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A lot of “shallow philosophy” seems more like “pseudo-philosophy”. I feel like a lot of people just take “thoughts” and label that philosophy.
by epgui 2mo ago
A lot of “shallow philosophy” seems more like “pseudo-philosophy”.
I feel like a lot of people just take “thoughts” and label that philosophy.
- jfengel 2mo agoPeople really don't get how poorly freshman philosophy presents the field. It's not even a survey of an introduction to a prologue. So every passing thought feels like "philosophy".
- lisper 2mo agoIt doesn’t help that a lot of philosophy is actually bullshit.
- demilicious 2mo agomind defending that? I suspect that opinion would only come from one who took philosophy 101 and stopped there. If all you took was philosophy 101, this sounds a lot more reasonable and runs right into the point made by the pos you just responded to
- lisper 2mo agoHow would you expect me to defend it? It's my opinion. I could give you a long list of things in philosophy that I consider BS, but what good would that do? Do you really doubt that I could provide such a list? The most likely outcome of that exercise would be for you to invoke the no-true-scotsman fallacy and say, "Oh, of course those things are bullshit, but that's not real philosophy." And the fact that I can make that prediction with confidence is my defense. If you really want my list, since this is HN, I'll start with Ayn Rand and the Austrian school. You can read this if you like: https://blog.rongarret.info/2013/03/murray-rothbard-was-idiot.html https://blog.rongarret.info/2013/03/murray-rothbard-was-idio... Oh, and since this is HN, I'll also invoke an argument from authority and cite: https://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html https://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
- KPGv2 2mo agoI think it's ironically telling about your opinion on philosophy that your argument is illogical and boils down to: 1. people who aren't philosophers said some bullshit 2. don't you dare point out people who don't do philosophy shouldn't have their ramblings labeled philosophy Ayn Rand, a 20th century writer without a university education; Paul Graham, a computer scientist; and the Austrian School, an economics movement, are categorically not entities that have produced or ever will produce philosophy. That's no a No True Scotsman fallacy. It is a strict application of the definition of philosophy, a deep analysis of certain specific topics. Neither Rand nor Graham is educationally equipped to plumb that depth. And, again, the other name you dropped is not even a philosophical school.
- defrost 2mo ago> Neither Rand nor Graham is educationally equipped to plumb that depth In his defence, Graham does hold a BA (Philosophy) from Cornell University in 1986. Is your distaste here due to BA degrees rather than PhDs, a dislike of Cornell, or that Graham didn't chase academic philosophy and join a philosophy department?
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- lisper 2mo ago> people who aren't philosophers said some bullshit Wow, I didn't expect to be vindicated quite so definitively when I predicted: "The most likely outcome of that exercise would be for you to invoke the no-true-scotsman fallacy." > That's no a No True Scotsman fallacy. It absolutely is: > the definition of philosophy, a deep analysis of certain specific topics. I see nothing in that definition about writing in a particular time period or having a university degree, which are the two features you cited that allegedly disqualify Ayn Rand. I also see an awful lot of wiggle-room in the "specific topics" and how one measures whether one's analysis is sufficiently "deep". You exclude economics and computer science from your list of "certain topics" but you don't say what topics are allowed or on what basis this assessment of admissibility is to be made. Your argument is a paragon of muddled thinking, and does more to support my position than refute it.
- epgui 2mo agoWell “a lot” in volume sure, but that feels unnecessarily (maybe ignorantly) dismissive of the core corpus of the field. Find me any field in which there isn’t “a lot” of BS.
- 6510 2mo agoIf it is known that a lot of the marbles are pink there would have to be other colors. That means there is something to it!
- lisper 2mo agoThere's a lot of BS in most fields. The problem with philosophy is that it has no criterion for separating the wheat from the chaff. All other fields have some kind of external forcing function. In science, its experimental data. In the arts, it's the ability to produce novelty or exhibit skill or attract an audience. In philosophy there is no external forcing function. The only thing that makes a great philosopher is other philosophers saying they are great philosophers. There are definitely some non-BS philosophers, like Dan Dennett and Tim Maudlin. But really they are more like scientists than philosophers. In Maudlin's case, he's really a physicist, he just happens to work in a philosophy department.
