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

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

#61

Post by lutusp » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 4:56 PM UTC

mburney wrote: post #45

ataggart wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>[Philosophy's real purpose] is to constantly search for deeper underlying truth. What "truth" has philosophy itself produced from that search which is well-defined, non-trivial, and correct?

Many philosophers have questioned the scientific definition of "correctness". For example Heidegger who argued that scientific truth is an approximation and measurement of things that we already presume to exist. These discoveries may be correct, and they may be true. But what about the more primordial truth (i.e. being) which we take for granted before we even begin a scientific inquiry? This is what he investigates…

> 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 words uttered is always ranked higher than the intellectual content of each word taken separately.

A scientific idea is "correct" if it can be successfully compared to reality.

How hard is that? I hasten to add that no scientific idea ever becomes true for all time -- all such ideas are subject to falsification by new evidence, by new comparisons to reality.

> But it is very hard to convince followers of scientism...

Ah, yes, the "science is just another religion" gambit. It speaks volumes about the depth of modern philosophical thought.

Philosophers compare their ideas to those of other philosophers. Scientists compare their ideas to reality.

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

#62

Post by unalone » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 4:58 PM UTC

mylittlepony wrote: post #30

unalone wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web site's not loading for me, so unfortunately I can't read the article yet, but your summary sounds worryingly wrongminded to me. Philosophy should not necessarily be a practical endeavor – it concerns itself with being, life, and existence on their most abstract and difficult levels. There is a place for functional philosophy, and plenty of places where modern scientific discoveries can aid a line of philosoph…

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, the best philosophy is that which provokes responses from people who encounter it.

That's one of the reasons why the "philosophy should be practical" argument is weird. Philosophy is practical, but its practical outcomes are philosophical in nature: that is, it drives people to consider aspects of life and existence that they wouldn't consider otherwise. Saying philosophy should be scientifically practical is like saying that science should help people find a closer connection with Jesus Christ: science does indeed drive some people to deep religious faith, but science that's only designed to make people think Jesus was an alright dude isn't science so much as it's religious propaganda posing as science. That's what this argument is: scientific propaganda pretending to be philosophy.

The thing is, I love science! I really do! Science is amazing! But so is philosophy – so much so that personally I like it much more than I like science. Which is why I'd rather see philosophy stay philosophy, you know?

(Incidentally, if you're interested in talking art, please do email me – I enjoy talking about my work, particularly with people skeptical about whether art's practical. :D)

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

#63

Post by btilly » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 5:00 PM UTC

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #56

lutusp wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Notably absent from this guy's syllabus is anything concerning ethics, morality, values, or right and wrong. That's because all morality is relative, one of the few things philosophy got right. The universe is morally neutral, which means that, to the degree that we fully grasp reality, to the same degree we discover that morality is a human invention, malleable across time and place. Not to discount notions of mor…

I'm not sure what that means. Dogs and apes and all social creatures have an innate sense of morality. They react emotionally to transgressions and punish transgressors. Nature has evolved that, in humans it has created certain rather strong thoughts and feelings on the subject. So in that sense nature does care. Different systems of morality are also going to lead to very different societies of varying effectiveness…

Here is my favorite example showing that effective societies in other species need not be ones we like.

Our closest relatives are chimpanzees. Their sexual strategy is to produce lots of sperm and have lots of sex. The average chimpanzee male has sex an average of once per hour. (This is the 24 hour average.) About 1% of the time, the female attempts to resist, this does not bother the male.

The result? The average chimp commits clear rape every few days.

Can we make this worse? I think we can. One thing every mother chimp wants is to have her son become dominant. She therefore begins his journey up the dominance hierarchy early. Literally juvenile male gets to have non-consensual sex with low ranking females because his mother forces the adult female to comply.

If you're going to base your system of morality on what evolution has encouraged, you're either going to be ignorant, or accepting of things that are extremely repugnant to any human society that I've heard of.

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

#64

Post by msutherl » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 5:00 PM UTC

unalone wrote: post #54

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…

That's interesting! My understanding of Descartes comes from the book Descartes' Bones , which frustrated me in some ways but made an argument about Descartes that I found very interesting: when Descartes wrote his Discourse on Method , he was a Christian who felt his works very strongly connected with the existing works of the Church. He was not an advocate of discarding all non-mechanistic discovery so much as he a…

Why can't I find a company to work for with people like you guys?

