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Although formal logicians are quite isolated in philosophy departments -- while their colleagues are debating whether Plato or Kant had a better idea of what it

Although formal logicians are quite isolated in philosophy departments -- while their colleagues are debating whether Plato or Kant had a better idea of what it meant to be "good", the logicians are basically doing math with symbols rather than numbers.

jampekka 3y ago
Ethics are discussed very little in current philosophy, at least in the analytical tradition. Plato is mostly of historical interest, and of Kant's work it's mostly philosophy of mind, epistemology and metaphysics. Logicians are somewhat different in studying formal systems, and there are strong links to (foundations of) mathematics. But logics are typically developed and analyze to study some otherwise philosophically motivated questions.
- quus 3y ago
  This is not accurate. Ethics is very well-studied in analytic philosophy, and discussion of Plato and Kant are central topics.
pxc 3y ago
That's true, but in a way this is a good thing for CS students. In schools with analytic philosophy departments, you can expect to find a logician there. So every CS student can stop by their philosophy department and meet the logician, and when they do, they'll find someone who they can connect and communicate with in a similar way that they already (by junior or senior year, certainly) do with their math and CS theory instructors. Yes, they're specialized, but they're still guaranteed to be philosophically literate and they can help bridge some really interesting topics for CS students. And they probably know other people in the department who teach things that might be interesting to a STEM student even if that student hardly knows it yet.
eynsham 3y ago
>formal logicians are quite isolated in philosophy departments Few generalisations hold of philosophy departments across traditions and regions, and this is untrue of departments in the analytic tradition of which Dennett was part. Philosophical logicians are often interested in more than logic for logic’s sake, and other philosophers share that interest; see e.g. Williamson’s /Modal logic as metaphysics/.

jampekka 3y ago

Ethics are discussed very little in current philosophy, at least in the analytical tradition. Plato is mostly of historical interest, and of Kant's work it's mostly philosophy of mind, epistemology and metaphysics. Logicians are somewhat different in studying formal systems, and there are strong links to (foundations of) mathematics. But logics are typically developed and analyze to study some otherwise philosophically motivated questions.

quus 3y ago
This is not accurate. Ethics is very well-studied in analytic philosophy, and discussion of Plato and Kant are central topics.

pxc 3y ago

That's true, but in a way this is a good thing for CS students. In schools with analytic philosophy departments, you can expect to find a logician there. So every CS student can stop by their philosophy department and meet the logician, and when they do, they'll find someone who they can connect and communicate with in a similar way that they already (by junior or senior year, certainly) do with their math and CS theory instructors. Yes, they're specialized, but they're still guaranteed to be philosophically literate and they can help bridge some really interesting topics for CS students. And they probably know other people in the department who teach things that might be interesting to a STEM student even if that student hardly knows it yet.

eynsham 3y ago

>formal logicians are quite isolated in philosophy departments Few generalisations hold of philosophy departments across traditions and regions, and this is untrue of departments in the analytic tradition of which Dennett was part. Philosophical logicians are often interested in more than logic for logic’s sake, and other philosophers share that interest; see e.g. Williamson’s /Modal logic as metaphysics/.