As you may know, many mathematicians turned philosophers while trying to do work on the foundations of mathematics. It seems like logic was the gateway discipline. What we now know as the analytic turn in philosophy of early 20th century came from such as lineage before it devolved into philosophy of language. Frege, Russel, Whitehead, and Wittgenstein are well known in this line of thought. However, the history of philosophy and mathematics goes way back to pre-socratic philosophers like Pythagoras and centuries later Aquinas and then Descartes. The question posed is rather strange given that mathematical development has often been formed by philosophical thought. I guess by clarifying the author means providing solutions (since he/she mentions that "mathematical insight" is nowhere to be found in the literature)? Since philosophy is not the same as doing mathematics the only kinds of clarification that philosophy will provide is in terms of distinctions, definitions and criteria: what is a proof, etc. This is because 'philosophy of x' is always meta discipline.
* the scientific method as falsification == Popper
* quantum theory / relativity / Heisenberg == positivism (If I don't see it (e.g. electron orbitals) it doesn't exist) (* e.g. complementarity)
* Einstein claimed that his reading of Schopenhauer was crucial to thinking about time, space, etc...
in essence, you are doing philosophy when you're re-evaluating your methodology and using a evolving reflective feedback loops to change your thinking.
Furthermore, I believe there was quite a lot of physics done before Popper explained how to do it. He said many valid and insightful things, but it was not necessary for physics for him to say them.
Popper didn't explain "how to do physics", nor did he invalidate previous physics, nor did he "invent the scientific method". But would you not agree that he influenced how scientists interpreted the scientific method? This is the point I'm making.. please don't reduce it into a blanket idea such as "phsyics could not have been done before Popper" which isn't anywhere close to what I said.
I think it is close to what you said, though apparently not what you meant.
What this discussion is sorely lacking is actual examples, so let me offer one up: reproducibility has lately become an issue in several branches of science, and maybe it would not have done so without Popper's insights.
Care to elaborate? After all this was exactly the subject of a conversation between Einstein and Heisenberg that the latter recounted in his mémoire "The Part and the Whole".
It might not be our modern view but it seems Heisenbergs view on the origin of QM is very much that. He wanted to work with the observable transitions directly rather than any assumed underlying reality, hence his matrix mechanics.
Quoting from wikipedia:
> Matrix mechanics, on the other hand, came from the Bohr school, which was concerned with discrete energy states and quantum jumps. Bohr's followers did not appreciate physical models which pictured electrons as waves, or as anything at all. They preferred to focus on the quantities which were directly connected to experiments.
Not the parent, but I do have a background in physics.
Positivism is broadly the philosophy that underlies all of science. i.e. the philosophy that there is a real world external to our minds, and that it can be understood.
Confusing that with relativity is... bizarre. It confuses the foundation of science with individual bricks that are built on it.
> It might not be our modern view but it seems Heisenbergs view on the origin of QM is very much that. He wanted to work with the observable transitions directly rather than any assumed underlying reality, hence his matrix mechanics.
At a certain point, the distinction between theories becomes philosophical. If both theories describe the same underlying reality to a similar approximation, then for all intents and purposes, they are the same theory.
The philosophy behind the theory is used to motivate extensions to the theory. i.e. edge conditions where the theories make different predictions. At that point, the theories are distinguishable.
It's like arguing whether subtraction is adding negative numbers, or subtracting positive numbers. The difference may be important in some edge conditions, but for most purposes, it's two sides of the same coin.
What does relativism have to do with anything? It wasn't mentioned by me or previously in this post. Maybe there is a problem with terms here [1], to me positivism does _not_ posit that there is an underlying truth that we get closer to.
Of course if theories make distinct predictions deciding between them is a matter of physics and not philosophy. But it is a fact that the philosophical idea that all knowledge derives purely from observable phenomena and does not need to describe an underlying reaity that is being measured is cited by Heisenberg as a starting point of his investigation of QM that led to matrix mechanics.
"quantum theory / relativity / Heisenberg == positivism (If I don't see it (e.g. electron orbitals) it doesn't exist) (* e.g. complementarity)"
Not the parent either, but consider this:
My understanding of the standard model of quantum mechanics is that the fundamental particles cannot be observed in any other way than as statistical behaviors. Therefore, by positivism, it would be an error to try to describe their behavior in terms of a more fundamental model, or as a metaphor, or etc. The mathematics is all you get. There may be two equivalent theories, but if one goes on to make claims that cannot be observed, it is invalid.
In terms of relativity, you it would be an error to make any statements about what is going on outside your light cone. It's not that you don't know, it's that you cannot know and therefore any statements you make are meaningless.
