8 ms·

First, Let's Shoot All the Philosophers

72 points by wtn 15y ago

Hisoka 15y ago
Philosophy, as it's taught in universities is not practical. But it doesn't have to be the case. Rather than aim for the abstract ideas such as Descartes, we should aim to teach things that relieve suffering in our daily lives, such as emotional mastery, and mental discipline. We should be answering the question: How best to live life in a world where luck, uncontrolled circumstances, unfairness and disappointments are bound to happen? How best to live in a world where we can't get what we always want? There are a lot of people with psychological problems in this world. Philosophy won't help them one bit. It's too technical and abstract. But things like the Noble Truths of Buddhism, or even basic emotional intelligence can be helpful to people as they deal with the turmoil of day to day life.
- jackwagon 15y ago
  "Philosophy, as it's taught in universities is not practical." There is plenty of practical philosophy. A healthy dose of theory of computation, or possibly business ethics, would have immediate utility for a lot of people here. "Rather than aim for the abstract ideas such as Descartes" We study the ideas from people such as Descartes to analyze their methods. Btw, he had many early-scientific writings. "we should aim to teach things that relieve suffering in our daily lives, such as emotional mastery, and mental discipline" no, maybe, yes. ... etc "There are a lot of people with psychological problems in this world." Now you're just getting batshit.
  - geoka9 15y ago
    > There is plenty of practical philosophy. A healthy dose of theory of computation.. Is theory of computation actually philosophy? Last time I checked it was a CS discipline.
flocial 15y ago
Philosophy certainly got left behind as science marched into the forefront. We certainly don't live in a age when one could be a world class mathematician, physicist, and philosopher at the same time. Who is the greatest contemporary philosopher that comes to mind? I find it ironic that this debate is taking place at UNLV because it sort of mirrors the way colleges push certain sports. Likewise with scholarship it's all about the professors who can crank out successful grant applications and co-author paper of the highest quality or expertly exploit gullible grad students.
- akuzi 15y ago
  > Who is the greatest contemporary philosopher that comes to mind? That is a question that is as difficult to answer as "Who is the greatest contemporary scientist?" Some candidates are Slavoj Žižek, Peter Singer, Annette Baier, Alastair Hannay, Daniel Dennett, John Searle, Simon Blackburn, Thomas Nagel, Leo Zaibert. The are also many famous philosophers are partly academics in specialist fields, eg. Richard Dawkins, Umberto Eco, Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker, George Dyson and many more.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - paganel 15y ago
    > Who is the greatest contemporary philosopher that comes to mind? In fact, this is not a relevant question, it's the same like we'd be asking "who's the tallest philosopher?" or "who's the most handsome?". Heraclitus or Epicurus or Thomas Aquinas are as relevant to us, people of this day and age, as are the philosophers that by chance happen to live in the same time with us. I don't know who said it first (Hegel, I think), but I think that the history of philosophy is the same thing as philosophy itself, there's no linear progress from the pre-Socratics to the post-Marxists.
- _delirium 15y ago
  It does seem to be relatively popular for scientists to philosophize towards the end of their careers, though the quality is mixed. Maybe it would be better if there were more people familiar with multiple fields. For example, Stephen Hawking's latest book is in part theoretical physics, but in part metaphysics, proposing a new position of "model-dependent realism". That part might've been improved by better understanding the existing realist and non-realist positions and the problems they've encountered. Of course, some existing metaphysics might be improved by better understanding theoretical physics, so it's not really a one-way street. But the approach of trying to pretend that that's not philosophy and therefore you don't have to engage with philosophy seems odder; it's difficult for me to see how proposing a metaphysical interpretation of a physics theory is not philosophy.
kstenerud 15y ago
The author begins by accurately portraying the general ignorance of the study of philosophy, and how this attitude greatly diminishes the perceived value of such studies. I was in agreement until the post took a sharp turn into veiled conspiracies, where those in authority are seemingly fully aware of how incompetent or corrupt authority can be undermined by questions, and actively seek to stamp out independent thought. I find myself even less in agreement when he uses Socrates as an example. Socrates was not killed because of his teachings. He was killed because he was a callous man who held little regard for the egoes he crushed by speaking truth bereft of tact, and in doing so made many enemies. The actual charges used against him were the same sort of trumped up charges you commonly see used to railroad a political enemy. Indeed, he was able to fully demonstrate that Meletus has no real evidence against him, but when you've offended the powerful who have influence over the proceedings, you have little hope of escaping the noose. When it comes down to it, Occam's Razor makes for an effective tool. Is this a great conspiracy against philosophers, or is it ignorance of philosophy, and thus its merits, leading to this careless dismantling U. Nevada's philosophy department?
- yters 15y ago
  In most dictatorships the intellectuals are all killed because they undermine the status quo.
  - kstenerud 15y ago
    What does this have to do with the blog post?
F_J_H 15y ago
