Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant • Hacker News Board

Re: Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant

#111

Post by tossacct » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 11:37 PM UTC

davesims wrote: post #49

unalone wrote: post #18

The 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declaring outright that philosophy as a discipline , and not just particular philosophers, is irrelevant and has been superseded by a specif…

Can you briefly explain or point to something brief that explains the specific things that are significantly harmful or incorrect with relation to Descartes' Discourse on Method?

I agree with you that dogmatism is probably a negative thing, unless the dogmatism enforces being non-dogmatic. My shallow reading of Popper and Descartes seems to indicate that they are dogmatic about not being dogmatic, so I really quite like their dogma.

Any other problems with reductionism would be especially interesting.

Any answers to the classic regress argument would also be appreciated, I am not very clever and neither are my acquaintances - we haven't seemed to find anyone to convince us why "A proves B" is epistemically useful...though surely there is some argument

[C PROVES why "A proves B"], and surely some argument

{D PROVES why [C proves why "A proves B"]}, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Tortoise_Said_to_Achil...

Re: Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant

#112

Post by kafkaesque » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 11:57 PM UTC

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #103

kafkaesque wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not speak for unalone. Personally, I see that lukeprog demonstrates an anti-intellectualism when he states, 'Another paper arguing about the definition of "knowledge"? No thanks.' I'm trying very hard to not be rude and laugh at the ridiculousness of eliminating certain philosophical studies/classes that lukeprog suggests. Let me first say I lean more towards unalone's thoughts on this matter. But essentially, I…

"Personally, I see that lukeprog demonstrates an anti-intellectualism when he states, 'Another paper arguing about the definition of "knowledge"? No thanks.'" I see how this criticizes one branch of intellectual thought within one discipline. I don't see how it is anti-intellectual. Luke runs the singularity institute, an organization dedicated to a highly specific and speculative conception of humanity's future (and…

It seems we're defending apples and oranges.

I briefly read some parts of Pearl's text you provided. Apart from my having an issue with his approach/tactics to explaining his thoughts, it reminded me of Mill's Methods (1843), which were 'influenced' by Avicenna's Book of Healing (1020).

And why should it 'supersede' (do you mean replace or 'is better than'?) previous philosophical thought?

What of Al-Ghazali's Deliverance from Error, which 'influenced' Descartes' Meditations?

There is no need for a 'replacement'. If Judea Pearl specialises in cognitive science and artificial intelligence and wants to write on cause/effect in relation to them, that should be its own branch, not replace an epistemology class.

Re: Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant

#113

Post by randallsquared » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 11:58 PM UTC

unalone wrote: post #59

lutusp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm making my way through The Process of Creating Life. Pro tip: always provide a link when you refer to a title: http://www.amazon.com/Process-Creating-Life-Building-Univers... (This doesn't constitute a recommendation, indeed, this book is way too expensive for its content.) > I was debating, at one point, scanning its pages and making a digital copy for my friends' sakes ... Pro tip: never say this online. It's…

Oops, my bad: should have linked. > (This doesn't constitute a recommendation, indeed, this book is way too expensive for its content.) I assume you're saying that without having read it? Because it is a marvelous and astonishing work – one that manages to simultaneously work out an abstract view of order while reasoning all the way to its practical outcomes – outcomes which Alexander's demonstrated in his decades of…

I haven't read it. However, if the work is that good, then the blurb is doing a terrible disservice to it.

"The processes of nature can make an infinite number of human faces, each one unique, [...]"

Starting off with something that's clearly untrue is not the best way to convince me that this book has deep insights. Maybe it's merely meant poetically.

Re: Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant

#114

Post by tossacct » Sun, Dec 09, 2012, 12:24 AM UTC

davesims wrote: post #83

dean wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" [Philosophy] has been superseded by a specific form of dogmatic, reductionist science. " Not sure of the 'specific form' of science you are refering to, but I would hardly call science dogmatic. True, it dogmatically follows the 'Scientific Method', but that is a process to get at the truth. It does not dogmatically accept any ideas. It questions and tests, and if a cherished idea is proven wrong -- out it goes. Cl…

Science, as the broad quest for knowledge, scientia , is not dogmatic, or at least ideally it is not. But modern science certainly has dogmas, and gladly admits them. Methodological Naturalism is the biggie. It is useful as a kind of provisional phenomenological reduction that brackets some questions and some kinds of answers (formal, teleological, aesthetic), in favor of others (mechanistic, reductionistic). In theo…

I appreciate your responses in this thread, I feel I have learned something from them. I want to make sure I am reading you correctly here:

>>>as long as the reduction [of Methodological Naturalism] remains provisional, it has tremendous explanatory power. In practice, it far too often becomes a de facto metaphysic, unwarranted and unproven within its own assumptions.

