
Has there been progress in philosophy? - mathattack
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/05/has-there-been-progress-in-philosophy.html
======
normalhuman
I argue that we live in an anti-philosophy era. I'm not sure this will change
in our lifetimes, but I think it will necessarily change if we survive for
long enough.

To illustrate: there is common belief that metaphysics became irrelevant --
that it was replaced by science. This is, in itself, a metaphysical position,
and a misunderstand about what science is and does. Of course, reasoning about
what science is and does is part of philosophy. So is the discussion of
knowledge itself, what is knowable and how can we trust the various methods of
seeking more knowledge. A lot of stuff surrounding these topics happened in
the XX century.

The acritical use of the yardstick of "progress" as the ultimate value for
everything (along with its little cousin: "productivity") is, in itself, a
philosophical position. One that is currently maintained by social norms and
authority. Which does not mean it is "wrong". I am only claiming that it is
accepted by most people without any reflection.

Some boundaries of scientific knowledge are quite visible. For example,
consciousness. You might argue that consciousness emerges from matter
interacting in a complex way (emergentism), and you might be right, but this
is accepted as a serious scientific theory although it has zero content -- no
way to falsify empirically, no explanatory mechanism proposed.

Real philosophy is a very subversive endeavor at the moment. Perhaps it always
was. It's something for those who love knowledge, but not for those who expect
any public recognition.

~~~
lmm
> To illustrate: there is common belief that metaphysics became irrelevant --
> that it was replaced by science. This is, in itself, a metaphysical position

That argument doesn't seem valid. The notion that fairies don't exist is, in
itself, a fairyological position; still, few would accept that fairyology is a
legitimate field of endeavour.

> I am only claiming that it is accepted by most people without any
> reflection.

Many things are accepted by most people without much reflection. Often that's
because they really are as simple as they look.

> Some boundaries of scientific knowledge are quite visible. For example,
> consciousness. You might argue that consciousness emerges from matter
> interacting in a complex way (emergentism), and you might be right, but this
> is accepted as a serious scientific theory although it has zero content --
> no way to falsify empirically, no explanatory mechanism proposed.

What are the outstanding empirical questions about consciousness? As soon as
you go down to an empirical level, you find that no mysticism is necessary:
there are valid, interesting questions to be asked and answered, but they are
no more outside science than questions about how, say, protein folding works.

~~~
TelmoMenezes
> That argument doesn't seem valid. The notion that fairies don't exist is, in
> itself, a fairyological position; still, few would accept that fairyology is
> a legitimate field of endeavour.

You are using Popper's criterion for what constitutes a valid scientific
theory, but I think you misunderstand me.

My claim is that saying that theoretical physics is the ultimate explanation
of reality is a metaphysical position. Cosmology describes the big bang but it
does not answer the question "why is it so?". Maybe there is no answer. Maybe
it is not knowable. Maybe theoretical physics cannot have the total picture.
These are all metaphysical questions that seem perfectly legitimate to me. If
you are not allowed to ask or talk about these questions, I would say that you
just accepted a religious faith. I am not trying to sell you anything except
doubt and curiosity :)

> Many things are accepted by most people without much reflection. Often
> that's because they really are as simple as they look

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

> What are the outstanding empirical questions about consciousness? As soon as
> you go down to an empirical level, you find that no mysticism is necessary:
> there are valid, interesting questions to be asked and answered, but they
> are no more outside science than questions about how, say, protein folding
> works.

You are implicitly making the strong claim that knowledge can only be attained
through empiricism. This is clearly not the case. I know that I am conscious
and I assume that you are, but I cannot use empiricism to test this
hypothesis, not can you use it to verify that I am, indeed, conscious. So
there is something very fundamental -- in fact the only thing I know with 100%
certitude -- that cannot be empirically tested.

Your use of the word "mysticism" betrays the current bias against such
questions. I am not proposing any woo. I'm just curious. Even being curious
about certain topics nowadays gets you labelled and a "mystic". I think this
illustrates the point that I wanted to make in the beginning.

~~~
biswaroop
But you were talking about the mechanism of consciousness, not verifying
whether someone is conscious or not.

It may be impossible to verify if someone is conscious in the same way that I
know I am, but we can associate a set of behaviors with an intelligent
creature. If we empirically prove that those behaviors emerge from a
collection of neural impulses, then it takes a simple assumption (almost a
cognitive axiom) that the creature exhibiting those behaviors is conscious, to
conclude that emergentism has been empirically verified.

I feel like your position that emergentism is empirically impossible to verify
is itself a strong position, and attempts to define a boundary on science when
your stated goal is to place doubts on where the boundaries are. Yes it
requires a few assumptions, and yes those assumptions are impossible to verify
empirically. But then so are the mathematical axioms. We don't go around
saying "physics is impossible to empirically verify because mathematical
axioms are impossible to prove and are incomplete"

