
Why read old philosophy? - Hooke
https://meteuphoric.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/why-read-old-philosophy/amp/
======
charles-salvia
I realize there's a (stereotypical) tendency for scientists and engineers to
look down on philosophy - and I think this tendency colors this whole
discussion to the extent that it almost borders on being a touchy subject.

But a lot of the claims about the uselessness of philosophy in the modern
world are probably based around the fact that, at least from the perspective
of an Ancient Greek like Aristotle, there was _no_ actual distinction between
"science" and "philosophy". It was all just _sophia_ (wisdom) to him. It was
applying abstract inductive reasoning to arrive at universal truths.

And this is patently obvious from simply reading Aristotle or the Pre-
Socratics. These writers routinely make what modern readers would consider
outright _scientific_ claims. A lot of what Aristotle wrote is testable and
falsifiable, and has indeed been falsified. But to Aristotle there wasn't any
inherent epistemological difference between reasoning about physics and
reasoning about justice. But today, we clearly separate these two spheres via
_empiricism_ \- a method of thinking that wasn't really available to the
Ancient Greeks, because it wouldn't be truly appreciated as part of a formal,
scientific method, until the Medieval Arabs and later the European Renaissance
thinkers really formalized it.

So in that sense, it's understandable why some modern students might find
reading Aristotle as silly as reading, say, a Medieval book about medicine or
alchemy.

I would argue, however, that Aristotle (and many of the ancient philosophers)
are actually very valuable to read precisely because of their historical
impact, and how their works shaped the course of human thought for millennia.
Aristotle's particular ideas about physics might be hopelessly wrong, but his
thought processes and writings influenced Europe and the Middle East
throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. It is therefore critically important to
have a good understanding of Ancient Greek philosophy if you are to have any
hope of understanding the history of Western thought in general.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Ancient Greek is stained by history - it was the only science taught in
Universities for what? a thousand years. That's the catch - its revered beyond
all reason due to history. Simultaneously its old-fashioned and outdated for
the same reason. Hard to disentangle the two.

I read the Philosophers in College. But I cannot imagine I would ever again
pick up a book of Ancient Greek Philosophy. There's just nowhere to go from
that stuff. Informative as history, and as an intro to the subject. But I been
there; done that.

~~~
coldtea
> _Ancient Greek is stained by history - it was the only science taught in
> Universities for what? a thousand years. That 's the catch - its revered
> beyond all reason due to history._

That's reversing cause and effect. It's not a mere accident of history that it
was "taught in Universities for a thousand years".

> _But I cannot imagine I would ever again pick up a book of Ancient Greek
> Philosophy. There 's just nowhere to go from that stuff_

Actually it's one of the best investments in one's personal development and
understanding of the world they could make.

Physical philosophy aside, philosophy, like arts, doesn't get deprecated over
time. Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, Epictetus, Leibniz, Spinoza, Kant, etc are as
relevant as they ever were.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Sure it was. It was all they had for 'science' for a thousand years. Something
about the 'dark ages'.

And, as stated above, been there and done that.

~~~
coldtea
> _Sure it was. It was all they had for 'science' for a thousand years.
> Something about the 'dark ages'_

There was not much "dark" about the dark ages (as 20th and 21st century
scholarly research increasingly showed), and what little was was due to the
collapse of a huge organized empire, not because because "that was all they
had for science" (I guess "that" being Aristotle).

In any case, this is an extremely shallow assessment of the role of philosophy
-- like someone reading Cliff Notes on Shakespeare and thinking they got all
there is to it.

------
kitbrennan
I'm not convinced by the author's argument. The difference between philosophy
and physics is that _old philosophical arguments do not become less correct
over time_. In physics, later physicists build on the earlier body of
knowledge and refine it, making it more correct. In philosophy, later
philosophers may suggest a counterargument to the early philosopher, but as
philosophy does not normally deal in absolutes it is impossible to say the
later philosopher is now more correct and worth reading instead of the earlier
philosopher.

For example: a philosopher may argue that murder is morally wrong, and a later
philosopher may argue that murder is morally right. Neither answer is
factually wrong or right. We should therefore read the work of both
philosophers to get the most value out of our studies and to form our own
opinions.

\---

I'd also argue that it's not always worth reading the earlier philosopher's
work if someone else can rewrite it in a better form. Personally I think
Immanuel Kant's philosophy is interesting but poorly written, and you'd get
more value out of reading a later text about his philosophy that his works
himself.

Other writers such as Plato have stood the test of time and are worth reading
(assuming you have a good translation).

~~~
hyperpape
You're generally right, but I take issue with the claims: "philosophy does not
normally deal in absolutes it is impossible to say the later philosopher is
now more correct and worth reading instead of the earlier philosopher" and
"Neither answer is factually wrong or right".

I hope you and everyone else realizes that these are philosophical claims, and
controversial ones at that!

I would tenatively assert that the majority of philosophers now and in the
past have believed the following two things: 1) moral statements like "murder
is wrong" are objectively true or false. 2) philosophical statements are also
objectively true or false.

(Note that I say "objective", not "factual" as some people would make a
distinction between the two, as in the fact-value distinction).

Like any philosophical issue, there is a lot of debate. But when
characterizing what philosophers think, how philosophers act, you have to make
clear what's your own view, as opposed to settled fact.

That said, I agree with you the central claim that the works of historical
philosophers are often of equal or greater insight than contemporary work.

