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Esar comments on Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant - Less Wrong
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There are a series of statements like this in Luke's post and in the comments. I don't understand them. What would it mean to 'scrap philosophy'? Would someone from like the government have to come along and make it illegal or something? It doesn't seem like there's any way to change philosophy, or eradicate it, except by arguing with philosophers and convincing them to do something else. Is that what 'scrap philosophy' means?
Presumably s/he means de-funding everything that pretends to be philosophy, but is, in fact, history of thought, and so belongs in the history department.
But the funding from philosophy programs comes from universities. I doubt the government itself spends more than a pitance on philosophy. So do you mean 'scrap philosophy' as in, try to convince universities to fire the philosophers under their employ?
I am not suggesting this, just trying to interpret what Armok_GoB may have meant. My view is that the defunding of the old school should happen organically, as it usually does. Newer, more successful approaches and sub-disciplines slowly replace the old as the old guard retires.
Ah, thanks. Is it weird that this has never happened to philosophy as a named discipline? Certainly schools of thought come and go, but why is philosophy as an academic banner by far the longest lived?
"Love of wisdom" is a very broadly-applicable term. Also, it managed to cough up the entire field of pure mathematics once, and arguably the slim chance of something else as good or better being in there somewhere justifies a lot of scattershot work.
No. Historians aren't trained to evaluate philsophical thought. Ask them the causes of a war, they can tell you, ask them the motivations for Aristotle's theory of Entelchy, they'll go "huh?".
Well, presumably historians do specialize. In the revised world where history of philosophy ended up in the history department, there would be historians specializing in the history of philosophy. For that matter, I'm sure such people exist already.
The real question is which option provides more synergy:
learning about the motivations for Aristotle's theory of Entelechy, together with a study of the culture of Greece in the 4th century BC (the historical option), or
learning about the motivations for Aristotle's theory of Entelechy, together with a modern understanding of causality or whatever (the philosophical option).
If I can offer an expert (though probably biased) opinion: 2.
I think it would be something more along the lines of spreading a meme that says "Let's just ignore philosophy, it's pretty much a waste of time."
This is happening already to some degree. It would have to be a heck of a lot more infectious of a meme to actually destroy philosophy as a field, though.
That's been a meme since 400 BC, and it remains by far the dominant view today among laypeople, scientists, economists, etc. Basically, the only people who think philosophy is worth pursuing are philosophers. If that's all you mean by 'scrapping philosophy' then the job is long since done.
Meanwhile, back in reality:
"Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) is a popular interdisciplinary undergraduate/graduate degree which combines study from the three disciplines."
Alain de Botton's pop philosphy sells millions, presumably to laypeople.
And philosophers appear with scientists at interdisciplinary conferences
Yeah, this is true. Maybe scrapping philosophy means just not funding it anymore?
As some quick replies have pointed out, yea, cutting funding and spreading memes about ignoring it and actually ignoring it.
Getting people to ignore philosophy is, as I said do DSimon, largely accomplished already. Ignoring it is as easy as pie. As far as defunding it goes, I'm not sure I see the point. It's not as if it uses up much of any given university's budget. I'd be willing to bet that philosophy departments are generally cash positive for a university.
If it wasn't easy it probably wouldn't be worth the trouble to suggest.
I'm fairly certain a professor at the University of Chicago told our class that the philosophy department was cash negative.
Really? Which professor?
I believe it was Ted Cohen, who's the head of the philosophy department. I'm not certain though.
As a curiosity, what would they make money on?
Ted Cohen huh.
They make money by attracting undergraduates, and they have low overhead because in general philosophy departments don't pay professors very well, and the department itself requires nothing more sophisticated than a few rooms filled with desks.
Oh, you're including attracting undergrads! I think he was just talking about direct earnings.
When were you at Chicago, if you don't mind me asking?
Right now. I'm a second year. You?