
First, Let's Shoot All the Philosophers - wtn
http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2011/04/first-lets-shoot-all-philosophers.html
======
F_J_H
From the article: _This is a key point to understand: philosophy, as a
discipline, does not provide answers._

Well, notwithstanding the fact that it certainly provides _some_ answers,
philosophy is more oriented towards learning _how_ to come up with answers,
and more importantly, learning how to recognize if the answer you’ve come up
with is right or wrong. I have forgotten much of what my first year philosophy
professor said, but one thing that has always stuck with me was his opinion
that “If we didn’t have philosophers, we’d still be burning witches.”

That philosophy is useless because it in not practical is the same sort of
thinking as expressed by reluctant students taking algebra and pre-calculus:
_Why do we need to know this stuff? It’s not like I will use it in everyday
life._ True, for the most part, many things you learn in a math course you
will not need to live your everyday life. However, learning these things
teaches you how to think, how to reason, and that answers can be derived by
methodically applying known principles to discover the unknown. Athletes
perform many exercises in the gym using motions and machines they will never
encounter in their respective sport, but the point is of course these
exercises help to make the body stronger and build endurance. The same
principle applies to philosophy.

To me, the spirit of philosophy is asking “why” when everyone just accepts,
much like the student in this anecdote:

One day when I was a junior medical student, a very important Boston surgeon
visited the school and delivered a great treatise on a large number of
patients who had undergone successful operations for vascular reconstruction.
At the end of the lecture, a young student at the back of the room timidly
asked, “Do you have any controls?” Well, the great surgeon drew himself up to
his full height, hit the desk, and said, “Do you mean did I not operate on
half of the patients?” The hall grew very quiet then. The voice at the back of
the room very hesitantly replied, “Yes, that’s what I had in mind.” Then the
visitor’s fist really came down as he thundered, “Of course not. That would
have doomed half of them to their death.” God, it was quiet then, and one
could scarcely hear the small voice ask, “Which half?” -Dr. E. E. Peacock, Jr

~~~
tel
I don't mean to flame, but in the light and sense of that quotation, weren't
controls invented by scientists and refined by statisticians both concerned
with effective experimental design? There weren't philosophers involved until
way later.

I find there's some important common ground between science and epistemology
that can be talked about, though practicing scientists, in practice, never
need to tread there.

~~~
jackfoxy
One can argue philosophers, or a philosopher,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon>, developed the scientific method.
Bacon and Galileo were contemporaries. I don’t know if either influenced the
other at all. Maybe they each independently discovered modern science.

~~~
davesims
Galileo was a first-rate philosopher of science as well as a scientist. He was
a contemporary and co-belligerent with Bacon in laying the foundation of
modern science. His role as a serious philosopher is often overlooked.

------
yummyfajitas
The author makes an unjustified claim: _I don't know what the tariff for
higher education at UNLV is nowadays, but you can be damn sure that every
$50,000-a-year Philosophy major at Harvard is subsidizing a hell of a lot of
electron microscopes for the glamorous—and much less profitable—Molecular
Biology majors._

This is nonsense. The materials scientist who bought a $1M electron microscope
received a grant for roughly $1.8M. The university took $800K or so as
"overhead".

I wish more people were aware of what congress is really funding when they
claim to give money to science.

~~~
sophacles
Ahh yes, classic argument technique: reply to nonsense with nonsense[1]!
Fantastic move. Oh wait.. there is one thing tho, which I presume you're OK
with: it's a total logical fallacy.

The nonsense here is the perfectly reasonable part of overhead, like that it
covers electricity for the microscope, legal, hr, accounting and so on offices
that need to be done for any organization, buildings to house the stuff,
people to keep the lab clean, and so on. The 40ish% overhead you describe is
pretty darn low, considering the overhead percentages in a lot of companies
that take contracts are 2-4x over materials and skilled labor time.

~~~
rflrob
Regardless of whether 40-70% of grant money going to overhead is reasonable,
there is still the point that most science is funded by medium-large scale
grants, and no doubt some of that overhead goes towards maintaining facilities
used for teaching Molecular Biology undergrads.

I'm not sure what fraction of a humanities professor comes from the University
vs. outside funding agencies, but it's at least a commonly held opinion in the
sciences that research money is subsidizing humanities instruction, rather
than vice versa. Anyone have any detailed analysis to the contrary?

~~~
sophacles
A couple of things here that suggest that there may be more going on than your
simplistic explanation (but no i don't have numbers):

1\. Humanities (e.g. arts programs) along with sports are large generators of
alumni donations. These are certainly large chunks of money that aren't even
considered "science funding saves the world" type thinking.

