9 ms·

Progress in Philosophy

60 points by diodorus 8y ago

tkyjonathan 8y ago
I dunno.. I'm studying on my own philosophy of systems (general systems theory) and I find it incredibly useful for my line of work. Perhaps philosophy can progress when applied to other fields, like biology, computer science, quantum physics...
- adjkant 8y ago
  You realize all those fields were birthed out of philosophy right? Once something becomes more known, it graduates from philosophy. Some questions look to be staying longer than others but generally I think you'll keep seeing fields be birthed, though over the timeline of centuries.
kristianc 8y ago
Honestly the original post on MR is much better than this, and has the benefit of Cowen’s customary concision and knack for getting to the heart of the issue.
vinceguidry 8y ago
This makes me think of this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/435/ https://xkcd.com/435/ And also of the strange and wonderful epiphany I got when I started considering the ancient Greeks again. On the purity scale given by the xkcd, math is just applied philosophy. The Greeks invented philosophy. Nobody thought philosophically before the Greeks invented it. People thought rigorously before the Greeks, but the rigor took a different form. That form is so different from philosophy that we have a different name for it. That word is theology. When the people of the world tried to think rigorously before the Greeks invented a way to take the theology out of it, they could not stop themselves from invoking deities or moral importunings and all of that alongside their attempts at rigor. Theological rigor is different than philosophical rigor. In a very real way, philosophy is just applied theology. Patterns for the sake of patterns is a hallmark of ancient theology. The ancient Hebrews believed they needed to sacrifice dozens to hundreds of animals daily at their great temple in order to stay in God's good graces. The Aztecs did one further and sacrificed humans. The patterns, the rituals, calmed the mind and served as a bulwark against the chaos and insanity that would surely reign and did reign whenever war or famine tore them away from them. Philosophy, the love of wisdom, saved people from that. Without those amazing men who dared to think differently, often at the cost of their lives, Socrates was made to drink poison for his heresy, we wouldn't have the modern world. Ancient Greece wasn't a philosophical wonder island of reason and logic. Philosophy had to coexist with their existing mystery pantheistic sacrifice-demanding religion. Those thought processes that they invented had to catch fire and spread the same way any idea needs to. It seems so strange, so weird, so crazy to consider, kind of like the idea that all current humans descended from a common ancestor. But before the Greeks, people didn't really consider the true nature of things. They just accepted whatever ideas sounded good and soothing.
- danbruc 8y ago
  [...] math is just applied philosophy. I don't think that this would be a good characterization of the relationship between mathematics and philosophy. Philosophy uses quite a bit of math, especially to make arguments rigorous, making philosophy more like physics in this regard. On the other hand philosophy of course also tries to investigate and explain the nature of mathematics, so in some sense this puts mathematics on top of philosophy but I am not sure that this justifies calling it applied philosophy.
- stepvhen 8y ago
  Greeks didnt invent philosophy, technically. The western tradition, maybe, but not the whole itself. And most of them, Socrates included, talked about thw gods a lot of the time. In fact, socrates's way of living a good life is, more or less, the same idea behind the christian heaven and hell concept. the only thing that really changes is, once most philosophers become theologians, they develop advanced theories in trying to explain away the Trinity or the Eucharist.
  - vinceguidry 8y ago
    If you go look at Eastern philosophy, to this day it looks similar to how you're describing Socrates. Philosophy couldn't completely separate from theology back in Socrates' day but in later Greek writings you see the split fully manifest. In one relatively small collection of nations, a mode of thought that was completely novel to the rest of the world was dreamed up. That way of thinking completely changed the world, so much that that way of thinking seems totally normal today. When modern theological philosophers try to explain the Trinity, they use Greek ideas. In fact, the whole idea of the Trinity just falls out of a philosophical way of looking at it. The Eastern Christian Church doesn't use the doctrine. Any time we talk about "the West," we're talking about a way of looking at things that originated with ancient Greece.
- mannykannot 8y ago
  Xkcd's cartoon is, of course, a gently sardonic poke at a reductionist point of view that is a lot less profound than it appears. It would not be useful, for example, to try to reduce the theory of evolution to physics. On the other hand, I completely take your point that the ancient Greek philosophers showed us an alternative to the tyranny of doctrinaire and theological rule.
