosophy ;)

Blame Stalin on the myth of 'centralized planning' or whatever Marx dreamed up about more advanced forms of government. It was a pipe dream, because government is made up of people. And selfish, brutal sociopaths keep bubbling up into government. So the more control govt has, the more Stalin's we'll see.

I'm fairly certain capitalism in its current form isn't sustainable (cf Piketty), and I don't think government is intrinsically sociopathic.

The open question is if government with checks and balances is stable in the long term, or if it will fall apart and have one branch take over. Time will tell.

Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#65

Post by hueving »

taylorscollon wrote: post #55
hueving wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people couldn't think before Aristotle? Formalizing something is very different than 'giving it to humanity'.

Gravity exerted force before Newton formalized its effect. I think Newton's contribution was still valuable.

Right, but we didn't pretend like there wasn't something that brought you back down when you jumped until newton's work.

Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#66

Post by pcrh »

drewfrank wrote: post #32
pcrh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frequently when philosophers solve a particular problem, it moves out of the realm of pure philosophy and into more "practical" fields, such as mathematics, the natural sciences, justice, or politics.

Do you have some examples of "solved" philosophical problems moving into natural sciences or mathematics? That sounds quite interesting.

In addition to the math and statistics described by others here, a better understanding of biology has helped solve some problems in ethics. For example the beginning and end of personhood; the beginning is not before the fusing of gametes, and as the brain is the seat of consciousness, someone's "soul" does not lie in their heart or liver, loss of brain function is therefore the end of personhood.

Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#67

Post by javert »

barrkel wrote: post #64
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blame Stalin on the myth of 'centralized planning' or whatever Marx dreamed up about more advanced forms of government. It was a pipe dream, because government is made up of people. And selfish, brutal sociopaths keep bubbling up into government. So the more control govt has, the more Stalin's we'll see.

I'm fairly certain capitalism in its current form isn't sustainable (cf Piketty), and I don't think government is intrinsically sociopathic. The open question is if government with checks and balances is stable in the long term, or if it will fall apart and have one branch take over. Time will tell.

Piketty's arguments are cherry-picked. No, I haven't read the book, and no, I'm not going to take the time to look up sources for you.

Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#68

Post by javert »

barrkel wrote: post #62
javert wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wants to defend Marx but there is no defense, so he does something to attack me instead. It's a classic disinformation tactic. I don't know that for certain, maybe he's just actually curious, that's why I just answered his question instead of saying this to him.

I think Marx's criticism of capitalism is valid in many ways; but more importantly, I don't think you can blame Stalin on Marx. Many people think of communism when they hear the word "Marx". Few have read his arguments. Of course, someone who quotes Objectivism in their profile is not in a strong position to talk about philosophy ;)

First, I am in a strong position to talk about philosophy.

Second, Marx made Stalin possible by setting up the necessary intellectual framework of class struggle, capitalism as oppressive, dialectical materialism (denial of reason and free will), etc.

Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#69

Post by eli_gottlieb »

javert wrote: post #46
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a vast difference between maximizing society's total productivity and maximizing the amount of time people spend working on increasing economic output. Namely, the amount of technology used. Since most of us on Hacker News work in some form of technology, I'd say its in our economic interest not to apply terms of moral condemnation like "decadent" to forms of society that generate more demand for our skills ;…

I'm not saying that philosophy professors don't increase economic output. I'm saying they don't contribute anything at all . In general---I think there are some good ones. And I think a lot of the contribute positively through their teaching, just not their research and publications. But note that the primary focus and goal of professors at top-tier universities is research. Also, I disagree with your dichotomy betwe…

>Also, I'm not going to be dishonest for the sake of narrow economic interest, which is what you are asking me to do.

Actually, I was being ironic. I don't believe that "decadent" is really a genuine moral condemnation at all, instead merely meaning, "A society that doesn't suit my survivalist tastes because it is too civilized." Or at least, that's what I observe about common applications of the word "decadent".

Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#70

Post by ahallock »

andreasvc wrote: post #59
ahallock wrote: post #8

I would love to force people to pay for things I love to do. There's nothing wrong with teaching philosophy, but stealing money to do so is wrong and lazy. What if I'd rather my money go toward cancer research? This guy would deny me that opportunity. He's saying his preferences are more important than mine. There are plenty of ways to make money teaching philosophy: donations (see FDR on Youtube as an example), book…

> see FDR on Youtube as an example Can you be more specific? Searching gives a bunch of documentaries about FDR the president, don't know if that's what you mean.

My apologies: Free Domain Radio
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