9 ms·

The irony is that when philosophers make statements like these, they never provide any empirical evidence to back it up. Does philosophy really improve critical

The irony is that when philosophers make statements like these, they never provide any empirical evidence to back it up. Does philosophy really improve critical thinking and reasoning skills? We're told it does, based on nothing more than "that's what it feels like to me". Rigorous reasoning is worthless without facts to reason on.

whataretensors 9y ago
My experience with philosophy was a mixture of half-baked history and distracting discussions that aren't useful.
- asimpletune 9y ago
  I don’t doubt that :)
- tw1010 9y ago
  This is the reason introducing mandatory programming in high school will likely cause more harm than good to the reputation of the field. (Don't judge a field of study by how it is taught.)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tw1010 9y ago
How to measure this is itself a philosophical question.
- fullshark 9y ago
  No offense, but comments like this just make me think philosophy is intellectual masturbation.
tMcGrath 9y ago
In this case that's not true though - the article is about someone who used critical thinking/reasoning skills to make a huge amount of money, and credits this in large part to his training in philosophy. It's possible, of course, that Miller is mistaken about the origin of his critical thinking ability (or just got lucky, and there's no ability to credit), however on balance this seems like a strong piece of anecdata in favour of the hypothesis. I'm interested what would constitute empirical evidence for/against the claim "philosophy helps improve critical thinking". Are there accepted standardised measures of this?
- igravious 9y ago
  People who study carpentry tend to be better carpenters than people who study accounting. One of the aims of philosophy as a discipline is to instil the discipline of critical thinking, that's the purported business of philosophy after all. Would you ask someone who had studied carpentry for empirical evidence that studying carpentry produces people more skilled in the carpentry than if they had not studied it?
  - somestag 9y ago
    > Would you ask someone who had studied carpentry for empirical evidence that studying carpentry produces people more skilled in the carpentry than if they had not studied it? Yes I would, if it seemed to me that an awful lot of people who had studied carpentry were mediocre carpenters, while many who hadn't studied carpentry were excellent carpenters. I would start to question the usefulness of carpentry study. I don't think we should accept that the study of philosophy improves critical thinking just because that is "one of the aims" of philosophy as a discipline. (One of the aims of homeopathic medicine is to cure disease, after all.) I certainly accept that you'd have a very hard time going through a philosophy program without ever thinking critically, but I'd say the same thing about a student in a comparative literature program. I also think it's very hard to teach philosophy well, and that a poorly taught philosophy course can easily detract from critical thinking rather than bolster it. I took my share of philosophy courses as an undergrad, and a good half of them were glorified history classes with strong implications that certain viewpoints were "wrong" and others were "right." I suppose you could say those courses were not really philosophy courses if they were taught that way, but then I would say it's unfair to say that philosophy education improves critical thinking if you will only admit examples where it does so.
    - igravious 9y ago
      > Yes I would, if it seemed to me that an awful lot of people who had studied carpentry were mediocre carpenters, while many who hadn't studied carpentry were excellent carpenters. I would start to question the usefulness of carpentry study. Well that's not really the point, is it? The point is that on average the person who studied carpentry is better than someone who hadn't studied it at all. > I don't think we should accept that the study of philosophy improves critical thinking just because that is "one of the aims" of philosophy as a discipline. (One of the aims of homeopathic medicine is to cure disease, after all.) I certainly accept that you'd have a very hard time going through a philosophy program without ever thinking critically, but I'd say the same thing about a student in a comparative literature program. That's actually rather insulting, you do realise that don't you? It's insulting in three different ways going by the way you've worded it. First, you've compared philosophy to something that is widely regarded as a pseudoscience (which is ironic considering that philosophy is that _very_ discipline that attempts to rigorously demarcate science from pseudoscience[0]). Second, this isn't something I'm making up–this is _central_ to what philosophy is methodologically about and has been since its inception. Third, It's more than likely you'd _fail_ a philosophy program if you didn't demonstrate critical thinking skills by the end of it. I've tutored philosophy students so I've witnessed first-hand the process whereby one tries to show a young person the difference between mere opinion and reasoned argument. With other disciplines (depending on the level) it's sort of assumed that one already has critical thinking skills or that at least they'll develop along the way. A core remit of philosophy is to think about what it means to think critically and therefore by bringing attention and