Am I the only one who unequivocally thinks that philosophy has made progress? Perhaps I have a different definition of what progress means, but surely I can't be the only one?
The number of theories and arguments that philosophers uncovered, as well as the clarity and breadth of their analyses, is certainly progress.
@twsh@ninokadic@philosophy@academicchatter
In science we aim at what David Deutsch refers to as “hard to vary explanations,” the essense of which is contained in Asimov’s classic essay, “The relativity of wrong.” This provides a benchmark for assessing progress in understanding. But I admit my uncertainty regarding how this might translate to philosophy.
@ninokadic@philosophy@academicchatter of course it has. I have a list of favorite examples I should dig up. One thing I’d add is that one of the unique features of philosophy is that we allow revisiting and debating views that were apparently refuted. This reflects l healthy caution given the complexity and nuanced nature of the issues and awareness of past near-misses.
Agreed. One of my pet hates is how many people focus on disagreement - critical thinking for its own sake - almost to make a point of denying progress.
A great interview. even in the first few exchanges you get mutually agreed "sound-bite" summaries of the problem of left-right brain world-views.
And yes - the "critical-thinking" damage done to human discourse is very much the same problem.
Exciting level of agreement, right to the end. A must read. The problem with left-right brain talk has always been the pop-psychology version, not the reality we must all wake up to.
I taught a seminar on progress in philosophy a few years back and there are definitely people who took positions similar to yours. If I recall correctly, perhaps have a look at Moody 1986. “Progress in Philosophy”, Golding 2011. “A Conception of Philosophical Progress” and Pigliucci 2017. “Philosophy as the Evocation of Conceptual Landscapes".
@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter Many do think that it's useless, though. However, it's usually useless to listen to people who hold such beliefs, so touché 😀
@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter Yeah. Though not all, there's a group of right-wing people who like stoicism, Christian philosophy and the classics, because it's part of their traditionalist worldview.
@ninokadic@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter Philosophy as a whole has included progress in many areas and times, stagnation in others, and even regress in some. (This is at least arguably true even in the little corner of philosophy made up of the conversations your initial post sparked!) Not sure how to add all of that together into one overall result.
Perhaps it is too early to say?
Or as my friend & colleague Tom Atlee puts it, "There’s more to it than that…"
The more I reflected, the more immense I realize All of Philosophy is.
Most philosophy is never written down. And so much of what has been written down has been lost.
Eras of open exploration followed by dogmatic clamp-downs & book burnings, followed by new periods of active inquiry. Ask the question in 1930s Germany and negative answers would not be surprising.
Future book burnings might change even your answer.
@slowenough@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter I think most obvious progress is in ethics and political philosophy, at the minimum by expanding the sphere of what it now encompasses: more people groups, animals and the environment, even potential AI, other planets, space exploration, etc.
In consciousness, the most obvious example is cognitive science, which sprang forth from a heavily philosophical background - functionalism, computationalism, multiple realisability thesis, etc.
@ninokadic@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter Sounds like you may be talking about Western philosophy in particular? Other philosophies have included many if not all of the elements you listed in their ethics/political philosophy.
I studied cognitive science as an undergraduate, and appreciate its inquiries into consciousness' relationship to the nitty gritty of how brains/minds work. Such inquiries in general at least have been a thing in some non-Western philosophies going way back.
@ninokadic@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter I do have the sense that Western philosophy has advanced, and I certainly hope it advances in any case, as there is a lot of progress to be made. (As with any lineage rooted so deeply in Empire.)
@ninokadic@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter I'd have to dig into "functionalism, computationalism, multiple realisability thesis" to say more, but thanks for leaving the breadcrumbs for me to follow!
Semi-recently dug into academic philosophy a bit and came away with interest to learn more about phenomenology at some point. Curious if that is an area where you see Western philosophy as having made progress?
(The one philosophy class I took, people were just playing word games. :-/ )
@slowenough@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter I think the largest contribution of 'traditional' phenomenology (think Brentano, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty) is recognising certain things about consciousness that then became useful both within and outside of philosophy. For example, embodied cognition is a big buzzword now in cognitive science, robotics, and its direct predecessor was Merleau-Ponty.
@slowenough@ninokadic@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter philosophy of course made progress, in giving birth to all the rest of science. On the other hand, certain things will always be true, and on those questions there has been no progress.
@ninokadic@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter
Unfortunately, many in the sciences are dismissive of philosophy — a profound mistake in my view. For many years I taught a graduate course in probability and statistics aimed at Earth scientists, and I cannot imagine offering such a course without folding in key philosophical elements surrounding the topic of probability, as these elements inform how we approach data analysis.
@PhilSciProf@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter I fully agree with you. Despite what I said, though, I definitely think it does both ways, and we philosophers should be in dialogue with scientists and learn from them. I'm sad there's even talk of some sort of divide or competition.