~~~
CuriouslyC
Try imagining yourself as a system of molecules all responding to their
environment. It is reasonable that your complexity might be a good indicator
of your potential for intelligent responses. I don't think that holds for your
consciousness though. If it did, that would imply either consciousness is a
spectrum or the universe has a hard coded on/off switch for consciousness. The
on/off hypothesis has problems with conservation of information, and if
consciousness is defined as "having an internal experience" it isn't clear how
that could be non-binary.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Did you say an on-off switch for consciousness? There may be one for humans.

[https://gwtoday.gwu.edu/gw-researchers-disrupt-
consciousness...](https://gwtoday.gwu.edu/gw-researchers-disrupt-
consciousness-electrical-stimulation)

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S152550501...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1525505014002017)

~~~
CuriouslyC
That area may be important for higher brain functioning and memory. I don't
think those are equivalent to consciousness though.

~~~
nickpsecurity
I think it's likely an emergent phenomenon. Still, being able to turn it on
and off with specific components hints they're either the source of
conciousness or a big part of it.

------
btilly
Calling things like Claude Shannon's work on information "progress in
philosophy" is like claiming Einstein's theory of General Relativity "progress
in linguistics".

It is only true in a way that makes it essentially meaningless. Unless the
people doing the work considered themselves philosophers, or drew on schools
of thought from philosophy, you're claiming credit to philosophy from
something that philosophy had nothing to do with.

~~~
empath75
Einstein's Theory of Relativity _was_ progress in philosophy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Mach#Philosophy_of_scien...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Mach#Philosophy_of_science)

~~~
btilly
Philosophy, yes. But not _linguistics_.

------
nabla9
Question of free will as a fundamental philosophical question is settled in a
sense that it made only sense together with dualism and soul (there are still
people who are dualists and believe in individual entity called soul. For them
the question remains).

Albert Einstein:

>I do not believe we can have any freedom at all in the philosophical sense,
for we act not only under external compulsion but also by inner necessity.
Schopenhauer’s saying— “A man can surely do what he wills to do, but he cannot
determine what he wills”—impressed itself upon me in youth and has always
consoled me when I have witnessed or suffered life’s hardships. This
conviction is a perpetual breeder of tolerance, for it does not allow us to
take ourselves or others too seriously; it makes rather for a sense of humor.

Modern version of free will has degenerated into question of deterministic vs
randomness and few other more vague branches. If human makes random decision,
he is making random decision not free decision. Calling it "free will" is just
a way to make the question sound more important.

~~~
foldr
>Question of free will as a fundamental philosophical question is settled in a
sense that it made only sense together with dualism and soul

It might be settled from your own point of view, but it's certainly a matter
of current philosophical controversy whether physicalism entails the absence
of free will.

~~~
visarga
The concept is a bag of very different meanings.

Define "free will" as acting mostly based on internal reasons and we all have
it. And this is the meaning of the word for the masses.

Define "free will" as a kind of supremacy of human will over physical
determinism and nobody has it.

~~~
foldr
I don't think anyone has ever defined free will as a supremacy of human will
over physical determinism.

------
outlace
In the spirit of Popper and Deutsch, I’d argue that philosophy makes progress
in the same way all branches of knowledge do: filtering out bad ideas.

The Popperian notion of scientific progress as an evolutionary process of
conjectures and refutations applies just as well to philosophy. Philosophy
gives us the tools to stamp out bad ideas and let the better ones rise to the
surface. (Better ~= survive refutation longer).

Without being able to run an experiment on a philosophical conjecture in most
cases, however, it is much more difficult to refute a purely philosophical
conjecture than a scientific one. But many old philosophical ideas have been
refuted on the basis of logical inconsistency or bad premises. So I’d expect
the kinds of philosophical ideas we debate today have a higher proportion of
truth than what was debated 500+ years ago.

------
ofrzeta
There can be no progress in philosophy because there's no clear definition or
consensus on neither the content, the objectives or the method of philosophy.
The very notion of "progress" implies a kind of scientific philosophy that is
a very recent (20th century) development.

In my view Analytic Philosophy (that I studied while at university) reduces
philosophical thought to linguistic and logical analysis and therefore is a
depleted form of philosophy.

If you accept the premise that philosophy should enrich people's lives
metaphysical and speculative thoughts clearly can't be excluded. This is also
what the (later) Wittgenstein thought, for instance.

With the recent return to ancient thinkers like the Stoa I see that people
might get more value out of philosophy. No progress there in the eternal
wisdom of humanity.

