Comment by pelorat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pelorat | Hacker News Reader

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A robot in a cow carcass is not a cow, it's a "robot in a cow carcass". Someone might believe it's a cow because they lack crucial information but that's on them, doesn't change the fact.

A cow-horse hybris is not a cow, it's a cow-horse hybrid.

A cow with a genetic mutation is a cow with a genetic mutation.

A cow created in a lab, perhaps even grown 100% by artificial means in-vitro is of course still a cow since it has the genetic makeup of a cow.

The word cow is the word cow, its meaning can differ based on context.

Things like this is why philosophers enjoy zero respect from me and why I'm an advocate for abolishing philosophy as a subject of study and also as a profession. Anyone can sit around thinking about things all day. If you spend money on studying it at a university you're getting scammed.

Also knowledge is finite based purely on the assumption that the universe is finite. An observer outside the universe would be able to see all information in the universe and they would conclude; you can't pack infinite amounts of knowledge into a finite volume.

While I tend to also wave away philosophers as it always boil down to unclear definitions, I don’t think your argument answers the question at all.

From “it has the genetic makeup of a cow”, you’re saying that what make a cow a cow is the genetic makeup. But then part of that ADN defines the cow? What can vary, by how much, before a cow stops being a cow?

The point is that you can give any definition of “cow”, and we can imagine a thing that fits this definition yet you’d probably not consider a cow. It’s a reflection on how language relates to reality. Whether it’s an interesting point or not is left to the reader (I personally don’t think it is)

I have this pet theory that Philosophy is kind of the Alternative Medicine of intellectual pursuits. In the same way that Alternative Medicine is doomed to consist of stuff that doesn't work (because anything proven to work becomes "Medicine"), Philosophy is made entirely of ideas that can't be validated through observation (because then they'd be Science), and also can't be rigorously formalized (because then they'd be Math).

So for any given claim in Philosophy, if you could find a way to either (a) compare it to the world or (b) state it in unambiguous symbolic terms, then we'd stop calling it Philosophy. As a result it seems like the discipline is doomed to consist of unresolvable debates where none of the participants even define their terms quite the same way.

Crazy idea, or no?

From Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy:

"Some ungentle reader will check us here by informing us that philosophy is as useless as chess, as obscure as ignorance, and as stagnant as content. “There is nothing so absurd,” said Cicero, “but that it may be found in the books of the philosophers.” Doubtless some philosophers have had all sorts of wisdom except common sense; and many a philosophic flight has been due to the elevating power of thin air. Let us resolve, on this voyage of ours, to put in only at the ports of light, to keep out of the muddy streams of metaphysics and the “many-sounding seas” of theological dispute. But is philosophy stagnant? Science seems always to advance, while philosophy seems always to lose ground. Yet this is only because philosophy accepts the hard and hazardous task of dealing with problems not yet open to the methods of science—problems like good and evil, beauty and ugliness, order and freedom, life and death; so soon as a field of inquiry yields knowledge susceptible of exact formulation it is called science. Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement. Philosophy is a hypothetical interpretation of the unknown (as in metaphysics), or of the inexactly known (as in ethics or political philosophy); it is the front trench in the siege of truth. Science is the captured territory; and behind it are those secure regions in which knowledge and art build our imperfect and marvelous world. Philosophy seems to stand still, perplexed; but only because she leaves the fruits of victory to her daughters the sciences, and herself passes on, divinely discontent, to the uncertain and unexplored."

Thanks, that's a hell of a quote! Though one suspects that Alternative Medicine would describe itself in similar terms, given the chance..

> for any given claim in Philosophy, if you could find a way to either (a) compare it to the world or (b) state it in unambiguous symbolic terms…

Not a crazy idea – that is called logic. Which is a field of philosophy. Philosophy and math intersect more than many people think.

Science and Math started as part of Philosophy. They just split out and became large specializations of their own. Schools for Math and Science still graduate Doctors of Philosophy for a reason.

Even the Juris Doctor is a branch of philosophy. After all, what is justice?

Sure, I hoped it might go without saying that I meant Philosophy as the term is used now - post-axiomatic systems and whatnot, not as the term was used when it encompassed the two things I'm comparing it to.

My pet peeve is that a lot of people who have never studied an hour of philosophy think that this is what people who study philosophy do.

"Anyone can sit around thinking about things all day" is like saying "anybody can sit and press keys on a keyboard all day".

I took a semester of philosophy at uni, perhaps the best invested time during my years there and by far more demanding than most of what followed. 100 % recommend it for anyone who wants to hone their critical reasoning skills and intellectual development in general.

Oh, this is a fun Gettier, with some language ambiguities, and some ship of Theseus sprinkled in! Let's say some smart-aleck travels back in time to when the English language was being developed and replaces all cows with robot cows such that current cows remain biological. So technically the word "cow" refers only to robot cows. What then?

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