It seems like Karl Popper is saying something identical here: >>>"A naturalistic methodology (sometimes called an "inductive theory of science") has its value, no doubt.... I reject the naturalistic view: It is uncritical. Its upholders fail to notice that whenever they believe to have discovered a fact, they have only proposed a convention. Hence the convention is liable to turn into a dogma." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)#Karl_Po...

I will try to synthesize the two previous paragraphs here: "Methodological Naturalism assumes that what humans can observe is the only way to gain more knowledge about the observable AND unobservable world. It is helpful for addressing immediate concerns of the observable world. However, let's not pretend that its usefulness somehow makes it true. Predicting the FUTURE is difficult, so let's hedge our bets in case things start getting weird."

Do you agree that your statement and his are equivalent, or are there some differences? If there are no significant differences, is my statement a reasonable synthesis?

Popper seems to express my (and I'm assuming yours and his own) sentiment about naturalism with his concept of falsifiability, which science seems to have accepted. In my opinion that is science taking a very good thing from a modern philosopher.

Re: Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant

#115

Post by davesims » Sun, Dec 09, 2012, 1:02 AM UTC

tossacct wrote: post #111

davesims wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 specif…

Can you briefly explain or point to something brief that explains the specific things that are significantly harmful or incorrect with relation to Descartes' Discourse on Method? I agree with you that dogmatism is probably a negative thing, unless the dogmatism enforces being non-dogmatic. My shallow reading of Popper and Descartes seems to indicate that they are dogmatic about not being dogmatic, so I really quite l…

Well said. I fear your humility may be more like that of Socrates, and I'm about to be hoisted on the petard of my own unexposed ignorance. I have to run at the moment but I'll come back to this tomorrow and hopefully have something useful to contribute. Thanks for the parley!

Re: Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant

#116

Post by mylittlepony » Sun, Dec 09, 2012, 1:10 AM UTC

unalone wrote: post #62

mylittlepony wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Philosophy sounds to me a lot like art. They do it mostly for themselves. We can consume it, but it's not really useful.

(cough.) Um, you're talking to an artist whose academic field of study specifically concerns why art, practically speaking, is vital to the well-being of a society. But judging from your username, Mr. Pony, I feel that you assume "art" refers to something different than what I do. The most valuable art is that which provokes a response : art is those creative acts which provoke creative acts in response. Similarly, t…

You shouldn't make assumptions based on usernames, at least not in HN, where we value anonymity and privacy.

A life without art would be quite empty indeed, everyone does art and consume art in some way or another, and in the same way everyone does philosophy (eg: thinking about the existence, the meaning of life, etc) at some point, we can't really avoid it. But I don't see the point in having people dedicating their lives to philosophy. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there is hardly any progress. In school I learned that every philosopher, to understand other philosophers, must walk the same path they walked, and every philosopher creates its own path from zero. So what's the point? There is never any progress, other than what they can grab from science. I think it was Aristotheles who decided planets where perfect spheres, because that made more sense. I know, at that time there was little to no science, and everything was mixed up. But I see philosophers are still doing that. The other day I saw a video about determinism by a philosophy professor in a university. The guy didn't fully understand quantum mechanics, he just overheard everything was random at that level, and made stupid conclusions. That's the image I have about philosophy.

Re: Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant

#117

Post by RockyMcNuts » Sun, Dec 09, 2012, 4:30 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #110

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I missed the step from 'evolution has endowed social animals with a native sense of morality' to 'morality must be based solely on that sense, or on chimp morality'. Social animals have innate behavior patterns that let them cooperate. Humans complement those with concepts like Kant's categorical imperative or Rawls's theory, thinking about them and teaching them to succeeding generations. No contradiction. Main thin…

There is a line of philosophy, particularly popular among atheists and other people who like to call themselves rationalists, there is is some absolute morality which can be justified on the basis of the kinds of issues that you're talking about. Just coincidentally, most people who believe in that come up with something like Western morality. Now I grant, our desire for morality is indeed evolved. It is as much a pa…

If all successful systems shared some characteristics, and social creatures seem hardwired with them, those characteristics would be in some real sense fundamental, no?

I guess the way I see it, morality tries to answer the question how do I act. That assumes actors exist, and others exist that can be acted upon. Then assume they share enough that they can communicate their individual values, eg I want to survive, avoid pain.

