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I'm going to reproduce a reddit post I made recently that I think is relevant: Analytic philosophy has made my mind a razor. It forged in me the confidence and

I'm going to reproduce a reddit post I made recently that I think is relevant: Analytic philosophy has made my mind a razor. It forged in me the confidence and mental discipline to learn anything, and I'm now dominating the tech scene despite having little in the way of formal coursework. I was lucky to choose one of the few disciplines that can be fruitfully studied at Brown. As any student of a rigorous discipline, I was ultimately responsible for my own intellectual growth; everything I ever truly learned has been in solitude. The less-than-brilliant technical faculty, weak course offerings, and charlatan arts professors had little negative impact on me. In fact, being forced to retreat within myself was necessary for my success, because it allowed me to look at reality more critically, unmired by the prejudices and preoccupations of the misguided or less thoughtful around me. I have nearly everything I want in life, but I was lucky to (1) pursue rigorous scholarship and (2) be born with the abilities and personality that made such a pursuit feasible at Brown. The less intelligent[^] or more impressionable will be made failures at Brown. Those are the people I'm trying to warn. [^] For example, those who were not invited to attend a better Ivy League university. It's very tempting for someone in this position to choose Brown over a better option simply because it is wrongfully perceived as prestigious for technically being an Ivy.

rublev 10y ago
Comments like that are lost on Reddit. Reddit isn't about discourse, it's about upvotes. The whole "just find good small subreddits" also doesn't work unless you subscribe to their specific early-stage cults mentality. And each sub has one.
- saintzozo 10y ago
  That has been my experience, unfortunately.
hkmurakami 10y ago
Question -- you say that you are a person who is able to learn in solitude. Would you have been able to pursue your dive into Philosophy without the environment that Brown offered you? I ask this for a few reasons. 1) I have a fairly strong interest in the discipline, but have found rigorous self guided study to be a challenge, beyond cursory readings of the classics and a smattering of modern theorists like Singer. 2) I feel that a fortunate circumstance today that the fastest growing, lucrative profession is programming, which now has a wealth of online resources for new entrants to get started and become proficient. Many other technical disciplines require prohibitively expensive lab equipment to learn the craft. I wonder if philosophy is a discipline within the humanities that is more difficult to cultivate in a self-directed fashion than others.
- rublev 10y ago
  I'm not the guy you're asking, but I've spent some time 'in solitude' studying without an academic institution. I'd read philosophy books whenever I have down time. Consciously replacing entertainment with books works as well. Philosophy to me is less about studying philosophy itself as a topic but encountering different people's various personal philosophies about things. Kierkegaard's "The Present Age" and Glenn Gould's perspective on anxiety helped me a lot.
  - arghimonmobile 10y ago
    I like Gould's music, but didn't know about his writing. Perhaps you could provide a pointer or two for an anxious fellow? :)
    - rublev 10y ago
      [0] "Anxiety gives way to pleasure and a passion for creative work for which the only condition is solitude." [1] "I do feel quite convinced that one's creativity is enhanced primarily by the more-or-less single-minded pursuit and development of one's own resources without reference to the trends, tastes, fashions, etc. of the world outside." [0] Glenn Gould - Selected Letters, page xx. [1] Glenn Gould - Selected Letters, page xxii.
