It's always seemed bizarre to me how disconnected from the philosophical discourse the sequences are. It's a series of philosophical positions articulated in ways that make naming them, and thus exposing oneself to the counter-arguments to them, and the ongoing discussions they are a part of, EXTREMELY difficult. If someone would just go through the sequences and label the ideas with their philosophical names and cite some of the people they are associated with in the larger philosophical discourse it seems like a lot of the discussion here could be short-cutted by simply exposing the community to the people who have already talked about this stuff.
I just read fake frameworks and I still just feel like I'm being interpreted as asking a different question than I am asking. If the frameworks are ultimately fake then that's fine. I just want to know what the frameworks are and where they come from. I'm asking "Why do you believe what you believe?" and was expecting the answer to take the form of citations of cognitive/experimental psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology. Is that not the kind of answer I should be expecting?
While a summary would be ideal, I'm really looking for any specific source from any of those fields that the community would deem important and relatively trustworthy. I'm going to be at least mildly critical in my analysis and so I want to be sure that I'm not just strawmanning. Whatever the strongest arguments and sources rationalist can provide from these sources, they are the ones I want to spend my time working with. I'm trying to narrow this down to single sources because I want to do a critical analysis of a single source as an example of how to do the kind of critical analysis I'm going to be explaining how to do. The CFAR handbook is a good idea and I'll be looking through it for sources tomorrow. Thanks!
PS. Considering the importance of bias research to the rationalist worldview, can you try to help me understand why no one would care enough about it post replication crisis to get clear on what, specifically, the replication findings were calling into question? If biases research is less "foundational" to the rationalist worldview than I've been thinking, then what research is foundational and what studies is that research informed by? Thank you for your help.
That's great, but synthesis of multiple sources begins with single sources and I'm trying to start at that level and build up. I'm not asking for a definitive source, just studies that rationalists think are important, supportive of their worldview, and reliable as far as single studies go.
If philosophy(and psychology) is supposed to be based on the findings of cognitive science(and not the other way around,
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vzLrQaGPa9DNCpuZz/against-modal-logics
recursive justification hits rock bottom with a reflective process that relies on cognitive science,
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/C8nEXTcjZb9oauTCW/where-recursive-justification-hits-bottom
and reflection on the ways human brains are predictably irrational is the lens that sees its own flaws
https://www.lesswrong.com/s/5g5TkQTe9rmPS5vvM/p/46qnWRSR7L2eyNbMA
then what cognitive science, neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology is that and what studies exist to support it?
I just read most of the comments in this thread and despite a general agreement that LW philosophy and Quinean philosophy have a whole lot in common, no one even suggested reading up on his critics. The lens that sees it's own flaws is fine and good(although always a more difficult task than one might expect), but what about the lens that exposes itself to the eyes of others and asks them what flaws they see?
And, especially with the replication crisis, shouldn't we all be gaining some awareness of the philosophical assumptions that inform our experimental and cognitive neuroscience? The interpreters of an FMRI scan or the designers or interpreters of an experimental study interpret their findings through the lenses of certain philosophical assumptions about mind, cognition, and metaphysics. Heck, our language of discourse that we use to talk about psychology is hugely influenced by a group of philosophers nearly everyone agrees was super wrong. The word idea can be traced straight back to Plato and refers to his Platonic forms and our English speaking naive psychology is, in large part, an internalization of Plato's metaphysics, Newton's physics, and Descartes dualisms. The words we use, and the ways it feels natural to combine them carry assumptions from philosophy whether we're aware of them or not. And those assumptions trickle up into the ways a psychologist interprets a subjects actions, the ways the subject interprets and self-reports on their actions, and the ways a neuroscientist interprets a FMRI scan.
― Leo Tolstoy- Anna Karenina
I found myself reading this book today thought I'd remembered someone on Less Wrong posting about it. So here I am.
I think your critique misses some really valid critiques provided by Lakoff of the entire rationalist project.
The sections on Quinne, Kahneman and Taversky(around p. 471) and around pages 15 and 105 are particularly good.
What your critique misses is that when you use the lens of cognitive science to critique Lakoff's philosophy is that the body of work you are drawing on is already saturated with and informed by the assumptions you are critiquing. In Lakoffian terms, when we look at a brain scan and correlate activity in it to the words someone says, or to their selection of a set of options from a survey, the metaphor that informs and provides the interpretation for those words is already implicit in the words they say or the question asked to them. If I am already operating out of the "brain is like a computer" or "The I is the thinking I, Aristotelian, Cartesian etc metaphors then that is what I will interpret to be present in the brain.
And if I am already operating in a certain metaphor, and so are the subjects in my psychology study then that is the metaphor that will guide my questions and their answers.
Cognitive science did not spring out of a vaccum of objective anything. It arose out of a western, greek, post-enlightenment philosophy saturated people and scientists. So what they found, inevitably confirmed what they were looking for. Imagine if you will, if you were to give a tribe of Papa New Guineans, Indians, or any other culture influenced by any other philosophies the same tools of surveys, controlled experiment, and biological neuroscience. Would they have begun by asking questions that would potentially confirm the karmic nature of the mind? The God worshipping nature of the mind? Or perhaps something even more alien to us? And would they not find what they were looking for? And would they not take their findings as confirming evidence of their already present metaphors?
If the replication crisis has proved anything it's that cognitive science is NOT an objective activity that we can conduct devoid of bias or prior interpretation.
Yes, psychology and neuroscience have something to do say about philosophy, but you are merely using the assumptions of one metaphor, interpreting the world through it's lens, then using that lens to critique the idea of any lens other than the one you're using. Your conclusion is inherent in your premises and you are merely confirming your biases.
This was a fascinating read. You may find an essay in my recent post history on the purported difference between "Greek" and "Hebrew" ways of thinking interesting.
I stumbled on this essay while reading a book that does a meta-analysis of Lakoff's "objectivism vs experientialism" and then proposes an integration as part of a larger integration project for general and domain language. It does so while also addressing implications for Machine translation and AI, but I'm neither a linguist nor an AI researcher so I find myself wondering what someone more familiar with Lesswrongian projects than I would think of it.
The integration it proposes is through the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, my(budding) area of expertise.
Anyways, here it is, and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts if you do read it.
I linked it above.
Hemming problem?