17 ms·

Has there been progress in philosophy?

159 points by mathattack 8y ago

Xophmeister 8y ago
What's special, from a philosophical point of view, about Singapore? It's number 12 in the list, but is not explained why, besides the subclause of "in fact most other places/polities in the world." So, specifically, what's special about the Singaporean government?
- microcolonel 8y ago
  That's the problem with meaningless nonsense: there's virtually nothing to it except the clickbait title.
- coldtea 8y ago
  How it combined a single party near-dictatorship with market success and lotsa consumption.
- currymj 8y ago
  the author (Tyler Cowen) regularly talks about how Singapore has a particularly effective and well-run government.
- wenc 8y ago
  If you've been following Marginal Revolution for a while, you'll know that Tyler Cowen (who has libertarian leanings) is endlessly fascinated by Singapore. It's one of the most free-market places in the world, yet it has huge government ("a high quality bureaucracy", as Tyler terms it). This pushes against the thinking of libertarians just slightly. The qualifier though is that for this to work the government has to be good -- and once you go beyond the size of a city-state, that becomes more difficult to achieve. Also, Tyler may not fully grasp the liberty you have to give up to achieve such a government in Singapore because he has never lived there. [1] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/08/why-singapore-is-special.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/08/wh... [2] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/my-worries-about-singapore.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/my... [3] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/12/how-to-visit-singapore.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/12/ho...
  - sp332 8y ago
    Disneyland with the Death Penalty (1993) https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/ https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/ It's illegal to buy gum in Singapore without a prescription. You may like Singapore - here's a more positive take by Dan Sivers https://sivers.org/sg14 https://sivers.org/sg14 - but I've never heard it described as "free market" let alone anything that would appeal to a libertarian as such.
    - Xophmeister 8y ago
      That was a really good read. Wired should pay Gibson to write a 25-years-later follow-up!
      - wenc 8y ago
        You should also know that that Gibson article is a one-sided view that was written on the basis of a very short stay in Singapore. It's an entertaining opinion piece to be sure, but if you want to derive anything useful from it, I would advise reading it critically.
DanielBMarkham 8y ago
I agree with the author that there has been progress. Oddly enough, the more important philosophy becomes, the more invisible it is to people -- even the people making the progress! The ideas are the air, the questions are being asked, and leading practitioners, many times simply from being part of the environment, pick up the conversation in a much better place than they would have, say, 50 years ago. The interesting question is the reverse: where has the progress of philosophy failed or gone backwards? (I imagine asking and talking about such a question would be quite controversial!)
MaxBarraclough 8y ago
What do we mean by 'philosophy'? They don't seem to be referring to professional philosophers in university philosophy departments, but instead to patterns of thought widespread in society. I see a comment there making much the same point - https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/05/has-there-been-progress-in-philosophy.html#blog-comment-159821404 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/05/ha...
- xHopen 8y ago
  That comment totally got it. When S. Hawking said, philosophy is dead, he was right, was death for him, the the gross of the world still doesn't understand what essentially philosophy is, and more important, how it can help you, therefore , when people will start questioning basic behevoirs and trying to understand basic things then , philopsohy will have reach the end , which is teaching the humans to think by themselves . At least this is what I think.
  - MaxBarraclough 8y ago
    No, that doesn't sound right at all. The second paragraph of the linked comment has it right: professional philosophers are in the business of clarifying fuzzy ideas, such as for example, what is meant by 'free will'? University philosophy departments are not in the business of teaching critical-thinking skills to the masses. That is the responsibility of high-schools. (Or at least, it should be.) Indeed, the works of proper philosophers are generally completely unknown to those who haven't formally studied philosophy. I doubt your average STEM graduate could name 3 living philosophers. (I'm of the opinion that this says bad things about what philosophy has become, but that's not the point.) That's how we end up with articles like this, which claim to summarise the recent progress of philosophy, but make no mention at all of any real philosophy, recent or not.
OrganicMSG 8y ago
Well, we have progressed to philosophers like John Gray (the author of Straw Dogs, not the relationship counselor who wrote that Mars/Venus thingy), though he would presumably argue that we haven't, given his views on progress. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmRBHCclzZk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmRBHCclzZk
devinhelton 8y ago
It seems what happened is that all the promising/useful areas of inquiry from ancient philosophy have since become their own fields. "Natural philosophy" became physics/biology/chemistry and so forth. Thus university philosophy departments were basically left with the dregs -- lots of debates over non-falsifiable claims, lots of debates caused by poor definitions of words. Ethics is the only subfield of modern philosophy I can think of that seems useful and interesting to me. Maybe political philosophy too, but that has mainly moved to the political science department.
- zwkrt 8y ago
  doesn't it seem like hubris to assume that philosophy has stopped producing "successful" fields? Computer science broke off less than 100 years ago...
  - foldr 8y ago
    And one might add that the branching off point was some extremely esoteric work in the foundations of mathematics and philosophy of language that would have struck most people at the time as entirely speculative and useless.
MikkoFinell 8y ago
Free will has been settled though, hasn't it? The best case for it these days seem to be a language game called "compatibilism" where you redefine free will to mean something vague about acting according to motivations, and when someone accepts that definition you turn around and say "Aha! We do have free will after all!"
- Symmetry 8y ago
  A more charitable way of putting it is that naive understandings of free will are incoherent but if we're going to have to make up a definition of free will we might as well do so while maintaining as much of traditional distinctions between free will and non-free will as possible. For instance if I decide hit someone and do so that might be considered blameworthy. If someone else decides to pick me up and throw me at that person then that wouldn't be blameworthy of me. Traditionally you'd distinguish between these by invoking free will and I think that's a useful distinction to make.
  - MikkoFinell 8y ago
    Well, since we are motivated by self preservation it might make sense to talk about blameworthiness when we figure out whether to lock you up or the person who threw you, or to cut out the brain tumor that caused you to suddenly become aggressive. Invoking free will still does not make any sense though, because you cannot choose your past, and I don't think you can argue that the past doesn't have any causal influence over you.
    - Symmetry 8y ago
      The notion that something is only free will if it uncaused is not at all the compatibalist position. The general compatibilist position is that an action is done with free will of a person if the causal chain it is part of runs through that person's intent for the action to occur, or conventionally that person's 'will'. If you choose to define an action as representing free will only if it is uncaused then first, you've made up a definition entirely at odds with the normal English usages and, second, your definition is useless because it only cuts actions into those actions that exist and those that don't and we already have a perfectly good word for that so the new one is redundant.
lainon 8y ago
Anyone interested in this topic should read Chalmers' paper "Why Isn't There More Progress in Philosophy?" http://consc.net/papers/progress.pdf http://consc.net/papers/progress.pdf
avip 8y ago
There cannot be "progress" in a field without agreed upon mechanism to decide what's "right" or "good". In math, we have proofs. In science - experiments. For med we use double-blinded tests. In tech - what works is king. Philosophy as a discipline is too poorly designed to assign proper meaning to the term "progress".
- pjmorris 8y ago
  In math, don't proofs only show whether something is consistent, not that something is 'better?' I'd wager the credit you are assigning math is based more on its utility when applied rather than to anything inherent to proofs. So, maybe the question to ask is 'Have there been changes in how philosophy is usefully applied?' Seems like there could be. For example, I'm wagering that there's plenty of applied philosophical work to be done in the ethics of automated machinery like, say, automobile braking systems.
  - avip 8y ago
    The point is there's no disagreement among mathematicians wrt the mechanism of (dis)proving claims. It has nothing to do with usefulness, consistency, or the set of axioms assumed.
    - foldr 8y ago
