Perhaps a more relevant question, in the context of the OP, is whether those problems are representative of the types of foundational (as opposed to engineering, logistical, strategic, etc.) problems that need to be solved in order to build an FAI.
But we could talk about “philosophy” as well, since, to be honest, I’m not sure why some topics count as “philosophy” and others don’t. It seems to me that my list of advances do fall under Wikipedia’s description of philosophy as “the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.” Do you disagree, or have a alternative definition?
It seems to me that my list of advances do fall under Wikipedia’s description of philosophy
I agree. But there are also some systematic differences between what the people you cited did and what (other) philosophers do.
The former didn’t merely study fundamental problems, they solved them.
They did stuff that now exists and can be studied independently of the original works. You don’t have to read a single word of Turing to understand Turing machines and their importance. You need not study Solomonoff to understand Solomonoff induction.
Their works are generally not shelved with philosophy in libraries. Are they studied in undergraduate courses on philosophy?
I think the criticism is indeed pointed towards the scientific “field” of Philosophy, AKA people working in Philosophy Departments or similar.
I doubt many here are targeting the activity of philosophy, nor the people who would identify as “philosophers”, but rather specifically towards Philosophy academics with a specialization in Philosophy, who work in a Philosophy Department and produce Philosophy papers to be published in a Journal of Philosophical Writings (and possibly give the occasional Philosophy class or seminar, depending on the local supply of TAs).
IME, a large fraction of real, practicing philosophers are actively publishing papers on arXiv or equivalent.
I think the criticism is indeed pointed towards the scientific “field” of Philosophy
Did you mean academic field?
I doubt many here are targeting the activity of philosophy, nor the people who would identify as “philosophers”, but rather specifically towards Philosophy academics with a specialization in Philosophy, who work in a Philosophy Department and produce Philosophy papers to be published in a Journal of Philosophical Writings (and possibly give the occasional Philosophy class or seminar, depending on the local supply of TAs).
You mean professional phi. bad, amateur phil good. Or not so much amaterur phil as the sort
of sciencey-philly cross-disciplinary stuff done by EY and Robin and Botrom and Tegmark do. Maybe.
But actually some of it is quite bad for reasons which are evident if you know phil.
You mean professional phi. bad, amateur phil good.
A good professional study of philosophy itself is to me indistinguishable from someone doing metaresearch, i.e. figuring out how to make the standards of the scientific method even better and the techniques of all scientists more efficient. IME, this is not what the majority of academics working in Philosophy Departments are doing.
OTOH, good applied philosophy, i.e. the sort of stuff you do once you’ve studied the result of the above metaresearch, is basically just doing science. In other words, doing research in any field that is not about how to do research.
So yes, in a sense, most academics categorized as “professional phil” are less good than most academics categorized as “amateur phil” who mainly work in other disciplines. The latter are also almost exclusively “sciencey-philly cross-disciplinary”.
I’m guessing we both agree that non-academic-nor-scientist amateur philosophers are less likely to produce meaningful research than any of the above, and yet is pretty much the stereotype that most people (in the general north-american population) assign to “philosophers”. Then again, the exclusion of “scientists” from that category feels like begging the question.
So yes, in a sense, most academics categorized as “professional phil” are less good than most academics categorized as “amateur phil” who mainly work in other disciplines
Is the “so” meant to imply that that follows from the forefgoing? I don’t see how it does.
I was responding to the sentence:
“If you look at the most interesting recent advances in philosophy, it seems that most of them were made by non-philosophers.”
..which does not mention “advances in philosophy useful to FAI”.
Do you disagree, or have a alternative definition?
None of them have been much discussed by phils. (except possibly Bostrom, the Diane Hsieh of LessWrongism).
Theory of computation is obviously used by the computational theory of mind as well as philosophy of language and of mathematics and logic. Decision theorists are commonly employed by philosophy departments and all current decision theories descend from vNM’s. AIT actually doesn’t seem to be much discussed by philosophers (a search found only a couple of references in the SEP, and even the entry on “simplicity” only gives a brief mention of it) which is a bit surprising. (Oh, there’s a more substantial discussion in the entry for “information”.)