~~~
Others
> moral statements like "murder is wrong" are objectively true or false

That is an incredibly controversial statement... Moral relativism much?

~~~
hyperpape
I pretty clearly said it was controversial, so I'm not sure what you're trying
to say.

That said, moral relativism has a very low status in philosophy. Many
philosophers think it is simply incoherent (the fifth paragraph here dances
around one reason: [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-
relativism/#MetMorR...](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-
relativism/#MetMorRel)).

It is much more common for philosophers to hold that there simply are no moral
facts, or that moral statements are merely expressions of approval or
disapproval, or some similar position
([https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-
cognitivism/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-cognitivism/)).

------
IsaacL
This is not a very good article. Like a lot of writers in the Lesswrong-
rationalist sphere, the author is very smart and describes her thought process
in great detail, but has too many erroneous premises and ends up with wrong
conclusions.

I understand her conclusion as "people study old philosophers, not to learn
about their views, but to learn about their thinking techniques". In contrast,
I would say that the primary reason for studying old philosophers first-hand
is to properly understand philosophy.

(I wouldn't start by studying the old philosophers - I would start by reading
modern summaries, especially those that focus on the actual philosophical
problems. Study the old philosophers only if you want a full understanding).

You have to understand what philosophy is. It's studying the fundamental
nature of reality and our thoughts about it. When you get down to fundamental
issues, there are often a very small number of plausible answers, and much of
philosophy is extrapolating the consequences of those answers. These issues
are timeless and still relevant.

The pervasive modern belief is that philosophy is mostly meaningless word-
games that can be dismissed, and science should be the basis of everything.
But collecting more observations of reality does not help answer these
questions. Furthermore, without knowledge of the implications of certain
answers, you easily wind up advocating positions that don't actually hold up.
(E.g., many people think neuroscience has disproved the existence of
consciousness, when all it has proved is that consciousness is closely related
to the brain).

Like Katja, I used to follow Lesswrong-style rationalism, but after studying
different philosophies I concluded that Objectivism made the most sense.
(Whatever you may have heard about Ayn Rand, I recommend evaluating her views
for yourself). Leonard Peikoff gave an excellent and comprehensive course on
the history of philosophy from an Objectivist POV:
[https://campus.aynrand.org/campus-courses/history-of-
philoso...](https://campus.aynrand.org/campus-courses/history-of-philosophy)

~~~
miloshadzic
I'd recommend a classical treatment of presocratic philosophy. I'm watching
the Heraclitus episode and he completely misrepresents him. The sparseness of
fragments that remain make it very easy to read into them what you like, and
that is exactly what happens here.

~~~
eropple
"Complete misrepresentation" of philosophers (and, well, everything else) is
probably to be expected with Peikoff around. He has made his bones on
Objectivism being a closed system, the incentives he's got necessitate doing a
lot of rearranging of reality when he's doing his preaching. And "preaching"
is chosen specifically; he is a megachurcher with a different bible.

I have no use for David Kelley, like I have no professional, personal, moral
or ethical use for any Objectivist (if I dropped my wallet around an
Objectivist I'd have to think about kicking one home before I bent down to get
it, just to be safe), but that Peikoff tried to tell him and his adherents to
leave the "Objectivist Movement" because they didn't think philosophy started
and stopped with Ayn Rand, because they didn't think that you have to "revere"
[Peikoff's word] Rand, because they didn't think it was impossible to consider
as potentially valid or edifying other systems (be they Marxism or
libertarianism) that had the temerity to not put Ayn Rand on an altar...well,
it's telling.

------
hyperpape
Why read old philosophy? Why not read the work that's created now?

Why study programming languages? Why not just use the best programming
language?

Just as we don't know or agree about the best programming language (or we
admit there's no "best" for every purpose), one answer is that the ancients
may be right.

That's a fine answer, but I think it's actually secondary. Just as you don't
have to think a programming language is the best to want to learn about it,
you don't have to think the ancients were right to study them.

What studying other programming languages/older philosophers gives you is
insight into the different ways you can formulate ideas or see the world.

It's a struggle to enter into a new way of thinking, much harder than learning
a new programming language. You have a tremendous number of assumptions that
you can't even state that interfere with your understanding. When you start
out, a historical philosopher often either looks incomprehensible, or like a
modern who is constantly wrong.

With enough work you can come to understand how that philosopher conceived the
world, so that their arguments begin to make sense.

Those different ways of seeing the world are themselves of philosophical
value, but they also help you understand how our contemporary understanding
arose, and therefore also help you understand which aspects of our
contemporary understanding are accidents or optional.

------
kdazzle
Interesting article, and I agree that a lot of the reason for reading old
philosophy is so that you know how philosophers should think and argue.

But I always thought there was another practical reason - old philosophy is
referenced all the time in newer philosophy - you have to read the older stuff
to kind of learn the "language" of philosophy with all of the issues that have
been covered and are still being covered.

Plus, old philosophy isn't necessarily irrelevant to contemporary ideas - Pre-
socratics had theorized about atoms, for example. Or it's not like ethics,
epistemology, or phenomenology will suddenly become irrelevant, though
theories surrounding them might change a little bit and be refined and lose
references to god.

~~~
gumby
> But I always thought there was another practical reason - old philosophy is
> referenced all the time in newer philosophy - you have to read the older
> stuff to kind of learn the "language" of philosophy with all of the issues
> that have been covered and are still being covered.

Sorry to disagree, but that's a "just so" argument: you have to do this
because everybody else does. She asks, "why _does_ everybody else do this?"
which is a good question.

My thoughts on this are in another long comment on a different thread so I
won't waste your time by pasting them again here.

~~~
hyperpape
Not at all: if other people reference old philosophy, you may need to
understand old philosophy in order to understand them, regardless of whether
or not they should be referencing old philosophy.

Compare: if there is a guy speaking French to you in the US, you need to
understand French to understand him, even if it would be a whole lot more
effective for him to speak English.