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  You certainly don't need expensive lab equipment to do philosophy. But a lot of philosophy is about interacting with others, about learning other people's ideas, considering them, coming up with your own reactions to those, and getting feedback as they consider your reactions. That kind of feedback loop is difficult if not impossible to do on a deep level without going to school for philosophy. I'm sure there are people who have a very deep knowledge and understanding of philosophy despite being self taught, but I would be surprised if there were very many of them these days. It used to be a lot easier in the past, when there wasn't as much to learn. But even going back 2500 years to Plato's time, there was a great role for learning in the Academy, from which modern universities descend. Of course, it doesn't take a university education to "do philosophy". You could certainly "philosophize" without any education (and a lot of people do, often not realizing that that's what they're doing). But I guess it all depends on what your goals are, and how deep you want to go. I've personally found discussing what I'm learning with other students and with professors to be critical for my own education. I think philosophy is often as much of an oral tradition as it is a written one. Finally, it requires an enormous amount of self-discipline to read and write as much as you would in getting a university education in philosophy, if you're going to try to teach yourself. A lot of people think they can just teach themselves, but later find to their regret that they can't without the structure provided by classes, schedules, graduation requirements, and teachers.
pmoriarty 10y ago
I'm not a big fan of analytic philosophy, quite the opposite. Continental philosophy is much more my speed (though there are plenty of parts of even that that I have big problems with). I consider analytic philosophy to be a blight upon philosophy in general. It started off dominating universities in mainly English speaking countries, but has moved on to gain control over many others. It's even started to co-opt philosophers traditionally considered to be in the Continental tradition, such as Nietzsche and now even Heidegger (who used to be absolutely despised as analytics, but now is seen by some as almost one of them). As a result many if not most philosophy students now see all of philosophy through an Analytic lens. They usually come out of their training thinking Analytic philosophy is the only "true" or "serious" way to do philosophy, and even when they encounter Continental thinkers, they view them effectively as being Analytics, usually completely missing the point. It's not clear how much non-Analytic philosophy will still be taught in another 50 years, perhaps not very much. I think that will be very sad. As someone famous once said, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Many Analytics seem not to have learned that lesson. To be fair, neither have many famous Continentals (a certain degree of arrogance and myopia seems too often to be a prerequisite for fame in philosophy), but at least they're not taking over the world with their rather narrow perspective. I'd like it just as little, for example, if everyone who got a philosophy degree was a Heideggerian. That said, I don't want to come off as saying that I consider training in analytic philosophy to be useless. Training in logic especially (which many analytics consider a prerequisite for doing any kind of philosophy) can certainly help to "make your mind like a razor". I'd just be careful that all that probably exclusively analytic training doesn't make your mind like a hammer and everything you see like a nail. There are other ways of looking at the world (and of doing philosophy). Some of them might even be just as valid and useful.
- maus42 10y ago
  You have lots of metaphors and how analytical thinking is "narrow", but I didn't found your argument why continental philosophy would be better to study than analytical tradition. I'm suddenly reminded of an acquaintance whole called me "narrow-minded" when I said chakras and horoscopes are maybe fun, but have not much to do with the observable scientific reality, so you should not be serious about them. I mean, I reviewed the wikipedia dictionary definition [1] of major trends in continental philosophy to see to refresh my mind what it was about, again, and I'm not terribly impressed. If analytical is "narrow" viewpoint, then fine, in my opinion it's very needed right kind of narrow a rigorous and honest study of philosophy needs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy
mablap 10y ago
Analytic philosophy has made my mind a razor. [...] Formal mathematical training (graduate) will do that to you too. I often find myself thinking with abstract algebra ideas (groups, vectors, vector spaces, commutation relations, etc).
- ianai 10y ago
  I studied both. They're great.
- saintzozo 10y ago
  I'm well trained in mathematics. It's certainly healthy. However, I often find that outside of their professional work, mathematicians are more willing to part with rigueur than the philosophers across the hall. Notice how most mathematicians aren't particularly interested in foundations of mathematics, for example.