Perhaps a more relevant question, in the context of the OP, is whether those problems are representative of the types of foundational (as opposed to engineering, logistical, strategic, etc.) problems that need to be solved in order to build an FAI.
But we could talk about “philosophy” as well, since, to be honest, I’m not sure why some topics count as “philosophy” and others don’t. It seems to me that my list of advances do fall under Wikipedia’s description of philosophy as “the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.” Do you disagree, or have a alternative definition?
I agree. But there are also some systematic differences between what the people you cited did and what (other) philosophers do.
The former didn’t merely study fundamental problems, they solved them.
They did stuff that now exists and can be studied independently of the original works. You don’t have to read a single word of Turing to understand Turing machines and their importance. You need not study Solomonoff to understand Solomonoff induction.
Their works are generally not shelved with philosophy in libraries. Are they studied in undergraduate courses on philosophy?
Turing’s work on AI (and Searle’s response) was discussed in my undergrad intro phil course. But that is not quite the same thing.
Not in my undergraduate program, at least.
I think the criticism is indeed pointed towards the scientific “field” of Philosophy, AKA people working in Philosophy Departments or similar.
I doubt many here are targeting the activity of philosophy, nor the people who would identify as “philosophers”, but rather specifically towards Philosophy academics with a specialization in Philosophy, who work in a Philosophy Department and produce Philosophy papers to be published in a Journal of Philosophical Writings (and possibly give the occasional Philosophy class or seminar, depending on the local supply of TAs).
IME, a large fraction of real, practicing philosophers are actively publishing papers on arXiv or equivalent.
Did you mean academic field?
You mean professional phi. bad, amateur phil good. Or not so much amaterur phil as the sort of sciencey-philly cross-disciplinary stuff done by EY and Robin and Botrom and Tegmark do. Maybe. But actually some of it is quite bad for reasons which are evident if you know phil.
Yes, my bad.
A good professional study of philosophy itself is to me indistinguishable from someone doing metaresearch, i.e. figuring out how to make the standards of the scientific method even better and the techniques of all scientists more efficient. IME, this is not what the majority of academics working in Philosophy Departments are doing.
OTOH, good applied philosophy, i.e. the sort of stuff you do once you’ve studied the result of the above metaresearch, is basically just doing science. In other words, doing research in any field that is not about how to do research.
So yes, in a sense, most academics categorized as “professional phil” are less good than most academics categorized as “amateur phil” who mainly work in other disciplines. The latter are also almost exclusively “sciencey-philly cross-disciplinary”.
I’m guessing we both agree that non-academic-nor-scientist amateur philosophers are less likely to produce meaningful research than any of the above, and yet is pretty much the stereotype that most people (in the general north-american population) assign to “philosophers”. Then again, the exclusion of “scientists” from that category feels like begging the question.
Is the “so” meant to imply that that follows from the forefgoing? I don’t see how it does.
I was responding to the sentence: “If you look at the most interesting recent advances in philosophy, it seems that most of them were made by non-philosophers.”
..which does not mention “advances in philosophy useful to FAI”.
None of them have been much discussed by phils. (except possibly Bostrom, the Diane Hsieh of LessWrongism).
Theory of computation is obviously used by the computational theory of mind as well as philosophy of language and of mathematics and logic. Decision theorists are commonly employed by philosophy departments and all current decision theories descend from vNM’s. AIT actually doesn’t seem to be much discussed by philosophers (a search found only a couple of references in the SEP, and even the entry on “simplicity” only gives a brief mention of it) which is a bit surprising. (Oh, there’s a more substantial discussion in the entry for “information”.)
Surely that is the other way round. Early computer theorists just wanted to solve mathematical problems mechanically.
What is your point? His day job was physicist.