~~~
gumby
Sure, what you say is true but that's not the question she raises. Yours is
simply a functional question. A very useful question, but not an insightful
one.

To reframe her question with your example, she's asking: "Everyone says I
should learn to write French to talk to French people. But the French froze
their spelling in the 17th century, while languages like English and German
have modernized their spelling. Why should the French be different?"

 _That_ is an interesting question. Hers is also: why is philosophy treated
differently from, say, Physics in this regard?

------
laichzeit0
During my first year as a student at University I stumbled upon the book An
Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke in the philosophy section.
It was the critical edition by Peter Nidditch, beautifully typeset and bound.
I flipped through it and the style of English looked intriguing so I took the
book out.

I spent about a month reading through it and when I finally finished it I felt
like it had profoundly changed my way of thinking and moved me deeply.

It also made me never want to read another "summary" or anything but the
original work of a philosopher ever again. It's very hard to explain or
understand if you haven't experienced it yourself.

I feel the same way after reading Schopenhauer, although I've never had the
privilege of reading him in German. The translations by Saunders is so
amazingly good in English and I've read that Schopenhauer's German is a real
delight, so I can't even imagine how good it must be to read him in the
original. But I imagine it would be something as beautiful and touching as
Locke if you're a native English speaker.

~~~
goodjam
German is very suitable for abstract thinking because you can form compound
words with ease and put the function at the end of the sentence. These
compound words are hard to translate (aufhebung - sublation is a famous
example). Hegel wrote about this in his Logic. German is like a different
programming paradigm compared to English.

~~~
mannykannot
That is a very Whorfian view, but McWhorter, among others, would question
whether it is at all plausible that these differences in what is little more
than syntax can really make a profound difference in meaning. To put it
another way, if these language features do make that much of a difference,
then is there much more to these texts than a self-referential discussion of
the meaning of the language used in these texts?

Your programming-paradigm analogy is perhaps unintentionally apt, as
underneath their particular representations, they are all Turing-equivalent.

~~~
VLM
Program languages can be Turing equivalent however an alternative view of
language is its like any other data encoding and via some kinds of Shannon's
Law for human speech your language has to be able to achieve a certain SNR
equivalent minimum to get an idea across in a small slice of a lifetime
devoted to a book at a reasonably low enough error rate to claim a meeting of
the minds on a topic. So you can write Kant in German and maybe its possible
to understand an English translation of Kant with a bit more effort but there
exists a hard lower SNR limit below which it doesnt work such that a Lojban
translation of Kant is simply a fliba. Note that its difficult to find a
Lojban-English dictionary that isn't also an English thesaurus in practice.
There are indications Kant could be translated into Esperanto but nobodies
tried in public, or maybe because its also quite impossible.

Now as a counter example (or is it?) see the whole concept of "a quran isn't a
quran unless its written in arabic at which point its a real quran" vs the
similar fun the pre-reformation christians had with the same belief WRT the
new testament.

~~~
mannykannot
That is a very interesting point, but I wonder if Lojban's avoidance of
ambiguity is the root of the translation difficulty - I doubt that Kant is
unambiguous.

I think the quran and new testament issues arise from theology, not
linguistics.

------
jackson1372
I'm a philosophy Philosophy PhD student. There can be a number of different
reasons to read the original text of some older work of philosophy. But two
central reasons that seem to be ignored here are:

1\. Philosophy is closer to logic/math than science. And the reason to learn
'what Aristotle said about X' is similar to the reason to learn 'what
Pythagoras said about triangles'. The pythagorean theorem doesn't become
outdated in the way that scientific knowledge becomes outdated. (The
difference here is just between a priori and a posteriori domains of
knowledge.)

2\. Explaining philosophical reasoning is, itself, doing philosophy--it
requires careful reasoning and argumentation. The central thing we do (in UC
Berkeley Philosophy classes) is evaluate philosophical reasoning. And so you
can't simply rely on some interpreter's take on the original text--you must
grapple with it yourself. Sometimes interpreters _do_ get things right, but
sometime's they _don 't_. And telling the difference requires doing some
philosophy.

~~~
gus_massa
About 1:

Only a small groups of researches of mathematical history reads what exactly
Pythagoras said about triangles, in mainstream mathematics people just have a
general idea of the results of Pythagoras or some rehash of his ideas and a
few later/former mathematicians. Moreover, most theorems names are
misattributed. The name of Pythagoras is more a nice historical anecdote about
triangles and the equation x^2+y^2=z^2. Moreover, IIRC none of his books have
survived. It's just a mix of folklore and indirect sources.

A better example is the work of Euclid. He wrote some books and some copies
survived and you can still read them. Anyway, most mathematician don't read
them, they have only a general idea of what Euclid wrote. I'm not sure what
parts of his books were original and what parts were only a recompilation of
the common knowledge of his time. He had a very interesting idea. You can
choose some sensible axioms and derive all the geometry from them. [Whatever
sensible means.] This idea survived, but the axioms he choose were wrong. Some
are confusing, there are some missing cases ... IIRC with the Euclid's axioms
you don't get the "real plane" with all it's points of , you can use them in a
smaller plane were x and y are algebraic numbers, like fractions and square
roots, ... but the point (x=pi, y=e) doesn't exist. IIRC the modern versions
of axiomatic geometry use about 20 axioms, and some are very technical.

With most people like Gauss or Euler gets a few theorems named after them and
a few anecdotes, but most mathematicians don't read the original material.

In some cases, it's nice to see as a curiosity a copy of the original
publication. IIRC there are some copies of the work of Newton, Leibnitz or
Cauchy were you can see that the notation they used is very similar to the
current notation.

In other cases, the following mathematicians buried completely the original
work and only the original name remains but most of the intermediate steps and
notation are not made by the original author. IIRC all what you usually study
about Galois theory is actually the version that was written later by Artin
and Noether.