      There's plenty of disagreement among people who actually think about what it means to prove or disprove a mathematical claim (which is a tiny, tiny minority of mathematicians). See finitism, intuitionism, etc. There is unlikely to be an agreed-upon mechanism for determining progress in philosophy for the obvious reason that what constitutes philosophical progress is itself a difficult and rather important philosophical question.
      - avip 8y ago
        The groups you've mentioned set forth their axioms and accepted logic and construct their math accordingly. There's no disagreement here, as there's no "disagreement" between Euclid and Lobachevsky.
forapurpose 8y ago
Why is Tyler Cowan, an economist, trying to answer this question himself? Why doesn't he interview a philosopher or several? Would we read a philosopher talk about progress in economics? Will Cowan next address progress in software engineering? There's a real intellectual arrogance to the post.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ctkrohn 8y ago
  He's actually done a few of those, for example this recent interview with Agnes Callard https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/agnes-callard-tyler-cowen-philosophy-socrates-plato-literature-c70a73cd38eb https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/agnes-callard-ty...
- TheCowboy 8y ago
  I think people generally don't speak well on the topic of economics, but it would be fine if an informed philosopher inquired about "progress" in economics. The topic of the philosophy of economics itself often is ignored or swept under the rug, and that's a shame. Economics has a lot to offer and isn't just what the ideological conceit of the moment deems it to be. Additionally, people should show an interest in fields that are external to their own narrow specialty, and ask meaningful questions to help them understand. The perspectives and methods of economics could definitely provide some insight on the topic of software engineering. It's a historically recent phenomenon, and there is plenty to be studied about its impact.
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    > it would be fine if an informed philosopher inquired about "progress" in economics Inquiring is different than answering the question yourself by naming things easily accessible to economists - it implies that Cowan doesn't know anymore about philosophy than I do, and that his standard of 'progress' is 'things that I find useful'.
cleong 8y ago
No, philosophy as a academic field has failed. It's common knowledge for those in the field to know that none of the primary problems of philosophy has been solved despite being worked on for 2000 years. What every academic tries to do now is work on the secondary problems.
- woodruffw 8y ago
  > It's common knowledge for those in the field to know that none of the primary problems of philosophy has been solved despite being worked on for 2000 years. We have different definitions of "failure." Without the last 2000 years of philosophy, we wouldn't have formal logic, liberal democracy, the existential outlook, or any number of fundamental conceits that you and I use on a daily basis. Whether or not any single fundamental question has been "solved" is irrelevant to progress in a field like philosophy.
- stepvhen 8y ago
  could you clairify the following: what is an example of a primary problem? what is an example of a secondary problem? what is failure by your definition? what state would a problem be in if it were "solved"? is a problem solved when everybody agrees on a solution? what, then, happens when a contrarian states otherwise? e.g. parmenides was one of the first monists, and that was more or less not acknowledged for a long time after plato, but has since come back into vogue somewhat; was the problem of "is our universe one" solved, and then unsolved?
  - cleong 8y ago
    Look into every sub field of philosophy and the debates that have gone on about certain topics for thousands of years. For example, the mind-body problem in epistemology. To clarify, no the field is not based on social consensus but logic. How do we explain certain things? For example, Kant believed that logic as a field had been "solved" in the sense there needs no more progress in the field as the techniques developed were sufficient to solve logic problems. Until Godel came along and improved on logic in the 20th century. Solving in this sense is a technical definition not the social one.
nabla9 8y ago
Question of free will as a fundamental philosophical question is settled in a sense that it made only sense together with dualism and soul (there are still people who are dualists and believe in individual entity called soul. For them the question remains). Albert Einstein: >I do not believe we can have any freedom at all in the philosophical sense, for we act not only under external compulsion but also by inner necessity. Schopenhauer’s saying— “A man can surely do what he wills to do, but he cannot determine what he wills”—impressed itself upon me in youth and has always consoled me when I have witnessed or suffered life’s hardships. This conviction is a perpetual breeder of tolerance, for it does not allow us to take ourselves or others too seriously; it makes rather for a sense of humor. Modern version of free will has degenerated into question of deterministic vs randomness and few other more vague branches. If human makes random decision, he is making random decision not free decision. Calling it "free will" is just a way to make the question sound more important.
- foldr 8y ago
  >Question of free will as a fundamental philosophical question is settled in a sense that it made only sense together with dualism and soul It might be settled from your own point of view, but it's certainly a matter of current philosophical controversy whether physicalism entails the absence of free will.
  - nabla9 8y ago
    The modern question of free is very different from the "the will does not have to be such as it is". Remaining issues in physicalism and free will requires a radical revision of the term. It's like asking something completely different.
    - foldr 8y ago
      No, whether or not free will in the classical sense exists is still debated, even among physicalists.
      - 8y ago
alehul 8y ago
If I'm understanding correctly, it seems similar to saying that there's been progress in math because there's been progress in physics [1] and economics, both of which are largely based on math. I think it would be more accurate to differentiate between "progress in other fields that utilize well-known, age-old x" and "progress in x." [1] Some progress in physics has been as a result of new discoveries in math, such as the strong cosmic censorship conjecture being disproved recently
ofrzeta 8y ago
There can be no progress in philosophy because there's no clear definition or consensus on neither the content, the objectives or the method of philosophy. The very notion of "progress" implies a kind of scientific philosophy that is a very recent (20th century) development. In my view Analytic Philosophy (that I studied while at university) reduces philosophical thought to linguistic and logical analysis and therefore is a depleted form of philosophy. If you accept the premise that philosophy should enrich people's lives metaphysical and speculative thoughts clearly can't be excluded. This is also what the (later) Wittgenstein thought, for instance. With the recent return to ancient thinkers like the Stoa I see that people might get more value out of philosophy. No progress there in the eternal wisdom of humanity.
- Retric 8y ago
  Assuming I accept your argument. If there can be no progress what's the point? It's fun is a perfectly valid justification IMO, but not something that necessarily brings prestige etc.
- stepvhen 8y ago
  i think there is value in analytic philosophy, mostly when used as a tool to clear up otherwise muddy issues. Case in point, Jay F. Rosenberg's "Thinking Clearly About Death." In the second half he spends his time clearing up moral arguments about euthenasia, letting die, and rational suicide, using analytic philosophy. he only comes to a definite conclusion on the rational suicide argument, but his clarifications are invaluable in the other cases.
maze-le 8y ago
I think, philosophy has not answered all the questions posed by Plato and Aristotle but it has put up quite some more interesting questions since then. Science has answered some of these questions -- Nameley in the fields of astronomy, biology and geology wich was considered natural philosophy in ancient times. For anyone interested in this topic, I hereby plug one of my favourite podcasts: https://historyofphilosophy.net/ https://historyofphilosophy.net/
normalhuman 8y ago
I argue that we live in an anti-philosophy era. I'm not sure this will change in our lifetimes, but I think it will necessarily change if we survive for long enough. To illustrate: there is common belief that metaphysics became irrelevant -- that it was replaced by science. This is, in itself, a metaphysical position, and a misunderstand about what science is and does. Of course, reasoning about what science is and does is part of philosophy. So is the discussion of knowledge itself, what is knowable and how can we trust the various methods of seeking more knowledge. A lot of stuff surrounding these topics happened in the XX century. The acritical use of the yardstick of "progress" as the ultimate value for everything (along with its little cousin: "productivity") is, in itself, a philosophical position. One that is currently maintained by social norms and authority. Which does not mean it is "wrong". I am only claiming that it is accepted by most people without any reflection. Some boundaries of scientific knowledge are quite visible. For example, consciousness. You might argue that consciousness emerges from matter interacting in a complex way (emergentism), and you might be right, but this is accepted as a serious scientific theory although it has zero content -- no way to falsify empirically, no explanatory mechanism proposed. Real philosophy is a very subversive endeavor at the moment. Perhaps it always was. It's something for those who love knowledge, but not for those who expect any public recognition.