- KPGv2 2mo ago> it has no criterion for separating the wheat from the chaff This comment does nothing but make you look ignorant.
- fasterik 2mo agoIt really depends on what you mean by philosophy. Academic philosophy? Ancient philosophy? Pop philosophy? Self-help content? For a list of topics that aren't bullshit, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a good starting point. https://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html https://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html
- lisper 2mo agoWell, yeah, obviously. I didn't say that all philosophy is BS, only that a lot of it is, including a lot of what is included in SEP. But as a source for making the field accessible, SEP is excellent.
- fasterik 2mo agoIt's not obvious at all from your comment, since you didn't qualify "a lot" or mention which topics in philosophy you think are legitimate.
- lisper 2mo ago> you didn't qualify "a lot" Why do you think I needed to? The phrase "a lot" has an established meaning in the English language. > or mention which topics in philosophy you think are legitimate That's true. I was writing an HN comment, not a review paper for submission to a peer-review journal. But it doesn't take a lot of imagination to notice that my comment was made in the context of a discussion of an article entitled "Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy" and to infer from that I was referring to philosophical topics popular among silicon valley tech bros. The specific topics I had in mind are mainly political and economic theories, which not everyone considers philosophy. But I'll point as an undeniable example the work of Curtis Yarvin a.k.a. Mencius Moldbug who, rather incredibly, attracts a huge audience by advocating for the divine right of kings, among other absurdities.
- fasterik 2mo agoWhen I read "a lot of philosophy is bullshit" without qualification I read it as an anti-intellectual statement either dismissing academic philosophy as a discipline, or confusing philosophy for self-help/mysticism. In some sense, I guess Curtis Yarvin could be considered (very bad) political philosophy, but he's so far removed from serious philosophy that he wouldn't have crossed my mind.
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- blitzar 2mo agoThat's a super philosophy lisper
- AngryData 2mo agoIt is true for multiple topics too, like economics. It is almost worse off for people to take these 100 level classes without then taking 200 and 300 level continuations. They think they have extra knowledge in the subject because of the classes but it was really just a primer later to tell them why all that stuff sounds good at first but is completely wrong and useless.
- mncharity 2mo agoA kindergarten science education person suggested their kids have a human right to understand their world then, rather than a lifetime (for them) later. So atoms, etc. I think that far far harder than they thought - "adapt later material for a younger audience" vs "wield lots and lots of research community domain expertise to craft largely novel content". But I've found it an interesting probe question: How would you teach some domain differently, if you primarily cared about... what to call it... non-deferred epistemic agency and calibrated/unfiltered sense-making? No learning linear systems without learning how to do linear approximation of systems in a mostly non-linear world. Ideal Gas Law chapter questions still have numbers for solid argon, but the intended learning outcome is "nope!" not mindless "PV=nRT!". No "this course will leave you with lots of new misconceptions about the world, but we'll clean those up in later years for those who stay with us".
- jjmarr 2mo ago> No learning linear systems without learning how to do linear approximation of systems in a mostly non-linear world. That's why Common Core trains kids on estimation from Grade 2. Instead of adding 12 + 23 = 35, you add 10 + 20 = 30 to get a number close to the right answer. This plants the idea "I can simplified numbers to get the answer if I don't need the last digit, which lets me solve problems faster". Which gets generalized as "I can use the simplified Ideal Gas Law to model a complex system if I don't own a supercomputer". Even in university I had this: my physics course heavily emphasized properties of linear systems to demonstrate why I'd want to use one and we ran linear regressions in other courses if we didn't "know" the true equations.
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- lostmsu 2mo agoState of the art of philosophy is IMHO Popper and scientific method. Everything that came after is BS, everything that came before is obsolete.
- hamper653 2mo ago> I feel like a lot of people just take “thoughts” and label that philosophy. Isn’t that just philosophy?