I absolutely loathe the way you phrased that question for a variety of reasons (and I suspect analytic philosophers would as well), so I’m going to replace “meaning of life” with something more sensible like “solve metaethics” or “solve the hard problem of consciousness.” In which case, yes. I think computer science is more likely to solve metaethics and other philosophical problems because the field of philosophy isn’t founded on a program and incentive structure of continual improvement through feedback from reality. Oh, and computer science works on those kinds of problems (so do other areas of science, though).
I don’t think you have phrased “the question” differntly and better, I think you have substituted two differnt questions. Well, maybe you think the MoL is a ragbag of different questions, not one big one. Maybe it is. Maybe it
isn’t. That would be a philsophical question. I don’t see how empiricsm could help. Speaking of which...
What instruments do use to get feedback from reality vis a vis phenomenal consciousness and ethical values?
I didn’t notice and qualiometers or agathometers last time I was in a lab.
I’ve substituted problems that philosophy is actually working on (metaethics and conciousness) with one that analytic philosophy isn’t (meaning of life). Meaning comes from mind. Either we create our own meaning (absurdism, existentialism, ect) or we get meaning from a greater mind that designed us with a purpose (religion). Very simple. How could computer science or science dissolve this problem? (1) By not working on it because it’s unanswerable by the only methods we can have said to have answered something, or (2) making the problem answerable by operationalizing it or by reforming the intent of the question into another, answerable, question.
Through the process of science, we gain enough knowledge to dissolve philosophical questions or make the answer obvious and solved (even though science might not say “the meaning of life is X” but instead show that we evolved, what mind is, and how the universe likely came into being—in which case you can answer the question yourself without any need for a philosophy department).
What instruments do use to get feedback from reality vis a vis phenomenal consciousness and ethical values? I didn’t notice and qualiometers or agathometers last time I was in a lab.
If I want to know what’s happening in a brain, I have to understand the physical/biological/computational nature of the brain. If I can’t do that, then I can’t really explain qualia or such. You might say we can’t understand qualia through its physical/biological/computational nature. Maybe, but it seems very unlikely, and if we can’t understand the brain through science, then we’ll have discovered something very surprising and can then move in another direction with good reason.
I’ve substituted problems that philosophy is actually working on (metaethics and conciousness) with one that analytic philosophy isn’t (meaning of life).
Unless it is. Maybe the MoL breaks down into many of the other topics studied by philosophers. Maybe philosophy is in the process of reducing it.
Meaning comes from mind. Either we create our own meaning (absurdism, existentialism, ect) or we get meaning from a greater mind that designed us with a purpose (religion). Very simple
How could computer science or science dissolve this problem? (1) By not working on it because it’s unanswerable by the only methods we can have said to have answered something,
You say it is “unanswerable” timelessly. How do you know that? It’s unanswered up to present. As are a number of scientific questions.
or (2) making the problem answerable by operationalizing it or by reforming the intent of the question into another, answerable, question.
Maybe. But checking that you have correctly identified the intent, and not changed the subject, is just the sort of
armchair conceptual analysis philosophers do.
Through the process of science, we gain enough knowledge to dissolve philosophical questions or make the answer obvious and solved
You say that timelsessly, but at the time of writing we have done where we have and we don’t where we haven;t.
(even though science might not say “the meaning of life is X” but instead show that we evolved, what mind is, and how the universe likely came into being—in which case you can answer the question yourself without any need for a philosophy department).
But unless science can relate that back to the initial question , there is no need to consider it answered.
What instruments do use to get feedback from reality vis a vis phenomenal consciousness and ethical values? I didn’t notice and qualiometers or agathometers last time I was in a lab.
If I want to know what’s happening in a brain, I have to understand the physical/biological/computational nature of the brain.
That’s necessary, sure. But if it were sufficient, would we have a Hard Problem of Consciousness?
If I can’t do that, then I can’t really explain qualia or such.
But I am not suggesting that science be shut down, and the funds transferred to philosophy.
You might say we can’t understand qualia through its physical/biological/computational nature. Maybe, but it seems very unlikely,
It seems actual to me. We don’t have such an understanding at present. I don’t know what that means for the future,
and I don’t how you are computing your confident statement of unlikelihood. One doens’t even have
to believe in some kind of non-physicalism to think that we might never. The philosopher Colin McGinn
argues that we have good reason to believe both that consc. is physical, and that we will never
understand it.
and if we can’t understand the brain through science,
We can’t understand qualia through science now. How long does that have to continue before
you give up? What’s the harm in allowing philsophy to continue when it is so cheap compared
to science?
PS. I would be interested in hearing of a scientific theory of ethics that doens’t just ignore the
is-ought problem.
Even though the wikipedia page for “meaning of life” is enormous, it boils all down to the very simple either/or statement I gave.
