4 ms·

Here you go: https://books.google.it/books?id=r0Bf3lLys6AC&printsec=frontcover&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.it/books?id=r0Bf3lLys6AC&pr

Here you go: https://books.google.it/books?id=r0Bf3lLys6AC&printsec=frontcover&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.it/books?id=r0Bf3lLys6AC&printsec=front... https://books.google.it/books?id=OVGna4ZEpWwC&printsec=frontcover&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.it/books?id=OVGna4ZEpWwC&printsec=front... These are just a couple of modern books with an anti-reductionist approach.

leereeves 8y ago
So no particular argument stands out as relevant and compelling? I can tell you I'll never read those books. Philosophy is a field that's never contributed anything useful and never actually reached a conclusion on anything.
- chobeat 8y ago
  can you acknowledge that "maybe" it's just that you cannot understand the whole thing? You know, many scientists engaged in philosophy (as if science is not a branch of philosophy, lol), as well as many artists, politicians, economists and most of the most brilliant minds every produced by the humankind. Why do you think they are wrong in that endeavour and you're right?
  - leereeves 8y ago
    I have no trouble understanding philosophy, it's not at all deep or challenging compared to advanced mathematics or physics. It's just unproductive. Ask five philosophers for an answer and you'll get ten opinions.
    - chobeat 8y ago
      what? Philosophy is not about giving answers. It's about many things, but it stopped being about giving answers a long time ago. It's about creating realities, it's about destructuring other people's answers. It's about asking questions. It's about understanding why all the answers are partial. But philosophy is a never ending endeavour, like science. They don't deal in absolutes, they deal in "this is good enough for now but that's not the truth".
      - leereeves 8y ago
        Precisely what I'm saying. Philosophy isn't even about looking for answers. You're right that science and philosophy were once united, but philosophy abandoned evidence-based inquiry long ago and left the search for real answers to science. Perhaps one day we'll really understand intelligence and consciousness. Perhaps not. But if we do, I'm confident the answers will come from neuroscience, psychology, and/or AI, rather than philosophy.
        chobeat 8y ago
        > Some time ago science diverged from philosophy Without epistemology there's no science. Period. Science needs philosophy because they have two complementing roles. If philosophy (or non-scientific thinking in general) doesn't define concepts, science has nothing to work with. Science's role is not to make up concepts. Sometimes a single person does that during scientific inquiry but he's stepping outside of science's responsability and ill-defined concepts created so many complications throughout science's history. Just think about psychiatry. > and philosophy abandoned evidence-based inquiry. Big citation needed. > Perhaps one day we'll really understand intelligence and consciousness. Perhaps not. But if we do, I'm confident the answers will come from neuroscience, psychology, and/or AI, rather than philosophy. That's not the point. For sure the scientific understanding of intelligence and consciousness will come from science. The role of philosophy is different: it's to define what's the intelligence your trying to make sense of, it's trying to frame the problem you want to solve with science, it's about pointing science towards the evidence you want to model and let it do its course because now the exchange is always been: "Go science, fetch there" and science replied "there's nothing there, but I've found neurons". "Oh nice, let's try there", "Still nothing, but I've found networks in the brain and processing in the visual cortex and the rest of the body", "Umh, weird. Maybe it's an emergent property". "Try there" and so on. Neuroscientists are heavily involved in philosophy in the first place because this back and forth is much more intense than in other fields and there's evidently something wrong in how the problem is framed.
        leereeves 8y ago
        > If philosophy (or non-scientific thinking in general) doesn't define concepts, science has nothing to work with. That's certainly not true. Physical concepts were invented by the physicists. Viruses, bacteria, prions, etc were discovered by biologists. Algorithms were invented by computer scientists and mathematicians. Philosophers had very little if anything to do with it. > philosophy abandoned evidence-based inquiry If I'm wrong about this you can easily prove it. Just point me to the evidence-based philosophy. > the exchange is always been: "Go science, fetch there" No philosopher pointed the way for Einstein or Planck or Euler. You could claim that they were practicing a non-scientific mode of thought but it was based on a scientific, not philosophical, education, and personally I think that's a very narrow, mechanical view of science. I don't mean to completely dismiss your chosen field. There might be value in it that I'm not seeing, and even if it's merely interesting but unproductive there's still value in that. I just mean to say two things: 1) it's not for me, and 2) when it intersects with other fields philosophers need to contribute something more specific/productive than "you should read these philosophy books". Practitioners of different fields collaborate by sharing relevant information, not by expecting people in other fields to learn their field.
- dang 8y ago
  Would you please stop? On the internet, the more grandiose a statement, the more empty it is, and posting like that in a flamewar is damaging this site for what it can actually be good at. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
chr1 8y ago
The problem with anti-reductionist approach is that it doesn't explain anything and doesn't predict anything. It simply says "i was wrong about all those other things, but this next thing you can't explain in principle, because reasons (many books of untestable claims here)". Even if we assume that consciousness or intelligence cannot be explained by physics, the anti-reductionist position still doesn't add anything because we need to try to explain it with physics anyway to find out that it is not possible.
- friendlybus 8y ago
  It adds the ability to survive in an environment where all the perceived facts are against you, like a desert. Physics in theory might save you from a water-less desert, but you won't be able to access that as a useful solution in the stranded-survivor situation.
  - chr1 8y ago
    How exactly philosophy is going to save anyone in a desert?