- Retric 8y ago
  > reasoning about what science is and does is part of philosophy Only if you approach Philosophy with a lot more rigor and math than what people have historically done. The useful parts of discussing what you call the 'philosophy of science' involves quite a bit of statistics for example. What people call useless is cruft dealing with Known Unknowable's which suck up time without getting anywhere. IMO, it's not that Philosophy is dead, it's just when you keep calling the useful bit's something else eventually people don't care about the leftovers.
  - TelmoMenezes 8y ago
    > Only if you approach Philosophy with a lot more rigor and math than what people have historically done. The useful parts of discussing what you call the 'philosophy of science' involves quite a bit of statistics for example. I disagree. For example, Karl Popper's positions on the philosophy of science became the current mainstream view. His positions are not based on statistics, but on good-old-fashioned qualitative reasoning. I know many scientists who mention Popper by name when discussing such matters. Carl Sagan also helped popularize it in his book "Demon-Haunted World", with his "invisible dragon in the garage" story. The ability to do statistics at incredible scales (currently known as Machine Learning) raises further questions about what science should be. Questions about such quantitative methods themselves. Rigor does not have to be quantitative in nature -- and let's not forget that the very idea of quantitative science was introduced by Descartes, another famous philosopher. > What people call useless is cruft dealing with Known Unknowable's which suck up time without getting anywhere. Depends on where you want to get. Noncommunicable knowledge is a very interesting topic, for those with the inclination. It is ok if you are not curious about such things, but I would argue that it is also ok to be. It deeply intersects mathematical logic (e.g. Gödel) and theoretical computer science (e.g. the halting problem). Will it help us create better gadgets? Probably not? Will it help us better understand the human condition? Probably yes.
btilly 8y ago
Calling things like Claude Shannon's work on information "progress in philosophy" is like claiming Einstein's theory of General Relativity "progress in linguistics". It is only true in a way that makes it essentially meaningless. Unless the people doing the work considered themselves philosophers, or drew on schools of thought from philosophy, you're claiming credit to philosophy from something that philosophy had nothing to do with.
- empath75 8y ago
  Einstein's Theory of Relativity _was_ progress in philosophy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Mach#Philosophy_of_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Mach#Philosophy_of_scien...
  - btilly 8y ago
    Philosophy, yes. But not linguistics.
- singularity2001 8y ago
  Any advanced system of philosophy should incorporate information theory.
- whytaka 8y ago
  What about information theory excludes a love of wisdom? All disciplines stem from Philosophy and Math.
outlace 8y ago
In the spirit of Popper and Deutsch, I’d argue that philosophy makes progress in the same way all branches of knowledge do: filtering out bad ideas. The Popperian notion of scientific progress as an evolutionary process of conjectures and refutations applies just as well to philosophy. Philosophy gives us the tools to stamp out bad ideas and let the better ones rise to the surface. (Better ~= survive refutation longer). Without being able to run an experiment on a philosophical conjecture in most cases, however, it is much more difficult to refute a purely philosophical conjecture than a scientific one. But many old philosophical ideas have been refuted on the basis of logical inconsistency or bad premises. So I’d expect the kinds of philosophical ideas we debate today have a higher proportion of truth than what was debated 500+ years ago.
mrleiter 8y ago
Asking for progress in philosophy is the wrong way to approach it. Philosophy is a domain that lives on exploring new ideas, asking different questions, refining answers. A more appropriate approach in my opinion would be to ask if there has been a consistent evolution in philosophy? Do ideas and areas build on its predecessors. Do they take reference? Another approach would be asking whether philosophy has impacted mankind in any way that is understandable? Each era had its philosophers and trains of thought.
neokantian 8y ago
If science is statements about facts, then philosophy is statements about other statements, the only requirement being that these statements are non-contradictory. That makes mathematics just a subdivision in philosophy, in which statements about statements must be (axiomatically) derived exclusively from a completely explicit starting point. Since math mostly took over logic and epistemology (as computability), general philosophy has indeed lost its most important subjects. Philosophy is simply meant to shrink and downsize. Reasoning without any particular method gets naturally replaced by reasoning with one. If philosophy had grown, that would not have been a good sign. It would not have been progress.
- arf 8y ago
  > the only requirement being that these statements are non-contradictory. > That makes mathematics just a subdivision in philosophy, in which statements about statements must be (axiomatically) derived exclusively from a completely explicit starting point. The main problem with philosophy is exactly the reason which makes above wrong. A global definition of 'contradiction' is not possible, Nor is even something that resembles a consensus to a sufficiently strong degree to make it meaningful. This is precisely the reason why you can have radically opposing schools of thought that are simultaneously existing. The trivial example being mathematical empiricism or coherentism, both of which directly oppose the axiomatic approach you've provided, from different angles. A more absurd example is to say it's never the case that all philosophers would agree "P and not P" is not true (including the sentence itself), let alone it being false (i.e. negation as failure), because the value of "P and not P" is dependent upon your theory of truth and no global theory of truth exist without G.E. Moorean appeals to common-sense.
sethish 8y ago
Philosophy is sophistry. I like R. Scott Bakker's take on the semantic apocalypse, and the lack of progress in philosophy. https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/what-is-the-semantic-apocalypse/ https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/what-is-the-semant...
- TooBrokeToBeg 8y ago
  Arguing about the progress in philosophy is sophistry. There's been plenty of progress that has affected lots of lives. It just doesn't happen to fit someone else's narratives or views.
acchow 8y ago
On a related note, I still love this interview: Scott Aaronson on Philosophical Progress: https://intelligence.org/2013/12/13/aaronson/ https://intelligence.org/2013/12/13/aaronson/
visarga 8y ago
I think the philosophy community (that was scared by behaviourism decades ago) needs to take a good hard look at reinforcement learning and representation learning. They can clarify many philosophical problems. The hard-problem of consciousness was a detour, a wrong direction. It led to nothing in the end - just wasted decades. It was dualism in disguise. You don't even need the notion of consciousness - just use the concept of agent, agent-environment relation and reinforcement - all being well defined, sound concepts unlike consciousness which doesn't even have an official definition.
- carapace 8y ago
  "consciousness" has a definition: You. It's a common misconception that there's no way to detect consciousness. It has no qualities and so cannot be measured, but consciousness can be detected by other consciousness. Since you are conscious you can detect consciousness in other beings. What's actually happening is that what we call consciousness is unitary and co-extensive with the entire Universe. When two people merge consciousness' they are just increasing the bandwidth between themselves until they are effectively a single organism, the separate self-models in each person merge into an integrated self-model. People do this spontaneously sometimes when the sex is really good.
  - visarga 8y ago
    I give you a straight forward notion that is scientific and concrete (the notion of "agent") - in other words - all that the notion of consciousness isn't, and you reply with new age hocus-pocus. Of course you're free to think about the macrocosmic consciousness and the tantric web of relations that tie subject to object. But that isn't getting us any closer to understanding the topic. It's just a 1000 year old mostly forgotten philosophy. Even in tantra, it is considered that the subject acts through three energies or processes - iccha: will, jnana: knowledge and kriya: action - the same three aspects that define an agent. The agent approach has game theory and reinforcement learning to back it, with real applications and results (such as Alpha Go). It does not presuppose a spirit, it has no mind-body problem, and is testable (no "first person" firewall around it). Given all that, I think the agent theory is much more parsimonious that the spiritual and philosophical treating of consciousness.
gaius 8y ago
Not since Nietzsche. Every philosopher afterwards has merely been quibbling over semantics. It’s a dead field but one whose proponents as a side effect tend to be good enough at rhetorical tricks that they still get funding. If every university philosophy department were to be abolished overnight nothing of value would be lost.
- kolbe 8y ago
