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novalis comments on What do professional philosophers believe, and why? - Less Wrong Discussion
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OK, so philosophers manage to avoid logical errors. Good for them. However, they make more complicated errors (see A Human's Guide To Words for some examples), as well as sometimes errors of probability. The thing that philosophers develop expertise in is writing interesting arguments and counterarguments. But these arguments are castles built on air; there is no underlying truth to most of the questions they ask (or, if there is an underlying truth, there is no penalty for being wrong about it). And even some of the "settled" positions are only settled because of path-dependence -- that is, once they became popular, anyone with conflicting intuitions would simply never become a philosopher (see Buckwalter and Stich for more on this).
Scientists (at least in theory) have all of the same skills that philosophers should have -- formulating theories and arguments, catching logical errors, etc. It's just that in science, the arguments are (when done correctly) constrained to be about the real world.
How do you know?
How do you know? Are you aware that much philosophy is about science.
To be fair, I have not done an exhaustive survey; "most" was hyperbole.
Sure. But there is no such constraint on philosophy of science.
Why is that a problem? Science deals with empirical reality, philosophy of science deals with meta-level issues. Each to their own.
Because if there is no fact of the matter on the "meta-level issues", then you're not actually dealing with "meta-level issues". You are dealing with words, and your success in dealing with words is what's being measured. Your argument is that expertise develops by feedback, but the feedback that philosophers get isn't the right kind of feedback.
I don't know what you mean by "fact of the matter". It's not a problem that meta-level isn't object level, any more than it's a problem that cats aren't dogs. I also don't think that there is any problem in identifying the meta level. Philosophers "don't deal with words" in the sense that linguists. They use words to do things, as do many other specialities. You seem to be making the complaint that success isn't well defined in philosophy, but that would require treating object level science as much more algorithmic than it actually is. What makes a scientific theory a good theory? Most scientists agree on it?
An actual truth about the world.
Have you read A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation?
I don't know what you mean by that. Is Gresham's law such a truth?
My question was rhetorical. Science does not deal entirely in directly observable empirical facts -- which might be what you meant by "actual truths about the world". Those who fly under the Bayesian flag by and large don't either: most of the material on this site is just as indirect/meta-levle/higher-level as philosophy. I just don't see anything that justifies the "Boo!" rhetoric.
Actually, perhaps you should try The Simple Truth, because you seem totally confused.
Yes, a lot of the material on this site is philosophy; I would argue that it is correspondingly more likely to be wrong, precisely because is not subject to the same feedback loops as science. This is why EY keeps asking, "How do I use this to build an AI?"
So...is Gresham;s Law an actual truth about the world?
Now I'm confused. Is that likely to be wrong or not?