It's not the case that if you know the position, then you cannot know the momentum of a particle. Instead, if you know the position, then the particle does not have a well defined momentum. Making claims about the momentum beyond the limit of your position/momentum knowledge is like asking "Is a unicorn blue?" The question is meaningless.
I see what you're saying, even if I would argue the details. But the important point is that there's no way to get from positivism to there:
The incompatibility of momentum and position, and that of energy and instant, arises from each being the Fourier transform of the other. It is after that that one can make a link to positivism.
In relativity, the fact that what happens beyond an event horizon can't influence my knowledge in any way is a consequence of the geometrical properties of spacetime. It is again a consequence of the mathematical theory, which one can link to positivism after the fact.
One shouldn't be fooled, by looking at how many branches of science started as philosophy, into then taking these modern spurious links and believing relativity or quantum mechanics are based on positivism.
yes, it's an oversimplification, and probably a slight misread of the point the guy was making.. i don't have time to copy the whole talk into a single sentance. a more charitable way to think about it is to consider the effects positivism had on scientists at that time.
It doesn't help that many philosophers of mathematics are, for obvious reasons, either also logicians or mathematicians, so demarcating between advancements in philosophy of mathematics that clarify mathematics and advancements in mathematics that clarify mathematics can be a bit of a fool's errand.
Whatever the case, I dislike it when folks from the sciences or mathematics try to discredit or dismiss philosophy--funnier still, and luckily not as bad, is when they question the value of philosophy without realizing that question is in and of itself a highly philosophical question!
Philosophy has been around for a long time and isn't going anywhere in the perceivable future (though I suppose it depends on what metaphysics of time you subscribe to :) ).
In some sense Grothendieck's investigations could be considered "philosophical"; in the early 20th century algebraic geometers studied objects called "varieties" and Grothendieck's coup resulted from asking the question "what is the general class of object with which we can do algebraic geometry?". Today scheme theory is entirely mathematical, but a scheme had to be conceived as a philosophical concept first. The link also mentions Turing's elucidation of the Turing machine as a similar process.
There is also the case of Frank Ramsey and Piero Sraffa, who were the only close friends of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and who went on to make major epistemological contributions to economics (and Ramsey was a philosopher in his own right): Ramsey was the first person to really clarify the concept of a subjective probability, and Sraffa was central in the capital aggregation controversy.
I am not familiar with Grothendieck's work and with algebraic geometry in general, but Turing's work was rather unique, and very much philosophical in nature[0].
I am basing the following on Turing's 1936 paper, On Computable Numbers[1], on Juliet Floyd's chapter on Turing's mathematical philosophy[2], and on Robin Gandy's 1988 paper, The Confluence of Ideas in 1936[3].
The generalization of mathematical concepts has always been an important part of mathematics. In fact, Gandy writes that this was precisely the concern with Church's claim that the lambda calculus can express all algorithms ("a vague and intuitive notion", in Church's words). It was thought that perhaps a genius could some day generalize the notion further to include lambda-definability as well as things that fall outside it. But then Turing appeared with arguments of a very different kind. For one, his construction of an automatic machine, while precise, was completely arbitrary. It was clear to everyone from his treatment that while his math concerns a specific formalism (what's known as the Turing machine ever since Church named it so), it really covers all formalisms. For another, his proof of undecidability is very different from the one normally presented as the proof for the undecidability of the halting problem (which is really due to Martin Davis). Turing's proof, Floyd notes, makes no use at all of any logical construction, and does not rely even on logical contradiction or the law of excluded middle (which are expected to hold in many "reasonable" formalisms) but on more basic philosophical principles that must hold in any and all formalisms.
Gödel called Turing's achievement a "miracle". In 1946 he said (quoted in Gandy's paper):
...with this concept one has for the first time succeeded in giving an absolute definition of an interesting epistemological notion, i.e., one not depending on the formalism chosen. In all other cases treated previously... one has been able to define them only relative to a given language, and for each individual language it is clear that the one thus obtained is not the one looked for. For the concept of computability, however,... the situation is different. By a kind of miracle it is not necessary to distinguish orders, and the diagonal procedure does not lead outside the defined notion...
[0]: Turing was a mathematical philosopher among other things, and is known for his discussions with Wittgenstein, published in Wittgenstein's Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics.
Isn't the crux of this back and forth proofs that rely upon the axiom of choice vs those that do not?
It is my understanding that philosophers have added a lot to our understanding of how the axiom of choice impacts logical reasoning about things which matter to humanity in concrete ways.
Axiom of Choice cannot matter to humanity in concrete ways (except as an artistic activity), because the Axiom of Choice only applies to uncountably-large sets, which have no realizable physical meaning in the Universe.
