Benito comments on Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant - Less Wrong

65 Post author: lukeprog 06 December 2012 12:42AM

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Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 04 December 2012 11:27:39AM 14 points [-]

Your examples of bad philosophy ... your reasons why they are bad ... aargh! Apparently it's bad to (1) reason about psychology (2) use the ideas of ancient philosophers (3) argue about definitions (4) mention religion at all. (I'm just guessing that this is the problem with the last item in the list.)

So far as I can see, the only problem you should have with papers 1 and 3 is that they're not sexy enough to hold your interest. They're not bursting at the seams with citations of experimental psychology or computational epistemology. Really, you shouldn't dismiss paper 2 as you do either, but I concede that seeing value in the psychological reflections of antiquity would require unusual broadmindedness. (Paper 4 is just oddball and I won't try to defend it as a representative of an important and unjustly maligned class of philosophical research.)

Concerning your curriculum for philosophy students, well, such zeal as yours is the basis for the renewal of a subject, but in the end I still think something like Plato and Kant would be a better foundation than Pearl and Kahneman. Causal diagrams and behavioral economics do not touch the why of causation or the how of conscious knowledge. If they were not complemented by something that promoted an awareness of the issues that these formalisms inherently do not answer, then philosophically they would define just another dogma parading itself as truth.

Comment author: Peterdjones 04 December 2012 12:47:44PM *  1 point [-]

Aaagh!

Seconded.

Plato and Kant would be a better foundation than Pearl and Kahneman.

They're a necessary foundation, because you can't understand Kripke without understanding Kant (etc). That has nothing to do with reverence.

Comment author: BerryPick6 04 December 2012 02:13:33PM -2 points [-]

Presumably, then, you would study Kant in the early stages of whatever course you are devoting to Kripke's work. Other than his work in Political Philosophy (I'm well aware he's a prerequisite for that,) what other foundational purpose does studying Kant serve?

Comment author: RobbBB 04 December 2012 08:39:18PM *  19 points [-]

I think you'd have an easier time justifying the thesis 'Kant was wrong about everything' than 'Kant was not super-super-crazy-influential.' Consider:

Kant ⇒ Schopenhauer ⇒ Nietzsche ⇒ all the postmodernists and relativists

Kant ⇒ Schopenhauer ⇒ Wittgenstein ⇒ most of the positivists

Kant ⇒ Schopenhauer ⇒ Nietzsche ⇒ Freud

Kant ⇒ Fichte ⇒ Hegel ⇒ Marx

Kant ⇒ von Mises ⇒ the less fun libertarians

My conclusion, by Six-Degrees-of-Hitler/Stalin/RonPaul ratiocination, is that Kant is directly and personally responsible for every atrocity of the 20th century.

Comment author: Peterdjones 08 December 2012 05:30:44PM 2 points [-]
Comment author: RobbBB 08 December 2012 07:50:07PM 5 points [-]

Even a broken Ayn Rand is right twice a day.

Comment author: BerryPick6 08 December 2012 07:54:27PM 1 point [-]

Twice a day may be a bit too often. Let's settle on some lower rate, shall we?

Comment author: BerryPick6 04 December 2012 08:41:28PM 2 points [-]

I was just mulling over that Peter may have been right in this conversation, and then this beauty of a comment drops. You should put this on a poster or a t-shirt, or something! :)

Comment author: id10t 08 December 2012 05:08:25PM 1 point [-]

This was quite possibly the best interwebs post I've seen in a long time ... if you don't start making these t-shirts, I will!

Comment author: Peterdjones 04 December 2012 02:37:14PM 1 point [-]

I didn't say Kant was only relevant to Kripke. He was hugely influential.

Comment author: BerryPick6 04 December 2012 02:44:56PM 1 point [-]

Re-reading my post, it wasn't clear that I was asking you for other examples, so I apologize for that. Would you mind giving other examples of relevant ideas for which a prior knowledge of Kant is absolutely necessary?

Comment author: Peterdjones 04 December 2012 03:36:16PM -1 points [-]

Eg. the whole of German Idealism. Believe it or not, philosophy educators have a reasonably good idea of what they are doing.

Comment author: Desrtopa 04 December 2012 03:38:48PM 5 points [-]

Having dropped a double major in philosophy, I'm inclined to take the side of "not."

Comment author: Peterdjones 04 December 2012 03:47:07PM 4 points [-]

Having read a lot of bad attempted philosophy by scientists, I'm inclined to think phil. doens't need replacement by, or oversight from, science

Comment author: thomblake 04 December 2012 05:40:47PM 1 point [-]

Having read a lot of bad attempted philosophy by scientists

But most of the really brilliant philosophers have come from a scientific background! For example, I don't think 20th-century philosophy would have accomplished nearly as much without Wittgenstein. And Aristotle wouldn't have gotten anywhere if he hadn't spent all those years cataloging plants and animals.

Comment author: BerryPick6 04 December 2012 03:43:07PM 2 points [-]

German Idealism

Is a fairly self contained subject. You could go through a degree or two without ever touching upon it unless you had to study Hegel for unrelated reasons. So, I don't see any reason he wouldn't be taught during the course or in a course of his own which is a prerequisite for the GI course, rather than in Phil 101.

Believe it or not, philosophy educators have a reasonably good idea of what they are doing.

Some do, some don't, generalizing is fun.