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The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

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Pamela McCorduck

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

One modern-day philosopher works hand-in-hand with scientists. I'm thinking here of Daniel Dennett. Ethical behavior used to be pretty clear: do this, don't do that, and you deserve to be punished if you violate those strictures. But as the scientific evidence began to pile up that free will was something of an illusion, Dennett and his colleagues have been working to find a way of making ethical responsibility compatible with what we know about genetic impulsion.

On Jul 8, 2011, at 9:17 AM, Douglas Roberts wrote:

I'd be interested in hearing what others on this list think that modern-day philosophers do. I'd express my opinion now, but I'm afraid it would taint the no-doubt rich, insightful responses that I'm sure will follow.

But just to be clear, the question is: what to modern-day philosophers do? Not: what did philosophers do back in the days before science had progressed to it's present state.

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]
http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

"In humans, the brain is already the hungriest part of our body: at 2 percent of our body weight, this greedy tapeworm of an organ wolfs down 20 percent of the calories that we expend at rest."

Douglas Fox, Scientific American

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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Nick Thompson

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

In reply to this post by Douglas Roberts-2

Doug,

Let me just say that a think your questions is basically right, but perhaps a tad broad. I agree that philosophers are what philosophers do, but only when they are acting as philosophers. So a philosopher might tell us how to run the economy or what the nature of the universe is, but NOT as a philosopher. As a philosopher, s/he might tell us how our most sacredly held premises lead to (or don’t lead to) ideas of how to run the economy or what the nature of the Universe is. Or what our view of the nature of the Universe might lead to in terms of how to run the economy. In this way, philosophy is broadly similar to mathematics in that it tells us about the world only what we have already told it.

Nick

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts
Sent: Friday, July 08, 2011 11:18 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

I'd be interested in hearing what others on this list think that modern-day philosophers do. I'd express my opinion now, but I'm afraid it would taint the no-doubt rich, insightful responses that I'm sure will follow.

But just to be clear, the question is: what to modern-day philosophers do? Not: what did philosophers do back in the days before science had progressed to it's present state.

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

Roger Critchlow-2

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

In reply to this post by Pamela McCorduck

Philosophy should be about how to use your head, how to think and interact with other thinking beings, and it should work even if you don't know jack about physics, neuroscience, computation, or the history of philosophy, though they are all rich sources of counter-examples.

And theology should be about the consequences of believing, or not believing, specific things that must be taken, or rejected, as articles of faith because they cannot be established, or disestablished, by any other means.

What do current philosophers do? I think they're arguing theology mostly.

-- rec --

Russ Abbott

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

Although some philosophers would disagree with the detailed implications of the following characterization, in a broad sense philosophers spend their time analyzing and clarifying ideas. This is often referred to as conceptual analysis, and it is understood as what one can do "from an armchair," i.e., by thinking about something.

If you look at what academic philosophers do these days it seems (to me) that an awful lot of it involves nit picking. One paper would be a claim about some concept X, and a responding paper argues that the author of the first didn't consider this aspect of what we normally think of when we talk about X. The points may be valid, but the important larger issues often (in my view) get lost. This happens (it seems to me) because like all academics, philosophers are under pressure to publish. Hence many papers are published more because the author needs to add to his CV than because the paper is a significant advance in its area. (But that's true of much academic writing.)

One way to get a sense of what philosophers do is to look at what they write, and a good place to get an overview of that is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), a resource that as I understand it, is respected by philosophizers -- and contributed to by many of the best known. Here's a link to the Table of Contents.

The articles in it are intentionally written as review articles rather than as articles that propound a specific position--although many seem to include a good deal of the author's perspective. The following articles may be of interest to this list: species (what do we mean by the term and are there really any such things?), <a href="http://Scientific Realism">scientific realism (a description of how most scientists think about what they do), emergent properties (about, of course, emergence and what that term has been used to mean), and causal processes (by an Australian philosopher who I think gets it right but who seems to have been dismissed by many academic philosophers).

Another place to look for information about what philosophers do is to do a Google search for "How to write a philosphy paper." This will yield quite a few references written by academic philosophers for their students telling them how to write papers. For example, here's one from the Dartmouth writing program about "Writing the philosophy paper."

Having written the preceding, I'm wondering whether it scratches the itch that prompted the question in the first place. It talks about what philosophers actually do, but it probably provides less ammunition to praise or criticize it.

-- Russ

P.S. I write this as a computer scientist who has read quite a bit of philosophy in the past few years. But I can't claim to speak for philosophers. To find out what an academic philosopher would say that philosophers do one should really ask one.