  What about the pragmatists?
dlwdlw 8y ago
Philosophy i think is the same question and message repeated in each era in the language of that era. (Modern lingo and memes and such) The question is “what’s the point”. Philosophies that get overly powerful turn into religions. Original questioning rooted in science (refusal to look away from reality) can become dogma. Yin becomes yang and back again. Dogma, while safe, doesnt evolve and eventually is disconnected from modernity. (Not using the right memes and lingo anymore) The same message can be right or wrong depending on how it is said and in which cultural era it is said. A strong belief in having already gotten the point or belief that execution is the only thing left leaves no room for philosophy which is about the wiggle room of constant flux. The current era is a bit strange in that science itself has become a sort of dogma. “scientism” masquerading as true science is another way of putting it. There’s a belief that certain people, idiots and infidels hold back everyone. The yin blames the yang and so becomes it.
- maldusiecle 8y ago
  > Philosophy i think is the same question and message repeated in each era in the language of that era. (Modern lingo and memes and such) > The question is “what’s the point”. In fact, very little of what philosophers are interested in can be fit into this reductive sort of question--and in fact, several major philosophers could be characterized as specifically trying to take that sort of question out of the realm of philosophy.
- ASalazarMX 8y ago
  Philosophy was incredibly relevant in past eras, for some time it was all of science itself. As the different disciplines gained their own identity and took their toys, philosophy decreased. I'd argue applied philosophy, as compared to purist philosophy, is very relevant today. Just like mathematics.
ASalazarMX 8y ago
In my very limited experience, the few philosophers I've known are teachers or earn their living doing something else. This tells me philosophy is not terribly practical, at least as it is being taught now. It is my impression that they love debating between themselves about the most impractical subjects, writing their thoughts in long form, and being extravagant. I am most likely prejudiced because, as an engineer, my education has always been utilitarian. Maybe we really are in an anti-philosophy era and I am just one more ignorant.
- namarie 8y ago
  Is ethics an impractical subject?
tim333 8y ago
There has been a lot of progress in the questions that have been considered philosophical but as soon as they get answered they are no longer considered philosophy. So something like how did all the animals get here or how many primes are there become biology and maths. Some of the current questions philosophers ponder like what is the nature of consciousness or what is quantum weirdness about will likely go the same way eventually.
ryanx435 8y ago
Yes. Jordan Peterson is proving a framework that connects the seemingly disparate philosophies of religion and of the modern scientific.
valarauca1 8y ago
Wow this post really pisses me off. A lot of these issues are addressed in Continental Philosophy which never really caught on in America because of its association with Hegel and Marx. I wonder why the author doesn’t... oh American Economics professor... no a philosophy prof that’s why.
131012 8y ago
Why Singapore? (no rhetorics here, simply curious)
shadowtree 8y ago
There is a general cultural malaise that started with WW1 and its massive effect on Western society. WW2 then iterated on it, remnants of that old culture escaped to the US to power Hollywood, Broadway, Universities for a while - but this is coming to an end too. Visit European museums, look at art right up to WW1. The massive meat grinder, the fall of empires and its cultural structures gave way to capitalist societies that churn faster, which benefits technology and consumption, but is detrimental for non-profit long term projects. The Sistine Chapel will not happen again, anytime soon. If it happens, it will come out of Asia. Western society lit itself on fire.
ozy 8y ago
In the past, philosophy had a lot of ground to cover. Today science covers all the ground on what is, what exists, what can be modeled. Philosophy only the ground of what matters. For example, free will is entirely a science question. How to interpret what science can tell us so far, and how or if it matters, that is a philosophical question.
nixpulvis 8y ago
Might depend on what you mean by progress. Culturally we are very far from even where we were in the age of my parents. In terms more like that from the sciences or academic philosophers I can't say, though I'd guess they'd argue "Yes!".
trumptr 8y ago
yes. ayn rand and jordan peterson.
trumptr 8y ago
yes. Ayn Rand and Jordan Peterson.
Ice_cream_suit 8y ago
Has there been progress in art?
- danieltillett 8y ago
  Interesting question. No if you mean aesthetics, yes if you mean techniques.
guilhas 8y ago
Philosophy is great. I go a lot to a meetup.com group in my area. Very underfunded field. Questioning the status quo or each other is not very well accepted today.
api 8y ago
The comments on that site are pretty cringey. Of course most comment sections are like an intellectual version of one of those gore sites that shows you a procession of photos of mangled bodies or grotesque carcinomas surgically removed from patients. If there has been progress it has not trickled down.
- namarie 8y ago
  Only on that site? Most comments on this thread are quite cringey as well to my ears...
  - api 8y ago
    I still visit HN because its comments are above average. Some of the topical subreddits are decent too. Of course above average is not saying much.
developer2 8y ago
The comments here are largely what I expected to find: people throwing around the names and quotes of famous philosophers from centuries past, as though it's a pissing contest to see who has read the most books on the topic. Modern discussions around philosophy are effectively a circle jerk: person 'A' regurgitates a quote from one philosopher, and then person 'B' is expected to regurgitate another quote to counter. While the historical works are an important piece of the puzzle, it would be nice if more folks could avoid equating "studying philosophy" with "literally studying existing books on philosophy - and nothing else".
xamuel 8y ago
I'll take this opportunity to plug a paper of mine, "A machine that knows its own code", as a humble example of recent progress made in philosophy :) https://philarchive.org/archive/ALEAMT https://philarchive.org/archive/ALEAMT
perpetualcrayon 8y ago
I was a philosophy major. The first few sentences struck a chord with me. I had a discussion with a professor. We were discussing Plato. He questioned why I was having issues with the topics being taught. I told him "because he (Plato) is wrong". Later I came to realize that we learn the history of philosophy not because we're stuck in the dark ages. We study it because it provides context, in one way or another, to what we believe today and why we do.
nyc111 8y ago
> My opinion is that there is significant and ongoing progress in philosophy... > 16. Much greater incorporation of the insights of women into philosophy... How is the "incorporation of the insights of women into philosophy" a progress in philosophy? This is not a progress in a philosophical subject; it is not a discovery in philosophy; it is not even a philosophical topic; at best it is political correctness.
tomtimtall 8y ago
Philosophers always seem to intent in discussing why philosophy has value. While every piece of science which moved onwards and away from philosophers are intent on showing why they have value. It also seems just laughable when philosophers try to impose their field on others they know nothing about. Like philosophy in the multiverse or quantum mechanics. It boils down to “I don’t understand this thing, likely others don’t either so they need someone uniquely skilled like me to explain it to them!” You never see them actually going into the concrete problems of other fields like: The philosophy of the Navier-stokes equation in light of new more efficient micro fluidics chips”. Philosophers thrive on the boundary between what we know really well and what we know but not that well. And that boundary is shrinking. That’s why there is a feeding frenzy in philosophers discussing recent advances in deep connected graphs of simple computing nodes for modeling and classification, from people who don’t even know what a a matrix is and postulating laughable things like that’s these networks will spontaneously develop their own understanding of philosophy purely based on the fact that’s the space they exist in is called something to do with intelligence.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  I sort of agree with you. Philosophers I knew in grad school were somewhat of dilletantes who didn’t want to commit to becoming an expert within a single scientific epistemology. But... I don’t know, that feels a little uncharitable too. I think the charitable reading is that yes, a philosopher of science doesn’t know the science as well as the scientist. They are not as close to the cutting edge of what we know.... But what they can do is look closer at how the scientist knows. And what other people who are not that scientist know. And from there situate the knowledge in a wider context. Not knowledge the universe but knowledge about knowings.
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dandare 8y ago
I was recently wondering about the same. I regularly hear about breakthroughs in math, physics, biology, chemistry, you name it. I never heard about a breakthrough or significant new ide in philosophy.
noeticsociety 8y ago
Pierre Grimes and the Noetic Society - Arthur O. Lovejoy's "The Great Chain of Being" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNMWl9cky84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNMWl9cky84