From the article: This is a key point to understand: philosophy, as a discipline, does not provide answers. Well, notwithstanding the fact that it certainly provides some answers, philosophy is more oriented towards learning how to come up with answers, and more importantly, learning how to recognize if the answer you’ve come up with is right or wrong. I have forgotten much of what my first year philosophy professor said, but one thing that has always stuck with me was his opinion that “If we didn’t have philosophers, we’d still be burning witches.” That philosophy is useless because it in not practical is the same sort of thinking as expressed by reluctant students taking algebra and pre-calculus: Why do we need to know this stuff? It’s not like I will use it in everyday life. True, for the most part, many things you learn in a math course you will not need to live your everyday life. However, learning these things teaches you how to think, how to reason, and that answers can be derived by methodically applying known principles to discover the unknown. Athletes perform many exercises in the gym using motions and machines they will never encounter in their respective sport, but the point is of course these exercises help to make the body stronger and build endurance. The same principle applies to philosophy. To me, the spirit of philosophy is asking “why” when everyone just accepts, much like the student in this anecdote: One day when I was a junior medical student, a very important Boston surgeon visited the school and delivered a great treatise on a large number of patients who had undergone successful operations for vascular reconstruction. At the end of the lecture, a young student at the back of the room timidly asked, “Do you have any controls?” Well, the great surgeon drew himself up to his full height, hit the desk, and said, “Do you mean did I not operate on half of the patients?” The hall grew very quiet then. The voice at the back of the room very hesitantly replied, “Yes, that’s what I had in mind.” Then the visitor’s fist really came down as he thundered, “Of course not. That would have doomed half of them to their death.” God, it was quiet then, and one could scarcely hear the small voice ask, “Which half?” -Dr. E. E. Peacock, Jr
- kmm 15y ago
  I don't understand, what question does philosophy conclusively answer?
  - kirubakaran 15y ago
rdouble 15y ago
This topic always starts a debate about the value of philosophy as a field of study. The real issue is that with contemporary pick and choose university curricula, few people take philosophy courses. At a school like UNLV, where the top majors are Hotel Management and Athletic Training, how many people are actually studying philosophy? Why keep the department around if nobody is taking the classes?
MaxGabriel 15y ago
I've always found the most persuasive argument for philosophy that it helps kids prepare for law school. Philosophy has some of the most difficult (imo) readings, and as the original Boston Review article mentioned kids in philosophy get the best average score on tests like the LSAT. However, I've personally found my philosophy classes pretty much useless and despised postmoderism
- loevborg 15y ago
  The best thing about philosophy is that it helps kids prepare for law school? A backhanded compliment if I've ever seen one!
yummyfajitas 15y ago
The author makes an unjustified claim: I don't know what the tariff for higher education at UNLV is nowadays, but you can be damn sure that every $50,000-a-year Philosophy major at Harvard is subsidizing a hell of a lot of electron microscopes for the glamorous—and much less profitable—Molecular Biology majors. This is nonsense. The materials scientist who bought a $1M electron microscope received a grant for roughly $1.8M. The university took $800K or so as "overhead". I wish more people were aware of what congress is really funding when they claim to give money to science.
- bluekeybox 15y ago
  As someone with a BS in Molecular Biology, I have to say that there is nothing glamorous about that degree.
  - anghyflawn 15y ago
    It really does depend on your standard of comparison. Cosmology? Yeah, I guess you're right. Philosophy (or for that matter any humanities department)? Guess who gets more "serves them right" jeers if a a university decides to close down the department
- sophacles 15y ago
  Ahh yes, classic argument technique: reply to nonsense with nonsense[1]! Fantastic move. Oh wait.. there is one thing tho, which I presume you're OK with: it's a total logical fallacy. The nonsense here is the perfectly reasonable part of overhead, like that it covers electricity for the microscope, legal, hr, accounting and so on offices that need to be done for any organization, buildings to house the stuff, people to keep the lab clean, and so on. The 40ish% overhead you describe is pretty darn low, considering the overhead percentages in a lot of companies that take contracts are 2-4x over materials and skilled labor time.
  - rflrob 15y ago
    Regardless of whether 40-70% of grant money going to overhead is reasonable, there is still the point that most science is funded by medium-large scale grants, and no doubt some of that overhead goes towards maintaining facilities used for teaching Molecular Biology undergrads. I'm not sure what fraction of a humanities professor comes from the University vs. outside funding agencies, but it's at least a commonly held opinion in the sciences that research money is subsidizing humanities instruction, rather than vice versa. Anyone have any detailed analysis to the contrary?
dmfdmf 15y ago
I fully support shutting down the philosophy departments from Harvard and Yale on down. Not because philosophy is useless, pointless and impractical but because today what they teach is useless, pointless and impractical, not to mention dangerous. Everyone has and needs a philosophy -- an integrated view of the nature of reality, of truth and the basis for good and evil and the essence of being human. I strongly urge folks to read "Philosophy, Who Needs It" by Ayn Rand in which she makes the case, not for her philosophy of Objectivism, but of the importance and need for philosophy by all.
desushil 15y ago
IMO philosophy can't be learned/taught by the way we do with other subjects in school. Basically, philosophy answers to your questions, but only if you are searching the answer. But in most of the cases, peoples are searching reasons and logic behind a question, which philosophy doesn't provide. Here, I am talking about the eastern philosophy, which is entirely different than the western which I am totally unknown from. Philosophy can provide you vision of life, or whatever we are upto. P.S. Let's not kill the philosophers. Note: I am planning to join philosophy classes in my master level, once I finish my bachelors. :)
jff 15y ago
One thing that struck me strongly when taking a Philosophy of Technology course at my university (part of a concentration in philosophy) was that these philosophers really had no understanding of the technology they were trying to discuss. They'd simply latch on to something they heard--I recall "cybernetics" was one such topic--and misconstrue a bunch of news articles about it, then publish papers at each other defending and attacking their varied misconceptions. I also found that a lot of these papers included early content devoted to explaining how philosophy is super important to science/technology--but why should we bother listening to them if they can't even get the facts right? There can be interesting things to find in philosophy, but until they actually bother to learn more about a subject instead of running off to write a paper because they came up with a great metaphor to explain what they think a gluon is, I don't see much value in their philosophizing on actual practical/scientific things.
- nick_urban 15y ago
