[LINK] Why Talk to Philosophers: Physicist Sean Carroll Discusses "Common Misunderstandings" about Philosophy

Shmi

Why Talk to Philosophers? Part I. by philosopher of science Wayne Myrvold.

See also Sean Carroll's own blog entry, Physicists Should Stop Saying Silly Things about Philosophy.

Sean classifies the disparaging comments physicists make about philosophy as follows: "Roughly speaking, physicists tend to have three different kinds of lazy critiques of philosophy: one that is totally dopey, one that is frustratingly annoying, and one that is deeply depressing". Specifically:

“Philosophy tries to understand the universe by pure thought, without collecting experimental data.”
“Philosophy is completely useless to the everyday job of a working physicist.”
“Philosophers care too much about deep-sounding meta-questions, instead of sticking to what can be observed and calculated.”

He counters each argument presented.

Personally, I am underwhelmed, since he does not address the point of view that philosophy is great at asking interesting questions but lousy at answering them. Typically, an interesting answer to a philosophical question requires first recasting it in a falsifiable form, so that is becomes a natural science question, be it physics, cognitive sciences, AI research or something else. This is locally known as hacking away at the edges. Philosophical questions don't have philosophical answers.

Why Talk to Philosophers? Part I. by philosopher of science Wayne Myrvold.

See also Sean Carroll's own blog entry, Physicists Should Stop Saying Silly Things about Philosophy.

“Philosophy tries to understand the universe by pure thought, without collecting experimental data.”
“Philosophy is completely useless to the everyday job of a working physicist.”
“Philosophers care too much about deep-sounding meta-questions, instead of sticking to what can be observed and calculated.”

He counters each argument presented.

? Taking apparent subject matter experts as genuine experts as a default is fraught with peril.

You have no evidence that philosophers are frauds. It's all (uninformed) opinion.

That doesn't respond substantially to the point other than to say "hey, someone disagrees with you".

If you have put forward the fact that you, uninformed, can't see how it works as amounting to the fact that it cannot work, then the existence of Kanes work is significant....because, whilst his theory may just .be opinion, so therefore is yours.

But we know this isn't how humans make decisions- i

Please expand

many in the other field are simply ignoring physics wholesale when discussing these issues.

Please provide examples

will. As far as I can tell, most versions of it are either obviously false, or are intuitively appealing but logically incohere.nt

But you made no attempt to steelman the contrary view by surveying the literature to find the best arguments for it. If you had, you would have heard of Kane.

Basically, you are making the Argument from Personal Incomprehension so notorious in Creationism

The creationists problem is that they are treating uninformed subjective grockage as the epistemic last word and it isn't...not for them, not for you.

y general argument for trusting experts needs to explain why one would be ok with trusting all philosophers as a group

What I have been saying us that none knows more about philosophy. I certainly didn't mean trust them to come up a definitive answer to everything.

Theism is also backed by some professional philosophers, and that includes a majority of phil religion people. Should I pay attention to theism?

You can't claim to know theism is false unless you can refute the best arguments for it. Where do you go for those? (Do you think of theists as some sort of Bad people that no one should associate with in case it's inferiors

One doesn't need to be a neurologist to know that classical libertarianism

What do you mean by classical libertarianism?

prior discussion

No different in content to the percent discussion

nt. That 70% of a major discipline consistently get such a basic question wrong and the rest of the philosophers are taking them even remotely seriously as a discipline shows a major part of the problem.

My epistemology is that ideas are true, when they are true for reason, and in offer to find out whether p or not p is true, you look at the best arguments on both sides. Therefore , you need arguments on both sides. Like a trial where the prosecution and defence put forward their best cases, even though one of them must be wrong.

You epistemology seems to be that there is a list of things that are Wrong for no Particular Reason, and that none should argue for thing that are Wrong...and that "knowing" what is right .or wrong is a a matterof reading them of the Lists.

You metaphysics may be the opposite of theism, but your epistemology is identical.

g. But if you want an example of good philosophy that's being done outside professional, academic philosophy, I'd be happy to point to the recent paper by Eliezer et. al. on modal agents and the prisoner's dilemma. See here.

Not philosophy. Filed under .CS.

Counterexample: his theory of metaethics...the one no one understands.

Kane versus Dennett II

Dennett has a real point against Kane with his accusation that there is a special time at which free will occurs. In Kane's theory the essence of free will is something called a "self forming action" which occurs at particular times in the life of an individual. This leads to a number of problems:1 An SFA may or may not occur at all in an individual, yet by all common-sense standards an individual without SFA's is as free and responsible as anyone else.2 Since SFA's are the essence of an individual's free will, they must al... (read more)

-2TheAncientGeek12y

Kate versus Dennett I "Ultimate Responsibility" is a term introduced by the Naturalistic Libertarian Robert Kane. It, and the thinking behind it, have led to some confusion."Only a Libertarian account, Kane claims, can provide the features we [...] yearn for, which he calls ultimate Responsibility. Libertarianism begins with a familiar claim: If determinism is true every, then every decision I make, like every breath I take, is an effect, ultimately,, of chains of causes leading back into times before I was born. [...] As many have claimed, then, if my decisions are caused by events leading back before my birth, I can be causally responsible for the results of my deeds in the same way a tree limb falling in a storm can be causally responsible for the results of the death of the person it falls on, but it's not the limb's fault that it was only a strong as it was, or that the wind blew so fiercely, or that the tree grew so close to the footpath. To be morally responsible I have to be the ultimate source of my decision and that can be true only if no earlier influences were sufficient to secure the outcome, which was truly "up to me". Harry Truman used to have a sign on his desk in the Oval office saying the "The Buck Stops Here". The human mind has a place where the buck stops, Kane says, and only libertarianism can provide this kind of free will, the kind that provides Ultimate Responsibility".(Daniel Dennett, "Freedom Evolves", p99Let's get one confusion out of the way: the libertarian only needs to claim that responsibility stops with the agent, not that there is a single place within the agent where it stops, or a single time at which it stops.Dennett has an eloquent series of arguments against a "single place" within the mind where it "all happens", a "homunculus", which he has developed in "Consciousness Explained", and which he re-deploys in "Freedom Evolves".If it really matters, as Libertarians think, then we had better shield your process of deliberation f

8JoshuaZ12y

Replying separately to the section you edited in after your reply. If you are going to edit in additional replies it might be helpful for you to note when you have done so explicitly so people can see them. [...] This sentence is apparently part of your general insults to my epistemological framework, so I'll just note that I'm mildly amused here- you accused me earlier of thinking of "theists as some sort of Bad people that no one should associate with in case it's inferiors" ([sic]^3) but you seem to think that theism must inherently be connected with terrible epistemologies, which isn't the case as demonstrated by the many theists in many disciplines (math, science, history, etc.) who do very good work. [...] This seems like a No True Scotsman more than anything else. Have you read the paper in question? If so, can you explain how what they are doing does not have a strong philosophical element? [...] I don't think the word "counterexample" is what you are looking for here; it might make sense if I had argued that everything philosophically Eliezer says is great and productive or something like that. Since no one has made that argument, your "counterexample" isn't terribly relevant.

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[LINK] Why Talk to Philosophers: Physicist Sean Carroll Discusses "Common Misunderstandings" about Philosophy

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[LINK] Why Talk to Philosophers: Physicist Sean Carroll Discusses "Common Misunderstandings" about Philosophy

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