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The salient question is "what is value?" One aim of Philosophy is to align our abstractions with our intuitions. Game theory/math can't do this, sorry. Your p

• Tichy 18y ago
  "One aim of Philosophy is to align our abstractions with our intuitions" I don't understand this sentence. I guess it means "philosophy is subjective"? If your understanding of those subjects is so great, then please elaborate. Also, I was referring to chapter 23, which seems to be purely about economic decisions. So clearly maths and economics are much better suited for treating the issue.
  • yelsgib 18y ago
    What does "subjective" mean? This question is not so straightforward as you (may) think. This is a microcosm of my point. What is value? How do we determine the relative values of our life decisions descriptively? How do we do so prescriptively? My claim is not that my understanding of the subjects is great - it's that your understanding of them (from what you've said in the comments) is shallow. Subjects do not exist independent of semantics - math and economics are only "useful" if we can transform our observations into their abstractions and vice versa (1 apple and 1 apple -> 1 + 1 = 2 -> 2 apples). Philosophy can give us tools for performing those transformations. It's very difficult to say what is of value in life (is a family of value? food? shelter? what are their relative worths?) and so is correspondingly difficult to use our abstract tools (math, economics, game theory) on the components of our observation (money, time, etc.) I'm not saying that chapter 23 is great, but I can motivate its use in -normal people's- lives. Normal people can't understand game theory, but that doesn't mean that they -should- or that they -need to- in order to survive or think about how they want to structure their lives. My real point is just that it seems very arrogant to me to assert that some hack Yale professors ideas validate your "prejudices" re: philosophy. It's better to say honestly that you don't understand philosophy. Maybe you don't want to. That's fine. I don't care. My point is that you shouldn't rail against it if you don't understand it. No one cares about your personal preferences, so you conflate them with moral high-ground and assert them in a public sphere. Good luck with everything :)
    • Tichy 18y ago
      "What is value? How do we determine the relative values of our life decisions descriptively? How do we do so prescriptively?" I am convinced that there is no possible external measurement for value, and therefore philosophy is doomed if it tries to find it. That is what annoys me about the lecture, it is pointless. As I described elsewhere, the best we can hope for is get a better idea of the implications of our actions (the result of our life), so that we can assign our own, subjective value to them. But that is the realm of economics and mathematics. So economics would be much more worthwhile than philosophy in that context. It's great that the guy is a professor. I am not. But there are also professors for "catholic religion" and other nonsense (I assume those people study "the will of god", studying religion as a cultural phenomenon is of course valid). There are whole conferences on "Consciousness" (which is complete nonsense in my opinion - the people going to those conferences can not even give a clear definition of what "consciousness" is supposed to be). Just because something is a subject at university doesn't imply that it makes sense. I have a maths degree myself, and I had 35 years of a life to think about things. You can call me arrogant, but I think I am entitled to have an opinion about things even if I am not a professor. One thing I took away from studying maths is the desire to always strip away the noise and the irrelevant facts, and get to the heart of what matters. If I can "shorten away" something, it is a great relief, it makes life simpler - forever. That is the great thing about maths, it is absolute. Sorry if it irks you when I call something irrelevant, but some things are. Edit: OK, I can't resist. You said "Normal people can't understand game theory, but that doesn't mean that they -should- or that they -need to- in order to survive or think about how they want to structure their lives" So you admit that philosophy is for the people who are not intelligent (or dedicated) enough to do maths or something real? That is why I say it is snake oil - it pretends to be important, when really the philosophers are only taking the easy way out, making a lot of words instead of aiming for precision.