trukterious 8y ago
>philosophical exports are the kinds of thing that, once you internalize them, just seem like the way things are Yes; if you like a philosophical idea that's usually sufficient for you to have 'adopted' or 'accepted' it. Yet, in addition, philosophical problems have been solved. It's just that ipso facto they then become part of science or some other discipline, so we don't notice so easily. For example, the theory of evolution was an example of philosophical progress (a new way of thinking about something, in this case life). But it's now part of biology. Another example is that Karl Popper solved the problem of induction. It's controversial that he did so. But if it shelves off into some other field, e.g. AGI, then perhaps his achievement will be more widely accepted as such.
- szemet 8y ago
  Is there any theoretical AGI modell based on Popper theories? I've heard only about ones based on Solomonoff induction & bayesian inference, like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI and its various derivatives...
  - abecedarius 8y ago
    There was an old paper "The scientific community metaphor" which I thought was pretty interesting and Popper-flavored, though it was more of a sketch of a GOFAI architecture than anything like AIXI.
hliyan 8y ago
I have not read Tyler's original, but would like to dump some of my notes as I read through this. > I do deny the implication that philosophy should be judged by what gets exported from it—any more than physics or mathematics should be assessed in this mercenary and extrinsic way. I find this strange. Shouldn't all knowledge be judged on the basis of whether their application yields valid results? If not, how should they be judged? > I believe the turn away from schools, teachings and doctrines is itself one of the great instances of philosophical progress. I agree. The existence of "schools" of thought (e.g. the Geocentric vs. Heliocentric schools of planetary motion) is a sign that the field of study is still nascent. Opinions should give way to theories as a science matures. > It is not the point of philosophy to end philosophy, to ‘solve’ the deep questions so that people can stop thinking about them. It is the point of people to think about these questions, and the job of philosophers to rub their faces in that fact. What? Yes, it is not the point of philosophy to end philosophy. But it's certainly not this either. To me, the point of philosophy is to examine those aspects of existence that cannot be examined by other sciences, especially because the measurement or experimental methods or the resources to do so do not (yet) exist.
- TelmoMenezes 8y ago
  > To me, the point of philosophy is to examine those aspects of existence that cannot be examined by other sciences, especially because the measurement or experimental methods or the resources to do so do not (yet) exist. Not at all. Philosophy is about fundamental questions that fall outside the scope of the set of questions that can be settled by empirical validation. For example: "what is science?", "how can we know something?", "what does it mean for something to exist?", "why is there something rather than nothing?", "what is good and evil?", etc. One important branch of philosophy is that of epistemology, concerned with the nature and acquisition of knowledge itself. You expressed two rather extreme epistemological views (extreme in relation to the positions of most non-naive philosophers on these topics): -> That one can only judge knowledge on the basis of its applications; -> That given good enough instruments and enough resources, science could answer all questions worth being asked. Maybe the example questions above can convince you to think deeper about these positions.
protonfish 8y ago
I have mixed feelings while reading philosophers trying to desperately justify their relevance. It's sad at first, then you start being battered with the verbose fallacies they believe to be good quality thinkin', and you wish they had died out a long time ago. I do not have the time to address every bit of nonsense in this gish gallop so I'll stick to 2: 1. What is the measure of philosophic truth? It is implied strongly that "success" is determined by acceptance of ideas by others. Usefulness, accuracy, precision, ethics, are not important: what is important is that your ideas spread like a virus. If true, then philosophy is really, like the Sophists of old, just about rhetoric. And if manipulating people through words is your thing, then studying advertising and marketing would be a much more effective investment. 2. A key argument was "philosophy is so much better now than it used to be." I find the fact philosophy is not nearly as bad as it used to be, though arguably true, not very compelling. A better question would be "Is it good enough?" I have not yet found convincing evidence that is the case.
- jasonhansel 8y ago
