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Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away

3-16am.co.uk

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Re: Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away

#121

Post by msla »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #3
keiferski wrote: post #2

Philosophy hasn’t stopped being relevant, if anything, it’s even more relevant today in a hyper-globalized world. What’s changed is that academics have become over-specialized, to the point where many outright deny the usefulness of entire academic fields. Scientists like Einstein or Humboldt were well versed in philosophy and religion, whereas today the “public intellectuals” often say philosophy is outdated or usel…

Agreed. Everyone already has a philosophy (and a religion), though many people don't know it, and some would deny it. The question isn't whether to have a philosophy but which philosophy to have. EDIT: since some have asked what I meant by "everyone already has...a religion," I meant that even something like atheism is a religion. It has a story of the origin of the universe, various accounts for why and how you shou…

> I meant that even something like atheism is a religion.

This is incoherent because it presupposes "an" atheism, as opposed to a broad range of philosophies which only hold lack of religious faith in common. It's like saying "non-strawberries" is a useful and enlightening category of food.

Re: Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away

#122

Post by mannykannot »

rrsmtz wrote: post #37
mannykannot wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Secular humanisn owes a lot to ethical principles developed in a religious context, but it does not follow that by adopting the ethics, one is also adopting the religion. Any attempt to push that proposition consistently is likely to devalue the overtly theistic aspects of the religion in question.

> it does not follow that by adopting the ethics, one is also adopting the religion Those ethics were created from within a theistic worldview, they weren't born from reason. Adopting the ethics of a religious culture while denying the underlying assumptions is pretty unreasonable.

Not at all, because secular humanist ethics can be derived without any reference to theistic concepts. That one can not get there by pure reason alone is a non-sequitur, as that applies equally to theologically-motivated ethics.

Furthermore, let's suppose a theologian - for the sake of example, let's say a christian one - insists that I am really a christian, on account of my ethical positions. Well, OK, but if that so, then it follows that being a christian does not involve believing in the Trinity, or that Christ is the son of God, or that God created the universe... in fact, that it does not involve anything beyond holding certain ethical positions, and that christianity is identical with secular humanism!

Of course, it is rare to find an avowed christian who follows this line of thinking to its logical conclusion. Motte-and-bailey argumentation [1] is rampant in theological thinking.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

Re: Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away

#123

Post by computerphage »

whimsicalism wrote: post #33
yboris wrote: post #6

Philosophy is arguably the most important thing in my life. I'd like to live a morally good life, and figuring out what makes such a life is a great journey. Thanks to my pursuit, I now give at least 10% of my income to the most cost-effective charities I can find (see GiveWell). Thousands of people do the same: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/ Many philosophers are working on society's most pressing issues (see the…

I've found that the effective altruist community (and other "neo-rationalist"-adjacent communities) can be very arrogant about ethical philosophy. Namely, they don't critically engage with alternatives to their ethical theory.

My experience is that they engage with ethics more than any other groups that I'm familiar with, except professional philosophers (including PhD students of philosophy).

The 80K podcast interviews professional philosophers all the time, for example:

https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/hilary-greaves-compa... https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/will-macaskill-paral... https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/david-chalmers-natur... https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/peter-singer-advocac...

Or, perhaps you mean that they engage with philosophy and philosophers, but they don't spread their engagement around in the field the right way?

Re: Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away

#124

Post by mannykannot »

spijdar wrote: post #115
leftyted wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what you're saying but I disagree: atheism is not a religion. The verb "is" does not mean "fulfills the same function as". Just because atheists have to answer the same questions as theists does not make atheism a religion. If you want a word to describe what atheism and religion have in common, I'd go with "spirituality". Not in the sense of "burning incense" or "believing in ghosts" but rather in the s…

I'd offer this idea in return -- religion may be the collective, social expression of individual spirituality, usually fuzzy and generalized beyond an individual's own specific beliefs in order to promote social harmony and cohesion. Just as some people have "religious" beliefs that are very eclectic and isolated from organized religion, a sort of personal spirituality, I think there are atheists with particular and…

This way of looking at it takes all the theology out of the issue. That's fine by me, so long as this isn't the motte position in a motte-and-bailey argument.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

Re: Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away

#125

Post by eivarv »

thisiszilff wrote: post #118
eivarv wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't be serious. Actual religions have sets of ideas (rules, creation-myths, alternative epistemologies, etc.), whereas atheism has none. The term literally means "without god(s)" (which was a defining feature of religions by those who coined the term). It is an absence of belief (at least in the way the term is commonly used; There are "atheistic religions" in the sense that they don't have a deity). Atheism is…

The charitable interpretation is that most people -- even atheists -- will have a belief system that is functionally equivalent to a religion. > Atheism is to religion as being silent is to speaking – and you're essentially claiming it's just another way of speaking. Another way of saying it is that religions (as we know them) are answers to questions, you can get rid of those answers, disagree with them, etc. but th…

Even this charitable interpretation doesn't make much sense: The only thing "atheists" have in common is that they have a lack of belief – we have no idea what they actually DO believe (people come with various philosophical persuasions, after all).