159 points by mathattack 8y ago

What's special, from a philosophical point of view, about Singapore? It's number 12 in the list, but is not explained why, besides the subclause of "in fact most other places/polities in the world." So, specifically, what's special about the Singaporean government?

microcolonel 8y ago
That's the problem with meaningless nonsense: there's virtually nothing to it except the clickbait title.
coldtea 8y ago
How it combined a single party near-dictatorship with market success and lotsa consumption.
currymj 8y ago
the author (Tyler Cowen) regularly talks about how Singapore has a particularly effective and well-run government.
wenc 8y ago
If you've been following Marginal Revolution for a while, you'll know that Tyler Cowen (who has libertarian leanings) is endlessly fascinated by Singapore. It's one of the most free-market places in the world, yet it has huge government ("a high quality bureaucracy", as Tyler terms it). This pushes against the thinking of libertarians just slightly. The qualifier though is that for this to work the government has to be good -- and once you go beyond the size of a city-state, that becomes more difficult to achieve. Also, Tyler may not fully grasp the liberty you have to give up to achieve such a government in Singapore because he has never lived there. [1] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/08/why-singapore-is-special.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/08/wh... [2] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/my-worries-about-singapore.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/my... [3] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/12/how-to-visit-singapore.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/12/ho...
- sp332 8y ago
  Disneyland with the Death Penalty (1993) https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/ https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/ It's illegal to buy gum in Singapore without a prescription. You may like Singapore - here's a more positive take by Dan Sivers https://sivers.org/sg14 https://sivers.org/sg14 - but I've never heard it described as "free market" let alone anything that would appeal to a libertarian as such.
  - Xophmeister 8y ago
    That was a really good read. Wired should pay Gibson to write a 25-years-later follow-up!
    - wenc 8y ago
      You should also know that that Gibson article is a one-sided view that was written on the basis of a very short stay in Singapore. It's an entertaining opinion piece to be sure, but if you want to derive anything useful from it, I would advise reading it critically.

DanielBMarkham 8y ago

I agree with the author that there has been progress. Oddly enough, the more important philosophy becomes, the more invisible it is to people -- even the people making the progress! The ideas are the air, the questions are being asked, and leading practitioners, many times simply from being part of the environment, pick up the conversation in a much better place than they would have, say, 50 years ago. The interesting question is the reverse: where has the progress of philosophy failed or gone backwards? (I imagine asking and talking about such a question would be quite controversial!)

MaxBarraclough 8y ago

What do we mean by 'philosophy'? They don't seem to be referring to professional philosophers in university philosophy departments, but instead to patterns of thought widespread in society. I see a comment there making much the same point - https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/05/has-there-been-progress-in-philosophy.html#blog-comment-159821404 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/05/ha...

xHopen 8y ago
That comment totally got it. When S. Hawking said, philosophy is dead, he was right, was death for him, the the gross of the world still doesn't understand what essentially philosophy is, and more important, how it can help you, therefore , when people will start questioning basic behevoirs and trying to understand basic things then , philopsohy will have reach the end , which is teaching the humans to think by themselves . At least this is what I think.
- MaxBarraclough 8y ago
  No, that doesn't sound right at all. The second paragraph of the linked comment has it right: professional philosophers are in the business of clarifying fuzzy ideas, such as for example, what is meant by 'free will'? University philosophy departments are not in the business of teaching critical-thinking skills to the masses. That is the responsibility of high-schools. (Or at least, it should be.) Indeed, the works of proper philosophers are generally completely unknown to those who haven't formally studied philosophy. I doubt your average STEM graduate could name 3 living philosophers. (I'm of the opinion that this says bad things about what philosophy has become, but that's not the point.) That's how we end up with articles like this, which claim to summarise the recent progress of philosophy, but make no mention at all of any real philosophy, recent or not.

OrganicMSG 8y ago

Well, we have progressed to philosophers like John Gray (the author of Straw Dogs, not the relationship counselor who wrote that Mars/Venus thingy), though he would presumably argue that we haven't, given his views on progress. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmRBHCclzZk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmRBHCclzZk

devinhelton 8y ago

It seems what happened is that all the promising/useful areas of inquiry from ancient philosophy have since become their own fields. "Natural philosophy" became physics/biology/chemistry and so forth. Thus university philosophy departments were basically left with the dregs -- lots of debates over non-falsifiable claims, lots of debates caused by poor definitions of words. Ethics is the only subfield of modern philosophy I can think of that seems useful and interesting to me. Maybe political philosophy too, but that has mainly moved to the political science department.

zwkrt 8y ago
doesn't it seem like hubris to assume that philosophy has stopped producing "successful" fields? Computer science broke off less than 100 years ago...
- foldr 8y ago
  And one might add that the branching off point was some extremely esoteric work in the foundations of mathematics and philosophy of language that would have struck most people at the time as entirely speculative and useless.

MikkoFinell 8y ago

Free will has been settled though, hasn't it? The best case for it these days seem to be a language game called "compatibilism" where you redefine free will to mean something vague about acting according to motivations, and when someone accepts that definition you turn around and say "Aha! We do have free will after all!"

Symmetry 8y ago
A more charitable way of putting it is that naive understandings of free will are incoherent but if we're going to have to make up a definition of free will we might as well do so while maintaining as much of traditional distinctions between free will and non-free will as possible. For instance if I decide hit someone and do so that might be considered blameworthy. If someone else decides to pick me up and throw me at that person then that wouldn't be blameworthy of me. Traditionally you'd distinguish between these by invoking free will and I think that's a useful distinction to make.
- MikkoFinell 8y ago
  Well, since we are motivated by self preservation it might make sense to talk about blameworthiness when we figure out whether to lock you up or the person who threw you, or to cut out the brain tumor that caused you to suddenly become aggressive. Invoking free will still does not make any sense though, because you cannot choose your past, and I don't think you can argue that the past doesn't have any causal influence over you.
  - Symmetry 8y ago
    The notion that something is only free will if it uncaused is not at all the compatibalist position. The general compatibilist position is that an action is done with free will of a person if the causal chain it is part of runs through that person's intent for the action to occur, or conventionally that person's 'will'. If you choose to define an action as representing free will only if it is uncaused then first, you've made up a definition entirely at odds with the normal English usages and, second, your definition is useless because it only cuts actions into those actions that exist and those that don't and we already have a perfectly good word for that so the new one is redundant.

lainon 8y ago

Anyone interested in this topic should read Chalmers' paper "Why Isn't There More Progress in Philosophy?" http://consc.net/papers/progress.pdf http://consc.net/papers/progress.pdf

avip 8y ago

There cannot be "progress" in a field without agreed upon mechanism to decide what's "right" or "good". In math, we have proofs. In science - experiments. For med we use double-blinded tests. In tech - what works is king. Philosophy as a discipline is too poorly designed to assign proper meaning to the term "progress".

pjmorris 8y ago
In math, don't proofs only show whether something is consistent, not that something is 'better?' I'd wager the credit you are assigning math is based more on its utility when applied rather than to anything inherent to proofs. So, maybe the question to ask is 'Have there been changes in how philosophy is usefully applied?' Seems like there could be. For example, I'm wagering that there's plenty of applied philosophical work to be done in the ethics of automated machinery like, say, automobile braking systems.
- avip 8y ago
  The point is there's no disagreement among mathematicians wrt the mechanism of (dis)proving claims. It has nothing to do with usefulness, consistency, or the set of axioms assumed.
  - foldr 8y ago
    There's plenty of disagreement among people who actually think about what it means to prove or disprove a mathematical claim (which is a tiny, tiny minority of mathematicians). See finitism, intuitionism, etc. There is unlikely to be an agreed-upon mechanism for determining progress in philosophy for the obvious reason that what constitutes philosophical progress is itself a difficult and rather important philosophical question.
    - avip 8y ago
      The groups you've mentioned set forth their axioms and accepted logic and construct their math accordingly. There's no disagreement here, as there's no "disagreement" between Euclid and Lobachevsky.