  I'm not sure what you're thinking of in particular, but I'm guessing that most talk about cybernetics in modern philosophy is derived from Heidegger's claim that in modernity, we lose any an ultimate referent for our chains of signification. Everything gets taken as for the sake of something else (e.g. as a resource to achieve some ends extrinsic to it), but there is no final "something else" to make it all meaningful. The reason he calls this "cybernetic" is because it deals with unending loops instead of the sort of hierarchical organization we might have seen in pre-modern times (e.g. with God at the top of the tree of meaning). Philosophy often attempts to dip below accepted meanings and systems of thought. This may make it seem like philosophers "have no understanding of the technology they're trying to discuss", but in fact they aren't necessarily discussing technology in the sense which one might assume. They're trying to get at a completely different strata of thought than the "how-to" of any given technology.
  - Nick_C 15y ago
    Perhaps. If the French school hadn't tried to use quantum mechanics in completely bizarre ways, leading many people to label them as wankers and thereby staining the entire profession, I might agree. The fact that the French view still persists 50 years later doesn't give me confidence.
bonaldi 15y ago
The philosopher, quoted: Philosophy teaches you how to think, to ask questions, this is useful to society. The university should keep it. The blogger, replying: I am unpersuaded. Philosophy does not give you answers. Oh, but it does teach you how to ask questions, that is useful to society. The straw man, beaten: ouch.
jchrisa 15y ago
I studied Philosophy at Reed College. The department there is biased toward the analytic side, which means I mostly studied set and number theory, reference and meaning of language, and other somewhat technical questions. I'm absolutely certain this was better preparation for my current career (writing Erlang and making dorky music videos about CouchDB) than anything I could have learned in a CS program. Maybe other folks wouldn't be adequately prepared to be coders, by learning the basics of predicate logic and theories of naming, but it certainly worked for me. If CS is practical, Philosophy is more practical. :)
- vecter 15y ago
  That's interesting. Could you elaborate on why you think analytic philosophy better prepared you for a career as an Erlang programmer than a computer science degree?
  - jchrisa 15y ago
    The biggest thing I learned in Philosophy, is how not to skip steps. Even the most mundane thing can have a ton of interesting questions hiding inside it. The best way to not skip steps is to train your mind to be in a state of perpetually acknowledging your ignorance. This is hard to do, and I wouldn't consider myself great at it, but the fact that I've identified this as a goal is something I credit to some of the professors I worked with there, Mark Hinchliff in particular.
    - vecter 15y ago
      Sounds like studying math or theoretical computer science would've accomplished the same :)
      - jchrisa 15y ago
        Perhaps, but it is nice that Philosophy is so general. Another side effect of studying it is that it's made me hungry for different perspectives. For most questions, there's a bigger context that can raise potentially more interesting questions. My favorite take on the subject is James Carse's lecture at The Long Now: http://longnow.org/seminars/02005/jan/14/religious-war-in-light-of-the-infinite-game/ http://longnow.org/seminars/02005/jan/14/religious-war-in-li...
dfc 15y ago
Did anyone else see the headline and immediately think about the article from yesterday encouring people to become a technologist and get a PhD in philosophy? I cracked up when I saw the title; I was expecting it to be a reply to the other article:) Previous Article: Why you should quit your technology job and get a Ph.D. in the humanities (chronicle.com) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2798178 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2798178
mchusma 15y ago
I always have problems with discussions like this. The article starts: "Apparently the state's current fiscal crisis has inspired the university to consider eliminating the entire department and firing all of its members." My answer to things like this is always the same. I would simply say privatize education, an let non profits and individuals pay for what they think is worth funds. Then you don't have to conflate the issue of the usefulness of philosophy with issues of taking the people's money to pay for people to learn philosophy. I think the philosophers might agree w me.
dreamdu5t 15y ago
Another Ann Rand circlejerk. Why stop at philosophy departments? Why not school itself? I thought that was the latest meme...
brianleb 15y ago
The snide commentary in this article undermines his arguments. Given how much of an expert he seems to consider himself, I would have expected him to know this. Looking down on others doesn't position you as their superior. Examples: "If anyone should realize that, an epistemologist should. If Professor Jones does not, perhaps he doesn't deserve to teach philosophy." "I shudder to think what a sensitive and intelligent criminologist, jurist, or physicist would take away from a rigorous course in the foundations of knowledge. If he or she has half a brain, they would be rendered permanently uncertain about the validity of their own day-to-day work." "Perhaps you, Dear Reader—like me—are surprised to learn that a hotbed of scholarly inquiry like UNLV actually has a philosophy department in the first place. But, putting aside any special needs UNLV might have concerning the ontology or metaphysics of college basketball, or the ethical justification for bribery of student athletes, I suppose it makes sense, if only for the sake of curricular completeness." "But last time I checked, the discipline of philosophy has not said, "Look, Kant got the categorical imperative pretty much right, so let's all just move on, shall we?" in the same way physicists have done with Newton and Einstein."
- Wilduck 15y ago
  I've never been involved in any philosophy department, but those I know who are talk a fair amount about the high level of ad hominem attacks that occur during debates. It seems like the superiority complex is fairly ingrained in their discourse. While my friends find it somewhat strange, they say eventually you start to tune it out and listen to the other arguments.
bugsy 15y ago
Some random thoughts that come to mind. 1. Philosophy is worth studying for many different reasons. 2. It is known that Philosophy majors have higher IQs and SAT/ACT scores than students in any other specialty. 3. Philosophy graduates make fantastic software engineers. It's a better screening degree than computer science (which is actually a pretty bad screening degree). 4. Pragmatism is an illusion.
- ristretto 15y ago