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 10:16 AM, Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:

Philosophy should be about how to use your head, how to think and interact with other thinking beings, and it should work even if you don't know jack about physics, neuroscience, computation, or the history of philosophy, though they are all rich sources of counter-examples.

And theology should be about the consequences of believing, or not believing, specific things that must be taken, or rejected, as articles of faith because they cannot be established, or disestablished, by any other means.

What do current philosophers do? I think they're arguing theology mostly.

-- rec --

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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Nick Thompson

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

In reply to this post by Roger Critchlow-2

Hi, Roger,

Odd use of the word, “theology”, no? I could see that theology, in your sense, is a branch of philosophy, but theology has to concern “God”, doesn’t it? But I agree with you that the heartland of philosophy is the study of implication.

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Friday, July 08, 2011 1:17 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

What do current philosophers do? I think they're arguing theology mostly.

-- rec --

Robert Holmes

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Honestly people, the answers to these questions are only a Google search away.

http://www.philosophynow.org/issue81/How_To_Be_A_Philosopher

—R

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 7:07 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Owen,

Please. I am confused. What is it that you think philosophers do?

Nick

Owen Densmore

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

Administrator

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 7:07 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Owen,

Please. I am confused. What is it that you think philosophers do?

Nick

Well, to be frank, I don't think I can answer beyond they philosophize .. or do philosophy. And that it is broad enough to have sub-disciplines like Philosophy of Science, but in a sense, it is not a discipline at all!

The reason I say this is that philosophers appear to avoid building on each other's past work .. they all start over so to speak. Thus the comment of toes vs shoulders and my questioning its being a discipline. This does make a bit of sense .. the world is changing all the time so that it should come as no surprise that philosophy must change. And they have done a good job of categorizing areas of thinking and being. That oughta be worth at least a C.

So I find peace with philosophy by thinking about it as "sorting things out". Hence my liking Michael Sandel .. I like his pragmatic approach, and his ability to show the value of philosophy and its broader concepts. And I like how it drives me to quiet meditation on my own life and purpose.

I also like how Noether, Weierstrass, Russell and many others used philosophic pondering to make gigantic steps forward in math and physics.

But from any direct experience, people appear to believe To Philosophize == To Argue Incessantly.

Forgive me,

-- Owen

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore
Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2011 9:40 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

Personally, I think philosophy is on par with science.

Good lord, how? Is it as empirical? Does it create as provably valid models? Or is it simply as worthy an area of study as science?

I think the Par you are considering would not include your going to a philosopher for medical treatment, right?

But they are in
two different categories. Science is limited to negation, the
demonstration that some sentence (or class of sentences) does not hold
(here, now, anywhere, anywhen).

Er, how does Newton deal with negation? Isn't a clear set of equations saying what *will* happen? I mean of course one can say, It Is Not The Case That F=ma Is Not True, but really, just how can we think of science limited to negation?

Don't get me wrong, I have great respect for all the rich topics of investigation we pursue, philosophy included. However, I don't see that they are on par in any way other than you can study it.

-- Owen

Russ Abbott

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

Nick, Owen,

Did you guys get my post about what philosophers do? If not, here it is again.

-- Russ

The articles in it are intentionally written as review articles rather than as articles that propound a specific position--although many seem to include a good deal of the author's perspective. The following articles may be of interest to this list: species (what do we mean by the term and are there really any such things?),scientific realism (a description of how most scientists think about what they do), emergent properties(about, of course, emergence and what that term has been used to mean), and causal processes (by an Australian philosopher who I think gets it right but who seems to have been dismissed by many academic philosophers).

-- Russ

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 1:42 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 7:07 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Owen,

Please. I am confused. What is it that you think philosophers do?

Nick

Well, to be frank, I don't think I can answer beyond they philosophize .. or do philosophy. And that it is broad enough to have sub-disciplines like Philosophy of Science, but in a sense, it is not a discipline at all!

The reason I say this is that philosophers appear to avoid building on each other's past work .. they all start over so to speak. Thus the comment of toes vs shoulders and my questioning its being a discipline. This does make a bit of sense .. the world is changing all the time so that it should come as no surprise that philosophy must change. And they have done a good job of categorizing areas of thinking and being. That oughta be worth at least a C.

So I find peace with philosophy by thinking about it as "sorting things out". Hence my liking Michael Sandel .. I like his pragmatic approach, and his ability to show the value of philosophy and its broader concepts. And I like how it drives me to quiet meditation on my own life and purpose.

I also like how Noether, Weierstrass, Russell and many others used philosophic pondering to make gigantic steps forward in math and physics.