      • yelsgib 18y ago
        "I am convinced that there is no possible external measurement for value" I agree with this. However, this does not mean that we can't form systems for interpreting our our observations in terms of values or structuring our lives to create them. This might be seen as the goal of philosophy. There's no possible external "measurement" or standard for anything, period. It's not as if we can actually -prove- math - it's just an agreement which we all come to. We don't come to it consciously; you might even say that it's in some sense the least common denominator of human computation; but "math" as an academic phenomenon is no more external than philosophy or anything else. "the best we can hope for is get a better idea of the implications of our actions" See, this is where I think you're wrong. Social systems have utility (buddhism, christianity) for some people because they give a method for aligning our values - they give external focus. In Japan, it's customary to say "it's cold, isn't it?" all the time in winter; this assures that a Japanese person's idea of cold is shared. Philosophical systems are useful in large part because they enable us to communicate, and create external standards. Talking about love in the abstract is useful because it both gives me insight into my own deep feelings and into those of others. Religion is in some sense primitive philosophy. --- You seem to be missing my big point which is that the aim of philosophy is to distill our difficult-to-verbalize notions into words. You claim that we shouldn't discuss consciousness because it is not defined. But if we don't discuss anything that is not defined, how can we ever come to a definition? If you look at the history of mathematics of physics, for instance, you'll see that people use strange and undefined terminology relatively frequently. It's hard to communicate in this forum, because I don't know your background, but formalization in mathematics didn't really take place until the end of the 19th century, early 20th century. Before that, math and philosophy were very similar. --- My point is not that you are not entitled to have an opinion - I am merely encouraging you to keep an open mind about things you don't understand. Try to put yourself in the position of someone who knew little or no math, for instance. You might say things like "all those symbols don't make sense" or "it's just gibberish, it's not useful" or whatever. I think there are a large number of problems here, really. One is that "philosophy" is hard to define. There are big branches (so-called "Western" vs. "Eastern," etc.) and smaller branches ("Analytic," "Structuralist," "Existentialist," etc.). But these are just branches of what has been traditionally referred to as philosophy. Some of these don't even really share traits (e.g. Structuralism doesn't really bear any resemblance to Analytic or Objectivist philosophies - they kind of talk in orthogonal directions). Another problem is that you are asking for a "use" of philosophy, which is kind of missing the point. Philosophy is not an object to be used (neither is Math, in its total form, incidentally), it is more of a large structure. Philosophy as an academic institution has had profound effects in the past - it shaped the creation of the United States and the constitution, it arguably stoked the nationalist fervor of nazi germany, it affects art, literature, relationship, gender. Feminism is a philosophical institution, in large part. My point is that as society "progresses" - as we have to deal with larger and more difficult to interpret social structures - as democracy arguably breaks down - philosophy becomes vital because it is in some sense our actual lingua franca. Philosophy -can- define the boundaries of what we can talk about. Philosophy -can- help us structure our worldviews and communicate them so that we can meaningfully cooperate. I'm not being rigorous or anything, I'm just trying to give you a taste of how I feel/think about the subject to help you see why I find your standpoint somewhat offensive. I'm not even really trying to argue, I'm just trying to communicate -my- values/feelings/thoughts. I also have a math degree, and I think that math is very important. Incidentally, I do NOT think that most current philosophical thought is important (I think that Foucault was important, and that he had effects, but after him I don't really know of any philosophers who I particularly "like") and I can completely understand why you think the way you do. --- As for your last point, I think you should be more careful in interpreting the statements of others. I was not saying (admitting! what harsh rhetoric) that philosophy is for those unintelligent (whatever that means) to do math. I was saying that one of the roles of philosophy is to give us a lingua franca so that we can communicate about how we structure our lives. People want to communicate, but it's hard to talk about things like love, value, etc. unless you have a structure to do it in. My claim is that philosophy (in some of its forms) achieves this task. --- As a capping point, I guess I want to say that the biggest flaw that I see in your thinking is that you essentialize "philosophy" and "math" and "economics." These things are not objects, they are sprawling and diverse academic structures whose effects are profoundly complex. To say "philosophy is snake oil" or "math is useful" is to make a major error in making objects out of things that cannot effectively be thought of as such. To say that philosophy "pretends to be important" is to draw together thousands of years of intellectual thought into one tiny heading and characterize it all (despite ignorance of most of it). For instance, why is Mahayana Buddhist Philosophy snake oil? Why is Post-Structuralist thought snake oil? What about Existentialism? What about Hegelian Metaphysics? You don't know about any of these things (most of which really do NOT "pretend to be important") but you characterize them nonetheless. So in the end, all the rigor with which you purport to think is thrown down the tubes because you obstinately refuse to be skeptical about a vast field which you ultimately do not understand. --- EDIT: Sorry, I know this is long, but this is something that I feel passionately about and it is very useful to write about it. I won't be terribly offended if you ignore my post. I wanted to add something which I think you might jump on: I am _NOT_ equating math and philosophy when I say that they are equally internal. I think that there are VAST and important differences between them. My claim is that their relative "objectivity" is not one of them. Do you know all the axioms of ZFC? Can you justify them? Do you know category theory? Do you know multiple axiom systems? How do you justify axioms? Most mathematicians I know (and I know a decent number) do not actually engage in foundational mathematics. In some sense they work in the "academic cloud" of math. They can't prove their ideas all the way down to ZFC. But because of the way that math as a field is structured, and because it is the abstraction of a simple concept or a small number of concepts (unit and/or set and/or "process/object" - corresponding to Peano Arithmetic, Set Theory (ZFC), and Category Theoretic bases, respectively), it is easy to work in the cloud and not run into bullshit. Philosophy has the problem that (as I said) it is attempting to find common language for things which we do not yet have language for. This means that a lot of the meaningful computation of philosophy is pre-linguistic. This makes it difficult to interact with, externally. One reason for this is that some philosophers (e.g. let's take the Deconstructionists) kind of live in their own world with their own specialized vocabulary. They all "understand" it, but to give a full exposition of it from basics would take forever. Philosophy's justifications are external, but they often take place in a difficult and idiosyncratic language which is inaccessible to outsiders. This does not mean that there are not the same standards of rigor (after all, many notable past philosophers were mathematicians and one might find it very hard to believe they would drop their logical standards for mere philosophy).