  Interesting that intelligent students choose philosophy. Is that choice justified, though, or just a relic of the old glory of philosophy?
  - discreteevent 15y ago
    Probably because a function of intelligence is to get to the root of things fairly quickly so intelligent students invariably come around to: "what about knowledge itself?" "what about thinking?" etc. They are a bit more meta. Problem is if you ever go down that route you find its hard tI distinguish meta from bullshit because its so abstracted from reality where you can verify things by trying them out or observing. Maybe they attend philosophy for help with this and later when they grow up realize that actually, no, they really attended because it was a good place to just shoot the shit. And what a lot of fun it was.
- spindritf 15y ago
  > 2. It is known that Philosophy majors have higher IQs and SAT/ACT scores than students in any other specialty. Source? I'm pretty biased so I mostly came here to ask "what about physicists?" but I'm also pretty curious about these relations in general. Anyway, this might be relevant: > Philosophers are the smartest humanists, physicists the smartest scientists, economists the smartest social scientists. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/12/verbal-vs-mathematical-aptitude-in-academics/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/12/verbal-vs-mat...
- MaysonL 15y ago
  Well, according to this table, it changes in grad school, where they seem to come in in 9th place: http://web.archive.org/web/20070104093613/http://www.econphd.net/guide.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20070104093613/http://www.econphd...
Reclix 15y ago
Philosophy taught me to ask the following question: "What is the purpose of our university degree?" If the answer is: "to secure a well paying, promising job after college", then I think at worst, philosophy is on par with a wealth of other majors. Consider however that the answer might be: "to find oneself. To discover what what causes in us joy, sorrow, anger. To provide us with a lens through which we will view the rest of our lives. To equip us for the magnitude of our future mental, emotional, and physical reality (of which our occupation plays only a part). To teach us how to understand our own mind." In this case, is there any major more important? One thing I can promise is that your salary, your achievements, your success - none of these will bring you peace.
davesims 15y ago
"...there is no body of widely accepted answers to commonly encountered questions like reason for belief or standard of proof, such as might be found in a natural science, for example." I laughed out loud at this. "Science" is not distinct from philosophy, it is a child of philosophy. It exists on the borrowed epistemological currency (and naively at that) first set forth by the likes of Bacon, Descartes, Kant, Husserl, Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, etc. The author points out that philosophy has not provided definitive conclusions in any of its fields. True enough, but that means that science persists on a borrowed, naive philosophy of knowledge. That is, unless you think Popper and falsification solved the problem once and for all, and if you do, all I can say is <sigh>. It's a little like the philosophical equivalent of the debt ceiling. We've been borrowing for so long we no longer understand that there were ever consequences, or anything at stake to begin with. There's really no question that we live in an era of deeply, profoundly naive epistemology, as evidenced by this post's bracketing 'Science' as a sovereign discipline independent of and even superior to philosophy. The question becomes, then: what will be the long-term consequences, if any, of our childlike faith in Sovereign, Benevolent Science? I don't know and I don't have any good speculations, but it worries me. The best and brightest of the Enlightenment put tremendous effort towards resolving the problem of skepticism and couldn't (Hume, Kant, Hegel and their Contentinental inheritors -- Hume, Compte, Russell, Ayer, Quine, Dennett and their Analytical inheritors), and yet now I can't count the number of times I've had conversations with otherwise bright, literate individuals who think that Science is a free and sovereign endeavor unencumbered by the high-falutin abstractions of philosophy -- pah! Was it really that simple -- all we needed to do all along was pretend there was no epistemological question, even though positivism, phenomenology, and even Popper's falsification (please) are inadequate at a fundamental level to provide even a basic rational first principle in which to ground the entire enterprise? If the naive reductionism of the current crop of Science-enthusiasts and dogmatic futurists like Brockman, Dennett, Pinker, et al, work for you, then more power to you. Go watch Star Trek and be happy. I just don't see how anyone with any sense at all of the history of ideas cannot be disturbed by the current state of our culture's philosophy, or lack thereof.
Dysiode 15y ago
This man is a master of irony. He's discussing the nature of philosophy which is itself philosophical in nature; therefore, he's using philosophy to argue against the usefulness of philosophy. This begs the question: Is he therefore advocating we shoot him? This would be one of the most clever ways to commit suicide. His gravestone would have to read "Trollololol". On a more serious note (so you don't down vote me. Gosh.), it's already been said but philosophy's value lies in the framework for understanding Truth. With the exception of Absolutists and Subjectivists (and there aren't many that extreme) everyone is searching for something better and philosophy teaches people how to reason and what questions are relevant and will further the understanding of an issue of -everyone- involved in the argument. Socrates managed to get himself killed for asking questions which says something about their value. Philosophy grants people the ability to understand, well, everything.
- vacri 15y ago
  I found it very disturbing that the subtext of his article was "philosophy is kind've useful, but do we really want our judiciary and administration doubting themselves?"
wlsimmons 15y ago
Practicality is dependent on one's objective. What if my objective is to live a contemplative life? Sure seems like a reasonable major.
typpo 15y ago
Was anyone else's immediate reaction to this headline to recall the Dining Philosophers problem?
jwingy 15y ago
Funny, there was an article earlier on HN arguing about the merits and usefulness of studying philosophy....and in a CS/AI context: http://chronicle.com/article/From-Technologist-to/128231/# http://chronicle.com/article/From-Technologist-to/128231/# Maybe I'm biased, but I tend to find the arguments of a computer scientist much more compelling than that of an investment banker. Or anyone else versus an investment banker for that matter :)