Of course. It’s not clear that the “real” or even “natural” numbers meaningfully correspond to any physical phenomenon. They’re just abstractions and tools for making predictions and reasoning about our experiences as humans, which don’t necessarily reflect how the world actually is.
The universe is uncountably infinite; that people routinely stumble over this is why Zeno posed all those paradoxes about motion. In a sense, if you don't believe that reality is uncountably infinite, then you believe it IS possible to square the circle. This actually matters a great deal, since it impacts on things like, what are digital computers (which is to say, set theoretic theories of math) capable of?
I've thought of that more of a serious thought than a joke. At my college we had a joke that physics majors washed out and became math majors (because the faculty were assholes); math majors washed out and became philosophy majors (because they couldn't handle rigor); and philosophy majors washed out and became anthropology majors (because they couldn't handle homework)
Bishop Berkeley's response to Newton might qualify. Newton had something useful but Berkeley showed he hadn't proved anything. It wasn't until Cauchy (?) proved things rigorously that calculus was on a solid footing.
Philosophy often revolves around questions of purpose in life, and any non-mathematician might wonder why someone would devote their life to the study of advanced math. The question of purpose becomes even more interesting when a mathematician spends decades solving theoretical math problems that have no immediate practical use in engineering or programming. Any mathematician who's engaged in such problems wouldn't have any trouble understanding his own motives; for him, the philosophy is so obvious that it goes without saying. But an outsider might see his actions as inexplicable - as inexplicable as an ascetic monk spending a week meditating on a frigid mountaintop.
Philosophy functions as an aid in that understanding. The mathematician might read it and recognize truth, if it is written well, and a non-mathematician might be able to learn the rationale for devoting one's life to math. It might have a strong enough effect to make someone gravitate towards that type of life.
Different works in the philosophy of math could deal with different aspects of the mathematical life, such as the inherent beauty of an elegant proof, and it could also go into the larger, more long-term purposes of math, whose effects might not be recognized until long after the mathematician is dead.
I would think that the best philosophy of math would need to be written by a mathematician. An issue with philosophy is that it's quite difficult to write it well. There is a lot of philosophy out there that's poorly-written. It might suffer from a lack of clarity or simply be inaccurate. To have a brilliant philosophy of math, you would need a person who is both a skilled mathematician and a skilled writer. That is a rare thing.
Most of the famous mathematicians were driven by philosophy. For example Kepler wanted to keep perfection in the new model universe. He thought he could do it by using Plato's solids for the relative distances between the planets. He was wrong, but the mathematical attempts he tired help to form a more correct answer. The motivation was philosophical.
Also, philosophy has been dogged since Descartes with the self-imposed goal of providing a "foundation" for all knowledge enterprises (e.g. science, math) — by attempting to, put crudely, solve the mind-body problem and legitimatize that our thoughts and connection to the world are valid.
> Question: Has it ever happened that philosophy has elucidated and clarified a mathematical concept, proof, or construction in a way useful to research mathematicians?
I would hope so! The short answer is the philosophy of Math will help you determine whether what you're researching is true! Surely it would be very bizarre to research something with complete apathy regarding its truth value. A few examples:
The famous Peano axioms [1] are widely used to prove such things as the commutative property of multiplication (ab=ba). But as the name "axiom" suggests, you just have to accept them as true or the whole thing crumbles. So why is it true that "0 is a natural number"? If this is false, much (all?) of math research is in big trouble! Does this suggest a sort of mathematical epistemic foundationalism? If so, what are its limits? When is mathematical research warranted, and when can we simply regard mathematical beliefs as properly basic?
Also, consider the realist/anti-realist debate [2, 3] which seeks to answer the question "are numbers, sets, functions, etc. actual features of the real world, or are they all just in our heads?" (or some refined variation thereof). If they are real entities, how is it that these non-causal things (like 5) lie at the very heart of the laws governing the physical, causal universe? But if they aren't real, then what possible explanation can one give for the perfect harmony of the physical world and these functions, that are ultimately all in my head? Moreover, why is belief in these unreal entities so widespread (I know of no "amathists")?
>So why is it true that "0 is a natural number"? If this is false, much (all?) of math research is in big trouble! Does this suggest a sort of mathematical epistemic foundationalism?
Math major here. To me, this seems like a non-nonsensical question. 0 is defined to be a natural number. You could say (as Platonism does), that there is some "real" natural numbers out there in the universe, and ask if the Peano axioms define a system that is isomorphic to the real "natural numbers". Or you could ask if the Peano axioms acuratly define the artificial system that we informally think of as the natural numbers.
