Either Plato invented some good-ometer, and then we should study the good-ometer regardless of Plato.
Or Plato (and his followers for recent 2000 years) failed at inventing some good-ometer, and then how is studying Plato helpful for our understanding of Good?
In other words, if a person X discovered Y, we should be able to teach Y without teaching about X. We don’t learn about life of Pythagoras to understand the Pythagorean theorem. We don’t have to read Turing’s book to understand computing. Etc. The knowledge was extracted, condensed, improved; if something was proven wrong, it was discarded. Why don’t philosophers process their data in the same way? Why is it always necessary to go back to the ancients?
It’s not always taught this way. Shelly Kagan, a philosophy professor at Yale, has a tendency to teach those Y’s without teaching about X first, which you can see since some of his courses are available online.
This is actually pretty standard in certain courses, like logic and ethics, where we have a better idea of what theories we want to teach. Actually, I learned fewer history/names in philosophical logic than in most math courses.
It’s also a subject of some controversy. For a while it was common to use textbooks that tended in the direction of teaching the ideas. But a lot of folks favor original works, especially since part of the point of Philosophy is being able to pick up a work by Plato and reason about it for yourself.
Philosophical progress is more about discovering errors than truths.
This isn’t a defense of philosophy as far as I can tell.
There is continuing doubt about exactly what the Greats were saying. The exegesis is ongoing.
Why is this at all relevant aside from at a historical level? Who said an idea isn’t connected to whether the idea is true or not. If there are two different interpretations of what someone said, just label them differently and discuss accordingly.
It isn’t always necessary to go back to the Ancients; once you have got past 101, it is possible to have a career where you never mention Plato.
If that’s the case, that raises the question of why we bother doing things that way in intro classes. In contrast for example, we discuss what the ancient Greeks did in math, because whatever area of math you go into, sometimes you are going to need some of their ideas.
Philosophy isn’y broken science, it’s philosophy.
This seems more like rhetoric than a coherent claim.
This isn’t a defense of philosophy as far as I can tell.
It was intended as an explanation. If you are contrasting it with science. which you think does positively confrm theories, you need to disprove Popper.
Why is this at all relevant aside from at a historical level?
Becuase philosphy is about what philosphers have thought. Why would you think it is irrelevant? Because you think phil. is or should be some sort of technical discipline.?
Who said an idea isn’t connected to whether the idea is true or not.
Huh?
If there are two different interpretations of what someone said, just label them differently and discuss accordingly.
That has happened several times. Phils. really aren’t hoplessly dumb.
If that’s the case, that raises the question of why we bother doing things that way in intro classes.
I’ve answered that elsewhere. You need them to set subsequent thinking in context. But that can become undiscussed background information. I notice you have no objection to the way physics is taught, which invariably starts with a lot of classical physics, even though it is “wrong”.
Philosophy isn'y broken science, it's philosophy.
This seems more like rhetoric than a coherent claim.
I’m serious. All the criticism of phil. is coming from people who expect it to be like science and work
like science, and there is no reason it should.
It was intended as an explanation. If you are contrasting it with science. which you think does positively confrm theories, you need to disprove Popper.
I never said science positively confirms theories. But there are so many issues with Popper that that’s almost not worth discussing. We’ve had seventy from Popper at this point, and philosophy of science is one area where unambiguious progress has been made. I don’t need to point to something that modern like Bayesianism, but just the pretty effective criticisms of Popper by Quine, Lakatos and Kuhn. Falsification is good as a rough guideline, but problems like the theory-laden nature of observations, and the fact that data can say something quite complicated about hypotheses, and other issues all make Popper not a sound basis for science either a descriptive or proscriptive level.
And if you are trying to argue that philosophy functions in a Popperian fashion, then the obvious question is why once it discovers the errors doesn’t it just leave the error filled arguments alone?
Becuase philosphy is about what philosphers have thought.
So this may be in part a dispute over definitions. But simply put, it isn’t at all clear why X should include “history of X” and in general it doesn’t. Math, psychology, physics, medicine, art, linguistics, music, all distinguish between X and history of X. Note that many of the subjects on my list are not sciences, so any claimed distinction between science and philosophy isn’t relevant here.
Who said an idea isn’t connected to whether the idea is true or not.
Huh?