72 points by wtn 15y ago

Philosophy, as it's taught in universities is not practical. But it doesn't have to be the case. Rather than aim for the abstract ideas such as Descartes, we should aim to teach things that relieve suffering in our daily lives, such as emotional mastery, and mental discipline. We should be answering the question: How best to live life in a world where luck, uncontrolled circumstances, unfairness and disappointments are bound to happen? How best to live in a world where we can't get what we always want? There are a lot of people with psychological problems in this world. Philosophy won't help them one bit. It's too technical and abstract. But things like the Noble Truths of Buddhism, or even basic emotional intelligence can be helpful to people as they deal with the turmoil of day to day life.

jackwagon 15y ago
"Philosophy, as it's taught in universities is not practical." There is plenty of practical philosophy. A healthy dose of theory of computation, or possibly business ethics, would have immediate utility for a lot of people here. "Rather than aim for the abstract ideas such as Descartes" We study the ideas from people such as Descartes to analyze their methods. Btw, he had many early-scientific writings. "we should aim to teach things that relieve suffering in our daily lives, such as emotional mastery, and mental discipline" no, maybe, yes. ... etc "There are a lot of people with psychological problems in this world." Now you're just getting batshit.
- geoka9 15y ago
  > There is plenty of practical philosophy. A healthy dose of theory of computation.. Is theory of computation actually philosophy? Last time I checked it was a CS discipline.

flocial 15y ago

Philosophy certainly got left behind as science marched into the forefront. We certainly don't live in a age when one could be a world class mathematician, physicist, and philosopher at the same time. Who is the greatest contemporary philosopher that comes to mind? I find it ironic that this debate is taking place at UNLV because it sort of mirrors the way colleges push certain sports. Likewise with scholarship it's all about the professors who can crank out successful grant applications and co-author paper of the highest quality or expertly exploit gullible grad students.

akuzi 15y ago
> Who is the greatest contemporary philosopher that comes to mind? That is a question that is as difficult to answer as "Who is the greatest contemporary scientist?" Some candidates are Slavoj Žižek, Peter Singer, Annette Baier, Alastair Hannay, Daniel Dennett, John Searle, Simon Blackburn, Thomas Nagel, Leo Zaibert. The are also many famous philosophers are partly academics in specialist fields, eg. Richard Dawkins, Umberto Eco, Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker, George Dyson and many more.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- paganel 15y ago
  > Who is the greatest contemporary philosopher that comes to mind? In fact, this is not a relevant question, it's the same like we'd be asking "who's the tallest philosopher?" or "who's the most handsome?". Heraclitus or Epicurus or Thomas Aquinas are as relevant to us, people of this day and age, as are the philosophers that by chance happen to live in the same time with us. I don't know who said it first (Hegel, I think), but I think that the history of philosophy is the same thing as philosophy itself, there's no linear progress from the pre-Socratics to the post-Marxists.
_delirium 15y ago
It does seem to be relatively popular for scientists to philosophize towards the end of their careers, though the quality is mixed. Maybe it would be better if there were more people familiar with multiple fields. For example, Stephen Hawking's latest book is in part theoretical physics, but in part metaphysics, proposing a new position of "model-dependent realism". That part might've been improved by better understanding the existing realist and non-realist positions and the problems they've encountered. Of course, some existing metaphysics might be improved by better understanding theoretical physics, so it's not really a one-way street. But the approach of trying to pretend that that's not philosophy and therefore you don't have to engage with philosophy seems odder; it's difficult for me to see how proposing a metaphysical interpretation of a physics theory is not philosophy.

kstenerud 15y ago

The author begins by accurately portraying the general ignorance of the study of philosophy, and how this attitude greatly diminishes the perceived value of such studies. I was in agreement until the post took a sharp turn into veiled conspiracies, where those in authority are seemingly fully aware of how incompetent or corrupt authority can be undermined by questions, and actively seek to stamp out independent thought. I find myself even less in agreement when he uses Socrates as an example. Socrates was not killed because of his teachings. He was killed because he was a callous man who held little regard for the egoes he crushed by speaking truth bereft of tact, and in doing so made many enemies. The actual charges used against him were the same sort of trumped up charges you commonly see used to railroad a political enemy. Indeed, he was able to fully demonstrate that Meletus has no real evidence against him, but when you've offended the powerful who have influence over the proceedings, you have little hope of escaping the noose. When it comes down to it, Occam's Razor makes for an effective tool. Is this a great conspiracy against philosophers, or is it ignorance of philosophy, and thus its merits, leading to this careless dismantling U. Nevada's philosophy department?

yters 15y ago
In most dictatorships the intellectuals are all killed because they undermine the status quo.
- kstenerud 15y ago
  What does this have to do with the blog post?

