
Philosophy as a public service - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/79/catalysts/philosophy-is-a-public-service
======
xenologist
I believe what the world needs now is philosophy. What we're experiencing is a
crisis of meaning. Philosophy is a shield against meaninglessness and
conceptual confusion. In an information environment full of overabundant
conflicting and clashing signals, we need philosophy to straighten it out and
confer order to the perceptual field. The fact that many people don't
understand or hold philosophy in contempt is a major disservice to their own
capacity for mastering their intellectual horizons.

As Chesterton said, philosophy is simply thought that has been thought out.
We're going to work with thoughts either way, but if we haven't thought it
out, we are sleepwalking, under the influence of a foreign presence we have
not taken the time to identify and dissect.

~~~
elfexec
> What we're experiencing is a crisis of meaning. Philosophy is a shield
> against meaninglessness and conceptual confusion.

This is simply not true. What you are describing is religion. Outside of the
realm of logic, much of philosophy is a neverending open-ended question.

Philosophy is great because it exercises the brain and teaches you to think
rationally and try to see things from as many angles as possible. But it
doesn't provide any answers to "is there life after death", "does life have
any meaning", "do I have a soul", etc. Philosophy just helps you think about
these questions meaningfully and rationally.

Religion provides certainty. Philosophy is more honest and does not.

~~~
empath75
Philosophy from the very beginning concerned itself with exactly those
questions. Some of that was subsumed into religion and science at some point
but they are all very much in the realm of philosophy, classically and
currently.

I’m not religious, and I think I have fairly conclusive answers to those
questions drawn from philosophy — there’s no soul or life after death and no
inherent meaning to life.

If you’re going to argue that’s exclusively the realm of religion, then what
were nietzche and Plato and Sartre doing?

~~~
elfexec
> If you’re going to argue that’s exclusively the realm of religion, then what
> were nietzche and Plato and Sartre doing?

I'm arguing that certainty is the realm of religion. "Religion provides
certainty. Philosophy is more honest and does not."

When it comes to the meaning of life, good and evil, soul or the abyss, heaven
or hell, religion provides certainty. There are 10 commandments and accept
Christ. You have the rules laid out for you.

Philosophy is a neverending open-ended question when it comes to these
questions.

In other words, you can keep asking questions in philosophy. In religion, you
have the answers so there is no need to keep asking questions. You have
certainty.

~~~
Fezzik
I think you’re confusing certainty with authority. None of the things you
mentioned are proved (certain) by religion, they are simply stated by
authority as being true (though they are not) and accepted by some as being
so. Saying with great conviction that Russel’s teapot orbits the sun, though
no one can see it no matter how hard they try, or how powerful a telescope
they have, does not make it true.

------
11thEarlOfMar
When I was in college, my friends/housemates and I took out an ad in the
yellow pages under 'Philosophers'. We were 'Murvanowski & Associates,
Philosophers at Large'. Each of us specialized in a philosophy, spanning
Realism, Epicureanism, Daoism and of course, Hedonism.

Every couple of weeks, we'd get a call from a student who had stumbled on us
when trying to reach the Pharmacy, while simultaneously struggling with their
Philosophy course. We liked to think we did provide a valuable public service.

------
nathias
I don't see how this has anything to do with philosophy, thought experiments
as such arent't philosophical, some philosophy (mostly anglosphere) just uses
them to draw conclusions from common sense intuitions. This kind of
'philosophy' has been a public service for as long as art exists which often
draws from concepts of science and philosophy and presents it in a easily
digestible form to common sense.

~~~
jeliotj
It begs the question of what philosophy is. If it is "love of wisdom", as the
Ancient Greeks suggested, then it seeks to know all things. That is, it seeks
knowledge of what is, not of what is most likely, which is the domain of
modern science.

~~~
finaliteration
> begs the question

I normally wouldn’t be pedantic about this but because this is a discussion
about philosophy I have to point out that it doesn’t “beg the question”.
“Begging the question” is an informal logical fallacy where an argument’s
premises assume that its conclusion is true so it ends up being circular. I
think you mean it “raises the question”.

~~~
jcims
The problem is 'begs the question' is not an intuitive phrase to describe the
formal definition, so we're going to be stuck with this correction forever.

At this point I feel it has only survived as a form of shibboleth.

