For example, linguistics -- understood as the science of language -- will never be able to, say, tell us what the connection is between the word and the world. How would it? And for all the promise of neuroscience, it is not one inch closer to telling us why there is a seeming difference between what physically occurs in a brain during an experience and what that experience is /like/.
There is certainly overlap between rigorous methodologies and philosophy. But the goal of philosophy is not to rigorize its way out of existence.
No they can't answer many of the questions some philosophers have asked, but they can and have shown that many of those questions were poorly defined. For instance, biology and biochemistry have completely supplanted the philosophical debate surrounding vitalism.
Slowly but surely, I also predict neuroscience will erode many of the foundations surrounding dualism. Which isn't to say that those fields will be free of philosophical questions at some point, because that's just not how knowledge works, I'm merely saying that many of our current philosophical questions will either be answered or will be shown to be poor questions.
There is something persistently mystical to qualia, to sensitivity, to experience, the nature of existence, whatever else you want to lump under the category of 'scientifically unsolvable'. Whether you want to address it via Hegelian Contexts or Quinian Nominalism or Protestant Ecstasy; for as many understandings of these phenomena and their motivating metaphysics, there are an equal number of implicit definitions of the word 'rigor'. Even the romantics were still in the business of establishing their own systems within which to do work, in the form of proofs using the rules of those systems. They may not look like scientific systems, but they are still systems to do the work of solving problems, and thus run parallel to scientific systems (as a sibling poster has described).
And so I prefer a much more charitable interpretation of the SO response. I agree with you that the goal of philosophy is not to rigorize its way out of existence - it probably can't, and probably for a superset of the reasons why meta-descriptive paradoxes arise. Nor is it to become a science in the technical sense (i.e., an empirical and deductive process in accordance with the scientific method). But do I think the goal of most philosphers is to build compelling systems within which their apostles may do work, or practice rigor.
That may or may not be what the modern philosopher's goal is, but I don't think it's fair to say, unequivocally, this was always philosophy's goal all along—or at the very least, such a claim is contested/disputed.
For example, Rorty [1] made the point that philosophy, as an epistemological enterprise that grounds the foundations of other sciences & give them credibility, really found it's start in the early modern philosophers, with their attempt to carve out a place for science inside dominant the religious world.
(At this point philosophy was continuous with the sciences.)
And then continuing w/ Descartes, Locke & Kant, to this version of philosophy which is no longer continuous with science, but rather playing this special epistemological role.
A lot of people jump into the naive belief that science replaces philosophy because philosophy is often the starting point of many of the sciences--as is typical, we see a connection and begin a reductive process that dumbs it all down to a straightforward relation like causality or linear progress, ignoring the actual complexities of the relationship. Nietzsche would scold us!
We tend to forget, of course, that science is really just another, even if it happens to be the most sensible thus far, form of dogma, and philosophy is one of the only, if not the only, discipline that can call it to account.
Philosophy of Science is an incredibly important field and will only become more important as we advance in the sciences--it has revealed and dealt with issues such as, our epistemic prejudice (ie the belief that most people hold that our current science is 'correct' even though history's course would increase the probability that it isn't), whether or not there actually is such a thing as scientific progress, or progress in general, how objectivity, as we frequently understand the concept, is grossly mishandled and probably an impossibility in its purest sense, how methods of verification can lead us astray... the list goes on.
Philosophy is important and I wish more people studied it or at least had a general familiarity with it. It really should be a gen ed requirement down to the Jr. high level.
1. the goals of philosophy are clear (since you can tell that this guy's answer is absolutely incorrect--though you have yet to mention what you believe the goals of philosophy to be) but, 2. the questions will never be answered
So you're saying philosophy leads from clear goals to unanswerable questions. Paradoxical.
Socrates said "I know that I do not know." I would recommend that you bring a similar humility to attempted definitions of philosophy.
>But the goal of philosophy is not to rigorize its way out of existence.
doesn't mean you shouldn't put rigor in your response instead of giving, like, your opinion.
>linguistics -- understood as the science of language -- will never be able to, say, tell us what the connection is between the word and the world. How would it?