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    I'm not sure if that's really true about mathematicians lacking rigour. I do recall a logic professor of mine jokingly say that mathematicians were afraid of logicians, and (more seriously) that the former thought the latter were unnecessarily precise. (I hope I'm remembering this right and not misrepresenting what he said) I'm not sure about the superiority in rigour in the rest of philosophy (even if we narrow the meaning of that term to just analytic philosophy, some of whom sure are fond of their logic, symbols and attempting to sound "scientific" or rigorous). If anything, I'd say those analytic philosophers have math (or hard science) envy. You're right about mathematicians not being very interested in the foundations of math. That's a consequence of the failure of the great foundational project in the early 20th century. From what I understand, most mathematicians have decided that such a foundation is not possible, and view themselves as moving on to doing the very practical business of math anyway. After all, the lack of a foundation has not prevented them from achieving many interesting (and often useful) results. That said, there has continued to be interest in foundations for math from some logicians, and (at least according to my logic professor) it still might be possible to found math on logic yet. That's quite a bit out of my league, however, so I'm afraid I can't elaborate much. But if you're interested in that, I do recommend taking some courses in symbolic logic and in the philosophy of math.
idlewords 10y ago
Your razor of a mind could use a lubricating aloe strip.
- saintzozo 10y ago
  Lubrication is for the weak.
  - sporkologist 10y ago
    And the efficient.
- theobold 10y ago
  Looking at the website in his profile, I'm fairly sure this guy is having a laugh.
- jacobolus 10y ago
  This is one of my favorite hacker news comments ever. Maciej, you’re a treasure.
  - saintzozo 10y ago
    He's a good guy. Some people aren't getting that my sibling comment is a homage to his blog.
seibelj 10y ago
This is one of the most preposterous and masturbatory comments I have ever read on HN. Congratulations on GOING TO BROWN!!!!! and being smarter than everyone there
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
andkon 10y ago
Is this satire? This is pretty much the perfect expression of all the most insufferable moments and people I knew during my own analytic philosophy education. It's even wrapped up in the fondest delusion of philosophy undergrads: that you, through the sheer strength of your intellect, rose above your surroundings. Your shit ain't that great, man. If anyone goes through four years of philosophy and is talking about their worldview like this, run away from them. Edit: agh I read his blog and I regret to inform you all that this person really has his stuff down pat definitely a true scholar here
- sporkologist 10y ago
  I think you can be excused a bit, it does read a little like Tony Robbins at first glance
- usgroup 10y ago
  Lol, yup I was "that guy". But then being that guy kept me interested and made the whole pursuit worth a damn. 8 hours of philosophy a day ain't easy. The narcissism and public masturbation aside, I can't think of a subject that does more to unify a mind or help a person tether themselves into the world in which they live.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Chinjut 10y ago
  Huh. Their website (http://soixante-neuf.homosexual.horse/veritas/ http://soixante-neuf.homosexual.horse/veritas/) does seem at least somewhat satirical, and yet, if they are trolling, they are quite committed to it. They do seem to post a lot on reddit about Brown: https://www.reddit.com/user/saintzozo https://www.reddit.com/user/saintzozo. Although those posts seem like a lot of trolling as well. Ah, I dunno. It's difficult for me to figure out exactly the dynamics of trolling vs. other forms of satire vs. sincerity that are in play here. ETA: Ah, and here's the referred-to original post on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BrownU/comments/50xjy7/another_alarming_example_of_censorship_at_brown/d78r5fm https://www.reddit.com/r/BrownU/comments/50xjy7/another_alar...
gone35 10y ago
Troll or textbook narcissist, so engage at your own peril. See e.g. [1]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/domain/soixante-neuf.homosexual.horse/ https://www.reddit.com/domain/soixante-neuf.homosexual.horse...
aporetics 10y ago
After this, its clear that the time has come for philosophy departments to offer seminars in trolling.

