5 ms·

Philosophy - What's the use?

29 points by Jun8 15y ago

Jun8 15y ago
Since it's a meta-discipline (i.e. thinking about thinking) philosophy has been pooh-poohed and vilified since ancient times; or philosophers have been elevated to god-like stature. The danger in the current times, I think, is that they are fast disappearing from the public consciousness, eliciting neither of these strong responses that they did in the past. This is too bad since, like it or not, we need them more than ever (or as much as always, depending on your view about the progress or lack thereof of the world): "... if I say I would never kill an innocent person, does that mean that I wouldn’t order the bombing of an enemy position if it might kill some civilians? Does a commitment to democratic elections require one to accept a fair election that puts an anti-democratic party into power? Answering such questions requires careful conceptual distinctions, for example, between direct and indirect results of actions, or between a morality of intrinsically wrong actions and a morality of consequences." Those are not abstractions but common questions that we are facing today (e.g. using UAVs in Afghanistan or the rise of Islam in Egyptian elections). Add to these the important questions that are perennial election debates in the US: gay marriage (check how your argument fares against e.g, polygamy), abortion rights, limits to right of speech (e.g. the very recent ruling in personal data encryption), stem cell research, affirmative action, and so forth.
- bmj 15y ago
  I would say "as much as ever," but I agree with your basic premise (as a guy with a philosophy degree). I'm not sure philosophers are disappearing from the public consciousness--rather, they are being replaced with pseudo-philosophers. I reckon Richard Rorty was the last philosopher/public intellectual.
  - Jun8 15y ago
    I couldn't agree with your pseudo-philosopher observation. The public does have a need for consultation on these important questions and more and more that's being filled by such people.
gaius 15y ago
I have several friends involved with philosophy, as students or lecturers. If you listen to them talk, there is some interesting stuff there, like formal logic, but the lion's share is just arguing about semantics and nuances of translation from the original German. I think of philosophy like chess: it's an intellectual challenge, with a lot of history, but at the end of the day it's just a game. It's not for anything.
- rapala 15y ago
  If you listen to them talk, there is some interesting stuff there, like formal logic, but the lion's share is just arguing about semantics and nuances of translation from the original German. I think that describes what it is to work with a programming language compiler. And everyone knows that it is of utmost importance to get the semantics and small nuances just right. Compiler that can detect more of these ambiguities is often held as the better one. Caring for these kind of ambiguities in our lives in general might not make one a better person. But it is for something.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
xenophanes 15y ago
Why Philosophy? free iOS app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/why-philosophy/id354900479 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/why-philosophy/id354900479 And short pro-thinking/philosophy website presenting an argument/reasons: http://curi.us/think/ http://curi.us/think/
ExpiredLink 15y ago
Philosophy is rational thinking. Just like any rational thinking in any domain or discipline. Philosophy 'just' concentrates on the most basic concepts, the irreducible concepts.
rdouble 15y ago
I majored in Philosophy. It requires reading a bunch of obtuse and boring stuff, as well as a couple of logic classes. It turns out if you do the homework, it makes the LSAT a piece of cake. So there's one practical use case.
- brudgers 15y ago
  It is also a prerequisite for employment as a philosopher-king.
- mcrider 15y ago
  Agreed, as evidenced by my SO who took philosophy and got almost a perfect score on the LSAT. I didn't go in that direction, but I think majoring in Philosophy is a great path if you're sure you're going to get a post-graduate degree (or already have a certifiable skill).
- MaxGabriel 15y ago
  Standardized Tests shouldn't count as 'practical use cases.'
dreamdu5t 15y ago
New York Times - What's the use?
AznHisoka 15y ago
There are 2 types of philosophy - the abstract stuff that deals with semantics and logic. And the more practical type that deals with emotional mastery (such as Zen, the non-religious aspects of Buddhism, and Stoicism). This type of philosophy is supposed to relieve suffering. I hate to phrase it as a negative, but for most people, we turn to philosophy when our lives are in dire straits, not when we're doing well. In a sense, I guess it's more like spirituality.
- kaffiene 15y ago
  Zen and Buddhism are much more religions than Philosophy in the sense that the article was discussing. As you say "it's more like spirituality" which is not at all what the article was about.
rwj 15y ago
Even if many people do not need to know more philosophy, they certainly need more practice in philosophy. Philosophy teaches people to think logically, to form rational arguments, to carefully define their terms. Thinking clearly is an important life skill.
idoh 15y ago
I was reading Benjamin Franklin's autobiography and he wrote about philosophy in a broader sense. The context I remember is that he was hoping that a philosopher would take on the challenge of figuring out how best to shape and rig a sailboat, because at the time it was all more of an art than a science. Point being, up until the 19th century some or most people who would consider themselves philosophers tended to be more pragmatic/practical in their pursuits.
- prodigal_erik 15y ago
  Science used to be called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy. Many of those people would not call themselves philosophers today, because the meaning has shifted.
realschool 15y ago
Philosophy is for the people who are pre-determined to be interested in philosophy. People who are not pre-determined to be interested in philosophy will never be able to see value in the act of studying philosophy.
cturner 15y ago