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

#65

Post by davesims » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 5:01 PM UTC

unalone wrote: post #54

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…

That's interesting! My understanding of Descartes comes from the book Descartes' Bones , which frustrated me in some ways but made an argument about Descartes that I found very interesting: when Descartes wrote his Discourse on Method , he was a Christian who felt his works very strongly connected with the existing works of the Church. He was not an advocate of discarding all non-mechanistic discovery so much as he a…

"I was led to believe that Descartes argued his new method should be added to existing ones rather than replace them entirely – am I wrong in thinking this way?"

Actually I think you are, but it is of course complicated. My read of the Discourse (certainly not original with me!) traces a sequence of subtle but nevertheless explicit rejections of each category of Descartes' own education: mathematics, physics, metaphysics, aesthetics, etc.

Descartes flatters his masters on the one hand while on the other "provisionally" rejecting every single one of them, never to return. This is the birth of modernism. The rejection of the past, the 'blank slate' of a hypothetical 'view from nowhere' acutely expressed in Descartes' notion of Radical Doubt (in the Meditations on First Philosophy). Descartes argues that, like a city built by multiple architects over many centuries, contemporary knowledge in the 17th Century was brilliant and confused all at once, at odds with itself and incapable of 'clear and distinct' ideas. Therefore he proposes that he himself embark on a provisional quest for certain knowledge, not because of his own genius, but because it is possible that a single philosopher with clarity of purpose can achieve what centuries of confused development cannot. It is an intoxicating proposition, and we moderns have yet to let go of its promise.

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

#66

Post by memla » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 5:01 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #28

unalone wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's how philosophy began and it's how philosophy is in its purest state , which is much different from saying it's the only way for philosophy to be. Generally, I think philosophy is like mathematics in that while its purest application is very obscure and very hard to understand without a whole lot of effort, that pure application results in practical breaththroughs on almost every level of "practical" research. I…

So this is a great place for me to be educated: what practical applications has philosophy yielded? Btw, I've read your comments on this thread, and it seems like you're very knowledgeable about the field of philosophy, but not particularly knowledgeable about LessWrong. I'm only slightly knowledgeable about philosophy, but I highly recommend you read more of LessWrong - it's an amazing resource of knowledge and of p…

To take one example, philosophers have been more than instrumental in the development of logic, especially [informal logic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_logic#History). Don't want to get into a discussion on whether logic is itself a branch of philosophy.

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

#67

Post by lutusp » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 5:02 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 assume you're saying that without having read it?

No, I am saying the author doesn't want to disseminate his ideas, he wants to become rich. US$75.00 is simply too high a price for any book (not to say there aren't even more expensive books, but the same reasoning applies to them).

The only place where authors get away with this kind of pricing is when a college professor requires his class to buy his book, in which case the students have no choice. Outrageous but true.

This is not how you change the world, it's how you charge the world.

Also, even granted an avaricious motive and all other considerations aside, the author would probably make more money by pricing his book more realistically.

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

#68

Post by nachteilig » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 5:02 PM UTC

Tying philosophy to usefulness in STEM disciplines is a terrible idea.

Reading Kant doesn't "too much respect for failed philosophical methods"--if you read him properly it helps teach solid thinking that might even lead you to reject some of what he says.

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

#69

Post by fatbird » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 5:06 PM UTC

dean wrote: post #57

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…

While I agree that philosophy has the ability to ask good questions, unfortunately it does not seem to be able to answer those questions in any meaningful way. Science also has the ability to ask good questions, but it knows how to answer them in a meaningful way (at least good science does). By meaningful, I mean provably true. Philosophy is very happy to take untested opinion as true. Which is provably dangerous. I…

I got the sense that he thinks of philosophers more in the fashion of scientists doing basic research in universities and R&D departments. People don't know their names, and they rarely have much direct impact, but their work is foundational to a lot of practical things that come later.

Philosophy is very happy to take untested opinion as true.

This is demonstrably false. Philosophy, almost by definition, is a process of rationally testing "opinion". Your post reeks of scientism and nothing more.

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

#70

Post by dean » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 5:07 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…

"[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. Clearly, philosophy can't do that. They still teach Plato in philosophy, but they no longer teach Ptolemy in science.