You could also ask if any system (real or abstract) can satisfy the Peano axioms. That is to say, are they internally consistent (and is there a constructive proof of such). Assuming this is the case, then (by definition) there will be an object that we call "0" that is a natural number. You can also ask if there is a unique (up to isomorphism) instantiation of the Peano axioms (there is).
> ...and ask if the Peano axioms define a system that is isomorphic to the real "natural numbers". Or you could ask if the Peano axioms accurately define the artificial system...
This is exactly what I meant. You can define anything you want. You can even do so in a sophisticated way such that your defined system is internally coherent. But internal coherence alone can't be the standard of measure of truth -- we need to ask "does our internally coherent system correspond with reality?" To the questioner on MathOverflow, math will answer the coherence question, philosophy of math will answer the correspondence question.
> To me, this seems like a non-nonsensical question. 0 is defined to be a natural number.
Is it merely definitional though? They're called "natural" numbers for a reason! These are the set of numbers that seem most obvious to us, the kind that (I don't think) we can teach. For example, you can tell a child "this is 1 apple", "these are 2 apples", etc., but other than the name, you really can't teach a person what numbers are. They just know. Why is that? It's clearly is more than merely definitional. And I think 0 falls into this category unlike, say, complex numbers. But notice, whatever your response -- even if you disagree -- we're deep into philosophy territory here with the simple axiom "0 is a natural number".
> For example, you can tell a child "this is 1 apple", "these are 2 apples", etc., but other than the name, you really can't teach a person what numbers are. They just know. Why is that?
I would argue that this is a question for psychology, with input from neuroscience, biology, and likely numerous other fields of science. What you are asking is not a question about the universe, but rather a question about the human mind: why is it that the natural numbers seem innate to humans. In the same way we can ask why language is innate in humans, or the skills to walk.
Regarding 0, historically, 0 has been much more controversial as a number. To the best of my knowledge, we have no evidence of it existing as a number prior to around 400AD India. Also, for the record, 0 being a natural number is denominational. So much so that many (most?) mathematicians (myself included) do not consider 0 to be a natural number. Math has not imploded because of this, we just waste a little bit of effort here and there to clarify what we mean when it is an important distinction.
>And I think 0 falls into this category unlike, say, complex numbers.
Funny you should bring up complex numbers. If we look at physics, we find that the complex numbers seem far more "natural" than the natural numbers do. In fact, I cannot think of a single physics theory defined over the natural numbers. In contrast, the complex numbers show up all the time. Even quantum mechanics, which (being quantized) would seem to be an ideal candidate for a natural number theory, ends up being defined heavily in terms of complex numbers.
> You can even do so in a sophisticated way such that your defined system is internally coherent
Rest assured, any mathematical or logical system capable of expressing arithmetic is incoherent, if only trying to prove so using it's own rules. (You can shift the burden of proof to an external system you trust, but that external system would suffer from the same problem if a similar proof was attempted)
But that sort of gives away the game, doesn't it? There is no perfect harmony in the real world, that only exists in the stylized world of scientific modeling. If you take scientific modeling on faith, or worse, if you adopt a "good enough is" position, then you've already smuggled in mathematical realism and given yourself a foregone conclusion.
if you asked practicing mathematicians whether or not the philosophy of foundational mathematics, the hilbert programme, and wittgensteins consternation on the notion of equality were at all relevant...you would get a pretty dispassionate 'of course'. for whatever reasons most of these topics are taught in the philosophy departments and not the mathematics.
No, not at all. One could argue that analytic philosophy and mathematical logic have some overlap and inform each other, but even then, there are deep differences in their goals and methods.
I think it's worth making it clear that Plato's contributions to political science, maths, physics, and religious thought were all framed at the time as philosophy.
> Secondly, remember that broadly the point of philosophy is to make things not philosophy. In extremely simplistic historical terms, once natural philosophy becomes rigorous it becomes science, once philosophy of language became rigorous it became linguistics, and today we're seeing philosophy of mind turn to neuroscience.
This is absolutely not correct, and elucidates little but the prejudices of the answerer. Philosophy of language has /not/ become linguistics, philosophy of mind has /not/ become neuroscience, and only a subset of natural philosophy has become natural science.
The philosophical questions discussed by Socrates have elided the grasp of both dogmatic rigor and empiricism for twenty-four hundred years, and there seems to be absolutely no reason to expect this to change.
The answerer has either no actual grasp of the history or content of philosophy, or has simply decided, apparently by fiat, to discard all but the most narrow positivism-flavored slice as nonsense.