~~~
akvadrako
I didn't read your whole post but I think I agree with your point which I
would phrase as saying that:

In mathematics (and science) it doesn't matter much what the researchers
thought; the ideas stand on their own. So we shouldn't study Plato, but it
would be good to study his ideas which are still relevant and insightful.

~~~
foldr
I'm not a mathematician of physicist, but I suspect that these disciplines are
ahistorical largely out of necessity. They now require the grasp of so much
technical material that there simply isn't time to teach the history of the
discipline. I see no reason to think that this is a particularly good thing.

~~~
akvadrako
Somehow you are implying that philosophy is so simple all the material can be
covered, so there is time to study the history?

What's important is understanding. If studying the history aids understanding
it might be worth the time.

I believe studying the history in physics impedes understanding, because it
builds up mistaken ideas that become hard to tear down.

For philosophy I'm not sure but I suspect it's better to order learning so as
to make a logical progression and that isn't the same as the historical order.

~~~
foldr
I didn't mean it as a dig at philosophy for being simple. But I think it's
true that there is less "essential technical material" to cover in philosophy.
There's no equivalent to spending 3 months practicing solving differential
equations.

>I believe studying the history in physics impedes understanding, because it
builds up mistaken ideas that become hard to tear down.

This can be true in some cases of course, but there are also good ideas that
get forgotten about or become unfashionable. And without studying the history
of the discipline, you will often end up rejecting straw man versions of
historical ideas rather than the ideas themselves.

------
goodjam
“This concern with aim or results, with differentiating and passing judgement
on various thinkers is therefore an easier task than it might seem. For
instead of getting involved in the real issue, this kind of activity is always
away beyond it; instead of tarrying with it, and losing itself in it, “this
kind of knowing is forever grasping at something new; it remains essentially
preoccupied with itself instead of being preoccupied with the real issue and
surrendering to it. To judge a thing that has substance and solid worth is
quite easy, to comprehend it is much harder, and to blend judgement and
comprehension in a definitive description is the hardest thing of all.”

Excerpt From: G. W. F. Hegel. “Phenomenology of Spirit.” Oxford University
Press.

~~~
ianai
My best philosophy reads were almost always when I felt connected to the
writer. They mostly all talk straight to the reader, but that doesn't mean I'm
always feeling on the same level as them. But when I do it's like A close
friend is telling me a story and I can understand their mind's machinations.

Hegels quote there is why I never spoke up in philosophy class. The other
students would hear the tone of my voice or maybe the first 3 words out of my
mouth and nothing else. They'd respond to fewer. It made me feel alienated.

As for why people should read philosophers: to learn. You can learn about wild
individuality through Thoreau and Ed Abbey. Ethics from Kant, Aristotle, and
many others. Life, death, and the meaning of both from many. We all have lives
to lead and philosophers can help in the day to day and the big struggles.

Oh and the Socratic method is worth it, too.

~~~
goodjam
I feel somewhat similar.. on a side note Hegel's way of thinking is very
"algorhythmical". For example the art of the metaobject protocol explores
common lisp in a similar way as Hegel explores the absolute spirit. Hegel is a
macrologist par excellance!

------
bsenftner
I have an old, leather bound "History of Philosophy" text from Harvard Press -
printed around 1913, I seem to remember. It's about 1200 onion-skin thin
partially transparent pages. I have it sealed in an air tight bag in a strong
box now, but back in the mid 80's (during my undergrad fascination with
Existentialism) I read most of the book. My favorite is Ionian philosophy, the
first humans to try to reasoning about their world, and they concluded that
the Gods were both evil and insane, the world is their navel, and we are the
lint inside. Literally.

~~~
mcguire
Amy idea who the author is?

~~~
bsenftner
Looks like many authors, the binding says "Encyclopedia of Classical
Philosophy" and "Harvard Press". Inside it says published 1923; I got the date
wrong above. It's very fragile now...

~~~
mcguire
With a date like that, it should be out of copyright. But I can't find it in
any of the usual sources. I'll keep an eye out, though.

Thanks!

------
biesnecker
A professor of Marxist political philosophy at my university told our
introductory course that the point of (political, at least) philosophy wasn't
to learn the philosopher's ideas on how to fix his world but rather how his
thought process could be used to analyze and fix ours. I don't remember much
else from the course but that bit has stuck for all these years.

~~~
wry_discontent
Sounds like he was quoting Marx himself

> The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point
> is to change it.

~~~
biesnecker
Haha, could well have been. :-)

------
petters
Towards the end:

> This doesn’t explain why philosophy is different to physics (and basically
> all of the other subjects). Why would you want to be like Socrates, and not
> like Newton?

