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The “lack of progress” in philosophy comes down to this. By the time of Socrates or Confucius, there had already been a lifetime’s worth of philosophical though
by earthboundkid 4y ago
The “lack of progress” in philosophy comes down to this. By the time of Socrates or Confucius, there had already been a lifetime’s worth of philosophical thought done that you needed to grapple with. Everyone since then has necessarily had to let something slip through in order to move forward at all.
- woodruffw 4y agoI think we sometimes understate philosophy's progress: it's certainly not measurable in decades, but the world of 2022 looks very different (in terms of philosophical priors and their consequences) than the world of Socrates or Confucius. A handful of examples that come to mind: * (Nearly) everybody on our planet lives under a government whose fundamental structure and right to power comes from modern (meaning 17th century) political philosophy. * Everybody posting on this board is using a machine that only existed in the mind games (and works) of math philosophers just over a century ago. * The philosophical foundations for contemporary science are very young, practically within living memory. Popper died less than 30 years ago!
- adalacelove 4y agoWe measure philosophy success relative to finding the meaning of life. On the other hand everybody agrees that computers have advanced enormously without achieving yet AGI.
- LudwigNagasena 4y agoDid those things appear because philosophers talked about them or did philosophers talk about them because they appeared?
- unsupp0rted 4y agoI can easily imagine an Earth with no philosophers after say Aristotle that is functionally identical to our current one.
- TuringTest 4y agoMinus evidence-based science, free markets, government of the people, freedom of religion and the end of slavery. Yep, exactly the same.
- LudwigNagasena 4y agoMight as well attribute all of that to Christianity. That claim probably holds as much water.
- andrepd 4y agoAttributing science and freedom of religion to Christianity? That's a bold thought.
- dublin 4y agoAnd a correct one. There is a reason these things did not develop until when and where they did...
- woodruffw 4y agoPinning concepts like "science" and "freedom" to a specific era is a silly endeavor. But if you had to, neither would originate in Christian Europe: science as a concept predates Christianity by at least 800 years; the thing we call "freedom" today didn't take shape until 1600 years into Christian Europe's development. Christianity, like just about every religion, has made invaluable contributions to philosophy. But it's ahistorical, to an embarrassing degree, to attribute such broad concepts and bodies of inquiry to it.
- pmontra 4y agoI second your other two points but I think this one is inaccurate: > * (Nearly) everybody on our planet lives under a government whose fundamental structure and right to power comes from modern (meaning 17th century) political philosophy. A large number of countries are ruled by dictators and their close supporters. Sometimes they position themselves within the boundaries of a more or less modern ideology but ultimately care only about being the one in command and use that ideology as lipstick. This is a straight continuation of prehistory, not something stemming from 17th century.
- woodruffw 4y agoI meant more the structure of and justification for the state and sovereign, not liberal ideology. You’re absolutely right that a large number of people don’t live under the latter.
- jll29 4y agoWhat is most annoying is: many of the dictators were installed by "democracies" so that these can continue their unsustainable lifestyles, at the expense of extreme suffering elsewhere. ...and I disagree with the parent's parent's point on progress in philosophy: all three examples are not progress of philosophy but at best influence or application of it, and in the last case did not involve trained/professional philosophers (e.g. Turing was a mathematician/chemist-turned-cryptoanalyst/computer scientist).
- LeanderK 4y agowhich lack of progress? The few encounters with logic (in a philosophical sense, although it feels more "mathy") I had recently were all more recent works, certainly more recent than a large part of math I use!
- dang 4y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33515219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33515219.