But from any direct experience, people appear to believe To Philosophize == To Argue Incessantly.

Forgive me,

-- Owen

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore
Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2011 9:40 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

Personally, I think philosophy is on par with science.

Good lord, how? Is it as empirical? Does it create as provably valid models? Or is it simply as worthy an area of study as science?

I think the Par you are considering would not include your going to a philosopher for medical treatment, right?

But they are in
two different categories. Science is limited to negation, the
demonstration that some sentence (or class of sentences) does not hold
(here, now, anywhere, anywhen).

Er, how does Newton deal with negation? Isn't a clear set of equations saying what *will* happen? I mean of course one can say, It Is Not The Case That F=ma Is Not True, but really, just how can we think of science limited to negation?

Don't get me wrong, I have great respect for all the rich topics of investigation we pursue, philosophy included. However, I don't see that they are on par in any way other than you can study it.

-- Owen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Owen Densmore

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

Administrator

Nick, Owen,

Did you guys get my post about what philosophers do? If not, here it is again.

Yup, and I apologize for the overlap caused by my running errands while having half completed responses.

-- Russ

Although some philosophers would disagree with the detailed implications of the following characterization, in a broad sense philosophers spend their time analyzing and clarifying ideas. This is often referred to as conceptual analysis, and it is understood as what one can do "from an armchair," i.e., by thinking about something.

Do you think this may contribute to what I see as the problem of not building upon prior art?

Here's an example: I do not believe philosophers could have built a philosophic frameworkfor the concepts 20th century progress within the domain of what the limits of science, computation and math are. I'd include things like the Uncertainty Principle, Computationally Nondeterministic algorithms, Chaos and Non-linear dynamics, the speed of light limit, Godel's proof and many others.

I think you'd need to leave the armchair and build upon prior art in each of these cases.

If you look at what academic philosophers do these days it seems (to me) that an awful lot of it involves nit picking.

This is what I meant by incessant arguing to no apparent end. I had to laugh when I heard one of these ending in "Oh, thats just a semantic argument." My God, isn't semantics the heart of philosophy?

One paper would be a claim about some concept X, and a responding paper argues that the author of the first didn't consider this aspect of what we normally think of when we talk about X. The points may be valid, but the important larger issues often (in my view) get lost. This happens (it seems to me) because like all academics, philosophers are under pressure to publish. Hence many papers are published more because the author needs to add to his CV than because the paper is a significant advance in its area. (But that's true of much academic writing.)

Totally agree.

One way to get a sense of what philosophers do is to look at what they write, and a good place to get an overview of that is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), a resource that as I understand it, is respected by philosophizers -- and contributed to by many of the best known. Here's a link to the Table of Contents.

We stumbled across this during one of Nick's seminars and I found it really useful.

The articles in it are intentionally written as review articles rather than as articles that propound a specific position--although many seem to include a good deal of the author's perspective. The following articles may be of interest to this list: species (what do we mean by the term and are there really any such things?),scientific realism (a description of how most scientists think about what they do), emergent properties(about, of course, emergence and what that term has been used to mean), and causal processes (by an Australian philosopher who I think gets it right but who seems to have been dismissed by many academic philosophers).

Another place to look for information about what philosophers do is to do a Google search for "How to write a philosphy paper." This will yield quite a few references written by academic philosophers for their students telling them how to write papers. For example, here's one from the Dartmouth writing program about "Writing the philosophy paper."

Good references. And it does make a good point about exposition being key.

Having written the preceding, I'm wondering whether it scratches the itch that prompted the question in the first place. It talks about what philosophers actually do, but it probably provides less ammunition to praise or criticize it.

I liked Doug's question on what modern philosophers actually DO. It did prompt me to look for The Good Parts. I think Emmy Noether would have been considered a philosopher in her day and her symmetry/conservation laws discovery were quite a deal. And the impact of modern philosophy on politics, religion, ethics, economics certainly are non-trivial. They do appear to be the exception rather than the rule, however.

-- Russ

P.S. I write this as a computer scientist who has read quite a bit of philosophy in the past few years. But I can't claim to speak for philosophers. To find out what an academic philosopher would say that philosophers do one should really ask one.

Do we have one on the list? They definitely should speak up to put us out of our misery!

-- Owen

Russ Abbott

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

Owen, I think we're basically in agreement -- although see my comment below about what one can do from an armchair.

Regarding what philosophers do, I think the issue is clouded by the fact that we want to think of philosophers as deep thinkers wrestling with our deepest problems whereas most philosophers are academics who do what academics do, namely they teach and write papers. From that perspective it's not nearly as grand and romantic as we would like to believe.

