Viliam_Bur 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: Viliam_Bur 04 December 2012 12:49:45PM *  26 points [-]

Imagine people who are trying to write books, without knowing the alphabet. They keep trying for ages, but produce nothing that other person could unambiguously read.

So someone comes and says: "You should learn alphabet first."

And they respond: "We are interested in writing books, not learning alphabet. The more time we spend learning alphabet, the less time we will have for actually writing books. We desire to become writers, not linguists." (Famous writers are high status, linguistics is considered boring by most.)

Similarly it seems to me that many philosophers are too busy discussing deep topics about the world, so they don't have time to actually study the world. To be fair, they do study a lot -- but mostly the opinions of people who used the same strategy, decades and centuries ago. Knowing Plato's opinions on X is higher status than knowing X.

This would be acceptable in situations where science does not know anything about X, so the expert's opinion is the best we can have. But in many topics this simply isn't true. Learning what we already know about X is the cost of ability to say something new and correct about X. The costs are higher than 2000 years ago, because the simple stuff is already known.

Mathematicians also cannot become famous today for discovering that a^2+b^2=c^2 in a right-angled triangle. They also have to study the simple stuff for years, before they are able to contribute something new. Computer programmers also cannot make billions by writing a new MS DOS, even if it were better than original. Neither do they get paid for quoting Dijkstra correctly. Philosophers need to work harder than centuries ago, too.

Comment author: Peterdjones 04 December 2012 12:59:19PM -2 points [-]

discussing deep topics about the world,

Are truth, meaning, beauty and goodness about the world? They are just not susceptible to straightforward empirical enquiry. People study Plato on the Good, because there aren't good-ometers.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 04 December 2012 01:03:25PM 10 points [-]

People study Plato on the Good, because there aren't good-ometers.

(If Plato is not at least a little bit a good-ometer, there is no point in studying Plato for that purpose either.)

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 04 December 2012 01:55:29PM *  18 points [-]

Beauty is about the world. More precisely, about humans. What makes humans perceive X as beautiful?

Required knowledge about the world: What happens in our brains? (Neuroscience, psychology, biology.) Do our beauty judgements change across cultures or centuries? (Sociology, anthropology, art history.) Do monkeys feel something similar? (Biology, ethology.)

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 04 December 2012 02:12:17PM *  3 points [-]

It might prove helpful to look at humans etc. to understand the things that trigger the topic of beauty, in the sense that you might learn interesting related ideas in greater detail by studying these things. But the detailed conditions of triggering the topic are not necessarily among them, so "What makes humans perceive X as beautiful?" may be a less useful question than "What are some representative examples of things that are perceived by humans as beautiful?". The world gives you detailed data for investigation, but you don't necessarily care about the data, the ideas it suggests might make the original data irrelevant at some point.

Comment author: Peterdjones 04 December 2012 02:58:11PM 1 point [-]

Likewise, knowing how people make moral decisions is not at all the same as knowing what the moral thing to do would be. I

Not in any sense that leadds to straightforward empiricism.

Required knowledge about the world:

That knowledge about the world is necessary is not in doubt. The issue is whether it is sufficient.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 04 December 2012 04:14:05PM *  0 points [-]

That knowledge about the world is necessary is not in doubt. The issue is whether it is sufficient.

We agree about the first sentence. And the knowledge about the world also helps to form a qualified opinion about the second one.

I have no problem with students of philosophy learning Plato's opinions and the related science, if they want to write a book about Beauty. (I just imagine them more likely to do the former part and ignore the latter.)

Comment author: Peterdjones 04 December 2012 04:18:17PM 0 points [-]

A lot of this seems to be imagination-driven.

Comment author: Strange7 07 December 2012 02:05:18AM -1 points [-]

We imagine that our imagination has all the answers. In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they are not.

Comment author: someonewrongonthenet 16 December 2012 10:21:45PM *  0 points [-]

Well...yes. Meaning, Beauty, and Goodness are all squarely in the domain of neuroscience/psychology. Truth is in the domain of the sciences, and its sister Tautology is in Mathematics. A philosopher who wishes to say meaningful things about any of the above needs to be well versed in all these things.

Plato - by no fault of his own of course - wasn't well versed in any of them, which is why his thinking feels so clumsy and child-like to modern thinkers.

And the fact that we remember Plato today, rather than many other ancient philosophers who were a lot...less wrong...is an accident of history.

Comment author: Peterdjones 17 December 2012 10:47:58AM 0 points [-]

I wonder what happened to Justification? I justified my claim that Good is not in the domain of science by pointing out that it is not empriically detectable, thar we don't have good-ometers. You just gainsaid that, without offering a counterargument.