awareness to this the student ought to develop that faculty. > I also think it's very hard to teach philosophy well, and that a poorly taught philosophy course can easily detract from critical thinking rather than bolster it. I took my share of philosophy courses as an undergrad, and a good half of them were glorified history classes with strong implications that certain viewpoints were "wrong" and others were "right." I suppose you could say those courses were not really philosophy courses if they were taught that way, but then I would say it's unfair to say that philosophy education improves critical thinking if you will only admit examples where it does so. I'm sorry your experience was sub-par. Certainly what I am pointing out to you is an ideal. I freely admit that it is always possible to not reach this ideal but then that's just normal human failings. --- Having said that, there is a reference to an quasi-empirical study and meta-analysis here but I think the results are inconclusive[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem [1] http://dailynous.com/2015/10/22/does-philosophy-improve-critical-thinking/ http://dailynous.com/2015/10/22/does-philosophy-improve-crit...
justin66 9y ago
> The irony is that when philosophers make statements like these, they never provide any empirical evidence to back it up. How many actual philosophers have you communicated with on the matter?
tommorris 9y ago
There's some evidence that philosophy majors score pretty high on the GMAT (for graduate admissions to business school) and on the LSAT (for law school), as well as pretty good on the GRE Verbal and GRE Analytical Writing tests. Less good at the GRE Quantitative Reasoning than all the science disciplines (and economics) but better than the rest of the arts and humanities subjects (and better than accounting, which is slightly worrying). See http://dailynous.com/value-of-philosophy/charts-and-graphs/ http://dailynous.com/value-of-philosophy/charts-and-graphs/ Also: https://www.salon.com/2013/07/01/be_employable_study_philosophy_partner/ https://www.salon.com/2013/07/01/be_employable_study_philoso... http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/why-philosophy-majors-rule_n_4891404 http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/why-philosophy-majors-... (I may be biased on this though: I have a BA and MA in Philosophy.)
- sevenfive 9y ago
  > There's some evidence that philosophy majors score pretty high on the GMAT (for graduate admissions to business school) and on the LSAT (for law school), as well as pretty good on the GRE Verbal and GRE Analytical Writing test As a philosophy major you should be the first to point out this doesn't imply causation.
  - vlunkr 9y ago
    This is the real problem. Philosophers can’t prove their own existence to themselves, how can they be expected to prove anything else?
    - klez 9y ago
      Descartes would like to have a word with you :)
      - jandrese 9y ago
        The guy who in the end just said "Fuck it, a Wizard (God) did it."? It's really interesting to see the logical hole he digs for himself in the book but then cops out in the end with a "Well, God is good so he wouldn't let something bad happen to us so we must exist."
tnecniv 9y ago
FWIW, philosophy majors are among the highest scoring majors on the LSAT.
platz 9y ago
Carlo Rovelli: "Why Physics needs Philosophy" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ0uPkG-pr4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ0uPkG-pr4 A few notes from the above: * the beginning of astronomy == plato's school * the scientific method as falsification == Popper * quantum theory / relativity / Heisenberg == positivism (If I don't see it (e.g. electron orbitals) it doesn't exist) (* e.g. complementarity) * Einstein claimed that his reading of Schopenhauer was crucial to thinking about time, space, etc... in essence, you are doing philosophy when you're re-evaluating your methodology and using a evolving reflective feedback loops to change your thinking. This is to say that advances in science are often preceded or co-created by a period of philosophy, which it becomes possible express the new scientific ideas, at which point, the philosophy recedes into the background (e.g. no longer is seen an 'philosophy') because it has already been 'accepted'. If you consider at the the fundamental problems involving physics these days, there is much philosophical activity there as well, but we don't know yet what will come out of it because it hasn't been 'solved' yet, compared to previous big jumps in scientific understanding.
- dcow 9y ago
  I mentioned this below, but it's even more relevant here: one of the most interesting things I learned in college is that physics departments used to be called natural philosophy. If you're interested in the cyclic nature of philosophy and dogma and the tension between them, check out Kuhn. He invented the term "paradigm shift". And as you allude to, he argues that "true progress" is impossible without a breakdown and reimagining of the prevailing belief system, the social rut, that has captured people's immediate attention.
  - nerfhammer 9y ago
    "natural philosopher" = "scientist" before we had a separate term for it.
  - Tomte 9y ago
    All the sciences gradually split off from philosophy: physics, biology, chemistry, sociology, psychology, ..., even theology. Whenever a subfield of philosophy got to the point that it had sufficiently many interesting theories to occupy several people fulltime, it got its own name (for practical reasons) and, after some time, was considered to be its own.