~~~
stepvhen
i think there is value in analytic philosophy, mostly when used as a tool to
clear up otherwise muddy issues. Case in point, Jay F. Rosenberg's "Thinking
Clearly About Death." In the second half he spends his time clearing up moral
arguments about euthenasia, letting die, and rational suicide, using analytic
philosophy. he only comes to a definite conclusion on the rational suicide
argument, but his clarifications are invaluable in the other cases.

------
MaxBarraclough
What do we mean by 'philosophy'? They don't seem to be referring to
professional philosophers in university philosophy departments, but instead to
patterns of thought widespread in society.

I see a comment there making much the same point -
[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/05/ha...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/05/has-
there-been-progress-in-philosophy.html#blog-comment-159821404)

~~~
xHopen
That comment totally got it. When S. Hawking said, philosophy is dead, he was
right, was death for him, the the gross of the world still doesn't understand
what essentially philosophy is, and more important, how it can help you,
therefore , when people will start questioning basic behevoirs and trying to
understand basic things then , philopsohy will have reach the end , which is
teaching the humans to think by themselves . At least this is what I think.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
No, that doesn't sound right at all. The second paragraph of the linked
comment has it right: professional philosophers are in the business of
clarifying fuzzy ideas, such as for example, what is meant by 'free will'?

University philosophy departments are _not_ in the business of teaching
critical-thinking skills to the masses. That is the responsibility of high-
schools. (Or at least, it should be.)

Indeed, the works of proper philosophers are generally completely unknown to
those who haven't formally studied philosophy. I doubt your average STEM
graduate could name 3 living philosophers. (I'm of the opinion that this says
bad things about what philosophy has become, but that's not the point.)

That's how we end up with articles like this, which claim to summarise the
recent progress of philosophy, but make no mention at all of _any_ real
philosophy, recent or not.

------
avip
There cannot be "progress" in a field without agreed upon mechanism to decide
what's "right" or "good".

In math, we have proofs. In science - experiments. For med we use double-
blinded tests. In tech - what works is king. Philosophy as a discipline is too
poorly designed to assign proper meaning to the term "progress".

~~~
woodruffw
One of the things that philosophy is _actively working on_ is determining what
"right" and "good" actually mean. There are epistemic/analytic senses ("the
answer on the test was right", "all bachelors are unmarried"), practical
senses ("it's good to run"), normative senses ("you _ought_ to run"), and so
on. A great deal of contemporary philosophy is invested in further delineating
these senses and explaining how they relate to our ontology, our metaethical
views, etc.

I've heard more than one person say, too, that philosophy progresses by
creating new subjects. When you consider that pretty much all of logic,
political thought, and biology come from the tradition started by Aristotle,
that claim sounds reasonable.

~~~
avip
Encouraging. And how is that going so far? If I meet a fellow Philosopher now,
can I prove him wrong in a way he'll accept?

~~~
woodruffw
It depends on what you mean by that. If someone presents a view that is
inconsistent with the accepted facts, then you you can "prove them wrong" in
that sense.

But that's not really the _point_ of philosophical inquiry -- the point is to
flesh out each view _entirely_ , and look for the best possible explanation of
the subject. Those kind of explanations don't always (or even usually) come
from outright rebuttals -- they come from synthesis, refinement of the
situations considered, improvements in clarity, etc.

------
visarga
I think the philosophy community (that was scared by behaviourism decades ago)
needs to take a good hard look at reinforcement learning and representation
learning. They can clarify many philosophical problems.

The hard-problem of consciousness was a detour, a wrong direction. It led to
nothing in the end - just wasted decades. It was dualism in disguise.

You don't even need the notion of consciousness - just use the concept of
agent, agent-environment relation and reinforcement - all being well defined,
sound concepts unlike consciousness which doesn't even have an official
definition.

~~~
carapace
"consciousness" has a definition: You.

It's a common misconception that there's no way to detect consciousness. It
has no qualities and so cannot be measured, but consciousness can be detected
by other consciousness. Since _you_ are conscious you can detect consciousness
in other beings.

What's actually happening is that what we call consciousness is unitary and
co-extensive with the entire Universe. When two people merge consciousness'
they are just increasing the bandwidth between themselves until they are
effectively a single organism, the separate self-models in each person merge
into an integrated self-model. People do this spontaneously sometimes when the
sex is really good.

