According to Luke, this is not a strawman, but in fact a correct representation of the current state of affairs.
It is correct if you go by a select set of quotes that, from what I can tell, have been chosen specifically to support a presupposed position, i.e., philosophers don't think about obvious problems which have been intimately entwined with moral and ethical philosophy for hundreds of years.
Obviously I don't feel that this is correct, or that the quotes given are representative of what they're being made to represent.
...I don't know what you mean
In this "Philosophy by Humans" sub-sequence, it seems like the most common response I get is, "No, philosophers can't actually be that stupid," even though my post went to the trouble of quoting philosophers saying "Yes, this thing here is our standard practice."
So? I can quote scientists saying all manner of stupid, bizarre, unintuitive things...but my selection of course sets up the terms of the discussion. If I choose a sampling that only confirms my existing bias against scientists, then my "quotes" are going ...
You can understand the difference between being a rough progenitor of a historical tradition in thought, on the one hand, and the views held by an individual, correct?
Honestly I'd expected a little better than the strategy of circling of the wagons and defending the group on the site of Pure Rationality where we correct biased thinking. Turns out LW is like every other internet forum and the focus on "rationality" makes no difference in the degree biases underpinning the arguments?
If you aren't denying or opposing anything, then what work is "only" doing in the sense "the natural world is the only world"?
In that there is "no more than", in ontological terms, there are no other fundamental categories of being. I don't have to explicitly deny that unicorns exist in order to rule them out of any taxonomy of equine animals.
If you've presupposed a worldview that allows for "supernatural" or "mystical" or Cartesian mind-substance or what have you, then of course the opposition seems ob...
Luke says that even naturalistic philosophers exhibit these bad habits. He does not say that naturalism is a bad habit, or that it's a bad habit because it uses science to understand the world.
Not quite:
reading too much mainstream philosophy ... is somewhat likely to "teach very bad habits of thought that will lead people to be unable to do real work."
"Teach" implies that engaging one's self with "too much" mainstream philosophy will cause bad habits to arise (and make one unable to do 'real work', whatever that might be).
Unexamined presuppositions make a wonderful basis for discourse.
Because in a general sense, ignoring a large and useful body of knowledge out of hand and on the grounds that it triggers intuitive dislikes (esp. when said intuitions are based on a weak strawman interpretation of said discipline) is usually not a good move.
More specific to the argument at hand, why should a debate about reliability of intuitions disqualify philosophy? Do you believe this is a settled debate? And if so, on what grounds is it settled?
The center of the issue is that you can't answer these questions empirically. What observation(s) could yo...
To be frank, although I speak for myself and not lukeprog, framing the scientific method or world-view in terms of 'naturalism,' or in terms of a nature/'supernature' dichotomy, is a bad habit. I can't say much more than that until you explain what you personally mean by 'naturalism.'
I'm thinking of naturalism as broadly accepted by modern analytic philosophy, in Quine's terms and in more modern constructions which emphasize i) that the natural world is the "only" world (this is not to be confused with a dualistic opposition to anything "...
Thinking 'naturalism' is a unitary concept that the members of some relevant linguistic community or intellectual elite share is itself a startlingly good example of the 'intuitions aren't shared' corrective lukeprog was making.
But calling it a "bad habit" with no justification or qualification is exempt from being an equally good (better, in fact, given that I'd not at all expanded on naturalism and certainly not with a dismissive one-liner) example of the "corrective"?
PS -- the Stanford Encyclopedia is as good a "proof" a...
But secondly... debate about the reliability of intuitions, really ? Isn't this basically a very strong sign that modern philosophy can safely be ignored, just like modern astrology ?
No.
arguing endlessly about definitions, or using one's own intuitions as strong evidence about how the external world works.
So this comes down to what you said previously about not liking people who came out of Philosophy 101, e.g., it's an argument against a philosophical tradition that does not actually exist.
These are bad habits relative to, you know, not arguing endlessly about definitions, and using science to figure out how the world works.
You mention naturalism as a "bad habit" for using science to understand the world?
Do you actually understand what naturalism is and what relationship it has with science?
You mention naturalism as a "bad habit" for using science to understand the world?
No, he doesn't (which is why I downvoted this comment, BTW). Luke says that even naturalistic philosophers exhibit these bad habits. He does not say that naturalism is a bad habit, or that it's a bad habit because it uses science to understand the world.
I think Eliezer is generally right that reading too much mainstream philosophy — even "naturalistic" analytic philosophy — is somewhat likely to "teach very bad habits of thought that will lead people to be unable to do real work."
Also could you expand on this as I didn't catch it before the edit?
It's not obvious what the "bad habits" might be, and what they are bad relative to. This reads as a claim that would be very hard to defend at face value, and without clarification it reads like a throwaway attack not to be taken seriously.
It's not obvious what the "bad habits" might be, and what they are bad relative to.
Examples of bad habits often picked up from reading too much philosophy: arguing endlessly about definitions, or using one's own intuitions as strong evidence about how the external world works. These are bad habits relative to, you know, not arguing endlessly about definitions, and using science to figure out how the world works.
The field as a whole (or rather, some within it, to be more accurate) takes these issues seriously as a matter of debate, yes, but arguing over controversial claims is the entire point of philosophy so that's no mark against it. It's also a radically different position from the strong claim you've advanced here that the field itself is broken, which is nonsense to anyone familiar with modern moral philosophy and ethics/meta-ethics and is dangerously close to a strawman argument.
To say the problem is "rampant" is to admit to a limited knowledge of the field and the debates within it.
Oh I doubt I'd be surprised, but that's more a problem of the people coming out of Philosophy 101 than the discipline itself. Frege and Bertrand Russell put most of the metaphysical extravagances to bed (in the Anglo-American tradition at least) with the turn towards formal logic and language, and the modern-day analytic tradition hasn't ever looked back.
As it stands the field has about as much to do with mind-body dualism or idealism (or their respective toolkits) as theoretical physics. This goes for ethics and meta-ethics, and no serious writer in that...
For one thing, we would never assume that people of all kinds would share our intuitions.
You write this like it's an original insight and not a problem that has been taken seriously by every philosopher who ever wrote seriously about ethics or meta-ethics.
There is no logical way that I can prove to you that reality exists. If you want one, I am sorry. Nonetheless, my senses tell me that reality exists and that logic works and that my values are good. I accept those senses because the alternative is to embrace groundlessness and the total destruction of meaning.
I have no exceptional quarrel with scientific realism nor the existence of an objective and mind-independent reality. I am however skeptical, firstly, of the idea that restricting inquiry into that domain to "rationality" is needlessly co...
The brute fact of our existence is that some things work and others don't, that some things seem right and others seem wrong. If someone is insistent upon denying reality, then that's their affair, but they should know that there are consequences to this rejection. I consider the rejection of reality to be viceful, because those who do so reject their own current values and intutions in favor of an embrace of an abstract form of nihilism. Nihilism is much easier than acknowledging reality, but it's also much worse, in my opinion.
This paragraph moves fro...
I'm interested to know how this methodology is supposed to diverge from existing methods of science in any useful way. We've had a hypothesis-driven science since (at least) Popper and this particular approach seems to offer no practical alternative; at best we're substituting one preferred type of non-empirical criteria for selection (in this case, a presumed ability to calculate he metaprobabilities that we'd have to assume for establishing likelihoods of given hypotheses, a matter which is itself controversial) for the currently-existing criteria, along...