How to Do Philosophy

http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html

by samb • 19 years ago

96 228 19 years ago

I skipped philosophy and always regretted it, for the same reasons pg mentions (it seems to be the ultimate in reality)

In the last 3 years, however, I've picked up some great philosophy CDs from The Teaching Company. I spent 400 bucks instead of all that tuition, and I learned enough philosophy to really appreciate it.

I agree somewhat and disagree somewhat with Paul's essay. On one hand, pragmatism seems to be the only rational resposne to so much generalizing! And he's right -- philosopher's have continuously pushed the boundaries of language well past the breaking point.

But I think Paul overgeneralizes, which is ironic since that seems to be part of the claim he's making against philosophy. I view the field as really smart people trying to come to grasp ultimate truths on which the rest of science can be constructed. Many times they have succeede, like J.S. Mills, or Newton. Philosophy generates science.

But you can't take it too seriously. Philosophy is like a dance, or a way to play the tuba. If you're having fun with it, and you're generating something of value (I would agree with the life-changing criteria but simply making a buck from geralizing where nobody else did is enough for me) then you're a philosopher. Anybody who's ever sat designing a program where you get that "a ha!" moment, where you realize by generalizing in these few areas you've made a whole new practical and valuable thing, is right up there with Russell in my book. Anybody who has went through requirements sessions, only to have the code still not match the needs because of the slipperiness of language understands Wittgenstein.

JeffL2• 19 years ago

Although unpopular with many people, Ayn Rand approached philosophy in some ways as you are proposing. She strove to discover general principles that, once grasped, change the way one acts. Personally, reading and understanding her philosophy has changed my life and the decisions I make a great deal.

For anyone interested, I have a site http://www.ImportanceOfPhilosophy.com that explains why I think philosophy is so important and which is mainly based on Ayn Rand's philosophy.

byrneseyeview• 19 years ago

One of the ways I (and others) knock Ayn is that she didn't have an effect on later developments in philosophy. But she did have an effect on people's lives. By pg's definition, is she more relevant -- or is she reheated Nietzsche with some Stirner stirred in?

neilc6• 19 years ago

IMHO Rand is vastly different from Nietzsche. There is obviously some degree of influence, but Nietzsche is subjective, anti-systematic and anti-rational, while Rand is almost the canonical example of a philosophy that attempts to be objective, systematic and rational.

As for Rand's limited influence on subsequent development in philosophy, that's an interesting point. Why is this the case? Even if you disagree with Rand's philosophy, I think it's pretty outrageous that her work isn't even mentioned in more university philosophy programs. There are only a few other philosophers whose work provides as complete a system for understanding reality, the nature of knowledge, and the nature of ethics (I'd include Aristotle, Plato, and Hegel as others that are similarly complete, but there aren't too many after that).

So why is Rand's work not taught more often? I'd say that is mostly the result of the biases and predilections of the typical university philosophy department.

xentek• 19 years ago

> But she did have an effect on people's lives.

But isn't that the point? Its the only reason I have an interest in philosophy.

> didn't have an effect on later developments in philosophy

And in a sense, Paul was arguing against that in this essay. When you think about it, it was exactly this effect that has lead Philosophy to remain so stagnant for so many years.

uuilly2• 19 years ago

I agree with you. Ayn Rand basically says:

-People are self interested.

-This is not a bad thing.

I think those are pretty good axioms to build upon. I don't think Rand came up with a grand unified theory of human behavior but she started from the right place... As opposed to our Greek ancestors...

geebee4• 19 years ago

yes, but what is "self?" what is "interested?" How does the meaning change when you put "self interested" together as a phrase?

As Paul mentioned in his essay, you're already bumping into what words mean.

I can tell you what an integer is, what a square root is, and what a ratio is, and as a result, I can (by looking it up in a book and typing in the text, heh heh) prove that the square root of 2 can't be expressed as the ratio of two integers. But can we do the same thing with the phrase "self interested"? Without pushing the meaning of words out to their breaking point?

prakash2• 19 years ago

I couldn't read beyond the first section...let me know when the cliff's notes version is available and if its worth reading?

icey• 19 years ago

How is it possible you had enough energy to type such a pointless complaint, but you couldn't be bothered to read a couple of pages?

Would pictures help? Maybe some cartoon animals sounding out the words for you?

prakash2• 19 years ago

lol.

I am big PG fan, but the non-startup articles don't appeal to me, this in particular.

bouncingsoul• 19 years ago

I couldn't resist: http://fuzzwich.com/minivid/minivid.php?vid=3917

It's not cartoon animals, but...

lackbeard2• 19 years ago

This pair of sentences is confusing: "All societies invent cosmologies. Occam's razor suggests their motivation was whatever it usually is."

I can't figure out what the second sentence is trying to tell me. That societies' motivations for inventing cosmologies are their motivations for inventing cosmologies? And what does this have to do with writing in verse rather than prose?

pg13• 19 years ago

I meant the presocratic philosophers were probably driven by the same motives that drive people in any other society to make up stories about the origins and nature of the world.

I'll see if I can rephrase that...

Edit: I did. Clearer now?

lackbeard2• 19 years ago

Yes.

karzeem• 19 years ago

Occam's Razor is a pretty lovely bit of guidance, if not philosophy, that's both general and useful. My college had a great books curriculum, and the few books from the last 100 years changed my thinking as much as all the earlier ones combined. Rawls' veil of ignorance is especially elegant.

One note about modern philosophy, though. One of my cofounders enjoys reading about neuroscience, and I was talking to him about modern philosophy a few months ago. He suggested, quite wisely, that in a few hundred years, the early 21st century work that philosophers read is as likely to come from science-oriented guys like Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett (i.e. the meaningoflife.tv cohort) as it is from traditional philosophers.

DanielBMarkham4• 19 years ago

Sorry to post twice, but this is a pet topic.

Software is applied philosophy. Where else can you deal with everything that western philosophy offers, from classification to epistemology to the philosophy of language and science -- and at the end of the day produce something that has immediate value for someone? All of this working, real-world stuff we're doing, from heuristics to machine learning and meta-programming -- it's all applied philosophy.

jey2• 19 years ago

Sounds more like math than philosophy.

bdr3• 19 years ago

Everything is applied philosophy. That's the point!

yters12• 19 years ago

But software has the shortest feedback loop between high metaphysical concepts and practical instantiation. For example, OO is a variation on the notion of Forms.

DanielBMarkham4• 19 years ago

I'll elaborate: in systems design you start with nothing. With words, ideas, feelings. Heck -- most of the time people can't even express what they want the system to do! When you start like that, you are in a completely impracticable spot.

Not only that, but when you do get the words out, they're all just abstractions of other things. "We'd like the user to see the most relevant article" Well gee, what do you mean by "relevant"? What do you mean by "see"? It's the same exact problem you face when you're talking about stuff most people consider BS, like are we real or not.

So you start in this totally meaningless set of concepts, you refine, you abstract, you categorize -- in short, you take a trip through each of the major branches of philosophy. When they say "user", do they mean something that is part of an abstract type of "person"? Or is that over-designing? When we look at scaling past ten million users, what's the impact of applying various principles of set theory, such as normalization? When we say we want the machine to learn what the user wants, do we really mean just what his next actions will be?

We do all of this automatically, without realizing that some pretty smart other people have walked many of these roads before. Because those guys have been there, done that, all of these sciences have been created: sciences like hardware and software design, debugging, complexity theory. For the most part, we don't need to learn about all of these smart people and the full stories of their ideas. After all, only about 1 or 2 percent of what they did lived on after them. But by understanding a more complete version of what they thought, sometimes it can save you going down a dead end. And heck, it can just make discovering the answer more fun. And at the end, when all of that BS comes toghether for a real, live, working system? It's a thing of beauty. Did you even build a system for a large organizatino and every department had a different idea of what reality was? Did you look for wrong and right people, or think of the word "paradigm" (Kuhn -- sort of)

You can't take philosophy like you would a hard science. It doesn't progress or evolve from one phase to another, and half of it doesn't even make sense with the other half. That's okay, though. It doesn't mean that it is not useful, just different.

ingenium4• 19 years ago

I'm currently a philosophy of science and molecular biology double major, and I have to say I agree with Paul Graham's criticisms of traditional philosophy. None of it really makes sense, and is generally nothing more than someone's opinion. Yet we hold philosophers such as Aristotle in high regard.

Philosophy of science is different from classical philosophy in that it focuses on more concrete aspects. One of the best classes I took was the philosophy of artificial intelligence. We discussed what it is to be conscious, and how we differed from a computer, it at all.

Other classes focused on the history of evolution or relativity and studied how these theories were formed and the arguments from the scientific community against them. While a lot of the readings are books or essays by people simply giving their opinions, I've learned to consider what they have to say, but that it is OK and in fact encouraged to disagree and give your own opinion. Since philosophy cannot be "proven" like a mathematical proof, another's opinions are not any more correct than my own as long as both are formed logically.

What I took from philosophy was not the opinions of the "great philosophers", but rather was the ability to think about things logically and confidently make my own opinions on them.

euccastro15• 19 years ago

So what's your take on consciousness, and how/whether we differ from computers?

ingenium4• 19 years ago

Basically, consciousness is nothing special and we don't differ from computer at all in that we're simply a more complex computer than anything we've created thus far.

Alex39172• 19 years ago

Sometimes we find ourselves working with schemas that clearly have elements of truth, but that for some reason don't seem to hold up well empirically. Often times this is because the schema we have in our heads is more broadly defined than the underlying phenomenon.

A good example of this is the phenomenon of prodigies. We know there are some people in society who are exceptionally talented in certain areas, and we call these people prodigies. We then have certain schemas that we apply to these prodigies in our quest for wisdom.

But even though prodigies clearly exist, our schemas often seem to not hold up so well. For example, studies have shown that child prodigies are often not significantly more successful than the rest of us when they grow up. And similarly, many prodigious adults were completely unremarkable as children. Why is this? How is it possible for such exceptional children not to make anything of themselves, and for such exceptional adults to have been completely average as children?

Malcolm Gladwell observes that the reason for this is because when we describe child prodigies, we are describing people who are gifted at learning. Whereas when we describe adult prodigies, we are actually describing people are gifted at doing.

Because we are applying one set of sensemaking tools to both groups, our schemas tend to not hold up so well even though they are based on an underlying truth. The solution to this is to create one set of schemas for understanding and dealing with child prodigies, and another set of schemas for understanding and dealing with adult prodigies.

There are often areas where we engage in fuzzy thinking, and apply one toolset to multiple distinct phenomena. Philosophers and thinkers can create enormous value by identifying distinct phenomena, and giving suggestions for how to think about each one.