F_J_H 15y ago

From the article: This is a key point to understand: philosophy, as a discipline, does not provide answers. Well, notwithstanding the fact that it certainly provides some answers, philosophy is more oriented towards learning how to come up with answers, and more importantly, learning how to recognize if the answer you’ve come up with is right or wrong. I have forgotten much of what my first year philosophy professor said, but one thing that has always stuck with me was his opinion that “If we didn’t have philosophers, we’d still be burning witches.” That philosophy is useless because it in not practical is the same sort of thinking as expressed by reluctant students taking algebra and pre-calculus: Why do we need to know this stuff? It’s not like I will use it in everyday life. True, for the most part, many things you learn in a math course you will not need to live your everyday life. However, learning these things teaches you how to think, how to reason, and that answers can be derived by methodically applying known principles to discover the unknown. Athletes perform many exercises in the gym using motions and machines they will never encounter in their respective sport, but the point is of course these exercises help to make the body stronger and build endurance. The same principle applies to philosophy. To me, the spirit of philosophy is asking “why” when everyone just accepts, much like the student in this anecdote: One day when I was a junior medical student, a very important Boston surgeon visited the school and delivered a great treatise on a large number of patients who had undergone successful operations for vascular reconstruction. At the end of the lecture, a young student at the back of the room timidly asked, “Do you have any controls?” Well, the great surgeon drew himself up to his full height, hit the desk, and said, “Do you mean did I not operate on half of the patients?” The hall grew very quiet then. The voice at the back of the room very hesitantly replied, “Yes, that’s what I had in mind.” Then the visitor’s fist really came down as he thundered, “Of course not. That would have doomed half of them to their death.” God, it was quiet then, and one could scarcely hear the small voice ask, “Which half?” -Dr. E. E. Peacock, Jr

kmm 15y ago
I don't understand, what question does philosophy conclusively answer?
- kirubakaran 15y ago

rdouble 15y ago

This topic always starts a debate about the value of philosophy as a field of study. The real issue is that with contemporary pick and choose university curricula, few people take philosophy courses. At a school like UNLV, where the top majors are Hotel Management and Athletic Training, how many people are actually studying philosophy? Why keep the department around if nobody is taking the classes?

MaxGabriel 15y ago

I've always found the most persuasive argument for philosophy that it helps kids prepare for law school. Philosophy has some of the most difficult (imo) readings, and as the original Boston Review article mentioned kids in philosophy get the best average score on tests like the LSAT. However, I've personally found my philosophy classes pretty much useless and despised postmoderism

loevborg 15y ago
The best thing about philosophy is that it helps kids prepare for law school? A backhanded compliment if I've ever seen one!

yummyfajitas 15y ago

The author makes an unjustified claim: I don't know what the tariff for higher education at UNLV is nowadays, but you can be damn sure that every $50,000-a-year Philosophy major at Harvard is subsidizing a hell of a lot of electron microscopes for the glamorous—and much less profitable—Molecular Biology majors. This is nonsense. The materials scientist who bought a $1M electron microscope received a grant for roughly $1.8M. The university took $800K or so as "overhead". I wish more people were aware of what congress is really funding when they claim to give money to science.

bluekeybox 15y ago
As someone with a BS in Molecular Biology, I have to say that there is nothing glamorous about that degree.
- anghyflawn 15y ago
  It really does depend on your standard of comparison. Cosmology? Yeah, I guess you're right. Philosophy (or for that matter any humanities department)? Guess who gets more "serves them right" jeers if a a university decides to close down the department
sophacles 15y ago
Ahh yes, classic argument technique: reply to nonsense with nonsense[1]! Fantastic move. Oh wait.. there is one thing tho, which I presume you're OK with: it's a total logical fallacy. The nonsense here is the perfectly reasonable part of overhead, like that it covers electricity for the microscope, legal, hr, accounting and so on offices that need to be done for any organization, buildings to house the stuff, people to keep the lab clean, and so on. The 40ish% overhead you describe is pretty darn low, considering the overhead percentages in a lot of companies that take contracts are 2-4x over materials and skilled labor time.
- rflrob 15y ago
  Regardless of whether 40-70% of grant money going to overhead is reasonable, there is still the point that most science is funded by medium-large scale grants, and no doubt some of that overhead goes towards maintaining facilities used for teaching Molecular Biology undergrads. I'm not sure what fraction of a humanities professor comes from the University vs. outside funding agencies, but it's at least a commonly held opinion in the sciences that research money is subsidizing humanities instruction, rather than vice versa. Anyone have any detailed analysis to the contrary?

dmfdmf 15y ago

I fully support shutting down the philosophy departments from Harvard and Yale on down. Not because philosophy is useless, pointless and impractical but because today what they teach is useless, pointless and impractical, not to mention dangerous. Everyone has and needs a philosophy -- an integrated view of the nature of reality, of truth and the basis for good and evil and the essence of being human. I strongly urge folks to read "Philosophy, Who Needs It" by Ayn Rand in which she makes the case, not for her philosophy of Objectivism, but of the importance and need for philosophy by all.

desushil 15y ago

IMO philosophy can't be learned/taught by the way we do with other subjects in school. Basically, philosophy answers to your questions, but only if you are searching the answer. But in most of the cases, peoples are searching reasons and logic behind a question, which philosophy doesn't provide. Here, I am talking about the eastern philosophy, which is entirely different than the western which I am totally unknown from. Philosophy can provide you vision of life, or whatever we are upto. P.S. Let's not kill the philosophers. Note: I am planning to join philosophy classes in my master level, once I finish my bachelors. :)

jff 15y ago

One thing that struck me strongly when taking a Philosophy of Technology course at my university (part of a concentration in philosophy) was that these philosophers really had no understanding of the technology they were trying to discuss. They'd simply latch on to something they heard--I recall "cybernetics" was one such topic--and misconstrue a bunch of news articles about it, then publish papers at each other defending and attacking their varied misconceptions. I also found that a lot of these papers included early content devoted to explaining how philosophy is super important to science/technology--but why should we bother listening to them if they can't even get the facts right? There can be interesting things to find in philosophy, but until they actually bother to learn more about a subject instead of running off to write a paper because they came up with a great metaphor to explain what they think a gluon is, I don't see much value in their philosophizing on actual practical/scientific things.