If one accepts that as a starting point, the next questions are: what do they teach? and what do they write papers about? The answers are fairly easy to determine. To see what philosophers teach, look at any university catalog with a Philosophy department. To see what they write papers about, look at the references in the articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Most of them are papers written by philosophizers.

Neither of those answers, though, has anything necessarily to do with deep thinking and profound questions--except to the extent that they teach and write about those things.

When teaching about the great human questions, most of the time philosophers talk about what other people have said. After all, not everyone can come up with significant new thoughts about issues that have been discussed for centuries. So it's mostly historical. That's what Sandel did in his course. He did it well, but he didn't make it up. He taught what other people have already said.

When philosophers do their own work, they typically make incremental additions to the literature based on work others have already done. That's what almost all academics do. It's rare to find an academic paper that changes paradigms. (If it weren't rare, paradigm breaking wouldn't be as significant as it is!) So in that regard I disagree that philosophers don't build on the work of others. If they didn't they wouldn't get their stuff published. And if they didn't get their stuff published they wouldn't get tenure, and they would cease to be philosophers.

-- Russ

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 4:53 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick, Owen,

Did you guys get my post about what philosophers do? If not, here it is again.

Yup, and I apologize for the overlap caused by my running errands while having half completed responses.

-- Russ

Although some philosophers would disagree with the detailed implications of the following characterization, in a broad sense philosophers spend their time analyzing and clarifying ideas. This is often referred to as conceptual analysis, and it is understood as what one can do "from an armchair," i.e., by thinking about something.

Do you think this may contribute to what I see as the problem of not building upon prior art?

Here's an example: I do not believe philosophers could have built a philosophic frameworkfor the concepts 20th century progress within the domain of what the limits of science, computation and math are. I'd include things like the Uncertainty Principle, Computationally Nondeterministic algorithms, Chaos and Non-linear dynamics, the speed of light limit, Godel's proof and many others.

I think you'd need to leave the armchair and build upon prior art in each of these cases.

I'd categorize mathematics and theoretical computer science as something you can do from an armchair. They don't involve empirical research. (There is even a branch of philosophy called experimental philosophy these days which requires that they get out of their armchairs. As I understand it, it mostly involves finding out what people think about philosophical questions.)

If you look at what academic philosophers do these days it seems (to me) that an awful lot of it involves nit picking.

This is what I meant by incessant arguing to no apparent end. I had to laugh when I heard one of these ending in "Oh, thats just a semantic argument." My God, isn't semantics the heart of philosophy?

One paper would be a claim about some concept X, and a responding paper argues that the author of the first didn't consider this aspect of what we normally think of when we talk about X. The points may be valid, but the important larger issues often (in my view) get lost. This happens (it seems to me) because like all academics, philosophers are under pressure to publish. Hence many papers are published more because the author needs to add to his CV than because the paper is a significant advance in its area. (But that's true of much academic writing.)

Totally agree.

One way to get a sense of what philosophers do is to look at what they write, and a good place to get an overview of that is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), a resource that as I understand it, is respected by philosophizers -- and contributed to by many of the best known. Here's a link to the Table of Contents.

We stumbled across this during one of Nick's seminars and I found it really useful.

The articles in it are intentionally written as review articles rather than as articles that propound a specific position--although many seem to include a good deal of the author's perspective. The following articles may be of interest to this list: species (what do we mean by the term and are there really any such things?),scientific realism (a description of how most scientists think about what they do), emergent properties(about, of course, emergence and what that term has been used to mean), and causal processes (by an Australian philosopher who I think gets it right but who seems to have been dismissed by many academic philosophers).

Another place to look for information about what philosophers do is to do a Google search for "How to write a philosphy paper." This will yield quite a few references written by academic philosophers for their students telling them how to write papers. For example, here's one from the Dartmouth writing program about "Writing the philosophy paper."

Good references. And it does make a good point about exposition being key.

Having written the preceding, I'm wondering whether it scratches the itch that prompted the question in the first place. It talks about what philosophers actually do, but it probably provides less ammunition to praise or criticize it.

I liked Doug's question on what modern philosophers actually DO. It did prompt me to look for The Good Parts. I think Emmy Noether would have been considered a philosopher in her day and her symmetry/conservation laws discovery were quite a deal. And the impact of modern philosophy on politics, religion, ethics, economics certainly are non-trivial. They do appear to be the exception rather than the rule, however.

