
What Is the Public Value of Philosophy? - bitbot28
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-m-parsons/what-is-the-public-value-of-philosophy_b_7018022.html
======
sktrdie
I feel differently from most people in this thread. Academia is not industry,
and is not really driven by a capitalist market. You can debate that
philosophy, and many other theoretical fields, have very little value in the
market, and perhaps they do. But in reality, the richest countries are the
ones that have strong research curriculums, with people studying things that
are not immediately beneficial or even useful.

I'd want to live in a society where people can work in all kinds of fields
that study nature and the human intellect, and not just jobs that are needed
because of some economical reason.

~~~
javert
Having a lot of professors living on the public dime and not contributing
anything back is the _effect_ of a rich (and decadent) society, not the
_cause_.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
There's a vast difference between maximizing society's total productivity and
maximizing the amount of time people spend working on increasing economic
output. Namely, the amount of technology used.

Since most of us on Hacker News work in some form of technology, I'd say its
in our economic interest not to apply terms of moral condemnation like
"decadent" to forms of society that generate more demand for our skills ;-).

~~~
javert
I'm not saying that philosophy professors don't increase economic output. I'm
saying they don't contribute anything _at all_.

In general---I think there are some good ones. And I think a lot of the
contribute positively through their teaching, just not their research and
publications. But note that the primary focus and goal of professors at top-
tier universities _is_ research.

Also, I disagree with your dichotomy between "economic output" and "society's
total productivity," but that's a separate issue.

Also, I'm not going to be dishonest for the sake of narrow economic interest,
which is what you are asking me to do.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Also, I'm not going to be dishonest for the sake of narrow economic interest,
which is what you are asking me to do.

Actually, I was being ironic. I don't believe that "decadent" is _really_ a
genuine moral condemnation at all, instead merely meaning, "A society that
doesn't suit my survivalist tastes because it is too civilized." Or at least,
that's what I observe about common applications of the word "decadent".

------
jseliger
I'm surprised no one has yet cited pg's "How to do Philosophy"
([http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html](http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html)).
I like his implicit explanation: the healthier parts of what used to be
philosophy have been turned into the sciences (and some social, experimental
sciences) while the less healthy parts have remained (disconnected questions
about what reality is, which feels like a variant of "How many angels can
dance on the head of a pin?).

Most of the comments on this thread so far feel like defenses of science,
rather than philosophy (e.g. "Philosophy is valuable when it is directed to
the inquiry of truth for the sake of discovering truth").

~~~
keshuv
Meditation at Lagunitas

by Robert Hass

[http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177014](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177014)

------
taylorscollon
Not sure this is the strongest argument for philosophy. Philosophy is valuable
when it is directed to the inquiry of truth for the sake of discovering truth,
not for some immediately practical application. This sort of exercise pushes
against the limits of thought, and that leads to interesting and important
places.

This isn't just true in philosophy. In the early 20th century physicists
announced they had solved almost all of the problems in physics. One thing
they hadn't got around to yet was figuring out the position of electrons at a
given time. But it was popular to regard this is a trivial problem. How they
bonded was a more practical issue, and they had solved that one. But those who
pushed on with this seemingly trivial problem discovered that it wasn't
trivial at all.

Turning unknown unknowns into known unknowns is not necessarily practical, but
it is certainly valuable.

------
yummyfajitas
I'm normally the sort to find things like philosophy useless, but I think
philosophy might be an exception to my general trend.

I think that _if philosophy education works_ (a big if), then it will be very
valuable in that it teaches people to recognize legitimate questions and
encouraging them to think rationally about them.

Very often on HN, a story will drive a lot of comments pushing a moral point.
But the supposedly moral point is usually just a popularity contest and
posturing - "I hate the person doing this SOO MUCH!!!" or "I'm so empathetic
for supporting this position". And any attempt to get past that to actual
moral philosophy nearly always results in nothing more than ad-hominems being
thrown and completely emotional (and inconsistent) arguments being made.

Other issues which often have a fundamentally philosophical element that are
relevant here include many issues of measurement (e.g., job interviews and
hiring).

------
eli_gottlieb
My problem with philosophy is that it appears to have few standards for what
constitutes a correct answer to a question, or for what constitutes a well-
formulated question.

So, take, for example, theories of truth. Last I've heard, "correspondence
theories" (a sentence is "true" when it corresponds to certain states of the
external world, called "facts") are actually considered very problematic,
precisely because they leave little way of characterizing "truth" in such "a
priori" fields of knowledge as mathematics and philosophy. Instead, what's
currently popular are minimal or deflationary theories of truth (a sentence "X
is true" means _just_ X). Problem is, this theory appears to say nothing at
all about truth; as Wittgenstein lambasted, it only says something about
words.

So yes, if I say that "X is true" and "X" are equivalent sentences, I've said
something about sentences, but I haven't said a damned thing about the
contents of the statement X itself!

Mathematical statements, at least analytically speaking, are mostly actually
hypotheticals conditioned on an enumerable set of axioms and a formal logic;
with those, we can use a coherence theory of truth, in which a statement is
true iff it does not contain an internal contradiction. But then you've thrown
out most forms of mathematical Platonism, which is, and I do loathe this, the
most popular philosophical interpretation of mathematics.

(I loathe it because _mathematical_ Platonism is so often used as a starting
example to support a fully general _philosophical_ Platonism, in which
statements about theories of truth or morality or knowledge are made in
reference to Philosophical Abstract Objects. These have no extension inside
space-time and also are not any kind of mental or computational manipulations
or constructions
([http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/)),
and are taken as necessarily constituting the only _correct_ answers to
philosophical questions, thus neatly yielding a kind of unique epistemological
authority for the philosophical process of arguing and analyzing sentences,
which is utterly absurd from a naturalistic perspective.)

------
vorg
The article by an American reflects a less respectful attitude towards
Philosophy in the U.S. compared to other English-speaking countries such as
the U.K. Remember how the book and movie "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's
Stone" were retitled "Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone" for the U.S.
markets, perhaps catering to an American preference for instant gratification
(sorcery) over abstract thought (philosophy).

------
amelius
The problem with philosophy is that it seems to make progress only very
slowly. As an outsider, it seems that their fundamental questions are still at
the same level as those of Socrates and Plato. It would have been nice if this
article had addressed this issue. For instance, by discussing what are the
most important insights of the last decade.

