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I 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 philoso
by woodruffw 4y ago
I 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.
- ConceptJunkie 4y ago
- woodruffw 4y agoEach of the examples I gave have direct origins in philosophy. It’s not even clear what the alternative would be for Hobbes and Popper; for Frege you could call him a mathematician instead, I suppose, if you ignore all of the other philosophy he did.
- kbrkbr 4y agoThe causality here is hard to prove, even untangle. I think the French Revolution was largely more influential for the state of governments today. I also think that science was not influenced so much by Popper, but much more by Fisher and Neyman. People tend to use what is a successful tool, and be influenced by power and theatre, not so much by fragile logical constructs without empirical value found sitting in the armchair.
- Tainnor 4y agoDo you think the French Revolution happened in a vacuum? Without the ideals of Enlightenment philosophy it would have amounted to nothing more than mob violence (if it had even gotten started at all).
- kbrkbr 4y agoGood point, I agree that it did not. Were those ideas however progress, or a tool that the Committee of Public Safety used because it fit their agenda? Was this philosophy finding truth that guided policy, or was it making up rhetorical arguments in a power struggle on behalf of the rising middle class and its policy? In absence of criteria of non empirical truth that are independent of the very non empirical truths they are criteria for I tend to believe the latter. In addition to this inherent weakness philosophical arguments are not for the masses anyways. Not even philosophers usually agree what they mean or entail. How could those idea(l)s have guided the revolution as more than just superficial self justification? Remember that the enemies of the French Revolution had their philosophers too, they just lost. Historical events usually have very mundane reasons, class struggles, geopolitics etc. Ideas may play a part too. But I believe not in the sense that they are the horses in front of the cart.
- 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).