-- Russ

P.S. I write this as a computer scientist who has read quite a bit of philosophy in the past few years. But I can't claim to speak for philosophers. To find out what an academic philosopher would say that philosophers do one should really ask one.

Do we have one on the list? They definitely should speak up to put us out of our misery!

-- Owen

Nick Thompson

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

All,

I have a creepy feeling some of my posts aren’t getting through.

For instance, did anybody ever tell me what OWEN things philosophers do? Including Owen? If so, could somebody resend the message, cause I never found out.

Also, I keep writing messages in which I argue that the proper comparison for philosophy is with mathematics, not with physics. At least two of them I can find no trace of in my inbox, my out box, sent items, or anywhere. Gremlins.

Nick

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Friday, July 08, 2011 8:19 PM
To: Owen Densmore
Cc: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

Owen, I think we're basically in agreement -- although see my comment below about what one can do from an armchair.

Neither of those answers, though, has anything necessarily to do with deep thinking and profound questions--except to the extent that they teach and write about those things.

-- Russ

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 4:53 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick, Owen,

Did you guys get my post about what philosophers do? If not, here it is again.

Yup, and I apologize for the overlap caused by my running errands while having half completed responses.

-- Russ

Although some philosophers would disagree with the detailed implications of the following characterization, in a broad sense philosophers spend their time analyzing and clarifying ideas. This is often referred to as conceptual analysis, and it is understood as what one can do "from an armchair," i.e., by thinking about something.

Do you think this may contribute to what I see as the problem of not building upon prior art?

I think you'd need to leave the armchair and build upon prior art in each of these cases.

If you look at what academic philosophers do these days it seems (to me) that an awful lot of it involves nit picking.

This is what I meant by incessant arguing to no apparent end. I had to laugh when I heard one of these ending in "Oh, thats just a semantic argument." My God, isn't semantics the heart of philosophy?

One paper would be a claim about some concept X, and a responding paper argues that the author of the first didn't consider this aspect of what we normally think of when we talk about X. The points may be valid, but the important larger issues often (in my view) get lost. This happens (it seems to me) because like all academics, philosophers are under pressure to publish. Hence many papers are published more because the author needs to add to his CV than because the paper is a significant advance in its area. (But that's true of much academic writing.)

Totally agree.

One way to get a sense of what philosophers do is to look at what they write, and a good place to get an overview of that is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), a resource that as I understand it, is respected by philosophizers -- and contributed to by many of the best known. Here's a link to the Table of Contents.

We stumbled across this during one of Nick's seminars and I found it really useful.

The articles in it are intentionally written as review articles rather than as articles that propound a specific position--although many seem to include a good deal of the author's perspective. The following articles may be of interest to this list: species (what do we mean by the term and are there really any such things?),scientific realism (a description of how most scientists think about what they do), emergent properties(about, of course, emergence and what that term has been used to mean), and causal processes (by an Australian philosopher who I think gets it right but who seems to have been dismissed by many academic philosophers).

Another place to look for information about what philosophers do is to do a Google search for "How to write a philosphy paper." This will yield quite a few references written by academic philosophers for their students telling them how to write papers. For example, here's one from the Dartmouth writing program about "Writing the philosophy paper."

Good references. And it does make a good point about exposition being key.

Having written the preceding, I'm wondering whether it scratches the itch that prompted the question in the first place. It talks about what philosophers actually do, but it probably provides less ammunition to praise or criticize it.

I liked Doug's question on what modern philosophers actually DO. It did prompt me to look for The Good Parts. I think Emmy Noether would have been considered a philosopher in her day and her symmetry/conservation laws discovery were quite a deal. And the impact of modern philosophy on politics, religion, ethics, economics certainly are non-trivial. They do appear to be the exception rather than the rule, however.

-- Russ

P.S. I write this as a computer scientist who has read quite a bit of philosophy in the past few years. But I can't claim to speak for philosophers. To find out what an academic philosopher would say that philosophers do one should really ask one.

Do we have one on the list? They definitely should speak up to put us out of our misery!

-- Owen

Nick Thompson

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

In reply to this post by Owen Densmore

Owen,

I finally found your answer. Sorry! It was, in part,

But from any direct experience, people appear to believe To Philosophize == To Argue Incessantly.

I don’t know which people you have in mind. I am sorry that you have met people like that who have claimed to be philosophers. Certainly none of the philosophers I have known or worked with have engaged in argument for argument sake. Whoever believed this about philosophers confused sophistry, or casuistry, or pure bloody mindedness, with philosophy. A philosophical argument is not a harangue. It is an attempt to rigorously connect premises with conclusions, to work out the implications of what one thinks or to discover from what premises one might come to think it. As I keep trying to say (sorry, everybody, for the repetition) , philosophy is a lot like mathematics. The good news is that it can talk about a lot more things than can mathematics; the bad news is that inevitably it talks about them with less rigor.