igravious 9y ago
It is sometimes argued that one can find answers about philosophy in the even more abstract field of metaphilosophy–philosophy of/about philosophy. Given that the study of X is usually termed Xology let's call the study of philosophy philosophology. An ugly word, safe from thieves and brigands. Pirsig uses it in his Zen and the Art… reboot Lila–I came up with it independently recently if you're so inclined to believe me. The world is not divided up into stuff we believe because we have empirical evidence for it and stuff we don't because we don't. For instance, the animal that jumps on my lap and purrs is called a cat. Would you say that I know its a cat because of empirical evidence? Would you say that I know that it is called 'cat' because of empirical evidence? Philosophy is a discipline. Discipline can be divided into how and what. _How_ are the methods. Hence, a title like 'Discourse on the Method'[0]. So part of the business of philosophy is to train your mind to be able to manipulate certain thinky-stuff in a reliable way†. Like learning to ride a bike. You don't need empirical evidence that philosophy does this. That's one of its raison(s?) d'etre! One can learn these mental habits in other disciplines, sure–but philosophy is especially concerned about them methodologically speaking. Secondly the _What_. This is what people mean when they ask the question, What is philosophy about? or What is it for? That is trickier … :) but I like the Wilfrid Sellar's answer, “The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term” Of course, the devil is in the details! [0] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/59/59-h/59-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/59/59-h/59-h.htm [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sellars/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sellars/ † examples: learning to spot your own cognitive biases, learning about logical fallacies, reading the works of great thinkers to see how their minds worked, practising mulling concepts over in a measured way oneself in solitude and in dialogue, and so on
Parcissons 9y ago
Like all reasoning, philosophys logic (which is the base of math) ultimatly rest upon a foundation of axioms. These axioms are usually laid out and discussed in great lengths. Fore example: 1. "To draw a straight line from any point to any point." 2. "To produce [extend] a finite straight line continuously in a straight line." 3. "To describe a circle with any centre and distance [radius]." 4. "That all right angles are equal to one another." 5. "That, if a straight line falling on two straight lines make the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles." These are the euclidean axioms, on which a whole field of math by a navelchain of proofs draws its certainty. One is of course free to doubt and question these axioms. This is science, so what does not kill it makes it stronger. If one is a real philosopher, the same accurate reasoning and sound arguing is expected of you, no matter what subject one approaches. Linguistics and Law, Aesthetics and Mathematics, the Meaning of Life and the Meaningless of Life, all have to live beneath this sharp sword. So if you can proof that one of this axioms is not fact, then all that you stated is right.If you can not proof these axioms wrong, the may be right, but have to live in the shadow of doubt for all eternity. Thus not one of the arts, thus none of the applied sciences, thus - the first science.
birdtime 9y ago
Philosophy improves critical thinking and reasoning skills but it requires active engagement in philosophical literature and inquiry. I can tell by your understanding of philosophy as "feeling" based that you haven't done this -- and you're missing out on a valuable form of rational inquiry. No it's not scientific. But to sit back, arms-crossed ready to rebuke anything philosophical because it fails to satisfy the criterion of a different discipline is so contrary to a healthy, open-minded, rational way of living.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 9y ago
  Do you concede philosophers never back up their statements with empirical evidence?
  - birdtime 9y ago
    Philosophy is not an empirical science.
  - wsy 9y ago
    This is an example how philosophers work: if I understood you correctly, you state that one must have empirical evidence to back up their position. If someone claims something without giving empirical evidence, their claim should be refuted (or at least ignored). However, your claim that empirical evidence is required to make a position valid, is itself not backed up by any empirical evidence. I can even give counter-evidence, e.g., mathematics works very well without empirical evidence, so it doesn't seem to be required to gain valid knowledge. (just to back up my philosophical argument with empirical evidence)
    - 0xdeadbeefbabe 9y ago
      Haha touché. Though the argument hurts my stomach somewhat.
- stdbrouw 9y ago
  I guess I'll have to throw away my MA in Philosophy then. If you read closely, you'll see that I didn't criticize philosophy, only the tendency of philosophers to make empirical statements about the practical value of their discipline without the empirical proof to back it up.
jmcmichael 9y ago
Philosophers explore and debate the very meaning of the words 'evidence', 'empirical', 'reasoning', 'facts', and various methods of knowing - many of which insist upon empirical evidence (e.g. science, history) and many which do not (e.g. praxeology, law, international relations). By insisting that all philosophy provide empirical evidence, you've misunderstood what philosophy actually does, and assumed the epistemology of empiricism - which has a number of flaws and contradictions (that any philosophical rationalist would be happy to point out).