~~~
philwelch
You’d think that, but we pedants managed to rescue the word “ironic” at one
point.

~~~
GauntletWizard
But you've figuratively lost "literally".

~~~
philwelch
That's just highly advanced irony; using the word "literally" non-literally.

------
lordleft
The greatest public service Philosophy can provide is helping us become better
people. This is philosophy as understood in the Socratic tradition, and many
people have since forgotten this once chief aim of philosophical endeavor.

------
rahuldottech
Relatedly, if anyone is looking to get started with philosophy, Crash Course
has a fantastic video series on it:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtNgK6MZucdY...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtNgK6MZucdYldNkMybYIHKR)

~~~
bananamerica
Another approach is reading a few articles from
[https://www.iep.utm.edu/](https://www.iep.utm.edu/) and
[http://plato.stanford.edu/](http://plato.stanford.edu/)

But IMHO the best course of action would be to acquire logic proficiency
first. And no, I'm not talking about the logic programmers usually know, but
rather formal and informal philosophical logic.

Proficiency in logic is to philosophy like reading sheet music is to music.
You can get by without it, but it will help you immensely.

~~~
rhizome
"A few articles?" This is what discoverability looks like on both of those
sites:
[https://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html](https://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html).
Just start at "A"?

I think non-academic people like me are served perfectly well by reading
Spinoza's Ethics. Googling for more from there will cover almost all of post-
dualism Western phil.

~~~
tyre
yeah encyclopedias don't provide any guidance.

Wikipedia actually does a pretty good job of this. They have a section on the
side bar for "Influences" (who influenced this philosopher and "Influenced"
(who this philosopher influenced.)

Aristotle has this epic entry:

Influences: Plato

Influenced: Virtually all subsequent Western philosophy, Christian philosophy
and pre-Enlightenment science (see List of writers influenced by Aristotle)

When I was in my first Philosophy seminar, our professor started off by
saying, "all of western philosophy is a footnote to Aristotle."

He was a real one.

You could also google for philosophy course syllabi, but it's not always easy
to know _why_ one philosopher influenced another or the significance in
political theory, ethics, etc.

~~~
ezequiel-garzon
Did your professor point to Whitehead’s original quote?

“So far as concerns philosophy only a selected group can be explicitly
mentioned. There is no point in endeavouring to force the interpretations of
divergent philosophers into a vague agreement. What is important is that the
scheme of interpretation here adopted can claim for each of its main positions
the express authority of one, or the other, of some supreme master of thought
- Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant. But ultimately nothing rests
on authority; the final court of appeal is intrinsic reasonableness. _The
safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is
that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato._ I do not mean the
systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his
writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them. His
personal endowments, his wide opportunities for experience at a great period
of civilization, his inheritance of an intellectual tradition not yet
stiffened by excessive systematization, have made his writing an inexhaustible
mine of suggestion.”

[https://www.age-of-the-
sage.org/philosophy/footnotes_plato.h...](https://www.age-of-the-
sage.org/philosophy/footnotes_plato.html)

------
idoubtit
In this case, philosophy clearly is an art. Creating artistic sculptures,
imagining a long-term future, playing with the notion of time, inducing
debates… all of this is relevant of arts. From my experience, this is not
specific to this philosopher: modern philosophy is the art of playing with
words and concepts.

Philosophy is indeed a public service, even if it's rather a niche one. People
have a large access to many kind of arts and activities. Some will enjoy
reading etiology books or discussing ethical themes, some will visit museums,
some will watch Scorcese's movies, many will watch Avenger entertainments. We
all need some kind of artistic culture around us. So philosophy is a public
service because some part of the public enjoys it to the point that it is
important in their life.

This "public service" status is not restricted to arts and entertainment. For
instance, the science on the human evolution has no practical goal — extending
knowledge has no direct impact on us. Just like philosophy, it will not really
influence the way we live. Yet many people want to know more about human
origins, which is a excellent reason for continuing research.

~~~
tyri_kai_psomi
Everything is an art. Science is an art. Even "pure mathematics" can be artful
and beautiful. There is beauty in all the miracle of the application of human
creation, thought, and skill. There is beauty in process, in discovery, of
discovery, etc.

And this is all so beautifully meta as well, because this too, is a
philosophical statement.

