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>Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics.
by nendroid 6y ago
>Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics.
I largely agree with this perspective on philosophy. Philosophy poses as a sort of higher level view of reality than physics or science. Rather than thinking of philosophy as a higher level view I think of it as a biased point of view.
Things like the philosophy of ethics or religion really drive this point through. Religion and ethics are human inventions that don't exist outside of the human experience.
I'm sure there are great ideas that have arisen from within philosophy, but the field as a whole tries to unionize religion, ethics, science, morality and logic as if these areas of thought are suppose to peers. Morality and religion is as specific to human behavior as the mating behavior of chimpanzees; they should not be put into the same bin as science and logic.
- Bodell 6y agoLogic is a field of philosophy [1]. As most inductive reasoning is. It would be impossible to separate philosophy from math, and in turn math from physics. Philosophy is not intended to be a high level view but a low level one, willing to examine the core structures of any system, weather those are man made ones such as ethics or beliefs, or supposed nature laws such as the physical world. It’s is true that some modern philosophers have done poorly to keep up with recent discoveries. However this is also true of many other proponents of different fields (i.e. neurology has been accused in lacking cognitive/computer science knowledge, biological science is often accused of lacking knowledge in statistical models). No matter the claim we don’t tend to decide entire fields of study are useless because we disagree with some of its practitioners. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic
- nendroid 6y agoReligion and morality is part of philosophy as well. Does this mean it is impossible to separate Morality and Mathematics? What is the mathematical formula for good and evil? >Philosophy is not intended to be a high level view but a low level one, We're talking about the same thing, high or low is just the choice of symbolic direction as nothing is really "lower" or "higher." Let's remove that from the semantics to remove the confusion. I mean a universal framework that unionizes all viewpoints into a cohesive whole similar to how assembly language unionizes all programming languages into a single cohesive language.
- Bodell 6y agoI think this fairly well points out that we do not actually mean the same thing when we say “high” and “low”. Although, I will concede that the two terms are often interchangeable and often misused. Correct me if I’m reading you wrongly, but It seems to me when you say high level you’re offering philosophy up as an umbrella where all things that fall beneath it are then equivocated. My argument is that I do not believe this. I believe philosophy is a tool best used to build things up from the bottom. I think when physics asks a question of itself, we can safely call that philosophy. In much the same way, it is also philosophy when we ask ourselves if what we are doing is morally “right”. Same tool, vastly different jobs. With little to no connection inherent between the jobs themselves. This would be the same in mathematics if I were to offer an axiom in traditional number theory (specifically all positive integers in a base 10 system). I would then need to argue that my proposed axiom did not apply also to propositional calculus, as no reasonable mathematical would believe that they were equivalent. This is not to say there is no overlap, there very well may be if interpreted correctly. But it does not by its existence imply they should be the same thing. This is also where I think we agree. For me physics’ ability to question its axioms are in fact what separates it from things like religious dogma. An axiom that is indisputable is dogma in a sense. So the reason why science is so powerful is this ability to question and not take results on faith. To remove philosophy from that would be to diminish what sets it apart. So with the tool metaphor I’d just say agin that not all practitioners use their tools wisely. But this does not mean we should throw out all of our hammers just because we see someone using one upside down. I would also suggest reading more on the topic of ethics in philosophy. I think you may find that the field is far more scientific then you believe it to be. You’ll also note that there are many similarities in its logic and methods of categorization. The issue is simply that it is much more difficult to answer questions in ethics than it is to find out what happens to an object on a frictionless plane. And if physics is the one true answer, than not much can be considered purely human made. As humans abide the same physical laws that frictionless planes do.
- nendroid 6y ago>Correct me if I’m reading you wrongly, but It seems to me when you say high level you’re offering philosophy up as an umbrella where all things that fall beneath it are then equivocated. No we mean the same thing. Though I do not agree with you that philosophy is more fundamental then science or logic. >You’ll also note that there are many similarities in its logic and methods of categorization. Any random topic can be founded on arbitrary axioms to create theorems of unlimited complexity. This does not justify study imo.