> Rejecting foundationalism means accepting that we > have every right to hold basic beliefs that are not > legitimated by philosophical reflection. No, that's an utter non-sequiter. It certainly does not follow on from a rejection of foundationalism that you can hold arbitrary basic beliefs. For example, you may instead set a standard of evidence whereby you expect the set of your ideas to have an internal consistency, and where you consider the weight of new evidence against your existing map. Your tree could be influenced by philosophical reflection. Of you might consider your belief to consist of parallel hypotheticals. I may be a brain in a vat, but I'm also open to being a geek tapping on a computer in a newtonianish universe.
spodek 15y ago
I respect philosophy, but am more persuaded by Richard Feynman's perspective, when asked what he considered a philosophical question. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8aWBcPVPMo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8aWBcPVPMo This NY Times story gets that philosophy isn't that necessary, but then got so bogged down in philosophical writing it was a chore to get through and I don't consider it worth my time to have read it. Socrates said "The unexamined life is not worth living." I've examined my life a bunch and have benefited from the examination, but the people I know who seem to enjoy their lives the most haven't examined theirs at all. I tend to examine mine less now and I think I'm living better. But maybe that's from figuring things out earlier.
- philwelch 15y ago
  "The unlived life is not worth examining."
scoofy 15y ago
Philosophy is interested with the very edge of knowledge and learning why and how we can know about it. Perhaps you forget not so long ago the philosophers Frege, along with and Russell and Whitehead. These guys were trying to create a logic that mapped to language better that their traditional logic. This guy named Wittgenstein came up with this idea called 'truth-tables'. This work eventually lead some guy named Turing to invent the effing computer. It was philosophy, now it's a science. Philosophy is the creation of sciences. Whether it's computer science of the recent past, or psychology and political science before that, or even physics if you go back to Galileo's and Decartes' 'natural philosophy'. It's easy to disparage philosophy in retrospect, because you don't consider the science you love as being its biproduct.
- bermanoid 15y ago
  It's easy to disparage philosophy in retrospect, because you don't consider the science you love as being its biproduct. But this is exactly the problem with philosophy - all the useful stuff[1] leaves the field and takes on another label, because all the crap that's been around forever (you know, all that meandering metaphysical wishy washy nonsense about the nature of existence that everyone immediately thinks when they hear the word "philosophy") is pretty much garbage and nobody wants to be associated with it if they've got something that you can actually use. Philosophical motivations are fine, and every field needs a "Philosophy Of" to guide it; quite often those philosophical thoughts are exactly what inspired the original visionaries to do the real work of studying that field, and that's great, we need people thinking about stuff like that. But the pure study of philosophy has too many dark corners where stupidity can hide out and self-reinforce for me to approve of its current incarnation: while a small part of it is legitimate work in formal logic, a good part of the rest is lightly camouflaged religious apologetics, and the remainder is just inane arguments over definitions which ultimately do little more than remind us that human language is imprecise and does not lend itself to formal analysis. In my experience, way too many of the people that are "into philosophy" focus exclusively on the latter two pieces of it, embracing rigor only to the extent that it allows for squishy beliefs that can never be proven wrong. [1] ...with the notable exception of some parts of mathematical logic, which for some inexplicable reason seemed to stick around in the philosophy departments rather than moving on over to math like they probably should have.
pbh 15y ago
I think the most succinct response to this question I've found comes from the Starcraft II casting archon, "Tastosis" during one of those filler periods where nothing is happening in the game: Tasteless: I'm a philosophy major, man. Artosis: Hmmmm? That's good. Tasteless: You major in that, people are like: "What are you going to do with a philosophy major?" ::outraged mumble:: I'm like: "I dunno, properly navigate the world with my mind? Geez!"
spenrose 15y ago
At the risk of coming off as a fanboy, I'll say that pg's essay on philosophy is my favorite of his writings: http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html It matches my experience of getting a B.A. from a SLAC quite closely, and I regularly share it with non-techies.
- Jun8 15y ago
  The essay is quintessential pg: some things that are not his specialty he gets wrong but clear and full of great insight. It should be required reading. When pg talks about his naive decision in high school to major in philosophy he says: "I thought studying philosophy would be a shortcut straight to wisdom." I believe this is the central fallacy that people have about the discipline that turns them off quickly once they realize that it's not a royal path to wisdom but a broad and technical discussion on what qualities such a path would have.
Tycho 15y ago
There are many philosophies, but only one can be right. Seems to me every self respecting adult should settle on what philosophy they think is right, and then live by it, and not waste time going back and fourth about abstract technicalities in other philosophies.
- kaffiene 15y ago
  Philosophy is about understanding and comparing ideas. "Having a philosophy [of life]" is about adopting a framework for living. These two things are different.
pygorex 15y ago
Philosophers are a lot like programmers. The car you drive, the clothes you wear, the food you eat - all of them are touched in some way by a computer program - even if you personally are unaware of how these computer programs design things and route people & things. Philosophy is like this - the most ardent Bible (or Quran) thumping fundamentalist makes a bevy of philosophical arguments, even if they do a poor job of it while they are unaware of it. As with programming, the more esoteric and technical aspects of philosophy can be difficult for the layman to grasp. No policy maker would dream of de-funding computer science education because it's obtuse to the general public. Yet somehow technical difficulty is a knock against funding philosophy education in the USA....