- jdp23 9y ago
  Exactly right! I was about to say something similar but you phrased it much better than I would have :)
- stdbrouw 9y ago
  You misunderstand. The point is that "philosophy improves critical reasoning" is an empirical statement and hence requires empirical evidence. That doesn't mean philosophical discussions themselves must be empirical in nature. But when they refer to evidence, they do.
  - jmcmichael 9y ago
    You're going to run into problems attempting to operationalize a variable like 'critical reasoning', in order to demonstrate, scientifically, its empirical validity. In fact, you'll need the help of philosophers, who have been studying various ways of interpreting what critical reasoning actually means[1], and how to properly operationalize variables[2]. Reasoning - using logic to form conclusions, inferences, judgements - is a process defined, taught, and professionally applied by philosophers. So, teach students philosophy and some other 'control subject'. They learn logic, rhetoric, and how to follow complex chains of complex thought. It seems to be a difficult claim to make, that this experiment would some somehow not show an improvement in critical reasoning - however you operationalize it. [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-knowledge-externalism/supplement2.html https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-knowledge-externalis... [2]https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/#OpeUniAnaSciPra https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/#OpeUniAna...
knownothing 9y ago
Philosophy is important. The fact that you're even asking that question indicates a deep ignorance of the history of ideas and thought. It's also slightly absurd because empiricism is itself a philosophy. Empiricism, as a method, became important because Bacon wanted to replace Aristotle's logic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baconian_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baconian_method. That took about 2000 years to happen, just to give you a sense of scale. And it's what helped spur the scientific revolution so it's also why we've got our little laptops and Facebook today. The scientific revolution and scientific method are a branch off of a long, long conversation about the world, the nature of it, and how we should understand it. Now, that's not to say there's not a lot of silly, useless garbage being put out under the guise of "philosophy". That's definitely the case. The challenge is identifying productive or useful parts and using them in a coherent manner.
- gshulegaard 9y ago
  Not that I got very deep into mathematics but higher level math is all formal logic and proofs. There are mathematical theorems that are proven to be true/closed for many years by mathematicians before they find commercial/practical applications. For the HN audience, much of the power and usefulness of RDBMSs is derived from the relational model and the relational algebra it sits on [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_algebra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_algebra
Karrot_Kream 9y ago
There's nothing ironic about that. Your question itself reveals your own assumptions: * What is evidence? * What does it mean for evidence to be empirical? * What does "critical thinking" or "reasoning" mean? * What is a fact? Further (more meaty) questions to ask: * Does your concept of evidence support the existence of a single truth? * Can 2 people truly perceive the same fact in the same way? What does it mean to perceive a fact? And the list goes on
- stdbrouw 9y ago
  You're changing the subject. The fact that it is possible to have a discussion (whether empirical or not) about the nature of evidence or of what constitutes a fact, and even that this might be a very fruitful thing to discuss, does not suddenly make a statement like "philosophy improves critical thinking" true and beyond questioning.
anigbrowl 9y ago
Why won't this proponent of philosophical education provide me the education to assess the quality of the claims on its behalf?
abc_lisper 9y ago
> Does philosophy really improve critical thinking and reasoning skills? I hope that's a joke. Lest you ignore all those that laid the foundations of western thinking like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Socrates was the one of the first people to infer the validity of one's thinking by following the thinking to it's natural conclusion by asking questions. This is inline with (and probably inspired) verifying a scientific theory by making predictions and verifying them. Plato talked the theory of forms. That everything can be classified, abstracted, and reasoned about. The first is inline with classes (in OOPS), and the last part with functional programming. Aristotle took Plato's classification idea, and was the first known person to classify animals and plants. Oh, only that allowed the rest of science to startup. Btw, Socrates taught Plato who taught Aristotle. I am not a philosophy major, so I am sure what I covered is just a bit of what they did (and taught others). It is very necessary to know and understand how we came to think in a certain way today (because it is not natural), visit the foundations of the knowledge we have today, to understand the world when the tools we know and use are too specialized to use.