First of all to understand what you are even trying to say requires linguistics. Secondly, you seem to make an linguistic argument to inform a philosophical idea.
Get off your high horse.
Unfortunately your post didn't correct any (perceived) mistake, it was mostly a longer way to write "That's not true". Would you be so kind and expand that reply a bit, so that I might find pointers/key words to look up myself?
Neuroscience studies various structures and mechanisms of nervous system and brain. Even when they seemingly discuss 'consciousness', they tend to simply mean 'awareness'. I think most are generally familiar with other aspects of neuroscience.
In phil. of mind there are categories of consciousness or lack thereof, though Phenomenal Consciousness is more popular area of study (experiential side of consciousness). One of the key subject in Philosophy of mind try to show whether mind can possibly be physical (ex readable article: http://organizations.utep.edu/Portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf), can mind be described computationally? (ex paper: http://consc.net/papers/rock.html) Phi. of mind also studies accesses of consciousness, study methods on how to go about studying contents of consciousness etc.
I've talked to neuroscientist who despise philosophers talking about conciseness and claim their ideas are silly or can be ignored. There has also been cases where big name neuroscientist proposed silly ideas about mind that philosophers wouldn't begin to consider.
In short they study different things.
You should give neuroscientists more credit! Some of them are aware of the philosophical problems surrounding subjectivity, and have tried to tackle them [1]. That's one of my favoured scientific theories on the source of subjectivity.
I can also sympathize with the disdain with whic some neuroscientists view some philosophers of mind. They've debated some completely ridiculous theories of mind in order to rationalize human importance. These consciousness debates are following the arc of vitalism, which the science of biology eventually simply replaced, and I expect these neuroscientists see it as a waste of time for similar reasons.
[1] http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00...
To be fair, no existing theory can explain subjective experience, so it's not a knock on that theory specifically.
There seem to be a subset of human beings who have convinced themselves they aren't conscious, even though it's not clear who they think they've convinced or who did the convincing. If you're one of them, that's okay... it's just not a conclusion I would personally endorse ("I" being whatever force is selecting the words that you're currently reading).
P.S. If something concludes that it's aware, then is it aware it has reached that conclusion? And if so, would that lead to an infinite regress? Perhaps that's what consciousness is... an infinite regress of awareness. :)
My understanding is that there are a lot of developed theories in philosophy that tries to explain "ego/I/me" aspect of consciousness. A lot of it is highly technical material. I've been trying to fully understand the content of the book "The Transcendence of the Ego" by Satre for a while, where he claims:
"We should like to show here that the ego is neither formally nor materially in consciousness: it is outside, in the world. It is being of the world, like the ego of another." -- ie, gets rid of insider "I". Phenomenologically "I" being only a formal thing, not actual. (maybe-helpful discussion if you are interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNFWyYa7ef4)
Phenomenology, the subject, itself is very interesting. It's the most fundamental of sciences (previously thought it was physics).
Because every sensation has to have some distinguishable characteristics from other sensation for functional purposes. That's not the hardest part of the hard problem, accounting for subjectivity was always the hard part. Certainly there are questions that aren't fully answered, but I think this paper demonstrates that neuroscience can and has started tackling the tough philosophical questions.
> They seem to be solving the very narrow problem of self-awareness, but not awareness in general. And I'm pretty self-awareness isn't a prerequisite for general awareness. (Just ask experienced drug users.)
I don't know what you mean. Certainly "altered states of consciousness" alter the operation of this attention schema theory, by altering signal strength of some perceptions and/or impeding the function of the attention schema apparatus somehow. I'm not sure what you think this means for this theory.
> There seem to be a subset of human beings who have convinced themselves they aren't conscious, even though it's not clear who they think they've convinced or who did the convincing.
You're grossly misrepresenting this position. I and others believe we don't have true subjective awareness. "Consciousness" is merely a label for a reducible phenomenon, like cars. So yes we are "conscious", but we don't mean the same thing you mean by "conscious", which carries far more ontological baggage that's only justified by weak thought experiments.