2\. Humanities and other non-science programs contribute to the overall
prestige of a school. Whether or not this is deserved is different from the
truth of it -- a good reputation is good for all forms of grants.

3\. A simple thought analysis on how much overhead a humanities professor
really needs compared to his science counterparts shows there is a huge lack
of cost from the humanities groups: no equipment to house and power, no labs
(but books, galleries etc, i don't know where more money would be needed: a
good lab building or a good library), fewer RAships (but roughly equal numbers
of TAships), no need for extra infrastructure to be built (cooling towers for
compute clusters, etc), no need for special legal teams to cover the risks, no
need for special accounting to sate the governments crazy reporting needs, no
need for non-academic staff (programmers, lab specialists, etc). Im sure there
are others.

Basically, from the universities I've worked at, the vast majority of overhead
goes to general building/grounds maintenance, specialized services for the
groups bringing grants, student programs, general infrastructure, and sure,
some to the humanities, why not -- all those LAS majors probably don't pay
tuition at all.

------
kstenerud
The author begins by accurately portraying the general ignorance of the study
of philosophy, and how this attitude greatly diminishes the perceived value of
such studies.

I was in agreement until the post took a sharp turn into veiled conspiracies,
where those in authority are seemingly fully aware of how incompetent or
corrupt authority can be undermined by questions, and actively seek to stamp
out independent thought.

I find myself even less in agreement when he uses Socrates as an example.

Socrates was not killed because of his teachings. He was killed because he was
a callous man who held little regard for the egoes he crushed by speaking
truth bereft of tact, and in doing so made many enemies. The actual charges
used against him were the same sort of trumped up charges you commonly see
used to railroad a political enemy. Indeed, he was able to fully demonstrate
that Meletus has no real evidence against him, but when you've offended the
powerful who have influence over the proceedings, you have little hope of
escaping the noose.

When it comes down to it, Occam's Razor makes for an effective tool. Is this a
great conspiracy against philosophers, or is it ignorance of philosophy, and
thus its merits, leading to this careless dismantling U. Nevada's philosophy
department?

~~~
yters
In most dictatorships the intellectuals are all killed because they undermine
the status quo.

~~~
kstenerud
What does this have to do with the blog post?

------
jff
One thing that struck me strongly when taking a Philosophy of Technology
course at my university (part of a concentration in philosophy) was that these
philosophers really had no understanding of the technology they were trying to
discuss. They'd simply latch on to something they heard--I recall
"cybernetics" was one such topic--and misconstrue a bunch of news articles
about it, then publish papers at each other defending and attacking their
varied misconceptions. I also found that a lot of these papers included early
content devoted to explaining how philosophy is _super_ important to
science/technology--but why should we bother listening to them if they can't
even get the facts right?

There can be interesting things to find in philosophy, but until they actually
bother to learn more about a subject instead of running off to write a paper
because they came up with a great metaphor to explain what they think a gluon
is, I don't see much value in their philosophizing on actual
practical/scientific things.

~~~
nick_urban
I'm not sure what you're thinking of in particular, but I'm guessing that most
talk about cybernetics in modern philosophy is derived from Heidegger's claim
that in modernity, we lose any an ultimate referent for our chains of
signification. Everything gets taken as for the sake of something else (e.g.
as a resource to achieve some ends extrinsic to it), but there is no final
"something else" to make it all meaningful. The reason he calls this
"cybernetic" is because it deals with unending loops instead of the sort of
hierarchical organization we might have seen in pre-modern times (e.g. with
God at the top of the tree of meaning).

Philosophy often attempts to dip below accepted meanings and systems of
thought. This may make it seem like philosophers "have no understanding of the
technology they're trying to discuss", but in fact they aren't necessarily
discussing technology in the sense which one might assume. They're trying to
get at a completely different strata of thought than the "how-to" of any given
technology.

~~~
Nick_C
Perhaps. If the French school hadn't tried to use quantum mechanics in
completely bizarre ways, leading many people to label them as wankers and
thereby staining the entire profession, I might agree. The fact that the
French view _still_ persists 50 years later doesn't give me confidence.

------
jchrisa
I studied Philosophy at Reed College. The department there is biased toward
the analytic side, which means I mostly studied set and number theory,
reference and meaning of language, and other somewhat technical questions.

I'm absolutely certain this was better preparation for my current career
(writing Erlang and making dorky music videos about CouchDB) than anything I
could have learned in a CS program. Maybe other folks wouldn't be adequately
prepared to be coders, by learning the basics of predicate logic and theories
of naming, but it certainly worked for me.