~~~
visarga
I give you a straight forward notion that is scientific and concrete (the
notion of "agent") - in other words - all that the notion of consciousness
isn't, and you reply with new age hocus-pocus.

Of course you're free to think about the macrocosmic consciousness and the
tantric web of relations that tie subject to object. But that isn't getting us
any closer to understanding the topic. It's just a 1000 year old mostly
forgotten philosophy. Even in tantra, it is considered that the subject acts
through three energies or processes - iccha: will, jnana: knowledge and kriya:
action - the same three aspects that define an agent.

The agent approach has game theory and reinforcement learning to back it, with
real applications and results (such as Alpha Go). It does not presuppose a
spirit, it has no mind-body problem, and is testable (no "first person"
firewall around it). Given all that, I think the agent theory is much more
parsimonious that the spiritual and philosophical treating of consciousness.

~~~
carapace
> I think the philosophy community (that was scared by behaviourism decades
> ago) needs to take a good hard look at reinforcement learning and
> representation learning. They can clarify many philosophical problems.

I agree with that.

> The hard-problem of consciousness was a detour, a wrong direction. It led to
> nothing in the end - just wasted decades. It was dualism in disguise.

I don't agree with that.

> You don't even need the notion of consciousness - just use the concept of
> agent, agent-environment relation and reinforcement - all being well
> defined, sound concepts unlike consciousness which doesn't even have an
> official definition.

It does have a definition: you.

What is the goal or purpose for which "You don't even need the notion of
consciousness"?

> I think the agent theory is much more parsimonious that the spiritual and
> philosophical treating of consciousness.

To what end?

------
lainon
Anyone interested in this topic should read Chalmers' paper "Why Isn't There
More Progress in Philosophy?"

[http://consc.net/papers/progress.pdf](http://consc.net/papers/progress.pdf)

------
alehul
If I'm understanding correctly, it seems similar to saying that there's been
progress in math because there's been progress in physics [1] and economics,
both of which are largely based on math.

I think it would be more accurate to differentiate between "progress in other
fields that utilize well-known, age-old x" and "progress in x."

[1] Some progress in physics _has_ been as a result of new discoveries in
math, such as the strong cosmic censorship conjecture being disproved recently

------
Xophmeister
What's special, from a philosophical point of view, about Singapore? It's
number 12 in the list, but is not explained why, besides the subclause of "in
fact most other places/polities in the world." So, specifically, what's
special about the Singaporean government?

~~~
wenc
If you've been following Marginal Revolution for a while, you'll know that
Tyler Cowen (who has libertarian leanings) is endlessly fascinated by
Singapore. It's one of the most free-market places in the world, yet it has
huge government ("a high quality bureaucracy", as Tyler terms it).

This pushes against the thinking of libertarians just slightly. The qualifier
though is that for this to work the government has to be good -- and once you
go beyond the size of a city-state, that becomes more difficult to achieve.

Also, Tyler may not fully grasp the liberty you have to give up to achieve
such a government in Singapore because he has never lived there.

[1]
[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/08/wh...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/08/why-
singapore-is-special.html)

[2]
[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/my...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/my-
worries-about-singapore.html)

[3]
[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/12/ho...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/12/how-
to-visit-singapore.html)

~~~
sp332
Disneyland with the Death Penalty (1993)
[https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/](https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/)

It's illegal to buy gum in Singapore without a prescription. You may like
Singapore - here's a more positive take by Dan Sivers
[https://sivers.org/sg14](https://sivers.org/sg14) \- but I've never heard it
described as "free market" let alone anything that would appeal to a
libertarian as such.

~~~
Xophmeister
That was a really good read. Wired should pay Gibson to write a 25-years-later
follow-up!

~~~
wenc
You should also know that that Gibson article is a one-sided view that was
written on the basis of a very short stay in Singapore.

It's an entertaining opinion piece to be sure, but if you want to derive
anything useful from it, I would advise reading it critically.

------
maze-le
I think, philosophy has not answered all the questions posed by Plato and
Aristotle but it has put up quite some more interesting questions since then.
Science has answered some of these questions -- Nameley in the fields of
astronomy, biology and geology wich was considered natural philosophy in
ancient times.

For anyone interested in this topic, I hereby plug one of my favourite
podcasts: [https://historyofphilosophy.net/](https://historyofphilosophy.net/)

------
tim333
There has been a lot of progress in the questions that have been considered
philosophical but as soon as they get answered they are no longer considered
philosophy. So something like how did all the animals get here or how many
primes are there become biology and maths. Some of the current questions
philosophers ponder like what is the nature of consciousness or what is
quantum weirdness about will likely go the same way eventually.

------
MikkoFinell
Free will has been settled though, hasn't it? The best case for it these days
seem to be a language game called "compatibilism" where you redefine free will
to mean something vague about acting according to motivations, and when
someone accepts that definition you turn around and say "Aha! We do have free
will after all!"

