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I disagree. Deeply interested in the idea of biology but not interested enough to work on biology puts you firmly out of the Spinoza category.
by mkoubaa 3y ago
I disagree. Deeply interested in the idea of biology but not interested enough to work on biology puts you firmly out of the Spinoza category.
- nathan_compton 3y agoYou can work on biology without physically being in a lab. Many neuroscientist spend more time writing simulations and analyzing data than they spend in a lab. Like how much time in the lab do you require at a minimum to be a "bona fide" "serious" philosopher. Like I seriously want to know: how many philosophers have you personally met? How many conferences have you attended? How many papers did you read this year? Because only a person barely aware of what philosophers get up to could possibly believe that they aren't interested in reality.
- mkoubaa 3y agoI consider writing simulations and analyzing data as working on biology. I don't consider pontificating about biology to be.
- nathan_compton 3y agoExcuse my plain language, but it is dumb to baldly assert that all philosophy is pontificating.
- mkoubaa 3y agoI agree, that would be really dumb. While I am prone to saying and doing dumb things, I think it'd be sloppy to suggest that I made that assertion. There's a set of things that include lab work, simulation, data analysis, etc that I consider doing biology, and another set of things that I consider philosophy of biology. The latter set includes pontification but also more analytical and serious work. But it is still wrong to compare Spinoza's interest in optics to a contemporary philosopher of biology's interest in biology unless that person also does biology. I don't hold philosophers to the impossible standard of classical polymaths, but I still don't feel a mere philosopher of X is as deeply interested in X as a practitioner of X.