And I don't feel convinced the author has an answer.

~~~
gumby
She walks up to it but doesn't get there (yet -- it doesn't sound like she's
read much philosophy yet).

All other disciplines have split off / descended from philosophy (not just in
the case of western/Greek philosophy) because "philosophy" essentially just
means "science". I say "disciplines" because I mean the formal study of
action; thus I include Engineering in this (the Greeks recognized a difference
between tradecraft (techne) and theory of which modern engineering is the
amalgam). She clearly hasn't yet been exposed to this (she writes, "The story
I hear about philosophy—and I actually don’t know how much it is true—is that
as bits of philosophy come to have any methodological tools other than ‘think
about it’, they break off and become their own sciences."). This is precisely
true, yet wrong!

Think of it as abstraction: chemistry and physics broke off semi-
independently; they are clearly highly related disciplines; yet trying to work
with chemistry solely at the subatomic level would be a disaster. Likewise
biology and ecology. I can very well believe that there are very interesting
quantum sensing phenomena involved in how, say, a group of pitcher plants lure
insects, phenomena which are very important to the integrity of the
rainforest; yet trying to save it by working at that level would be futile.

It's better to think of chemistry, physics, ecology, and religion as
technologies (trades) and work with them. They practical use has shifted from
the brain to the hand. These fields still have useful roots in philosophy and
can make valuable use of "traditional" philosophical tools. For example it's
clear that almost all (but not 100%!) of the arguments against worrying about
anthropomorphic global climate change are made by people who have a very
limited understanding of epistemology, which is probably the most important
subject to understand for anyone in the practical sciences.

Which brings her to the second part of her answer, which she also gives:
"...suggest that in physics students are maybe missing out on learning the
styles of thought that produce progress in physics.... might partially explain
why Nobel prizewinner advisors beget Nobel prizewinner students." Well, umm,
yes. If you study under someone who works on "X" you'll become skilled in "X".
If your goal is the areas in which the Nobel committee award prizes, yes, this
can help. But the problem is broader than that and applies to all disciplines.
If you want to become a master craftsperson/artist like Noguchi, you should
study under him (except he's dead) -- not to duplicate his work but to
understand how he _thought_.

This is no different in programming: we read others' code to learn how to
think about programming. There are still many gems in the old literature,
overlooked by cultural stigma.

In fact the characterization of "old" is a misnomer. In my professional life I
have frequently had recourse to Wittgenstein, Heidigger and Plato (sorry, I
don't like Aristotle) and they are not only useful in shaping my direct work
but when discussing it with coworkers -- essentially this understanding itself
forms a techne.

~~~
skew
Dare I hope "arguments against _anthropomorphic_ global climate change" was
not a typo? If not, please share!

~~~
gumby
Ha ha good catch. I tried to think of a witty explanation but kept laughing.
Thanks!

------
chrismealy
I haven't read a ton of philosophy, but I'm almost always surprised by how
different the original is from the interpretations. People are weird and
surprising. Textbook explanations smooth out the rough edges. And they always
take out the jokes.

------
hyperpape
It's worth noting that philosophy grad school is not necessarily focused on
history. I went to Pitt (philosophy, not History and Philosophy of Science),
which is arguably a department dominated by Kantians and Aristotelians, and in
general people who care a lot about the history of philosophy, and the
requirement was still 3 historical courses (1 modern, 1 ancient, 1 of either)
out of the 12 courses needed for comprehensive evaluation.

Also, not all contemporary philosophers like history. There are plenty who
think that the philosophy worth worrying about starts sometime around Quine,
or maybe David Lewis. I think they're wrong, but they're out there.

------
ThomPete
There are so many reasons to read philosophy none of them have to do with
philosophy as such.

Just because you know a lot about philosophy does not make you a great
philosopher. But what reading philosophy do IF you are able to combine it with
other skills is to provide you with an ability to think about what you do in a
differen perspective.

The actual questions as interesting but not as such why you should read
philosophy. You should read it because you want to have another perspective to
think about what you do.

------
n72
You know how, when your opinionated uncle reads a very high level description
of some tech thing you know a lot about and then tells you how it will or
won't work, you kind of sigh and don't even bother to try to explain just how
much he doesn't know about the subject? Engineers who've taken a few
philosophy undergrad courses should keep that in mind when drawing broad
conclusions about philosophy. I'm not saying you shouldn't opine, but I'd
suggest doing so with the appropriate amount of humility.

~~~
mattmanser
Having done a philosophy degree and been a programmer, in my opinion you're
adding far too much weight to what is a very easy domain to understand. All
the complicated bits became their own discipline
(maths/physics/chemistry/social science/psychology).

Philosophy's not particularly complicated to someone who understands basic
logic.

In some ways it's not a real subject as there's nothing to study as it's all
thought experiments. There's no weird data mucking up elegant theories, or
strange earth movements, or bizarre lights patterns.

These days philosophy tends to be just an argument about what a word actually
means.

It's certainly nothing like a programmer dabbling in maths and claiming
they've solved p v np.

~~~
n72
This is one of those moments when you sigh and don't bother. If you've done an
undergrad in philosophy and still don't think there are parts which aren't
very sophisticated and difficult, we'll... Sigh.

~~~
mattmanser
This is one of those moments when you wonder why someone bothered to reply
without mentioning a single one of these "sophisticated and difficult" parts
of philosophy that we could then happily explain in simple terms. You only had
to mention a single name or sub-discipline.

For example one of my modules was philosophy of mathematics. It was
sophisticated and difficult, but not complicated or meaningful.

It was just a fairly pointless thought experiment. The actual important bits
are just called "mathematics".

It's like today's social science. It's an extension of moral and political
philosophy. But moral and political philosophy are fairly pointless and get
bogged down by fairly meaningless arguments about the meaning of "self" or
"altruism", while social science attempts to make people's lives better.

You know, I studied 3 separate modules on formal logic. I did 36 hours worth
of lectures, wrote various essays and read multiple expensive philosophy text
books.