PG actually does this in his essay How to Make Wealth. He observes that money and wealth are not the same thing so we should think about them differently. Specifically, that money is sort of an abstraction of wealth, but for various reasons we can benefit from thinking about wealth on a lower level. Providing the sort of disambiguation that this essay does is really valuable, which is why this is arguably the most useful of all the PG essays.

It seems like with math we start with something we know is true but not necessarily useful (like just the concept of a line) and then we abstract our way to usefulness. This is opposed to philosophy, which generally takes the stance that all models are false but some models are useful. In philosophy we usually start with something that is useful in certain situations but not necessarily universally true, and then we disambiguate our way down toward truthfulness. I don't really see a problem with philosophy as long as it is empirically useful under at least in certain conditions.

I feel there are two major issues with philosophy today:

1. No "philosophical method" the same way there is a scientific method, which means philosophy doesn't really build on each other from one philosopher to the next.

2. No real way to categorize ideas the same way you can categorize physics research, which makes it hard to find prior art. So even though Malcolm Gladwell and PG make really good arguments, there is no guarantee that people in the future will use these arguments. As opposed to science where is something is proven true it becomes the basis for future works.

bluishgreen3• 19 years ago

Ok, I am hitting a wall here. I can imagine ways to classify ideas and put them in boxes. It will take some work, but I can see it there. But as for the method, it keeps slipping me. What more, I have this uneasy feeling that we might not have one which will be unlike the scientific method. For me the scientific method is obvious, common sense, of course-it-is kind of method. Just like Darwin's evolution. Once I saw it I simply cannot imagine how else things could have been. If I am right, then we should just open another branch of science for this. Its like one of those big company buys small unsuccessful company and makes it rock kinda stuff.

mdemare2• 19 years ago

pg: Are there any philosophical texts that you'd recommend?

rms8• 19 years ago

http://www.paulgraham.com/raq.html

though it's really starting to turn into a faq

dpapathanasiou8• 19 years ago

Disappointing that this essay (like so many others) talks about Plato without mentioning Diogenes.

Plato is the stuffed shirt know-it-all, and Diogenes is the smart-alecky devil's advocate ready to poke holes in Plato's ideas, thereby cutting him down a few notches: http://faculty.quinnipiac.edu/libraries/tballard/diogenes.ht... and http://members.optushome.com.au/davidquinn000/Diogenes%20Fol...

Ultimately, Diogenes is more important.

pg13• 19 years ago

Ultimately, Diogenes is more important.

I don't see how you can say that. He left no work. All we have to judge him by is a few probably apocryphal stories.

neilc6• 19 years ago

IMHO it's hard to argue that any philosopher is more influential than Plato, especially when you consider the clear neo-Platonic influences on Christian theology, and the subsequent influence that that tradition has had on Western civilization.

dpapathanasiou8• 19 years ago

Plato, despite his intellect (or perhaps because of it), turned out to be, as you say yourself, "naive and mistaken".

Yet Diogenes was able to see that about Plato then, as a contemporary.

And while it's true that he never sat down to write anything himself, his work has endured via written accounts of others (Diogenes was a real person, not a mythical figure).

yters12• 19 years ago

Uh, have you read Plato's dialogues? The defining characteristic is that they aren't philosophical treatises, i.e. not pedantic monologues claiming all knowledge. Their whole point is to stimulate the reader to think for themselves on very interesting questions.

dpapathanasiou8• 19 years ago

Never ask a person of Greek descent if he's read Plato.

The very idea! ;)

create_account• 19 years ago

Irony: the "Intelligent Design" guy is talking about thinking for himself!

axiom7• 19 years ago

Two points:

1. I'm actually very surprised at how many Ayn Rand fans there are on this site. For a fringe philosophy that has fewer followers than Scientology there seems to be an unusually high concentration here. I am a big Ayn Rand fan, so this is a pleasant surprise for me.

2. Ayn Rand's book Intorduction to Objectivist Epistemology is the most interesting book on the theory of concept formation I've read. I have not come across anything that I found more plausible. One of the most appealing parts of it was that she tied concept formation to a similar process as algebra.

Specifically to the point of this article, I would certainly say that it changes the way you think. The chapters on definitions and concept hierarchy make your thinking radically more efficient. Even if you're a programmer and have no interest in philosophy I'd say it's definitely worth a read.

curi3• 19 years ago

I'm rereading The Fountainhead presently :)

gwenhwyfaer12• 19 years ago

Considering that the people on this site are more or less exactly the kind of people with whom Rand surrounded herself, and anyone who fancies themselves at all creative or exceptional is likely to identify with the Roark or Galt characters (who are, nonetheless, only ever described from an external perspective) - and frankly, the more likely to so identify the less their achievements tally with their self-estimation - I'd say it's not at all surprising.

I'd also say it doesn't bode well for the future. From my perspective, being a Rand fan is a demonstration of an unfortunate lack of either insight or critical thinking. Maybe the ability to believe bullshit, so long as it's positive bullshit, is a strength in an entrepreneur. But being unable to distinguish harsh truth from desirable illusion is not a strength in someone who is truly creative, whether in thought or in anything else.

curi3• 19 years ago

I like Roark, but I think Galt is overrated. He doesn't do much. Dagny is more appealing and more similar to Roark -- they both heroically pursue active goals against stiff opposition.

axiom7• 19 years ago

I like how you call Rand's work bullshit but don't provide a single example. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if you haven't read any of her work. Most of her critics haven't.

Also, it's interesting that you don't try to reconcile the fact that the Y Combinator is one of the most successful startup incubators ever, and that there is a large presence of Ayn Rand fans on here. Do ya think there might be a connection there? no of course not, it's just that entrepreneurs like to believe in bullshit.

In my experience it's very rare to meet a person who calls themselves an Objectivist who isn't way above average in intelligence and ambition. And don't tell me about the 14 yearolds you've talked to on various online forums - I don't think you'd want people to judge you by how you behaved when you were a kid. I'm talking about people 25+. All the guys I knew from university who were Objectivists are now either working at Google, some big time law firm, or have started their own company (I'm in the lattermost category.)

bdr3• 19 years ago

"They were in effect arguing about artifacts induced by sampling at too low a resolution."

Sampling from what -- "meaning-space"?

pg13• 19 years ago

The observable world. That's what meaning-space is.

zaidf• 19 years ago

I took one philosophy elective first semester of my undergrad and boy did it screw me.

For the longest time I kept asking my friends "how can you prove to me THAT tree is in fact a tree?" It was all part of realizing that current philosophy is just a play on words. I do believe that once you understand that, you can think beyond the frivolous debates.

bdr3• 19 years ago

"in fact, it would not be a bad definition of math to call it the study of terms that have precise meanings."

What meanings? I think that math is made of structure, not meaning. The latter is a human phenomenon. For example, a proof using geometry and one using algebra might be mathematically identical, but have different meanings (created when they are perceived).

Goladus• 19 years ago

I think the question is whether you can say the terms used in either proof have precise semantics. Any of the terms in a correct geometry proof can be traced back precisely to the initial axioms, which are terms with meanings defined as precisely as possible.

kc5tja4• 19 years ago

The symbology used to form each proof is universally accepted and agreed upon. The symbol "=", for example, is taken not as a verb (a becomes b), but as a statement of truth (a IS b). Likewise, "+" has a specific meaning. The juxtaposition of terms is implicitly understood (e.g., all mankind agrees to interpret it as) as multiplication of some form (which is generalized in higher mathematics to function composition, which makes sense once it's explained). It is the ultimate language, where one symbol has one, and only one, meaning.

It is the structure which is a human phenomenon. The fact that you can express any algebraic expression in reverse polish notation is a great example of this. 1 2 + 3 4 <asterisk> / has the same meaning as (1+2)/(3*4). (Sorry for the <asterisk> thing -- the markup system of this blog is positively broken since it doesn't provide a means of escaping the markup characters.) The symbols, and hence the meaning behind them, remain the same.

soundsop2• 19 years ago

I haven't finished reading yet, but for what it's worth, I'm having trouble parsing this sentence:

Few were sufficiently correct that people have forgotten who discovered what they discovered.

forgotmylastone4• 19 years ago

I think he meant something along the lines of "Few were sufficiently correct that they were remembered for their discovery."

pg13• 19 years ago

No, I meant that when you learn about e.g. the chemical elements, you don't also learn who discovered each of them. It's accepted knowledge; you're taught it as facts.

In philosophy, most of the exam questions have someone's name in them. E.g. "explain x's concept of y."

mynameishere• 19 years ago

Metaphysics: Physics without a laboratory.

[branch of philosophy]: [equiv. branch of science] without a laboratory.

I'm not sure philosophy can really be improved beyond the obvious: ie, introducing experimentation after the theorization. But then it's no longer philosophy.

walterk• 19 years ago

FWIW, PG's thoughts on philosophy are largely confined to "analytic philosophy", which I agree suffers from the problems he talks about. There is a whole other tradition of sorts (sometimes referred to as "continental philosophy"), taking a different path from Kant, including Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, Badiou, etc. This side of philosophy tends to suffer from being extremely difficult to understand, but yields much genuine insight for those who take the time to study it.

There's also the pragmatic tradition, as DanielBMarkham notes. I'm less familiar with it, but many have seen commonalities between Heidegger and the Pragmatists.

Ayn Rand's writing can be inspirational, but her philosophy was poorly conceived.

gwenhwyfaer12• 19 years ago

If Rand's fans accepted that she was worthless as a philosopher, but half a century ahead of the self-help curve, they'd be a lot less annoying.

voidstar• 19 years ago

i think it's precisely the opposite. analytic philosophers try to say clear and precise (yet admittedly, often trivial) things while continental philosophers take on grandiose-sounding concepts and discuss them nonsensically (but with FEELING). And so I think pg's arguments don't apply to highly-regarded philosophy done in the past 30-odd years (highly-regarded, that is, by other philosophers). I don't think Lewis was confused about how he used words when he developed functionalism, or modal realism in On the Plurality of Worlds. Nor was Kripke in Naming and Necessity, carefully separating epistemology from metaphysics in his theory of reference. I don't think searle was confused about words in his Chinese Room argument, and I don't think Parfit is confused about words in stating his ethical paradoxes and reductionist account of personal identity in Reasons and Persons. Nearly all of these arguments are terribly controversial, indicating that their conclusions actually matter to people, yet they are considered paradigms of good philosophy, and all were written in the past 30-odd years. Chinese Room was in fact a direct response of sorts to john mccarthy's argument that his thermostat can have beliefs. So the point is that there is good philosophy being done out there, even if it may be too recent for pg to have been exposed to it in college, and may be more cautious and exact (and therefore, far less grandiose) than the old "proofs of god's existence."

soundsop2• 19 years ago

This side of philosophy tends to suffer from being extremely difficult to understand, but yields much genuine insight for those who take the time to study it.

Insights such as?

forgotmylastone4• 19 years ago

"There are things I know I learned from studying philosophy. The most dramatic I learned immediately, in the first semester of freshman year, in a class taught by Sydney Shoemaker. I learned that I don't exist. I am (and you are) a collection of cells that lurches around driven by various forces, and calls itself I. But there's no central, indivisible thing that your identity goes with. You could conceivably lose half your brain and live. Which means your brain could conceivably be split into two halves and each transplanted into different bodies. Imagine waking up after such an operation. You have to imagine being two people."

Whew, I'm glad I just watched Star Trek to learn this, and didn't spend tens of thousands at Harvard. (I'm referring to the numerous times someone was 'duplicated' in a transporter accident)

euccastro15• 19 years ago

Someone suggested mind uploading too:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42607

But that, like your Star Trek example, is more pie-in-the-sky science fiction. While it may make you think about the issue, it doesn't force you to confront it in the same way. Brain splitting seems more plausible; I wouldn't be surprised to see something like that in a few years.

yters12• 19 years ago

It'd be useful to see some support for your claims about the history of philosophy. Specifically:

1. Aristotle's Metaphysics, and the like, had no effect on its readers. I'd also like a clearer definition of "did something." I.e. does changing the way one thinks about practically theoretical fields "do something?"

2. No one challenged the two until the 1600s. Kant, by himself, isn't a good source since his philosophical agenda was to overthrow the relevance of religion (which was tightly coupled with classical thought). See Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind for details.

For my undergrad I studied the classics, and I'd say your generalizations are too general. People, such as Aristophanes, said the same things about Plato in his day that you say in your essay. Yet, generations of great thinkers have chosen Plato over the Cynics and Epicureans, today's relativists and materialists. Your critique of the uselessness of philosophy is more indicative of the fact that many of the humanities in academia today are purposely biased towards relativism or materialism.

While I agree that philosophy should be tested with practice, I don't think practicality should restrict inquiry. Otherwise, we become very short sighted. Math is a great example of this, which you've pointed out in one of your essays.

Finally, you misunderstand Aristotle's support for 'useless' theory. You're confusing 'useless' with 'pointless.' All useful activities are done for a specific goal, they aren't important in themselves. Therefore, the ultimate point of useful activities is by definition 'useless.' Aristotle thinks the final goal we all aim for is happiness, and the highest form of happiness is a kind of knowledge.

yters12• 19 years ago

That being said, I am very much in favor of hacker philosophers.

1. Creative, logical thinking is an inherent part of what we do and love.

2. We created and own the best communication and research network in history.

3. Programming brings our ideas into existence in very short order, and allows us to model pretty much every aspect of reality.

Unfortunately, we also tend to get stuck in our own little world of ideas, a important strength which is our major flaw.

rkabir• 19 years ago

I'm of the opinion that [good] Sci Fi is a weak form of philosophy. Societies that don't exist are constructed and described, and then readers can read and digest the implications.

yters12• 19 years ago

Godel was a Platonist.

jraines• 19 years ago

Reading philosophy is still good mental exercise, and it gives you interesting ways to think about the world. Learning to call bullshit on intimidating ideas is a good thing to learn.

I agree that one test of it is whether it changes the way you do things -- or at least gives you an imperative to do so that you're too weak or cowardly to heed (see Nietzche, Thoreau, Schopenhauer, Seneca).

But I dunno -- the whole math versus the world mentality always strikes me as a symptom of too much craving for certainty. Math never told us anything about the rights of man.

bluishgreen3• 19 years ago

I dunno about math. But conclusively telling people in clear terms that we were all monkeys once asserts equality of humankind in a brutally ironic way.

euccastro15• 19 years ago

Does it? Gorillas were all monkeys too, and they are not equal to us[1].

I agree thinking about evolution can give you an insight on human rights. It's interesting to reason about how moral rules emerge from certain social traits, and why have such traits proven evolutionarily stable.

[1] I don't mean humans intrinsically 'deserve' 'rights' that other living beings don't.

eusman2• 19 years ago

Isn't an essay based on the assumption we don't exist doomed from the beggining?

We are not cells and molecules. We are souls. Strange that an essay that talks about philosophy doesn't have even once the word soul.

Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotel seperates animals from humans as beings that have soul and the ability to think.

His work "Physics" tried to capture concepts people ignore even these days, and tried to examine in an amazing use of reason various metaphysical phenomena trying to find balance between whats real, fake and imaginary.

If you read the works of Aristotel and others, in original Greek you will be amazed by his astonishing ability to convey truth in a wonderful ingenious word of speech.

Plato talked about many not-connected subjects in a very indirect way to put the reader in becoming part of his works. Ingenius!

A very important concept of Socrates and Plato is the world of ideas. A seperate existance/entity/world that we all have access to. Modern science doesn't accept that, as there is not proof for that. But doesn't the fact that a lot of people share similar ideas at different place and time may be a small clue of exactly that?

ingenium4• 19 years ago

See, the problem is that you are simply wrong. I do not believe in the soul, and I cannot say for certain that it does not exist. I CAN say for certain that we are just cells and molecules. Our brains are composed of neurons, which are simply complex chemical reactions. The cell is basically a test tube, separating off the chemicals from everything else. A certain threshold of a chemical interacts with a molecule on the neuron surface, and it "fires", which causes it to release chemicals to an adjacent neuron, and this repeats.

If we had a powerful enough computer to simulate the physics of how each cell works or simulated the connections of neurons, do you really think it won't be able to "think" like we do? Our brains really aren't any different from a computer. A neuron either fires or it doesn't; on or off; 1 or 0.

Humans aren't special. Other animals can clearly think and react to their environment to make "decisions", but they just aren't as powerful of a computer as we are.

On that note, I assume you also believe we have free will? Well, we don't. With a certain set of stimuli, you will make the same decision/"choice" every time. If you understand what I said above, this would become apparent.

With regards to the soul, where did the soul come from? Do primates have souls? If they don't, then it had to come into existence at some point. Was there a set of parents who were soulless and had a child who magically had a soul? What about groups of people that had a long time in isolation to evolve separately, such as the indigenous peoples of Australia and the Americas? Do they have souls? How about the "hobbit" that was found in Indonesia that's 12,000 years old and is a separate branch from homo sapiens? What about neanderthals?

If a human gets a soul upon conception, and identical twins are caused by a zygote that splits, does each twin only have half a soul?

eusman2• 19 years ago

DNA evolved from RNA and it took billion years to do just that. DNA tried to perfect it self through its evolution. Your human body to evolve during its growth a lot of cells are destroyed of course while you are shaping.

So basically we are all derivatives of that process. Everybody knows that.

The point is that philosophy is not about getting a claim and considering it substantial to eliminate other probabilities.

Metaphysics is not feasible they are part of a material world. they react with it of course but it exists whether you can accept it or not.

Everyone is trying to understand what happened to all that antimatter that was created during the bing bang. For every molecule there is another anti.

And what about time? who can explain that mystical concept? in the possibility that you can go beyond it, means it may not even be valid as a concept as we know it.

In all these strange ideas, it's impossible to be satisfied that everything is only molecules.

If everything is a chemical random chain reaction how can we all have similar ideas or visions of the future? and note that Greeks never considered chemistry as different from Physics. Only recently did Chemistry claim it's independence.

greendestiny• 19 years ago

I definitely agree with the criticisms of philosophy. I did a minor in philosophy, and its an absolute complete waste of time.

PG's redefinition of philosophy is something I've been thinking/writing about a bit recently. I prefer to call it insight, and I don't think its worth trying to define by itself. Insight is the abstract thinking that gets to the heart of a real problem or class of problems, it by definition illuminates our understanding. Calling it philosophy will just cause everyone who attempts it to miss the point. Plus philosophy has a history and a workforce, all of which will completely derail any attempt to redefine the field.

benhoyt• 19 years ago

Cause and effect is a complex thing, but at least partly because of Paul Graham, I quit a 9-5 job and tried to start a startup. Whether that was a wise thing to do or not, given the circumstances, is quite another question. :-)

So PG's a pretty useful philosopher, at least according to his own test: "The test of utility I propose is whether we cause people who read what we've written to do anything differently afterward." Good stuff, PG.

euccastro15• 19 years ago

That only follows if the arguments that prompted you to quit are of philosophical nature.

dudeman• 19 years ago

If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading, "Philosophy for Dummies" by Tom Morris, Ph.D.. You may find some of the presuppositions you present in your essay to be challenged.

pg13• 19 years ago

Really? Which ones?

gregwebs• 19 years ago

I have always thought that the goal of philosophy was to change the way I behaved or thought. Likewise, I minored in psychology to understand the nature of my own behavior so that I would be more capable of changing it. To loosely quote everyone's favorite philosopher "everyone is a philosopher whether they realize it or not". Meaning most people are living by their subconscious impulses, but the philosopher becomes introspective and question how they are living. Nothing could be more practical, but as PG points out philosophy does not usually have this goal in mind.

Neoryder• 19 years ago

PG, Does this mean you are starting a project of some sort?

pg13• 19 years ago

http://paulgraham.com/articles.html

zoltz• 19 years ago

Really that's what I thought when reading this essay. And I agree that some of your essays are exactly what philosophy should be. But most are advice about startups rather than philosophy (although you can still see they were written by a philosopher), and some state specific observations. Maybe the philosophy essays deserve their own directory?

Grue• 19 years ago

Having studied philosophy (and maths and CS) myself, I mostly agree with your essay. However, here are a few things in defense of studying philosophy:

1. Just as it can be useful to be able to consider what makes a _good_ burrito, it can be useful to consider what makes a _tortilla_ (as opposed to pita or lavash or other flat breads). A large part of metaphysics is about carving up and categorising concepts and analysing and clarifying distinctions. These skills (taken in moderation) turn out to be quite useful in everyday life.

2. Symbolic logic is great exercise for the brain. Analytic philosophy is great for learning to write precisely. Becoming a better thinker and writer will serve you well. (Philosophy is a good way to get these skills, but not the only way.)

3. Philosophy is the subject which encompasses studies that are not yet mature enough to be their own disciplines. Some such subjects may never mature, but others will (think Kuhnian protoscience, iff you like Kuhn). Most maths and sciences have spun off from philosophy. The boundaries are fascinating: go read the so-called natural philosophers (the term "scientists" is anachronistic) like Descartes, Galileo, Huygens, Newton, and Leibniz.

4. There's a wealth of "philosophy of $foo" subjects to study. The degree of BS involved in Phil($foo) seems proportional to the degree of BS in $foo. Pick the right $foo, and study _both_ $foo and Phil($foo), and you've likely found someting meaningful to study.

lvecsey• 19 years ago

I think thats what we got with the Paul Graham article; Philosophy of Computer Science ;)

The article says its not good enough for those of us otherwise interested in philosophy but dissappointed by its exactness, to back off from it. Rather we need to demand accuracy, precision, and practicality. And that for the sake of progress its important to recognize the field is in poor condition and not silently pass it off, in its current state, as having higher merit.

pmetzger2• 19 years ago

In addition to Sokal's hack on "Social Text", I believe that Rob Pike did a test in which random texts produced by running a Markov chain over Derrida were found to be indistinguishable by informed readers from actual Derrida. (I'm probably misremembering at least some details of the actual incident but the gist is, I'm pretty sure, true.)

pmetzger2• 19 years ago

I've done a bit of research -- the Pike incident involved Baudrillard, not Derrida.

kcl• 19 years ago

All that proves is that Baudrillard's message is invariant under Markov chains. I'd like see a mathematician produce an argument of such fine structure.

sketerpot• 19 years ago

Pike's comment at the beginning of the Markovified text is brilliant:

> For those unfamiliar with M. Baudrillard's work, the thesis of the essay is, in a nutshell, that reality is indistinguishable from good simulation.

pg13• 19 years ago

I did the same thing with Paradise Lost to produce the "poem" at the start of ANSI Common Lisp. When read aloud it passed as poetry to a sample of 1 English Lit grad student.

dfranke2• 19 years ago

Another of life's mysteries solved. I've been wondering about that poem every time I open that book.

dfranke2• 19 years ago

That is hilarious. I plan to repeat this experiment.

gabrielroth• 19 years ago

I'm surprised that your essay doesn't deal directly with the branch of philosophy known as ethics, as practiced by such canonical philosophers as Kant, Hume, Bentham and Mill, and by contemporary philosophers like Peter Singer, Michael Walzer, Jonathan Glover, and John Rawls. Their work addresses some of the most general questions (what is a just action or a just society?), and it seems to meet your utility criterion: if you find it convincing, you have to do things differently.

Is this not an example, from within the mainstream of philosophy, of the thing you're calling for?

whoami• 19 years ago

It is true that many works on philosophy are complicated because they fail to accurately define the meaning of the terms they are discussing. However, the solution proposed by this essay would result in the reduction of philosophy to self-improvement books like the 7 Habits of this and that.

In his book, Wittgenstein said that one must be silent on those things about which one cannot speak. The idea as advanced in his lecture on ethics is that some things simply cannot be expressed in human language and one should not try to speak about them. But is there really any harm in trying?

Anything useful that came out of philosophy is called something else: mathematics, science, etc. It has not failed. We should keep on trying.

lst7• 19 years ago

...loving wisdom!

evilmonkey• 19 years ago

Philosophy is not about proving scientific theory as this article suggests. It is about understanding how to think (thereby understanding why there is scientific theory). Basing an initial premise or blame against Aristotle whose works are not complete and not understood in historical terms is like accusing a toddler of not understanding how to order a pizza.

It amazes me every now and then how smart people can get lost. I have and I'm not that smart. But I am smart enough to know that many of the attempted arguments in this essay are off.

Consolidating the history of a field of thought to a few authors and blaming one of the "fathers" as making a mistake is a false argument. It doesn't address the core framework of the field or address applied thinking. Philosophy is about logic and understanding how to get to a point where one human can explain to another in clear terms what that means.

I enjoy Mr. Graham's articles and read all of them, in this case I would avoid reading this and instead read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance instead.

hilbert• 19 years ago

Paul Graham wrote: "Greek philosophers before Plato wrote in verse. This must have affected what they said. If you try to write about the nature of the world in verse, it inevitably turns into incantation. Prose lets you be more precise, and more tentative."

I've written some poetry in my time, and I've read enough of it too, to know that verse can be even more precise than prose -- but it is generally less tentative, mainly because it takes more effort and thought _per_word_ to write poetry. Verse is crafted; prose tumbles out of discussion.

One can imagine Plato or Aristotle stumbling back home after a long night of drinking and talking philosophy, and then quickly jotting down a particularly juicy discussion in prose. However, good poetry (especially when it's highly philosophical) tends to require a lot of thought, and it tends to come from individual reflection. Wordsworth's "Daffodils" talks about this:

For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

Poetry comes out of individual reflection, and usually not directly from a discussion. However, the classical Greek philosophers produced philosophy by discussion -- hence the "Socratic method."

Verse is no more or less suited to philosophy than prose, but the classical Greeks preferred prose, because it reflected their approach to philosophy.

Ironically, especially nowadays, prose cloaks philosophy in a garb of officialness. Prose claims precision through official-sounding vocabulary and structure; poetry _exhibits_ precision through careful choice of sound, word, image, and structure.

mfh http://hilbertastronaut.blogspot.com/

dratman• 19 years ago

I offer the following idea as both useful and general.

Beliefs, or articles of faith, may be defined as intrinsically untestable assertions. Under that assumption, people can and should feel at liberty to maintain whatever beliefs they like. Their beliefs need be of no concern to anyone else, as they can never have any consequences. For if a belief had definite consequences, it would be testable, contrary to our assumed definition.

As an example, suppose I assert a belief that the world was created 6,000 years ago, and that God at that time laid down the fossil record and all the related evidence which has made scientists believe in geological history and biological evolution. My belief should bother no one, as it is untestable and has no observable consequences.

Continuing the example, if I later throw a stone at a scientist who fails to share my belief, that action of mine must stand on its own. It cannot be ascribed to my belief. "I believed that I must..." is rightly not an acceptable argument in any court.

salmonax• 19 years ago

I didn't start taking classes in philosophy until several quarters ago and had merely read out of interest for some years. It has always been a matter of some discomfort that people hold even THIS sort of knowledge at arm's length, fail to truly enter into it, mistake a kind of aimless and wandering detachment from the essential questions for objectivity, and fail to develop any understanding whatever of philosophy as a project.

I have no stake in this matter except an intellectual one. It's quite saddening for me to see yet another formal student of philosophy produce such a boring, typical, and downright naive treatise on the subject, a writer who has chosen to convert into assertions of half-truths a thinly veiled myopia.

If this is the sort of intellectual cynicism that the modern institution produces, then I am quite happy that I've had no part in it.

And why on earth is there no mention of the Americans? Is that once burdgeoning and scientifically literate pragmatist tradition completely lost to us? Why are we still dwelling on the befuddled analytic solution to continental problems when such great American minds as Charles Sanders Pierce have made such sharpening new developments without precociously discarding the old? And their writing is as far as anything out there from being mealy-mouthed or inexact.

I'm sorry, but we can do a hell of a lot better than this. And we ought to; our current level of science demands it.

ww2• 19 years ago

A degree in Philosophy = the same value as a degree in computer science. You come out knowing about as much as someone with 2 to 12 months of real life experience depending on how much you applied yourself. You shouldn't expect anyone who 'majored' in something to actually have applied it.

To get that experience I would challenge PG to go around the internet and debate something like universalism vs nominalism. You would have to take the nominalism side if you think 'math' is 'science' and not philosophy. Remember though, that bertrand russel was a universalist .. you know .. that strange believe that numbers exist outside of the human mind and are not physical, sort of like what Plato believed.

PS forget Wittgenstein. To quote him: 'My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless'.

lst7• 19 years ago

Do you know that Darwinism is becoming more and more obsolete? It's not me saying this, but many major scientiscts.

The only reason for Darwinism still to exist is because of the atheists. But atheists are extreme - an intelligent human should leave the question open, and not stupidly deny something nobody can really know by reasoning (since God is transcendent by definition).

rms8• 19 years ago

You mean that evolutionary theory is becoming more refined over time. This makes the case for science, not the theistic God of the Hebrews.

lst7• 19 years ago

I mean that there are two different things which can be confused easily: evolution and adaption/assimilation/conformation.

Many things that seem to confirm evolution could in fact be of the second group cited above.

jbonnet• 19 years ago

Hi! Do you think countries like Portugal should stimulate students to go to Science courses, instead of Humanistics (Philosofy, Languages, History...)?

krispykreme• 19 years ago

PG, you ought to read Chuang Tzu and then revise your essay accordingly. Not only was his work relevant to the topic, but also he started before Aristotle and affected a greater fraction of humanity. Until then you better rename your essay "How to do 3 Greeks + 1 Austrian". Parochial.

janm• 19 years ago

Interesting. Sounds a lot like Christopher Alexeander's "Nature of Order" work. Specifically, trying to answer the question: "What makes something good?"

euccastro15• 19 years ago

Metaesthesia (1/3)

[This was meant as a reply to a comment about soul, but I drifted too bad to claim it's really a reply to anything.]

The word 'soul' has a lot of baggage I don't care for, but I need some word that expresses the concept of 'feeling', 'perception', 'consciousness' in me. Not my ability to perceive this or that, to feel this or that, but the quality of experiencing stuff at all. Just to get rid of some of the implications of the words above, I could call this feeling of self autoesthesia, or, for an even more pretentious neologism, metaesthesia. I'll conjure a ridiculous, but convenient, word for the act of exercising metaesthesia: metafeeling.

Note that in the paragraph above I have talked about myself rather than about humans as a species. This is for several crucial reasons. To confront the thorny one first: quite honestly, I haven't established yet that any of you guys have this.

No offense; most of you folks look convincing enough, especially when I only have myself to compare to. In any event, I have to say most of you other people are quite alright phenomenons to perceive. I hope we can still continue this discussion in civilized terms[1].

But I'm trying to be rigorous here (heh..), and for all I know, you could all be replicants, NPCs, or hallucinations. I can only metafeel my own stuff!

Another reason why I didn't speak of 'us' is, who are us? What is not us? As soon as I go happily assuming metaesthesia in other stuff, I have no good reason to limit myself to humans, animals, living beings, computational systems, complex systems, material things, or whatever else, if anything, is there.

Do my cells metafeel? Do the mitochondria within them? Do cities, societies? Does the world as a whole, does the universe as a whole have a definite consciousness that metafeels itself?

[I had to split this. Search in page for "Metaesthesia (2/3)"]

euccastro15• 19 years ago

Metaesthesia (2/3)

[This follows from anoter post in this page. Search for Metaesthesia (1/3) if interested.]

In the interest of agility, I'll go one level deeper into insanity and present the rest of my drivel as an interview with myself:

How can things metafeel if they don't have nervous systems, or any mechanism for reacting to their environments?

Well, they can have very peaceful feelings. I know where you're coming from: I can relate my feelings to the flow of information through my nervous system. I can see how different conditions that alter the quality of that flow alter the quality of my feelings similarly. Extrapolating, I'd say that feeling emerges somehow from complex order.

Ha! Typical nervous system chauvinism.

(sigh) What's a neural network to do?

No, really. Why are my metafeelings bound to my physical body? If everything metafeels, why don't I metafeel everything? Why this fragmentation?

I imagine there is some I that emerges from the interactions of my body with other entities. My matter, my actions serve that consciousness too, although I am a less significant part of it. Just as most of my cells are replaced often (and thus, I presume, their tiny consciousnesses are born and die), while my perceived self stays mostly constant.

So what if half my brain was transplanted to other body?

I hope you'll go on the other half.

No, seriously: after some initial weirdness and confusion, it will be business as usual. The other body will be a different person. A very affine person, to be sure. Maybe like someone you've spent all your life with and told all your secrets to, probably someone you'll care a lot about. But I bet you can get something similar without surgery, if you were willing to go all the way to get that level of intimacy with someone. It's scary and it wouldn't be easy to know yourself well enough, nor it would be easy for the other person to understand you well enough, but I bet some approximation is possible by good old interpersonal communication means.

So what about the converse? Could it be possible to merge consciousnesses by merging nervous systems?

I bet. That would be an even more interesting experiment. For maybe different degrees of metaesthetical merging, you could link brains temporarily or permanently, and you could do it with more or less bandwidth.

[Continued in Metaesthesia (3/3), which search for.]

euccastro15• 19 years ago

Metaesthesia (3/3)

[This is a multi-part post. Read it before I'm killed from the site! :P Search for Metaesthesia to find the other parts.]

Bandwidth?

Yeah. If you have a connection as dense (or more) as your hemispheres have with each other, you can get some pretty strong integration, to the point the two selves dissolve into a new one. With a narrower link, like the one you have with your feet, each brain will still metafeel mostly autonomously, with a small window of empathy and ultra fast communication to the other end.

How would brains make sense of each other, if the wiring in each of us is unique?

Just as we make sense of the world in general: by rewiring until it 'works'. It would take some time until each brain makes sense of the other, and in the case of hardcore brain mergers, it would take some more time until some supra-consciousness emerges from both.

For low bandwidth-- if this technology became casual enough, conventional wirings could emerge. As we try more peer brains, our own brains pick patterns and get better at negotiating this kind of stuff. I don't rule out computer assisted training either. This would allow good old neural rigging.

In the case of high-bandwidth brain merges, would the emerging new consciousness replace both original consciousnesses?

I think it depends mainly on bandwidth. Time and plasticity of the brain also matter. If you merge brains in unborn children, I'm pretty sure they'll grow to have an unified consciousness. The older the subjects are, the longer it will take, in principle, to dissolve the old selves. But we have to assume that there is some medical way to stimulate and assist brain rewiring. It's part of the required technology, lest both brains go nuts before they can integrate.

But do you see both the original selves and the supra-self coexisting at some point?

The rewiring takes time. It doesn't just click and voila, you're merged. It's more of a cross-fade.

Do they metafeel each other?

Yes, but not necessarily in any meaningful way. Most of the time it will feel like a terrible LSD trip.

If my city metafeels, why doesn't it talk to me?

Why don't I talk to my mythocondria?

I bet you do.

That was uncalled for.

Let's continue this in private, shall we?

Sure, my email is in my profile.

[And thus, there is no Metaesthesia (4/x).]

 -  -  -

[1] And seriously, folks, if this was all that important to you, metaesthesia.com would be taken.

rms8• 19 years ago

Do you think stars metafeel? The universe as a whole?

euccastro15• 19 years ago

How do you even think about this stuff? It's almost orthogonal to reason. The only useful engagement point I can find is observing the characteristics, especially the limits, of my own experience.

I think there is some 'metafeeling tone' everywhere, and that the intensity of it is somehow associated to our concept of complex dynamic order. Although it is a continuum, in parts of the universe that sport a dramatically greater amount of complex order than their surroundings, the feeling of such surroundings is lost as imperceptible line noise. Thus, isolated selves.

I think stars feel, although I can't see how their feelings could be much more interesting that those of a pot of boiling water.

The universe is more interesting. Since it is 'everything', it holds all the complexity, all the order, all the chaos, all the information flow, everything that you could relate to consciousness, or to interesting consciousness.

Yet, at a macro level, and at any timescale that can be humanly grasped, I suspect the universe is a rather dumb thing. AFAIK, there is not a terribly complex interplay going on between the top level parts, and I imagine interesting subparts have independent consciousnesses of their own, that the universe is essentially blind to: I don't think the universe is more aware of us than we are of the neutrons in our bloodcells.

stickler• 19 years ago

This essay needs to be corrected. There is a major historical error. Several times, it is implied that Aristotle's work held back European thought for hundreds of years, up until the seventeenth century. This isn't true. Aristotle's influence was absent from Europe for several of the intervening centuries, only really returning with the influx of ideas from the great Arab philosophers like Averroes.

lst7• 19 years ago

> needs to be corrected

It's only an opinion, and it's situated in a certain culture and situation.

If you look closer, quite everything needs a 'correction'.

If you want something perfect, humans are the wrong place to search for.

ato• 19 years ago

"You could conceivably lose half your brain and live. Which means your brain could conceivably be split into two halves and each transplanted into different bodies."

Unfortunately this does not follow. In most cases, if you lose half your brain you would die. If by chance, after losing half your brain you continue to live, that means the physical half that is gone was the less essential part. I am not a neurologist but I'd guess it is very unlikely that if you lost the part that survived you could still live.

Regards,

Atakan Gurkan

william42• 19 years ago

Actually, people have had entire hemispheres of their brain removed and continued to survive, with other parts of the brain taking over for the jobs of the removed parts.

In addition, to treat epilepsy brain surgeons sometimes cut the corpus callosum, or the nerves connecting the two hemispheres. The two halves of the body act almost like the bodies of two different people who just happen to be connected.

ww2• 19 years ago

The main purpose of philosophy is to find truth without exceptions. There are people, like descarte, that spend their lives trying to find something that is true, and then measure everything else within that truth

Metaphysics: What is true, without exceptions, about things that are not physical or on the boundary of being physical. Ontology: What is true, without exceptions, about existence (being) Epistemology: What is true, without exceptions, about how you know what you know Ethics: What is true about the way things ought to be, without exceptions.

Epistemology/Ontology/Metaphysics have provided lots of value for those that love truth without exceptions.

If you read philosophers and try to see the problems they want to solve within those branches of philosophy, ask yourself what are the exceptions. When you try to battle with them, you will have the feeling of thinking you are the first one to climb a large mountain, only to find a whole city at the top with a lot of people saying, 'What took you so long to get here? PS here are the real mountains for you to climb!'

Is there anything that is true (epistemology)? If false, why have an essay? If true, what is it?

A simple start, can a self refuting statement be true? Well the vast majority of philosophers would tell you no. That is to say they would believe the following statement to be true:

1) Self refuting statements are false or inscrutable.

So you have plenty of people in the world that deny (1). Philosophy allows the Descarte types to relax when dealing with these people.

So lets take a Descarte truth based on (1). That would be:

2) I cannot doubt doubting.

Or in other words I do not have the ability to doubt my ability to doubt. Then when someone says something like this:

4) If I am multiple pieces, I do not exist (?!) 5) Empirical data has shown that I am multiple pieces (cells) 6) Therefore I do not exist

a descarte type doesn't waste brain energy on either (4) or (5) (or both).

To sum this up, philosophy is the domain of what is necessarily the case. Science (positivism) has nothing to say about this. That is what philosophy brings to the table. But only a descarte type would enjoy this.

For programmers, an analogy could be said as lisp programmers laugh at the 'pattern circus' and the 'aspect oriented design' of other languages (which basically fix what should not have been broken in the first place), philosophers laught 10X as much at people that say things like 'I don't exist' and 'there are no true statements' and wish that they could help them, but know that some people love their circus so they let them have their fun.

thales19403• 19 years ago

I take your point and suggest you go back and explain 'the Greek miracle' as everything after Pythagoras is a distortion.

thales19403• 19 years ago

There is no science before Thales, 600BC. There is general agreement that Thales is first to deduce certainties, implicitly building on inductions. So, the key to explaining the Greek miracle is an inspection of what we know about Thales. Pythagoras reversed Thales in that he took the integration of induction and deduction and when applied to numbers reified them making them subjective. The history of mathematics argued over the source of a numbers certainty (cardinality) for 2350 years which mostly consisted of arguments to explain the relation between god and cardinality. God is a bogus concept, it has no existential content. Kant refusing to accept the obvious devloped an argument that took the god/cardinal problem and made it impossible to integrate them in the hope of saving the god part from reasoned inspection. From Kant developes a new aecular, subjective view of cardinality. Excepting Ayn Rand, no one has ever gone back to Pythagoras to correct his mystic error.

thales19403• 19 years ago

My position is large in that it questions Pythagoras and so, everything that follows him. All phillosophy today is still Pythagorean in that it implies agreement with his subjective stance. The Greek miracle is in fact the discovery of objectivity (reasoned argument) based on the integration of ordinal and cardinal numbers, or concretes and abstractions, which is the same thing. Pythagoras confused numbers which are abstractions with their concrete instances. This has the effect of reversing the Thalean integration and re-establishes the mind/body dichotomy as the norm, making objectivity impossible.

lewisb• 19 years ago

On the use of language, try reading up on E-prime. When you change a sentence from "This food is tasty" to "This food tastes good to me" or "That is a tree" to "That looks like what I understand to be a tree", a lot of these issues around language become clearer.

Who is the master who makes the grass green?

francoisp• 19 years ago

First, to Paul: I have really enjoyed a lot of your essays; most are very insightful and/or motivational, keep up the good work. I have to ask, what's up with the word wrap? On one hand the articles are formatted for a 80 lines terminal, and the comments do not render OK on my 1920*1280?

I have been reflecting along the same lines for a while, here are few thoughts, if anyone is interested.

Philosophy is constructed from two words and could be translated literarily from Greek as: love of knowledge. This implies a "lover", and from this individuality in the act I see flowing a lot of the problems you describe.

From my understanding, Wittgenstein main point is: "meaning is usage". This is a generalization that is a centrality of philosophy itself; Russell alludes to it in "the problems with philosophy" as he sets the reader on a quest to right something that can't be.

Here's my reasoning: since no two person can use a word in exactly the same way, the inherent imprecision of language and of philosophy as a construction is a feature not a bug, a v.useful one still; ever had this epiphany moment of having a great idea because you misunderstood someone?

If you set off to generalize enough on practical philosophy, I guess you get to the wisdom expressed in sayings and in illustrations; they convey by high bandwidth a particular pattern of analysis from one individual to another one that seeks wisdom, but one would be hard pressed to call receiving (as in "idee recues") sayings as a philosophical endeavor.

The way I now see philosophy is it's a quest to a personal worldview acquired through a personal love for knowledge. It cannot be exact nor absolutely true unless you're a dictator or a cult leader. This is why the idea and "ideators" are so closely associated; people talk about A.Rand because through her constructed world view she gives an ethic that have seducing finalities; however as you point out, objectivism as she conceived it cannot be perceived again by a human being let alone brought to new heights.

I find that reading inherently imprecise philosophical material can give very strong insights exactly because of the words are soft, and impact each unique individual in a different way. The ones that are not purposefully unreadable that is (Foucault?), in this I agree with you. "I", as my existing uniquely individual self, personally agree with you; another unique entity that defines itself as an ensemble of cells and electric currents. Seriously, I find it rather unconvincing that because you cannot pinpoint self, or soul, you negate something as evident as individuality, from which "I" choses to defines itself. I guess this fits "l'air du temps", ref Dawkins, Pinker and co. It has the smell of groupthink tho.

 (BTW, evilmonkey your comment got me ROTFL)

Best regards, Francois Payette

rms8• 19 years ago

He thinks that 80 character widths are inherently more readable on a screen.

euccastro15• 19 years ago

That doesn't explain the ridiculous width of this page. This is a problem specific to this thread, caused by a comment which contains a very long line without whitespace.

rahulkjha• 19 years ago

I've usually found good philosophy hidden in good novels, movies and science fiction. It's a bit paradoxical, the generalaties become clear only in a more specific presentation; it requires a lovely balance, and few can manage. That's what makes it all the more intresting I guess. I think this is one of your finest essays.

brianfrank• 19 years ago

This is great! I just wrote a similar essay on http://blog.openconceptual.com/ proposing a 'philosophy of enterprise,' which also served as an introduction to the work of Alfred North Whitehead -- a philosopher with a mathematical background who wasn't fooled by the supposed certainty of abstractions:

"Philosophy has been misled by the example of mathematics; and even in mathematics the statement of the ultimate logical principles is beset by difficulties, as yet insuperable. The verification of a rationalistic scheme is to be sought in its general success, and not in the peculiar certainty, or initial clarity, of its first principles." "The position of metaphysics in the development of culture cannot be understood without remembering that no verbal statement is the adequate expression of a proposition."

Whitehead (who was an early collaborator of Russell's) made these statements while Wittgenstein was a schoolteacher and Russell was still enthralled with his early work, which W. himself later rejected in favour of the ideas he is now (justly) celebrated for.

Whitehead's lack of a legacy in professional philosophy is partly due to the fact that he felt it was nevertheless necessary to articulate a sort of heuristic metaphysical framework -- which few professional philosophers have been interested in tangling with [actually, it's been pretty roundly criticized; I meant that philosophers aren't interested in countering or improving it] (for reasons PG points out in the essay).

By making such an attempt, he has much in common with Heidegger, who has remained more widely read and cited than Whitehead perhaps (for another reason pointed out by PG) because of his esoteric and unclear style. It's as if James Joyce and Kurt Godel both composed universal cosmologies: whose do you think would be more popular among later generations of young philosophers?

Whitehead also agreed with PG's attitude towards Aristotle's impractical metaphysics: "Metaphysics is nothing but the description of the generalities which apply to all the details of practice."

I think PG's "test of utility" has potential, but I think we should be careful not to let it stray too far into an authoritative stance. (... while I try not to stray into "word soup.") What I mean is that, above all, we should be doing philosophy for ourselves but with others, in conversation. We may not get them to "do something differently," but if we can get them to do something with us (like discuss philosophy, as PG's essay has so effectily done here...), then we've done enough (for the moment). I think if we start believing our ideas are for other people's benefit -- that we somehow appreciate their needs and wants better than they do -- we get into hazardous situations of resentment and (ironically) competition.

My favourite "test of the value of any philosophy" (quoting John Dewey) is Dewey's question, "Does it end in conclusions which, when they are referred back to ordinary life-experiences and their predicaments, render them more significant, more luminous to us, and make our dealings with them more fruitful?"

That is roughly a more general formulation of PG's test -- only without the requirement of having someone else read it -- which (correct me if I'm wrong) sort of demonstrates PG's proposal: it was useful in getting me to act differently (or at least getting me to act), which I did by "cranking up the generality" -- to apply not just to written philosophies but any kind of idea or insight. (Now we wait and see how useful my [I mean Dewey's] philosophy is...)

And I fully agree with the last comment: we're just beginning to learn.

olavk• 19 years ago

Those that don't know the history of philosophy are doomed to repeat it. For example Marx wrote in 1845 "Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." This is almost exactly what PG is proposing.

Also, that statement that "all previous philosophy is bollocks" is a literary device used by numerous philosophers.

paulvonhippel• 19 years ago

It's a little misleading to say that philosophy is useless. You can get that feeling by looking at what's called philosophy today, but that's because branches of philosophy that became useful are now called something else.

Many useful studies started out as branches of philosophy. As a topic develops standards of evidence, it tends to calve off from philosophy. So natural philosophy turned into physics, biology, astronomy, etc. as practitioners got serious about observation and modeling. Likewise, logic and geometry grew into mathematics, parts of epistemology turned into psychology, and social theory is turning into social science. Today psychologists and evolutionary theorists are starting to take a fresh look at questions in ethics and aesthetics.

What's left in the philosophy department, then, are topics that have been hard, so far, to get purchase on. If you focus on these topics, you can get a feeling of futility, but it's like staring at the bare patch in an otherwise fertile garden.

gregboutin• 19 years ago

excellent article Paul. I am part of those who changed their mind about a degree in philosophy after realizing that most debates were rooted in language imprecisions. I was leading the pack in my philosophy class. I studied commerce instead and don't regret one second to be an entrepreneur! thanks for the enlightening thoughts!

mikhailfranco• 19 years ago

Anyone for a philosophy start-up !

pknz61• 19 years ago

http://peter.allmedia.googlepages.com/pottedphilosophy

You talk about the "meaning of words" in a very English school way. Obviously the meaning of meaning is the branch where Wittgenstein left the British for dead and led to Heidegger and Derrida. Meaning of meaning is an important issue as we begin the task of programming computers that will be more intelligent than we are.

tones• 19 years ago

Paul, Vico and Pirsig both address the problem you outline in constructive ways, Vico through a pragmatic view of history as a Science, an evolutionary philosophy if you will, and Pirsig by a link to anthropology and a distinction between philosophy and "philosophilogy" which is what is mostly going on today. Tones

earcaraxe• 19 years ago

I'm surprised that nobody brought up the calvin and hobbes strip that works really well with this article. http://www.c2i.ntu.edu.sg/AI+CI/Humor/AI_Jokes/Academia-Bill...

Neptune• 19 years ago

Maybe philosophy could be also used as psychotherapy. It's funny, but sometimes Paul himself tries to push words too far:)

tigerthink• 19 years ago

How does self-improvement (ala lifehack.org) fit it? I personally think it fits very well. The trouble is that these sorts of personal development blogs are still mainly in it for the money and they aren't scientific enough (e.g. they'll tell you what to do and maybe how to do it, but not necessarily why to do it.)

Also, they often focus on superficial behaviors instead of underlying thinking patterns. For instance, here's a way of thinking that I've found to be useful: 99% of the time, there's no logical reason to feel fear in any social situation. Whatever happens, when all is said and done, it really doesn't matter what other people think of you. If that seems like a "no-duh" way of thinking to you, think back to when you were in high school.

A superficial example of this behavior is learning to meet new people. But someone who hasn't grasped the underlying concept will have a hard time meeting people, no matter how often they read about how to meet people on personal development blogs.

Besides money, another reason for this personal development blog bullshit is that a lot of the bloggers are themselves in the process of figuring out how to be successful, etc. It's much easier to write instructions for someone else than yourself, so they start blogging about what they think will work for them without necessarily having tried it for very long. Thus the field of personal development can be something like an echo chamber, where the same ideas are repeated over and over.

uglyduckling• 19 years ago

When I graduated college as a philosophy major, I left with an uneasy feeling. Craving utility and connection with my childhood interests I took up software development.

I'm glad to finally see an explanation for the letdown I experienced as an enthusiastic but inexperienced scholar. I remember when I asked my first philosophy professor, someone I had struggled with intellectually (and physically during a dinner party) for a recommendation letter to leave philosophy and study law, and his reply that I had "not spent enough time with the classics" for him to feel confident that I was a real enough philosopher.

I am glad now to state that I am not, and that like many my response to its flaws was to turn to other pursuits.

rodrigobraz• 19 years ago

Paul, what do you think of Modern Art, especially painting? It seems to me the very same arguments you made about philosophy hold there. People try to look impressive by doing something opaque and incomprehensible and calling it art. If you don't "get it" that is used as even further evidence as to their genius. It seems to me the same situation you talk about, when there is a market for people producing and consuming such things.

I would love to know your take on the subject.

ncm• 19 years ago

No, modern science was invented by ibn al-Haytham a thousand years ago. (Spellings vary, but include "Alhazen" and "Alhacen".) He is generally credited with inventing modern optics (along with various geometric results), but the method he invented to give a firm foundation to his investigations into optics was what, today, we call science. Bacon studied him.

MiklosHollender• 19 years ago

1. Seems to me Paul partly rediscovered Buddhism: great Buddhist philosophers of the Great Middle Way school use philosophy to demonstrate philosophy does not work. There is a great analysis of it:

http://www.bahai-library.org/personal/jw/other.pubs/nagarjun...

(This is where the Great Middle Way comes from: the middle way between existence and non-existence. We can prove Berkeley wrong just by kicking stone: it would be wrong to assert that that the phenomena don't exist in the casual, everyday sense. However, they don't exist in that sense that if we look deep into it the entity we casually define as a "stone" does not actually have a true and lasting essence, or identity.)

2. However, I believe philosophy, even though usually it is a bluff, is a necessary evil. How can we talk about politics without philosophy? How can one have any political opinion without at least having some ideas of what "good", esp. "a good life" is? (OK you can be an anarcho-capitalist without it but otherwise basically both Liberalism and Conservativism requires some definition of "good".)

Miklos Hollender

yelsgib• 19 years ago

Consider any "vocalizable concept" X. There are 4 directions you can move from X.

"Meta" - you can ask the set of questions "what can we say about claims about X?"

"Anti-meta" - you can ask the questions "what can X say about other things?" (make X a meta-concept of some other concept)

"General" - you can ask the question "do there exist generalizations of X?" (commonly known as abstraction, although the term is ambiguous - generalization is more precise)

"Specific" - you can ask the question "do there exist instances of X?"

Answering questions in these 4 directions gives you information about what you really want to know - what is X? What is "true" of X?

Philosophy is exploration and characterization of this "idea space." Nothing more. Nothing less. Very useful, if people would only do it once in a while.

---

Quick example:

"What is free-will?" = X

Meta:

Does free-will correspond to a thing? What classes of things is it in? What are our intuitions? What can we meaningfully say about free-will?

Anti-meta:

Suppose we define free-will well. What concepts does it enable? Are those concepts meaningful?

General:

Are there generalizations of free-will? How about just plain old "will"? What can we say about "will"? How about "freedom?" What's that?

Specific:

Are there any hard-and fast examples of free will? Are there any "thought-experiments" we can perform to try to shake out our intuitions? For instance, if everything were systematic/deterministic, what would this imply?

---

My claim is that this method is useful for getting terms to be well-defined in the way that PG requires of math. You just keep doing this sort of analysis over and over until you get down to essential definitions.

Best to start from the bottom, though.

irrevenant• 18 years ago

"Of all the useful things we can say, which are the most general?"

As a hill-climbing algorithm, wouldn't this approach tend to result in the local optimum rather than the most general truths?

pg13• 18 years ago

That is an interesting question. I wonder if there is even a way to know if the space has merely local maximums.

astine• 18 years ago

There is a slight error here: when Aristotle makes this distinction, it is not between things that are useful and things that are not, but between things that are sought for their utility and things that are sought for their own sake.

We make art supplies in order to make art. We make art because we like art. Aristotle pursued knowledge, not because he wanted to use it, but because he valued it for its own sake; much like a hacker will write a program, not so that he can do his taxes with it or watch really cool videos, so much as because he enjoys the craft. This attitude, that knowledge is not just a means to and end but rather an end in and of itself, today is usually called 'curiosity.'

I think the lesson here is that people who aren't curious about the questions that philosophy attempts to answer probably shouldn't study it to any great deal. It's just like people who don't like to program shouldn't become programmers; they won't get anything out of it.

khan194• 18 years ago

But isn't the fuzziness of words and their inability to convey the most general truths a very old idea? The Tao says, "the tao that can be told is not the true tao" and then goes on to describe the limits of words in more detail.

flandry19• 18 years ago

The comments below are intended to amplify and to ever so slightly change the direction of some aspects of the presented essay.

Fundamental and central to the dissatisfaction that many people feel with philosophy is the realization that it is not formal or concrete -- that it is ultimately abstract and seems to be nothing more than 'word play' (semantics). They study "process" since that seems to be all that can be done.

The author writes: "that the concepts we use in everyday life are fuzzy, and break down if pushed too hard."

The trouble with this idea is that it hides incomplete assumptions. Concepts are defined _as_much_ in terms of continuity as in symmetry. Saying that a concept 'breaks down' in analysis is simply saying that the concept of symmetry (a logical sameness while under conditions and contexts of the applied analytic force) is not sufficient to fully contain the meaning of a concept. That is true, but not a problem. The logic of continuity is as complete in its own way as any formalisms based on symmetry. There is no paradox in this; nothing is lost, and it is right that concepts be understood in this more complete way. The /process/ of philosophy needs to be changed in a certain way, a very different kind of discipline, equally as hard, than that a mathematician would use.

For example, the "Ship of Theseus" paradox is a direct exploration of how the notion of continuity must be included in the very basis of a notion of a notion. If that were not enough evidence in this post, may I point out that it is also possible to directly construct "barber" type paradoxes that show that the notion of a concept of a particular type (ie, non-fuzzy) cannot somehow be more basic than the notion of a concept itself.

Philosophy does have a strong and irreducible core of definite knowledge -- it just does not happen to be widely known or taught in USA universities at this time. Mostly I suspect that this is because philosophy _as_a_practice_ does not have an obvious direct connection to bottom line profitability (ie, ideas like "education is about business" -- "right intelligence/information is success", etc). It is therefore treated as a 'has been' -- something for people to do in their spare time, for reasons of interest and/or hobby.

Yet the connection of philosophy to practicality is (astonishingly) far more real, powerful, and potent than 99.9% of the worlds people will ever realize, because it /also/ happens to be so completely subtle and everywhere pervasive. This means only that it will also be the most neglected, particularly in younger civilizations (as ours is).

It has been observed that when a technology is truly powerful, it also tends to be unobtrusive. In fact, some have proposed that the proper measure of the power of a technology is in its unobtrusiveness. An advanced technolgy appears as "magic" to an unknowing and primative people (A. C. Clark). Similarly, philosophy is, if anything, much more subtle than the much more basic and simpler forms of religion and contemporary politics. A Master of the Art can move entire nations with the stroke of a pen, but such people are very rare and unobtrusive themselves.

For an example of the forgoing, Consider the effect of the -- at that time very novel -- ideas of "life, liberty, and the presuit of happness" (as suggested by John Locke) on the historical development of the USA. These ideas are so central to the way that we think and define our self identity now, individially and nationally, that they are totally taken for granted. Yet indirectly, one mans philosophy shaped the course and outcome of wars, and indeed everything 300 million people do, in every practical business decision, the world over. Go just a little farther and you find that the "love philosophy" of one (presumed) man has affected billions more for far longer (2000 years).

Although stated informally, something about their ideas must somehow /feel/ true to /most/ people, regardless of context -- a definite indication that 'something is up' and should be considered carefully. Although an examination of the logical form of their philosophical assertions does not hold up using ordinary mathematical logic, something about them makes them very pervasive and influential -- a power that like any other in nature, must be somewhere connected to a real truth. A different kind of discipline is needed to discover these connections, not just a different type of domain knowledge.

Q: How is it that a handful of gurus/buddahs in ancient history can have effects so far out of proportion to the scope of their lives? A: In one form or another, they all taught philosophy that had at least some, possibly unknown, connection to a real truth of nature and life.

Q: Is philosophy practical? A: Yes. It is at once very subtle and very powerful -- nearly invisible and yet when 'right', nearly invincible. These are all notions based inherently in foundations of continuity.

Asking for philosophy to be "practical" and to "have effects" is like asking all the worlds oceans to be "wet". Why should 'wetness' be a more defining characteristic of a "good ocean" than any other? Even the question itself is connected to deeper assumed truths in philosophy.

For the record, I would like it to be known that I do also definitely agree that Sturgeon's law applies to the nearly total current state of Western philosophy. For my own part, to get anywhere with it I have had to start from scratch -- examining the root ideas and assumptions behind science and spirituality to get anywhere at all. At this point, I am glad I did because I can assert with the absolute confidence of owned rigorous proofs that 1) Kant (and others) were wrong about metaphysics, 2) that is possible (and necessary!) to positively and exactly define things like a non-relativistic ethics, and 3) that the fully self describing "auto bootstraping" system of concepts is known and does currently exist explicitly (as would be inherent in any true 'system of metaphysics'). There is nothing 'fuzzy' about a root analysis of the inherent assumptions behind all the 'fuzzy' usages of meaning in everyday languages. But do _not_ expect the sort of concepts that provide a the very basis for everyday logic to look like ordinary logic either -- different protocols of thinking are required. Continuity is as fundamental a notion as symmetry. Again for the record, I note that the basis of these ideas have absolutely no connection to religion or faith, although the net effect of them tends to validate a lot of things most world religions tend to take on faith.

Those who have the eyes to see will see; all others will be blinded or live in darkness.

Regards, Forrest Landry, Apr 19, 2008, San Deigo, CA.

mxetch• 18 years ago

While I sympathize with some of this essay's points, I think its criticisms of philosophy are largely unjustified. (Fair warning: I was a philosophy major in college as well.)

Philosophy, at its best, is basically a study of the history of ideas. (Let's set aside modern philosophy, especially the Continental variety, for now.) This seems no more or less practical than any other kind of history, be it military history or art history.

Let me address a few of Paul Graham's points.

First: "Few [philosophers] were sufficiently correct that people have forgotten who discovered what they discovered." This is demonstrably false. How many scientists understand their debt to Aristotle for being the first to attempt a systematic categorization of the natural world? How many people apply Ockham's Razor without knowing anything about the guy who came up with it (other than his name)? How many programmers understand their debt to G.W. Leibniz? How many Americans understand their debt to the many political philosophers (Locke comes to mind) for their system of government? I could go on and on.

Second: "Did studying logic teach me the importance of thinking [logically], or make me any better at it? I don't know." Nevermind logic specifically, but philosophy is widely regarded as an excellent pre-law major, and I know of at least one SCOTUS justice (Breyer) who studied it. Now, maybe it's possible to get the same training on one's own, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of evidence that philosophy is failing to train rigorously critical thinkers.

Third: "Most philosophical debates are not merely afflicted by but driven by confusions over words." Well, most philosophical debates that take place in a freshman dorm under a haze of bong smoke are. Just kidding -- sort of. So the "free will" debate has been beaten to death, and is basically a matter of semantics. Who cares? Are Nietzsche's critiques of ethics just a matter of confusion over words? I don't think so. Ditto the guys I mentioned above.

Fourth: Let's talk about Aristotle. So, Aristotle basically defined the pursuit of science for two thousand years, and it didn't go as well as it has since people decided to move beyond his paradigm. So should we treat Aristotle like a bonehead? I don't think so. I could just as easily say that all military history prior to the invention of gunpower is nothing but a catalogue of hilarious errors rendered irrelevant by the first guy who was smart enough to mix up a few simple chemicals and instantly consign all prior weapon systems to the scrap heap. How could all those hundreds of previous generations be so miserably dumb that they couldn't come up with this simple formula? They actually wasted millennia doing nothing but hitting each other with variations of the sharpened stick/rock/hunk of metal. Why should we waste our time studying them, or worse yet, appreciating them? This is nothing but "presentism."

Fifth: "And so instead of denouncing philosophy, most people who suspected it was a waste of time just studied other things. That alone is fairly damning evidence, considering philosophy's claims." So, it's damning evidence that people who suspect a subject is useless just studied something else? Isn't this true of almost all subjects that students aren't coercively forced to study? Most people who suspect astronomy is a waste of time don't study it. And indeed, I'm sure that describes most people. Is that evidence that all of astronomy is b.s.?