Nick

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore
Sent: Friday, July 08, 2011 4:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 7:07 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Owen,

Please. I am confused. What is it that you think philosophers do?

Nick

I also like how Noether, Weierstrass, Russell and many others used philosophic pondering to make gigantic steps forward in math and physics.

But from any direct experience, people appear to believe To Philosophize == To Argue Incessantly.

Forgive me,

-- Owen

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore
Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2011 9:40 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

Personally, I think philosophy is on par with science.

Good lord, how? Is it as empirical? Does it create as provably valid models? Or is it simply as worthy an area of study as science?

I think the Par you are considering would not include your going to a philosopher for medical treatment, right?

But they are in
two different categories. Science is limited to negation, the
demonstration that some sentence (or class of sentences) does not hold
(here, now, anywhere, anywhen).

Er, how does Newton deal with negation? Isn't a clear set of equations saying what *will* happen? I mean of course one can say, It Is Not The Case That F=ma Is Not True, but really, just how can we think of science limited to negation?

Don't get me wrong, I have great respect for all the rich topics of investigation we pursue, philosophy included. However, I don't see that they are on par in any way other than you can study it.

-- Owen

Nick Thompson

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Thanks, Frank.

Thank God SOMEBODY is getting them.

Nick

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Friday, July 08, 2011 10:44 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

I got those.

Frank

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Nicholas Thompson
Sent: Friday, July 08, 2011 6:30 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

All,

I have a creepy feeling some of my posts aren’t getting through.

For instance, did anybody ever tell me what OWEN things philosophers do? Including Owen? If so, could somebody resend the message, cause I never found out.

Nick

Owen, I think we're basically in agreement -- although see my comment below about what one can do from an armchair.

Neither of those answers, though, has anything necessarily to do with deep thinking and profound questions--except to the extent that they teach and write about those things.

-- Russ

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 4:53 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick, Owen,

Did you guys get my post about what philosophers do? If not, here it is again.

Yup, and I apologize for the overlap caused by my running errands while having half completed responses.

-- Russ

Although some philosophers would disagree with the detailed implications of the following characterization, in a broad sense philosophers spend their time analyzing and clarifying ideas. This is often referred to as conceptual analysis, and it is understood as what one can do "from an armchair," i.e., by thinking about something.

Do you think this may contribute to what I see as the problem of not building upon prior art?

I think you'd need to leave the armchair and build upon prior art in each of these cases.

If you look at what academic philosophers do these days it seems (to me) that an awful lot of it involves nit picking.

This is what I meant by incessant arguing to no apparent end. I had to laugh when I heard one of these ending in "Oh, thats just a semantic argument." My God, isn't semantics the heart of philosophy?

One paper would be a claim about some concept X, and a responding paper argues that the author of the first didn't consider this aspect of what we normally think of when we talk about X. The points may be valid, but the important larger issues often (in my view) get lost. This happens (it seems to me) because like all academics, philosophers are under pressure to publish. Hence many papers are published more because the author needs to add to his CV than because the paper is a significant advance in its area. (But that's true of much academic writing.)

Totally agree.

One way to get a sense of what philosophers do is to look at what they write, and a good place to get an overview of that is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), a resource that as I understand it, is respected by philosophizers -- and contributed to by many of the best known. Here's a link to the Table of Contents.

We stumbled across this during one of Nick's seminars and I found it really useful.

The articles in it are intentionally written as review articles rather than as articles that propound a specific position--although many seem to include a good deal of the author's perspective. The following articles may be of interest to this list: species (what do we mean by the term and are there really any such things?),scientific realism (a description of how most scientists think about what they do), emergent properties(about, of course, emergence and what that term has been used to mean), and causal processes (by an Australian philosopher who I think gets it right but who seems to have been dismissed by many academic philosophers).

Another place to look for information about what philosophers do is to do a Google search for "How to write a philosphy paper." This will yield quite a few references written by academic philosophers for their students telling them how to write papers. For example, here's one from the Dartmouth writing program about "Writing the philosophy paper."

Good references. And it does make a good point about exposition being key.

Having written the preceding, I'm wondering whether it scratches the itch that prompted the question in the first place. It talks about what philosophers actually do, but it probably provides less ammunition to praise or criticize it.