~~~
crimsonalucard
Yes it's beautifully meta. This happens because everything that exists and
doesn't exist including philosophy itself falls under the purview of
philosophy. It's the ultimate definition given to a word.

Now imagine this brain twisting concept: The Philosophy of "The Philosophy of
philosophy." Yes discussions about philosophy are in itself philosophy and
that by induction causes an infinite chain to form where you can talk about
the the philosophy of philosophy of philosophy ...

Let's get even more meta. What do we call discussions and debates about this
infinite long chain of philosophy? Imagine a higher order description, a word
that describes the nature of the infinite chain but is in itself above it.

Some people call this word "philosophy" as well but that will simply create
another infinite long chain of meta definitions that never ends. Yes you can
do this, and you can keep doing this, but let's again go a level higher above
it all. What is the word that describes every possible usage of philosophy,
every possible infinite chain of meta descriptions that could exist?

Believe it or not a word for it does exist that sits above all possible usages
of philosophy, but the word and concept itself is so mind blowing that I can
only give you the acronym for it and leave it up to you to deduce what it
stands for.

The acronym is B. S.

Think on that.

Side note: If you have trouble figuring it out: I have found that some of my
most novel ideas pop out when I'm sitting on the toilet. It's a quiet and safe
area and thus a good place to think and find the answer.

~~~
xamuel
Not sure what happened in the 2nd half of your post, it kind of went off the
rails. But the in the 1st half, you're basically getting at the ordinal
numbers. Now just drop the "philosophy" from it (which is just a placeholder,
since you could replace it with anything else whatsoever and still get the
same chains) and focus on the underlying structure---infinite chains of
infinite chains, etc.---and you're actually standing on the threshold of some
very interesting material.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_number)

~~~
crimsonalucard
I think philosophical conjectures are ultimately useless. You can talk about
abstract concepts all you want but you don't get anywhere unless you have
rigor or formalism. This is why philosophy can do things like talk about logic
and ethics and science and religion.

The post is ultimately a trap. I introduce a bit of a simplistic but semi-
mind-bending concept but then when you get to the end you realize my true
thoughts about philosophy. It's for all the philosophers out there who always
tell me that even though I don't know it I'm actually talking about
philosophy. Well it's kind of hard _not_ to talk about it given the fact that
the word is defined to encompass everything.

I think your post hits the nail on the head. If you want to learn about these
concepts formal math is the way to go. The layman description I wrote is
really not that deep though, it's all pedantic.

~~~
xamuel
Everything seems useless if you don't understand it. Open a giant page of
mathematical number crunching (with integrals and infinite series and
everything) and it'll seem totally useless if you don't have the prerequisites
for it.

The difference in philosophy is there are no pages full of integrals and
infinite series, it's all just words, many of which look familiar to you, so
you don't even realize that you don't have the prerequisites for it.

~~~
crimsonalucard
I have the prerequisites. Philosophy is an art and therefore inexact and open
to bias. It's more similar to literature than it is to number theory.

I'm not a chemist so if I open an advanced chemistry book, all the symbols are
magic. But I do know that there's a hard science and logic behind chemistry
and therefore I don't view it the same way I view the humanities. Philosophy
is a humanity... an art.

------
pdonis
This article isn't about philosophy, it's about science. The author is making
scientific claims and advocating scientific methods of measurement. If the
scientific claims the author is making are false, or even if the error
involved in the measurements is significantly larger than he believes it is,
his entire scheme falls apart.

