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As a philosophy grad who finds this stuff mildly interesting, I wish the "rationalists" had chosen a different name for their movement. While "rationality" brin

As a philosophy grad who finds this stuff mildly interesting, I wish the "rationalists" had chosen a different name for their movement. While "rationality" brings to mind Plato or Descartes, this movement appears to be a kind of hyper-empiricism informed by cognitive psychology, AI research, and Bayesian statistics. In any case, if you're going to be an empiricist, it strikes me as a pretty decent way to go.

jessaustin 12y ago
Serious question: what would you recommend, instead of empiricism?
- RodericDay 12y ago
  Positivism. Logical positivism.
  - cbd1984 12y ago
    > Positivism. Logical positivism. Isn't this name taken by a somewhat different philosophy?
    - RodericDay 12y ago
      I don't think so. Parent asserts, > this movement appears to be a kind of hyper-empiricism informed by cognitive psychology, AI research, and Bayesian statistics. Opening intro from wiki for Logical Positivism asserts, > Logical positivism and logical empiricism, which together formed neopositivism, was a movement in Western philosophy that embraced verificationism, an approach that sought to legitimize philosophical discourse on a basis shared with the best examples of empirical sciences. Stephen Bond had a neat essay, perhaps a bit dubious on the AI/declarative side, about this exact topic. He writes a bit acerbically, but read at least past "For a long time I accepted this explanation at face value...". http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/positivism.html http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/positivism.html
      - rpedroso 12y ago
        The wikipedia definition isn't the clearest definition of logical positivism. If I had to define logical positivism in one sentence (which, in philosophy, is almost universally a bad idea), I would say something like this: Logical positivism is a philosophical movement which maintains that statements are only meaningful if they can be formally derived or empirically verified. In that respect, I think that logical positivism and the kind of empiricist approach identified by the OP have a significant amount in common. Similarly, I think the approaches share many of the same problems.
      - kbenson 12y ago
        Thanks for the link to the essay. The images are interesting, I didn't get that anything was going on until the third one. It's pretty good reading once you pick up on his humor. This passage is a gem: > The reluctant scion of a domineering steel tycoon, one of the wealthiest men in Europe, Wittgenstein spent his childhood hob-nobbing with the highest of imperial Viennese high society — and society doesn't get much higher than that. Groomed from an early age to take over his father's industrial empire, Wittgenstein instead fucked off to England at the earliest opportunity, to devote his life to the study of the most uncommercial and practically useless subject he could find. Russell proved an ideal mentor, and Predicate Logic an ideal subject.
- rpedroso 12y ago
  One thing the parent didn't bring up was there was a philosophical movement called "rationalism" that preceded the contemporary movement that refers itself by the same name. These so-called "Continental Rationalists" included philosophers like Descartes and Leibniz. The British Empiricist movement, featuring Locke, Berkeley and Hume, arose in response to the Continental Rationalists. One of the key points of contention between these two movements was the problem of "innate knowledge". Rationalists believed that we were born with some sorts of knowledge (foundationalism). Leibniz believed that we were born with the basic mathematical knowledge and reasoning. Descartes thought he had a great deal of innate ideas -- perhaps most famously, his proof of the existence of God relied on the fact that he had an innate idea of God. It was really only until Locke came along that anyone presented a top-down theory attempting to account for the acquisition of basic forms of knowledge (e.g. difference and similarity, truth and falsehood) while maintaining an initial "tabula rasa" state. I wouldn't lump in the contemporary rationalist movement with either of these previous movements -- it is probably best considered as an extension of logical positivism, owing to heirs like early Wittgenstein. However, positivism brushed up against many philosophical problems: semantics, the analytic-synthetic dichotomy, etc. Things got worse when Wittgenstein eventually wrote "Philosophical Investigations" which effectively contradicted everything he wrote in the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus", the latter of which was the foundational text of logical positivism. The two schools of thought were so different that people generally refer to "Tractatus" and "post-Tractatus" Wittgenstein. One of the key scientific critics to logical positivism was Karl Popper -- best known for formalizing the ideas of falsifiability -- eschewed the idea of induction altogether. I highly recommend his "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" (which is not to say that I agree with Popper, but he is an important figure in the philosophy of science). Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" calls into question the very idea of there being a "scientific truth" that is independent of historical assumptions. Contemporary heirs of this kind of historically focused thought, like Ian Hacking, try to make room for the ideas of "scientific fact" in some contexts (particle physics) but question it in others (psychology). I highly recommend Hacking's "Making Up People" -- a brilliant collection of essays which is still friendly to people who haven't read a great deal of Foucault (another important figure in recent philosophy of science). Second to last in my brief and certainly not comprehensive list is Hilary Putnam. It's hard to precisely pin down Putnam's thought -- as a philosopher he is remarkably open to criticism -- he has written papers in response to himself. Putnam has mostly kept himself consistent with scientific realism -- which basically states that scientific theories are usually more-or-less true.. Early on, he was a metaphysical realist who became sharply opposed to the school. Frankly, I don't know where he stands today, but read his essay "Brains in a vat" if you're at all interested in Skepticism. Finally, this list of alternatives to positivism would be incomplete without Richard Rorty. His landmark text, "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature", rejects the possibility of an epistemology altogether. I can't recommend Rorty's writings enough -- I believe he stands with Foucault as the most important pair of philosophers in the last 50 years. I hope that I've given some more background on the rationalist/empiricist debate and contemporary alternatives to proper empiricist and positivist thought. I certainly cannot give you anything comprehensive in the space of a HN comment -- my only goal has been to hint towards various schools of thought on this matter. Pierre Hadot wrote that philosophy is a way of life moreso than a domain of thought -- and I tend to believe that in life, the journey is more important than the destination. In that respect, it is impossible for me to give you a firm answer to the question you asked of the OP: "if not empiricism, then what?" -- but I hope that my comments help you find where you stand.
- sowhatquestion 12y ago
  Instead of empiricism? Probably some variant of pragmatism in the direction of Wilfrid Sellars and Robert Brandom. Try this on for size: section two of Brandom's article "Pragmatism, Inferentialism, and Modality in Sellars' Arguments against Empiricism."[1] Brandom's argument (which he has given different versions of elsewhere) is that having a belief is necessarily a social endeavor, because the content of that belief can never be fully specified by observations. Philosophers[2] have tried and failed to formalize observations in order to specify the content of beliefs in a formal language, but it never works. Brandom suggests an alternate route: the content of a belief is inseparable from the role it plays in the social "game" of asking for and giving reasons. Here's a key passage: "Observational vocabulary is not a vocabulary one could use though one used no other. Non-inferential reports of the results of observation do not form an autonomous stratum of language. In particular, when we look at what one must do to count as making a non-inferential report, we see that that is not a practice one could engage in except in the context of inferential practices of using those observations as premises from which to draw inferential conclusions, as reasons for making judgments and undertaking commitments that are not themselves observations. The contribution to this argument of Sellars’s inferential functionalism about semantics lies in underwriting the claim that for any judgment, claim, or belief to be cognitively, conceptually, or epistemically significant, for it to be a potential bit of knowledge or evidence, to be a sapient state or status, it must be able to play a distinctive role in reasoning: it must be able to serve as a reason for further judgments, claims, or beliefs, hence as a premise from which they can be inferred. That role in reasoning, in particular, what those judgments, claims, or beliefs can serve as reasons or evidence for, is an essential, and not just an accidental component of their having the semantic content that they do." EDIT2: This might be a more helpful explanation. Elsewhere, Brandom elaborates on this view by redefining beliefs as commitments. A commitment entails some other commitments, and is mutually incompatible with others. For example, if I believe that I'm eating an apple, this entails the belief that I'm eating a fruit. It's mutually incompatible with the belief that I'm eating a squid. It also entails that I believe things I might not even know about the apple, such as the chemical formulas for the various sugars I'm eating. The point is, if I play the game of reasoning correctly--mostly by dispensing with mutually incompatible commitments when they arise--others (e.g. botanists, chemists) can hold me accountable for all the correct beliefs about the apple. The "content" of the apple, for me, is nothing other than the series of moves I make in this game. EDIT1: You should also read rpedroso's comment, which does a great job exploring the many alternatives that arose after empiricism reached its impasse. 1: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-444/paper01.pdf http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-444/paper01.pdf 2: Not only empiricists, but possibly Kant on a very straightforward reading--although Brandom has a very different reading of Kant.