whataretensors 9y ago

My experience with philosophy was a mixture of half-baked history and distracting discussions that aren't useful.

asimpletune 9y ago
I don’t doubt that :)
tw1010 9y ago
This is the reason introducing mandatory programming in high school will likely cause more harm than good to the reputation of the field. (Don't judge a field of study by how it is taught.)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

tw1010 9y ago

How to measure this is itself a philosophical question.

fullshark 9y ago
No offense, but comments like this just make me think philosophy is intellectual masturbation.

tMcGrath 9y ago

In this case that's not true though - the article is about someone who used critical thinking/reasoning skills to make a huge amount of money, and credits this in large part to his training in philosophy. It's possible, of course, that Miller is mistaken about the origin of his critical thinking ability (or just got lucky, and there's no ability to credit), however on balance this seems like a strong piece of anecdata in favour of the hypothesis. I'm interested what would constitute empirical evidence for/against the claim "philosophy helps improve critical thinking". Are there accepted standardised measures of this?

igravious 9y ago
People who study carpentry tend to be better carpenters than people who study accounting. One of the aims of philosophy as a discipline is to instil the discipline of critical thinking, that's the purported business of philosophy after all. Would you ask someone who had studied carpentry for empirical evidence that studying carpentry produces people more skilled in the carpentry than if they had not studied it?
- somestag 9y ago
  > Would you ask someone who had studied carpentry for empirical evidence that studying carpentry produces people more skilled in the carpentry than if they had not studied it? Yes I would, if it seemed to me that an awful lot of people who had studied carpentry were mediocre carpenters, while many who hadn't studied carpentry were excellent carpenters. I would start to question the usefulness of carpentry study. I don't think we should accept that the study of philosophy improves critical thinking just because that is "one of the aims" of philosophy as a discipline. (One of the aims of homeopathic medicine is to cure disease, after all.) I certainly accept that you'd have a very hard time going through a philosophy program without ever thinking critically, but I'd say the same thing about a student in a comparative literature program. I also think it's very hard to teach philosophy well, and that a poorly taught philosophy course can easily detract from critical thinking rather than bolster it. I took my share of philosophy courses as an undergrad, and a good half of them were glorified history classes with strong implications that certain viewpoints were "wrong" and others were "right." I suppose you could say those courses were not really philosophy courses if they were taught that way, but then I would say it's unfair to say that philosophy education improves critical thinking if you will only admit examples where it does so.
  - igravious 9y ago
    > Yes I would, if it seemed to me that an awful lot of people who had studied carpentry were mediocre carpenters, while many who hadn't studied carpentry were excellent carpenters. I would start to question the usefulness of carpentry study. Well that's not really the point, is it? The point is that on average the person who studied carpentry is better than someone who hadn't studied it at all. > I don't think we should accept that the study of philosophy improves critical thinking just because that is "one of the aims" of philosophy as a discipline. (One of the aims of homeopathic medicine is to cure disease, after all.) I certainly accept that you'd have a very hard time going through a philosophy program without ever thinking critically, but I'd say the same thing about a student in a comparative literature program. That's actually rather insulting, you do realise that don't you? It's insulting in three different ways going by the way you've worded it. First, you've compared philosophy to something that is widely regarded as a pseudoscience (which is ironic considering that philosophy is that _very_ discipline that attempts to rigorously demarcate science from pseudoscience[0]). Second, this isn't something I'm making up–this is _central_ to what philosophy is methodologically about and has been since its inception. Third, It's more than likely you'd _fail_ a philosophy program if you didn't demonstrate critical thinking skills by the end of it. I've tutored philosophy students so I've witnessed first-hand the process whereby one tries to show a young person the difference between mere opinion and reasoned argument. With other disciplines (depending on the level) it's sort of assumed that one already has critical thinking skills or that at least they'll develop along the way. A core remit of philosophy is to think about what it means to think critically and therefore by bringing attention and awareness to this the student ought to develop that faculty. > I also think it's very hard to teach philosophy well, and that a poorly taught philosophy course can easily detract from critical thinking rather than bolster it. I took my share of philosophy courses as an undergrad, and a good half of them were glorified history classes with strong implications that certain viewpoints were "wrong" and others were "right." I suppose you could say those courses were not really philosophy courses if they were taught that way, but then I would say it's unfair to say that philosophy education improves critical thinking if you will only admit examples where it does so. I'm sorry your experience was sub-par. Certainly what I am pointing out to you is an ideal. I freely admit that it is always possible to not reach this ideal but then that's just normal human failings. --- Having said that, there is a reference to an quasi-empirical study and meta-analysis here but I think the results are inconclusive[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem [1] http://dailynous.com/2015/10/22/does-philosophy-improve-critical-thinking/ http://dailynous.com/2015/10/22/does-philosophy-improve-crit...

