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shminux comments on Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant - Less Wrong
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Isn't it history of philosophy, rather than philosophy? Learning why Aristotle's ideas on physics are wrong (e.g. "all bodies move toward their natural place") belong mostly in a History of Science course, not in a Physics course. Shouldn't it work the same for philosophy?
Hmm, this is a good question. After spending some time thinking about this, I think the problem I have in trying to separate "history of philosophy" from "philosophy" is that such an enterprise almost appears antithetical to the goal(s) of philosophy.* Philosophy seems meant not to be useful or practical, but intended to ask the right sorts of questions, think about things one abstraction deeper/more meta, and question things others don't question. As such, studying the history of philosophy is philosophy--and vice versa--insofar as the goal of philosophy is not to positively answer the right questions but to think philosophically and ask those questions in the first place. So, learning why Aristotle's ideas on physics are wrong is simply not the sort of thing with which philosophy would concern itself--for better or for worse.
*Thinking about it some more, I just realized that I may be conceiving of the goal(s) of philosophy as something different than what most of the posters here do. I get the sense that lukeprog (and others here) wants philosophy to provide answers to the deep questions, or at least attempt to do so. The problem is philosophy is not about that; maybe it should be, but then I'd argue that such a field is precisely what science is, with philosophy as almost a check/balance (making sure that the right questions are still being asked, assumptions questioned, etc.).
How is asking "the right sorts of questions" not "useful or practical"? To "question things others don't question" is what scientists do. Examples: Why do things fall down when let go? (physics) Why do children tend to look like their parents? (genetics) Why does a candle burn? (chemistry)
What are the questions "others take for granted" that philosophy asks? Wikipedia:
Most of these are logic, psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science and linguistics, and most recently AI research (esp. knowledge acquisition and reasoning). What's left is "reality" and "existence". Have I missed anything?
Upvoted. I do largely agree with you, and the things that I don't quite agree with you about are things about which I don't think I can form a persuasive argument.
I'm pretty sure many philosophers would disagree.
I fully concede that; that was more what I think it should be about. And if that's true and philosophers really do want to answer those deep questions, philosophy needs to be reformed to incorporate more modern science--something like what lukeprog proposed.
If I recall correctly, introductory college physics (as I took it almost 20 years ago!) didn't teach how to discover physical truths, so much as which ones have been discovered. One might do a few experiments to verify that thrown objects approximate a parabolic path, but one will spend much more time and effort doing word problems applying known formulae from Newton, Boyle, Kirchhoff, etc.