If CS is practical, Philosophy is more practical. :)

~~~
vecter
That's interesting. Could you elaborate on why you think analytic philosophy
better prepared you for a career as an Erlang programmer than a computer
science degree?

~~~
jchrisa
The biggest thing I learned in Philosophy, is how not to skip steps. Even the
most mundane thing can have a ton of interesting questions hiding inside it.
The best way to not skip steps is to train your mind to be in a state of
perpetually acknowledging your ignorance. This is hard to do, and I wouldn't
consider myself great at it, but the fact that I've identified this as a goal
is something I credit to some of the professors I worked with there, Mark
Hinchliff in particular.

~~~
vecter
Sounds like studying math or theoretical computer science would've
accomplished the same :)

~~~
jchrisa
Perhaps, but it is nice that Philosophy is so general. Another side effect of
studying it is that it's made me hungry for different perspectives. For most
questions, there's a bigger context that can raise potentially more
interesting questions.

My favorite take on the subject is James Carse's lecture at The Long Now:
[http://longnow.org/seminars/02005/jan/14/religious-war-in-
li...](http://longnow.org/seminars/02005/jan/14/religious-war-in-light-of-the-
infinite-game/)

------
brianleb
The snide commentary in this article undermines his arguments. Given how much
of an expert he seems to consider himself, I would have expected him to know
this. Looking down on others doesn't position you as their superior.

Examples: "If anyone should realize that, an epistemologist should. If
Professor Jones does not, perhaps he doesn't deserve to teach philosophy."

"I shudder to think what a sensitive and intelligent criminologist, jurist, or
physicist would take away from a rigorous course in the foundations of
knowledge. If he or she has half a brain, they would be rendered permanently
uncertain about the validity of their own day-to-day work."

"Perhaps you, Dear Reader—like me—are surprised to learn that a hotbed of
scholarly inquiry like UNLV actually has a philosophy department in the first
place. But, putting aside any special needs UNLV might have concerning the
ontology or metaphysics of college basketball, or the ethical justification
for bribery of student athletes, I suppose it makes sense, if only for the
sake of curricular completeness."

"But last time I checked, the discipline of philosophy has not said, "Look,
Kant got the categorical imperative pretty much right, so let's all just move
on, shall we?" in the same way physicists have done with Newton and Einstein."

~~~
Wilduck
I've never been involved in any philosophy department, but those I know who
are talk a fair amount about the high level of ad hominem attacks that occur
during debates.

It seems like the superiority complex is fairly ingrained in their discourse.
While my friends find it somewhat strange, they say eventually you start to
tune it out and listen to the other arguments.

------
bugsy
Some random thoughts that come to mind.

1\. Philosophy is worth studying for many different reasons.

2\. It is known that Philosophy majors have higher IQs and SAT/ACT scores than
students in any other specialty.

3\. Philosophy graduates make fantastic software engineers. It's a better
screening degree than computer science (which is actually a pretty bad
screening degree).

4\. Pragmatism is an illusion.

~~~
MaysonL
Well, according to this table, it changes in grad school, where they seem to
come in in 9th place:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20070104093613/http://www.econphd...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070104093613/http://www.econphd.net/guide.htm)

~~~
bugsy
Thanks for digging that up, that is a good source. Combined with spindrift's
reference he dug up from 2010
([http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/12/verbal-vs-
mat...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/12/verbal-vs-mathematical-
aptitude-in-academics/)), they show a much fuller and more accurate picture
than I portrayed. Philosophy students are the best at verbal and writing on
the GRE, but are only at the top of the humanities in math ranking, and are
below the levels of STEM subject applicants.

------
Dysiode
This man is a master of irony.

He's discussing the nature of philosophy which is itself philosophical in
nature; therefore, he's using philosophy to argue against the usefulness of
philosophy.

This begs the question: Is he therefore advocating we shoot him? This would be
one of the most clever ways to commit suicide. His gravestone would have to
read "Trollololol".

On a more serious note (so you don't down vote me. Gosh.), it's already been
said but philosophy's value lies in the framework for understanding Truth.
With the exception of Absolutists and Subjectivists (and there aren't many
that extreme) everyone is searching for something better and philosophy
teaches people how to reason and what questions are relevant and will further
the understanding of an issue of -everyone- involved in the argument. Socrates
managed to get himself killed for asking questions which says something about
their value.

Philosophy grants people the ability to understand, well, everything.

~~~
vacri
I found it very disturbing that the subtext of his article was "philosophy is
kind've useful, but do we really want our judiciary and administration
doubting themselves?"

------
dfc
Did anyone else see the headline and immediately think about the article from
yesterday encouring people to become a technologist and get a PhD in
philosophy?

