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Philosophy gets a bad rep for the same reason psychology and sociology and applied macroeconomics do: because there is no way to clearly distinguish right ideas

Philosophy gets a bad rep for the same reason psychology and sociology and applied macroeconomics do: because there is no way to clearly distinguish right ideas from wrong ones, so the field is flooded with junk.

jm__87 9y ago
Not sure I would lump economics and psychology in there. Economics tries to explain some observable phenomenon which arises from human behavior which we don't fully understand. Psychology again, tries to understand human behavior. In theory, if we measured the correct things and the measurements were accurate, we'd be able to make accurate predictions based on those measurements in both fields. The problem is that we aren't able to do that currently. Philosophy is asking way more subjective questions, like "what should we do, and why?". The answer will always vary by context and individual and there will never be a "right" answer.
- mcguire 9y ago
  Ok, I will say something. Economics had a problem in that it is partially descriptive, as you say, but it is also partially normative: it wants to say how things should be. Then it gets the two parts confused a lot, leading to homo economicus stuff. Behavioral economics is more relevant to both the fields you describe.
  - jm__87 9y ago
    Do you mind giving an example?
    - mcguire 9y ago
      In Misbehaving, Richard Thaler describes a meeting of psychologists where he describes the best current thinking of economists as to what a "rational" person would do if the government were to give a payment to all citizens as an economic stimulus. I don't remember the details, but it involves the recognition that a citizen would have to pay the money back (as taxes) at some point, and that the citizen would have descendants in perpetuity---as a result, the economic stimulus would fail because the citizen would lock the payment into a 0-risk savings account. He had to have another economist at the meeting reassure everyone that that was indeed the current best economic thinking in order to stop them from laughing at him. He recalls telling the story to Some Fameous Economist and being told that (a) yes, that was the most rational thing to do in that situation, and (b) that it was indeed what everyone would do.
mcguire 9y ago
Philosophy, for the most part, isn't flooded with junk. (I'll refrain from comments about the rest.) In fact, I'm not sure what philosophical junk would be. There may be schools of thought based on assumptions that are fundamentally alien to you, but making sense of them is the fun of philosophy.
- Retra 9y ago
  If at the end of the day, you've got a world to live in with problems to solve, it does not suffice to say "oh, gee... there are lots of interesting ways to look at the world." You have to do something more than just catalogue esoteric thought. And there's a lot of junk philosophy that poses questions and says "this is interesting", even if, for all practical purposes, it is definitely not interesting. (Like P-Zombies, the Ship of Theseus, free will, etc. It's all junk philosophy.)
  - mcguire 9y ago
    P-zombies are a bit overblown in my opinion, too, but that arises from the AI question: what is the moral, ethical, and ultimately legal status of a general AI? Does an entity that is behaviorally indistinguishable from a person have any rights a real person is bound to respect? Likewise, the question of free will has some downstream legal consequences. A pure practical, utilitarian answer might just be unpalatable. In the end different philosophical systems have different behavioral results-a strong believer in divinely received morality will certainly come to different conclusions from an existential absurdist. Support charities? A Nietzschian might not thank you for that. A Randian might just think you a fool. There's probably a difference between Buddhist philosophy and that of Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann, but for the life of me, I can't see what it is.
    - Retra 9y ago
      >Does an entity that is behaviorally indistinguishable from a person have any rights a real person is bound to respect? Any entity that is behaviorally indistinguishable from a person is a person. That's what "is" means. Scientists figured this out. Programmers figured this out. Mathematicians figured this out. Philosophers? They don't want to figure things out. They want to drop names. In the end, these are mostly solved problems, and if it weren't for people continuing to worship their own ignorance -- sorry -- "the mystery", then we'd be able to move past these and find some useful philosophy to talk about, rather than spinning up 1300 year old problems again and again.

jm__87 9y ago

Not sure I would lump economics and psychology in there. Economics tries to explain some observable phenomenon which arises from human behavior which we don't fully understand. Psychology again, tries to understand human behavior. In theory, if we measured the correct things and the measurements were accurate, we'd be able to make accurate predictions based on those measurements in both fields. The problem is that we aren't able to do that currently. Philosophy is asking way more subjective questions, like "what should we do, and why?". The answer will always vary by context and individual and there will never be a "right" answer.

mcguire 9y ago
Ok, I will say something. Economics had a problem in that it is partially descriptive, as you say, but it is also partially normative: it wants to say how things should be. Then it gets the two parts confused a lot, leading to homo economicus stuff. Behavioral economics is more relevant to both the fields you describe.
- jm__87 9y ago
  Do you mind giving an example?
  - mcguire 9y ago
    In Misbehaving, Richard Thaler describes a meeting of psychologists where he describes the best current thinking of economists as to what a "rational" person would do if the government were to give a payment to all citizens as an economic stimulus. I don't remember the details, but it involves the recognition that a citizen would have to pay the money back (as taxes) at some point, and that the citizen would have descendants in perpetuity---as a result, the economic stimulus would fail because the citizen would lock the payment into a 0-risk savings account. He had to have another economist at the meeting reassure everyone that that was indeed the current best economic thinking in order to stop them from laughing at him. He recalls telling the story to Some Fameous Economist and being told that (a) yes, that was the most rational thing to do in that situation, and (b) that it was indeed what everyone would do.

mcguire 9y ago

Philosophy, for the most part, isn't flooded with junk. (I'll refrain from comments about the rest.) In fact, I'm not sure what philosophical junk would be. There may be schools of thought based on assumptions that are fundamentally alien to you, but making sense of them is the fun of philosophy.

Retra 9y ago
If at the end of the day, you've got a world to live in with problems to solve, it does not suffice to say "oh, gee... there are lots of interesting ways to look at the world." You have to do something more than just catalogue esoteric thought. And there's a lot of junk philosophy that poses questions and says "this is interesting", even if, for all practical purposes, it is definitely not interesting. (Like P-Zombies, the Ship of Theseus, free will, etc. It's all junk philosophy.)
- mcguire 9y ago
  P-zombies are a bit overblown in my opinion, too, but that arises from the AI question: what is the moral, ethical, and ultimately legal status of a general AI? Does an entity that is behaviorally indistinguishable from a person have any rights a real person is bound to respect? Likewise, the question of free will has some downstream legal consequences. A pure practical, utilitarian answer might just be unpalatable. In the end different philosophical systems have different behavioral results-a strong believer in divinely received morality will certainly come to different conclusions from an existential absurdist. Support charities? A Nietzschian might not thank you for that. A Randian might just think you a fool. There's probably a difference between Buddhist philosophy and that of Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann, but for the life of me, I can't see what it is.
  - Retra 9y ago
    >Does an entity that is behaviorally indistinguishable from a person have any rights a real person is bound to respect? Any entity that is behaviorally indistinguishable from a person is a person. That's what "is" means. Scientists figured this out. Programmers figured this out. Mathematicians figured this out. Philosophers? They don't want to figure things out. They want to drop names. In the end, these are mostly solved problems, and if it weren't for people continuing to worship their own ignorance -- sorry -- "the mystery", then we'd be able to move past these and find some useful philosophy to talk about, rather than spinning up 1300 year old problems again and again.