  All good points, but it is worth noting that the idea of a logical fallacy itself comes from philosophy. The study of fallacies proper began with Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations.
  - dooglius 8y ago
    The study of fallacies may have started there, but the _idea_ of a logical fallacy is likely much, much older.
  - ColanR 8y ago
    I guess that just means philosophy hasn't improved beyond the standard erected by Aristotle. More complicated, and more to it, but certainly not of higher quality.
    - jasonhansel 8y ago
      The study of fallacies in the West began with Aristotle, but it certainly hasn't ended there; Aristotle only lists a fraction of the things we consider fallacies today. That said, I do think that more philosophical research is needed in the area. Unfortunately, most philosophers have focused on formal logic, even though informal fallacies are much more common.
charlysl 8y ago
For me, Russel put it best: Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge—so I should contend— belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy
- Koshkin 8y ago
  All that being true, "philosophy" is also the name often given to an emerging science that has no name of its own; for example, physics used to be known as "natural philosophy" (despite Aristotle having used the word long before that).
  - Retra 8y ago
    "Natural philosophy" was not called that because it was an emerging science. It was called that because it was different from theology in the way Russel described.
- cerradokids 8y ago
  I prefer Ayn Rand's take on it: Without abstract ideas you would not be able to deal with concrete, particular, real-life problems. You would be in the position of a newborn infant, to whom every object is a unique, unprecedented phenomenon. The difference between his mental state and yours lies in the number of conceptual integrations your mind has performed. You have no choice about the necessity to integrate your observations, your experiences, your knowledge into abstract ideas, i.e., into principles. Your only choice, is whether your principles are true or false, rational or irrational, consistent or contradictory. The only way to know which they are is to integrate your principles. What integrates them? Philosophy. A philosophic system is an integrated view of existence. As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation—or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by- your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: selfdoubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind’s wings should have grown.
man-and-laptop 8y ago
Epistemology is an interesting area of philosophy. It asks "How do I know whether something is true or not?" It interests me because while there's consensus on what's true in the hard sciences, there isn't any outside of it. People have passionate and utterly divergent opinions on politics, which they don't have about mathematics or physics. There has to be a way to live in a world where people disagree massively about politics, or idealistically, where we can resolve the disagreements. I find this more interesting than most specific issues in politics. I recommend Less Wrong or Nassim Taleb.
- skybrian 8y ago
  Before even getting into politics, we need to agree about what's going on in the world. I would consider it a great improvement if political discussions could move beyond naive realism: assuming we understand what's happening just because of what we read in the news. (Or worse, on Twitter.) Journalism is only the "first draft of history" and often gets it wrong. We should therefore be more uncertain about most things we read, particularly breaking news.
nshepperd 8y ago
> It is not the point of philosophy to end philosophy, to ‘solve’ the deep questions so that people can stop thinking about them. And yet, many people who ask questions like "what is good?" or "how can we know things?" or "is there free will, and if so, how does it work?" do so because they actually want to know the answers. If the purpose of philosophy isn't to find the answers, is philosophy the wrong place to be looking? If you're claiming that there aren't any answers, well... that sounds like a strong philosophical position!
- wsy 8y ago
  Philosophers have given their answers to some of these questions. But - as absurdly as it sounds - the answers are not the main point of philosophy. I would say, the main point is learning to ask these questions better. That includes: - getting a deeper understanding what the question means - learning how to assess candidate answers - learning which answers are wrong, and for which reasons - finding out what difference it makes to know the answer (sometimes it doesn't make any difference)
ThomPete 8y ago
Philosophy in my mind and experience really is the art of thinking both critically and constructively about a subject. Good philosophy opens up more new questions than it answers. When applied properly to problem-solving or system analysis or conceptual ideation it can be amazingly powerful and provide you with a perspective that is wider than those who don't. I have studied philosophy since I was very little but I always had one goal and that was to make it applicable to my life not just serve as an intellectual discipline devoid from any reality.