I cracked up when I saw the title; I was expecting it to be a reply to the
other article:)

Previous Article:

Why you should quit your technology job and get a Ph.D. in the humanities
(chronicle.com)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2798178>

------
rdouble
This topic always starts a debate about the value of philosophy as a field of
study. The real issue is that with contemporary pick and choose university
curricula, few people take philosophy courses. At a school like UNLV, where
the top majors are Hotel Management and Athletic Training, how many people are
actually studying philosophy? Why keep the department around if nobody is
taking the classes?

------
MaxGabriel
I've always found the most persuasive argument for philosophy that it helps
kids prepare for law school. Philosophy has some of the most difficult (imo)
readings, and as the original Boston Review article mentioned kids in
philosophy get the best average score on tests like the LSAT.

However, I've personally found my philosophy classes pretty much useless and
despised postmoderism

~~~
loevborg
The best thing about philosophy is that it helps kids prepare for law school?
A backhanded compliment if I've ever seen one!

------
davesims
"...there is no body of widely accepted answers to commonly encountered
questions like reason for belief or standard of proof, such as might be found
in a natural science, for example."

I laughed out loud at this. "Science" is not distinct from philosophy, it is a
child of philosophy. It exists on the borrowed epistemological currency (and
naively at that) first set forth by the likes of Bacon, Descartes, Kant,
Husserl, Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, etc.

The author points out that philosophy has not provided definitive conclusions
in any of its fields. True enough, but that means that science persists on a
borrowed, naive philosophy of knowledge. That is, unless you think Popper and
falsification solved the problem once and for all, and if you do, all I can
say is <sigh>.

It's a little like the philosophical equivalent of the debt ceiling. We've
been borrowing for so long we no longer understand that there were ever
consequences, or anything at stake to begin with. There's really no question
that we live in an era of deeply, profoundly naive epistemology, as evidenced
by this post's bracketing 'Science' as a sovereign discipline independent of
and even superior to philosophy.

The question becomes, then: what will be the long-term consequences, if any,
of our childlike faith in Sovereign, Benevolent Science? I don't know and I
don't have any good speculations, but it worries me. The best and brightest of
the Enlightenment put tremendous effort towards resolving the problem of
skepticism and couldn't (Hume, Kant, Hegel and their Contentinental inheritors
-- Hume, Compte, Russell, Ayer, Quine, Dennett and their Analytical
inheritors), and yet now I can't count the number of times I've had
conversations with otherwise bright, literate individuals who think that
Science is a free and sovereign endeavor unencumbered by the high-falutin
abstractions of philosophy -- pah!

Was it really that simple -- all we needed to do all along was pretend there
_was_ no epistemological question, even though positivism, phenomenology, and
even Popper's falsification (please) are inadequate at a fundamental level to
provide even a basic rational first principle in which to ground the entire
enterprise?

If the naive reductionism of the current crop of Science-enthusiasts and
dogmatic futurists like Brockman, Dennett, Pinker, et al, work for you, then
more power to you. Go watch Star Trek and be happy. I just don't see how
anyone with any sense at all of the history of ideas cannot be disturbed by
the current state of our culture's philosophy, or lack thereof.

------
mchusma
I always have problems with discussions like this. The article starts:
"Apparently the state's current fiscal crisis has inspired the university to
consider eliminating the entire department and firing all of its members."

My answer to things like this is always the same. I would simply say privatize
education, an let non profits and individuals pay for what they think is worth
funds. Then you don't have to conflate the issue of the usefulness of
philosophy with issues of taking the people's money to pay for people to learn
philosophy. I think the philosophers might agree w me.

------
flocial
Philosophy certainly got left behind as science marched into the forefront. We
certainly don't live in a age when one could be a world class mathematician,
physicist, and philosopher at the same time. Who is the greatest contemporary
philosopher that comes to mind?

I find it ironic that this debate is taking place at UNLV because it sort of
mirrors the way colleges push certain sports. Likewise with scholarship it's
all about the professors who can crank out successful grant applications and
co-author paper of the highest quality or expertly exploit gullible grad
students.

~~~
akuzi
> Who is the greatest contemporary philosopher that comes to mind?

That is a question that is as difficult to answer as "Who is the greatest
contemporary scientist?"