There are moral systems that are going to allow them to cooperate. Those moral systems are going to have some things in common, eg, reciprocity, or don't unnecessarily hurt others.

Nature tends to hardwire those, experiments show. Those would be universal moral values.

Beyond that, societies are going to evolve more complex systems, e.g. relieve yourself in the toilet, not in the public square; drive on the right. Some are going to follow more or less directly from universal principles given the environment, some are more like local maxima that people agree on.

One could say that a moral system that allows a bigger and more varied group to cooperate more successfully in more complex ways is better. So beyond the universal principles one could distinguish moral systems in more or less objective ways, as well as subjective ways like how repugnant they seem.

So, I'd agree that a lot of things people have strong moral views about are just fashions. Also that you can't get to one ideal moral system. Also that you need some first principles about how to determine harm. But I think there is a lot of morality that flows from simple first principles and is hardwired.

Re: Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant

#118

Post by lutusp » Sun, Dec 09, 2012, 5:36 PM UTC

davesims wrote: post #96

lutusp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many philosophers have questioned the scientific definition of "correctness". This concisely and aptly summarizes the reason for philosophy's low standing among intellectual disciplines. Philosophers are manifestly unqualified to debate the scientific definition of anything, much less "correctness". Beyond this, a suitable definition is too short to be of interest to a philosopher, someone for whom the number of wo…

Where to begin with this? This is naive scientific triumphalism of the first order, utterly illiterate with regards to the philosophical foundations of science, the rigorous and multi-layered debates over the status of scientific statements that have been ongoing for centuries to the present day: from Bacon, Gallileo and Descartes (with deep roots in Lucretius, Plato, Aristotle, Thomas, Epicurus, Heraclitus) through…

> This is naive scientific triumphalism of the first order ...

Translation: "Okay, science works. Stop gloating!"

> Centuries of debate quelled in a single utterance.

Yes, and correct.

Re: Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant

#119

Post by lutusp » Sun, Dec 09, 2012, 5:56 PM UTC

davesims wrote: post #99

lutusp wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But this is similar to saying what is real is what corresponds to reality. Do you see the circularity here? The circularity is in your wording, not in the thing itself. A scientist has an idea, one expressed clearly enough that two or more similarly trained individuals can understand the claim. The idea is tested against reality, in a way (again) that similarly equipped observers can agree that the result means wha…

Oh, come on. This is beneath you surely. Where are these "philosophers," this monolithic horde of abstraction-loving pinheads stuck in the 15th century, too benighted to see the Real Truth right under their noses, too stuck in debates over definitions to think practically about application and science?? You have a cartoon version of philosophy in your mind that is in sore need of remediation. These are precisely the…

> Have you read a single volume of philosophy in the last decade?

Do you have an opinion on the utility of suicide? But how can you, without having personally committing suicide? Am I getting thorough to you?

> You have a cartoon version of philosophy in your mind that is in sore need of remediation.

You mean the thesis that philosophers argue for centuries without ever resolving anything? That's hardly controversial.

> These are precisely the kinds of questions that philosophers have been utterly preoccupied with for centuries.

Q.E.D.

Re: Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant

#120

Post by btilly » Sun, Dec 09, 2012, 6:18 PM UTC

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #117

btilly wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a line of philosophy, particularly popular among atheists and other people who like to call themselves rationalists, there is is some absolute morality which can be justified on the basis of the kinds of issues that you're talking about. Just coincidentally, most people who believe in that come up with something like Western morality. Now I grant, our desire for morality is indeed evolved. It is as much a pa…

If all successful systems shared some characteristics, and social creatures seem hardwired with them, those characteristics would be in some real sense fundamental, no? I guess the way I see it, morality tries to answer the question how do I act. That assumes actors exist, and others exist that can be acted upon. Then assume they share enough that they can communicate their individual values, eg I want to survive, av…

One characteristic that all successful systems that we know of share is a division between "us" and "them". And our greatest revulsion is reserved for "almost us", who presumably are competing with "us". Any group that gets painted as "almost us" can receive intense bigotry - be they Jewish, black, LBTG, muslim...

One of the characteristics of current Western moral fashions is that "us" should be painted as broadly as possible. It is not in fashion just to talk of rights for ourselves, we talk about universal rights. We do not just grant those rights to people we like, we grant them to people of different religions, different races, different sexual orientations, etc.

To me this aspect of morality - that there are universal principles granted even to those we don't like - matters a lot. Yet if we go off of evidence from nature, it is exactly this that there is the least evidence that is innate.