rublev 10y ago

Comments like that are lost on Reddit. Reddit isn't about discourse, it's about upvotes. The whole "just find good small subreddits" also doesn't work unless you subscribe to their specific early-stage cults mentality. And each sub has one.

saintzozo 10y ago
That has been my experience, unfortunately.

hkmurakami 10y ago

Question -- you say that you are a person who is able to learn in solitude. Would you have been able to pursue your dive into Philosophy without the environment that Brown offered you? I ask this for a few reasons. 1) I have a fairly strong interest in the discipline, but have found rigorous self guided study to be a challenge, beyond cursory readings of the classics and a smattering of modern theorists like Singer. 2) I feel that a fortunate circumstance today that the fastest growing, lucrative profession is programming, which now has a wealth of online resources for new entrants to get started and become proficient. Many other technical disciplines require prohibitively expensive lab equipment to learn the craft. I wonder if philosophy is a discipline within the humanities that is more difficult to cultivate in a self-directed fashion than others.

rublev 10y ago
I'm not the guy you're asking, but I've spent some time 'in solitude' studying without an academic institution. I'd read philosophy books whenever I have down time. Consciously replacing entertainment with books works as well. Philosophy to me is less about studying philosophy itself as a topic but encountering different people's various personal philosophies about things. Kierkegaard's "The Present Age" and Glenn Gould's perspective on anxiety helped me a lot.
- arghimonmobile 10y ago
  I like Gould's music, but didn't know about his writing. Perhaps you could provide a pointer or two for an anxious fellow? :)
  - rublev 10y ago
    [0] "Anxiety gives way to pleasure and a passion for creative work for which the only condition is solitude." [1] "I do feel quite convinced that one's creativity is enhanced primarily by the more-or-less single-minded pursuit and development of one's own resources without reference to the trends, tastes, fashions, etc. of the world outside." [0] Glenn Gould - Selected Letters, page xx. [1] Glenn Gould - Selected Letters, page xxii.
pmoriarty 10y ago
You certainly don't need expensive lab equipment to do philosophy. But a lot of philosophy is about interacting with others, about learning other people's ideas, considering them, coming up with your own reactions to those, and getting feedback as they consider your reactions. That kind of feedback loop is difficult if not impossible to do on a deep level without going to school for philosophy. I'm sure there are people who have a very deep knowledge and understanding of philosophy despite being self taught, but I would be surprised if there were very many of them these days. It used to be a lot easier in the past, when there wasn't as much to learn. But even going back 2500 years to Plato's time, there was a great role for learning in the Academy, from which modern universities descend. Of course, it doesn't take a university education to "do philosophy". You could certainly "philosophize" without any education (and a lot of people do, often not realizing that that's what they're doing). But I guess it all depends on what your goals are, and how deep you want to go. I've personally found discussing what I'm learning with other students and with professors to be critical for my own education. I think philosophy is often as much of an oral tradition as it is a written one. Finally, it requires an enormous amount of self-discipline to read and write as much as you would in getting a university education in philosophy, if you're going to try to teach yourself. A lot of people think they can just teach themselves, but later find to their regret that they can't without the structure provided by classes, schedules, graduation requirements, and teachers.

pmoriarty 10y ago

I'm not a big fan of analytic philosophy, quite the opposite. Continental philosophy is much more my speed (though there are plenty of parts of even that that I have big problems with). I consider analytic philosophy to be a blight upon philosophy in general. It started off dominating universities in mainly English speaking countries, but has moved on to gain control over many others. It's even started to co-opt philosophers traditionally considered to be in the Continental tradition, such as Nietzsche and now even Heidegger (who used to be absolutely despised as analytics, but now is seen by some as almost one of them). As a result many if not most philosophy students now see all of philosophy through an Analytic lens. They usually come out of their training thinking Analytic philosophy is the only "true" or "serious" way to do philosophy, and even when they encounter Continental thinkers, they view them effectively as being Analytics, usually completely missing the point. It's not clear how much non-Analytic philosophy will still be taught in another 50 years, perhaps not very much. I think that will be very sad. As someone famous once said, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Many Analytics seem not to have learned that lesson. To be fair, neither have many famous Continentals (a certain degree of arrogance and myopia seems too often to be a prerequisite for fame in philosophy), but at least they're not taking over the world with their rather narrow perspective. I'd like it just as little, for example, if everyone who got a philosophy degree was a Heideggerian. That said, I don't want to come off as saying that I consider training in analytic philosophy to be useless. Training in logic especially (which many analytics consider a prerequisite for doing any kind of philosophy) can certainly help to "make your mind like a razor". I'd just be careful that all that probably exclusively analytic training doesn't make your mind like a hammer and everything you see like a nail. There are other ways of looking at the world (and of doing philosophy). Some of them might even be just as valid and useful.

maus42 10y ago
You have lots of metaphors and how analytical thinking is "narrow", but I didn't found your argument why continental philosophy would be better to study than analytical tradition. I'm suddenly reminded of an acquaintance whole called me "narrow-minded" when I said chakras and horoscopes are maybe fun, but have not much to do with the observable scientific reality, so you should not be serious about them. I mean, I reviewed the wikipedia dictionary definition [1] of major trends in continental philosophy to see to refresh my mind what it was about, again, and I'm not terribly impressed. If analytical is "narrow" viewpoint, then fine, in my opinion it's very needed right kind of narrow a rigorous and honest study of philosophy needs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy

mablap 10y ago

Analytic philosophy has made my mind a razor. [...] Formal mathematical training (graduate) will do that to you too. I often find myself thinking with abstract algebra ideas (groups, vectors, vector spaces, commutation relations, etc).