forapurpose 8y ago

Why is Tyler Cowan, an economist, trying to answer this question himself? Why doesn't he interview a philosopher or several? Would we read a philosopher talk about progress in economics? Will Cowan next address progress in software engineering? There's a real intellectual arrogance to the post.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ctkrohn 8y ago
He's actually done a few of those, for example this recent interview with Agnes Callard https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/agnes-callard-tyler-cowen-philosophy-socrates-plato-literature-c70a73cd38eb https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/agnes-callard-ty...
TheCowboy 8y ago
I think people generally don't speak well on the topic of economics, but it would be fine if an informed philosopher inquired about "progress" in economics. The topic of the philosophy of economics itself often is ignored or swept under the rug, and that's a shame. Economics has a lot to offer and isn't just what the ideological conceit of the moment deems it to be. Additionally, people should show an interest in fields that are external to their own narrow specialty, and ask meaningful questions to help them understand. The perspectives and methods of economics could definitely provide some insight on the topic of software engineering. It's a historically recent phenomenon, and there is plenty to be studied about its impact.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  > it would be fine if an informed philosopher inquired about "progress" in economics Inquiring is different than answering the question yourself by naming things easily accessible to economists - it implies that Cowan doesn't know anymore about philosophy than I do, and that his standard of 'progress' is 'things that I find useful'.

cleong 8y ago

No, philosophy as a academic field has failed. It's common knowledge for those in the field to know that none of the primary problems of philosophy has been solved despite being worked on for 2000 years. What every academic tries to do now is work on the secondary problems.

woodruffw 8y ago
> It's common knowledge for those in the field to know that none of the primary problems of philosophy has been solved despite being worked on for 2000 years. We have different definitions of "failure." Without the last 2000 years of philosophy, we wouldn't have formal logic, liberal democracy, the existential outlook, or any number of fundamental conceits that you and I use on a daily basis. Whether or not any single fundamental question has been "solved" is irrelevant to progress in a field like philosophy.
stepvhen 8y ago
could you clairify the following: what is an example of a primary problem? what is an example of a secondary problem? what is failure by your definition? what state would a problem be in if it were "solved"? is a problem solved when everybody agrees on a solution? what, then, happens when a contrarian states otherwise? e.g. parmenides was one of the first monists, and that was more or less not acknowledged for a long time after plato, but has since come back into vogue somewhat; was the problem of "is our universe one" solved, and then unsolved?
- cleong 8y ago
  Look into every sub field of philosophy and the debates that have gone on about certain topics for thousands of years. For example, the mind-body problem in epistemology. To clarify, no the field is not based on social consensus but logic. How do we explain certain things? For example, Kant believed that logic as a field had been "solved" in the sense there needs no more progress in the field as the techniques developed were sufficient to solve logic problems. Until Godel came along and improved on logic in the 20th century. Solving in this sense is a technical definition not the social one.

nabla9 8y ago

Question of free will as a fundamental philosophical question is settled in a sense that it made only sense together with dualism and soul (there are still people who are dualists and believe in individual entity called soul. For them the question remains). Albert Einstein: >I do not believe we can have any freedom at all in the philosophical sense, for we act not only under external compulsion but also by inner necessity. Schopenhauer’s saying— “A man can surely do what he wills to do, but he cannot determine what he wills”—impressed itself upon me in youth and has always consoled me when I have witnessed or suffered life’s hardships. This conviction is a perpetual breeder of tolerance, for it does not allow us to take ourselves or others too seriously; it makes rather for a sense of humor. Modern version of free will has degenerated into question of deterministic vs randomness and few other more vague branches. If human makes random decision, he is making random decision not free decision. Calling it "free will" is just a way to make the question sound more important.

foldr 8y ago
>Question of free will as a fundamental philosophical question is settled in a sense that it made only sense together with dualism and soul It might be settled from your own point of view, but it's certainly a matter of current philosophical controversy whether physicalism entails the absence of free will.
- nabla9 8y ago
  The modern question of free is very different from the "the will does not have to be such as it is". Remaining issues in physicalism and free will requires a radical revision of the term. It's like asking something completely different.
  - foldr 8y ago
    No, whether or not free will in the classical sense exists is still debated, even among physicalists.
    - 8y ago

alehul 8y ago

If I'm understanding correctly, it seems similar to saying that there's been progress in math because there's been progress in physics [1] and economics, both of which are largely based on math. I think it would be more accurate to differentiate between "progress in other fields that utilize well-known, age-old x" and "progress in x." [1] Some progress in physics has been as a result of new discoveries in math, such as the strong cosmic censorship conjecture being disproved recently

ofrzeta 8y ago

There can be no progress in philosophy because there's no clear definition or consensus on neither the content, the objectives or the method of philosophy. The very notion of "progress" implies a kind of scientific philosophy that is a very recent (20th century) development. In my view Analytic Philosophy (that I studied while at university) reduces philosophical thought to linguistic and logical analysis and therefore is a depleted form of philosophy. If you accept the premise that philosophy should enrich people's lives metaphysical and speculative thoughts clearly can't be excluded. This is also what the (later) Wittgenstein thought, for instance. With the recent return to ancient thinkers like the Stoa I see that people might get more value out of philosophy. No progress there in the eternal wisdom of humanity.

Retric 8y ago
Assuming I accept your argument. If there can be no progress what's the point? It's fun is a perfectly valid justification IMO, but not something that necessarily brings prestige etc.
stepvhen 8y ago
i think there is value in analytic philosophy, mostly when used as a tool to clear up otherwise muddy issues. Case in point, Jay F. Rosenberg's "Thinking Clearly About Death." In the second half he spends his time clearing up moral arguments about euthenasia, letting die, and rational suicide, using analytic philosophy. he only comes to a definite conclusion on the rational suicide argument, but his clarifications are invaluable in the other cases.

maze-le 8y ago

I think, philosophy has not answered all the questions posed by Plato and Aristotle but it has put up quite some more interesting questions since then. Science has answered some of these questions -- Nameley in the fields of astronomy, biology and geology wich was considered natural philosophy in ancient times. For anyone interested in this topic, I hereby plug one of my favourite podcasts: https://historyofphilosophy.net/ https://historyofphilosophy.net/

normalhuman 8y ago

I argue that we live in an anti-philosophy era. I'm not sure this will change in our lifetimes, but I think it will necessarily change if we survive for long enough. To illustrate: there is common belief that metaphysics became irrelevant -- that it was replaced by science. This is, in itself, a metaphysical position, and a misunderstand about what science is and does. Of course, reasoning about what science is and does is part of philosophy. So is the discussion of knowledge itself, what is knowable and how can we trust the various methods of seeking more knowledge. A lot of stuff surrounding these topics happened in the XX century. The acritical use of the yardstick of "progress" as the ultimate value for everything (along with its little cousin: "productivity") is, in itself, a philosophical position. One that is currently maintained by social norms and authority. Which does not mean it is "wrong". I am only claiming that it is accepted by most people without any reflection. Some boundaries of scientific knowledge are quite visible. For example, consciousness. You might argue that consciousness emerges from matter interacting in a complex way (emergentism), and you might be right, but this is accepted as a serious scientific theory although it has zero content -- no way to falsify empirically, no explanatory mechanism proposed. Real philosophy is a very subversive endeavor at the moment. Perhaps it always was. It's something for those who love knowledge, but not for those who expect any public recognition.