bitwize 8y ago
I've realized this: Philosophy is the science of shit we really know nothing about yet. Since we know nothing about it, we don't even know where to start. Our body of knowledge is in a state of primordial chaos, so philosophers come in and establish some ground rules that help us make sense of the chaos. THEN we can begin to learn. The philosophers generally have to retreat once we start building up a decent sized body of empirical knowledge and move onto the next frontier. That's why these days, philosophy is concerned mainly with a particular frontier: the human mind, especially its subconscious processes. Neuroscience is advancing at a steady clip, but it still doesn't have answers for things like how we acquire knowledge, how we know something is knowledge, how we process language, how we assign meaning to words and symbols, etc. Once the neuroscientists crack those nuts, I wonder what philosophers will retreat to. Morality and ethics, perhaps, about which gathering imperial data is difficult to impossible.
vinayms 8y ago
I think its fruitful to view philosophy as something that evolves rather than progresses. At its core, philosophy is nothing more than a disciplined approach to acquire knowledge about anything that the human mind is curious. The approach is usually through systematic questioning and applying logic* to the received answers, and iterating till satisfied. What happened was things changed. When "philosophy" first burst onto the scene, everything that man was curious about was ripe for exploration - life, universe, creation, numbers, sexuality, morals, shapes, thoughts, politics - everything. A cursory look at the kinds of topics that were discussed by ancient philosophers (not just the Greeks) should show the same. In time, all these pieces of knowledge got specialized and got separated into their own fields. Now, physics deals with the universe, maths deals with numbers and so on. Knowledge is not a Pangea anymore. All the low hanging fruits have been picked, eaten, digested and turned into manure. That is how the specialization happened. The deep and meaningful questions in each of these fields can only be asked if one is well versed in them. Human knowledge has outgrown the human capacity to be Renaissance men. Thus, we can't expect an outsider like Berkeley take down calculus anymore (but I guess they still do), and such tasks must be left to the experts with a philosophical bent. This leaves "philosophy" with very little to tackle. To me it seems only the question of existence and the meta question about nature of knowledge are left untouched by other fields, but I suppose theology often trespasses. I think this is why most people feel philosophy is boring and useless - the questions are either too abstract or they produce nothing but never ending debates and flamewars with no results that improve the knowledge. Philosophy has evolved. Philosophers must evolve too. I honestly have no idea what philosophers do (probably graduate and teach, and the cycle continues?) but they are left with two things to do to make themselves relevant again (not sure if they feel irrelevant) - pick a field of interest, learn it deeply and ponder over it, or infuse philosophical outlook to the students of various fields who would be better equipped to do the pondering. --- * For sake on convenience, I consider logic as a tool that already exists. To me logic is philosophy in its own right, and it bootstraps philosophy.
PinkMilkshake 8y ago
I don't think we can have a reasonable conversation about the progress of philosophy without separating it's two major traditions, Continental and Analytic. Once you do, it becomes clearer where the progress has been made. The modern world stands on the foundations of the Analytic tradition and while I don't necessarily agree, some argue that it reached it's apex when it discovered Empiricism. Progress in Continental Philosophy probably ended at the same time, when it came up against our new found ability to test what is true. Now the remnants of it (that I know of), Neo-Marxism and Postmodernism spend all their time trying to attack the foundations of Empiricism. Because until that is done, they can't really move forward. I feel that all the worst parts of human history and many lingering pseudosciences came out of the Continental tradition. Communism, Fascism, Anti-enlightenment, Psychoanalysis, and many schools of Sociology. And while Sociology has potential, Marxism is to modern Sociology what Alchemy is to Chemistry.
adjkant 8y ago
I'm amazed there has been little talk of modern ethics where there has actually been good progress by people like Rawls and Sandel, for example. The problem is that these ideas have not been truly applied in any way, only considered on the surface level. I think the problem with modern philosophy is not one of progress but one of translation and application.

