How to Do Philosophy • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#101

Post by aswanson » Sat, Sep 22, 2007, 7:14 AM UTC

rms wrote: post #94

asdflkj wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, there already is stuff that's far more refined (and empirically true) than Ayn Rand. It's called evolutionary psychology. Unfortunately, understanding it leaves one feeling rather unedified. It's like realizing that you've been a pawn in somebody else's game, and will continue to be one until your life ends. With Ayn Rand fans, this kind of message doesn't seem to be in demand.

Any good links/more info on evolutionary psychology?

Steven Pinker's papers and books, although you have probably already encountered those.

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#102

Post by soundsop » Sat, Sep 22, 2007, 8:21 AM UTC

walterk wrote: post #42

FWIW, PG's thoughts on philosophy are largely confined to "analytic philosophy", which I agree suffers from the problems he talks about. There is a whole other tradition of sorts (sometimes referred to as "continental philosophy"), taking a different path from Kant, including Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, Badiou, etc. This side of philosophy tends to suffer from being extremely difficult to understa…

This side of philosophy tends to suffer from being extremely difficult to understand, but yields much genuine insight for those who take the time to study it.

Insights such as?

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#103

Post by benhoyt » Sat, Sep 22, 2007, 9:43 AM UTC

Cause and effect is a complex thing, but at least partly because of Paul Graham, I quit a 9-5 job and tried to start a startup. Whether that was a wise thing to do or not, given the circumstances, is quite another question. :-)

So PG's a pretty useful philosopher, at least according to his own test: "The test of utility I propose is whether we cause people who read what we've written to do anything differently afterward." Good stuff, PG.

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#104

Post by ced » Sat, Sep 22, 2007, 11:31 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #82

forgotmylastone wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he meant something along the lines of "Few were sufficiently correct that they were remembered for their discovery."

No, I meant that when you learn about e.g. the chemical elements, you don't also learn who discovered each of them. It's accepted knowledge; you're taught it as facts. In philosophy, most of the exam questions have someone's name in them. E.g. "explain x's concept of y."

I also had problems with the sentence, probably because it doesn't ring especially true. I can name the discoverer of most of what I know about physics, right from the names: Newtonian physics, Bohr's model, the Schrodinger equation, Euclidian geometry, Gaussian curves... E=Mc2...

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#105

Post by JulianMorrison » Sat, Sep 22, 2007, 11:59 AM UTC

axiom wrote: post #80

curi wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Roark, but I think Galt is overrated. He doesn't do much. Dagny is more appealing and more similar to Roark -- they both heroically pursue active goals against stiff opposition.

It's funny, everyone likes Roark more than Galt :) Yeah, I thought there just wasn't enough characterization with Galt, compared to any of the other characters. He just kind of appears towards the end of the novel and you never really understand what is motivating him on an emotional level. Maybe I'm just not remembering it properly, it's been 6 or 7 years since I read Atlas Shrugged.

Personally I see Galt as something of a disproof-by-overextension of some of Rand's ideas. Galt was her "perfect man". For a character to be human, the author must be able to get inside their head. For even Ayn Rand herself to be unable to thus think like Galt indicates to me that she was unable to make her own thoughts follow her own ideals. As any Rand follower will agree, the quickest way to get your thoughts to stall and boggle is to try and deny a natural axiom, or push through a contradiction. (Similarly you get much the same stall-and-boggle leading to an authorial 3rd person stance, when other erroneous ideas are tried to destruction - compare most utopian fiction.) So that's a strong warning signal.

What could be the fault she ran into? I think she had a bit of the "chasing words" disease. The words for her were "rational", "mind", "self-interest" - and those are words that break down quite quickly and thoroughly when you look at the brain and the human organism in context. (In her defense, she was writing some 50 years before the science would become any good.)

