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Peterdjones comments on A reply to Mark Linsenmayer about philosophy - Less Wrong
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I'll say it again: there is no point in criticising philosophy unless you have (1) a better way of (2) answering the same questions.
ETA:
See above. You need something better.
LP is a known failure, as has been pointed out here innumberable times The burden is on you to justify the LP metaphsics-is-nonsense principle.
Mark doesn't have to arge that no problem can be dissolved, since he never claimed that. You probably need to arge that the majority can be dissolved , since you keep citing the proportion of philosophy that is worthless as over 90%. You also probably need to expaln why phils. can't do that, in the teeth of examples of the doing just that (eg Dennett on quaia).
Consider this: If an amaterur claims to be doing considerably better than an acknowledged domain expert, he is probably suffering from the Dunning-Krueger effect.
Um... I'm writing an entire sequence about that, and so is Eliezer...
One might just as well argue that burden is on metaphysicists, to show that what they're saying is useful. But anyway, I'm not going to play burden of proof tennis. All I was saying in that paragraph is that Eliezer and I have explained our approaches to philosophy at length, and Mark's final paragraph offered only contradictions (of our views) rather than counter-arguments.
Also, neither Eliezer nor I are logical positivists. See here and here.
That's precisely the proper response to any proposed wonderful activity: show me the payoff.
And don't tell me all the truths you can produce - show the payoff of those truths. Show me what you can do with them, that I might want to have done.
Academia is full of people producing stacks of bits. That activity is very profitable for them, but I fail to see the payoff in many of those bits to anyone else, and in particular, me.
So you don't gave a better way, strictly speaking, you are in the process of formulating one.... but you are sufficiently confident of success to offer criticism of other approaches in the basis of your expected results?
Physicalism is metaphysics,
Criticism could come in the form of showing that the questions shouldn't be asked for one reason or another. Or criticism could come in the form of showing that the questions cannot be answered with the available tools. For example, if I ran into a bunch of people trying to trisect an arbitrary angle using compass and straight-edge, I might show them that their tools are inadequate for the task. In principle, I could do that without having any replacement procedure. And yet, it seems that I have helped them out.
Such criticism would have at least the following point. If people are engaged in a practice that cannot accomplish what they aim to accomplish, then they are wasting resources. Getting them to redirect their energies to other projects -- perhaps getting them to search for other ways to satisfy their original aims (ways that might possibly work) -- would put their resources to work.
Agreed, in principle. Hoewever, I am waiting for someone to do that in a way that
applies to the stated 90%+ of philosophy.
is objective and scientific, not just an expression of personal preference
avoids the self-undermining problems of LP
If. Note that there is already a great deal of criticism of particualr schools of philsosphy, and of philosophy in general, within philosophy. Note also that LW is not only lakcing the Something Better, it is also lacing a critique that fulfils the three criteria above.
This is probably false. Sometimes you know you have a problem for quite a while before you have a solution.