Finally, your cute yet all too common response begs the question by your use of "who", ie. no one needs convincing to begin with. In fact, if we're just automota then we're merely claiming that our perceptions yield a false conclusion about the existence of subjectivity. That's what it means to be an illusion.
I was just saying that subjective awareness doesn't require awareness of the self as observer. One can become engrossed in a movie without constantly thinking about one's place in relation to the movie. But on second thought, I'm probably misunderstanding some aspect of this theory, as this counterexample seems too obvious.
> I and others believe we don't have true subjective awareness.
I'm afraid this just makes no sense to me. Aren't you subjectively aware of the computer in front of your eyes? If you claim to not have "true subjective awareness", I'm curious what "true subjective awareness" would amount to.
An illusion is when our subjective experience of reality does not match actual reality, but to claim that our subjective experience is itself an illusion? That seems like a contradiction in terms.
Anyway, I'm sorry if this is coming across as flippant. I understand where your belief is coming from (I probably had it myself at one point) but it's just not the way I understand the world now.
For me, the knowledge that I have true subjective awareness is a basic first principle, along the lines of "I think, therefore I am". Maybe I'm a brain-in-a-vat and this is all virtual reality, but I'm definitely experiencing something. Are you trying to deny the fact that I have experiences and sensations, or something else? Maybe we're just talking past each other...
Also, what "weak thought experiments" are you referring to?
Being engrossed involves a suspension of awareness.
> I'm afraid this just makes no sense to me. Aren't you subjectively aware of the computer in front of your eyes? If you claim to not have "true subjective awareness", I'm curious what "true subjective awareness" would amount to.
True subjective awareness requires ontologically committing to dualism, because subjectivity is then irreducible. By which I mean that no account for true first-person experience is possible using only third-person objective facts.
> An illusion is when our subjective experience of reality does not match actual reality, but to claim that our subjective experience is itself an illusion? That seems like a contradiction in terms.
That definition of illusion begs the question, like I said, so I categorically reject it. If you eliminate the dependency on "subjective experience of reality" you get "perception of reality does not match actual reality", which is exactly what I said.
> For me, the knowledge that I have true subjective awareness is a basic first principle, along the lines of "I think, therefore I am".
Ah, but this too begs the question! The fallacy-free version is "this is a thought, therefore thoughts exist".
> Also, what "weak thought experiments" are you referring to?
P-zombies, Mary's room, etc.
Here are some articles from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the mentioned topics that should point you in the right direction to start thinking for yourself about whether these questions are reducible to the empirical sciences:
Natural philosophy
Aristotle's natural philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-natphil/
Hume (look at the section on causation): https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/
Philosophy of language
Wittgenstein: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/
Names: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/names/
Philosophy of mind
Aristotle's psychology: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-psychology/
Kant's account of reason: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-reason/
What is change? How do we know what we know? What is the relationship between speech and the thing spoken of? What is the relationship between knowledge and the thing known?
You could maybe get away with saying that we're fairly confident that _at some point_ we'll be able to accomplish such a feat (translating all interesting problems into scientifically decidable ones), but even that would be a super hairy/controversial assertion.
Same thing is likely to hold vis-a-vis neuroscience and philosophy of mind.
I suspect it couldn't be a physics result, because the question is something like "Why does the universe follow natural laws at all" and/or "what IS a natural law, in metaphysical terms" ?
Who is "we"? Americans? Because continental europeans very much care.
Well, if by tiny you mean a good 5-10%, then yes. Besides, when was that number much higher?
Did you notice the constraint:
> we generally don't particularly care about what they have to say anymore.
It's a human perspective way of saying it's not relevant to much the active work, but it still is being worked.
They didn't say Philosophy of X has become Science of X, they said When a component of Philosophy of X becomes rigorous it becomes part of Science of X.
That certain philosophical questions posed by Socrates have remained philosophical in nature does not make the claim invalid, just as the fact that many of the writings of Aristotle dealt with subjects that are no longer in the purview of philosophy does not conclusively prove the claim.