29 points by Jun8 15y ago

Jun8 15y ago

Since it's a meta-discipline (i.e. thinking about thinking) philosophy has been pooh-poohed and vilified since ancient times; or philosophers have been elevated to god-like stature. The danger in the current times, I think, is that they are fast disappearing from the public consciousness, eliciting neither of these strong responses that they did in the past. This is too bad since, like it or not, we need them more than ever (or as much as always, depending on your view about the progress or lack thereof of the world): "... if I say I would never kill an innocent person, does that mean that I wouldn’t order the bombing of an enemy position if it might kill some civilians? Does a commitment to democratic elections require one to accept a fair election that puts an anti-democratic party into power? Answering such questions requires careful conceptual distinctions, for example, between direct and indirect results of actions, or between a morality of intrinsically wrong actions and a morality of consequences." Those are not abstractions but common questions that we are facing today (e.g. using UAVs in Afghanistan or the rise of Islam in Egyptian elections). Add to these the important questions that are perennial election debates in the US: gay marriage (check how your argument fares against e.g, polygamy), abortion rights, limits to right of speech (e.g. the very recent ruling in personal data encryption), stem cell research, affirmative action, and so forth.

bmj 15y ago
I would say "as much as ever," but I agree with your basic premise (as a guy with a philosophy degree). I'm not sure philosophers are disappearing from the public consciousness--rather, they are being replaced with pseudo-philosophers. I reckon Richard Rorty was the last philosopher/public intellectual.
- Jun8 15y ago
  I couldn't agree with your pseudo-philosopher observation. The public does have a need for consultation on these important questions and more and more that's being filled by such people.

gaius 15y ago

I have several friends involved with philosophy, as students or lecturers. If you listen to them talk, there is some interesting stuff there, like formal logic, but the lion's share is just arguing about semantics and nuances of translation from the original German. I think of philosophy like chess: it's an intellectual challenge, with a lot of history, but at the end of the day it's just a game. It's not for anything.