~~~
Symmetry
A more charitable way of putting it is that naive understandings of free will
are incoherent but if we're going to have to make up a definition of free will
we might as well do so while maintaining as much of traditional distinctions
between free will and non-free will as possible.

For instance if I decide hit someone and do so that might be considered
blameworthy. If someone else decides to pick me up and throw me at that person
then that wouldn't be blameworthy of me. Traditionally you'd distinguish
between these by invoking free will and I think that's a useful distinction to
make.

~~~
MikkoFinell
Well, since we are motivated by self preservation it might make sense to talk
about blameworthiness when we figure out whether to lock you up or the person
who threw you, or to cut out the brain tumor that caused you to suddenly
become aggressive. Invoking free will still does not make any sense though,
because you cannot choose your past, and I don't think you can argue that the
past doesn't have any causal influence over you.

~~~
Symmetry
The notion that something is only free will if it uncaused is not at all the
compatibalist position. The general compatibilist position is that an action
is done with free will of a person if the causal chain it is part of runs
through that person's intent for the action to occur, or conventionally that
person's 'will'.

If you choose to define an action as representing free will only if it is
uncaused then first, you've made up a definition entirely at odds with the
normal English usages and, second, your definition is useless because it only
cuts actions into those actions that exist and those that don't and we already
have a perfectly good word for that so the new one is redundant.

~~~
MikkoFinell
Okay I accept your compatibilist definition that actions are done with free
will despite being part of a causal chain. Congratulations, you won the
language game, and can proceed to claim we agreed free will is real. You now
have as much free will as a rock rolling down a hill.

> If you choose to define an action as representing free will only if it is
> uncaused then first, you've made up a definition entirely at odds with the
> normal English usages

I was trying to be precise, and assumed you agree that something that's part
of a causal chain cannot be reasonably be called "free" by any common sense
definition. You can't change the past after all, can you? If not then you're a
product of circumstance just like everything else in the universe.

~~~
Symmetry
I think that if I'm walking down the road on a hot day and get thirsty and
then I decide to buy a soda then my purchase is of my free will despite being
cause by the heat, cause by society teaching me about buying things, etc. And
I insist that if you told a non-philospher I bought it of my own free will
they would agree. So I think you're entirely wrong to say that something that
is part of a causal chain cannot be called free.

Now, if you told a normal person that someone in that circumstance couldn't
have done anything except buy the soda they would agree that would mean I
didn't have free will but they wouldn't see why. To them the "My decisionness"
and "Could have been differentness" are the same thing. But philosophically we
have to choose one or the other and it's both more useful, in terms of carving
reality at the joints, and in greater accordance with common usage to pick "My
decisionness" as what we interpret "free will" to mean.

I'm sorry I'm not directly addressing your point about changing the past, but
that's because I'm still rather confused by how it relates to free will.
Certainly I'd say that nobody can change the past.

~~~
MikkoFinell
> So I think you're entirely wrong to say that something that is part of a
> causal chain cannot be called free.

Yes you can call it free since you have defined free to mean acting according
to your motivations, just like I predicted in my original comment. But since
your behavior is caused by your motivations, and your motivations have it's
own causes, and so on, I really don't see what you actually win (except the
language game) by describing the process as free. It's about as free as the
last cogwheel in a machine.

> I'm sorry I'm not directly addressing your point about changing the past,
> but that's because I'm still rather confused by how it relates to free will.

Suppose your will is a function of your brain, and suppose that your brain is
a function of gene expression and environmental stimuli. Suppose you are
unable to choose your genes, and suppose that you are unable to alter the
history of environmental stimuli. It follows that the causes of your will are
outside your control. If you don't control your will, then your will is not
free.

------
dlwdlw
Philosophy i think is the same question and message repeated in each era in
the language of that era. (Modern lingo and memes and such)

The question is “what’s the point”.

Philosophies that get overly powerful turn into religions. Original
questioning rooted in science (refusal to look away from reality) can become
dogma. Yin becomes yang and back again.

Dogma, while safe, doesnt evolve and eventually is disconnected from
modernity. (Not using the right memes and lingo anymore)

The same message can be right or wrong depending on how it is said and in
which cultural era it is said.

A strong belief in having already gotten the point or belief that execution is
the only thing left leaves no room for philosophy which is about the wiggle
room of constant flux.

The current era is a bit strange in that science itself has become a sort of
dogma. “scientism” masquerading as true science is another way of putting it.
There’s a belief that certain people, idiots and infidels hold back everyone.
The yin blames the yang and so becomes it.

