I tend to believe that we need a combination of both. Purely pursuing these problems from a philosophical perspectives risks becoming untethered from reality due to the lossiness and slipperiness of high-level abstractions. Purely pursuing these problems from an engineering mindset risks losing the forest for the trees or a failure to look outside of the present situation, even as it is rapidly changing.
I suspect that the suspicion of those in an engineering mindset towards philosophy may be a factor in the bounty that I recently posted on the potential circular dependency of counterfactuals receiving very little engagement on the issue that I was trying to highlight, despite the large number of comments.
If you start following the parents from any concept you’ll ultimately end up going around in circles, but:
a) Further down the chain b) Counterfactuals or something very much like them (like possible worlds) are somewhere in the loop.
I think this makes a difference because if circularity is far down the chain then you can effectively ignore the circularity. Depending on other quite different concepts also makes it easier to ignore.
Thanks for writing this post.
I tend to believe that we need a combination of both. Purely pursuing these problems from a philosophical perspectives risks becoming untethered from reality due to the lossiness and slipperiness of high-level abstractions. Purely pursuing these problems from an engineering mindset risks losing the forest for the trees or a failure to look outside of the present situation, even as it is rapidly changing.
I suspect that the suspicion of those in an engineering mindset towards philosophy may be a factor in the bounty that I recently posted on the potential circular dependency of counterfactuals receiving very little engagement on the issue that I was trying to highlight, despite the large number of comments.
Are you aware of other concepts that have a similar circular dependency, or have seemed to have it?
If you start following the parents from any concept you’ll ultimately end up going around in circles, but:
a) Further down the chain
b) Counterfactuals or something very much like them (like possible worlds) are somewhere in the loop.
I think this makes a difference because if circularity is far down the chain then you can effectively ignore the circularity. Depending on other quite different concepts also makes it easier to ignore.