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What, exactly, do philosophers do?

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Re: What, exactly, do philosophers do?

#31

Post by smnrchrds »

dvt wrote: post #26

Always warms my heart to see philosophy on top of HN. Philosophy is hard -- much harder than one would think. And people that contribute are incredibly smart -- far smarter than software engineers, by comparison. On the other hand, it's very political, and a lot of it is mental masturbation. Philosophy of Science, I think, is almost a completely bogus field. Philosophy of Mind, apart from a few great minds (Chalmers,…

> Philosophy of Science, I think, is almost a completely bogus field.

Could you please elaborate on this?

Re: What, exactly, do philosophers do?

#32

Post by spiffyman »

Diederich wrote: post #12
yarrel wrote: post #9

1. Spend an awful lot of time chasing tenure. 2. Spend an awful lot of time trolling each other on Facebook. 3. Occasionally rehash old ideas. 4. Even more occasionally come up with breathtaking insights into the nature of reality and what it means to be human. 5. Get annoyed if you point out any flaws in those insights. 6. Publish more than they used to.

> 2. Spend an awful lot of time trolling each other on Facebook. I think I would very much enjoy seeing some citations of this. (:

I'm friends with several philosophers since I took it fairly seriously in undergrad and befriended several grad students. From my perspective, the "trolling" is generally just pointing out interesting entailments of another philosopher's arguments. For example, in a recent thread philosopher X outlined philosopher Y's argument just to point out that he hopes it shows the "weird consequences" of the basis of Y's argument. Y showed up to point out that X had missed a key wrinkle. A bunch of others showed up to wrangle about the meaning of certain words.

... So basically the same thing philosophers do in their papers, just with fewer citations.

(That's not me throwing shade -- just pointing out how the field seems to work. I loved and still love philosophy.)

Re: What, exactly, do philosophers do?

#33

Post by ue_ »

euyyn wrote: post #10
ue_ wrote: post #3

The article starts with a question which asks about the present very clearly, but then answers a different question of what philosophers did (i.e the past) without any reference to modern philosophers. Modern philosophers analyse older philosophical work and reply to contemporaries; for example there is an ongoing debate about the difference between "letting die" and "killing", and if it is an ethical difference then…

I see the importance of exploring those questions, for they pertain to current movements and political issues, like veganism or euthanasia. So (from my position of now knowing the work of any modern philosopher) have such philosophical explorations, in the past decades or century, produced answers? In the sense that, have they made a change in the way these important issues developed? What are the biggest ways they h…

I wouldn't say that modern philosophers, or even old philosophers, have had much of an effect on current legislative decisions concerning things like euthanasia. As to what extent they have influenced real communities I also don't know about veganism (aside from perhaps Pinker, though again I don't know of his influence) but modern philosophy (since 1950s or so) has been "all the rage" within left-wing communities, most visibly the work of Slavoj Zizek who is seen as a "superstar Marxist philosopher".

I'm under the impression that philosophical investigation has been largely ignored in science, though I don't have enough information to give a definitive answer.

Principles in law seem to me to be unclear and not guided along any particular philosophy, despite in the UK at least PPE (politics, philosophy, economics) being a common choice of university degree for politicians. I have seen utterly terrible and fallacious and evidence-lacking arguments used to create hideous laws, as the arguments are public record in England and Wales.

I'd say that philosophy doesn't have nearly as much impact as it should do, and anyone who disagrees with this should recognise that the ability to think critically is taught in any and all philosophy.

Re: What, exactly, do philosophers do?

#34

Post by duncanawoods »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #21
yters wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If philosophy is reasoning in its purest form, why so much reference to other work? Shouldn't it be like math where we logically conclude something and it is true regardless of what others think? If not, then it seems a less pure form of reasoning than math.

Because there is a good chance that whatever you want to say has already been said by at least a few other people and been refuted counter-argued or otherwise discussed. If you are not aware of all that accompanying discussion, you are likely to think you have come up with something profound when you actually haven't. This is why r/im14andthisisdeep/ is a thing. A lot of teens think they have an insight despite the f…

All true but I feel as currently taught it is hamstrung as a "historical study of great men / literary study of original sources" instead of teaching the key ideas distilled into the the most efficient and practical form.

High school physicists are not ploughing through Principia Mathematica, instead they learn the laws of motion and move on. Physicists pretty much leave behind the original sources until you are at the bleeding edge. Why can't philosophy?

Re: What, exactly, do philosophers do?

#35

Post by ue_ »

dvt wrote: post #26

Always warms my heart to see philosophy on top of HN. Philosophy is hard -- much harder than one would think. And people that contribute are incredibly smart -- far smarter than software engineers, by comparison. On the other hand, it's very political, and a lot of it is mental masturbation. Philosophy of Science, I think, is almost a completely bogus field. Philosophy of Mind, apart from a few great minds (Chalmers,…

>Philosophy of Science, I think, is almost a completely bogus field.