I guess I would have to say if anything invalidates the claim it is just that they have not exactly established what it means to have a point, nor shown that philosophy in a unified state has such a point that covers the whole. I personally do not believe it has a point, but then I don't believe any of things that are being argued as outgrowths of philosophy have points either.
Not sure why that's so controversial. Good scientists make guesses and work to prove or disprove them.
This might be less true for areas of applied math, but that just shows how the boundaries of any field are fuzzy. The same for philosophy: most of it deals with questions—and, subsequently, arguments and answers—that are fundamentally distinct from science. There are certain areas classically part of philosophy that have become the subject of physics or psychology or the social sciences, but these parts do not characterize philosophy as a whole.
Far be it from me to be able to give a precise (much less consise) definition of what it is exactly, but it's not merely the hypothetical phase when doing science.
Immediately metaphysics comes to mind as a philosophical field that is 'unscientific' in the sense that sometimes(mostly?) advances are not made by empirical measurements in an axiomatic system, but by convoluted and extreme thought-experiments with 0 experimental underpinnings.
Another example is pointed out above, in the philosophy of mind, about the fundamental difference between seeing an experience happen (for example with a brain scan/direct measurement of neurons) and actually experiencing something. That is not something that you can easily touch with science/surveys/brainscans/etc.
Instead it remains stuck in the past, refusing modern understanding. Much of the subset of natural philosophy that didn't become natural science is the stuff that didn't make the cut - i.e the junk.
> The answerer has either no actual grasp of the history or content of philosophy, or has simply decided, apparently by fiat, to discard all but the most narrow positivism-flavored slice as nonsense.
Yeah yeah, and if you don't believe in god, you don't understand the bible well enough. Same old story.
To re-iterate, philosophy of mind chooses to ignore neuroscience. Again, more "you don't understand", but no substance.
If not helpful, you may choose to look it up on Internet on specifics of topic of study, not sure what sort of substance would suffice.
If you want to look at a sort of caricatured version of this science-vs-philosphy-misunderstanding discussion, you may choose to watch this: https://youtu.be/9tH3AnYyAI8
> whether mind can possibly be physical
I re-iterate my comparison to religion, theistic philosopher reason similarly about the soul/god/etc.
philosophical junk. There's a reason "neuroscientists despise philosophers talking about conciseness".
> silly ideas about mind that philosophers wouldn't begin to consider
What authority do philosophers have to label anything silly?
> they study different things
Reminds me of the claims made about religion vs science, that science can only study the 'physical', where religion is needed to explore the 'spiritual'.
I'd guess most philosophers of mind would love to understand how - or show that mind is indeed physical. But it is not as simple a job as it might seem; like any rigorous subject, you'll have to have familiarity of the subject matter to understand why that is the case (and if you are looking for argument, one can't hope to summarize many years of technical papers and necessary background on a HN comment)
> What authority do philosophers have to label anything silly?
They are the expert of their field, why wouldn't they have authority there? If I throw out some idea about physics, I'd guess physicists should have first authority to decide whether my idea is silly.
> Reminds me of the claims made about religion vs science, that science can only study the 'physical', where religion is needed to explore the 'spiritual'.
As far as I'm aware, philosophy of mind has absolutely no religious motivations. Most are proponent of some physicalist theory, but many of those would probably say -we are not fully there yet to show how it is possible.
I don't consider it a rigorous subject.
> you'll have to have familiarity of the subject matter to understand why that is the case
Do you have this understanding?
> one can't hope to summarize many years of technical papers
Of course you can, that's what summarize means. Can you explain to me what 'technical' means in this context?
> They are the expert of their field
Phrenologists are experts in their field too; what authority does that field have?
> As far as I'm aware, philosophy of mind has absolutely no religious motivations
The comparison was wrt the study of doubtful concepts.
> many of those would probably say -we are not fully there yet to show how it is possible.
"not yet there"? We are not quite able to prove the existence of god either.
What progress has been made, in either case?
> I don't consider it a rigorous subject.
Many universities offer undergrad, masters and phd level work in this subject. Could be helpful to know why you think it is not rigorous.
> Do you have this understanding?
