Comment by protonfish | Hacker News Reader

Comment by protonfish | Hacker News Reader

I have mixed feelings while reading philosophers trying to desperately justify their relevance. It's sad at first, then you start being battered with the verbose fallacies they believe to be good quality thinkin', and you wish they had died out a long time ago.

I do not have the time to address every bit of nonsense in this gish gallop so I'll stick to 2:

1. What is the measure of philosophic truth? It is implied strongly that "success" is determined by acceptance of ideas by others. Usefulness, accuracy, precision, ethics, are not important: what is important is that your ideas spread like a virus. If true, then philosophy is really, like the Sophists of old, just about rhetoric. And if manipulating people through words is your thing, then studying advertising and marketing would be a much more effective investment.

2. A key argument was "philosophy is so much better now than it used to be." I find the fact philosophy is not nearly as bad as it used to be, though arguably true, not very compelling. A better question would be "Is it good enough?" I have not yet found convincing evidence that is the case.

It is a bit funny: you attempt to show the irrelevance of philosophy, and immediately stumble on a deeply philosophical question: "What is the measure of philosophic truth?" Actually, the question is "what is the measure of truth?", because philosophy has no special rules about truth.

Then you repeat the Sophist's answer, a philosophical school. Unfortunately for you, philosophy has much much more to say about truth than what the Sophists said. For example, they invented logic, and explained how to identify fallacies. So "just about rhetoric" has been shown to be wrong. This invalidates your argument 1.

Your question in 2 is again deeply philosophical: when is any knowledge "good enough"? Go on and treat this question seriously, then you will find out that some philosophers did the same already, and that you might learn something from them.

All good points, but it is worth noting that the idea of a logical fallacy itself comes from philosophy. The study of fallacies proper began with Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations.

I guess that just means philosophy hasn't improved beyond the standard erected by Aristotle.

More complicated, and more to it, but certainly not of higher quality.

The study of fallacies in the West began with Aristotle, but it certainly hasn't ended there; Aristotle only lists a fraction of the things we consider fallacies today.

That said, I do think that more philosophical research is needed in the area. Unfortunately, most philosophers have focused on formal logic, even though informal fallacies are much more common.

The study of fallacies may have started there, but the _idea_ of a logical fallacy is likely much, much older.

1. Philosophers derive measures of truth from theories of truth. To accept the measure you have to accept the theory. If you question all the theories you simply arrive at well-trodden metaphysical debates within philosophy.

2. Argument over progress in philosophy is a debate borne of logical positivism, and it valorizes the goal of accumulating one ever-larger shared pool of knowledge as the only one that matters. But why does it matter?

Throughout history philosophers have often been more interested in personal development than grand collaboration. Empiricism just happens to have this property of creating tangible objects that others may study, which makes it apparently dominant in a world dominated by "whiz-bang" science - we're always looking at the next big thing. But merely knowing physical properties of the world does nothing to inform us of how to use them in a productive manner. That's where philosophy will perpetually re-enter as a way to add holistic breadth: the principles are often old, but they need a new adaptation to the circumstances brought about by technical changes.

And that also means that philosophers tend to be unpopular. If their nature is always to question how we're doing things, the natural consequence is that they are outcast for "rocking the boat". This is why it is important to draw some distinction between philosophy, the contemporary academic job title, and philosophy when it is practiced by ordinary people every day. The former is a strange outgrowth of the post-Enlightenment enterprise, the latter is something anyone can claim. Defining oneself as "artist", "maker", "entrepreneur" - these ideas encode philosophical purpose.

Please, do not give up on philosofy. It is the mother of all sciences and has answers to fundamental questions any human being has, had or will have, like:

- What is the nature of reality? - How does one acquire knowledge? - How can I trust what I know? - What is a good life to live? - How should I act on a daily basis? - What should I expect from others? - How the society should be structured? - What is the purpose of art?

This is a bold claim on the glossy brochure of philosophy. I don't see evidence that philosophy has answered any of those questions or has the tools it claims to answer them.

Whenever I hear arguments about the contemporary relevance of philosophy, I ask myself "could these same arguments be applied to Alchemy and Astrology?" These were precursors to modern chemistry and astronomy, and their practitioners made many significant discoveries that we still use today. However, we have updated their methods significantly so though they are still known and read about, but not actively used.

I have not seen solid reasoning and evidence to suggest that philosophy is not in a similar situation.

I see. I think you have never listened a lecture of a good philosopher. I really like Leonard Peikoff. Take for example his lecture called "The American School: Why Johnny Can't Think?" [0]. It has a higher overview than any other science is capable of, reach the essence of the problem and suggest a solution.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4BJ-21EhY8

It was philosophy which set up the standards of 'solid reasoning' and 'evidence' so that we can now distinguish between Chemistry and Alchemy.

It seems that you apply the 'natural sciences' pattern of knowledge generation to philosophy, and conclude that philosophy doesn't produce knowledge. But this stance needs justification. And as soon as you write down arguments that this is the right way to judge philosophy, you are actually doing philosophy yourself.

Really? Can you provide an answer for any of these answered by philosophy? On the contrary, it is the sciences that provide answers to these questions, to the extent they are meaningful or the answers are known.

Philosophy is a science. Aristotle answered the essence of theses questions 2400 years ago. He may have commit some mistakes, but the essence is there.

One thing that Aristotle did right was call philosophy "metaphysics". Indeed, philosophy is meta-science.

For the question "How does one acquire knowledge?", I recommend Kant, Hume, Russell, Carnap, and Popper, for a start.

I'd like to ask you how you find out if a question is meaningful? And please don't answer "if it can be answered by science", because then you have a circular argument.

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