I learnt more about logic from a single 1 hour high school electronics lesson
than I ever did from all that.

pg has a good essay about why he doesn't particularly rate philosophy:
[http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html](http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html)

~~~
n72
Pick one:

1\. There's something you missed along the way and thus you fail to appreciate
the complexity of the issues.

2\. You're considerably more intelligent than the hundreds of thousands of
very intelligent people who struggle with the issues.

------
braft
The author seems to take the goal of studying philosophy to be
knowledge/technique collection, for an eventual goal of some type of
measurable output. In other words, she expects philosophy to have something in
common with the study of physics that it just doesn't have. One reads Plato
(for example), not to collect facts about the world, but because Plato's
Socrates still represents one of the most noteworthy and admirable ways of
being towards the world. You read Plato to learn how to comport yourself
better towards death, injustice, and most of all, your own ignorance.

The bias I'm trying to get at is shown here: > And if philosophy is about
having certain experiences, like poetry, but then it would seem to be a kind
of entertainment rather than a project to gain knowledge, which is at least
not what most philosophers would tell you.

Dividing experience into "knowledge" and "entertainment" belies an ignorance
of much of the subject matter Plato treats. Many works of ancient philosophy
are still some of the most worthwhile texts to read because they are education
in how to live. They represent some of the most admirable and imitable
responses to the puzzle/experience of being a fragile creature who knows that
it will die but doesn't know why it's here nor quite how to find out.
Scientific inquiry can treat "why" questions when we understand "why" to mean
"by what means?" but not when we understand "why" to mean "for the sake of
what?" Many today would contend that "why" questions in the latter sense are
not meaningful nor admit of answers, and you can't present empirical data in
rebuttal, nor do much else besides try to inspire a sense of skepticism about
their broadest assumptions, habits, etc. And encourage them to read Plato.

As others have observed, many of Aristotle's scientific claims have been
falsified, and personally I didn't get much out of reading his Physics. But
the Nic. Ethics made a permanent change in the way I think and feel, in part
because it revealed to me how incomplete and shallow my justifications about
ethics had been my whole life, and that a coherent way of thinking about
ethics was possible.

Also, studying the history of philosophy and philosophy of science are the
best ways to become aware of the (often questionable) philosophical
assumptions that underlie the contemporary scientistic attitude towards
knowledge.

~~~
braft
This section stuck out to me also:

> Why would you want to be like Socrates, and not like Newton? Especially
> since Newton had more to show for his thoughts than an account of what his
> thoughts were like. I suspect the difference is that because physicists
> invent explicit machinery that can be easily taught, when you learn physics
> you spend your time mastering these tools. And perhaps in the process, you
> come to think in a way that fits well with these tools. Whereas in
> philosophy there is much less in the way of explicit methods to learn, so
> the most natural thing to learn is how to do whatever mental processes
> produce good philosophy.

The notion of having "more to show" is beside the point. The goal of
philosophy can not be described as "producing good philosophy." The goal, at
least for many of the ancients both in and outside Greece, is coming to know
the truth, possessing wisdom, but not in the sense of holding in mind a set of
facts about the world. It is a goal of reconciling oneself to the world,
reaching the best understanding of how to live and think properly that is
available to human beings.

------
jfaucett
As an undergrad there was a brief point where I got really into philosophy
i.e. its core disciplines such as metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics,
ethics, because I had never encountered it before but after about a year and a
half I got completely sick of all the confused vagueness and have never
returned.

The impracticality of the whole discipline is what frustrated me in the end,
and is why all my free reading to this day is about maths, physics,
engineering, computer science, etc. topics that are applicable in the real
world and help me solve problems. I suppose that if you plop logic, game
theory, and enough other formal science disciplines under the philosophy
rubric you can make philosophy seem more reasonable but to me that's just
mathematics and you're fooling yourself calling it philosophy.

I know many will disagree, but IMO there is hardly a discipline more pointless
than philosophy, its continually losing ground to science in every area and
its methods are questionable at best i.e. armchair I think its so so its so.

~~~
kitbrennan
> its continually losing ground to science in every area and its methods are
> questionable at best

Philosophy is a very broad school and many areas do not lose out to science.
While science helps answer such things as the free will debate, it cannot
answer the question of morality or the debate over how to govern society
correctly.

Often science can bring us closer to understanding the world but not provide
an answer on how to act. The classic example is abortion. Science can tell us
when the heartbeat starts, or brainwaves begin firing, or when we feel pain;
but it cannot begin to answer whether it is ok to take a life before/after any
of those biological points - that is where philosophy comes in.

I'd go as far as arguing that it is one of the most practical disciplines. It
gave me answers on how to act rather than relying on pure feeling. Too many of
us support the same political parties as our parents or having the same moral
code as our peers, without questioning whether that is actually the ideal way
to act. These philosophical arguments go to the heart of society, morality,
politics and law.

~~~
charles-salvia
Science can settle (or at least inform) a debate over how to govern society
correctly _if_ you define certain tangible features or goals that a correct
society should have. If you agree upfront that a correct society should seek
to e.g. maximize individual happiness, or maximize economic output, or
whatever, there are scientific arguments that would support one policy over
another.