- mannykannot 6y agoIt is certainly true that science is founded on philosophy and is arguably a branch of it, but the implicit question in the controversial passage from the review is whether modern philosophy's methods are adequate. In that regard, as pointed out by Eliezer Yudkowsky [1], two millenia of philosophic inquiry was blindsided by the more radical epistemic and metaphysical implications of 20th. century physics. Personally, I feel that philosophy of the mind's preoccupation with materialism (or its denial) [2] is a distraction that is holding it back. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Bp8vnEciPA5TXSy6f/can-you-prove-two-particles-are-identical https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Bp8vnEciPA5TXSy6f/can-you-pr... [2] http://www.timcrane.com/uploads/2/5/2/4/25243881/crane_hist_of_consciousness_draft.pdf http://www.timcrane.com/uploads/2/5/2/4/25243881/crane_hist_... p. 13
- Bodell 6y agoI'd have to give it serious thought, but if I were to agree, I'd also have to add that: The last two millennia of physics were also blindsided by it's own implications of it's discoveries in the 20th century. Philosophy of mind I think is only a good example of all the things we still do not understand about neurology and cognitive science. I am not personally disheartened by it, as I typically get excited about unanswered questions. But I would agree modern day philosophers would be well advised to read more interdisciplinary science journals if they want to remain relevant. A good example of this is the Bereitschaftspotential from Libet's famous experiments.The experiment was sound the results were sound, the interpretations however may not have been. Diligent philosophers could have pointed this out, but it was the work of a medical researcher who did disprove it's underlying assumptions.[1][2] [1]https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/09/free-will-bereitschaftspotential/597736/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/09/free-will... [2]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230624040_An_Accumulator_Model_for_Spontaneous_Neural_Activity_Prior_to_Self-Initiated_Movement https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230624040_An_Accumu...
- mannykannot 6y ago> The last two millennia of physics were also blindsided by it's own implications of it's discoveries in the 20th century. Putting aside whether we have had two millennia of physics as a distinct discipline, the point here is that progress on these issues was made by the methods of physics, rather than those of philosophic epistemology and metaphysics.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoBut that's exactly the point - science and logic are also specific to human behaviour. Our ideas of what constitutes science and logic are wholly subjective, and boil down to certain kinds of predictability, inference, and consistency within our own experience. We have no idea how universal, representative, or complete that experience really is. Worse, whenever we've assumed in the past that our science and logic are complete and perfectly self-consistent, we've always been proven wrong. So IMO it's likely that we're operating with a small subset of the experiential and philosophical sophistication available to more advanced sentiences - and it would be naive and irrationally self-congratulatory to assume otherwise.
- nendroid 6y agoWell of course you can get really abstract, but let's keep the topic on things that we know about to the best of our knowledge. As far as we're aware science and logic applies to things outside of our own experience. This is a semantic issue. Yeah you're not technically wrong that science and logic is part of the human experience. But at the same time there is a demarcation between science/logic and religion. What's the semantic word used for this demarcation? I chose "human experience" but I'm sure you can agree that's just a semantic choice and that the principles of science and logic as far as we're "aware" apply "outside" of the "human experience" while religion and morality do not.
- utopian3 6y ago> principles of science and logic as far as we're "aware" apply "outside" of the "human experience" On the contrary if you take a critical thinking course, you'll see that your logic does apply to the human experience
- nendroid 6y ago>On the contrary if you take a critical thinking course, you'll see that your logic does apply to the human experience Of course it does. I didn't say otherwise. All things we talk about are technically experienced through humans and thus all things are touched by the human experience. But that's just pedantics... we can think outside of that and assume that there are experiences other than our own even though technically the only thing we can experience is the "human experience." There is a demarcation here that I'm talking about that separates science and religion. Perhaps culture is a better word than experience. What if I say that science and logic apply outside of "human culture" while religion and morality do not? Would that help you understand my point?
- olooney 6y ago> Morality [...] is as specific to human behavior as the mating behavior of chimpanzees It's true that a lot of what has been written about morality and ethics turns out to make a lot of assumptions that tend to limit it to human beings; Kant's "rational agents" are pretty clearly just humans, certainly adult, likely neurotypical. Although he probably intended for it to be a truly universal concept, the definition he provides is so narrow that it actually excludes many ordinary humans, much less non-human intelligences. The frontier of ethics is to consider a more generalized ethical framework that can encompass other forms of intelligence. In the short term we'll need theories like that to deal with AI; in the long term perhaps also for aliens, uplifted animals, digital copies of human brains, or other even stranger things.
