How To Do Philosophy (2007)

http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html

by _pw5l • 14 years ago

33 59 14 years ago

paulgraham.com

rogueleaderr• 14 years ago

If you like this essay, check out http://lesswrong.com/

They seem focused on what PG is proposing.

pjscott2• 14 years ago

Particularly on-topic is a series of articles by Luke Muehlhauser about "how to do philosophy when you take cognitive science seriously."

http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Rationality_and_Philosophy

goldfeld2• 14 years ago

There is one thing that I could do differently that's enormously significant: freely undertake teleportation and mind uploading, given I live to be able to do it; and it's in turn what's driving me just now into Philosophy (I'm learning German even). Surprisingly for me, Graham nails that, but may not quite explore the possibilities ensuing, when he talks about sectioning one's brain in half, putting the other in a clone body, and trying to figure out which person you are now.

My working line of reason is that consciousness is, as he puts it, merely an abstract concept we get attached to and have the illusion of having. There is no consciousness, only the awareness of a single moment--a point in time. What we take for consciousness is nothing more than a succession of these single moments, much as a computer's processor clocks at so many Gigahertz. With each moment of awareness creating new memory and storing that memory back in the brain, the subsequent moments are able to access it.

You coud think that the current moment of awareness is all that ever really "exists", because for all the other previous ones you only have the memory, you have no concrete evidence that it ever existed. There is no past awareness, there is only a current awareness of what we have registered as the past. With that decoupled thinking, you can start to realize that any given moment of awareness that I have is as different (and as similar) from any given moment you have as it is different from a moment I had 5 minutes ago, or ever.

So who I "am" now is as entirely different from who I was just a second ago, in essence, as it would be different from a clone that could be made of me. There is nothing in my flesh ensuring I am a continuous consciousness. There is only the memory. The reason I am closer to my 5-minute younger self than I am to another human being is that the former and I share all the memory up to 5 minutes ago. We have a base commit to our memories in common. But a clone of me, made now, would be exactly as close to my 5-minute younger self.

The bottom line is that I should not think that being teleported should kill me, as that would imply that I'm dying after every moment of awareness, birthing a new person who happens to share all my memories. Indeed I may well be, and we have the illusion that we have a continuous life since we have all these vivid memories of what just happened a second ago, even if it's not us who lived through it.

And though I'm finding this train of thought increasingly alluring, I know nothing of how philosophy ever brushed it, or it may well have tackled it head on and I wouldn't know it.

yakiv• 14 years ago

What if there is no passage of time? You could be in a single state but remember the "past" and the perception of moving through time during the "past".

theraccounman• 14 years ago

There is no consciousness, only the awareness of a single moment

I believe many people would say that consciousness and awareness are synonymous terms. And further, consciousness is undeniable, the a priori to all inference and understanding. What have you ever known outside of your consciousness?

GreyZephyr• 14 years ago

I presume you are acquainted with Buddhist thought on this matter? One of the central tenants of Buddhist philosophy is the idea that there is no such thing as the self, but rather a linked series of experiences. The Chan and Zen traditions make something of a big deal about this; the main goal of the religious and esoteric practices associated with them is to come to the realisation that you do not in some sense exist and are 'selfless' at this point you are said to be enlightened. (As an aside one of the core rules for Buddhist monastic communities is that you can't claim to be enlightened as if you have achieved enlightenment there is no self to make the claim.) The European philosophers came to the idea much later on, historically this would seem to be a side effect of the notion of a soul, and in particular its indivisible nature.

goldfeld2• 14 years ago

Buddhist philosophy did shape much of my thinking in the years I read and meditated on the Vipassana variety. But I hadn't been aware that other traditions took the notion of detachment as extremely--and down to it's essence--as I'm now taking, thanks for pointing it out. I hear all of the hype around Zen but the fetishism of Japanese culture keeps me at a distance; though Chan sounds like a wonderful indulgement to go with my Mandarin studies, I'll look into it.

kitbrennan• 14 years ago

And though I'm finding this train of thought increasingly alluring, I know nothing of how philosophy ever brushed it, or it may well have tackled it head on and I wouldn't know it.