It's also worth noting that a lot of what Aristotle (as opposed to Plato) as
well as many of the Pre-Socratics actually wrote about would today be
considered scientific topics. Aristotle speculated about physics and natural
systems using abstract reasoning. Many of his conclusions are empirically
falsifiable and have been falsified. It's simply that empiricism itself as an
epistemological tool had not yet been fully appreciated in Classical Greece.

~~~
CM30
> If you agree upfront that a correct society should seek to e.g. maximize
> individual happiness, or maximize economic output, or whatever, there are
> scientific arguments that would support one policy over another.

And that's the key. How do you define what a 'correct' society should seek to
do? What might make some people materially/'objectively' better off may also
make them miserable. What makes people happier may make the world worse by
encouraging people to 'waste' their lives on meaningless things (like say,
virtual reality experiences). What makes most lives better might make a lot of
other people happy (the utilitarian issue).

Science cannot say what the goal you're trying to achieve is. That's where
philosophy comes in.

------
RyJones
I've really enjoyed the time I've spent listening to PEL[0]. If you start from
the beginning and listen in order, they mostly try to build on previous
episodes.

[0]
[https://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/](https://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/)
it's worth it to become a PEL citizen for access to the archives

------
innocentoldguy
I like reading both old and new philosophy, because I feel philosophy tends to
explore ideas with less bias and polarity. The point isn't to be "right" as
much as it is to think and explore. For example, one philosopher can ask "Why
shouldn't we eat babies," without other philosophers engaging in political
demonstrations, leaflet campaigns, and anti-baby-eating benefit concerts. The
goal isn't to leave the philosophy meeting and find a baby to eat, but rather
to explore the topic intellectually.

------
eruditely
Just FYI for the folks here, every time Aristotle's works were translated they
caused a golden age, Rome, Classical Arabia.

No scientist would ever disavow epistemology, no matter how much they pretend
once an issue _really_ comes down to it, it really matters.

For example I will link a picture out of Gregory Clark's a farewell to alms
that shows that Classical Athens was ahead pound for pound than 1800's
England!

Classical Philosophy is also important for learning how to rule well w/o over
reliance on the industrial revolution, the entirety of science's false glory
is the glory of industry and technology.

The below link shows that Athens/Ancient Assyria had a better economy than
1800's England, much better, and Roman Egypt is competitive.
[https://twitter.com/SanguineEmpiric/status/81818406860496076...](https://twitter.com/SanguineEmpiric/status/818184068604960768)

Afaik, modern sociological research is proving Hegel correct see Ricardo
Duchesne, the real problem is, is that the civilizational distance isn't
_that_ large, or actually doesn't exist between Rome and say 1800's England, I
effectively consider it continuous if you know what I mean.

------
ianai
My problem lately hasn't been a lack of need to read philosophy. It's been a
lack of time. When I do have idle moments I want to turn my brain off.

------
lolive
After old philosophy, came several centuries of war and monotheism. This dark
age gave wrong explanations to several important questions. Once Renaissance
rediscovered old philosophy, then came back the strategies to formulate
questions relevantly and avoid wrong answers. From there, monotheism was
doomed. And eventually, rationalism was on its way to success. Nowadays, old
philosophy and rationalism are considered too complex and abstract. We are
coming back to simple (wrong) answers: monotheism and war (and I would add
propaganda). The difference with the previous dark ages is that nowadays old
philosophy is still widely available. Just that no one considers it as a way
to ask good questions and never be fooled by wrong answers.

------
mtdewcmu
I'm not sure about philosophy, but for physics, the most elegant expression of
new discoveries is mathematical equations and numeric measurements. The words
used by the original discoverer are not that important, because they just
introduce the equations and numbers and provide context. When they appear in
textbooks, the equations are usually expressed in the same form as the
original discoverer expressed them, so in that sense, you are reading the
original (equations).

------
glenstein
I think at least two of the explanations dismissed by the author are
intriguing, even if not fully adequate as answers to her question.

>Philosophy is not trying to communicate normal content that can be in
explicit statements, of the kind you might be able to explain well and check
the understanding of and such.

I think there's something to that. Some forms of philosophy advocate broad
conceptual systems that "hang together" in a way. I don't know how you would
teach Kantian philosophy without reading passages from Kant, for instance.

>Philosophy is about having certain experiences which pertain to the relevant
philosophy, much like reading a poem is different to reading a summary of its
content.

I think that applies to writers such as Nietzsche, and some of the more
substantive writers continental philosophers. It also applies, for better or
worse, to writers who in my opinion wrote nonsense, but are nevertheless
written in a style intended to be "experienced." And at least in principle I
don't think there's anything wrong with that.

And beyond those two bullet points, I can think of a few more.

One is we're supposed to believe that philosophy deals with timeless subject
matter. So it's not necessarily surprising that at certain points in history
some people might do a really good job writing about it, expressing ideas that
continue to be relevant and which aren't improved upon by attempts to
elucidate.

Another reason to read old philosophers is the same reason some courses teach
math or physics in a way that emphasizes the historical circumstances where
the ideas first originated. I've even heard of some courses that teach almost
entirely in primary sources. You can view the ideas with a sense of discovery
and an appreciation for the ingenuity involved. A lot of the magic in very
beautiful ideas tends to die when it's clinically summarized in a textbook.

Now, all of that said, I still think there are many branches of philosophy
where you don't need to read old sources. Things like language, logic, meta-
ethics, and probably many others can just be summarized while ignoring
historical sources, saving a lot of time. But again, contra the author's
suggestion, from what I know it's at least relatively common to have graduate
level courses on philosophical subjects that are focused on cutting edge
literature.

------
holri
I read them because I find there timeless truths.

------
Ericson2314
These are good points. I don't consider philosophy outmodded, and I do think
that in every field you should study its history too to learn it's dirty
secrets and biases. But I don't think that in philiosophy this is any more or
less true, as the author seems to also suspect.

------
alexpetralia
Really enjoyed reading this - Robert Pirsig had a similar criticism of
philosophy in academia.