~~~
maldusiecle
> Philosophy i think is the same question and message repeated in each era in
> the language of that era. (Modern lingo and memes and such) > The question
> is “what’s the point”.

In fact, very little of what philosophers are interested in can be fit into
this reductive sort of question--and in fact, several major philosophers could
be characterized as specifically trying to take that sort of question out of
the realm of philosophy.

------
developer2
The comments here are largely what I expected to find: people throwing around
the names and quotes of famous philosophers from centuries past, as though
it's a pissing contest to see who has read the most books on the topic. Modern
discussions around philosophy are effectively a circle jerk: person 'A'
regurgitates a quote from one philosopher, and then person 'B' is expected to
regurgitate another quote to counter.

While the historical works are an important piece of the puzzle, it would be
nice if more folks could avoid equating "studying philosophy" with "literally
studying existing books on philosophy - and nothing else".

------
devinhelton
It seems what happened is that all the promising/useful areas of inquiry from
ancient philosophy have since become their own fields. "Natural philosophy"
became physics/biology/chemistry and so forth. Thus university philosophy
departments were basically left with the dregs -- lots of debates over non-
falsifiable claims, lots of debates caused by poor definitions of words.
Ethics is the only subfield of modern philosophy I can think of that seems
useful and interesting to me. Maybe political philosophy too, but that has
mainly moved to the political science department.

~~~
zwkrt
doesn't it seem like hubris to assume that philosophy has stopped producing
"successful" fields? Computer science broke off less than 100 years ago...

~~~
foldr
And one might add that the branching off point was some _extremely_ esoteric
work in the foundations of mathematics and philosophy of language that would
have struck most people at the time as entirely speculative and useless.

------
DanielBMarkham
I agree with the author that there has been progress. Oddly enough, the more
important philosophy becomes, the more invisible it is to people -- even the
people making the progress! The ideas are the air, the questions are being
asked, and leading practitioners, many times simply from being part of the
environment, pick up the conversation in a much better place than they would
have, say, 50 years ago.

The interesting question is the reverse: where has the progress of philosophy
failed or gone backwards? (I imagine asking and talking about such a question
would be quite controversial!)

------
perpetualcrayon
I was a philosophy major. The first few sentences struck a chord with me. I
had a discussion with a professor. We were discussing Plato. He questioned why
I was having issues with the topics being taught. I told him "because he
(Plato) is wrong".

Later I came to realize that we learn the history of philosophy not because
we're stuck in the dark ages. We study it because it provides context, in one
way or another, to what we believe today and why we do.

------
tomtimtall
Philosophers always seem to intent in discussing why philosophy has value.
While every piece of science which moved onwards and away from philosophers
are intent on showing why they have value.

It also seems just laughable when philosophers try to impose their field on
others they know nothing about. Like philosophy in the multiverse or quantum
mechanics. It boils down to “I don’t understand this thing, likely others
don’t either so they need someone uniquely skilled like me to explain it to
them!”

You never see them actually going into the concrete problems of other fields
like: The philosophy of the Navier-stokes equation in light of new more
efficient micro fluidics chips”. Philosophers thrive on the boundary between
what we know really well and what we know but not that well. And that boundary
is shrinking. That’s why there is a feeding frenzy in philosophers discussing
recent advances in deep connected graphs of simple computing nodes for
modeling and classification, from people who don’t even know what a a matrix
is and postulating laughable things like that’s these networks will
spontaneously develop their own understanding of philosophy purely based on
the fact that’s the space they exist in is called something to do with
intelligence.

~~~
erikpukinskis
I sort of agree with you. Philosophers I knew in grad school were somewhat of
dilletantes who didn’t want to commit to becoming an expert within a single
scientific epistemology.

But... I don’t know, that feels a little uncharitable too.

I think the charitable reading is that yes, a philosopher of science doesn’t
know the science as well as the scientist. They are not as close to the
cutting edge of what we know....

But what they can do is look closer at how the scientist knows. And what other
people who are not that scientist know. And from there situate the knowledge
in a wider context. Not knowledge the universe but knowledge about knowings.

------
OrganicMSG
Well, we have progressed to philosophers like John Gray (the author of Straw
Dogs, not the relationship counselor who wrote that Mars/Venus thingy), though
he would presumably argue that we haven't, given his views on progress.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmRBHCclzZk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmRBHCclzZk)

------
api
The comments on that site are pretty cringey. Of course most comment sections
are like an intellectual version of one of those gore sites that shows you a
procession of photos of mangled bodies or grotesque carcinomas surgically
removed from patients. If there has been progress it has not trickled down.