Philosophers have actually wrote a lot about the subject of personhood, and it sounds like you would find the discussion fascinating. Not only is the discussion practical in the future for the examples you have given, but it is also incredibly valuable to the present in terms of the abortion debate and the consent debate See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personhood

While a number of pre-19th Century philosophers have wrote about the subject (eg. Descarte, Locke and Hume), I would suggest just reading an outline of their works and delving into the more interesting discussions found in current philosophy journals.

frepkt• 14 years ago

What you're describing sounds similar to what Galen Strawson calls the "transience view" (formerly the "pearl view", as in a string of pearls). The idea is probably most associated with William James, but I think Strawson is the best-known contemporary advocate and (along with his critics) probably a better place to start if you're interested in the current status of the idea in academic philosophy.

gnosis2• 14 years ago

It's a grave injustice to the vast field of philosophy to judge it by one undergraduate's impression of Plato, Aristotle, Bertrand Russell, and Wittgenstein.

By his own admission, he didn't get much out of his experience. Should the entire field of computer science be judged by one unenthusiastic undergraduate's impressions of Java?

pjscott2• 14 years ago

That argument applies to more than just philosophy. And yet, if you accept that not all religions can be true, and that most of the major ones have long scholastic traditions, then there must be at least one field of study which is vast, majestic, and wrong.

So, what method would you propose for determining which academic fields are worthwhile, in their current state?

(I think I just did some philosophy. Oops.)

opminion• 14 years ago

Answers to your question would be given by criteria which discriminate between science an theology.

gnosis2• 14 years ago

For a method for determining "which academic fields are worthwhile", perhaps it might be wise to start by becoming well familiar with the fields in question -- something that the author of the above essay did not seem to have taken the trouble of doing.

And how much less familiar with philosophy are most of the readers of this essay? I would venture to guess that they are not even philosophy majors, but rather computer science majors or self-taught computer programmers. What a shame it would be if they thought the essay's author knew what he was talking about and dismissed all of philosophy out of hand.

All of philosophy might be "wrong", but if that's so, it's going to take a lot more than a vague, ill-informed five page essay by a disaffected undergraduate to convince me.

unalone3• 14 years ago

> if you accept that not all religions can be true

I think, actually, that once you accept that no one religion contains Ultimate Truth, it is much easier to see that every religion is a facet of something true and powerful. Dogma is what insists that only one religion, only one way of doing things, can be the correct way; dogma is always false. But beneath the dogma lies fascinating insights.

Personally, I find that the simplest religion, and therefore the "truest", is Taoism. The Tao Te Ching is goddamn gold: short, succinct, and brilliant. Buddhism is similarly philosophically inclined; Hinduism is fantastic, and quite explicit in telling you that its gods are metaphors for the world, characters that turn insights about life into stories. Christianity's God-as-man metaphor is a fascinating one that can lead to some very interesting thoughts about our relationship to everything around us. So on and so forth.

Those long scholastic traditions are part of why people who don't utterly hate religion argue that anti-theists are missing something important in their insistence that religion be razed to the ground. For all the horrors of dogma, and those horrors are many, the religious tradition has collected millennia of collected human experience and wisdom – it's a treasure trove for anybody seeking to discover those parts of themselves. Let's get rid of the dogma and blind faith, but acknowledge that religion has been a monumental accomplishment for the species that should be respected for what it's done for our race.

> So, what method would you propose for determining which academic fields are worthwhile, in their current state?

The less dogma, the better. Luckily for us philophiles, philosophy is more obsessed with ending dogma than just about anything, so I guess we'll have to keep it around forever!

cicero• 14 years ago

I don't see how philosophy, as a field of study, could be wrong. Even if every philosopher who ever lived was wrong, we still need to do something like philosophy to address questions like the one you just raised. Philosophy is not a single methodology or approach. Indeed, most of the great philosophers are considered great because they introduced new approaches.