~~~
ndr
There's also this one from pg:
[http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html](http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html)

~~~
saycheese
>> "In high school I decided I was going to study philosophy in college. I had
several motives, some more honorable than others. One of the less honorable
was to shock people."

Really miss PG being more active on his blog, HN, YC, etc.

PG is active on Twitter:

[https://mobile.twitter.com/paulg](https://mobile.twitter.com/paulg)

------
rampage101
The same could be said about any other time period. If it was 1970 you could
say we have televisions and cars, how could the ancients' advice possibly
benefit us. Next the author will tell us about an article he read about the
Singularity.

~~~
eruditely
Lindy effect.

------
mybrid
Wisdom is the product of knowledge and knowledge is often times the product of
foolish mistakes.

A butterfly flaps its wings in Africa and changes the weather in California.

Unknowns is the one word answer to your question.

You have your known knowns, your known unknowns and your unknown unknowns.

We have to make decisions every day with known unknowns and unknown unknowns.
Philosophy is a body of knowledge that is in built up on trial-and-error over
time. Those first trials start for us when history first started. We've been
building on them ever since. We still know next to nothing about
consciousness. Philosophy today primarily deals with consciousness. Once we've
modeled the conscious brain and can completely control and predict human
nature then there truly will be no need for philosophy.

~~~
draw_down
Don't forget about the unknown knowns! The things we know but which we don't
know that we know.

------
tempz
So, entertainment with role models.

That is the best description of philosophy I ever heard.

------
mannykannot
The paradox goes away once you realize that philosophy is more like literature
than it is like science.

------
danielam
There seem to be a couple of different questions and concerns in this post
that have been confused (the first step: clarify the question). One seems to
be the question of why we study old philosophers in the first place (1),
another is the question why we study them in their original language (2). The
most discernible answer the author proposes, to the first question at least,
is that reading old philosophers is a way of learning about the methodologies
employed by a philosopher. My brief response...

(2) The original text is the original data. The first task is to understand
what exactly it is that a philosopher said. Nailing that down can itself be
the subject of debate. As multilingual people who've used more than one
language in the course of intellectual work know, translation is often an
approximation of the original text. Language is bound up with culture and what
words denote, their connotations, their significance, etc, aren't always
translatable in a straightforward fashion. By comprehending the language, we
have a better grasp of the content the philosopher was trying to communicate
to us. That doesn't mean good translations can't exist, but that, too, can be
the subject of debate. From there, we have all manner of commentary which
begins a tradition and can spin off into still other traditions. Science
operates in essentially the same way. There is a scientific tradition with
important figures that have initiated fruitful traditions themselves and who
are likewise inheritors of still older traditions. Some traditions fade for a
number of reasons. Understanding both the commentary and the original text can
clarify things better than understanding just one of the two. Your
understanding becomes more perfect.

(1) The notion that philosophical theories at time T+1 are necessarily better
than those at time T is an appeal to novelty, i.e., a fallacy. Theories fall
out of favor not necessarily because whatever takes their place, so to speak,
is more formidable. That kind of progress isn't a given nor is it that
straightforward. For example, that Cartesianism and its fallout has dominated
a good chunk of western thought for the last few centuries does not mean that
the Aristotelianism it "replaced" was inferior.

In response to the proposal that we read Aristotle to absorb his methodology,
I'd like to answer in the context of what I wrote above. The methodologies he
uses are communicated through the tradition and numerous commentaries have
been written on the methodologies Aristotle employes (they vary depending on
the subject matter he is attending to). However, it is a mistake to think that
that is the only thing Aristotle offers. Aristotle's methodology, after all,
is a means to the truth. Philosophy is a theoretical endeavor where
"theoretical" means it is done to know things for their own sake.

------
redsummer
The old philosophers had much greater breadth because the whole vista was open
to them. They were treading on soil for the first time. Newer philosophers are
dry academics who are just filling in a few details. Who wants to read that?

~~~
Cozumel
Too add most modern 'philosophers' publish for the sake of publishing, not
because they actually have anything new or interesting to say.

Philosophy is an unbroken conversation going back thousands of years, why
would we want the cliffnotes summary written by 'academics' who most times
demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of what they're writing about
when we can go straight to the source and read the original.

------
ommunist
Well, Aritotle is famous for his description of fly with eight legs. He was so
much in empireae, that did not bothered to count the fact, flies have 6 legs.

------
k1841894
I read old books because I would rather learn from those who built
civilization than those who tore it down.

------
stevenmays
The problem with modern philosophy is it rides the curtails of physics and
other sciences. It basically exists to explain the phenomenon the physics
cannot (think schrodinger's cat).

Ancient philosophy was all intertwined with science because the philosophers
were the scientists. Ancient philosophy still has its place in teaching
readers how to think better and more rationally. And I think modern philosophy
will increase in value as we build more intelligent machines.

------
joeclark77
The author is ignoring the 800-lb gorilla in the room which is the anti-truth,
anti-rationality fashions -- modernism and post-modernism -- that have
dominated and corrupted philosophy for the past century. The analogy to
physical science would make sense only if the mainstream of science since
about 1910 was dominated by politics and founded on a premise that whatever
makes you feel happy, man, must be what makes the universe go round. In such
an environment, it would be entirely reasonable to ignore the modern trash and
have your kids read Newton...

~~~
typon
Cultural marxist straw feminists ruining modern civilization, oh no!

~~~
int_19h
Oh, cmon. You don't need to buy into that whole "cultural Marxism" conspiracy
theory to believe that postmodernism is a cancer to philosophy (and so much
else). All it takes is reading some postmodernist writings, really.