How do we know if something is answerable? Did a chicken just materialize 10 billion light years from Earth? We can’t answer that. Is the color blue the best color? We can’t answer that. We can answer questions that contact reality such that we can observe them directly or indirectly. Did a chicken just materialize in front me? No. Is the color blue the most preferred color? I don’t know, but it can be well answered through reported preferences. I don’t know if these currently unanswerable questions will always be unanswerable, but given what I know I can only say that they will almost certainly remain unanswerable (because it’s unfeasible or because it’s a nonsensical question).
Wouldn’t science need to do conceptual analysis? Not really, though it could appear that way. Philosophy has “free will”, science has “volition.” Free will is a label for a continually argued concept. Volition is a label for an axiom that’s been nailed in stone. Science doesn’t really care about concepts, it just wants to ask questions such that it can answer them definitely.
Even though science might provide all the knowledge necessary to easily answer a question, it doesn’t actually answer it, right? My answer: so what? Science doesn’t answer a lot of trivial questions like what I exactly should eat for breakfast, even though the answer is perfectly obvious (healthy food as discovered by science if I want to remain healthy).
Why still have the hard problem of consciousness if it’s answerable by science? Because the brain is hard to understand. Give another century or so. We’ve barely explored the brain.
What if consciousness isn’t explainable by science? When we get to that point, we’ll be much better prepared to understand what direction we need to go to understand the brain. As it is now, philosophy is simply following science’s breadcrumbs. There is no point in doing philosophy, unless there is a reasonable expectation that it will solve a problem that can be more likely solved by something else.
A scientific theory of ethics? It wouldn’t have any “you ought to do X because X is good,” but would be more of the form of “science says X,Y,Z are healthy for you” and then you would think “hey, I want to be healthy, so I’m going to eat X,Y,Z.” This is actually how philosophy works now. You get a whole bunch of argumentation as evidence, and then you must enact it personally through hypothetical injunctions like “if I want to maximize well being, then I should act as a utilitarian.”
Even though the wikipedia page for “meaning of life” is enormous, it boils all down to the very simple either/or statement I gave.
Providing you ignore the enornous amount of substructure hanging off each option.
do we know if something is answerable?
We generally perform some sort of armchair conceptual analysis.
Wouldn’t science need to do conceptual analysis? Not really,
Why not? Doesn’t it need to decide which questions it can answer?
Volition is a label for an axiom that’s been nailed in stone.
First I’ve heard of it. Who did that? Where was it published?
Why still have the hard problem of consciousness if it’s answerable by science? Because the brain is hard to understand.
Or impossible, or the brain isn’t solely or responsible, ro something else. It would have helped to have argued
for your prefered option.
Give another century or so. We’ve barely explored the brain.
As it is now, philosophy is simply following science’s breadcrumbs. There is no point in doing philosophy, unless there is a reasonable expectation that it will solve a problem that can be more likely solved by something else.
Philosophy generally can’t solve scientific problems, and science generally can’t solve philosophical ones.
A scientific theory of ethics? It wouldn’t have any “you ought to do X because X is good,” but would be more of the form of “science says X,Y,Z are healthy for you” and then you would think “hey, I want to be healthy, so I’m going to eat X,Y,Z.”
And what about my interactions with others? Am I entitled to snatch an orange from a starving man because I need a few extra milligrams of vitamin C?
Defund philosophy departments to the benefit of computer science departments?
And the CS departments are going to tell us what the meaning of life is?
If have to give up on even trying to answer the questions, you don’t actually have a better alternative.
I absolutely loathe the way you phrased that question for a variety of reasons (and I suspect analytic philosophers would as well), so I’m going to replace “meaning of life” with something more sensible like “solve metaethics” or “solve the hard problem of consciousness.” In which case, yes. I think computer science is more likely to solve metaethics and other philosophical problems because the field of philosophy isn’t founded on a program and incentive structure of continual improvement through feedback from reality. Oh, and computer science works on those kinds of problems (so do other areas of science, though).
I don’t think you have phrased “the question” differntly and better, I think you have substituted two differnt questions. Well, maybe you think the MoL is a ragbag of different questions, not one big one. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. That would be a philsophical question. I don’t see how empiricsm could help. Speaking of which...
What instruments do use to get feedback from reality vis a vis phenomenal consciousness and ethical values? I didn’t notice and qualiometers or agathometers last time I was in a lab.
I’ve substituted problems that philosophy is actually working on (metaethics and conciousness) with one that analytic philosophy isn’t (meaning of life). Meaning comes from mind. Either we create our own meaning (absurdism, existentialism, ect) or we get meaning from a greater mind that designed us with a purpose (religion). Very simple. How could computer science or science dissolve this problem? (1) By not working on it because it’s unanswerable by the only methods we can have said to have answered something, or (2) making the problem answerable by operationalizing it or by reforming the intent of the question into another, answerable, question.
