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> In your opinion, what are most philosophers about? Disclaimer: My main source of knowledge about this for the last 10 years is HN posts. It seems to me mod

by theamk 5y ago

> In your opinion, what are most philosophers about? Disclaimer: My main source of knowledge about this for the last 10 years is HN posts. It seems to me modern philosophy is very useful for the person who study it -- a large number of people who studied that claim that studying it helps them to organize their thoughts, and even help with "living a better life". Unlike many other sciences, philosophy makes no working predictions regarding real world, nor it is useful to non-philosophers. It only benefits people studying it. (Compare with physics for example: one may not be a physicist and have no idea how electricity works, but they still use electric light every day). Few centuries ago, philosophy was much more -- it was covering all natural sciences. There are still leftovers of that usage (the PhD degree; the jurisprudence being called "philosophy of law") but they have little relation to modern philosophy -- all the stuff which affects real world got their own type science. Sometimes philosophers forget about two previous paragraphs and try to apply their knowledge to external world -- like in this post that we are discussing. The results are normally hilariously wrong. Another example is [1], a philosopher who has a "solution to all the paradoxes of the infinite" which apparently has 0 citations and he does not care. This looks like a completely broken science field to me, so I can only hope that he is an exception and other philosophy departments are much better. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28367416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28367416 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28119854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28119854

bumby 5y ago
This is a very good post that helps clarify a lot. I think it gets to the heart of where we might not be seeing eye-to-eye: I'm guessing my umbrella of 'philosophy' is much broader than yours. I can certainly agree that much of philosophical debate, particularly in some academic circles, may devolve into being overly pedantic. I personally think philosophy is more value when it's an applied science; i.e., that which helps one "live a better life". I think that's really the point and without it, the study just comes across as an obsession with smelling one's own farts. To that end, I think I would disagree with the claim that it's of no value to "non-philosophers". Rather than just applied law which helps determine if something is legal or not, "philosophy of law" helps determine if a law is just or not. I think there's probably a good reason many lawyers study philosophy (I've seen studies that Classics majors had the highest LSAT scores). I'm glad the authors of the U.S. Constitution studied philosophy; I think it helps make better policy. I may have no knowledge of philosophy myself, but benefit from the policies framed by those who study philosophy to create robust systems. But I think that's all predicated on my larger umbrella of what constitutes philosophy. To circle back to the discussion AI, I cringe a bit at the thought of an overly technocratic approach because I worry the policy could be overly focused on building the best technology and not necessarily with the best ethics. Go back a hundred years to the eugenics movement and I would have the same concerns. One of the points made by the AI Now Inst. that you linked to is that "the current framing of AI ethics are failing." To me, the domain of ethics is philosophy, not tech. But that's not to mean there's a natural dichotomy, I think what we really need are "technologist philosophers".

by theamk 5y ago

bumby 5y ago

This is a very good post that helps clarify a lot. I think it gets to the heart of where we might not be seeing eye-to-eye: I'm guessing my umbrella of 'philosophy' is much broader than yours. I can certainly agree that much of philosophical debate, particularly in some academic circles, may devolve into being overly pedantic. I personally think philosophy is more value when it's an applied science; i.e., that which helps one "live a better life". I think that's really the point and without it, the study just comes across as an obsession with smelling one's own farts. To that end, I think I would disagree with the claim that it's of no value to "non-philosophers". Rather than just applied law which helps determine if something is legal or not, "philosophy of law" helps determine if a law is just or not. I think there's probably a good reason many lawyers study philosophy (I've seen studies that Classics majors had the highest LSAT scores). I'm glad the authors of the U.S. Constitution studied philosophy; I think it helps make better policy. I may have no knowledge of philosophy myself, but benefit from the policies framed by those who study philosophy to create robust systems. But I think that's all predicated on my larger umbrella of what constitutes philosophy. To circle back to the discussion AI, I cringe a bit at the thought of an overly technocratic approach because I worry the policy could be overly focused on building the best technology and not necessarily with the best ethics. Go back a hundred years to the eugenics movement and I would have the same concerns. One of the points made by the AI Now Inst. that you linked to is that "the current framing of AI ethics are failing." To me, the domain of ethics is philosophy, not tech. But that's not to mean there's a natural dichotomy, I think what we really need are "technologist philosophers".