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thomblake comments on Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant - Less Wrong
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Speaking as someone who has read a lot of philosophy...
If I had a boatload of money, I would currently be throwing it at you to make this thing happen.
Actually, is this happening anywhere? Does CMU teach this sort of stuff in their philosophy department? Luke gave as examples the five top American programs, but are there other programs ranked lower which teach philosophy Pearl and Kahneman style?
I seriously doubt it. This is pretty much a "reboot" of Philosophy - a reconception of what it's about. Anyone who wants to put together a program like this might hesitate to call it Philosophy instead of something else.
I'm not sure. Looking at CMU's website makes me think that they are leaning in this new direction, which is maybe not reflected in the Intro courses yet, but is certainly present in the lecures they have scheduled, as well as the fact that it offers a Major in Logic & Computation and puts it in the Philosophy department.
The tech schools have had excellent philosophy departments. It's no accident that Judith Jarvis Thomson taught at MIT.
If I was looking into majoring in philosophy and I was possibly interested in this new-fangled portion of it, you're saying tech schools are the way to go?
I do not know that specifically.
However, the advice I would give to anyone thinking of majoring in philosophy is: don't major in philosophy.
That said, I don't think it matters too much what you major in. The main benefit of a liberal arts degree is the liberal arts part - being exposed to people from many different disciplines with different ways of thinking, being forced to take them seriously for a while, and getting a chance to see the connections between them.
Really, if you want to major in something, you should take the opportunity to learn a skill, or else to take advantage of machinery that you'll only find in a university. There are things that you can learn in college, like how to mix chemicals in a lab or how to make pottery, that are difficult to learn without the proper facilities. And if you do prefer learning academic subjects in a class, remember that math and computing are good bases for everything.
You can read philosophy on your own time, and if you're reasonably intelligent then reading it in a class probably won't help. A philosophy club might be a good idea - those are often as good as seminar classes.
In my opinion, your comment is a very valuable kind of philosophy. You make clear statements in plain language about expected results from doing things in the real world. If a "newfangled" philosophy has a technical end, I would like the non-technical end to look like training in writing this way.
Yes, though it would be better-written if I'd instead trained in writing and it would be more useful if I'd been able to link to empirical research demonstrating the effects I just baldly asserted. My training in philosophy did seem to make me better at sounding like I know what I'm talking about when I tell other people what to do.
If you can describe the methods of sounding authoritative, I think it would be very valuable, whether as a contribution to understanding the dark arts or as a tool for increasing motivation. (Or does is it a skill of sounding right which doesn't actually motivate people?)
I've been wondering about the techniques ever since I noticed that Heinlein had a talent for sounding right.
The empirical research is nice for footnotes, but I honestly don't know how you could've written it better.
Actually, I agree with all this. Phil is a great hobby. No special equipment is required and you can do it anywhere.
Here is CMU's spring 2013 philosophy department course catalog. Unfortunately, the CMU website doesn't show syllabi for its philosophy classes. Just looking at the classes, they appear to be much more logic- and compsci-heavy than most philosophy departments, but also cover some standard stuff: political philosophy, Kant, etc.