Forgive me for cliche scientism, but I recently realized that I can’t think of any major philosophical developments in the last two centuries that occurred within academic philosophy. If I were to try to list major philosophical achievements since 1819, these would likely appear on my list, but none of them were from those trained in philosophy:
A convincing, simple explanation for the apparent design we find in the living world (Darwin and Wallace).
The unification of time and space into one fabric (Einstein)
A solid foundation for axiomatic mathematics (Zermelo and Fraenkel).
A model of computation, and a plausible framework for explaining mental activity (Turing and Church).
By contrast, if we go back to previous centuries, I don’t have much of an issue citing philosophical achievements from philosophers:
The identification of the pain-pleasure axis as the primary source of value (Bentham).
Advanced notions of causality, reductionism, scientific skepticism (Hume)
Extension of moral sympathies to those in the animal kingdom (too many philosophers to name)
A highlight of the value of wisdom and learned debate (Socrates, and others)
Of course, this is probably caused my by bias towards Lesswrong-adjacent philosophy. If I had to pick philosophers who have made major contributions, these people would be on my shortlist:
John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit, Bertrand Russell, Arthur Schopenhauer.
My impression is that academic philosophy has historically produced a lot of good deconfusion work in metaethics (e.g. this and this), as well as some really neat negative results like the logical empiricists’ failed attempt to construct a language in which verbal propositions could be cached out/analyzed in terms of logic or set theory in a way similar to how one can cache out/analyze Python in terms of machine code. In recent times there’s been a lot of (in my opinion) great academic philosophy done at FHI.
The development of modern formal logic (predicate logic, modal logic, the equivalence of higher-order logics and set-theory, etc.), which is of course deeply related to Zermelo, Fraenkel, Turing and Church, but which involved philosophers like Quine, Putnam, Russell, Kripke, Lewis and others.
The model of scientific progress as proceeding via pre-paradigmatic, paradigmatic, and revolutionary stages (from Kuhn, who wrote as a philosopher, though trained as a physicist)
The identification of the pain-pleasure axis as the primary source of value (Bentham).
I will mark that I think this is wrong, and if anything I would describe it as a philosophical dead-end. Complexity of value and all of that. So listing it as a philosophical achievement seems backwards to me.
I might add that I also consider the development of ethical anti-realism to be another, perhaps more insightful, achievement. But this development is, from what I understand, usually attributed to Hume.
Depending on what you mean by “pleasure” and “pain” it is possible that you merely have a simple conception of the two words which makes this identification incompatible with complexity of value. The robust form of this distinction was provided by John Stuart Mill who identified that some forms of pleasure can be more valuable than others (which is honestly quite similar to what we might find in the fun theory sequence...).
In its modern formulation, I would say that Bentham’s contribution was identifying conscious states as being the primary theater for which value can exist. I can hardly disagree, as I struggle to imagine things in this world which could possibly have value outside of conscious experience. Still, I think there are perhaps some, which is why I conceded by using the words “primary source of value” rather than “sole source of value.”
To the extent that complexity of value disagrees with what I have written above, I incline to disagree with complexity of value :).
Then I will assert that I would in fact appreciate seeing the reasons for disagreement, even as the case may be that it comes down to axiomatic intuitions.
Forgive me for cliche scientism, but I recently realized that I can’t think of any major philosophical developments in the last two centuries that occurred within academic philosophy. If I were to try to list major philosophical achievements since 1819, these would likely appear on my list, but none of them were from those trained in philosophy:
A convincing, simple explanation for the apparent design we find in the living world (Darwin and Wallace).
The unification of time and space into one fabric (Einstein)
A solid foundation for axiomatic mathematics (Zermelo and Fraenkel).
A model of computation, and a plausible framework for explaining mental activity (Turing and Church).
By contrast, if we go back to previous centuries, I don’t have much of an issue citing philosophical achievements from philosophers:
The identification of the pain-pleasure axis as the primary source of value (Bentham).
Advanced notions of causality, reductionism, scientific skepticism (Hume)
Extension of moral sympathies to those in the animal kingdom (too many philosophers to name)
A highlight of the value of wisdom and learned debate (Socrates, and others)
Of course, this is probably caused my by bias towards Lesswrong-adjacent philosophy. If I had to pick philosophers who have made major contributions, these people would be on my shortlist:
John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit, Bertrand Russell, Arthur Schopenhauer.
I would name the following:
Modern logic (Gottlob Frege)
Master/slave morality (Friedrich Nietzsche)
Historical critique of power/knowledge systems (Michel Foucault)
Phenomenology (Edmund Husserl)
Language games (Lugwig Wittgenstein)
Inauthenticity/bad faith (Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir)
Performativity (John Austin and Judith Butler)
My impression is that academic philosophy has historically produced a lot of good deconfusion work in metaethics (e.g. this and this), as well as some really neat negative results like the logical empiricists’ failed attempt to construct a language in which verbal propositions could be cached out/analyzed in terms of logic or set theory in a way similar to how one can cache out/analyze Python in terms of machine code. In recent times there’s been a lot of (in my opinion) great academic philosophy done at FHI.
Those are all pretty good. :)
Wow! You left out the whole of analytical philosophy!
I’m not saying that I’m proud of this fact. It is mostly that I’m ignorant of it. :)
The development of modern formal logic (predicate logic, modal logic, the equivalence of higher-order logics and set-theory, etc.), which is of course deeply related to Zermelo, Fraenkel, Turing and Church, but which involved philosophers like Quine, Putnam, Russell, Kripke, Lewis and others.
The model of scientific progress as proceeding via pre-paradigmatic, paradigmatic, and revolutionary stages (from Kuhn, who wrote as a philosopher, though trained as a physicist)
I will mark that I think this is wrong, and if anything I would describe it as a philosophical dead-end. Complexity of value and all of that. So listing it as a philosophical achievement seems backwards to me.
I might add that I also consider the development of ethical anti-realism to be another, perhaps more insightful, achievement. But this development is, from what I understand, usually attributed to Hume.
Depending on what you mean by “pleasure” and “pain” it is possible that you merely have a simple conception of the two words which makes this identification incompatible with complexity of value. The robust form of this distinction was provided by John Stuart Mill who identified that some forms of pleasure can be more valuable than others (which is honestly quite similar to what we might find in the fun theory sequence...).
In its modern formulation, I would say that Bentham’s contribution was identifying conscious states as being the primary theater for which value can exist. I can hardly disagree, as I struggle to imagine things in this world which could possibly have value outside of conscious experience. Still, I think there are perhaps some, which is why I conceded by using the words “primary source of value” rather than “sole source of value.”
To the extent that complexity of value disagrees with what I have written above, I incline to disagree with complexity of value :).
(I think you and habryka in fact disagree pretty deeply here)
Then I will assert that I would in fact appreciate seeing the reasons for disagreement, even as the case may be that it comes down to axiomatic intuitions.