60 points by diodorus 8y ago

I dunno.. I'm studying on my own philosophy of systems (general systems theory) and I find it incredibly useful for my line of work. Perhaps philosophy can progress when applied to other fields, like biology, computer science, quantum physics...

adjkant 8y ago
You realize all those fields were birthed out of philosophy right? Once something becomes more known, it graduates from philosophy. Some questions look to be staying longer than others but generally I think you'll keep seeing fields be birthed, though over the timeline of centuries.

kristianc 8y ago

Honestly the original post on MR is much better than this, and has the benefit of Cowen’s customary concision and knack for getting to the heart of the issue.

vinceguidry 8y ago

This makes me think of this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/435/ https://xkcd.com/435/ And also of the strange and wonderful epiphany I got when I started considering the ancient Greeks again. On the purity scale given by the xkcd, math is just applied philosophy. The Greeks invented philosophy. Nobody thought philosophically before the Greeks invented it. People thought rigorously before the Greeks, but the rigor took a different form. That form is so different from philosophy that we have a different name for it. That word is theology. When the people of the world tried to think rigorously before the Greeks invented a way to take the theology out of it, they could not stop themselves from invoking deities or moral importunings and all of that alongside their attempts at rigor. Theological rigor is different than philosophical rigor. In a very real way, philosophy is just applied theology. Patterns for the sake of patterns is a hallmark of ancient theology. The ancient Hebrews believed they needed to sacrifice dozens to hundreds of animals daily at their great temple in order to stay in God's good graces. The Aztecs did one further and sacrificed humans. The patterns, the rituals, calmed the mind and served as a bulwark against the chaos and insanity that would surely reign and did reign whenever war or famine tore them away from them. Philosophy, the love of wisdom, saved people from that. Without those amazing men who dared to think differently, often at the cost of their lives, Socrates was made to drink poison for his heresy, we wouldn't have the modern world. Ancient Greece wasn't a philosophical wonder island of reason and logic. Philosophy had to coexist with their existing mystery pantheistic sacrifice-demanding religion. Those thought processes that they invented had to catch fire and spread the same way any idea needs to. It seems so strange, so weird, so crazy to consider, kind of like the idea that all current humans descended from a common ancestor. But before the Greeks, people didn't really consider the true nature of things. They just accepted whatever ideas sounded good and soothing.

danbruc 8y ago
[...] math is just applied philosophy. I don't think that this would be a good characterization of the relationship between mathematics and philosophy. Philosophy uses quite a bit of math, especially to make arguments rigorous, making philosophy more like physics in this regard. On the other hand philosophy of course also tries to investigate and explain the nature of mathematics, so in some sense this puts mathematics on top of philosophy but I am not sure that this justifies calling it applied philosophy.
stepvhen 8y ago
Greeks didnt invent philosophy, technically. The western tradition, maybe, but not the whole itself. And most of them, Socrates included, talked about thw gods a lot of the time. In fact, socrates's way of living a good life is, more or less, the same idea behind the christian heaven and hell concept. the only thing that really changes is, once most philosophers become theologians, they develop advanced theories in trying to explain away the Trinity or the Eucharist.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  If you go look at Eastern philosophy, to this day it looks similar to how you're describing Socrates. Philosophy couldn't completely separate from theology back in Socrates' day but in later Greek writings you see the split fully manifest. In one relatively small collection of nations, a mode of thought that was completely novel to the rest of the world was dreamed up. That way of thinking completely changed the world, so much that that way of thinking seems totally normal today. When modern theological philosophers try to explain the Trinity, they use Greek ideas. In fact, the whole idea of the Trinity just falls out of a philosophical way of looking at it. The Eastern Christian Church doesn't use the doctrine. Any time we talk about "the West," we're talking about a way of looking at things that originated with ancient Greece.
mannykannot 8y ago
Xkcd's cartoon is, of course, a gently sardonic poke at a reductionist point of view that is a lot less profound than it appears. It would not be useful, for example, to try to reduce the theory of evolution to physics. On the other hand, I completely take your point that the ancient Greek philosophers showed us an alternative to the tyranny of doctrinaire and theological rule.