This should be clear: The truth value of a claim isn’t connected to who espoused the claim. Even if Terry Tao says that 1+1=3, it doesn’t make it more true. And the same applies for philosophers. Whether a claim was made by Plato or by Joey the bartender doesn’t make the statement more or less true. (It is possible that it can provide weak heuristic usefulness about a claim being likely to be true.)
That has happened several times.
Right, and that’s part of the problem in a nutshell, that the reasonable word to use here is “several” and not, “frequently” or even “every time this question comes up.”
I notice you have no objection to the way physics is taught, which invariably starts with a lot of classical physics, even though it is “wrong”.
The problem though isn’t teaching background. If you look elsewhere in this thread you’ll see that I’ve argued for a much more limited form of Luke’s thesis, deemphasizing the classical sources in philosophy more but not eliminating. The equivalent for physics would be if before one did Newton one had a semester on Aristotle, Ptolemy, Aristarchus, Oresme, etc. And if we still saw journal articles in top tier journals discussing Aristotle’s physics.
I’m serious. All the criticism of phil. is coming from people who expect it to be like science and work like science, and there is no reason it should.
It isn’t just the sciences that make progress. Math makes progress, and it is far closer in its goals to philosophy than science. Linguistics is a fuzzy border as is economics, yet both make real progress. If you prefer, consider these discussions to be about whether philosophy should act more like a science, and grapple with that question. You haven’t presented any argument why philosophy shouldn’t act more like the sciences other than claim that for a lot of philosophers the status quo is that it doesn’t.
why once it discovers the errors doesn’t it just leave the error filled arguments alone?
It does. LP has been abandoned. So have many issues in Scholasticism.
Math, psychology, physics, medicine, art, linguistics, music, all distinguish between X and history of X.
True but irrelevant. Phil doens’t have to work like other subjects.
The truth value of a claim isn’t connected to who espoused the claim
Philosophical claims are often subtle and need to be interpreted in context together with the rest of their originator’s body of work.
Right, and that’s part of the problem in a nutshell, that the reasonable word to use here is “several” and not, “frequently” or even “every time this question comes up.”
That’s an opionion. How about putting forward some examples to show that pils. really are stupidly undersuing this manouvre.
The equivalent for physics would be if before one did Newton one had a semester on Aristotle, Ptolemy, Aristarchus, Oresme, etc
That’s an opinion. It could do with being backed by detailed work showing that phils really are stupidly overmphasing the ancients. On the other hand, it is perhaps motivated by an excessive tendendy to equate
phil. with science. In science it is uncontroversial that the old stuff is probably wrong.
You haven’t presented any argument why philosophy shouldn’t act more like the sciences other than claim that for a lot of philosophers the status quo is that it doesn’t.
I have put forward the argument that it does not deal with the same sorts of questions, so it is, to say the least, not obvious that scientific techniques would work as well as LW’s expect. if they can be shown to (as in experimental philosophy) I am happy with that. But Luke’s claims are much more sweeping than piecemeal improvement.
So? Are you saying phil. has the right methodology, but is studying the wrong people?
I understand it as:
Either Plato invented some good-ometer, and then we should study the good-ometer regardless of Plato.
Or Plato (and his followers for recent 2000 years) failed at inventing some good-ometer, and then how is studying Plato helpful for our understanding of Good?
In other words, if a person X discovered Y, we should be able to teach Y without teaching about X. We don’t learn about life of Pythagoras to understand the Pythagorean theorem. We don’t have to read Turing’s book to understand computing. Etc. The knowledge was extracted, condensed, improved; if something was proven wrong, it was discarded. Why don’t philosophers process their data in the same way? Why is it always necessary to go back to the ancients?
It’s not always taught this way. Shelly Kagan, a philosophy professor at Yale, has a tendency to teach those Y’s without teaching about X first, which you can see since some of his courses are available online.
This is actually pretty standard in certain courses, like logic and ethics, where we have a better idea of what theories we want to teach. Actually, I learned fewer history/names in philosophical logic than in most math courses.
It’s also a subject of some controversy. For a while it was common to use textbooks that tended in the direction of teaching the ideas. But a lot of folks favor original works, especially since part of the point of Philosophy is being able to pick up a work by Plato and reason about it for yourself.
Philosophical progress is more about discovering errors than truths.
There is continuing doubt about exactly what the Greats were saying. The exegesis is ongoing.
Circularities in evaluating what is “good” or “right” answer to a question, since those are philosophical questions too.