rapala 15y ago
If you listen to them talk, there is some interesting stuff there, like formal logic, but the lion's share is just arguing about semantics and nuances of translation from the original German. I think that describes what it is to work with a programming language compiler. And everyone knows that it is of utmost importance to get the semantics and small nuances just right. Compiler that can detect more of these ambiguities is often held as the better one. Caring for these kind of ambiguities in our lives in general might not make one a better person. But it is for something.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

xenophanes 15y ago

Why Philosophy? free iOS app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/why-philosophy/id354900479 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/why-philosophy/id354900479 And short pro-thinking/philosophy website presenting an argument/reasons: http://curi.us/think/ http://curi.us/think/

ExpiredLink 15y ago

Philosophy is rational thinking. Just like any rational thinking in any domain or discipline. Philosophy 'just' concentrates on the most basic concepts, the irreducible concepts.

rdouble 15y ago

I majored in Philosophy. It requires reading a bunch of obtuse and boring stuff, as well as a couple of logic classes. It turns out if you do the homework, it makes the LSAT a piece of cake. So there's one practical use case.

brudgers 15y ago
It is also a prerequisite for employment as a philosopher-king.
mcrider 15y ago
Agreed, as evidenced by my SO who took philosophy and got almost a perfect score on the LSAT. I didn't go in that direction, but I think majoring in Philosophy is a great path if you're sure you're going to get a post-graduate degree (or already have a certifiable skill).
MaxGabriel 15y ago
Standardized Tests shouldn't count as 'practical use cases.'

dreamdu5t 15y ago

New York Times - What's the use?

AznHisoka 15y ago

There are 2 types of philosophy - the abstract stuff that deals with semantics and logic. And the more practical type that deals with emotional mastery (such as Zen, the non-religious aspects of Buddhism, and Stoicism). This type of philosophy is supposed to relieve suffering. I hate to phrase it as a negative, but for most people, we turn to philosophy when our lives are in dire straits, not when we're doing well. In a sense, I guess it's more like spirituality.

kaffiene 15y ago
Zen and Buddhism are much more religions than Philosophy in the sense that the article was discussing. As you say "it's more like spirituality" which is not at all what the article was about.

rwj 15y ago

Even if many people do not need to know more philosophy, they certainly need more practice in philosophy. Philosophy teaches people to think logically, to form rational arguments, to carefully define their terms. Thinking clearly is an important life skill.

idoh 15y ago

I was reading Benjamin Franklin's autobiography and he wrote about philosophy in a broader sense. The context I remember is that he was hoping that a philosopher would take on the challenge of figuring out how best to shape and rig a sailboat, because at the time it was all more of an art than a science. Point being, up until the 19th century some or most people who would consider themselves philosophers tended to be more pragmatic/practical in their pursuits.

prodigal_erik 15y ago
Science used to be called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy. Many of those people would not call themselves philosophers today, because the meaning has shifted.

realschool 15y ago

Philosophy is for the people who are pre-determined to be interested in philosophy. People who are not pre-determined to be interested in philosophy will never be able to see value in the act of studying philosophy.

cturner 15y ago

> Rejecting foundationalism means accepting that we > have every right to hold basic beliefs that are not > legitimated by philosophical reflection. No, that's an utter non-sequiter. It certainly does not follow on from a rejection of foundationalism that you can hold arbitrary basic beliefs. For example, you may instead set a standard of evidence whereby you expect the set of your ideas to have an internal consistency, and where you consider the weight of new evidence against your existing map. Your tree could be influenced by philosophical reflection. Of you might consider your belief to consist of parallel hypotheticals. I may be a brain in a vat, but I'm also open to being a geek tapping on a computer in a newtonianish universe.

spodek 15y ago

I respect philosophy, but am more persuaded by Richard Feynman's perspective, when asked what he considered a philosophical question. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8aWBcPVPMo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8aWBcPVPMo This NY Times story gets that philosophy isn't that necessary, but then got so bogged down in philosophical writing it was a chore to get through and I don't consider it worth my time to have read it. Socrates said "The unexamined life is not worth living." I've examined my life a bunch and have benefited from the examination, but the people I know who seem to enjoy their lives the most haven't examined theirs at all. I tend to examine mine less now and I think I'm living better. But maybe that's from figuring things out earlier.