trukterious 8y ago

>philosophical exports are the kinds of thing that, once you internalize them, just seem like the way things are Yes; if you like a philosophical idea that's usually sufficient for you to have 'adopted' or 'accepted' it. Yet, in addition, philosophical problems have been solved. It's just that ipso facto they then become part of science or some other discipline, so we don't notice so easily. For example, the theory of evolution was an example of philosophical progress (a new way of thinking about something, in this case life). But it's now part of biology. Another example is that Karl Popper solved the problem of induction. It's controversial that he did so. But if it shelves off into some other field, e.g. AGI, then perhaps his achievement will be more widely accepted as such.

szemet 8y ago
Is there any theoretical AGI modell based on Popper theories? I've heard only about ones based on Solomonoff induction & bayesian inference, like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI and its various derivatives...
- abecedarius 8y ago
  There was an old paper "The scientific community metaphor" which I thought was pretty interesting and Popper-flavored, though it was more of a sketch of a GOFAI architecture than anything like AIXI.

hliyan 8y ago

I have not read Tyler's original, but would like to dump some of my notes as I read through this. > I do deny the implication that philosophy should be judged by what gets exported from it—any more than physics or mathematics should be assessed in this mercenary and extrinsic way. I find this strange. Shouldn't all knowledge be judged on the basis of whether their application yields valid results? If not, how should they be judged? > I believe the turn away from schools, teachings and doctrines is itself one of the great instances of philosophical progress. I agree. The existence of "schools" of thought (e.g. the Geocentric vs. Heliocentric schools of planetary motion) is a sign that the field of study is still nascent. Opinions should give way to theories as a science matures. > It is not the point of philosophy to end philosophy, to ‘solve’ the deep questions so that people can stop thinking about them. It is the point of people to think about these questions, and the job of philosophers to rub their faces in that fact. What? Yes, it is not the point of philosophy to end philosophy. But it's certainly not this either. To me, the point of philosophy is to examine those aspects of existence that cannot be examined by other sciences, especially because the measurement or experimental methods or the resources to do so do not (yet) exist.

TelmoMenezes 8y ago
> To me, the point of philosophy is to examine those aspects of existence that cannot be examined by other sciences, especially because the measurement or experimental methods or the resources to do so do not (yet) exist. Not at all. Philosophy is about fundamental questions that fall outside the scope of the set of questions that can be settled by empirical validation. For example: "what is science?", "how can we know something?", "what does it mean for something to exist?", "why is there something rather than nothing?", "what is good and evil?", etc. One important branch of philosophy is that of epistemology, concerned with the nature and acquisition of knowledge itself. You expressed two rather extreme epistemological views (extreme in relation to the positions of most non-naive philosophers on these topics): -> That one can only judge knowledge on the basis of its applications; -> That given good enough instruments and enough resources, science could answer all questions worth being asked. Maybe the example questions above can convince you to think deeper about these positions.

protonfish 8y ago

I have mixed feelings while reading philosophers trying to desperately justify their relevance. It's sad at first, then you start being battered with the verbose fallacies they believe to be good quality thinkin', and you wish they had died out a long time ago. I do not have the time to address every bit of nonsense in this gish gallop so I'll stick to 2: 1. What is the measure of philosophic truth? It is implied strongly that "success" is determined by acceptance of ideas by others. Usefulness, accuracy, precision, ethics, are not important: what is important is that your ideas spread like a virus. If true, then philosophy is really, like the Sophists of old, just about rhetoric. And if manipulating people through words is your thing, then studying advertising and marketing would be a much more effective investment. 2. A key argument was "philosophy is so much better now than it used to be." I find the fact philosophy is not nearly as bad as it used to be, though arguably true, not very compelling. A better question would be "Is it good enough?" I have not yet found convincing evidence that is the case.

