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Luke_A_Somers comments on Philosophy professors fail on basic philosophy problems - Less Wrong Discussion

16 Post author: shminux 15 July 2015 06:41PM

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Comment author: TheAncientGeek 17 July 2015 08:36:15AM *  2 points [-]

My professional input does not depend on bias in moral (or similarly fuzzy) questions.

But that doesn't make philosophy uniquely broken. If anything it is the other way around: disciplines that deal with the kind of well-defined abstract problems where biases can't get a grip, are exceptional.

As for other biases, I definitively determine success or failure on a time scale ranging from minutes to weeks.These are rather different from how a philosopher can operate.

"Can operate" was carefully phrased. If the main role of philosophers is to answer urgent object level moral quandaries, then the OP would have pointed out a serious real world problem....but philosophers typically don't do that, they typically engage in long term meta level thought on a variety of topics,

Philosophers can operates in a way that approximates the OP scenario, for instance, when they sit on ethics committees. Of course, they sit alongside society's actual go-to experts on object level ethics, religious professionals, who are unlikely to be less biased.

Philosophers aren't the most biased or most impactive people in society....worry about the biases of politicians, doctors, and financiers.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 17 July 2015 03:08:45PM 0 points [-]

So in short, you are answering your rhetorical question with 'no', which rather undermines your earlier point - no, DanArmak did not 'prove too much'.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 17 July 2015 03:46:02PM 0 points [-]

DanArmak did not 'prove too much'.

Shminux did.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 17 July 2015 07:50:49PM 0 points [-]

If you answer the rhetorical question as 'no' then no, Shminux didn't prove too much either.