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I am not sure that philosophers believe they are doing work like mathematics -- and if they do then they a wrong. Philosophy inevitably involves teaching of tr

I am not sure that philosophers believe they are doing work like mathematics -- and if they do then they a wrong. Philosophy inevitably involves teaching of traditions (see below). But universities and indeed the word "philosophy" are historically tied to the western tradition. Philosophy students study study particular thinkers and the traditions in detail. And rightly so: theirs words are open to importantly varied interpretation. Students need to read read Plato because even today professors have non-trivial arguments about what he meant and how to apply the ideas. So it is forgivably hard for philosophy to see beyond the western tradition it grew up in. But it is unforgivably dumb to try and justify the Euro-centrism by an by an false analogy to science. I if a student is learning classical mechanics, she needn't read Principia Mathematica, and it doesn't matter what Newton was thinking when he wrote it. What matters is how you do physics today -- the various interpretations that physicists put on it can wait for some advanced course.

a_humean 10y ago
"I am not sure that philosophers believe they are doing work like mathematics" As someone with a postgraduate background in Philosophy I can say that, within at least the Western Analytic (mostly anglophone) tradition, that many do in fact think exactly that and I would tend to agree. Many Philosopher see their closest relations reside in Mathematics and to a lesser extent the hard sciences. They prize deductive reasoning and argument with truth as the aim. They are not consciously engaged in a project of cultural preservation and would welcome say Indian or Chinese contributions, but the barrier to understanding their contributions are often very very high (conceptual and not just large linguistic barriers with lack of access to good translations) and so very few people bother to engage when grant applications need writing. History of Philosophy, as the study of past traditions, thinkers, and arguments plays an outsized role in Philosophy 101 undergraduate courses, but in fact represents a minority of research activity. The majority of research philosophers are active in work relating to new work and living or recent figures such as David Chalmers, Saul Kripke, Ted Sider, David Lewis, Ruth Millikan, Dorothy Edgington, Timothy Williamson, David Parfit, and many many others. To demonstrate what I mean look at the citation network of the top journals in the subject: Force graph visualisation: https://kieranhealy.org/philcites/ https://kieranhealy.org/philcites/ Blog post explainer: https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/18/a-co-citation-network-for-philosophy/ https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/18/a-co-citati...
- adrianratnapala 10y ago
  Well then I stand corrected on what philosophers (at least analytic ones) believe. I even agree that mathematics is the closest thing to Analytic philosophy. But it is still very telling that in your third para, you list names instead of theorems. And you are right to do so, for the reasons I explained in my post above. When you talk of current research, then sure, you talk of modern philosophers. But that's still studying a tradition: just the latest versions of it. When teaching students you reach further back in time (just as maths students learn ancient theorems rather than modern ones). The conceptual barriers to entry that you say face Asian contributions are a consequenceof the whole discipline having learned more Aristotle than Kongzi in philosophy 101. Because the 101 class (in any field) is what sets the terminology and background assumptions behind even modern research.
  - a_humean 10y ago
    Because I was leading to my point about citation networks and didn't want to bore you to death about theory names like causal theories of reference and semantic externalism in philosophy of language.
    - ced 10y ago
      Did any of these modern theories come from non-western parts of the world? "Causal theories of reference" looks interesting from an AI perspective. Do you know how it relates to the math discipline, causality (eg. Pearl)?
      - a_humean 10y ago
        Does Australian count as non-western, in which case Armstrong's contributions debunk the entire article?! Joking aside, I don't really know of a lineage or pedigree for a major active research area that is non-western, but I am not and was not active in the history of philosophy. Philosophers working in metaphysics and especially causation are aware of Pearl, and the literature on causation in Philosophy is very large, old, and active. It is also clear that Pearl is also aware of the literature in Philosophy on causation and conditionals as he does cite people like Robert Stalnaker and David Lewis. However, there is a slight difference in concerns on the topic of causation/causality. Philosophers are usually interested in providing a reductive account of causation by providing necessary and sufficient conditions for causation, as apposed to modelling known causal structures to predict what interventions might have on novel systems. That said I do know that L.A. Paul, Ned Hall, Hitchcock, and Menzies have done some work trying to incorporate the insights from the causal modelling approach done by Pearl and colleagues. Some links in case you want to explore further. Standard Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an amazing free resource if you want to look something up: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-metaphysics/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-metaphysics/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/meaning/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/meaning/
justin66 10y ago
Some of my philosophy professors published papers in math journals. I bet they thought they were "doing work like mathematics."