A coherent philosophy of science is required for science to be based on valid premises. I don't know what you mean by this, unless you're referring to something recent which I don't know about. The past philosophy of science has been extremely instrumental to creating the scientific method; Karl Popper is science household name.

>On the other hand, it's very political, and a lot of it is mental masturbation.

There's nothing wrong with political philosophy, and arguably political philosophy is some of the most important from certain perspectives (pragmatism?). There's also nothing wrong with mental masturbation; by the same measure art, abstract mathematics, theoretical computer science, theoretical physics, poetry and a vast array of human literature is also mental masturbation, yet few would deny its value.

I have a hard time dismissing Hegel and Marx because their work involved political philosophy.

Re: What, exactly, do philosophers do?

#37

Post by dvt »

smnrchrds wrote: post #31
dvt wrote: post #26

Always warms my heart to see philosophy on top of HN. Philosophy is hard -- much harder than one would think. And people that contribute are incredibly smart -- far smarter than software engineers, by comparison. On the other hand, it's very political, and a lot of it is mental masturbation. Philosophy of Science, I think, is almost a completely bogus field. Philosophy of Mind, apart from a few great minds (Chalmers,…

> Philosophy of Science, I think, is almost a completely bogus field. Could you please elaborate on this?

I'm being kind of harsh, so let me restate: my experience with Philosophy of Science has been very sub-par. I took a class on the Philosophy of Time and a lot of it dealt with relativity. Now, I don't think you need to understand Einstein to understand the gist of relativity, but if you're studying it for 10-weeks in a formal environment then, yeah, you probably need to have a grasp not only on Minkowski spaces, but on the metric tensor as well -- and the accompanying math. These topics were merely brushed over (with the kind of brevity you would see in a Netflix documentary) and it left a bad taste in my mouth. At the graduate level, a few (Philosophy of Science) grad students didn't have a grasp on Bayesian inference -- but were attempting to use it in their arguments freely.

Maybe I'm being unfair, but I just think science should be left to the scientists.

Re: What, exactly, do philosophers do?

#38

Post by lg »

duncanawoods wrote: post #34
kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there is a good chance that whatever you want to say has already been said by at least a few other people and been refuted counter-argued or otherwise discussed. If you are not aware of all that accompanying discussion, you are likely to think you have come up with something profound when you actually haven't. This is why r/im14andthisisdeep/ is a thing. A lot of teens think they have an insight despite the f…

All true but I feel as currently taught it is hamstrung as a "historical study of great men / literary study of original sources" instead of teaching the key ideas distilled into the the most efficient and practical form. High school physicists are not ploughing through Principia Mathematica, instead they learn the laws of motion and move on. Physicists pretty much leave behind the original sources until you are at t…

because philosophical papers can stay 'at the bleeding edge' (under active debate) for a really, really long time.

Re: What, exactly, do philosophers do?

#39

Post by nomel »

dvt wrote: post #26

Always warms my heart to see philosophy on top of HN. Philosophy is hard -- much harder than one would think. And people that contribute are incredibly smart -- far smarter than software engineers, by comparison. On the other hand, it's very political, and a lot of it is mental masturbation. Philosophy of Science, I think, is almost a completely bogus field. Philosophy of Mind, apart from a few great minds (Chalmers,…

> And people that contribute are incredibly smart -- far smarter than software engineers, by comparison

Comparing a software engineer to someone contributing to the advancement of an entire field is not really a fair comparison. This is like comparing someone who has a job in "compliance and ethics" to someone making advancement in quantum computing.

Re: What, exactly, do philosophers do?

#40

Post by dvt »

nomel wrote: post #39
dvt wrote: post #26

Always warms my heart to see philosophy on top of HN. Philosophy is hard -- much harder than one would think. And people that contribute are incredibly smart -- far smarter than software engineers, by comparison. On the other hand, it's very political, and a lot of it is mental masturbation. Philosophy of Science, I think, is almost a completely bogus field. Philosophy of Mind, apart from a few great minds (Chalmers,…

> And people that contribute are incredibly smart -- far smarter than software engineers, by comparison Comparing a software engineer to someone contributing to the advancement of an entire field is not really a fair comparison. This is like comparing someone who has a job in "compliance and ethics" to someone making advancement in quantum computing.

I'm comparing people of equal experience in either field. A philosophy undergraduate is, in my experience, much more intelligent than their engineering counterpart. This probably has to do with the fact that in philosophy, writing clear arguments is of primary import.

Whereas in engineering, most examinations are problem sets -- where the worst that can happen is a clever gotcha' (see whiteboard interviews).

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