I liked Doug's question on what modern philosophers actually DO. It did prompt me to look for The Good Parts. I think Emmy Noether would have been considered a philosopher in her day and her symmetry/conservation laws discovery were quite a deal. And the impact of modern philosophy on politics, religion, ethics, economics certainly are non-trivial. They do appear to be the exception rather than the rule, however.

-- Russ

P.S. I write this as a computer scientist who has read quite a bit of philosophy in the past few years. But I can't claim to speak for philosophers. To find out what an academic philosopher would say that philosophers do one should really ask one.

Do we have one on the list? They definitely should speak up to put us out of our misery!

-- Owen

Owen Densmore

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

Administrator

For my homework in philosophy (and sins in life), I've been observing a modern philosopher, who I enjoy, giving a series of lectures.

http://www.justiceharvard.org/

The discussion has been on fitting schools of philosophy to events in human life.

The current (second video, 4th lecture) is on Utilitarianism. In particular, on how to derive a utility function especially when human life is at stake. The initial readings are on Jeremy Bentham.

Listening to the students, who are the foil, so to speak, for the speaker, the major problem is how to assign a number, say a dollar figure, to the worth of things that are not generally sold .. such as human life or whether or not it is even possible.

Fascinating historic examples include the risk-benefit analys of smoking in the czech republic (it gained the government $1,200+ per premature death) and the Ford Pinto exploding fuel tank ($130 million to fix vs $45 million in losses, including human life).

It occurred to me that it was yet again a difficulty of mathematics. The assumption of both the audience and the speaker, at least at this point in the series, is that all "numbers" have a metric, which of course we know is only an interesting subset of say vector spaces.

So how was it that an entire school of philosophy, one with great adherents and even a really rational outlook, fail to understand that not all "numbers" have a metric? That high dimensional spaces do not include comparison functions?

-- Owen

Owen Densmore

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

Administrator

BTW: voting doesn't count: Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.

On Sat, Jul 9, 2011 at 9:22 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

For my homework in philosophy (and sins in life), I've been observing a modern philosopher, who I enjoy, giving a series of lectures.
http://www.justiceharvard.org/

The discussion has been on fitting schools of philosophy to events in human life.

The current (second video, 4th lecture) is on Utilitarianism. In particular, on how to derive a utility function especially when human life is at stake. The initial readings are on Jeremy Bentham.

Listening to the students, who are the foil, so to speak, for the speaker, the major problem is how to assign a number, say a dollar figure, to the worth of things that are not generally sold .. such as human life or whether or not it is even possible.

Fascinating historic examples include the risk-benefit analys of smoking in the czech republic (it gained the government $1,200+ per premature death) and the Ford Pinto exploding fuel tank ($130 million to fix vs $45 million in losses, including human life).

It occurred to me that it was yet again a difficulty of mathematics. The assumption of both the audience and the speaker, at least at this point in the series, is that all "numbers" have a metric, which of course we know is only an interesting subset of say vector spaces.

So how was it that an entire school of philosophy, one with great adherents and even a really rational outlook, fail to understand that not all "numbers" have a metric? That high dimensional spaces do not include comparison functions?

-- Owen

Nick Thompson

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

Your man Gower had some particularly good passages that suggesting that math’s ability to come to a usable conclusion depends on how it is interpreted, not only on the math itself.

I cannot tell from your example whether I would agree that your Harvard philopher is doing philosophy. He may be saying very wise things and not doing philosophy. If he starts somewhere, more or less arbitrarily, and shows how you can get somewhere else through sound argument, he is being a philopher, as well as being wise.

Nick

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore
Sent: Saturday, July 09, 2011 11:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

BTW: voting doesn't count: Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.

On Sat, Jul 9, 2011 at 9:22 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

For my homework in philosophy (and sins in life), I've been observing a modern philosopher, who I enjoy, giving a series of lectures.

http://www.justiceharvard.org/

The discussion has been on fitting schools of philosophy to events in human life.

The current (second video, 4th lecture) is on Utilitarianism. In particular, on how to derive a utility function especially when human life is at stake. The initial readings are on Jeremy Bentham.

-- Owen

Owen Densmore

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

Administrator

Your man Gower had some particularly good passages that suggesting that math’s ability to come to a usable conclusion depends on how it is interpreted, not only on the math itself.

Yes indeed. In this case Sandel is discussing Utilitarianism, via Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. In this case the Utilitarians needed a metric, a way to do two things:

1 - Apply a relationship between two events. Simple < = > triple would appear to work. In other words he needs to sort the value of the events using the greater than, less than and equal operators for pleasures.

2 - He then needs to aggregate them for groups to which the particular pleasure is to be measured in order to determine the common good.