ianai 10y ago
I studied both. They're great.
saintzozo 10y ago
I'm well trained in mathematics. It's certainly healthy. However, I often find that outside of their professional work, mathematicians are more willing to part with rigueur than the philosophers across the hall. Notice how most mathematicians aren't particularly interested in foundations of mathematics, for example.
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  I'm not sure if that's really true about mathematicians lacking rigour. I do recall a logic professor of mine jokingly say that mathematicians were afraid of logicians, and (more seriously) that the former thought the latter were unnecessarily precise. (I hope I'm remembering this right and not misrepresenting what he said) I'm not sure about the superiority in rigour in the rest of philosophy (even if we narrow the meaning of that term to just analytic philosophy, some of whom sure are fond of their logic, symbols and attempting to sound "scientific" or rigorous). If anything, I'd say those analytic philosophers have math (or hard science) envy. You're right about mathematicians not being very interested in the foundations of math. That's a consequence of the failure of the great foundational project in the early 20th century. From what I understand, most mathematicians have decided that such a foundation is not possible, and view themselves as moving on to doing the very practical business of math anyway. After all, the lack of a foundation has not prevented them from achieving many interesting (and often useful) results. That said, there has continued to be interest in foundations for math from some logicians, and (at least according to my logic professor) it still might be possible to found math on logic yet. That's quite a bit out of my league, however, so I'm afraid I can't elaborate much. But if you're interested in that, I do recommend taking some courses in symbolic logic and in the philosophy of math.

idlewords 10y ago

Your razor of a mind could use a lubricating aloe strip.

saintzozo 10y ago
Lubrication is for the weak.
- sporkologist 10y ago
  And the efficient.
theobold 10y ago
Looking at the website in his profile, I'm fairly sure this guy is having a laugh.
jacobolus 10y ago
This is one of my favorite hacker news comments ever. Maciej, you’re a treasure.
- saintzozo 10y ago
  He's a good guy. Some people aren't getting that my sibling comment is a homage to his blog.

seibelj 10y ago

This is one of the most preposterous and masturbatory comments I have ever read on HN. Congratulations on GOING TO BROWN!!!!! and being smarter than everyone there

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

andkon 10y ago

Is this satire? This is pretty much the perfect expression of all the most insufferable moments and people I knew during my own analytic philosophy education. It's even wrapped up in the fondest delusion of philosophy undergrads: that you, through the sheer strength of your intellect, rose above your surroundings. Your shit ain't that great, man. If anyone goes through four years of philosophy and is talking about their worldview like this, run away from them. Edit: agh I read his blog and I regret to inform you all that this person really has his stuff down pat definitely a true scholar here

sporkologist 10y ago
I think you can be excused a bit, it does read a little like Tony Robbins at first glance
usgroup 10y ago
Lol, yup I was "that guy". But then being that guy kept me interested and made the whole pursuit worth a damn. 8 hours of philosophy a day ain't easy. The narcissism and public masturbation aside, I can't think of a subject that does more to unify a mind or help a person tether themselves into the world in which they live.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Chinjut 10y ago
Huh. Their website (http://soixante-neuf.homosexual.horse/veritas/ http://soixante-neuf.homosexual.horse/veritas/) does seem at least somewhat satirical, and yet, if they are trolling, they are quite committed to it. They do seem to post a lot on reddit about Brown: https://www.reddit.com/user/saintzozo https://www.reddit.com/user/saintzozo. Although those posts seem like a lot of trolling as well. Ah, I dunno. It's difficult for me to figure out exactly the dynamics of trolling vs. other forms of satire vs. sincerity that are in play here. ETA: Ah, and here's the referred-to original post on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BrownU/comments/50xjy7/another_alarming_example_of_censorship_at_brown/d78r5fm https://www.reddit.com/r/BrownU/comments/50xjy7/another_alar...

gone35 10y ago

Troll or textbook narcissist, so engage at your own peril. See e.g. [1]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/domain/soixante-neuf.homosexual.horse/ https://www.reddit.com/domain/soixante-neuf.homosexual.horse...

aporetics 10y ago

After this, its clear that the time has come for philosophy departments to offer seminars in trolling.