Retric 8y ago
> reasoning about what science is and does is part of philosophy Only if you approach Philosophy with a lot more rigor and math than what people have historically done. The useful parts of discussing what you call the 'philosophy of science' involves quite a bit of statistics for example. What people call useless is cruft dealing with Known Unknowable's which suck up time without getting anywhere. IMO, it's not that Philosophy is dead, it's just when you keep calling the useful bit's something else eventually people don't care about the leftovers.
- TelmoMenezes 8y ago
  > Only if you approach Philosophy with a lot more rigor and math than what people have historically done. The useful parts of discussing what you call the 'philosophy of science' involves quite a bit of statistics for example. I disagree. For example, Karl Popper's positions on the philosophy of science became the current mainstream view. His positions are not based on statistics, but on good-old-fashioned qualitative reasoning. I know many scientists who mention Popper by name when discussing such matters. Carl Sagan also helped popularize it in his book "Demon-Haunted World", with his "invisible dragon in the garage" story. The ability to do statistics at incredible scales (currently known as Machine Learning) raises further questions about what science should be. Questions about such quantitative methods themselves. Rigor does not have to be quantitative in nature -- and let's not forget that the very idea of quantitative science was introduced by Descartes, another famous philosopher. > What people call useless is cruft dealing with Known Unknowable's which suck up time without getting anywhere. Depends on where you want to get. Noncommunicable knowledge is a very interesting topic, for those with the inclination. It is ok if you are not curious about such things, but I would argue that it is also ok to be. It deeply intersects mathematical logic (e.g. Gödel) and theoretical computer science (e.g. the halting problem). Will it help us create better gadgets? Probably not? Will it help us better understand the human condition? Probably yes.

btilly 8y ago

Calling things like Claude Shannon's work on information "progress in philosophy" is like claiming Einstein's theory of General Relativity "progress in linguistics". It is only true in a way that makes it essentially meaningless. Unless the people doing the work considered themselves philosophers, or drew on schools of thought from philosophy, you're claiming credit to philosophy from something that philosophy had nothing to do with.

empath75 8y ago
Einstein's Theory of Relativity _was_ progress in philosophy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Mach#Philosophy_of_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Mach#Philosophy_of_scien...
- btilly 8y ago
  Philosophy, yes. But not linguistics.
singularity2001 8y ago
Any advanced system of philosophy should incorporate information theory.
whytaka 8y ago
What about information theory excludes a love of wisdom? All disciplines stem from Philosophy and Math.

outlace 8y ago

In the spirit of Popper and Deutsch, I’d argue that philosophy makes progress in the same way all branches of knowledge do: filtering out bad ideas. The Popperian notion of scientific progress as an evolutionary process of conjectures and refutations applies just as well to philosophy. Philosophy gives us the tools to stamp out bad ideas and let the better ones rise to the surface. (Better ~= survive refutation longer). Without being able to run an experiment on a philosophical conjecture in most cases, however, it is much more difficult to refute a purely philosophical conjecture than a scientific one. But many old philosophical ideas have been refuted on the basis of logical inconsistency or bad premises. So I’d expect the kinds of philosophical ideas we debate today have a higher proportion of truth than what was debated 500+ years ago.

mrleiter 8y ago

Asking for progress in philosophy is the wrong way to approach it. Philosophy is a domain that lives on exploring new ideas, asking different questions, refining answers. A more appropriate approach in my opinion would be to ask if there has been a consistent evolution in philosophy? Do ideas and areas build on its predecessors. Do they take reference? Another approach would be asking whether philosophy has impacted mankind in any way that is understandable? Each era had its philosophers and trains of thought.

neokantian 8y ago

If science is statements about facts, then philosophy is statements about other statements, the only requirement being that these statements are non-contradictory. That makes mathematics just a subdivision in philosophy, in which statements about statements must be (axiomatically) derived exclusively from a completely explicit starting point. Since math mostly took over logic and epistemology (as computability), general philosophy has indeed lost its most important subjects. Philosophy is simply meant to shrink and downsize. Reasoning without any particular method gets naturally replaced by reasoning with one. If philosophy had grown, that would not have been a good sign. It would not have been progress.

arf 8y ago
> the only requirement being that these statements are non-contradictory. > That makes mathematics just a subdivision in philosophy, in which statements about statements must be (axiomatically) derived exclusively from a completely explicit starting point. The main problem with philosophy is exactly the reason which makes above wrong. A global definition of 'contradiction' is not possible, Nor is even something that resembles a consensus to a sufficiently strong degree to make it meaningful. This is precisely the reason why you can have radically opposing schools of thought that are simultaneously existing. The trivial example being mathematical empiricism or coherentism, both of which directly oppose the axiomatic approach you've provided, from different angles. A more absurd example is to say it's never the case that all philosophers would agree "P and not P" is not true (including the sentence itself), let alone it being false (i.e. negation as failure), because the value of "P and not P" is dependent upon your theory of truth and no global theory of truth exist without G.E. Moorean appeals to common-sense.

sethish 8y ago

Philosophy is sophistry. I like R. Scott Bakker's take on the semantic apocalypse, and the lack of progress in philosophy. https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/what-is-the-semantic-apocalypse/ https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/what-is-the-semant...

TooBrokeToBeg 8y ago
Arguing about the progress in philosophy is sophistry. There's been plenty of progress that has affected lots of lives. It just doesn't happen to fit someone else's narratives or views.

acchow 8y ago

On a related note, I still love this interview: Scott Aaronson on Philosophical Progress: https://intelligence.org/2013/12/13/aaronson/ https://intelligence.org/2013/12/13/aaronson/

visarga 8y ago

I think the philosophy community (that was scared by behaviourism decades ago) needs to take a good hard look at reinforcement learning and representation learning. They can clarify many philosophical problems. The hard-problem of consciousness was a detour, a wrong direction. It led to nothing in the end - just wasted decades. It was dualism in disguise. You don't even need the notion of consciousness - just use the concept of agent, agent-environment relation and reinforcement - all being well defined, sound concepts unlike consciousness which doesn't even have an official definition.

carapace 8y ago
"consciousness" has a definition: You. It's a common misconception that there's no way to detect consciousness. It has no qualities and so cannot be measured, but consciousness can be detected by other consciousness. Since you are conscious you can detect consciousness in other beings. What's actually happening is that what we call consciousness is unitary and co-extensive with the entire Universe. When two people merge consciousness' they are just increasing the bandwidth between themselves until they are effectively a single organism, the separate self-models in each person merge into an integrated self-model. People do this spontaneously sometimes when the sex is really good.
- visarga 8y ago
  I give you a straight forward notion that is scientific and concrete (the notion of "agent") - in other words - all that the notion of consciousness isn't, and you reply with new age hocus-pocus. Of course you're free to think about the macrocosmic consciousness and the tantric web of relations that tie subject to object. But that isn't getting us any closer to understanding the topic. It's just a 1000 year old mostly forgotten philosophy. Even in tantra, it is considered that the subject acts through three energies or processes - iccha: will, jnana: knowledge and kriya: action - the same three aspects that define an agent. The agent approach has game theory and reinforcement learning to back it, with real applications and results (such as Alpha Go). It does not presuppose a spirit, it has no mind-body problem, and is testable (no "first person" firewall around it). Given all that, I think the agent theory is much more parsimonious that the spiritual and philosophical treating of consciousness.

gaius 8y ago

Not since Nietzsche. Every philosopher afterwards has merely been quibbling over semantics. It’s a dead field but one whose proponents as a side effect tend to be good enough at rhetorical tricks that they still get funding. If every university philosophy department were to be abolished overnight nothing of value would be lost.

kolbe 8y ago
What about the pragmatists?