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#106

Post by davidw » Sat, Sep 22, 2007, 12:04 PM UTC

axiom wrote: post #64

gwenhwyfaer wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that the people on this site are more or less exactly the kind of people with whom Rand surrounded herself, and anyone who fancies themselves at all creative or exceptional is likely to identify with the Roark or Galt characters (who are, nonetheless, only ever described from an external perspective) - and frankly, the more likely to so identify the less their achievements tally with their self-estimation…

I like how you call Rand's work bullshit but don't provide a single example. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if you haven't read any of her work. Most of her critics haven't. Also, it's interesting that you don't try to reconcile the fact that the Y Combinator is one of the most successful startup incubators ever, and that there is a large presence of Ayn Rand fans on here. Do ya think there might be a connection the…

Here's what I don't like about Rand's work:

It flies in the face of economics - while many economists tend towards the libertarian side of things, the honest ones acknowledge things like externalities, merit goods, and other market 'abnormalities'. People live in communities and have for thousands of years, and there are aspects of that that you can't simply throw out the window in favor of The Individual. Her thinking strikes me as some sort of utopia that is about as relevant to the real world as Karl Marx, albeit in a direction that I personally find more appealing. However, I find the writings of people like Milton Friedman more compelling, because they discuss the real world, human frailties and all, and are less absolute/extreme.

I also find all the scenes involving female protagonists being more or less raped as weird and disturbing. But that's perhaps tangential to her philosophy.

All told, though... I'm just not interested in "philosophy" as this wishy washy thing, that's not my thinking style. I prefer things like economics, or at most, going one removed from that and talking about what a society wants to accomplish and how it wants to treat its citizens.

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#107

Post by euccastro » Sat, Sep 22, 2007, 1:04 PM UTC

forgotmylastone wrote: post #44

"There are things I know I learned from studying philosophy. The most dramatic I learned immediately, in the first semester of freshman year, in a class taught by Sydney Shoemaker. I learned that I don't exist. I am (and you are) a collection of cells that lurches around driven by various forces, and calls itself I. But there's no central, indivisible thing that your identity goes with. You could conceivably lose hal…

Someone suggested mind uploading too:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42607

But that, like your Star Trek example, is more pie-in-the-sky science fiction. While it may make you think about the issue, it doesn't force you to confront it in the same way. Brain splitting seems more plausible; I wouldn't be surprised to see something like that in a few years.

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#108

Post by axiom » Sat, Sep 22, 2007, 1:58 PM UTC

JulianMorrison wrote: post #105

axiom wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, everyone likes Roark more than Galt :) Yeah, I thought there just wasn't enough characterization with Galt, compared to any of the other characters. He just kind of appears towards the end of the novel and you never really understand what is motivating him on an emotional level. Maybe I'm just not remembering it properly, it's been 6 or 7 years since I read Atlas Shrugged.

Personally I see Galt as something of a disproof-by-overextension of some of Rand's ideas. Galt was her "perfect man". For a character to be human, the author must be able to get inside their head. For even Ayn Rand herself to be unable to thus think like Galt indicates to me that she was unable to make her own thoughts follow her own ideals. As any Rand follower will agree, the quickest way to get your thoughts to s…

That's one weakness of Objectivism which has become more apparent to me in the last few years. The philosophy seems to almost construct a platonic form of "rationality" and "self-interest" and never really reconnect with concretes, staying entirely in the abstract. So it ends up handling most cases pretty well, but a lot special cases get left behind.

Still, when I re-think through her reasoning again and again, I don't see how one could reach any different fundamental principles. Special cases are just that, and the best course seems to be to just deal with them as they arise.

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#109

Post by dudeman » Sat, Sep 22, 2007, 2:27 PM UTC

If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading, "Philosophy for Dummies" by Tom Morris, Ph.D.. You may find some of the presuppositions you present in your essay to be challenged.

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#110

Post by gregwebs » Sat, Sep 22, 2007, 2:39 PM UTC

I have always thought that the goal of philosophy was to change the way I behaved or thought. Likewise, I minored in psychology to understand the nature of my own behavior so that I would be more capable of changing it. To loosely quote everyone's favorite philosopher "everyone is a philosopher whether they realize it or not". Meaning most people are living by their subconscious impulses, but the philosopher becomes introspective and question how they are living. Nothing could be more practical, but as PG points out philosophy does not usually have this goal in mind.