The other way you propose of defining religions is so general and vague that it borders on meaningless, and doesn't deal with the fact that different people have different questions, formulated differently, using different assumptions and caring about the answers to different extents.

Re: Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away

#126

Post by mannykannot »

keiferski wrote: post #49
whimsicalism wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a difference between having cultural values and believing in a deity. We can expand the definition of religion to include those sets of cultural values, but then I worry that: a. the word religion loses meaning b. someone who was raised in the Islamic world and comes to the States and converts to Judaism can never stop being a Muslim? Even if they weren't one to start with? That seems absurd to me.

a. The word doesn't lose meaning, unless you insist on what religion means circa ±2000 was the ultimate definition, and no previous or future meanings can ever be correct. Again, the definition of the term has changed over time and the separation of "religion" as a separate thing is itself a modern phenomenon. b. That's more of a sociological labeling question, but I don't think that's a good example.

> The word doesn't lose meaning, unless you insist on what religion means circa ±2000 was the ultimate definition, and no previous or future meanings can ever be correct.

That's dodging the issue, which is that if you are going to argue that secular humaninsm is identical with christianity, then logically, you must accept that christianity is identical with secular humanism: No God, no creation, no Trinity, Christ is not the son of God in any sense... and if you do, then all the explicitly theological and christian concepts can be stripped out with Occam's razor.

Re: Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away

#127

Post by [deleted] »

keiferski wrote: post #2

Philosophy hasn’t stopped being relevant, if anything, it’s even more relevant today in a hyper-globalized world. What’s changed is that academics have become over-specialized, to the point where many outright deny the usefulness of entire academic fields. Scientists like Einstein or Humboldt were well versed in philosophy and religion, whereas today the “public intellectuals” often say philosophy is outdated or usel…

[deleted]

Re: Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away

#128

Post by Traster »

keiferski wrote: post #11
thatcat wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mark Fisher describes the same thing, as not "the end of history" but the cancellation of the future based on observations that the Neoliberal political system has continued well past its serviceable life and that there seems to be nothing coming to replace it.

I've noticed this a lot with culture, particularly with television. At the moment, there seem to be an infinite number of shows that rehash the 1920s and the 1980s, as if we just jumped back a century, with 1920 being the present and 1980 being the future.

I'm not sure that there's a deep cultural issue with this, I think there's a pragmatic issue. 99% of television drama can be replaced with a text message. It's incredibly difficult to tell a suspenseful story when everyone can communicate with everyone else instantly at any time. Can you imagine The Shining in 2020? The guy would be driven insane by browsing reddit. This is why it's very difficult to make modern TV programmes that have realistic phone use.

Re: Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away

#129

Post by ADayOnEarth »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #35
yboris wrote: post #6

Philosophy is arguably the most important thing in my life. I'd like to live a morally good life, and figuring out what makes such a life is a great journey. Thanks to my pursuit, I now give at least 10% of my income to the most cost-effective charities I can find (see GiveWell). Thousands of people do the same: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/ Many philosophers are working on society's most pressing issues (see the…

Your charity is fascinating and admirable. It's also funny to me because elsewhere in the comments people are arguing what the nature of religion is, and here you are tithing.

I don't see anything religious in donating a portion of your income to non-religious causes.

In some religions or locations it is customary to give a certain percentage to one's church, for example 10%, but this is not a universal rule and the percentage varies, and sometimes it is optional and sometimes forced.

Re: Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away

#130

Post by animal_spirits »

randlet wrote: post #42
narraturgy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn't. While the discussion of the definition of religion would result in its own holy war, suffice to say that defining religion based of the involvement of the supernatural is cyclical logic used to discredit any opposing religion. "Pagans believe in the supernatural, the sun isn't a mythical being! Only belief in my God is grounded in reality" is not functionally different from "Theists believe in the sup…

If we can't agree on a definition for religion, then saying I belong to a religion is a fairly meaningless statement no?

Linguistics are the crux of all philosophical discussions
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