4 ms·

I can’t think of one serious “public intellectual” who says that “philosophy is outdated or useless” and I’d be curious to have a name or two.

keiferski 6y ago
"Stephen Hawking recently fluttered the academic dovecotes by writing in his new book The Grand Design – and repeating to an eager company of interviewers and journalists – that philosophy as practised nowadays is a waste of time and philosophers a waste of space. More precisely, he wrote that philosophy is ‘dead’ since it hasn’t kept up with the latest developments in science, especially theoretical physics." https://philosophynow.org/issues/82/Hawking_contra_Philosophy https://philosophynow.org/issues/82/Hawking_contra_Philosoph... "Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson has claimed philosophy is not “a productive contributor to our understanding of the natural world”;" https://www.huffpost.com/entry/neil-degrasse-tyson-and-the-value-of-philosophy_b_5330216 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/neil-degrasse-tyson-and-the-v...
- leephillips 6y ago
  Ah, I remember the Hawking thing now. Thank you. Feynman was also frequently snarky about philosophy. But he is not of our times.
- boyobo 6y ago
  I don't know about the first quote, but the second quote is not saying that the study of philosophy is useless. Just that it's useless for science.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    If you read the link, he's clearly attacking the study of philosophy as a whole.
    - boyobo 6y ago
      Why did you pick out that quote if it misrepresents the linked article?
      - keiferski 6y ago
        I don't think it misrepresents it at all. I wasn't reading "natural world" as being strictly a scientific thing.
        ekabod 6y ago
        "natural world" is the term used by greek philosophers to describe cosmos and motions. It is the same as a "scientific thing".
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    Philosophy is obviously not useless for science, but continental philosophy is useless. The main problem with philosophy of science nowadays is that not enough scientists act as philosophers.
    - jfengel 6y ago
      "Continental philosophy" isn't useless, either, except by the definitions of those who made up the term "continental philosophy". They have a very limited notion of what "utility" is. The things targeted as "continental philosophy" are mostly meaning-of-life questions. Those aren't "useful", but they're important to people. It's no more useless than literature or video games or skiing, which you don't need but are exactly what people do when they're not doing things that they are required to do. Not all "continental philosophy" is done well, and the vagueness of the question means that it's hard to distinguish rigorously between "well done" and "not well done". But that doesn't diminish meaning, or value, that people find in it.
      - whimsicalism 6y ago
        I've spent extensive time reading modern analytic and continental philosophy (ie. post-structuralists like Deleuze, honestly even Heidegger). Maybe it's my bent of mind but analytic philosophy just seems "reasoned" in a way that continental traditions are not.
        jfengel 6y ago
        Exactly. It's "reasoned", and it's easy to think that reason is everything worth thinking about. That is, after all, reasonable. But a huge swath of human activity isn't reasoned. A lot of human activity is spent just sitting around wondering what it all means, trying to live a "good" life, and wondering for that matter what "good" even means. Those are unscientific questions (or at least, we lack anything close to a science for discussing them), but it doesn't make them unimportant. Those are the questions the "continentals" are usually working on. In my opinion, they're at their worst when they're trying to sound analytical about it. The more rigorous they get, the more they make it clear that they're actually pretty bad at rigor. Derrida is the most obvious example, and honestly I have only the word of his defenders that he's somehow trying to undercut rationality rather than simply being a charlatan. In the end I treat the continentals the way I treat fans of soccer: I'm glad you're having a good time and finding meaning in what you're doing. That's worth it. But I'm gonna get irritated if you insist that I must find meaning in it as well. Maybe I will, maybe I won't, but the harder you insist the less interested I get.
- FabHK 6y ago
  First, Tyson didn't claim that philosophy is not a productive contributor to our understanding of the natural world, but that for any individual, "if you are distracted by your questions so that you can’t move forward, you are not being a productive contributor to our understanding of the natural world." The latter is a much more defensible claim. Next, it's worth quoting from the conclusion of the article defending philosophy against Hawking: > No doubt there is a fair amount of ill-informed, obtuse, or ideologically angled philosophy that either refuses or tries but fails to engage with the concerns of present-day science. One can understand Hawking’s impatience – or downright exasperation – with some of the half-baked notions put around by refuseniks and would-be engageniks alike. People justifiably take issue with some aspects of philosophy (postmodernism, for example, and its misuse of scientific terminology, as exposed in Bricmont & Sokal's Intellectual Impostors), and a few scientists certainly overshoot in their criticism, or make it unduly broad. But I don't think it's accurate to claim that "today the 'public intellectuals' often say philosophy is outdated or useless". Lastly, even if one thinks that philosophy is largely useless today, that doesn't imply at all that one considers "21st-century American values [...] the best, final ones, never to be questioned again".
cat199 6y ago
... anyone trying to impose their form of pseudo-scientific anthropological thought as normative would (not) beg to differ...
syril 6y ago
Lawrence Krauss https://www.google.com/search?q=lawrence+krauss+philosophy https://www.google.com/search?q=lawrence+krauss+philosophy Though I'm not sure if he counts since "intellectual" might be a bit of a stretch for him.

