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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,

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.

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.