------
yipbub
I like this, but wonder if this kind of art is at all accessible to the people
who need to hear its message.

~~~
pboutros
Good question. I'm certain it isn't, but also, you can't give all things for
all people.

These thought experiments are useful, interesting, and appealing to certain
segments of people. There should be different ways to transmit the same
message to others, instead of looking for 'one-size-fits-all'.

------
Thorentis
I wanted more exploration of the Bristlecone time thought experiment. How did
you anticipate people's actions changing based on adherence to this new time?
If a tree year is now 2 earth years (for example) , how does that change our
behaviour, and how does this have a positive/negative effect on the
environment (which is presumably the aim of this thought experiment?) How does
one properly adhere to this new time in order to have the desired positive
effect?

------
acephal
The article is more about the hoped-for value of mimicking survival mechanisms
found in nature in order to endure climate change rather than explaining
"Philosophy as a public service".

I actually think that once you're in the realm of implementation you're no
longer in the realm of philosophy, which _should_ , IMO, remain abstract. A
book like "A Thousand Plateaus", "Being and Time", "The Critique of Pure
Reason" are philosophical works of art but I wouldn't consider the pinecone
clock a philosophical work of art but rather inspired, and clever,
engineering.

~~~
Der_Einzige
_Sigh_ Why do people here like Deleuze and Guattari? They're intellectual
charlatans of the highest caliber.

~~~
dean177
Care to explain why you think that?

------
Fezzik
It is tangential, but I’ll take this opportunity to plug one of the best*
podcasts ever: The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps. If you want thought
provoking summaries of philosophical thought, spanning the history of
philosophy, this podcast is for you. I have no affiliation with it, I just
enjoy it: [https://historyofphilosophy.net/](https://historyofphilosophy.net/)

* subjectively, from a person with a BA in Philosophy and a JD, FWIW.

------
dr_dshiv
If you want to really understand philosophy, start with Pythagoras, the man
coined the term Philosophy and Cosmos -- and conducted the first attested
scientific experiment in history.

His legacy, through Plato, was resurrected as a key element of the Renaissance
and Enlightenment.

It makes modern philosophy look like a sad farce since this legacy of modern
thought probably isn't taught in a single modern philosophy course (happy to
be proven wrong).

~~~
abdullahkhalids
I have never understood this thing about being asked to study old texts in
Philosophy. In no other field that I have studied have people suggested that
my first introduction to the field must be a book written decades ago, forget
two millennia ago. If I want to study physics, nobody tells me to read Newton
or Einstein's paper. Instead I should read an introductory textbook, whose
contents and presentation are much better than the original texts.

If you are telling me that in the twenty centuries, no one has taken what
Pythagoras/Plato said and has rewritten it in a better way, with modern
exposition and examples and graphics and what not, I fail to believe you.
Because that would mean philosophy as a discipline is not improving by
building upon the works of those past, unlike every other intellectual
discipline. I know this is not true, so stop suggesting old texts to beginners
and start suggesting books written in the last twenty years.

~~~
claudiawerner
>In no other field that I have studied have people suggested that my first
introduction to the field must be a book written decades ago, forget two
millennia ago.

No other field is philosophy. Philosophy, in some respects, is special - at
least according to Socrates as relayed by Plato. As Socrates says, each
science (or even activity) has its object, but what of the science which has
science as its object? The trouble with many future reformulations of key
ideas is that they can miss the intricacies and highly abstract arguments of
the original texts. For that reason, it may be more appropriate to read Newton
than it is to read Einstein, because Newton used much more natural language
than equations. I would very heavily disagree with the idea that introductory
textbooks necessarily have better contents and presentation than original
texts, and any serious philosopher will tell you that too.

>If you are telling me that in the twenty centuries, no one has taken what
Pythagoras/Plato said and has rewritten it in a better way, with modern
exposition and examples and graphics and what not, I fail to believe you.

What do you mean by "a better way"? Is Plato really so difficult or obtuse or
obscure that one needs to express Socrates' ideas in "a better way"? The text
is perfectly readable to a modern audience, which is precisely _why_ starting
with Plato's actual dialogues is the hallmark of any good university
philosophy programme.

>Because that would mean philosophy as a discipline is not improving by
building upon the works of those past

No; you have it backwards. Many philosophers have agreed with or disagreed
with Plato, but the point of a text _on Plato 's ideas_ should represent what
he wanted to represent in those ideas, not say "well, that's what Plato said,
here's my idea now!". Philosophy (according to some accounts, at least) does
progress, but it's dubious that rewriting and "simplifying" texts is the
hallmark of progress.

You end with the assumption that books written since 2000 are necessarily
better than Plato. I fail to see why this is the case. If you want an overview
of philosophy _since_ Plato, then by all means, only the most up-to-date book
will do. If you want to know Plato's (or Socrates') ideas yourself, there is
no better source than Plato himself.

Philosophy explanations and short introductions (Peter Singer's one on Marx
comes to mind) are riddled with errors, and for any such text you will find at
least ten philosophers ready to lambast an "introductory" interpretation
because it misses out on the intricacies of that thought. I'm not joking. Look
at any intro book on Hegel, Kant, Marx, Pythagoras. Then look at the reviews
published in philosophy journals.

"Progress" in philosophy does not and cannot mean shortening, rewriting and
"simplifying" ideas.