Wikipedia says, "Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument." The attacks I've seen on philosophy are either glib statements that such questions don't matter, reductions of philosophical problems to those that can be answered by science, or anti-intellectual attacks on the validity of systematic rational argument to answer such questions.

Those who say such questions don't matter have just made a philosophical statement, yet I never have heard them give a rational argument for their philosophy. They seem to rely on the force of their personality and credentials in their field and act like the statement is obvious and anyone who thinks otherwise is silly.

Similarly, there are those who say that neuroscience or some other science answers the question, but what they have done is reduced the larger question into a smaller one that science can answer, and then declare that the rest of the question is not important.

Those who doubt the power of human rational argument to answer fundamental questions might be right ultimately, but we don't know the limits of human rationality until we get there. If rational argument has any value at all for determining truth, then we should press it as far as we can. If a person thinks it doesn't, then they shouldn't be arguing about it. One cannot argue the truth of the statement that argument cannot lead to truth.

By the way, I agree that all religions cannot be true in every respect since they contradict each other at various points, but they still could be true in certain respects, and some may be more true than others, or offer a better way to the truth than others.

petegrif3• 14 years ago

I think the point he would make is that Java works.

jackson1372• 14 years ago

(As a current Philosophy PhD Student...)

PG's essays are consistently great. Although in this case, I disagree with the central thesis that the history of philosophy is merely a history of confused talk. Certainly, a lot of philosophizing (especially OLD philosophy) commits just this sin. But that's not to say that philosophy as a methodology is inherently broken, that one has to be caught up in the muddle of confused language. In fact, my own study of philosophy has taught me that philosophy, at its best, clearly lays bear the ways in which language confuses us. Philosophy, then, allows us to transcend the little confusions that pervade our everyday language.

And what PG comes to saying, that philosophy should change people the way we go about doing things, is essentially a reworded statement of the Pragmatist's ideal. Peirce, James, and Dewey said the same thing a hundred years ago. PG is right to stress this idea, but if his claim is that philosophy is not sensitive to it, he's just wrong.

petegrif3• 14 years ago

I feel you fall into the very trap of which he speaks. Even a Philosophy Ph.D.Student, wise in the way of the Ancients, and eager to speak plainly, finds it impossible to not be 'caught up in the muddle of confused language.' Your study has apparently taught you that philosophy 'lays bear' the ways language confuses us. And that statement did indeed confuse me mightily. Presumably it is a subtler articulation of underlying intent than the everyday process of 'laying bare.' But perhaps I am wrong in this?

aptwebapps• 14 years ago

That's the wordiest typo nitpick I've seen in a while.

pfortuny• 14 years ago

If you think philosophy needs "fixing" it isbecause you see it as something external, a problem shich is out of yourself.

The fact is philosophy is the reaction of each individual to his confrontation with reality, language, morals and people: you cannot "fix" individuality.

And the "muddle" is as ols as Descartes... don't start me on this.

Tryng to "fix" philosophy with "science" makes me laugh: which one, maths? physics? string theory? behavior sciences??? COME ON.

Just think by yourself and accept you may not understand other people's thoughts before trying to 'fix' them.

dschiptsov• 14 years ago

One of such useful general ideas is to know when to stop.

Pilling up meaningless words (or Java-classes, or CL macros) is not just waste of time, it creates even more confusion and messes everything up.

When very few people trying to capture the essence of a phenomena, so to speak) they end up with something really clever, like Plan9, or Scheme (or Arc) vi, Emacs, etc.

So, there is a simple heuristic - as long as you saw piles upon piles of crap (J2EE, NodeJS, Clojure, everything that comes from MS or SAP) - just avoid it.