nick_urban 15y ago
I'm not sure what you're thinking of in particular, but I'm guessing that most talk about cybernetics in modern philosophy is derived from Heidegger's claim that in modernity, we lose any an ultimate referent for our chains of signification. Everything gets taken as for the sake of something else (e.g. as a resource to achieve some ends extrinsic to it), but there is no final "something else" to make it all meaningful. The reason he calls this "cybernetic" is because it deals with unending loops instead of the sort of hierarchical organization we might have seen in pre-modern times (e.g. with God at the top of the tree of meaning). Philosophy often attempts to dip below accepted meanings and systems of thought. This may make it seem like philosophers "have no understanding of the technology they're trying to discuss", but in fact they aren't necessarily discussing technology in the sense which one might assume. They're trying to get at a completely different strata of thought than the "how-to" of any given technology.
- Nick_C 15y ago
  Perhaps. If the French school hadn't tried to use quantum mechanics in completely bizarre ways, leading many people to label them as wankers and thereby staining the entire profession, I might agree. The fact that the French view still persists 50 years later doesn't give me confidence.

bonaldi 15y ago

The philosopher, quoted: Philosophy teaches you how to think, to ask questions, this is useful to society. The university should keep it. The blogger, replying: I am unpersuaded. Philosophy does not give you answers. Oh, but it does teach you how to ask questions, that is useful to society. The straw man, beaten: ouch.

jchrisa 15y ago

I studied Philosophy at Reed College. The department there is biased toward the analytic side, which means I mostly studied set and number theory, reference and meaning of language, and other somewhat technical questions. I'm absolutely certain this was better preparation for my current career (writing Erlang and making dorky music videos about CouchDB) than anything I could have learned in a CS program. Maybe other folks wouldn't be adequately prepared to be coders, by learning the basics of predicate logic and theories of naming, but it certainly worked for me. If CS is practical, Philosophy is more practical. :)

vecter 15y ago
That's interesting. Could you elaborate on why you think analytic philosophy better prepared you for a career as an Erlang programmer than a computer science degree?
- jchrisa 15y ago
  The biggest thing I learned in Philosophy, is how not to skip steps. Even the most mundane thing can have a ton of interesting questions hiding inside it. The best way to not skip steps is to train your mind to be in a state of perpetually acknowledging your ignorance. This is hard to do, and I wouldn't consider myself great at it, but the fact that I've identified this as a goal is something I credit to some of the professors I worked with there, Mark Hinchliff in particular.
  - vecter 15y ago
    Sounds like studying math or theoretical computer science would've accomplished the same :)
    - jchrisa 15y ago
      Perhaps, but it is nice that Philosophy is so general. Another side effect of studying it is that it's made me hungry for different perspectives. For most questions, there's a bigger context that can raise potentially more interesting questions. My favorite take on the subject is James Carse's lecture at The Long Now: http://longnow.org/seminars/02005/jan/14/religious-war-in-light-of-the-infinite-game/ http://longnow.org/seminars/02005/jan/14/religious-war-in-li...

dfc 15y ago

Did anyone else see the headline and immediately think about the article from yesterday encouring people to become a technologist and get a PhD in philosophy? I cracked up when I saw the title; I was expecting it to be a reply to the other article:) Previous Article: Why you should quit your technology job and get a Ph.D. in the humanities (chronicle.com) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2798178 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2798178

mchusma 15y ago

I always have problems with discussions like this. The article starts: "Apparently the state's current fiscal crisis has inspired the university to consider eliminating the entire department and firing all of its members." My answer to things like this is always the same. I would simply say privatize education, an let non profits and individuals pay for what they think is worth funds. Then you don't have to conflate the issue of the usefulness of philosophy with issues of taking the people's money to pay for people to learn philosophy. I think the philosophers might agree w me.

dreamdu5t 15y ago

Another Ann Rand circlejerk. Why stop at philosophy departments? Why not school itself? I thought that was the latest meme...

brianleb 15y ago

The snide commentary in this article undermines his arguments. Given how much of an expert he seems to consider himself, I would have expected him to know this. Looking down on others doesn't position you as their superior. Examples: "If anyone should realize that, an epistemologist should. If Professor Jones does not, perhaps he doesn't deserve to teach philosophy." "I shudder to think what a sensitive and intelligent criminologist, jurist, or physicist would take away from a rigorous course in the foundations of knowledge. If he or she has half a brain, they would be rendered permanently uncertain about the validity of their own day-to-day work." "Perhaps you, Dear Reader—like me—are surprised to learn that a hotbed of scholarly inquiry like UNLV actually has a philosophy department in the first place. But, putting aside any special needs UNLV might have concerning the ontology or metaphysics of college basketball, or the ethical justification for bribery of student athletes, I suppose it makes sense, if only for the sake of curricular completeness." "But last time I checked, the discipline of philosophy has not said, "Look, Kant got the categorical imperative pretty much right, so let's all just move on, shall we?" in the same way physicists have done with Newton and Einstein."