justin66 9y ago

> The irony is that when philosophers make statements like these, they never provide any empirical evidence to back it up. How many actual philosophers have you communicated with on the matter?

tommorris 9y ago

There's some evidence that philosophy majors score pretty high on the GMAT (for graduate admissions to business school) and on the LSAT (for law school), as well as pretty good on the GRE Verbal and GRE Analytical Writing tests. Less good at the GRE Quantitative Reasoning than all the science disciplines (and economics) but better than the rest of the arts and humanities subjects (and better than accounting, which is slightly worrying). See http://dailynous.com/value-of-philosophy/charts-and-graphs/ http://dailynous.com/value-of-philosophy/charts-and-graphs/ Also: https://www.salon.com/2013/07/01/be_employable_study_philosophy_partner/ https://www.salon.com/2013/07/01/be_employable_study_philoso... http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/why-philosophy-majors-rule_n_4891404 http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/why-philosophy-majors-... (I may be biased on this though: I have a BA and MA in Philosophy.)

sevenfive 9y ago
> There's some evidence that philosophy majors score pretty high on the GMAT (for graduate admissions to business school) and on the LSAT (for law school), as well as pretty good on the GRE Verbal and GRE Analytical Writing test As a philosophy major you should be the first to point out this doesn't imply causation.
- vlunkr 9y ago
  This is the real problem. Philosophers can’t prove their own existence to themselves, how can they be expected to prove anything else?
  - klez 9y ago
    Descartes would like to have a word with you :)
    - jandrese 9y ago
      The guy who in the end just said "Fuck it, a Wizard (God) did it."? It's really interesting to see the logical hole he digs for himself in the book but then cops out in the end with a "Well, God is good so he wouldn't let something bad happen to us so we must exist."

tnecniv 9y ago

FWIW, philosophy majors are among the highest scoring majors on the LSAT.

platz 9y ago

Carlo Rovelli: "Why Physics needs Philosophy" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ0uPkG-pr4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ0uPkG-pr4 A few notes from the above: * the beginning of astronomy == plato's school * the scientific method as falsification == Popper * quantum theory / relativity / Heisenberg == positivism (If I don't see it (e.g. electron orbitals) it doesn't exist) (* e.g. complementarity) * Einstein claimed that his reading of Schopenhauer was crucial to thinking about time, space, etc... in essence, you are doing philosophy when you're re-evaluating your methodology and using a evolving reflective feedback loops to change your thinking. This is to say that advances in science are often preceded or co-created by a period of philosophy, which it becomes possible express the new scientific ideas, at which point, the philosophy recedes into the background (e.g. no longer is seen an 'philosophy') because it has already been 'accepted'. If you consider at the the fundamental problems involving physics these days, there is much philosophical activity there as well, but we don't know yet what will come out of it because it hasn't been 'solved' yet, compared to previous big jumps in scientific understanding.

dcow 9y ago
I mentioned this below, but it's even more relevant here: one of the most interesting things I learned in college is that physics departments used to be called natural philosophy. If you're interested in the cyclic nature of philosophy and dogma and the tension between them, check out Kuhn. He invented the term "paradigm shift". And as you allude to, he argues that "true progress" is impossible without a breakdown and reimagining of the prevailing belief system, the social rut, that has captured people's immediate attention.
- nerfhammer 9y ago
  "natural philosopher" = "scientist" before we had a separate term for it.
- Tomte 9y ago
  All the sciences gradually split off from philosophy: physics, biology, chemistry, sociology, psychology, ..., even theology. Whenever a subfield of philosophy got to the point that it had sufficiently many interesting theories to occupy several people fulltime, it got its own name (for practical reasons) and, after some time, was considered to be its own.