Here are the two key problems:

1 - Not all multi-dimensional spaces have a metric. I.e. its not always the case that a set of values for an experiment have metric values, they may simply be a collection of properties like Name = Owen, Age = 69, Sex = yes indeed, and so on. These are not easily sorted against a utilitarian pleasure even if modeled specifically for that pleasure.

2 - Even if you could sort, we've seen with Arrow's Impossibility theorem that for choices greater than two, there is no solution for the problem. This is why there is so much attention to fair voting and how to achieve it.

Now all that is simply an illustration. I'm not attacking Utilitarianism, and indeed I enjoy the philosophic conversation that attends it and its laudable goal.

However, I am a bit concerned that at least modern philosophers have not pointed out these two trivial objections and found at least a few classes of solutions.

Indeed, as far as I can tell .. and I have looked .. this form of thinking is foreign to philosophers.

I cannot tell from your example whether I would agree that your Harvard philopher is doing philosophy. He may be saying very wise things and not doing philosophy. If he starts somewhere, more or less arbitrarily, and shows how you can get somewhere else through sound argument, he is being a philopher, as well as being wise.

Nick

I do think he is doing original work, or at least did at Oxford during his degree. He now is primarily a teacher.

-- Owen

Robert Holmes

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

Owen—I'm afraid that scientists & engineers like us have occasionally got to be on the receiving end of "go read the book" comments just as much as non-scientists who want to know about vortex formation...

The contemporary utilitarians who are writing about this stuff include Judith Lichtenberg, Michalel Slote and Michael Stocker. Ones with a more theoretical bent include Peter Railton, Samuel Scheffler and Shelly Kagan. Google Scholar has links to their work.

—R

P.S. "The paradigm case of consequentialism is utilitarianism" says http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/. You many need to expand your search terms!

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 9:25 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

<snip>

Indeed, as far as I can tell .. and I have looked .. this form of thinking is foreign to philosophers.

Nick Thompson

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

As I have said before, I don’t think go read the book is ever an appropriate response. One can choose not to participate, one can suggest books to be read, but I dislike the idea that one has to read the reading list before one can post a question to the friam list. But you all already know that.

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Robert Holmes
Sent: Sunday, July 10, 2011 11:44 AM
To: Owen Densmore
Cc: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

—R

P.S. "The paradigm case of consequentialism is utilitarianism" says http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/. You many need to expand your search terms!

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 9:25 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

<snip>

Indeed, as far as I can tell .. and I have looked .. this form of thinking is foreign to philosophers.

Greg Sonnenfeld

Re: The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris

Hello,
I really like the idea of a referral to an excellent book, or a even
better, a specific chapter or short paper explaining an already solved
problem. Its likely that a talented author has explain the idea or
phenomenon more concisely then anyone on the list would have time to
present.

Though, It is really nice when someone does all the work of reading,
understand, and summarizing a subject or topic for you, its a bit of a
burden to place on someone. It certainly should not be "expected", and
when given should be received with gratitude.

That being said, I'm wondering what are the active topics and open
problems in philosophy, and where is progress being made, in the 21st
century?

****************************
Greg Sonnenfeld

"Junior programmers create simple solutions to simple problems. Senior
programmers create complex solutions to complex problems. Great
programmers find simple solutions to complex problems. The code
written by topnotch programmers may appear obvious, once it is
finished, but it is vastly more difficult to create."

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 2:39 PM, Nicholas Thompson
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> As I have said before, I don’t think go read the book is ever an appropriate
> response. One can choose not to participate, one can suggest books to be
> read, but I dislike the idea that one has to read the reading list before
> one can post a question to the friam list. But you all already know that.
>
>
>
> N
>
>
>
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
> Of Robert Holmes
> Sent: Sunday, July 10, 2011 11:44 AM
> To: Owen Densmore
> Cc: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris
>
>
>
> Owen—I'm afraid that scientists & engineers like us have occasionally got to
> be on the receiving end of "go read the book" comments just as much as
> non-scientists who want to know about vortex formation...
>
>
>
> The contemporary utilitarians who are writing about this stuff include
> Judith Lichtenberg, Michalel Slote and Michael Stocker. Ones with a more
> theoretical bent include Peter Railton, Samuel Scheffler and Shelly Kagan.
> Google Scholar has links to their work.
>
>
>
> —R
>
> P.S. "The paradigm case of consequentialism is utilitarianism"
> says http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/. You many need to
> expand your search terms!
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 9:25 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> Indeed, as far as I can tell .. and I have looked .. this form of thinking
> is foreign to philosophers.
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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>