Academia doesn't live up to its noble image. Philosopher Peter Fosl: Although academics will hardly raise an eyebrow about this "open secret," it comes as a surprise to many others to learn that many philosophers … are little devoted to the love of wisdom. In only a merely "academic" way do they aspire to intellectual virtue. Even less often do they exhibit qualities of moral excellence. On the contrary, many philosophers, or what pass as philosophers, are, sadly, better described as petty social climbers, meretricious snobs, and acquisitive consumerists. I blush a bit now to confess that part of what drove me into philosophy in the first place was the naive conviction that among those who call themselves lovers of wisdom I would find something different in kind from the repugnant and shallow brutalism of the worlds of finance, business, and the law. …
Well, if someone actually debated Richard on a philosophy issue he thought he had been resolved for good, that might throw some cold water on the "academic philosophy debates are purely manufactured by the Big Philosophy Lobby" thesis.
Has anyone ever wondered how their own beliefs are caused by the truth, while the existence of differing beliefs is caused by institutional incentives, blind self-interest, wishful thinking, and other pathologies? It's an interesting phenomenon.
For a so-called "rationalist" community, some who comment here seem lamentably more fond of name-calling than rational argument.
As a general rule, asserting one's mere disagreement is not very interesting. (Add name-calling into the mix and one probably qualifies as a 'troll'.) If one were to offer counterarguments, or reasons to support one's contrary assertions, then one might actually be worth reading.
While I do agree there are many "solved" issues in philosophy in much the same way as there are in the sciences, the Examples of Solved Philsophy referenced here contains few. Some highlights of the list of supposedly "solved" issues are: "rational egoism is false" ; "capitalism is not intrinsically just: libertarianism must be defended on consequentialist grounds" ... Is this guy disingenuous or just very deluded?
Richard,Most of your examples are pathetic. In the comments, you say that many are failings of the "untutored." I would say the opposite: that they are almost entirely the fault of philosophers. Aside from straw men, some were taken by philosophers because of institutional incentives to be controversial or to take simple positions. Others are the result badgering laymen to take precise positions, but are much worse than the effective beliefs of said laymen, even if the effective beliefs are largely incoherent.
Maybe "institutional incentives to be simple" is not so different from "badgering laymen to be precise."
Maybe it's just my sample, but I've found the "brutal" worlds of finance, business, and law to include more people who are sincerely focused on their work than I have in the halls of academia. Academic goals are so abstract that even really smart people seem more interested in status fights than in focused goal-pursuit. My favorite people, of course, are the ones who can't help getting interested in other goals despite the tangible ones in front of them in their day jobs. How can academics get distracted in an equivalent way?
> What do philosophers need research budgets for? What expenses does philosophizing entail?
Travel expenses to conferences & debates & appearances etc. Publication fees for open-access journals. Paying for grad students and TAs. The professor's own salary and the administrative costs pertaining to him. Basic office supplies. Extensive libraries and periodical subscriptions and inter-library loan requests.* Web hosting. And so on I'm sure I've forgotten some. Philosophy certainly has very minimal capital requirements, but it's not zero, and for some areas like experimental philosophy the expenses could be comparable to psychology.
But at least it's not billions and billions for a single particle accelerator. :)
* I once asked a librarian friend how much some of my harder ILL requests cost, and was a little shocked to learn that they could go up to 50$
note the word "uproar" automaton. There is no dispute that the levels of C02 in the atmosphere are increasing. There is also little dispute that humans are directly responsible. However, because we are directly responsible we are vastly overestimating how much of an impact it will have due to a bias our culture seems to have towards human tampering.Let's look at a non-hysterical interpretation of the data:1) Temperature increase corresponds to the logarithm of C02 increase. This means a doubling of C02 levels produces a constant temperature increase.2) An extrapolation of the rise in C02 from 1900 to now indicates that it will double by 2200 if nothing is done to curb use. Let's be pessimistic and say it will double by 2100.3) Doubling C02 increases the radiation absorption of by about 3.8W/m^2 over the present value of 1366 W/m^2, or about 0.3%.
how much does that radiation increase correspond to a temperature increase? This is called climate sensitivity and there is no legitimate scientific consensus on it because NO ONE KNOWS. We have no control earth to test it on. In order to know this we would need an accurate model of the earth's atmosphere.
But let's go with the party-line for a moment. Say the radiation increase corresponds to a 2 degree centigrade average temperature increase. Is this a bad thing? Is anyone doing research on the potential benefits? I doubt it because no one thinks that way.
Put it another way: If you were declared grand emperor of Earth right now and someone came to you and said that over the next 100 years the amount of radiation absorbed by the earth will increase by .3% would preventing it be at the top of your priority list? Especially when the proposed solutions are exorbitantly expensive and their effectiveness is totally unknown?
I'm not saying it's not a potential problem. But for the amount of resources we are devoting to it we could be solving much more pressing issues.
billswift: you must believe that the vast majority of 20th century physics (i.e., all the physics developed by academics rather than private industry) is without merit.