"Perfection", as we know, is achieved not when it is nothing more to add, but when it is nothing more to remove.) This means, for instance, that we need less special forms (but moar small macros), less special characters (and using them consistently - I could write a brochure, about why using ~ instead of , in Clojure's macroses is not just a stupid break of consistency and familiarity, but also lack of taste - , "matches" with ` while ~ not.))

Most of the time, even a single glance at a text or source code is enough to form a correct intuition.

indubitably• 14 years ago

Does he ever get any less arrogant?

kijin5• 14 years ago

I usually like PG's essays, but this one is nowhere near as good as his essays usually are. His argument has more holes in it than aerogel.

> Most philosophical debates are not merely afflicted by but driven by confusions over words. Do we have free will? Depends what you mean by "free." Do abstract ideas exist? Depends what you mean by "exist."

Isn't that exactly why (analytic) philosophers make a great deal of effort to clarify the sense in which they're using a word? Philosophy professors often tell students not to quote dictionaries in their essays, because typical definitions of English words are nearly useless when it comes to modern philosophy. Yes, ancient philosophers got confused by words. But people do learn from their predecessors' mistakes! Read any good paper from the last century that deals with free will, and it won't take long before you come across words like "P-free", "Q-free", "T-free", etc., each with its own precise definition. Nobody cares whether we have "free will" in a fuzzy sense. What actually matters is whether we have "ABC-free DEF-will", where "ABC-free" and "DEF-will" each have very precise definitions.

Has America become a communist country? Depends on what you mean by "communist". But this doesn't mean that there aren't any interesting questions to be asked about shifts in America's ideological makeup.

> Instead of trying to answer the question: What are the most general truths? let's try to answer the question: Of all the useful things we can say, which are the most general? The test of utility I propose is whether we cause people who read what we've written to do anything differently afterward.

I'm afraid a lot of people who are attracted to philosophy actually want very much to tackle the first question, and find the second question rather uninteresting. If you're someone who is deeply attracted to the P=NP problem and similar topics, would you find it satisfactory to spend your life creating the next Instagram instead?

Seriously, I want to know whether there exist any general truths. Using a suitably precise definition of "exist", "general" and "truth", of course. I don't give a damn whether those truths (if they exist) have any impact on human life, although I don't deny that it would be neat if they did.

Given what's being proposed here, the title of the article should be "What to do instead of philosophy", or at best "How to do this special kind of philosophy", not "How to do philosophy (in general)". The same applies to the lesswrong crowd. I don't have anything against what they're trying to achieve, but let's call a spade a spade. Failure to do so only exacerbates the confusion-of-words problem that PG rightly points out.

> Knowing we have to give definite (if implicit) advice will keep us from straying beyond the resolution of the words we're using.

If the resolution of English words is not enough, why not try to increase the resolution? Why give up already?

Steve Jobs gave us the Retina Display while everyone else was playing with anti-aliasing. The pseudo-words I mentioned above are one way to do to human languages what Steve Jobs did to mainstream computer displays. (Okay, I'm oversimplifying. The history of high-res screens is much more complicated. But anyway.)

Also, we already use words like "#fdfdfd" and "#fcfcfc" to increase the resolution of words like "white".

Disclaimer: I have a Ph.D. in philosophy, so I'm probably biased.

Edit: Increased precision in some of the sentences.

Confusion5• 14 years ago

  Disclaimer: I have a Ph.D. in philosophy, so I'm probably biased.

You're not biased: you know WTF you are talking about. Whereas pg doesn't. He's fallen into the same trap that many very smart people fall into: thinking they understand philosophy, just because they're capable of deeply thinking about a problem. They fail to understand that that isn't enough: you need to very thoroughly study and understand what others have had to say on a subject, because nobody is smart enough to think of all angles and relevant points on his own.

You see this a lot with theoretical physicists, who ramble on about philosophical consequences of theories without a clue of the actual complexity of the subject.

mattmanser4• 14 years ago

pg did Philosophy you plonker.

mattmanser4• 14 years ago

I did Philosophy as a degree and pg's essay, which I read a while ago, was one of crystallization, a total clarification of something that had been bugging me for years.

