2 ms·

I wouldn't call myself a philosphy expert by any means (love me some Epicurus) but I think the previous commenter is right. As far as philosophical dilemmas go,

I wouldn't call myself a philosphy expert by any means (love me some Epicurus) but I think the previous commenter is right. As far as philosophical dilemmas go, the answering machine problem is contrived at best. It relies on a pretty obvious mischaracterization of the situation at hand - there isn't a person saying "I am not here" at all, it's a machine playing a recording. With the necessary context, the dilemma becomes a pretty obvious non-dilemma. If you're saying we should be willing to explore our minds through philosophical problems, I agree with you. I just think this particular philosophical problem is pretty lame. Is the conclusion supposed to be that that formal meaning of any particular word is less important than the ability to communicate abstract ideas? That's an interesting notion though I'd argue that notion isn't helped by a half-broken analogy.

tadala 2y ago
On the other hand, the other response to OP's comment is a perfect display of what he means. A lot of tech bro hubris/idiocy.
- ryukoposting 2y ago
  In that case, let me go a step further: although I wouldn't respond the way some other folks have, I get why they would. Many of my most memorable and most intellectually stimulating classes were those that weren't related to my engineering degree. The philosophy classes, though, never even approached "intellectually stimulating" status. I wrote a good 80-100 pages of pseudointellectual drivel about half-baked analogies like the "answering machine paradox," and accrued thousands in debt in the process. Another thing: The great thing about Philosophy is that there are no wrong answers. But, the bad thing about philosophy classes is there are wrong answers. Open-endedness and free thinking don't scale to 150-seat lecture halls, indifferent TAs, and PhD-candidate "professors" doing the bare minimum to get a diploma.
djur 2y ago
"Paradox" and "dilemma" and even "problem" don't have as strong a meaning in philosophy as they do in colloquial English. In this context, the claim is essentially that a particular system of analyzing the truth of statements will incorrectly analyze this particular type of statement. The "paradox" is in the system, not in reality. The paper linked offers a solution for modifying one particular system so that it will correctly resolve the paradox. The programming analogy would be that processing a particular type of data will often have hidden pitfalls for the most intuitive approach. It might be easy to avoid those pitfalls by modifying your program, but someone had to notice and document the problem and the workaround.

tadala 2y ago

On the other hand, the other response to OP's comment is a perfect display of what he means. A lot of tech bro hubris/idiocy.

ryukoposting 2y ago
In that case, let me go a step further: although I wouldn't respond the way some other folks have, I get why they would. Many of my most memorable and most intellectually stimulating classes were those that weren't related to my engineering degree. The philosophy classes, though, never even approached "intellectually stimulating" status. I wrote a good 80-100 pages of pseudointellectual drivel about half-baked analogies like the "answering machine paradox," and accrued thousands in debt in the process. Another thing: The great thing about Philosophy is that there are no wrong answers. But, the bad thing about philosophy classes is there are wrong answers. Open-endedness and free thinking don't scale to 150-seat lecture halls, indifferent TAs, and PhD-candidate "professors" doing the bare minimum to get a diploma.

djur 2y ago

"Paradox" and "dilemma" and even "problem" don't have as strong a meaning in philosophy as they do in colloquial English. In this context, the claim is essentially that a particular system of analyzing the truth of statements will incorrectly analyze this particular type of statement. The "paradox" is in the system, not in reality. The paper linked offers a solution for modifying one particular system so that it will correctly resolve the paradox. The programming analogy would be that processing a particular type of data will often have hidden pitfalls for the most intuitive approach. It might be easy to avoid those pitfalls by modifying your program, but someone had to notice and document the problem and the workaround.