~~~
barrkel
Don't underestimate philosophy's power to change the world. Marx's critique of
capitalism had a dramatic effect, for example.

~~~
czzarr
Kant's, Hegel's and Nietszche's too

~~~
taylorscollon
Aristotle gave us logic, which is the basis for rational inquiry in all
fields. Also an important contribution.

~~~
hueving
Because people couldn't think before Aristotle? Formalizing something is very
different than 'giving it to humanity'.

~~~
taylorscollon
Gravity exerted force before Newton formalized its effect. I think Newton's
contribution was still valuable.

~~~
hueving
Right, but we didn't pretend like there wasn't something that brought you back
down when you jumped until newton's work.

------
the_cat_kittles
Whenever this question comes up about _anything_, it seems like people forget
that if the people who do it enjoy it, that is a big public value.

------
copsarebastards
Philosophy has become disconnected with real-life concerns. Philosophers
operate in a void, working on problems without context. Attempts to connect
this work with real-life concerns usually involve taking an idea developed
without context and trying to apply it to a field (computer ethics, philosophy
of scientific methods, etc.).

This works poorly because the philosopher doesn't understand the field. A
computer scientist is better qualified to talk about the ethics of Ladar
Levison not cooperating with the FBI[1] than an ethicist. A chemist is more
qualified to talk about the scientific method than an epistemologist.
Specializations have eroded the area of expertise of philosophy to the point
that philosophy is rarely relevant.

There's just no case I can think of where talking to a philosopher is likely
to inform my decision-making process more than talking to an expert in the
actual subject.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit)

~~~
hyperpape
How much actual philosophy of science written since 1970 have you read? Right
now, a constant conflict is that (many) non-philosophers of science think
philosophy of science has gotten too empirical and too focused on particular
scientific issues, to the detriment of philosophy (I don't believe this, but
it shows how out of touch you are). Grad students in Phil Sci are expected to
do graduate coursework in the scientific fields they study, and completing a
masters is quite common.

As for working scientists, many have brilliant insights into the practice of
science and its epistemology, but very many working scientists will offer you
a warmed over version of Karl Popper as their philosophy of science.

~~~
copsarebastards
How much of the philosophy of science written since 1970 was written by
philosophers in the abstract, and how much of it was written by scientists?
Just look at the "philosophers" mentioned on downthread from here; Carlo
Rovelli: theoretical physicist, Noam Chomsky: linguist and cognitive
scientist, Imre Lakatos: mathematician. All these people were formally trained
in a more specialized field and later went into philosophy. This supports my
point: a person who knows a specialized field is far more qualified to
innovate in philosophy than someone who is philosophizing in a void and trying
to apply it ex post facto.

I perhaps should have worded my post differently to clarify that my post is a
criticism of philosophers (academics specializing in philosophy), not
philosophy as it is more broadly practiced.

> Right now, a constant conflict is that (many) non-philosophers of science
> think philosophy of science has gotten too empirical and too focused on
> particular scientific issues, to the detriment of philosophy

I know, and that's exactly why I'm disagreeing with these people. As far as
I'm concerned, philosophy that _hasn 't_ specialized in this way is mostly
useless.

~~~
hyperpape
I feel confident in saying that most of it was written by philosophers. I
don't have anything to cite for that, unfortunately.

When you say you're not criticizing philosophy, just academic philosophers, I
wonder who are the people doing philosophy outside of academic philosophy that
you're talking about?

------
ahallock
I would love to force people to pay for things I love to do. There's nothing
wrong with teaching philosophy, but stealing money to do so is wrong and lazy.
What if I'd rather my money go toward cancer research? This guy would deny me
that opportunity. He's saying his preferences are more important than mine.
There are plenty of ways to make money teaching philosophy: donations (see FDR
on Youtube as an example), books, speaking at conferences--but that takes hard
work and risk. And if you can't make a living, why not teach philosophy for
free as an avocation? Contribute as if it's open source -- for the better of
the community. Stealing money from people and justifying it after the fact
seems unphilosophical.

~~~
littletimmy
Are you seriously making the argument that taxation is stealing?

~~~
throwy
He is saying that bad allocation of taxes is stealing.