leereeves 8y ago

So no particular argument stands out as relevant and compelling? I can tell you I'll never read those books. Philosophy is a field that's never contributed anything useful and never actually reached a conclusion on anything.

chobeat 8y ago
can you acknowledge that "maybe" it's just that you cannot understand the whole thing? You know, many scientists engaged in philosophy (as if science is not a branch of philosophy, lol), as well as many artists, politicians, economists and most of the most brilliant minds every produced by the humankind. Why do you think they are wrong in that endeavour and you're right?
- leereeves 8y ago
  I have no trouble understanding philosophy, it's not at all deep or challenging compared to advanced mathematics or physics. It's just unproductive. Ask five philosophers for an answer and you'll get ten opinions.
  - chobeat 8y ago
    what? Philosophy is not about giving answers. It's about many things, but it stopped being about giving answers a long time ago. It's about creating realities, it's about destructuring other people's answers. It's about asking questions. It's about understanding why all the answers are partial. But philosophy is a never ending endeavour, like science. They don't deal in absolutes, they deal in "this is good enough for now but that's not the truth".
    - leereeves 8y ago
      Precisely what I'm saying. Philosophy isn't even about looking for answers. You're right that science and philosophy were once united, but philosophy abandoned evidence-based inquiry long ago and left the search for real answers to science. Perhaps one day we'll really understand intelligence and consciousness. Perhaps not. But if we do, I'm confident the answers will come from neuroscience, psychology, and/or AI, rather than philosophy.
      - chobeat 8y ago
        > Some time ago science diverged from philosophy Without epistemology there's no science. Period. Science needs philosophy because they have two complementing roles. If philosophy (or non-scientific thinking in general) doesn't define concepts, science has nothing to work with. Science's role is not to make up concepts. Sometimes a single person does that during scientific inquiry but he's stepping outside of science's responsability and ill-defined concepts created so many complications throughout science's history. Just think about psychiatry. > and philosophy abandoned evidence-based inquiry. Big citation needed. > Perhaps one day we'll really understand intelligence and consciousness. Perhaps not. But if we do, I'm confident the answers will come from neuroscience, psychology, and/or AI, rather than philosophy. That's not the point. For sure the scientific understanding of intelligence and consciousness will come from science. The role of philosophy is different: it's to define what's the intelligence your trying to make sense of, it's trying to frame the problem you want to solve with science, it's about pointing science towards the evidence you want to model and let it do its course because now the exchange is always been: "Go science, fetch there" and science replied "there's nothing there, but I've found neurons". "Oh nice, let's try there", "Still nothing, but I've found networks in the brain and processing in the visual cortex and the rest of the body", "Umh, weird. Maybe it's an emergent property". "Try there" and so on. Neuroscientists are heavily involved in philosophy in the first place because this back and forth is much more intense than in other fields and there's evidently something wrong in how the problem is framed.
        leereeves 8y ago
        > If philosophy (or non-scientific thinking in general) doesn't define concepts, science has nothing to work with. That's certainly not true. Physical concepts were invented by the physicists. Viruses, bacteria, prions, etc were discovered by biologists. Algorithms were invented by computer scientists and mathematicians. Philosophers had very little if anything to do with it. > philosophy abandoned evidence-based inquiry If I'm wrong about this you can easily prove it. Just point me to the evidence-based philosophy. > the exchange is always been: "Go science, fetch there" No philosopher pointed the way for Einstein or Planck or Euler. You could claim that they were practicing a non-scientific mode of thought but it was based on a scientific, not philosophical, education, and personally I think that's a very narrow, mechanical view of science. I don't mean to completely dismiss your chosen field. There might be value in it that I'm not seeing, and even if it's merely interesting but unproductive there's still value in that. I just mean to say two things: 1) it's not for me, and 2) when it intersects with other fields philosophers need to contribute something more specific/productive than "you should read these philosophy books". Practitioners of different fields collaborate by sharing relevant information, not by expecting people in other fields to learn their field.
dang 8y ago
Would you please stop? On the internet, the more grandiose a statement, the more empty it is, and posting like that in a flamewar is damaging this site for what it can actually be good at. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

chr1 8y ago

The problem with anti-reductionist approach is that it doesn't explain anything and doesn't predict anything. It simply says "i was wrong about all those other things, but this next thing you can't explain in principle, because reasons (many books of untestable claims here)". Even if we assume that consciousness or intelligence cannot be explained by physics, the anti-reductionist position still doesn't add anything because we need to try to explain it with physics anyway to find out that it is not possible.

friendlybus 8y ago
It adds the ability to survive in an environment where all the perceived facts are against you, like a desert. Physics in theory might save you from a water-less desert, but you won't be able to access that as a useful solution in the stranded-survivor situation.
- chr1 8y ago
  How exactly philosophy is going to save anyone in a desert?