- nendroid 6y ago>The frontier of ethics is to consider a more generalized ethical framework that can encompass other forms of intelligence. You cannot derive morality from pure logic. Good and evil has nothing to do with a truth table. In addition there is a huge body of evidence that are specific moral behaviors are the result of natural selection. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Natural_morality https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Natural_morality. Morality are just arbitrary behavioral principles that assisted us in survival,. In the same way that feeling hungry helps us survive so does feeling guilty, the two are one and the same. Moral behavior is no different then behaviors caused by hunger. Why not create a philosophy of hunger? Once you think things through you will realize that an ethical framework does not exist outside of the human experience. You can create your own axiomatic morality framework to encompass aliens and AI but realize that you are just creating an arbitrary set of rules, you are not discovering anything profound about the universe.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago> In addition there is a huge body of evidence that are specific moral behaviors are the result of natural selection. There's a huge body of argument, which argues that various "moral" behaviors could have arisen via natural selection. Actual evidence? Not so much.
- entropicdrifter 6y agoI think the fundamental error you're making here is thinking of philosophy as a monolithic metastructure of human thought rather than thousands of discrete silos of academic study representing millions of perspectives over the course of human history. I would argue that one of the reasons we have so many societies that are so heavily dependent on scientific understanding yet also so perilously ignorant of science is because of the dearth of philosophical study in those cultures. In order to parse scientific understanding without wasting its insights we need to already have the mental tools needed to critically asses the usefulness and truth of said knowledge. That is what philosophy provides. From epistemology to logic to the wider existential questions, exploration of philosophy is what leads most modern people to rationality, whatever their starting points. For many people, understanding their religious or moral philosophy within the wider network of possible options that people have considered valid over the eons is the first step in the direction of scientific literacy. To discount that study because you're already a rationalist is reductive and self-sabotaging.
- nendroid 6y agoYeah, I agree. I'm more arguing for the fact that philosophy is not more fundamental than science. Think of it in the sense of in the big quest to answer the big fundamental question of existence we likely won't find it through philosophy because of a category error. Religion and ethics is not more fundamental than logic yet philosophy places them side by side as peers. This doesn't mean we should just throw the whole thing in the trash or that nothing good ever came out of it. I'm not saying that.
- entropicdrifter 6y ago>Religion and ethics is not more fundamental than logic yet philosophy places them side by side as peers. See, this is what I was talking about before, you're speaking of 'philosophy' as though it's one big thing and there's a unified perspective there. I don't think that anyone in their right mind would argue that ethics are as fundamentally true as logic any more than they would argue that a scientific theory is more proven than a mathematical proof. You just attacked a strawman, is my point. That was my point before, too. Philosophy is the exploration of perspectives, it isn't a single thing. It's an action. Just like science.
- farias0 6y agoYou seem to imply that knowledge of human experience-centric matters (morality, religion, perception, language, social sciences, the list goes on) is lesser than knowledge centered around the nature (obviously excluding the human experience). You used the word "bias", but researchers of course try to use scientific approaches as much as possible. Humanities thinkers are also preoccupied with truth and knowledge. It's just that their field is much more subjective. But it is a fallacy to conclude that therefore they are less serious or important subjects. You'd be basically expecting us to drop a subject just because it is harder.
- nendroid 6y ago>You seem to imply that knowledge of human experience-centric matters (morality, religion, perception, language, social sciences, the list goes on) is lesser than knowledge centered around the nature (obviously excluding the human experience). Yes because across human cultures (morality, religion, perception, language, social sciences, the list goes on) most of these things differ and if we were to encounter extraterrestrial beings I'm positive that such concepts such as morality and language could be foreign to them as well. One thing that we can assume to be universal across all cultures and even extraterrestrial life forms is logic. >You'd be basically expecting us to drop a subject just because it is harder. No I'm saying keep it seperate not drop it. Literature is more similar to religion than it is to logic; the grouping philosophy makes of logic and science with religion is erroneous as clearly religion and science are completely different things.
- farias0 6y agoSorry but you'll have to explain how universality makes an area of knowledge more important, useful, serious or any other similar adjective. The human experience not only exists, but it's by definition central to us, so how is this not extremely important? And your argument about science being different from religion therefore grouping both under philosophy is wrong simply ignores what "philosophy" is supposed to mean and how areas of knowledge relate to each other. I'm sorry, unlike your point about natural vs human sciences I can't see AT ALL what you mean here.