Wei Dai and Tsvi BT posts have convinced me I need to understand how one does philosophy significantly better. Anyone who thinks they know how to learn philosophy, I’m interested to hear your takes on how to do that. I get the sense that perhaps reading philosophy books is not the best way to learn to do philosophy.
I may edit this comment with links as I find them. Can’t reply much right now though.
Transfer learning is dubious, doing philosophy has worked pretty well for me thus far for learning how to do philosophy. More specifically, pick a topic you feel confused about or a problem you want to solve (AI kill everyone oh no?). Sit down and try to do original thinking, and probably use some external tool of preference to write down your thoughts. Then do live or afterwards introspection on if your process is working and how you can improve it, repeat. This might not be the most helpful, but most people seem to fail at “being comfortable sitting down and thinking for themselves”, and empirically being told to just do it seems to work.
Maybe one crucial object level bit has to do with something like “mining bits from vague intuitions” like Tsvi explains at the end of this comment, idk how to describe it well.
What has “conceptual engineering” contributed to philosophy? Does it tell us anything new about why anything exists, what the categories of being are, or the nature of the good?
Not to suggest that you’ve done this, but I think it’s a fairly common mistake to look for conceptual engineering’s merits as a metaphilosophy by only looking at papers that include the words ‘conceptual engineering’, many of which are quite bad. There’s a section of Fixing Language (by Cappelen) that provides examples of actual philosophical contributions, some of which predate the term.
Sorry, but the only philosophical position I even see in the post, is the claim that there are no essences. The philosophical line seems to be: conceptual analysis is about seeking the essence of a concept; but there are no essences, and concepts are just categories with quasi-arbitrary boundaries that can be re-drawn; so let’s just focus on drawing the boundaries of our concepts where we want them to be.
Well, if you’re engaged in an intellectual activity, both analysis and re-definition may be appropriate at various times (as shown in your own post). But why would acknowledging the ability to re-define a concept be so revolutionary or important?
Evidently it’s because the author considers it a rebuttal of Platonism. But that is nothing new. For as long as there have been thinkers taking the reality of “abstract entities” seriously, there have been other thinkers urging nominalism or materialism or that only concrete things exist.
Is that why you think it’s important? So as to avoid reification of the abstract?
My take is that you can’t define term X until you know why you’re trying to define term X.
For example, if someone asks what “language” is, instead of trying to jump in with an answer, it’s better to step back and ask why the person is asking the question.
For example, if someone asks “How many languages do you know?”, they probably aren’t asking about simple schemes like “one click = yes, two clicks = no”. On the other hand, it may make sense to talk about such simple schemes in an introductory course on “human languages”.
Asking “Well what really is language?” independent of any context is naive.
Wei Dai and Tsvi BT posts have convinced me I need to understand how one does philosophy significantly better. Anyone who thinks they know how to learn philosophy, I’m interested to hear your takes on how to do that. I get the sense that perhaps reading philosophy books is not the best way to learn to do philosophy.
I may edit this comment with links as I find them. Can’t reply much right now though.
Transfer learning is dubious, doing philosophy has worked pretty well for me thus far for learning how to do philosophy. More specifically, pick a topic you feel confused about or a problem you want to solve (AI kill everyone oh no?). Sit down and try to do original thinking, and probably use some external tool of preference to write down your thoughts. Then do live or afterwards introspection on if your process is working and how you can improve it, repeat.
This might not be the most helpful, but most people seem to fail at “being comfortable sitting down and thinking for themselves”, and empirically being told to just do it seems to work.
Maybe one crucial object level bit has to do with something like “mining bits from vague intuitions” like Tsvi explains at the end of this comment, idk how to describe it well.
I highly recommend this post. Seems like a more sensible approach to philosophy than conceptual analysis:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9iA87EfNKnREgdTJN/a-revolution-in-philosophy-the-rise-of-conceptual
What has “conceptual engineering” contributed to philosophy? Does it tell us anything new about why anything exists, what the categories of being are, or the nature of the good?
Not to suggest that you’ve done this, but I think it’s a fairly common mistake to look for conceptual engineering’s merits as a metaphilosophy by only looking at papers that include the words ‘conceptual engineering’, many of which are quite bad. There’s a section of Fixing Language (by Cappelen) that provides examples of actual philosophical contributions, some of which predate the term.
Two papers that I think are important—and count as conceptual engineering, by my lights—are The Extended Mind and Grace and Alienation.
The second paper looks interesting.
(Having read through it, it’s actually really, really good).
Helps people avoid going down pointless rabbit holes.
Can you give the most important examples? Are there some classic mistakes that conceptual engineering is uniquely equipped to overcome?
I think the benefits are adequately described in the post.
Sorry, but the only philosophical position I even see in the post, is the claim that there are no essences. The philosophical line seems to be: conceptual analysis is about seeking the essence of a concept; but there are no essences, and concepts are just categories with quasi-arbitrary boundaries that can be re-drawn; so let’s just focus on drawing the boundaries of our concepts where we want them to be.
Well, if you’re engaged in an intellectual activity, both analysis and re-definition may be appropriate at various times (as shown in your own post). But why would acknowledging the ability to re-define a concept be so revolutionary or important?
Evidently it’s because the author considers it a rebuttal of Platonism. But that is nothing new. For as long as there have been thinkers taking the reality of “abstract entities” seriously, there have been other thinkers urging nominalism or materialism or that only concrete things exist.
Is that why you think it’s important? So as to avoid reification of the abstract?
My take is that you can’t define term X until you know why you’re trying to define term X.
For example, if someone asks what “language” is, instead of trying to jump in with an answer, it’s better to step back and ask why the person is asking the question.
For example, if someone asks “How many languages do you know?”, they probably aren’t asking about simple schemes like “one click = yes, two clicks = no”. On the other hand, it may make sense to talk about such simple schemes in an introductory course on “human languages”.
Asking “Well what really is language?” independent of any context is naive.