Not quite. First, the sciences are rather different, and off the main "path" of academia. I've even seen a few things that consider science and engineering to be trade schools, not really academic. Second, the few academics who actually made advances rather than just teaching or writing forgetable articles in journals are a small group of outliers, who quite likely could have done as well (or better) outside academia.
Anyone who considers academia essential for research should read Kealey's "The Economics of Scientific Research" for an alternative view.
Yvain,Yes, overcoming bias is an awesome blog. If you like the stuff here than you should pay attention to work in formal epistemology. There are many philosophers working (and making progress) on the kinds of questions that are addressed on this blog. Notice how many of the insights discussed here are the result of debates in contemporary formal philosophy and philosophy of psychology.http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
nazgulnarsil: "Another is scientism as we see with the anthropogenic global warming uproar."
I'm not entirely sure how mentioning a well-supported scientific conclusion fits in with the rest of your point, unless you're referring to the Creationist-like tactics of many global warming opponents.
"Yvain, You haven't a clue what's going on in contemporary philosophy.Clearly you had a bad experience with post-modernist bullshit, but most philosophers believe that there are objective standards for judging arguments."
Yes, part of my problem is the post-modernist bullshit, and I did say it was by no means all philosophers, but I'm aware of the more rationalistic Anglo-American side of philosophy. I'm not claiming that they literally say "there's no objective answer to this question". I'd claiming that (some) philosophers approach their issues the same way people arguing about abortion treat that issue, with about the same results. They think that they can solve them by taking the answer that sounds best and then arguing for it (usually informally). And when they don't eventually settle anything, this doesn't keep them up at night.
I didn't really understand this problem until I started reading Overcoming Bias, after which it became obvious that of course a lot of smart people coming up with arguments for their point of view would have trouble coming to any conclusion. And by "conclusion", I don't mean I want everyone to agree about the qualia issue after a month. I just mean that there are still smart, credentialled people who think Plato was right about most things, or support some of the weirder ontological arguments, or so on. Can you give me an example of a formerly difficult question that philosophy has settled to the same degree that science has settled its questions?
I've found more good philosophy on Overcoming Bias than I have elsewhere, and I think it's because a lot of the people here (Eliezer especially) have an objective standard they're measuring themselves to - the ability to at least as a thought experiment create an AI using their ideas.
*Philosophy has devolved from a search for truth into something more akin to literary criticism.*
It's more general than that. The social sciences used to be about making useful observations about the human condition. This has slowly changed due to the fact that the majority of grants come from the same place, the Government. Well pleasing the government enough to get fat grants comes in many flavors but one of them is what was described in the quote: schmoozing to find connections. Another is scientism as we see with the anthropogenic global warming uproar. A third is confirming that which people already want to hear. etc.
billswift: you must believe that the vast majority of 20th century physics (i.e., all the physics developed by academics rather than private industry) is without merit.
Well, if someone actually debated Richard on a philosophy issue he thought he had been resolved for good, that might throw some cold water on the "academic philosophy debates are purely manufactured by the Big Philosophy Lobby" thesis.
Has anyone ever wondered how their own beliefs are caused by the truth, while the existence of differing beliefs is caused by institutional incentives, blind self-interest, wishful thinking, and other pathologies? It's an interesting phenomenon.
For a so-called "rationalist" community, some who comment here seem lamentably more fond of name-calling than rational argument.
As a general rule, asserting one's mere disagreement is not very interesting. (Add name-calling into the mix and one probably qualifies as a 'troll'.) If one were to offer counterarguments, or reasons to support one's contrary assertions, then one might actually be worth reading.
While I do agree there are many "solved" issues in philosophy in much the same way as there are in the sciences, the Examples of Solved Philsophy referenced here contains few. Some highlights of the list of supposedly "solved" issues are: "rational egoism is false" ; "capitalism is not intrinsically just: libertarianism must be defended on consequentialist grounds" ... Is this guy disingenuous or just very deluded?
Richard,Most of your examples are pathetic. In the comments, you say that many are failings of the "untutored." I would say the opposite: that they are almost entirely the fault of philosophers. Aside from straw men, some were taken by philosophers because of institutional incentives to be controversial or to take simple positions. Others are the result badgering laymen to take precise positions, but are much worse than the effective beliefs of said laymen, even if the effective beliefs are largely incoherent.
Maybe "institutional incentives to be simple" is not so different from "badgering laymen to be precise."
Maybe it's just my sample, but I've found the "brutal" worlds of finance, business, and law to include more people who are sincerely focused on their work than I have in the halls of academia. Academic goals are so abstract that even really smart people seem more interested in status fights than in focused goal-pursuit. My favorite people, of course, are the ones who can't help getting interested in other goals despite the tangible ones in front of them in their day jobs. How can academics get distracted in an equivalent way?
> What do philosophers need research budgets for? What expenses does philosophizing entail?
Travel expenses to conferences & debates & appearances etc. Publication fees for open-access journals. Paying for grad students and TAs. The professor's own salary and the administrative costs pertaining to him. Basic office supplies. Extensive libraries and periodical subscriptions and inter-library loan requests.* Web hosting. And so on I'm sure I've forgotten some. Philosophy certainly has very minimal capital requirements, but it's not zero, and for some areas like experimental philosophy the expenses could be comparable to psychology.