philwelch 15y ago
"The unlived life is not worth examining."

scoofy 15y ago

Philosophy is interested with the very edge of knowledge and learning why and how we can know about it. Perhaps you forget not so long ago the philosophers Frege, along with and Russell and Whitehead. These guys were trying to create a logic that mapped to language better that their traditional logic. This guy named Wittgenstein came up with this idea called 'truth-tables'. This work eventually lead some guy named Turing to invent the effing computer. It was philosophy, now it's a science. Philosophy is the creation of sciences. Whether it's computer science of the recent past, or psychology and political science before that, or even physics if you go back to Galileo's and Decartes' 'natural philosophy'. It's easy to disparage philosophy in retrospect, because you don't consider the science you love as being its biproduct.

bermanoid 15y ago
It's easy to disparage philosophy in retrospect, because you don't consider the science you love as being its biproduct. But this is exactly the problem with philosophy - all the useful stuff[1] leaves the field and takes on another label, because all the crap that's been around forever (you know, all that meandering metaphysical wishy washy nonsense about the nature of existence that everyone immediately thinks when they hear the word "philosophy") is pretty much garbage and nobody wants to be associated with it if they've got something that you can actually use. Philosophical motivations are fine, and every field needs a "Philosophy Of" to guide it; quite often those philosophical thoughts are exactly what inspired the original visionaries to do the real work of studying that field, and that's great, we need people thinking about stuff like that. But the pure study of philosophy has too many dark corners where stupidity can hide out and self-reinforce for me to approve of its current incarnation: while a small part of it is legitimate work in formal logic, a good part of the rest is lightly camouflaged religious apologetics, and the remainder is just inane arguments over definitions which ultimately do little more than remind us that human language is imprecise and does not lend itself to formal analysis. In my experience, way too many of the people that are "into philosophy" focus exclusively on the latter two pieces of it, embracing rigor only to the extent that it allows for squishy beliefs that can never be proven wrong. [1] ...with the notable exception of some parts of mathematical logic, which for some inexplicable reason seemed to stick around in the philosophy departments rather than moving on over to math like they probably should have.

pbh 15y ago

I think the most succinct response to this question I've found comes from the Starcraft II casting archon, "Tastosis" during one of those filler periods where nothing is happening in the game: Tasteless: I'm a philosophy major, man. Artosis: Hmmmm? That's good. Tasteless: You major in that, people are like: "What are you going to do with a philosophy major?" ::outraged mumble:: I'm like: "I dunno, properly navigate the world with my mind? Geez!"

spenrose 15y ago

At the risk of coming off as a fanboy, I'll say that pg's essay on philosophy is my favorite of his writings: http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html It matches my experience of getting a B.A. from a SLAC quite closely, and I regularly share it with non-techies.

Jun8 15y ago
The essay is quintessential pg: some things that are not his specialty he gets wrong but clear and full of great insight. It should be required reading. When pg talks about his naive decision in high school to major in philosophy he says: "I thought studying philosophy would be a shortcut straight to wisdom." I believe this is the central fallacy that people have about the discipline that turns them off quickly once they realize that it's not a royal path to wisdom but a broad and technical discussion on what qualities such a path would have.

Tycho 15y ago

There are many philosophies, but only one can be right. Seems to me every self respecting adult should settle on what philosophy they think is right, and then live by it, and not waste time going back and fourth about abstract technicalities in other philosophies.

kaffiene 15y ago
Philosophy is about understanding and comparing ideas. "Having a philosophy [of life]" is about adopting a framework for living. These two things are different.

pygorex 15y ago

Philosophers are a lot like programmers. The car you drive, the clothes you wear, the food you eat - all of them are touched in some way by a computer program - even if you personally are unaware of how these computer programs design things and route people & things. Philosophy is like this - the most ardent Bible (or Quran) thumping fundamentalist makes a bevy of philosophical arguments, even if they do a poor job of it while they are unaware of it. As with programming, the more esoteric and technical aspects of philosophy can be difficult for the layman to grasp. No policy maker would dream of de-funding computer science education because it's obtuse to the general public. Yet somehow technical difficulty is a knock against funding philosophy education in the USA....