jessaustin 12y ago

Serious question: what would you recommend, instead of empiricism?

RodericDay 12y ago
Positivism. Logical positivism.
- cbd1984 12y ago
  > Positivism. Logical positivism. Isn't this name taken by a somewhat different philosophy?
  - RodericDay 12y ago
    I don't think so. Parent asserts, > this movement appears to be a kind of hyper-empiricism informed by cognitive psychology, AI research, and Bayesian statistics. Opening intro from wiki for Logical Positivism asserts, > Logical positivism and logical empiricism, which together formed neopositivism, was a movement in Western philosophy that embraced verificationism, an approach that sought to legitimize philosophical discourse on a basis shared with the best examples of empirical sciences. Stephen Bond had a neat essay, perhaps a bit dubious on the AI/declarative side, about this exact topic. He writes a bit acerbically, but read at least past "For a long time I accepted this explanation at face value...". http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/positivism.html http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/positivism.html
    - rpedroso 12y ago
      The wikipedia definition isn't the clearest definition of logical positivism. If I had to define logical positivism in one sentence (which, in philosophy, is almost universally a bad idea), I would say something like this: Logical positivism is a philosophical movement which maintains that statements are only meaningful if they can be formally derived or empirically verified. In that respect, I think that logical positivism and the kind of empiricist approach identified by the OP have a significant amount in common. Similarly, I think the approaches share many of the same problems.
    - kbenson 12y ago
      Thanks for the link to the essay. The images are interesting, I didn't get that anything was going on until the third one. It's pretty good reading once you pick up on his humor. This passage is a gem: > The reluctant scion of a domineering steel tycoon, one of the wealthiest men in Europe, Wittgenstein spent his childhood hob-nobbing with the highest of imperial Viennese high society — and society doesn't get much higher than that. Groomed from an early age to take over his father's industrial empire, Wittgenstein instead fucked off to England at the earliest opportunity, to devote his life to the study of the most uncommercial and practically useless subject he could find. Russell proved an ideal mentor, and Predicate Logic an ideal subject.
rpedroso 12y ago
One thing the parent didn't bring up was there was a philosophical movement called "rationalism" that preceded the contemporary movement that refers itself by the same name. These so-called "Continental Rationalists" included philosophers like Descartes and Leibniz. The British Empiricist movement, featuring Locke, Berkeley and Hume, arose in response to the Continental Rationalists. One of the key points of contention between these two movements was the problem of "innate knowledge". Rationalists believed that we were born with some sorts of knowledge (foundationalism). Leibniz believed that we were born with the basic mathematical knowledge and reasoning. Descartes thought he had a great deal of innate ideas -- perhaps most famously, his proof of the existence of God relied on the fact that he had an innate idea of God. It was really only until Locke came along that anyone presented a top-down theory attempting to account for the acquisition of basic forms of knowledge (e.g. difference and similarity, truth and falsehood) while maintaining an initial "tabula rasa" state. I wouldn't lump in the contemporary rationalist movement with either of these previous movements -- it is probably best considered as an extension of logical positivism, owing to heirs like early Wittgenstein. However, positivism brushed up against many philosophical problems: semantics, the analytic-synthetic dichotomy, etc. Things got worse when Wittgenstein eventually wrote "Philosophical Investigations" which effectively contradicted everything he wrote in the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus", the latter of which was the foundational text of logical positivism. The two schools of thought were so different that people generally refer to "Tractatus" and "post-Tractatus" Wittgenstein. One of the key scientific critics to logical positivism was Karl Popper -- best known for formalizing the ideas of falsifiability -- eschewed the idea of induction altogether. I highly recommend his "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" (which is not to say that I agree with Popper, but he is an important figure in the philosophy of science). Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" calls into question the very idea of there being a "scientific truth" that is independent of historical assumptions. Contemporary heirs of this kind of historically focused thought, like Ian Hacking, try to make room for the ideas of "scientific fact" in some contexts (particle physics) but question it in others (psychology). I highly recommend Hacking's "Making Up People" -- a brilliant collection of essays which is still friendly to people who haven't read a great deal of Foucault (another important figure in recent philosophy of science). Second to last in my brief and certainly not comprehensive list is Hilary Putnam. It's hard to precisely pin down Putnam's thought -- as a philosopher he is remarkably open to criticism -- he has written papers in response to himself. Putnam has mostly kept himself consistent with scientific realism -- which basically states that scientific theories are usually more-or-less true.. Early on, he was a metaphysical realist who became sharply opposed to the school. Frankly, I don't know where he stands today, but read his essay "Brains in a vat" if you're at all interested in Skepticism. Finally, this list of alternatives to positivism would be incomplete without Richard Rorty. His landmark text, "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature", rejects the possibility of an epistemology altogether. I can't recommend Rorty's writings enough -- I believe he stands with Foucault as the most important pair of philosophers in the last 50 years. I hope that I've given some more background on the rationalist/empiricist debate and contemporary alternatives to proper empiricist and positivist thought. I certainly cannot give you anything comprehensive in the space of a HN comment -- my only goal has been to hint towards various schools of thought on this matter. Pierre Hadot wrote that philosophy is a way of life moreso than a domain of thought -- and I tend to believe that in life, the journey is more important than the destination. In that respect, it is impossible for me to give you a firm answer to the question you asked of the OP: "if not empiricism, then what?" -- but I hope that my comments help you find where you stand.
sowhatquestion 12y ago
Instead of empiricism? Probably some variant of pragmatism in the direction of Wilfrid Sellars and Robert Brandom. Try this on for size: section two of Brandom's article "Pragmatism, Inferentialism, and Modality in Sellars' Arguments against Empiricism."[1] Brandom's argument (which he has given different versions of elsewhere) is that having a belief is necessarily a social endeavor, because the content of that belief can never be fully specified by observations. Philosophers[2] have tried and failed to formalize observations in order to specify the content of beliefs in a formal language, but it never works. Brandom suggests an alternate route: the content of a belief is inseparable from the role it plays in the social "game" of asking for and giving reasons. Here's a key passage: "Observational vocabulary is not a vocabulary one could use though one used no other. Non-inferential reports of the results of observation do not form an autonomous stratum of language. In particular, when we look at what one must do to count as making a non-inferential report, we see that that is not a practice one could engage in except in the context of inferential practices of using those observations as premises from which to draw inferential conclusions, as reasons for making judgments and undertaking commitments that are not themselves observations. The contribution to this argument of Sellars’s inferential functionalism about semantics lies in underwriting the claim that for any judgment, claim, or belief to be cognitively, conceptually, or epistemically significant, for it to be a potential bit of knowledge or evidence, to be a sapient state or status, it must be able to play a distinctive role in reasoning: it must be able to serve as a reason for further judgments, claims, or beliefs, hence as a premise from which they can be inferred. That role in reasoning, in particular, what those judgments, claims, or beliefs can serve as reasons or evidence for, is an essential, and not just an accidental component of their having the semantic content that they do." EDIT2: This might be a more helpful explanation. Elsewhere, Brandom elaborates on this view by redefining beliefs as commitments. A commitment entails some other commitments, and is mutually incompatible with others. For example, if I believe that I'm eating an apple, this entails the belief that I'm eating a fruit. It's mutually incompatible with the belief that I'm eating a squid. It also entails that I believe things I might not even know about the apple, such as the chemical formulas for the various sugars I'm eating. The point is, if I play the game of reasoning correctly--mostly by dispensing with mutually incompatible commitments when they arise--others (e.g. botanists, chemists) can hold me accountable for all the correct beliefs about the apple. The "content" of the apple, for me, is nothing other than the series of moves I make in this game. EDIT1: You should also read rpedroso's comment, which does a great job exploring the many alternatives that arose after empiricism reached its impasse. 1: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-444/paper01.pdf http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-444/paper01.pdf 2: Not only empiricists, but possibly Kant on a very straightforward reading--although Brandom has a very different reading of Kant.