Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

huffingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 71 posts

Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#31

Post by eli_gottlieb »

javert wrote: post #16
sktrdie wrote: post #14

I feel differently from most people in this thread. Academia is not industry, and is not really driven by a capitalist market. You can debate that philosophy, and many other theoretical fields, have very little value in the market, and perhaps they do. But in reality, the richest countries are the ones that have strong research curriculums, with people studying things that are not immediately beneficial or even usefu…

Having a lot of professors living on the public dime and not contributing anything back is the effect of a rich (and decadent) society, not the cause .

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 ;-).

Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#32

Post by drewfrank »

pcrh wrote: post #25
amelius wrote: post #2

The problem with philosophy is that it seems to make progress only very slowly. As an outsider, it seems that their fundamental questions are still at the same level as those of Socrates and Plato. It would have been nice if this article had addressed this issue. For instance, by discussing what are the most important insights of the last decade.

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.

Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#33

Post by jseliger »

I'm surprised no one has yet cited pg's "How to do Philosophy" (http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html). I like his implicit explanation: the healthier parts of what used to be philosophy have been turned into the sciences (and some social, experimental sciences) while the less healthy parts have remained (disconnected questions about what reality is, which feels like a variant of "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?).

Most of the comments on this thread so far feel like defenses of science, rather than philosophy (e.g. "Philosophy is valuable when it is directed to the inquiry of truth for the sake of discovering truth").

Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#34

Post by DenisM »

Drakim wrote: post #26
sktrdie wrote: post #14

I feel differently from most people in this thread. Academia is not industry, and is not really driven by a capitalist market. You can debate that philosophy, and many other theoretical fields, have very little value in the market, and perhaps they do. But in reality, the richest countries are the ones that have strong research curriculums, with people studying things that are not immediately beneficial or even usefu…

> But in reality, the richest countries are the ones that have strong research curriculums, with people studying things that are not immediately beneficial or even useful. Is this because studying those creates a rich country, or because people of rich countries have a tendency to study these things?

It's a feedback loop.

Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#35

Post by DenisM »

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.

Does X lead to Y?

Statistics today can answer the question of causality in many cases, especially the controlled studies, and that use to be the domain of philosophy.

Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#36

Post by orthoganol »

gaius wrote: post #15
orthoganol wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like a lot of outsiders see people like Zizek, and get the impression that philosophy today has a lot do with language and psychoanalysis. I'm not exactly sure what the insights are, but it at least feels like a very different brand than Socrates badgering people about what is justice.

Zizek is to Nietzsche as Dan Brown is to Shakespeare.

I'm not sure I would pick Nietzsche for the gold standard of philosophy. I've always had it that Plato, Kant, and Hegel were the big 3 (in terms of systematic ontologies).

Also, Dan Brown sells like crazy and is easy to read. Zizek, no one can read, and no one actually buys his books AFAIK. But at the level of 'sensationalism' perhaps I could see that.

Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#37

Post by calibraxis »

hyperpape wrote: post #17
copsarebastards wrote: post #11

Philosophy has become disconnected with real-life concerns. Philosophers operate in a void, working on problems without context. Attempts to connect this work with real-life concerns usually involve taking an idea developed without context and trying to apply it to a field (computer ethics, philosophy of scientific methods, etc.). This works poorly because the philosopher doesn't understand the field. A computer scie…

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…

It would help to cite articulate, reasonable philosophers who discuss science. Like: Carlo Rovelli, Imre Lakatos, Noam Chomsky...

Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#38

Post by taylorscollon »

gaius wrote: post #15
orthoganol wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like a lot of outsiders see people like Zizek, and get the impression that philosophy today has a lot do with language and psychoanalysis. I'm not exactly sure what the insights are, but it at least feels like a very different brand than Socrates badgering people about what is justice.

Zizek is to Nietzsche as Dan Brown is to Shakespeare.

This is a worthwhile point. People have a misconception about what philosophy is because pop 'philosophy' like Zizek is more about generating controversy than useful inquiry.

It's like someone who has only ever seen click bait dismissing journalism as pointless.

Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#39

Post by yummyfajitas »

I'm normally the sort to find things like philosophy useless, but I think philosophy might be an exception to my general trend.

I think that if philosophy education works (a big if), then it will be very valuable in that it teaches people to recognize legitimate questions and encouraging them to think rationally about them.

Very often on HN, a story will drive a lot of comments pushing a moral point. But the supposedly moral point is usually just a popularity contest and posturing - "I hate the person doing this SOO MUCH!!!" or "I'm so empathetic for supporting this position". And any attempt to get past that to actual moral philosophy nearly always results in nothing more than ad-hominems being thrown and completely emotional (and inconsistent) arguments being made.

Other issues which often have a fundamentally philosophical element that are relevant here include many issues of measurement (e.g., job interviews and hiring).

Re: What Is the Public Value of Philosophy?

#40

Post by [deleted] »

DenisM wrote: post #34
Drakim wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But in reality, the richest countries are the ones that have strong research curriculums, with people studying things that are not immediately beneficial or even useful. Is this because studying those creates a rich country, or because people of rich countries have a tendency to study these things?

It's a feedback loop.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN