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lukeprog comments on Less Wrong Rationality and Mainstream Philosophy - Less Wrong
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This seems to be saying that Quinean philosophy reached (correct) conclusions similar to Less Wrong, and that since it came first it probably influenced LW, directly or indirectly, and therefore, we should study Quinean philosophy. But this does not follow; if LW and Quine say the same things, and either LW is better written or we've already read it, then this is a reason not to read Quine, because of the duplication. The implied argument seems to be: Quine said these things first => Quine deserves prestige => We should read Quine. But prestige alone is not a sufficient reason to read anything.
No, I advise against reading Quine. I only said above that rationalists should not ignore mainstream (Quinean) philosophy. That's a much weaker claim than the one you've attributed to me. Much of LW is better-written and more informed of the latest science than some of the best Quinean philosophy being written today.
What I'm claiming is that Quinean philosophy has made, and continues to make, useful contributions, and thus shouldn't be ignored. I have some examples of useful contributions from Quinean philosophy here.
Necro-post, but I have to say I think a lot of people might have been/be talking past each other here. The question isn't whether mainstream philosophy has useful insights to offer, the question is whether studying mainstream philosophy, i.e. "not ignoring it", as you put it, is the best possible use of one's time, as opposed to studying, say, AI research. There are opportunity costs for everything you do, and frankly, I'd say reading philosophy has (for me) too high of an opportunity cost and too low of an expected benefit to justify doing so. I don't think I'd be mistaken in saying that this is probably true for many other LW readers as well.