I personally believe that Philosophy is the place where amateur thinkers reside until a discipline matures and breaks off. Philosophy is thinking without the effort of doing. First it was Physics, Law, Chemistry, Biology, Medicine and we are now seeing Psychology and Sociology departing Philosophy, taking morality and personal identity into the realms of actual science instead of thought experiments. Soon Philosophy will be left with its history and debating the meaning of words. CS and Maths have taken all the interesting logic questions away from Philosophy for example.

I believe what pg advocates at the end has already happened, is always happening to Philosophy. The general truths philosophy helped discover are the sciences, it just that as we get to answering the general truth the philosophers step aside for people who actually do.

Most previously interesting philosophical questions are now interesting scientific questions. There's not much left for philosophers to actually talk about.

kijin5• 14 years ago

I think you're right about mature disciplines breaking off from philosophy, but I don't see morality and personal identity departing the realm of philosophy any time soon.

Sociologists only tell us how human societies behave, not how they are supposed to behave. You might hold the opinion that we can somehow derive the ought from the is, but if that's the view that you're trying to advocate, then you're already doing metaethics -- a branch of philosophy.

Psychologists and neuroscientists might be able to tell us how children acquire a sense of identity, or how patients identify themselves after massive brain surgery. But I don't think their job description includes figuring out what the essence of a person is, or whether there is such a thing as an essence of a person in the first place.

As for law, it is unlikely that you will be able to settle the question, "Why in hell should anyone obey the law?" or "If the law is unjust, should I still obey it?" until you've settled some questions about morality. Just because a law is (un)constitutional doesn't mean that it is (im)moral.

Guess what, you can even combine questions about morality with questions about personal identity, and throw in some legal theory as well, to end up with some really interesting philosophy [1].

[1] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-ethics/

unalone3• 14 years ago

> Most previously interesting philosophical questions are now interesting scientific questions.

Well, not "most", but certainly many of them are.

> There's not much left for philosophers to actually talk about.

What? This is silly. "This practice that unveiled the thoughts which have aided science and literature and politics and art for countless generations is probably out of new ideas, let's stop using it!" What's the proof that philosophers are out of new discoveries to make?

In fact, I find that contemporary philosophers interest me more than older ones do, simply because they're making discoveries which are new to this time! I have to remind myself to make my way through classic philosophers' works instead of only reading the new stuff all the time so my thoughts are grounded in the older tradition, but contemporary philosophy touches on a lot of interesting things. Richard Rorty is a recent favorite of mine – his Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity is twenty years old, but still offers some fascinating insights into a subject that is very much dominating a part of our popular culture.

memla5• 14 years ago

This might be an interesting read. Also the comments about Krauss on that blog are useful because Krauss is representative of many contemporary scientists. http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/...

eikenberry• 14 years ago

You are missing the forest for the trees here. Philosophy as a field is not about any of the individual ideas explored by any school of thought or individual philosopher. Philosophy is about constructing systems of thought and exploring them. Science, as a methodology, is but one of these systems it produced that happend to end up being very useful. But comparing the 2 is comparing apples and oranges. Like comparing all of philosophy to utilitarianism or the like.

adrianhoward• 14 years ago

I don't know if this is a UK/US thing - but the undergrad philosophy course pg didn't seem to touch upon things that were happening in modern philosophy judging by the essay.

I did a contextual course in cognitive philosophy as an undergrad back in the late eighties (roughly equivalent to a minor in US universities) - so only about two or three years after pg graduated.

Even in that - a minor in a narrow chunk of philosophy - we were exposed to modern philosophers - people like Daniel Dennett (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett), Andy Clark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Clark) and many more. All of which were looking at work coming from the sciences to ground their thinking - and indeed suggest courses for further research (look at Dan Dennett's influence on cognitive psychologists for example).

