Do you think that the best way achieve solutions to meta-philosophy is to actually do philosophy? I ask because, like other posters, I’m skeptical of the magnitude of contributions from the field of philosophy with regard to philosophical insights. I’m definitely biased, being not nearly as familiar with philosophy as I am with science, but it seems to me that math and science do a great majority of the heavy lifting.
This is not to downplay the importance of philosophy in general, because I think Daniel Dennett is spot on when he says “[T]here is no such thing as philosophy-free; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.” (I think there’s a good argument that the entire symbolic AI program was a major philosophy-fail). It’s really more a question of methodology.
The issue I see is that to giving a satisfactory answer to a question like “what is the nature of philosophy, and how do we use it?” likely involves a whole hell of a lot of neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, etc. research, and it seems unlikely that much can be gained by a philosophical approach to the question (which I assume involves surveying all the relevant scientific and philosophical literature, and then making reasoned arguments for why some aspect of philosophy use must be a certain way).
Do you think that the best way achieve solutions to meta-philosophy is to actually do philosophy?
I don’t know, but I think it’s at least plausible that the answer is yes. This is one of those situations where we should probably take multiple approaches simultaneously.
The issue I see is that to giving a satisfactory answer to a question like “what is the nature of philosophy, and how do we use it?” likely involves a whole hell of a lot of neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, etc. research [...]
Maybe, but before von Neumann and Morganstern invented expected utility maximization, it might have seemed like we’d need a whole lot of neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, etc., to figure out decision theory, but that would have turned out to be wrong.
Do you think that the best way achieve solutions to meta-philosophy is to actually do philosophy? I ask because, like other posters, I’m skeptical of the magnitude of contributions from the field of philosophy with regard to philosophical insights. I’m definitely biased, being not nearly as familiar with philosophy as I am with science, but it seems to me that math and science do a great majority of the heavy lifting.
This is not to downplay the importance of philosophy in general, because I think Daniel Dennett is spot on when he says “[T]here is no such thing as philosophy-free; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.” (I think there’s a good argument that the entire symbolic AI program was a major philosophy-fail). It’s really more a question of methodology.
The issue I see is that to giving a satisfactory answer to a question like “what is the nature of philosophy, and how do we use it?” likely involves a whole hell of a lot of neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, etc. research, and it seems unlikely that much can be gained by a philosophical approach to the question (which I assume involves surveying all the relevant scientific and philosophical literature, and then making reasoned arguments for why some aspect of philosophy use must be a certain way).
I don’t know, but I think it’s at least plausible that the answer is yes. This is one of those situations where we should probably take multiple approaches simultaneously.
Maybe, but before von Neumann and Morganstern invented expected utility maximization, it might have seemed like we’d need a whole lot of neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, etc., to figure out decision theory, but that would have turned out to be wrong.
This is reasonable, and I agree.