Like I said, I have a beginner level interest in the subject, ie, I have taken a undergrad. level relevant course in psychology and one in philosophy of mind, and occasionally read related books.
Maybe you do have a full explanatory theory of qualia, of other mind, transcendence of objects in perception, unification of consciousness, how consciousness leads to another, forming the concept of "I" in addition to "me", how to speak of contents of consciousness in their own right and so on.
There's various thought experiments to highlight some of the basic problems that you have to go through, (ex: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/)
If you you have a complete explanation of mind in physical term, please do share or write some papers on some journals so people can slow down on AIs and start building a mind.
Do you consider the fact that universities offer philosophy courses proof of authenticity? Are religious studies proof of god?
I consider non-analytic philosophy non-rigorous on the basis that the tools of thought are subjective, emotive and rely on juggling poorly defined concepts with little empirical verification.
> Maybe you do have a full explanatory theory of
Nice try. But the burden isn't on me to clarify dubious concepts. Do you have a full theory of the holy trinity?
> highlight some of the basic problems
> so people can slow down on AIs and start building a mind
pure philosophy will not solve these problems. can you point me to a philosophy paper that has made any progress in "building a mind"? What is the philosophical method for interrogation an empirical phenomenon?
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If you happen to be interested anytime, you can start with some very introductory resources I bothered to look up for you (most are video, they are easy to consume):
+ Donald Hoffman - computational theory of mind, someone closer to HN's demographic (https://youtu.be/cUhrK82seVY)
+ John Searl is good speaker so try his talk (https://youtu.be/rHKwIYsPXLg)
+ Some thought experiments (remember that thought experiments are not highlighters of issue, not complete arguments) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz0n_SjOttTdUVuUqefi6...
+ If you want to know what a complete technical work looks like, here's one I've been reading: http://a.co/2xF4PPB
+ Not agreed upon but a fun one to not include - about: what is philosophy: https://youtu.be/dp8aTYUrPi0
+ Science vs philosophy sort of video, slow but good discussion in there: https://youtu.be/9tH3AnYyAI8
In the unlikely case that you become very interested, you can look up "Introduction to philosophy of mind syllabus" and go through the materials and/or books of your choice on the subject.
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> What is the philosophical method for interrogation an empirical phenomenon
That would go into philosophy of science, which I have absolutely no familiarity with. I'm guessing, to a philosopher of science, 'empirical' isn't such a simple subject as recording something that scientist would call it. I did watch this very interesting video once about phil. of science: https://youtu.be/5ng-t0o7E-w
Really, how so? you're the one assuming the authority of philosophy, not me. How are my projections 'faulty'? You just keep pivoting, and claiming there to be some counterpoint, somewhere, even though you can't seem to supply them yourself.
> you can start with some very introductory resources
No thanks, implicit to this move is the suggestion that I need to read "very introductory" material. I don't.
> That would go into philosophy of science, which I have absolutely no familiarity with
Then you have no basis for arguing with me?
You may find the work of Patricia Churchland an interesting exception.
of course, if you encounter philosophers/scholars/believers who argue about whether the mind can be physical, it's a lost cause..
> broadly the point of philosophy
> In extremely simplistic historical terms
It doesn't mean that all areas have been proven, or that they all will be.
It is often that topics of philosophy have generated real outcomes, it may very well seem that philosophy -> real world outcome.
And consider the forum. It's not as if this is a university course in philosophy.
You seem to have found one thing to nitpick and ignored the rest of the response. Respectfully, I suggest you hang the ax back up, and stop pushing the pedal on the stone.
Huh?
"Universities are good at claiming credit, and little else."
This is absolutely not correct, and elucidates little but the prejudices of the answerer. Philosophy of language has /not/ become linguistics, philosophy of mind has /not/ become neuroscience, and only a subset of natural philosophy has become natural science.
The philosophical questions discussed by Socrates have elided the grasp of both dogmatic rigor and empiricism for twenty-four hundred years, and there seems to be absolutely no reason to expect this to change.
The answerer has either no actual grasp of the history or content of philosophy, or has simply decided, apparently by fiat, to discard all but the most narrow positivism-flavored slice as nonsense.