@ninokadic@PhilSciProf@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter
Yes, and I certainly wish that in the sciences we took more seriously the idea that PhD stands for Doctorate of Philosophy, not doctorate of science. Some of my deepest insights (for me) regarding technical aspects of my research actually came from reading papers with a strong philosophical flavor, usually involving physics.
@PhilSciProf@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter I really appreciate hearing stories like yours. We should definitely all work together. That's why I'm very into cognitive science, I think. At least when it comes to the mind, it invites researchers from different fields to collaborate in a mutually respectful manner. They realised they needed each other.
@NikaShilobod@PhilSciProf@ninokadic@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter
I will try to collect a short list and post it. Meanwhile, I recommend the popular work of David Deutsch. Although Deutsch is a quantum physicist, he is equally adept in science philosophy, notably epistemology. Then there is the work of Edwin Jaynes, formally a probabilist/physicist, but deeply philosophical (e.g. “The well-posed problem”).
@PhilSciProf@ninokadic@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter I work on energy modeling, and I must say that papers discussing epistemology are by far the most useful ones I come across. They are godsends when working on topics filled to the brim with uncertainty.
The other good ones are those offering well documented data, and "back to basics" reviews.
@ivanrmanuel@PhilSciProf@ninokadic@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter
I fully concur. To have a clear sense of the epistemological progression in one’s field and its relation to the history of ideas in other fields is particularly valuable. This speaks to the “why” of one’s efforts and, as I think you imply, bears on how we think about and address uncertainty of complex real systems.
@PhilSciProf@ivanrmanuel@ninokadic@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter The weaker one's grasp of epistemology (whether one knows the word or not), the less skillfully one will be able to pick what scale or scope to consider, what questions are worth one's time (I loved discovering that Buddha had a list of questions he would not spend time on), which problems to prioritize, which assets to nurture, capacities to develop, etc.
@slowenough@chiffchaff@PhilSciProf@ivanrmanuel@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter I think maybe Kaet is saying: the impression is that Buddhists have a utilitarian undedrstanding of knowledge (i.e., it had to be for some cause or goal), and they're not for the right to freely enquire, for enquiry's sake... I think, tbh I didn't quite understand it myself either...
I've come across a few situations reading Buddhist texts where someone says "don't bother with this question", etc, and I've remembered them because it seems like a remarkable thing to say.
Just looking back on them now, when it happens seems to be when certain preconditions aren't met, mainly utilitarian, like @ninokadic says.
One thing which it does remind me of is in correspondence with part of "Just War" theory, when and how a war is declared and its conditions (called /just ad bellum/, there's a wikipedia page called that). Success must be likely, there must be a good reason and you must be asking it for that good reason, etc.
I don't mean to establish a formal correspondence, I just found it remarkable!
(Fwiw, I'm not a fan of just war theory per se, I'm just aware of it).
What I notice with Buddhism is that “The Secret” somewhat aligns with it in blaming the victim, attributing suffering to the victim’s own mental state, refusing to recognize structural violence.
Even the more surface-y interpretation though does not seem to come from an unwillingness to face questions which might threaten Buddhist philosophy, but rather a desire to focus attention on inquiries which people are most likely to find fruitful.
People often invest much energy in questions which won't help them, regardless of the answer.
Telling me you won't answer such questions tells me you have something to hide. And it absolutely does not reassure me that you have anybody's best interests at heart--except perhaps your own.
Most inquiry happens in the context of something to be achieved and that requires shaping finite resources.
Even in the context of a rigorous mathematical proof, sometimes preparatory lemmas are required, even preparatoy fields of study, that may require suspension of curiosity until those lemmas are established.
Imagine a student who asks questions about the quantum nature of the universe but storms out due to the "evasive" teacher's insistence on not answering which he discusses the square root of minus one and differential equations.
Sometimes you have to shape study beyond attacking it with an ever weightier crowbar to get at the jewels.
@chiffchaff: "sometimes preparatory lemmas are required, even preparatoy fields of study, that may require suspension of curiosity until those lemmas are established."
Exactly this. The more nuanced take re Buddhism seems to be that Buddha did not categorically refuse to take up any particular question. Rather, he might answer or not, considering the questioner's readiness. https://groupworksdeck.org/patterns/Seasoned_Timing
But always engaging with every question which arises is itself a choice. And it's one which can be, and is, deployed sometimes to end the previous line of conversation if it was going somewhere one wanted to avoid.
So, determining someone's motivations may require more nuanced discernment.
My first substantive exposure Buddhism (via Walpola Rahula's book in college), blew me away with the idea that a religion might not have a strict dogma, but rather encourage one to try their ideas to see if they worked.
@slowenough@benfell@ninokadic@PhilSciProf@ivanrmanuel@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter I found it difficult for similar reasons, but because I'd just become a parent when I first seriously looked into it. All the teaching is based around non-attachment and equanimity to self and I was like "Yeah, that's fine, but what about the bairn" (like Michael in Lost, 😄 ). There's answers to that if you dig, but most introductory texts seem to be aimed at people in different circumstances.