Through the process of science, we gain enough knowledge to dissolve philosophical questions or make the answer obvious and solved (even though science might not say “the meaning of life is X” but instead show that we evolved, what mind is, and how the universe likely came into being—in which case you can answer the question yourself without any need for a philosophy department).
If I want to know what’s happening in a brain, I have to understand the physical/biological/computational nature of the brain. If I can’t do that, then I can’t really explain qualia or such. You might say we can’t understand qualia through its physical/biological/computational nature. Maybe, but it seems very unlikely, and if we can’t understand the brain through science, then we’ll have discovered something very surprising and can then move in another direction with good reason.
Unless it is. Maybe the MoL breaks down into many of the other topics studied by philosophers. Maybe philosophy is in the process of reducing it.
No, not simple
You say it is “unanswerable” timelessly. How do you know that? It’s unanswered up to present. As are a number of scientific questions.
Maybe. But checking that you have correctly identified the intent, and not changed the subject, is just the sort of armchair conceptual analysis philosophers do.
You say that timelsessly, but at the time of writing we have done where we have and we don’t where we haven;t.
But unless science can relate that back to the initial question , there is no need to consider it answered.
That’s necessary, sure. But if it were sufficient, would we have a Hard Problem of Consciousness?
But I am not suggesting that science be shut down, and the funds transferred to philosophy.
It seems actual to me. We don’t have such an understanding at present. I don’t know what that means for the future, and I don’t how you are computing your confident statement of unlikelihood. One doens’t even have to believe in some kind of non-physicalism to think that we might never. The philosopher Colin McGinn argues that we have good reason to believe both that consc. is physical, and that we will never understand it.
We can’t understand qualia through science now. How long does that have to continue before you give up? What’s the harm in allowing philsophy to continue when it is so cheap compared to science?
PS. I would be interested in hearing of a scientific theory of ethics that doens’t just ignore the is-ought problem.
Even though the wikipedia page for “meaning of life” is enormous, it boils all down to the very simple either/or statement I gave.
How do we know if something is answerable? Did a chicken just materialize 10 billion light years from Earth? We can’t answer that. Is the color blue the best color? We can’t answer that. We can answer questions that contact reality such that we can observe them directly or indirectly. Did a chicken just materialize in front me? No. Is the color blue the most preferred color? I don’t know, but it can be well answered through reported preferences. I don’t know if these currently unanswerable questions will always be unanswerable, but given what I know I can only say that they will almost certainly remain unanswerable (because it’s unfeasible or because it’s a nonsensical question).
Wouldn’t science need to do conceptual analysis? Not really, though it could appear that way. Philosophy has “free will”, science has “volition.” Free will is a label for a continually argued concept. Volition is a label for an axiom that’s been nailed in stone. Science doesn’t really care about concepts, it just wants to ask questions such that it can answer them definitely.
Even though science might provide all the knowledge necessary to easily answer a question, it doesn’t actually answer it, right? My answer: so what? Science doesn’t answer a lot of trivial questions like what I exactly should eat for breakfast, even though the answer is perfectly obvious (healthy food as discovered by science if I want to remain healthy).
Why still have the hard problem of consciousness if it’s answerable by science? Because the brain is hard to understand. Give another century or so. We’ve barely explored the brain.
What if consciousness isn’t explainable by science? When we get to that point, we’ll be much better prepared to understand what direction we need to go to understand the brain. As it is now, philosophy is simply following science’s breadcrumbs. There is no point in doing philosophy, unless there is a reasonable expectation that it will solve a problem that can be more likely solved by something else.
A scientific theory of ethics? It wouldn’t have any “you ought to do X because X is good,” but would be more of the form of “science says X,Y,Z are healthy for you” and then you would think “hey, I want to be healthy, so I’m going to eat X,Y,Z.” This is actually how philosophy works now. You get a whole bunch of argumentation as evidence, and then you must enact it personally through hypothetical injunctions like “if I want to maximize well being, then I should act as a utilitarian.”
Providing you ignore the enornous amount of substructure hanging off each option.
We generally perform some sort of armchair conceptual analysis.
Why not? Doesn’t it need to decide which questions it can answer?
First I’ve heard of it. Who did that? Where was it published?
Or impossible, or the brain isn’t solely or responsible, ro something else. It would have helped to have argued for your prefered option.
Give another century or so. We’ve barely explored the brain.
Philosophy generally can’t solve scientific problems, and science generally can’t solve philosophical ones.
And what about my interactions with others? Am I entitled to snatch an orange from a starving man because I need a few extra milligrams of vitamin C?