jasonhansel 8y ago
All good points, but it is worth noting that the idea of a logical fallacy itself comes from philosophy. The study of fallacies proper began with Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations.
- dooglius 8y ago
  The study of fallacies may have started there, but the _idea_ of a logical fallacy is likely much, much older.
- ColanR 8y ago
  I guess that just means philosophy hasn't improved beyond the standard erected by Aristotle. More complicated, and more to it, but certainly not of higher quality.
  - jasonhansel 8y ago
    The study of fallacies in the West began with Aristotle, but it certainly hasn't ended there; Aristotle only lists a fraction of the things we consider fallacies today. That said, I do think that more philosophical research is needed in the area. Unfortunately, most philosophers have focused on formal logic, even though informal fallacies are much more common.

charlysl 8y ago

For me, Russel put it best: Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge—so I should contend— belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy

Koshkin 8y ago
All that being true, "philosophy" is also the name often given to an emerging science that has no name of its own; for example, physics used to be known as "natural philosophy" (despite Aristotle having used the word long before that).
- Retra 8y ago
  "Natural philosophy" was not called that because it was an emerging science. It was called that because it was different from theology in the way Russel described.
cerradokids 8y ago
I prefer Ayn Rand's take on it: Without abstract ideas you would not be able to deal with concrete, particular, real-life problems. You would be in the position of a newborn infant, to whom every object is a unique, unprecedented phenomenon. The difference between his mental state and yours lies in the number of conceptual integrations your mind has performed. You have no choice about the necessity to integrate your observations, your experiences, your knowledge into abstract ideas, i.e., into principles. Your only choice, is whether your principles are true or false, rational or irrational, consistent or contradictory. The only way to know which they are is to integrate your principles. What integrates them? Philosophy. A philosophic system is an integrated view of existence. As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation—or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by- your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: selfdoubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind’s wings should have grown.

man-and-laptop 8y ago

Epistemology is an interesting area of philosophy. It asks "How do I know whether something is true or not?" It interests me because while there's consensus on what's true in the hard sciences, there isn't any outside of it. People have passionate and utterly divergent opinions on politics, which they don't have about mathematics or physics. There has to be a way to live in a world where people disagree massively about politics, or idealistically, where we can resolve the disagreements. I find this more interesting than most specific issues in politics. I recommend Less Wrong or Nassim Taleb.

skybrian 8y ago
Before even getting into politics, we need to agree about what's going on in the world. I would consider it a great improvement if political discussions could move beyond naive realism: assuming we understand what's happening just because of what we read in the news. (Or worse, on Twitter.) Journalism is only the "first draft of history" and often gets it wrong. We should therefore be more uncertain about most things we read, particularly breaking news.

nshepperd 8y ago

> It is not the point of philosophy to end philosophy, to ‘solve’ the deep questions so that people can stop thinking about them. And yet, many people who ask questions like "what is good?" or "how can we know things?" or "is there free will, and if so, how does it work?" do so because they actually want to know the answers. If the purpose of philosophy isn't to find the answers, is philosophy the wrong place to be looking? If you're claiming that there aren't any answers, well... that sounds like a strong philosophical position!

wsy 8y ago
Philosophers have given their answers to some of these questions. But - as absurdly as it sounds - the answers are not the main point of philosophy. I would say, the main point is learning to ask these questions better. That includes: - getting a deeper understanding what the question means - learning how to assess candidate answers - learning which answers are wrong, and for which reasons - finding out what difference it makes to know the answer (sometimes it doesn't make any difference)

ThomPete 8y ago

Philosophy in my mind and experience really is the art of thinking both critically and constructively about a subject. Good philosophy opens up more new questions than it answers. When applied properly to problem-solving or system analysis or conceptual ideation it can be amazingly powerful and provide you with a perspective that is wider than those who don't. I have studied philosophy since I was very little but I always had one goal and that was to make it applicable to my life not just serve as an intellectual discipline devoid from any reality.