~~~
namarie
Only on that site? Most comments on this thread are quite cringey as well to
my ears...

~~~
api
I still visit HN because its comments are above average. Some of the topical
subreddits are decent too. Of course above average is not saying much.

------
xamuel
I'll take this opportunity to plug a paper of mine, "A machine that knows its
own code", as a humble example of recent progress made in philosophy :)

[https://philarchive.org/archive/ALEAMT](https://philarchive.org/archive/ALEAMT)

------
neokantian
If science is statements about facts, then philosophy is statements about
other statements, the only requirement being that these statements are non-
contradictory.

That makes mathematics just a subdivision in philosophy, in which statements
about statements must be (axiomatically) derived exclusively from a completely
explicit starting point. Since math mostly took over logic and epistemology
(as computability), general philosophy has indeed lost its most important
subjects.

Philosophy is simply meant to shrink and downsize. Reasoning without any
particular method gets naturally replaced by reasoning with one. If philosophy
had grown, that would not have been a good sign. It would not have been
progress.

~~~
arf
> the only requirement being that these statements are non-contradictory.

> That makes mathematics just a subdivision in philosophy, in which statements
> about statements must be (axiomatically) derived exclusively from a
> completely explicit starting point.

The main problem with philosophy is exactly the reason which makes above
wrong. A global definition of 'contradiction' is not possible, Nor is even
something that resembles a consensus to a sufficiently strong degree to make
it meaningful.

This is precisely the reason why you can have radically opposing schools of
thought that are simultaneously existing. The trivial example being
mathematical empiricism or coherentism, both of which directly oppose the
axiomatic approach you've provided, from different angles.

A more absurd example is to say it's never the case that all philosophers
would agree "P and not P" is not true (including the sentence itself), let
alone it being false (i.e. negation as failure), because the value of "P and
not P" is dependent upon your theory of truth and no global theory of truth
exist without G.E. Moorean appeals to common-sense.

------
ASalazarMX
In my very limited experience, the few philosophers I've known are teachers or
earn their living doing something else. This tells me philosophy is not
terribly practical, at least as it is being taught now. It is my impression
that they love debating between themselves about the most impractical
subjects, writing their thoughts in long form, and being extravagant.

I am most likely prejudiced because, as an engineer, my education has always
been utilitarian. Maybe we really are in an anti-philosophy era and I am just
one more ignorant.

~~~
namarie
Is ethics an impractical subject?

------
mrleiter
Asking for progress in philosophy is the wrong way to approach it. Philosophy
is a domain that lives on exploring new ideas, asking different questions,
refining answers.

A more appropriate approach in my opinion would be to ask if there has been a
consistent evolution in philosophy? Do ideas and areas build on its
predecessors. Do they take reference?

Another approach would be asking whether philosophy has impacted mankind in
any way that is understandable? Each era had its philosophers and trains of
thought.

------
nyc111
> My opinion is that there is significant and ongoing progress in
> philosophy...

> 16\. Much greater incorporation of the insights of women into philosophy...

How is the "incorporation of the insights of women into philosophy" a progress
_in philosophy_? This is not a progress in a philosophical subject; it is not
a discovery in philosophy; it is not even a philosophical topic; at best it is
political correctness.

------
ozy
In the past, philosophy had a lot of ground to cover. Today science covers all
the ground on what is, what exists, what can be modeled. Philosophy only the
ground of what matters.

For example, free will is entirely a science question. How to interpret what
science can tell us so far, and how or if it matters, that is a philosophical
question.

------
nixpulvis
Might depend on what you mean by progress. Culturally we are very far from
even where we were in the age of my parents. In terms more like that from the
sciences or academic philosophers I can't say, though I'd guess they'd argue
"Yes!".

------
acchow
On a related note, I still love this interview: Scott Aaronson on
Philosophical Progress:

[https://intelligence.org/2013/12/13/aaronson/](https://intelligence.org/2013/12/13/aaronson/)

------
noeticsociety
Pierre Grimes and the Noetic Society - Arthur O. Lovejoy's "The Great Chain of
Being"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNMWl9cky84](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNMWl9cky84)

------
Ice_cream_suit
Has there been progress in art?

~~~
danieltillett
Interesting question. No if you mean aesthetics, yes if you mean techniques.

