You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

shminux comments on What do professional philosophers believe, and why? - Less Wrong Discussion

31 Post author: RobbBB 01 May 2013 02:40PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (249)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: RobbBB 01 May 2013 04:26:58PM *  3 points [-]

I'd say the Anti-Naturalism and Anti-Realism clusters are obviously wrong. Trekophobia and Logical Conventionalism are less obvious, though they clearly go against a lot of the basic views and tendencies on LW. Objectivism and Rationalism are more debatable, and Externalism seems the most LWy on a cursory look. But even Externalism only gets a couple of things consistently right, at best. (And in a fairly arbitrary manner.)

Perhaps I under-emphasized a really crucial point: All of these clusters should be criticized not just for the views you see, but for the ones you don't see. Why don't Externalists knock physicalism out of the ballpark? Why aren't Rationalists winning at Newcomb's Problem 80, 90, 100% of the time? Defensibility is an indefensibly low standard; expecting mediocrity is expecting too little even of high school philospohy students, to say nothing of those who have devoted 30, 40, 50 years to grasping these topics, with all the resources of human civilization at their disposal.

Too slow.

Comment author: shminux 01 May 2013 06:08:29PM 2 points [-]

I'd say the Anti-Naturalism and Anti-Realism clusters are obviously wrong.

I wonder what your definition of obviously wrong is. Is it instrumental, like two-boxing on Newcomb? Bayesian, like theism failing the Occam's razor? Or something else? Or a combination?

Comment author: RobbBB 01 May 2013 06:19:06PM *  7 points [-]

Generally it's Bayesian. If at this point in the history of civilization statements like 'there are chairs' don't get to count as obviously right, or 'physics be damned, I don't need on stinkin' causes for my volition!' as obviously wrong, then I confess I no longer find it obvious what 'obvious' is even supposed to mean.

I'm not saying Anti-Naturalists and Anti-Realists aren't extremely sophisticated, or in a number of cases well worth reading; sophistication is compatible with obvious wrongness.