But at least it's not billions and billions for a single particle accelerator. :)
* I once asked a librarian friend how much some of my harder ILL requests cost, and was a little shocked to learn that they could go up to 50$
Richard: Examples of Solved Philosophy
Okay. I retract my belief in this being true of all philosophy, although I still think it's a problem in some of it.
This isn't the place to argue about global warming.
Professional philosophers know a lot, and the average philosophy journal article contains substantial insight.
note the word "uproar" automaton. There is no dispute that the levels of C02 in the atmosphere are increasing. There is also little dispute that humans are directly responsible. However, because we are directly responsible we are vastly overestimating how much of an impact it will have due to a bias our culture seems to have towards human tampering.Let's look at a non-hysterical interpretation of the data:1) Temperature increase corresponds to the logarithm of C02 increase. This means a doubling of C02 levels produces a constant temperature increase.2) An extrapolation of the rise in C02 from 1900 to now indicates that it will double by 2200 if nothing is done to curb use. Let's be pessimistic and say it will double by 2100.3) Doubling C02 increases the radiation absorption of by about 3.8W/m^2 over the present value of 1366 W/m^2, or about 0.3%.
how much does that radiation increase correspond to a temperature increase? This is called climate sensitivity and there is no legitimate scientific consensus on it because NO ONE KNOWS. We have no control earth to test it on. In order to know this we would need an accurate model of the earth's atmosphere.
But let's go with the party-line for a moment. Say the radiation increase corresponds to a 2 degree centigrade average temperature increase. Is this a bad thing? Is anyone doing research on the potential benefits? I doubt it because no one thinks that way.
Put it another way: If you were declared grand emperor of Earth right now and someone came to you and said that over the next 100 years the amount of radiation absorbed by the earth will increase by .3% would preventing it be at the top of your priority list? Especially when the proposed solutions are exorbitantly expensive and their effectiveness is totally unknown?
I'm not saying it's not a potential problem. But for the amount of resources we are devoting to it we could be solving much more pressing issues.
"Can you give me an example of a formerly difficult question that philosophy has settled to the same degree that science has settled its questions?"
Examples of Solved Philosophy
billswift: you must believe that the vast majority of 20th century physics (i.e., all the physics developed by academics rather than private industry) is without merit.
Not quite. First, the sciences are rather different, and off the main "path" of academia. I've even seen a few things that consider science and engineering to be trade schools, not really academic. Second, the few academics who actually made advances rather than just teaching or writing forgetable articles in journals are a small group of outliers, who quite likely could have done as well (or better) outside academia.
Anyone who considers academia essential for research should read Kealey's "The Economics of Scientific Research" for an alternative view.
Yvain,Yes, overcoming bias is an awesome blog. If you like the stuff here than you should pay attention to work in formal epistemology. There are many philosophers working (and making progress) on the kinds of questions that are addressed on this blog. Notice how many of the insights discussed here are the result of debates in contemporary formal philosophy and philosophy of psychology.http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
nazgulnarsil: "Another is scientism as we see with the anthropogenic global warming uproar."
I'm not entirely sure how mentioning a well-supported scientific conclusion fits in with the rest of your point, unless you're referring to the Creationist-like tactics of many global warming opponents.
Virtuous Philosopher,
"Yvain, You haven't a clue what's going on in contemporary philosophy.Clearly you had a bad experience with post-modernist bullshit, but most philosophers believe that there are objective standards for judging arguments."
Yes, part of my problem is the post-modernist bullshit, and I did say it was by no means all philosophers, but I'm aware of the more rationalistic Anglo-American side of philosophy. I'm not claiming that they literally say "there's no objective answer to this question". I'd claiming that (some) philosophers approach their issues the same way people arguing about abortion treat that issue, with about the same results. They think that they can solve them by taking the answer that sounds best and then arguing for it (usually informally). And when they don't eventually settle anything, this doesn't keep them up at night.
I didn't really understand this problem until I started reading Overcoming Bias, after which it became obvious that of course a lot of smart people coming up with arguments for their point of view would have trouble coming to any conclusion. And by "conclusion", I don't mean I want everyone to agree about the qualia issue after a month. I just mean that there are still smart, credentialled people who think Plato was right about most things, or support some of the weirder ontological arguments, or so on. Can you give me an example of a formerly difficult question that philosophy has settled to the same degree that science has settled its questions?
I've found more good philosophy on Overcoming Bias than I have elsewhere, and I think it's because a lot of the people here (Eliezer especially) have an objective standard they're measuring themselves to - the ability to at least as a thought experiment create an AI using their ideas.
*Philosophy has devolved from a search for truth into something more akin to literary criticism.*
It's more general than that. The social sciences used to be about making useful observations about the human condition. This has slowly changed due to the fact that the majority of grants come from the same place, the Government. Well pleasing the government enough to get fat grants comes in many flavors but one of them is what was described in the quote: schmoozing to find connections. Another is scientism as we see with the anthropogenic global warming uproar. A third is confirming that which people already want to hear. etc.
billswift: you must believe that the vast majority of 20th century physics (i.e., all the physics developed by academics rather than private industry) is without merit.