keiferski 6y ago

"Stephen Hawking recently fluttered the academic dovecotes by writing in his new book The Grand Design – and repeating to an eager company of interviewers and journalists – that philosophy as practised nowadays is a waste of time and philosophers a waste of space. More precisely, he wrote that philosophy is ‘dead’ since it hasn’t kept up with the latest developments in science, especially theoretical physics." https://philosophynow.org/issues/82/Hawking_contra_Philosophy https://philosophynow.org/issues/82/Hawking_contra_Philosoph... "Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson has claimed philosophy is not “a productive contributor to our understanding of the natural world”;" https://www.huffpost.com/entry/neil-degrasse-tyson-and-the-value-of-philosophy_b_5330216 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/neil-degrasse-tyson-and-the-v...

leephillips 6y ago
Ah, I remember the Hawking thing now. Thank you. Feynman was also frequently snarky about philosophy. But he is not of our times.
boyobo 6y ago
I don't know about the first quote, but the second quote is not saying that the study of philosophy is useless. Just that it's useless for science.
- keiferski 6y ago
  If you read the link, he's clearly attacking the study of philosophy as a whole.
  - boyobo 6y ago
    Why did you pick out that quote if it misrepresents the linked article?
    - keiferski 6y ago
      I don't think it misrepresents it at all. I wasn't reading "natural world" as being strictly a scientific thing.
      - ekabod 6y ago
        "natural world" is the term used by greek philosophers to describe cosmos and motions. It is the same as a "scientific thing".
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Philosophy is obviously not useless for science, but continental philosophy is useless. The main problem with philosophy of science nowadays is that not enough scientists act as philosophers.
  - jfengel 6y ago
    "Continental philosophy" isn't useless, either, except by the definitions of those who made up the term "continental philosophy". They have a very limited notion of what "utility" is. The things targeted as "continental philosophy" are mostly meaning-of-life questions. Those aren't "useful", but they're important to people. It's no more useless than literature or video games or skiing, which you don't need but are exactly what people do when they're not doing things that they are required to do. Not all "continental philosophy" is done well, and the vagueness of the question means that it's hard to distinguish rigorously between "well done" and "not well done". But that doesn't diminish meaning, or value, that people find in it.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      I've spent extensive time reading modern analytic and continental philosophy (ie. post-structuralists like Deleuze, honestly even Heidegger). Maybe it's my bent of mind but analytic philosophy just seems "reasoned" in a way that continental traditions are not.
      - jfengel 6y ago
        Exactly. It's "reasoned", and it's easy to think that reason is everything worth thinking about. That is, after all, reasonable. But a huge swath of human activity isn't reasoned. A lot of human activity is spent just sitting around wondering what it all means, trying to live a "good" life, and wondering for that matter what "good" even means. Those are unscientific questions (or at least, we lack anything close to a science for discussing them), but it doesn't make them unimportant. Those are the questions the "continentals" are usually working on. In my opinion, they're at their worst when they're trying to sound analytical about it. The more rigorous they get, the more they make it clear that they're actually pretty bad at rigor. Derrida is the most obvious example, and honestly I have only the word of his defenders that he's somehow trying to undercut rationality rather than simply being a charlatan. In the end I treat the continentals the way I treat fans of soccer: I'm glad you're having a good time and finding meaning in what you're doing. That's worth it. But I'm gonna get irritated if you insist that I must find meaning in it as well. Maybe I will, maybe I won't, but the harder you insist the less interested I get.
FabHK 6y ago
First, Tyson didn't claim that philosophy is not a productive contributor to our understanding of the natural world, but that for any individual, "if you are distracted by your questions so that you can’t move forward, you are not being a productive contributor to our understanding of the natural world." The latter is a much more defensible claim. Next, it's worth quoting from the conclusion of the article defending philosophy against Hawking: > No doubt there is a fair amount of ill-informed, obtuse, or ideologically angled philosophy that either refuses or tries but fails to engage with the concerns of present-day science. One can understand Hawking’s impatience – or downright exasperation – with some of the half-baked notions put around by refuseniks and would-be engageniks alike. People justifiably take issue with some aspects of philosophy (postmodernism, for example, and its misuse of scientific terminology, as exposed in Bricmont & Sokal's Intellectual Impostors), and a few scientists certainly overshoot in their criticism, or make it unduly broad. But I don't think it's accurate to claim that "today the 'public intellectuals' often say philosophy is outdated or useless". Lastly, even if one thinks that philosophy is largely useless today, that doesn't imply at all that one considers "21st-century American values [...] the best, final ones, never to be questioned again".

cat199 6y ago

... anyone trying to impose their form of pseudo-scientific anthropological thought as normative would (not) beg to differ...

syril 6y ago

Lawrence Krauss https://www.google.com/search?q=lawrence+krauss+philosophy https://www.google.com/search?q=lawrence+krauss+philosophy Though I'm not sure if he counts since "intellectual" might be a bit of a stretch for him.