igravious 9y ago

It is sometimes argued that one can find answers about philosophy in the even more abstract field of metaphilosophy–philosophy of/about philosophy. Given that the study of X is usually termed Xology let's call the study of philosophy philosophology. An ugly word, safe from thieves and brigands. Pirsig uses it in his Zen and the Art… reboot Lila–I came up with it independently recently if you're so inclined to believe me. The world is not divided up into stuff we believe because we have empirical evidence for it and stuff we don't because we don't. For instance, the animal that jumps on my lap and purrs is called a cat. Would you say that I know its a cat because of empirical evidence? Would you say that I know that it is called 'cat' because of empirical evidence? Philosophy is a discipline. Discipline can be divided into how and what. _How_ are the methods. Hence, a title like 'Discourse on the Method'[0]. So part of the business of philosophy is to train your mind to be able to manipulate certain thinky-stuff in a reliable way†. Like learning to ride a bike. You don't need empirical evidence that philosophy does this. That's one of its raison(s?) d'etre! One can learn these mental habits in other disciplines, sure–but philosophy is especially concerned about them methodologically speaking. Secondly the _What_. This is what people mean when they ask the question, What is philosophy about? or What is it for? That is trickier … :) but I like the Wilfrid Sellar's answer, “The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term” Of course, the devil is in the details! [0] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/59/59-h/59-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/59/59-h/59-h.htm [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sellars/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sellars/ † examples: learning to spot your own cognitive biases, learning about logical fallacies, reading the works of great thinkers to see how their minds worked, practising mulling concepts over in a measured way oneself in solitude and in dialogue, and so on

Parcissons 9y ago

Like all reasoning, philosophys logic (which is the base of math) ultimatly rest upon a foundation of axioms. These axioms are usually laid out and discussed in great lengths. Fore example: 1. "To draw a straight line from any point to any point." 2. "To produce [extend] a finite straight line continuously in a straight line." 3. "To describe a circle with any centre and distance [radius]." 4. "That all right angles are equal to one another." 5. "That, if a straight line falling on two straight lines make the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles." These are the euclidean axioms, on which a whole field of math by a navelchain of proofs draws its certainty. One is of course free to doubt and question these axioms. This is science, so what does not kill it makes it stronger. If one is a real philosopher, the same accurate reasoning and sound arguing is expected of you, no matter what subject one approaches. Linguistics and Law, Aesthetics and Mathematics, the Meaning of Life and the Meaningless of Life, all have to live beneath this sharp sword. So if you can proof that one of this axioms is not fact, then all that you stated is right.If you can not proof these axioms wrong, the may be right, but have to live in the shadow of doubt for all eternity. Thus not one of the arts, thus none of the applied sciences, thus - the first science.

birdtime 9y ago

Philosophy improves critical thinking and reasoning skills but it requires active engagement in philosophical literature and inquiry. I can tell by your understanding of philosophy as "feeling" based that you haven't done this -- and you're missing out on a valuable form of rational inquiry. No it's not scientific. But to sit back, arms-crossed ready to rebuke anything philosophical because it fails to satisfy the criterion of a different discipline is so contrary to a healthy, open-minded, rational way of living.

0xdeadbeefbabe 9y ago
Do you concede philosophers never back up their statements with empirical evidence?
- birdtime 9y ago
  Philosophy is not an empirical science.
- wsy 9y ago
  This is an example how philosophers work: if I understood you correctly, you state that one must have empirical evidence to back up their position. If someone claims something without giving empirical evidence, their claim should be refuted (or at least ignored). However, your claim that empirical evidence is required to make a position valid, is itself not backed up by any empirical evidence. I can even give counter-evidence, e.g., mathematics works very well without empirical evidence, so it doesn't seem to be required to gain valid knowledge. (just to back up my philosophical argument with empirical evidence)
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 9y ago
    Haha touché. Though the argument hurts my stomach somewhat.
stdbrouw 9y ago
I guess I'll have to throw away my MA in Philosophy then. If you read closely, you'll see that I didn't criticize philosophy, only the tendency of philosophers to make empirical statements about the practical value of their discipline without the empirical proof to back it up.

