Peterdjones 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: Peterdjones 05 December 2012 03:44:24PM -1 points [-]

why once it discovers the errors doesn't it just leave the error filled arguments alone?

It does. LP has been abandoned. So have many issues in Scholasticism.

Math, psychology, physics, medicine, art, linguistics, music, all distinguish between X and history of X.

True but irrelevant. Phil doens't have to work like other subjects.

The truth value of a claim isn't connected to who espoused the claim

Philosophical claims are often subtle and need to be interpreted in context together with the rest of their originator's body of work.

Right, and that's part of the problem in a nutshell, that the reasonable word to use here is "several" and not, "frequently" or even "every time this question comes up."

That's an opionion. How about putting forward some examples to show that pils. really are stupidly undersuing this manouvre.

The equivalent for physics would be if before one did Newton one had a semester on Aristotle, Ptolemy, Aristarchus, Oresme, etc

That's an opinion. It could do with being backed by detailed work showing that phils really are stupidly overmphasing the ancients. On the other hand, it is perhaps motivated by an excessive tendendy to equate phil. with science. In science it is uncontroversial that the old stuff is probably wrong.

You haven't presented any argument why philosophy shouldn't act more like the sciences other than claim that for a lot of philosophers the status quo is that it doesn't.

I have put forward the argument that it does not deal with the same sorts of questions, so it is, to say the least, not obvious that scientific techniques would work as well as LW's expect. if they can be shown to (as in experimental philosophy) I am happy with that. But Luke's claims are much more sweeping than piecemeal improvement.