I appreciate your “what about the bairn” question. Not sure what a bairn is, but assume it’s something tangible.
There are a couple ways to go with this, so this is gonna be a long one. Get yourself a nice beverage.
First, I notice a repetition of the mistake of separating mind and body. I’d thought of this mistake as a Western thing. You’re showing me that it also appears in Buddhism.
In essence, mind/consciousness is an emergent property of body. There is no real distinction between “physical” and “psychological” torture, for example, because both produce both physical and psychological effects. It shows up in other ways as well, as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson describe in Philosophy In The Flesh (New York: Basic, 1999).
Taoists often notice when actions backfire. Buddhists, you note, rely on “non-attachment and equanimity to self.” Yes, you’ve nailed that. But what the Taoist will notice is that seeking to detach from one’s body, only produces a louder attachment from the body. Take away the body and the mind will disappear.
Indeed, in an article I read on a near-death experience, the patient reported a sensation that her consciousness had dissolved. I disagree with Lakoff on a bunch of stuff, but it sure looks to me like he got this right.
Which overlaps with the second point. Which is like what I say of solipsism. Solipsism is actually right: We do in fact only know what is in our minds. What we think we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch is filtered through perception and we cannot be certain of what lies on the other side of that perception. The theory that our perceptions somewhat correspond to the external reality is the correspondence theory of truth and that we cannot be certain of that relationship is a particularly fatal flaw.
The trouble is that solipsism isn’t actually good for anything. It’s like, okay, that then, now what? And by the way, whatever you all think of my “perceptions,” I perceive some food that I’m stuffing into that rumbling belly. And by the way, if I don’t pay the rent, I’m going to be out in the cold. Solipsism sure ain’t letting me alter my perceptions of that external reality, because no matter how much I wish and hope, I can’t make it go away.
Confronting this, Buddhism says I need to meditate more or something, so I can make it go away. Otherwise, I am insufficiently devout. Which really does sound a lot like “The Secret’s” Law of Attraction, where if you’re still attracting bad stuff, it’s because you’re harboring bad stuff in your consciousness. In both ideologies, it’s all my fault, excusing everybody else from any duty to other human beings.
I spoke to some of your other points earlier in this thread, but I am not hearing any progress in your understanding of Buddhist philosophy. If you go back and read what I wrote and respond to that, I will have something more substantive to engage with.
Except that most of us here are not “seekers” in that dichotomy. Some of us are scholars. Others, relative to that dichotomy, might be bystanders.
And I didn’t actually address seekers’ strategies but rather the tactics of Buddhists who refuse questions. This would be a category error of students (seekers) versus masters (teachers).
Finally, I would not treat prerequisites (“preparatory lemmas”) as a refusal. Sometimes you really can’t jump ahead, which is why prerequisites can be required. If this is indeed what that is, then I withdraw my objection.
But I wonder if that is what it is.
In my earlier post, I mentioned that Buddhists adopt a view that effectively blames victims by asserting that their reality is in some degree a projection of their consciousness when suffering can have external causes, like structural or physical violence. This Buddhist view aligns with “The Secret” and the “Law of Attraction” and what it does is allow the preacher to evade responsibility, alleging that the victim doesn’t believe hard enough. It feels like fraud and I don’t think anyone who has suffered poverty can accept it.
That perception of fraud is what leads me to doubt the bit about “preparatory lemmas.” Buddhists evade reality about suffering. It would be consistent for them to evade questions with “preparatory lemmas.”
As practically every Buddhist teacher is also still a seeker, and they or any seeker might notice they're obsessing on a question unhelpfully and realize that and shift their attention, I'm not sure the distinction matters here, but thanks for helping clarify it anyway. 1/2
@benfell@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter Absolutely, though maybe logicians would get a pass now that AI is big. The value of exploration and culture seems to be dwindling in the popular imagination.
@ninokadic@DominikDammer@philosophy@academicchatter If you’re satisfied with aggregate answers, you aren’t really interested in answers. You’re just trying to get by and you don’t care about who you’re leaving out. And that seems to be our governing paradigm.
@apublicimage@philosophy@academicchatter Historical progress, over time. Because it's not just making it up, theories have to be coherent, supported by arguments, follow some epistemic virtues (like parsimony, being compatible with our general worldview, etc.), and they usually build on previous work in the field, including within and without philosophy.
@ninokadic
Well coherence is surely not a truth-maker, nor is being part of a tradition. I think the whole idea of progress in philosophy is dubious, it's not science. @philosophy@academicchatter
@apublicimage@philosophy@academicchatter I see it more as trying to develop coherent explanations, not about uncovering the ultimate truth, I think no one really does philosophy with that premise any more. I also didn't mean to imply that “being part of tradition” is a truth-maker, nor do I see how that follows from what I said. It was merely a description of how work happens. Obviously, I strongly disagree that there is no progress. Theories today are clearer and better argued.