There's a whole branch of Philosophy (Experimental Philosophy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_philosophy) that's been going since 2000 with antecedents long before that.

At the time pg wrote this essay experimental philosopher Joshua Knobe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Knobe) was being written about in the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/magazine/09wwln-idealab-t....).

(Freaky PS... in double checking roughly when pg was born to see when he would have been doing his undergrad philosophy course - I see he was born in Weymouth, Dorset, UK.... about half an hour from where I live now ;-)

Tycho• 14 years ago

My guide to doing philosophy: study philosophy (along with history and other related subjects) until you're in your early twenties, then choose which philosophy you think is right and live by it.

kijin5• 14 years ago

In fact, this is what most "professional" philosophers do. The theories they prefer are more or less set in stone by the time they do their Master's (age 22-24). After that, it's mostly refinement and minor adjustments, and arguing with everyone who disagrees. Of course, those minor adjustments make all the the difference between a convincing theory and a ridiculous theory.

Some people are exceptions; that's when you hear them being referred to as "the early Tycho", "the late Tycho", etc.

martingoodson• 14 years ago

Nice article but isn't this mostly a restatement of Wittgenstein's thoughts on philosophy? pg gives the impression that Wittgenstein had an obvious idea that only he bothered to put into writing. Like many great ideas, Wittgenstein's later philosophy only seems kind of obvious after you encounter it. And its probably not fair to suggest that Wittgenstein just shut down philosophy instead of studying it as 'an example of reason gone wrong'. 'Studying philosophy as an example of reason gone wrong' is basically a description of Wittgenstein's later thought.

Similarly, its difficult to answer the question 'has (western) philosophy just been a complete waste of time' because we don't know how much of our thinking has absorbed wisdom that came from philosophy. I suppose you could compare our society to another technologically-advanced and successful society which hasn't been as exposed to it. Like China, as pg suggests. But they have that whole totalitarian-state thing going on so perhaps they are not the best exemplar.

tylerneylon• 14 years ago

Some commenters are defending modern philosophy, but I think there is something legitimately wonky in the discipline. I can't figure out the best way to describe it, but, to state it poorly, studying philosophy often feels like filtering out a ton of BS.

I'm saying it's all BS (it's not) but that there's too much.

I don't think it has to be that way. Example ideas:

* Writing in philosophy could be improved (http://tylerneylon.com/a/writing-about-philosophy/)

* The attitude toward 'what is philosophy?' could be improved (http://www.richardprice.io/post/35542139118/one-hypothesis-a...)

powertower• 14 years ago

I've always enjoyed reading this (by ― Mikhail Naimy, from - The Book of Mirdad)...

"Logic is immaturity weaving its nets of gossamer wherewith it aims to catch the behemoth of knowledge. Logic is a crutch for the cripple, but a burden for the swift of foot and a greater burden still for the wise."

swansong• 14 years ago

Dilettante.

http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3s458i/

Just picking one of the many hilariously patronising statements in the essay, the author says "we may be able to do better" than the great philosophers by, in effect, making a big list of things that are true in general, and cause people to act differently.

How do we measure truth? Who decides? What happens when the people who decide become political? What if someone is wrong? What if an action that you thought was true causes someone to do something morally wrong? What is morally wrong?

What if others want to talk about things that aren't on this list? Do you stop them? Are they wasting their time if they ask other questions?

Maybe people in philosophy are looking at things now that will only make sense to others in decades to come. That happens to be my opinion. It is worth studying anything somebody gives their life to very carefully before writing it off as a "swamp of abstractions".

knb• 14 years ago

I was puzzled by the statement that he didn't learn much from the classes he took in formal logic.

>(Consider "I don't know if I learned anything from them. " Footnote: 1 "In practice formal logic is not much use,..." )

This guy has programmed massive amounts of LISP code, and written books about LISP.

How can he say that his training in formal logic didn't take him anywhere?

How To Do Philosophy (2007)

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