------
dandare
I was recently wondering about the same. I regularly hear about breakthroughs
in math, physics, biology, chemistry, you name it. I never heard about a
breakthrough or significant new ide in philosophy.

------
forapurpose
Why is Tyler Cowan, an economist, trying to answer this question himself? Why
doesn't he interview a philosopher or several? Would we read a philosopher
talk about progress in economics? Will Cowan next address progress in software
engineering? There's a real intellectual arrogance to the post.

~~~
TheCowboy
I think people generally don't speak well on the topic of economics, but it
would be fine if an informed philosopher inquired about "progress" in
economics. The topic of the philosophy of economics itself often is ignored or
swept under the rug, and that's a shame. Economics has a lot to offer and
isn't just what the ideological conceit of the moment deems it to be.

Additionally, people should show an interest in fields that are external to
their own narrow specialty, and ask meaningful questions to help them
understand.

The perspectives and methods of economics could definitely provide some
insight on the topic of software engineering. It's a historically recent
phenomenon, and there is plenty to be studied about its impact.

~~~
forapurpose
> it would be fine if an informed philosopher inquired about "progress" in
> economics

Inquiring is different than answering the question yourself by naming things
easily accessible to economists - it implies that Cowan doesn't know anymore
about philosophy than I do, and that his standard of 'progress' is 'things
that I find useful'.

------
guilhas
Philosophy is great. I go a lot to a meetup.com group in my area.

Very underfunded field. Questioning the status quo or each other is not very
well accepted today.

------
valarauca1
Wow this post really pisses me off.

A lot of these issues are addressed in Continental Philosophy which never
really caught on in America because of its association with Hegel and Marx.

I wonder why the author doesn’t... oh American Economics professor... no a
philosophy prof that’s why.

------
sethish
Philosophy is sophistry. I like R. Scott Bakker's take on the semantic
apocalypse, and the lack of progress in philosophy.
[https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/what-is-the-
semant...](https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/what-is-the-semantic-
apocalypse/)

~~~
TooBrokeToBeg
Arguing about the progress in philosophy is sophistry. There's been plenty of
progress that has affected lots of lives. It just doesn't happen to fit
someone else's narratives or views.

------
cleong
No, philosophy as a academic field has failed. It's common knowledge for those
in the field to know that none of the primary problems of philosophy has been
solved despite being worked on for 2000 years. What every academic tries to do
now is work on the secondary problems.

~~~
stepvhen
could you clairify the following: what is an example of a primary problem?
what is an example of a secondary problem? what is failure by your definition?
what state would a problem be in if it were "solved"? is a problem solved when
everybody agrees on a solution? what, then, happens when a contrarian states
otherwise? e.g. parmenides was one of the first monists, and that was more or
less not acknowledged for a long time after plato, but has since come back
into vogue somewhat; was the problem of "is our universe one" solved, and then
unsolved?

~~~
cleong
Look into every sub field of philosophy and the debates that have gone on
about certain topics for thousands of years. For example, the mind-body
problem in epistemology.

To clarify, no the field is not based on social consensus but logic. How do we
explain certain things? For example, Kant believed that logic as a field had
been "solved" in the sense there needs no more progress in the field as the
techniques developed were sufficient to solve logic problems. Until Godel came
along and improved on logic in the 20th century. Solving in this sense is a
technical definition not the social one.

------
131012
Why Singapore? (no rhetorics here, simply curious)

------
shadowtree
There is a general cultural malaise that started with WW1 and its massive
effect on Western society. WW2 then iterated on it, remnants of that old
culture escaped to the US to power Hollywood, Broadway, Universities for a
while - but this is coming to an end too.

Visit European museums, look at art right up to WW1. The massive meat grinder,
the fall of empires and its cultural structures gave way to capitalist
societies that churn faster, which benefits technology and consumption, but is
detrimental for non-profit long term projects.

The Sistine Chapel will not happen again, anytime soon.

If it happens, it will come out of Asia. Western society lit itself on fire.

------
gaius
Not since Nietzsche. Every philosopher afterwards has merely been quibbling
over semantics. It’s a dead field but one whose proponents as a side effect
tend to be good enough at rhetorical tricks that they still get funding. If
every university philosophy department were to be abolished overnight nothing
of value would be lost.

~~~
kolbe
What about the pragmatists?

------
ryanx435
Yes. Jordan Peterson is proving a framework that connects the seemingly
disparate philosophies of religion and of the modern scientific.

------
trumptr
yes. ayn rand and jordan peterson.

------
trumptr
yes. Ayn Rand and Jordan Peterson.