Furthermore, this is supposed to be damning "considering philosophy's claims [i.e., that it's] supposed to be about the ultimate truths." Who exactly made this claim? Mr. Graham attributes this claim to philosophy itself, which is a rather strange thing to do. As far as I know, this is the first time an academic discipline has literally spoken for itself, something I thought academic disciplines were not capable of doing. Does he mean that Aristotle made this claim? If so, I should point out that until long, long after Aristotle, the word "philosophy" was essentially synonymous with all study in the pursuit of knowledge, and thus would include basically every discipline taught in modern universities (except maybe some of the fine arts).

This is a straw man. Damning philosophy because it doesn't reveal the ultimate truths of the universe is like damning capitalism because it doesn't make everybody happy.

Now, it is true that "modern philosophy" finds itself with fewer and fewer useful things to talk about. Most interesting fields of study have split off into their own departments and disciplines. But most of what undergraduate philosophy departments teach their students is really the history of ideas, and that strikes me as a perfectly good and useful thing to study.

All best,

Max Menlo Park, CA.

dfree693• 18 years ago

I think the basis of progress in any field of study is the degree and precision of inquiry. This is what Socrates recognized as the way to know. It’s what scientists use with physical reality. I’m guessing it’s how Paul Graham finds start-ups to invest in. Where you have genuine inquiry, you have new knowledge being unfolded and developed. Where you don’t have inquiry, or have insincere inquiry, or have taboos against inquiry, you have stagnation, dogma, and useless speculation. It’s as simple as that.

There’s an author, A. H. Almaas, that has articulated a way of inquiry that is quite penetrating in its quality. He became a physics student because he wanted to know reality. At some point his love of knowing reality turned a corner towards the human condition, and a way of inquiring into human existence gradually became clear to him. So he uses this way of inquiry to help people investigate their experience. And this has the effect of revealing the nature of their existence.

So he and his students use inquiry for inner knowing, but it could also be used in any field of study. And he says as much in his book “Spacecruiser Inquiry” (page 372). Turns out inquiry is a general truth, broadly applicable like Paul’s examples of the controlled experiment and evolution. And when Almaas turned inquiry towards inquiry itself, the basic elements of inquiry became clear: ordinary knowledge, basic knowledge, not-knowing, dynamic questioning, loving the truth, the personal thread, and journey without a goal (chapters 5 through 11). When all these elements are in place, inquiry can be quite effective and efficient, no matter where used.

So to get back to Paul’s essay, I think he’s onto something when he suggests to start with something very specific and then to follow it to something more general. Following the thread of a small, specific experience or observation can lead with inquiry, persistence, and time to larger and more general truths. This is real philosophy. Starting with someone else’s large truths and commenting and speculating on them and adding a few of your own will not do much to add to our understanding of reality or to develop new, useful knowledge and things.

barce• 18 years ago

Maybe you should read the Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous. It's so much clearer.

Like you, I studied philosophy in college, and then ended up in the tech industry. I've tried really hard to repress my philosophical urges because when I express their questions, I get into trouble.

I've had managers in the tech industry tell me to quit it with the philosophy, and I used to think there was something wrong with me for being philosophical.

If you look at Socrates, he was killed for his philosophizing. If philosophy is really as you, and the early Wittgenstein say it is, then why do people get so upset about philosophy?

I think (like Plato and Socrates) it's because the questioning in philosophy puts people face to face with their ignorance. And most people if they've had some success in life, like to believe it's because they know.

You wrote: "The real lesson here is that the concepts we use in everyday life are fuzzy, and break down if pushed too hard."

You've clearly identified the source of upset people have at philosophy. But what if the concept is really broken and doesn't fit the world it was born into? Ptolemaic physics is pretty fuzzy. Many have pushed it too hard. Does that mean we should kill someone?

You might be disillusioned in philosophy, but I find it liberating. What makes me fear for the future, especially since now, the study of philosophy in terms of student enrollments has doubled, is that people will suppress it.

tyche• 18 years ago

Descartes - I think, therefore I am. Berkeley - To be is to be perceived (his version is prettied up in fancy words with religion thrown in). Kierkegaard - To exist is to have the ability to feel angst.

Craig A. Eddy - I am, therefore I think, I am perceived, and I have the ability to feel angst. One should always start with what one knows.

Craig A. Eddy, B.A. Philosophy (which is to say a Bachelor of Arts degree in BS)

kinet• 18 years ago

A useful link

http://sriramanamaharshi.org/

Happiness All beings desire happiness. Everybody loves himself best. The cause for this love is only happiness. So, that happiness must lie in one self. Further, that happiness is daily experienced by everyone in sleep, when there is no mind. To attain that natural happiness one must know oneself. For that, Self-Enquiry 'Who am I?' is the chief means.

prakash@kinet1.com

sorgeangel• 18 years ago

Listen, I can understand your frustration...I am a philosophy major also. The problem lies in two things the answer does not lie in you, self-reflection leads to the emptiness of yourself (not from the eastern perspective) and toy must have a concern for others, and the openness to accept God as Being, not Possibility. If God under our definition falls under Possibility, He is then ruled by existence, and limited. Is God Possible denies God...Does God Exist? This question is also limited, as God does not come into Existence? So you work with the idea God is Existence, how, why, and do I have any respect for people who have died for Him? Philosophy is difficult because we have to read all the history of some senseless ideas to reach to the point we have today. The reason for this is retracing steps if a mistake is made and so that you do not think you did this all by yourself, and like Socrates said to reach the points of other men easily. A pursuit for Goodness, and a surrender to it, instead of Goodness surrendering to you might be another approach, for you are not the God of Goodness.

EmRyall• 18 years ago

Really interesting post - thanks. For me, the most important thing that studying Philosophy can do is to get people to ask questions and to consider the assumptions that are traditionally made. That is not to say their actions might ultimately be different, but at least they are able to recognise particular problems and difficulties... even if there are no absoultely convincing solutions. I currently teach Philosophy in a Sports faculty and believe that it is useful in getting students that are not 'naturally' philosophical to realise there are philosophical and ethical problems that don't have 'easy' solutions. This is what I think is important and it is up to those of us with the more traditional philosophical training to make philosophy a useful enterprise in other disciplines.

tarmik• 18 years ago

Unfortunately I have to agree with some ideas in this article. Long time ago I've had artificial intelligence forum, and kept it alive for two or three years, but decided to give up on it - because most of posts where exactly philofophing on theme "AI", not really useful. You cannot make a program based on those posts. Also one of comments here also suggests that "Software is applied philosophy." - I have to agree on that one as well. I've seen software source code, which were "overabstract", or over philosophical - if you could say so. Finally I've concluded that native language walks hand by hand with programming languages, and they should become one language eventually. Now I'm looking deeper into programming languages, especially C and C++, and how they are constructed, and trying to find resemblance to native language. Unfortunately trying to extract the essence/core of languages is non-trivial thing. I have hit basically the same wall as psilophy - operating on I-don't-know-what by using I-don't-know-which-terms using I-don't-know-which-logic. Also on some wiki page language definition page I have found a mention that languages in which you can express easily one thing, it's more difficult to express another thing. This basically means that exact atomic terms or definitions does not exist, and it's up to language to define them, and fluent communication is a result of language construction. So basically any language can be defined, using any terms, side effect is "how easily language can be used". Philosophy walks on shaky ground, since they try to define their own terms, concepts and logic, (or in other words their own language) after a while that newly defined language becomes completely detached from reality of this world. Or it might be even not completely detached, but not understandible by most of people, after that it still can be considered as detached.

I'm afraid of such detached situations, and so I'm trying to get highest possible abstraction of source code taking into account current programming environment / developers mental world. Each small abtraction step, which I'm achieving is one step forward - I can identify of what was done correctly and what was done wrong and take into consideration on making the next step. Unfortunately the further I go - more resistance I feel is hitting me back.

For example programming language compilers are made by whole teams, and architecture and design - even if they exists require enormous effort to develop similar compiler.

I however still think there is a way to simplify things, but it's very hard to find a better way / solution, as it is probably with philosophy. I'm inspired by language like Toki Pona, and that what drives me forward.

DanielBMarkham4• 18 years ago

To me philosophy is a way to make life easier. Philosophy is also a way to make technology solutions easier.

I see no conflict between using the same tool for both types of work. However I would not go so far as to say both types of work are identical. As a deep pragmatist, I pick and choose philosophies of living and idea development concentrating on what works and ditching what doesn't. It doesn't matter to me that on different projects, or on different days, different philosophies which might be mutually contradictory are required. Philosophy is always a work in progress. I have a small enough moral sense that stealing what works isn't a problem and a small enough ego that I don't worry with trying to come up with the ultimate philosophy of everything.

flashpoint• 18 years ago

Thanks, your essays are excellent. I studied philosophy for the same reason you did, I thought it had something to do with finding wisdom. However, it wasn't my bread and butter option, thank heavens, otherwise I would have died of starvation by now. My own feeling is that if words break down after a certain point the next step would be the Eastern Philosophy's idea of insight into reality. Words do not really bring insight, words can only go so far in bringing insight. Words can only point in the right direction perhaps through logic and even poetry. To find the true basis of reality would be a step above words - I don't know exactly what that means - perhaps it is the sound of one hand clapping? To me philosophy is basically a way to determine reality and it forms a building block of our quest to find the true nature of reality. It is a bit sad that in our present time people do not seem interested in the fact that there are ways that reality has been studied and that our lives are often only based on escaping the reality of the moment. Last is not my idea but I read it somewhere probably in some book on Eastern Philosophy. I am convinced that the day we all start living in reality is the day that we find God. Furthermore, the upside to philosohy and the study of it is to make sure you don't make basic logical errors in your thinking for example realising that there are things such as sweeping statements, generalisations, ambiguity, prejudice, bias etc. It is often a mind strain to get through the day surrounded by people who never realise the limit that words have and the limits that untrained minds have. It is heartbreaking to realise the lost potential and the absence of meaning that is in front of peoples eyes without them ever realising it. Quite painful . . .

niloc• 17 years ago

What you are advocating is not exactly new. Pragmatism has been around for a little over a century now.

memetics• 17 years ago

One should not so blithely throw away the concept of science as a type of philosophy and that philosophy is a type of religion.

Natural philosophy is a very good name for science, because it reminds us that "science" is based on a philosophy. This philosophy includes the concepts of control of degrees of freedom, replication of process and result as the axiom for "proof", and objectivity, among other things.

As an example, math is not science, it is a sub-class of philosophy. It is important to realize that the math used in science is fully in tune with the philosophy of science, and MUST BE in order to be a valid tool in scientific inquiry.

Philosophy, properly done, is a way of helping both group and differentiate (to classify) things. A fundamental difference, for example, is between the constructed experiential (such as a belief), and something that is physical and non-experiential (the atomic weight of iron). This difference, properly understood, is one of the beneficial results of studying philosophy, and it HAS changed the world.

How to Do Philosophy

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