dlwdlw 8y ago

Philosophy i think is the same question and message repeated in each era in the language of that era. (Modern lingo and memes and such) The question is “what’s the point”. Philosophies that get overly powerful turn into religions. Original questioning rooted in science (refusal to look away from reality) can become dogma. Yin becomes yang and back again. Dogma, while safe, doesnt evolve and eventually is disconnected from modernity. (Not using the right memes and lingo anymore) The same message can be right or wrong depending on how it is said and in which cultural era it is said. A strong belief in having already gotten the point or belief that execution is the only thing left leaves no room for philosophy which is about the wiggle room of constant flux. The current era is a bit strange in that science itself has become a sort of dogma. “scientism” masquerading as true science is another way of putting it. There’s a belief that certain people, idiots and infidels hold back everyone. The yin blames the yang and so becomes it.

maldusiecle 8y ago
> Philosophy i think is the same question and message repeated in each era in the language of that era. (Modern lingo and memes and such) > The question is “what’s the point”. In fact, very little of what philosophers are interested in can be fit into this reductive sort of question--and in fact, several major philosophers could be characterized as specifically trying to take that sort of question out of the realm of philosophy.
ASalazarMX 8y ago
Philosophy was incredibly relevant in past eras, for some time it was all of science itself. As the different disciplines gained their own identity and took their toys, philosophy decreased. I'd argue applied philosophy, as compared to purist philosophy, is very relevant today. Just like mathematics.

ASalazarMX 8y ago

In my very limited experience, the few philosophers I've known are teachers or earn their living doing something else. This tells me philosophy is not terribly practical, at least as it is being taught now. It is my impression that they love debating between themselves about the most impractical subjects, writing their thoughts in long form, and being extravagant. I am most likely prejudiced because, as an engineer, my education has always been utilitarian. Maybe we really are in an anti-philosophy era and I am just one more ignorant.

namarie 8y ago
Is ethics an impractical subject?

tim333 8y ago

There has been a lot of progress in the questions that have been considered philosophical but as soon as they get answered they are no longer considered philosophy. So something like how did all the animals get here or how many primes are there become biology and maths. Some of the current questions philosophers ponder like what is the nature of consciousness or what is quantum weirdness about will likely go the same way eventually.

ryanx435 8y ago

Yes. Jordan Peterson is proving a framework that connects the seemingly disparate philosophies of religion and of the modern scientific.

valarauca1 8y ago

Wow this post really pisses me off. A lot of these issues are addressed in Continental Philosophy which never really caught on in America because of its association with Hegel and Marx. I wonder why the author doesn’t... oh American Economics professor... no a philosophy prof that’s why.

131012 8y ago

Why Singapore? (no rhetorics here, simply curious)

shadowtree 8y ago

There is a general cultural malaise that started with WW1 and its massive effect on Western society. WW2 then iterated on it, remnants of that old culture escaped to the US to power Hollywood, Broadway, Universities for a while - but this is coming to an end too. Visit European museums, look at art right up to WW1. The massive meat grinder, the fall of empires and its cultural structures gave way to capitalist societies that churn faster, which benefits technology and consumption, but is detrimental for non-profit long term projects. The Sistine Chapel will not happen again, anytime soon. If it happens, it will come out of Asia. Western society lit itself on fire.

ozy 8y ago

In the past, philosophy had a lot of ground to cover. Today science covers all the ground on what is, what exists, what can be modeled. Philosophy only the ground of what matters. For example, free will is entirely a science question. How to interpret what science can tell us so far, and how or if it matters, that is a philosophical question.

nixpulvis 8y ago

Might depend on what you mean by progress. Culturally we are very far from even where we were in the age of my parents. In terms more like that from the sciences or academic philosophers I can't say, though I'd guess they'd argue "Yes!".

trumptr 8y ago

yes. ayn rand and jordan peterson.

trumptr 8y ago

yes. Ayn Rand and Jordan Peterson.

Ice_cream_suit 8y ago

Has there been progress in art?

danieltillett 8y ago
Interesting question. No if you mean aesthetics, yes if you mean techniques.

guilhas 8y ago

Philosophy is great. I go a lot to a meetup.com group in my area. Very underfunded field. Questioning the status quo or each other is not very well accepted today.

api 8y ago

The comments on that site are pretty cringey. Of course most comment sections are like an intellectual version of one of those gore sites that shows you a procession of photos of mangled bodies or grotesque carcinomas surgically removed from patients. If there has been progress it has not trickled down.

namarie 8y ago
Only on that site? Most comments on this thread are quite cringey as well to my ears...
- api 8y ago
  I still visit HN because its comments are above average. Some of the topical subreddits are decent too. Of course above average is not saying much.

developer2 8y ago

The comments here are largely what I expected to find: people throwing around the names and quotes of famous philosophers from centuries past, as though it's a pissing contest to see who has read the most books on the topic. Modern discussions around philosophy are effectively a circle jerk: person 'A' regurgitates a quote from one philosopher, and then person 'B' is expected to regurgitate another quote to counter. While the historical works are an important piece of the puzzle, it would be nice if more folks could avoid equating "studying philosophy" with "literally studying existing books on philosophy - and nothing else".

xamuel 8y ago

I'll take this opportunity to plug a paper of mine, "A machine that knows its own code", as a humble example of recent progress made in philosophy :) https://philarchive.org/archive/ALEAMT https://philarchive.org/archive/ALEAMT

perpetualcrayon 8y ago

I was a philosophy major. The first few sentences struck a chord with me. I had a discussion with a professor. We were discussing Plato. He questioned why I was having issues with the topics being taught. I told him "because he (Plato) is wrong". Later I came to realize that we learn the history of philosophy not because we're stuck in the dark ages. We study it because it provides context, in one way or another, to what we believe today and why we do.

nyc111 8y ago

> My opinion is that there is significant and ongoing progress in philosophy... > 16. Much greater incorporation of the insights of women into philosophy... How is the "incorporation of the insights of women into philosophy" a progress in philosophy? This is not a progress in a philosophical subject; it is not a discovery in philosophy; it is not even a philosophical topic; at best it is political correctness.

tomtimtall 8y ago

Philosophers always seem to intent in discussing why philosophy has value. While every piece of science which moved onwards and away from philosophers are intent on showing why they have value. It also seems just laughable when philosophers try to impose their field on others they know nothing about. Like philosophy in the multiverse or quantum mechanics. It boils down to “I don’t understand this thing, likely others don’t either so they need someone uniquely skilled like me to explain it to them!” You never see them actually going into the concrete problems of other fields like: The philosophy of the Navier-stokes equation in light of new more efficient micro fluidics chips”. Philosophers thrive on the boundary between what we know really well and what we know but not that well. And that boundary is shrinking. That’s why there is a feeding frenzy in philosophers discussing recent advances in deep connected graphs of simple computing nodes for modeling and classification, from people who don’t even know what a a matrix is and postulating laughable things like that’s these networks will spontaneously develop their own understanding of philosophy purely based on the fact that’s the space they exist in is called something to do with intelligence.

erikpukinskis 8y ago
I sort of agree with you. Philosophers I knew in grad school were somewhat of dilletantes who didn’t want to commit to becoming an expert within a single scientific epistemology. But... I don’t know, that feels a little uncharitable too. I think the charitable reading is that yes, a philosopher of science doesn’t know the science as well as the scientist. They are not as close to the cutting edge of what we know.... But what they can do is look closer at how the scientist knows. And what other people who are not that scientist know. And from there situate the knowledge in a wider context. Not knowledge the universe but knowledge about knowings.

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dandare 8y ago

I was recently wondering about the same. I regularly hear about breakthroughs in math, physics, biology, chemistry, you name it. I never heard about a breakthrough or significant new ide in philosophy.

noeticsociety 8y ago

Pierre Grimes and the Noetic Society - Arthur O. Lovejoy's "The Great Chain of Being" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNMWl9cky84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNMWl9cky84