jmcmichael 9y ago

Philosophers explore and debate the very meaning of the words 'evidence', 'empirical', 'reasoning', 'facts', and various methods of knowing - many of which insist upon empirical evidence (e.g. science, history) and many which do not (e.g. praxeology, law, international relations). By insisting that all philosophy provide empirical evidence, you've misunderstood what philosophy actually does, and assumed the epistemology of empiricism - which has a number of flaws and contradictions (that any philosophical rationalist would be happy to point out).

jdp23 9y ago
Exactly right! I was about to say something similar but you phrased it much better than I would have :)
stdbrouw 9y ago
You misunderstand. The point is that "philosophy improves critical reasoning" is an empirical statement and hence requires empirical evidence. That doesn't mean philosophical discussions themselves must be empirical in nature. But when they refer to evidence, they do.
- jmcmichael 9y ago
  You're going to run into problems attempting to operationalize a variable like 'critical reasoning', in order to demonstrate, scientifically, its empirical validity. In fact, you'll need the help of philosophers, who have been studying various ways of interpreting what critical reasoning actually means[1], and how to properly operationalize variables[2]. Reasoning - using logic to form conclusions, inferences, judgements - is a process defined, taught, and professionally applied by philosophers. So, teach students philosophy and some other 'control subject'. They learn logic, rhetoric, and how to follow complex chains of complex thought. It seems to be a difficult claim to make, that this experiment would some somehow not show an improvement in critical reasoning - however you operationalize it. [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-knowledge-externalism/supplement2.html https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-knowledge-externalis... [2]https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/#OpeUniAnaSciPra https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/#OpeUniAna...

knownothing 9y ago

Philosophy is important. The fact that you're even asking that question indicates a deep ignorance of the history of ideas and thought. It's also slightly absurd because empiricism is itself a philosophy. Empiricism, as a method, became important because Bacon wanted to replace Aristotle's logic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baconian_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baconian_method. That took about 2000 years to happen, just to give you a sense of scale. And it's what helped spur the scientific revolution so it's also why we've got our little laptops and Facebook today. The scientific revolution and scientific method are a branch off of a long, long conversation about the world, the nature of it, and how we should understand it. Now, that's not to say there's not a lot of silly, useless garbage being put out under the guise of "philosophy". That's definitely the case. The challenge is identifying productive or useful parts and using them in a coherent manner.

gshulegaard 9y ago
Not that I got very deep into mathematics but higher level math is all formal logic and proofs. There are mathematical theorems that are proven to be true/closed for many years by mathematicians before they find commercial/practical applications. For the HN audience, much of the power and usefulness of RDBMSs is derived from the relational model and the relational algebra it sits on [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_algebra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_algebra

Karrot_Kream 9y ago

There's nothing ironic about that. Your question itself reveals your own assumptions: * What is evidence? * What does it mean for evidence to be empirical? * What does "critical thinking" or "reasoning" mean? * What is a fact? Further (more meaty) questions to ask: * Does your concept of evidence support the existence of a single truth? * Can 2 people truly perceive the same fact in the same way? What does it mean to perceive a fact? And the list goes on

stdbrouw 9y ago
You're changing the subject. The fact that it is possible to have a discussion (whether empirical or not) about the nature of evidence or of what constitutes a fact, and even that this might be a very fruitful thing to discuss, does not suddenly make a statement like "philosophy improves critical thinking" true and beyond questioning.

anigbrowl 9y ago

Why won't this proponent of philosophical education provide me the education to assess the quality of the claims on its behalf?

abc_lisper 9y ago

> Does philosophy really improve critical thinking and reasoning skills? I hope that's a joke. Lest you ignore all those that laid the foundations of western thinking like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Socrates was the one of the first people to infer the validity of one's thinking by following the thinking to it's natural conclusion by asking questions. This is inline with (and probably inspired) verifying a scientific theory by making predictions and verifying them. Plato talked the theory of forms. That everything can be classified, abstracted, and reasoned about. The first is inline with classes (in OOPS), and the last part with functional programming. Aristotle took Plato's classification idea, and was the first known person to classify animals and plants. Oh, only that allowed the rest of science to startup. Btw, Socrates taught Plato who taught Aristotle. I am not a philosophy major, so I am sure what I covered is just a bit of what they did (and taught others). It is very necessary to know and understand how we came to think in a certain way today (because it is not natural), visit the foundations of the knowledge we have today, to understand the world when the tools we know and use are too specialized to use.