Wilduck 15y ago
I've never been involved in any philosophy department, but those I know who are talk a fair amount about the high level of ad hominem attacks that occur during debates. It seems like the superiority complex is fairly ingrained in their discourse. While my friends find it somewhat strange, they say eventually you start to tune it out and listen to the other arguments.

bugsy 15y ago

Some random thoughts that come to mind. 1. Philosophy is worth studying for many different reasons. 2. It is known that Philosophy majors have higher IQs and SAT/ACT scores than students in any other specialty. 3. Philosophy graduates make fantastic software engineers. It's a better screening degree than computer science (which is actually a pretty bad screening degree). 4. Pragmatism is an illusion.

ristretto 15y ago
Interesting that intelligent students choose philosophy. Is that choice justified, though, or just a relic of the old glory of philosophy?
- discreteevent 15y ago
  Probably because a function of intelligence is to get to the root of things fairly quickly so intelligent students invariably come around to: "what about knowledge itself?" "what about thinking?" etc. They are a bit more meta. Problem is if you ever go down that route you find its hard tI distinguish meta from bullshit because its so abstracted from reality where you can verify things by trying them out or observing. Maybe they attend philosophy for help with this and later when they grow up realize that actually, no, they really attended because it was a good place to just shoot the shit. And what a lot of fun it was.
spindritf 15y ago
> 2. It is known that Philosophy majors have higher IQs and SAT/ACT scores than students in any other specialty. Source? I'm pretty biased so I mostly came here to ask "what about physicists?" but I'm also pretty curious about these relations in general. Anyway, this might be relevant: > Philosophers are the smartest humanists, physicists the smartest scientists, economists the smartest social scientists. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/12/verbal-vs-mathematical-aptitude-in-academics/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/12/verbal-vs-mat...
MaysonL 15y ago
Well, according to this table, it changes in grad school, where they seem to come in in 9th place: http://web.archive.org/web/20070104093613/http://www.econphd.net/guide.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20070104093613/http://www.econphd...

Reclix 15y ago

Philosophy taught me to ask the following question: "What is the purpose of our university degree?" If the answer is: "to secure a well paying, promising job after college", then I think at worst, philosophy is on par with a wealth of other majors. Consider however that the answer might be: "to find oneself. To discover what what causes in us joy, sorrow, anger. To provide us with a lens through which we will view the rest of our lives. To equip us for the magnitude of our future mental, emotional, and physical reality (of which our occupation plays only a part). To teach us how to understand our own mind." In this case, is there any major more important? One thing I can promise is that your salary, your achievements, your success - none of these will bring you peace.

davesims 15y ago

"...there is no body of widely accepted answers to commonly encountered questions like reason for belief or standard of proof, such as might be found in a natural science, for example." I laughed out loud at this. "Science" is not distinct from philosophy, it is a child of philosophy. It exists on the borrowed epistemological currency (and naively at that) first set forth by the likes of Bacon, Descartes, Kant, Husserl, Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, etc. The author points out that philosophy has not provided definitive conclusions in any of its fields. True enough, but that means that science persists on a borrowed, naive philosophy of knowledge. That is, unless you think Popper and falsification solved the problem once and for all, and if you do, all I can say is <sigh>. It's a little like the philosophical equivalent of the debt ceiling. We've been borrowing for so long we no longer understand that there were ever consequences, or anything at stake to begin with. There's really no question that we live in an era of deeply, profoundly naive epistemology, as evidenced by this post's bracketing 'Science' as a sovereign discipline independent of and even superior to philosophy. The question becomes, then: what will be the long-term consequences, if any, of our childlike faith in Sovereign, Benevolent Science? I don't know and I don't have any good speculations, but it worries me. The best and brightest of the Enlightenment put tremendous effort towards resolving the problem of skepticism and couldn't (Hume, Kant, Hegel and their Contentinental inheritors -- Hume, Compte, Russell, Ayer, Quine, Dennett and their Analytical inheritors), and yet now I can't count the number of times I've had conversations with otherwise bright, literate individuals who think that Science is a free and sovereign endeavor unencumbered by the high-falutin abstractions of philosophy -- pah! Was it really that simple -- all we needed to do all along was pretend there was no epistemological question, even though positivism, phenomenology, and even Popper's falsification (please) are inadequate at a fundamental level to provide even a basic rational first principle in which to ground the entire enterprise? If the naive reductionism of the current crop of Science-enthusiasts and dogmatic futurists like Brockman, Dennett, Pinker, et al, work for you, then more power to you. Go watch Star Trek and be happy. I just don't see how anyone with any sense at all of the history of ideas cannot be disturbed by the current state of our culture's philosophy, or lack thereof.

Dysiode 15y ago

This man is a master of irony. He's discussing the nature of philosophy which is itself philosophical in nature; therefore, he's using philosophy to argue against the usefulness of philosophy. This begs the question: Is he therefore advocating we shoot him? This would be one of the most clever ways to commit suicide. His gravestone would have to read "Trollololol". On a more serious note (so you don't down vote me. Gosh.), it's already been said but philosophy's value lies in the framework for understanding Truth. With the exception of Absolutists and Subjectivists (and there aren't many that extreme) everyone is searching for something better and philosophy teaches people how to reason and what questions are relevant and will further the understanding of an issue of -everyone- involved in the argument. Socrates managed to get himself killed for asking questions which says something about their value. Philosophy grants people the ability to understand, well, everything.

vacri 15y ago
I found it very disturbing that the subtext of his article was "philosophy is kind've useful, but do we really want our judiciary and administration doubting themselves?"

wlsimmons 15y ago

Practicality is dependent on one's objective. What if my objective is to live a contemplative life? Sure seems like a reasonable major.

typpo 15y ago

Was anyone else's immediate reaction to this headline to recall the Dining Philosophers problem?

jwingy 15y ago

Funny, there was an article earlier on HN arguing about the merits and usefulness of studying philosophy....and in a CS/AI context: http://chronicle.com/article/From-Technologist-to/128231/# http://chronicle.com/article/From-Technologist-to/128231/# Maybe I'm biased, but I tend to find the arguments of a computer scientist much more compelling than that of an investment banker. Or anyone else versus an investment banker for that matter :)