bitwize 8y ago

I've realized this: Philosophy is the science of shit we really know nothing about yet. Since we know nothing about it, we don't even know where to start. Our body of knowledge is in a state of primordial chaos, so philosophers come in and establish some ground rules that help us make sense of the chaos. THEN we can begin to learn. The philosophers generally have to retreat once we start building up a decent sized body of empirical knowledge and move onto the next frontier. That's why these days, philosophy is concerned mainly with a particular frontier: the human mind, especially its subconscious processes. Neuroscience is advancing at a steady clip, but it still doesn't have answers for things like how we acquire knowledge, how we know something is knowledge, how we process language, how we assign meaning to words and symbols, etc. Once the neuroscientists crack those nuts, I wonder what philosophers will retreat to. Morality and ethics, perhaps, about which gathering imperial data is difficult to impossible.

vinayms 8y ago

I think its fruitful to view philosophy as something that evolves rather than progresses. At its core, philosophy is nothing more than a disciplined approach to acquire knowledge about anything that the human mind is curious. The approach is usually through systematic questioning and applying logic* to the received answers, and iterating till satisfied. What happened was things changed. When "philosophy" first burst onto the scene, everything that man was curious about was ripe for exploration - life, universe, creation, numbers, sexuality, morals, shapes, thoughts, politics - everything. A cursory look at the kinds of topics that were discussed by ancient philosophers (not just the Greeks) should show the same. In time, all these pieces of knowledge got specialized and got separated into their own fields. Now, physics deals with the universe, maths deals with numbers and so on. Knowledge is not a Pangea anymore. All the low hanging fruits have been picked, eaten, digested and turned into manure. That is how the specialization happened. The deep and meaningful questions in each of these fields can only be asked if one is well versed in them. Human knowledge has outgrown the human capacity to be Renaissance men. Thus, we can't expect an outsider like Berkeley take down calculus anymore (but I guess they still do), and such tasks must be left to the experts with a philosophical bent. This leaves "philosophy" with very little to tackle. To me it seems only the question of existence and the meta question about nature of knowledge are left untouched by other fields, but I suppose theology often trespasses. I think this is why most people feel philosophy is boring and useless - the questions are either too abstract or they produce nothing but never ending debates and flamewars with no results that improve the knowledge. Philosophy has evolved. Philosophers must evolve too. I honestly have no idea what philosophers do (probably graduate and teach, and the cycle continues?) but they are left with two things to do to make themselves relevant again (not sure if they feel irrelevant) - pick a field of interest, learn it deeply and ponder over it, or infuse philosophical outlook to the students of various fields who would be better equipped to do the pondering. --- * For sake on convenience, I consider logic as a tool that already exists. To me logic is philosophy in its own right, and it bootstraps philosophy.

PinkMilkshake 8y ago

I don't think we can have a reasonable conversation about the progress of philosophy without separating it's two major traditions, Continental and Analytic. Once you do, it becomes clearer where the progress has been made. The modern world stands on the foundations of the Analytic tradition and while I don't necessarily agree, some argue that it reached it's apex when it discovered Empiricism. Progress in Continental Philosophy probably ended at the same time, when it came up against our new found ability to test what is true. Now the remnants of it (that I know of), Neo-Marxism and Postmodernism spend all their time trying to attack the foundations of Empiricism. Because until that is done, they can't really move forward. I feel that all the worst parts of human history and many lingering pseudosciences came out of the Continental tradition. Communism, Fascism, Anti-enlightenment, Psychoanalysis, and many schools of Sociology. And while Sociology has potential, Marxism is to modern Sociology what Alchemy is to Chemistry.

adjkant 8y ago

I'm amazed there has been little talk of modern ethics where there has actually been good progress by people like Rawls and Sandel, for example. The problem is that these ideas have not been truly applied in any way, only considered on the surface level. I think the problem with modern philosophy is not one of progress but one of translation and application.