Some candidates are Slavoj Žižek, Peter Singer, Annette Baier, Alastair
Hannay, Daniel Dennett, John Searle, Simon Blackburn, Thomas Nagel, Leo
Zaibert. The are also many famous philosophers are partly academics in
specialist fields, eg. Richard Dawkins, Umberto Eco, Noam Chomsky, Steven
Pinker, George Dyson and many more.

~~~
paganel
> Who is the greatest contemporary philosopher that comes to mind?

In fact, this is not a relevant question, it's the same like we'd be asking
"who's the tallest philosopher?" or "who's the most handsome?". Heraclitus or
Epicurus or Thomas Aquinas are as relevant to us, people of this day and age,
as are the philosophers that by chance happen to live in the same time with
us. I don't know who said it first (Hegel, I think), but I think that the
history of philosophy is the same thing as philosophy itself, there's no
linear progress from the pre-Socratics to the post-Marxists.

------
Reclix
Philosophy taught me to ask the following question: "What is the purpose of
our university degree?" If the answer is: "to secure a well paying, promising
job after college", then I think at worst, philosophy is on par with a wealth
of other majors. Consider however that the answer might be: "to find oneself.
To discover what what causes in us joy, sorrow, anger. To provide us with a
lens through which we will view the rest of our lives. To equip us for the
magnitude of our future mental, emotional, and physical reality (of which our
occupation plays only a part). To teach us how to understand our own mind." In
this case, is there any major more important? One thing I can promise is that
your salary, your achievements, your success - none of these will bring you
peace.

------
dmfdmf
I fully support shutting down the philosophy departments from Harvard and Yale
on down. Not because philosophy is useless, pointless and impractical but
because today what they teach is useless, pointless and impractical, not to
mention dangerous. Everyone has and needs a philosophy -- an integrated view
of the nature of reality, of truth and the basis for good and evil and the
essence of being human. I strongly urge folks to read "Philosophy, Who Needs
It" by Ayn Rand in which she makes the case, not for her philosophy of
Objectivism, but of the importance and need for philosophy by all.

------
desushil
IMO philosophy can't be learned/taught by the way we do with other subjects in
school. Basically, philosophy answers to your questions, but only if you are
searching the answer. But in most of the cases, peoples are searching reasons
and logic behind a question, which philosophy doesn't provide. Here, I am
talking about the eastern philosophy, which is entirely different than the
western which I am totally unknown from. Philosophy can provide you vision of
life, or whatever we are upto.

P.S. Let's not kill the philosophers.

Note: I am planning to join philosophy classes in my master level, once I
finish my bachelors. :)

------
jwingy
Funny, there was an article earlier on HN arguing about the merits and
usefulness of studying philosophy....and in a CS/AI context:

<http://chronicle.com/article/From-Technologist-to/128231/#>

Maybe I'm biased, but I tend to find the arguments of a computer scientist
much more compelling than that of an investment banker. Or anyone else versus
an investment banker for that matter :)

------
bonaldi
The philosopher, quoted: Philosophy teaches you how to think, to ask
questions, this is useful to society. The university should keep it.

The blogger, replying: I am unpersuaded. Philosophy does not give you answers.
Oh, but it does teach you how to ask questions, that is useful to society.

The straw man, beaten: ouch.

------
wlsimmons
Practicality is dependent on one's objective. What if my objective is to live
a contemplative life? Sure seems like a reasonable major.

------
typpo
Was anyone else's immediate reaction to this headline to recall the Dining
Philosophers problem?

------
Hisoka
Philosophy, as it's taught in universities is not practical. But it doesn't
have to be the case. Rather than aim for the abstract ideas such as Descartes,
we should aim to teach things that relieve suffering in our daily lives, such
as emotional mastery, and mental discipline. We should be answering the
question: How best to live life in a world where luck, uncontrolled
circumstances, unfairness and disappointments are bound to happen? How best to
live in a world where we can't get what we always want?

There are a lot of people with psychological problems in this world.
Philosophy won't help them one bit. It's too technical and abstract. But
things like the Noble Truths of Buddhism, or even basic emotional intelligence
can be helpful to people as they deal with the turmoil of day to day life.

~~~
jackwagon
"Philosophy, as it's taught in universities is not practical." There is plenty
of practical philosophy. A healthy dose of theory of computation, or possibly
business ethics, would have immediate utility for a lot of people here.

"Rather than aim for the abstract ideas such as Descartes" We study the ideas
from people such as Descartes to analyze their methods. Btw, he had many
early-scientific writings.

"we should aim to teach things that relieve suffering in our daily lives, such
as emotional mastery, and mental discipline" no, maybe, yes.

... etc

"There are a lot of people with psychological problems in this world." Now
you're just getting batshit.

~~~
geoka9
> There is plenty of practical philosophy. A healthy dose of theory of
> computation..

Is theory of computation actually philosophy? Last time I checked it was a CS
discipline.