a_humean 10y ago

"I am not sure that philosophers believe they are doing work like mathematics" As someone with a postgraduate background in Philosophy I can say that, within at least the Western Analytic (mostly anglophone) tradition, that many do in fact think exactly that and I would tend to agree. Many Philosopher see their closest relations reside in Mathematics and to a lesser extent the hard sciences. They prize deductive reasoning and argument with truth as the aim. They are not consciously engaged in a project of cultural preservation and would welcome say Indian or Chinese contributions, but the barrier to understanding their contributions are often very very high (conceptual and not just large linguistic barriers with lack of access to good translations) and so very few people bother to engage when grant applications need writing. History of Philosophy, as the study of past traditions, thinkers, and arguments plays an outsized role in Philosophy 101 undergraduate courses, but in fact represents a minority of research activity. The majority of research philosophers are active in work relating to new work and living or recent figures such as David Chalmers, Saul Kripke, Ted Sider, David Lewis, Ruth Millikan, Dorothy Edgington, Timothy Williamson, David Parfit, and many many others. To demonstrate what I mean look at the citation network of the top journals in the subject: Force graph visualisation: https://kieranhealy.org/philcites/ https://kieranhealy.org/philcites/ Blog post explainer: https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/18/a-co-citation-network-for-philosophy/ https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/18/a-co-citati...

adrianratnapala 10y ago
Well then I stand corrected on what philosophers (at least analytic ones) believe. I even agree that mathematics is the closest thing to Analytic philosophy. But it is still very telling that in your third para, you list names instead of theorems. And you are right to do so, for the reasons I explained in my post above. When you talk of current research, then sure, you talk of modern philosophers. But that's still studying a tradition: just the latest versions of it. When teaching students you reach further back in time (just as maths students learn ancient theorems rather than modern ones). The conceptual barriers to entry that you say face Asian contributions are a consequenceof the whole discipline having learned more Aristotle than Kongzi in philosophy 101. Because the 101 class (in any field) is what sets the terminology and background assumptions behind even modern research.
- a_humean 10y ago
  Because I was leading to my point about citation networks and didn't want to bore you to death about theory names like causal theories of reference and semantic externalism in philosophy of language.
  - ced 10y ago
    Did any of these modern theories come from non-western parts of the world? "Causal theories of reference" looks interesting from an AI perspective. Do you know how it relates to the math discipline, causality (eg. Pearl)?
    - a_humean 10y ago
      Does Australian count as non-western, in which case Armstrong's contributions debunk the entire article?! Joking aside, I don't really know of a lineage or pedigree for a major active research area that is non-western, but I am not and was not active in the history of philosophy. Philosophers working in metaphysics and especially causation are aware of Pearl, and the literature on causation in Philosophy is very large, old, and active. It is also clear that Pearl is also aware of the literature in Philosophy on causation and conditionals as he does cite people like Robert Stalnaker and David Lewis. However, there is a slight difference in concerns on the topic of causation/causality. Philosophers are usually interested in providing a reductive account of causation by providing necessary and sufficient conditions for causation, as apposed to modelling known causal structures to predict what interventions might have on novel systems. That said I do know that L.A. Paul, Ned Hall, Hitchcock, and Menzies have done some work trying to incorporate the insights from the causal modelling approach done by Pearl and colleagues. Some links in case you want to explore further. Standard Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an amazing free resource if you want to look something up: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-metaphysics/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-metaphysics/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/meaning/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/meaning/

justin66 10y ago

Some of my philosophy professors published papers in math journals. I bet they thought they were "doing work like mathematics."