It isn’t always necessary to go back to the Ancients; once you have got past 101, it is possible to have a career where you never mention Plato.
Philosophy isn’y broken science, it’s philosophy.
This isn’t a defense of philosophy as far as I can tell.
Why is this at all relevant aside from at a historical level? Who said an idea isn’t connected to whether the idea is true or not. If there are two different interpretations of what someone said, just label them differently and discuss accordingly.
If that’s the case, that raises the question of why we bother doing things that way in intro classes. In contrast for example, we discuss what the ancient Greeks did in math, because whatever area of math you go into, sometimes you are going to need some of their ideas.
This seems more like rhetoric than a coherent claim.
It was intended as an explanation. If you are contrasting it with science. which you think does positively confrm theories, you need to disprove Popper.
Becuase philosphy is about what philosphers have thought. Why would you think it is irrelevant? Because you think phil. is or should be some sort of technical discipline.?
Huh?
That has happened several times. Phils. really aren’t hoplessly dumb.
I’ve answered that elsewhere. You need them to set subsequent thinking in context. But that can become undiscussed background information. I notice you have no objection to the way physics is taught, which invariably starts with a lot of classical physics, even though it is “wrong”.
I’m serious. All the criticism of phil. is coming from people who expect it to be like science and work like science, and there is no reason it should.
I never said science positively confirms theories. But there are so many issues with Popper that that’s almost not worth discussing. We’ve had seventy from Popper at this point, and philosophy of science is one area where unambiguious progress has been made. I don’t need to point to something that modern like Bayesianism, but just the pretty effective criticisms of Popper by Quine, Lakatos and Kuhn. Falsification is good as a rough guideline, but problems like the theory-laden nature of observations, and the fact that data can say something quite complicated about hypotheses, and other issues all make Popper not a sound basis for science either a descriptive or proscriptive level.
And if you are trying to argue that philosophy functions in a Popperian fashion, then the obvious question is why once it discovers the errors doesn’t it just leave the error filled arguments alone?
So this may be in part a dispute over definitions. But simply put, it isn’t at all clear why X should include “history of X” and in general it doesn’t. Math, psychology, physics, medicine, art, linguistics, music, all distinguish between X and history of X. Note that many of the subjects on my list are not sciences, so any claimed distinction between science and philosophy isn’t relevant here.
This should be clear: The truth value of a claim isn’t connected to who espoused the claim. Even if Terry Tao says that 1+1=3, it doesn’t make it more true. And the same applies for philosophers. Whether a claim was made by Plato or by Joey the bartender doesn’t make the statement more or less true. (It is possible that it can provide weak heuristic usefulness about a claim being likely to be true.)
Right, and that’s part of the problem in a nutshell, that the reasonable word to use here is “several” and not, “frequently” or even “every time this question comes up.”
The problem though isn’t teaching background. If you look elsewhere in this thread you’ll see that I’ve argued for a much more limited form of Luke’s thesis, deemphasizing the classical sources in philosophy more but not eliminating. The equivalent for physics would be if before one did Newton one had a semester on Aristotle, Ptolemy, Aristarchus, Oresme, etc. And if we still saw journal articles in top tier journals discussing Aristotle’s physics.
It isn’t just the sciences that make progress. Math makes progress, and it is far closer in its goals to philosophy than science. Linguistics is a fuzzy border as is economics, yet both make real progress. If you prefer, consider these discussions to be about whether philosophy should act more like a science, and grapple with that question. You haven’t presented any argument why philosophy shouldn’t act more like the sciences other than claim that for a lot of philosophers the status quo is that it doesn’t.
It does. LP has been abandoned. So have many issues in Scholasticism.
True but irrelevant. Phil doens’t have to work like other subjects.
Philosophical claims are often subtle and need to be interpreted in context together with the rest of their originator’s body of work.
That’s an opionion. How about putting forward some examples to show that pils. really are stupidly undersuing this manouvre.
That’s an opinion. It could do with being backed by detailed work showing that phils really are stupidly overmphasing the ancients. On the other hand, it is perhaps motivated by an excessive tendendy to equate phil. with science. In science it is uncontroversial that the old stuff is probably wrong.
I have put forward the argument that it does not deal with the same sorts of questions, so it is, to say the least, not obvious that scientific techniques would work as well as LW’s expect. if they can be shown to (as in experimental philosophy) I am happy with that. But Luke’s claims are much more sweeping than piecemeal improvement.