~~~
abdullahkhalids
> What do you mean by "a better way"?

Einstein was the first person to discover relativity, and how he stated those
ideas is merely one way of countless different ways of expressing them. People
learned what Einstein said, taught it to others and used those ideas in
further development of physics. In the process they learned ways of expressing
these ideas that are much more conducive to teaching novice physicists, and/or
elegant to build upon. This is what I mean by better: faster learning, deeper
understanding, mathematical and conceptual elegance.

This process is not unique to physics or Einstein. In most intellectual
fields, people digest and reformulate the ideas of past intellectuals to make
them better, at which point people stop reading the works of those past
intellectuals (except historians or the super-experts), and start referring to
the newer texts. In fact, if any field does not do this, I would dare call it
an anti-intellectual field.

A field has certain goals, certain questions it tries to answer. In most
intellectual fields, newcomers start by learning the best possible answers to
those questions found till now, and then get to the research stage, where they
start trying to do better. If they do find better answers, they teach the next
generation those better answers.

If you are telling me that what Plato said is among the best answers to the
questions that Philosophy asks, then that means the field has not progressed.
You say that "short introductions ... misses out on the intricacies of that
thought", but this indicates a deep problem with Philosophy. In every other
field, experts of today express the ideas of those in the past with mistakes
corrected, oversights fixed, and exposition improved. You also misunderstand
me when you say 'rewriting and "simplifying" texts is the hallmark of
progress.' Modern textbooks of General Relativity are far more intricate, and
complex than what Einstein ever wrote, yet more understandable to the physics
undergrad. Our answers today are far far better than Einstein's, so I won't
waste an undergrad's time with Einstein's writings.

Where are the best answers that the field of Philosophy has come up with, and
why were they not written in the past few decades?

~~~
claudiawerner
>A field has certain goals, certain questions it tries to answer. In most
intellectual fields, newcomers start by learning the best possible answers to
those questions found till now

Not so in philosophy. If philosophy has the aim (if one's idea is that science
has some goal, or a goal outside of being done for the sake of being done) to
create new answers to old questions, or create new questions which require new
answers, one must know (1) what questions were previously asked, (2) why the
questions do (or don't) have answers, or what the problems and advantages of
the answers are, (3) what these answers were in their original form, such that
we have the best access to the most complete argument.

Endless rephrasing of texts didn't get us from Newton to Einstein. Even if one
accepts that philosophy makes progress (internally), it doesn't in any way
imply that one can get away without reading _both_ old (to see what remains
uncovered, and there is plenty to this day) and new.

------
senderista
This is interesting as public performance art, but has nothing to do with
either philosophy or realistic solutions to climate change and mass
extinction.

------
DrNuke
The problem with philosophy that irks so many over here mainly stays in the
anglophone curricula these days, which prepare pupils analytically aka to
function (get a job, be independent, start a family, pay taxes, buy goods)
instead of continentally aka to live (grow a conscience, ask who you are, live
for experience, avoid authority, exchange and reuse goods). Another point is
that competitive societies do not rate aggregative unfruitful manners, which
also shows in the borderly sociopathic attitude towards any kind of
regulation.

------
shashanoid
Philosophy is dead. Dead words nothing else -- a therapy. Transformation only
possible through meditation.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
> Transformation only possible through meditation.

Descarte's Meditations on First Philosophy? That's quite a place to start.