I'm not sure I follow what you're railing against here. You're absolutely correct that none of the disciplines you've listed have been completely solved yet, and that they likely won't be any time soon. But I'm not sure it's fair to say they are not all actively fed by and deeply integrated with the work done in their precursor philsophical fields. This is particularly noticeable in more abstract fields like mathematics and computation where often times, empiricism can't be a driving factor because there's no empirical ground to stand on. If your point is, "There's still Philosophy left in these spaces", that seems to me to be like arguing that men cannot have evolved from apes, because there's still apes around.
No, my point is that none of these disciplines have been remotely subsumed by their "rigorous" counterparts, because their subject matter is fundamentally different. All of these "rigorous" fields are, of course, fed by philosophy -- but they are not in a position to turn around and solve philosophy.
For example, linguistics -- understood as the science of language -- will never be able to, say, tell us what the connection is between the word and the world. How would it? And for all the promise of neuroscience, it is not one inch closer to telling us why there is a seeming difference between what physically occurs in a brain during an experience and what that experience is /like/.
There is certainly overlap between rigorous methodologies and philosophy. But the goal of philosophy is not to rigorize its way out of existence.
> No, my point is that none of these disciplines have been remotely subsumed by their "rigorous" counterparts, because their subject matter is fundamentally different. All of these "rigorous" fields are, of course, fed by philosophy -- but they are not in a position to turn around and solve philosophy.
No they can't answer many of the questions some philosophers have asked, but they can and have shown that many of those questions were poorly defined. For instance, biology and biochemistry have completely supplanted the philosophical debate surrounding vitalism.
Slowly but surely, I also predict neuroscience will erode many of the foundations surrounding dualism. Which isn't to say that those fields will be free of philosophical questions at some point, because that's just not how knowledge works, I'm merely saying that many of our current philosophical questions will either be answered or will be shown to be poor questions.
I don't mean to understate or disrespect the scale of the task to which philosophers traditionally apply themselves; you're preaching to the choir there. But I do want to be careful not to inject too much mysticism into the picture.
There is something persistently mystical to qualia, to sensitivity, to experience, the nature of existence, whatever else you want to lump under the category of 'scientifically unsolvable'. Whether you want to address it via Hegelian Contexts or Quinian Nominalism or Protestant Ecstasy; for as many understandings of these phenomena and their motivating metaphysics, there are an equal number of implicit definitions of the word 'rigor'. Even the romantics were still in the business of establishing their own systems within which to do work, in the form of proofs using the rules of those systems. They may not look like scientific systems, but they are still systems to do the work of solving problems, and thus run parallel to scientific systems (as a sibling poster has described).
And so I prefer a much more charitable interpretation of the SO response. I agree with you that the goal of philosophy is not to rigorize its way out of existence - it probably can't, and probably for a superset of the reasons why meta-descriptive paradoxes arise. Nor is it to become a science in the technical sense (i.e., an empirical and deductive process in accordance with the scientific method). But do I think the goal of most philosphers is to build compelling systems within which their apostles may do work, or practice rigor.
> think the goal of most philosphers is to build compelling systems within which their apostles may do work, or practice rigor.
That may or may not be what the modern philosopher's goal is, but I don't think it's fair to say, unequivocally, this was always philosophy's goal all along—or at the very least, such a claim is contested/disputed.
For example, Rorty [1] made the point that philosophy, as an epistemological enterprise that grounds the foundations of other sciences & give them credibility, really found it's start in the early modern philosophers, with their attempt to carve out a place for science inside dominant the religious world.
(At this point philosophy was continuous with the sciences.)
And then continuing w/ Descartes, Locke & Kant, to this version of philosophy which is no longer continuous with science, but rather playing this special epistemological role.
A lot of people jump into the naive belief that science replaces philosophy because philosophy is often the starting point of many of the sciences--as is typical, we see a connection and begin a reductive process that dumbs it all down to a straightforward relation like causality or linear progress, ignoring the actual complexities of the relationship. Nietzsche would scold us!
We tend to forget, of course, that science is really just another, even if it happens to be the most sensible thus far, form of dogma, and philosophy is one of the only, if not the only, discipline that can call it to account.
Philosophy of Science is an incredibly important field and will only become more important as we advance in the sciences--it has revealed and dealt with issues such as, our epistemic prejudice (ie the belief that most people hold that our current science is 'correct' even though history's course would increase the probability that it isn't), whether or not there actually is such a thing as scientific progress, or progress in general, how objectivity, as we frequently understand the concept, is grossly mishandled and probably an impossibility in its purest sense, how methods of verification can lead us astray... the list goes on.
Philosophy is important and I wish more people studied it or at least had a general familiarity with it. It really should be a gen ed requirement down to the Jr. high level.
What is the goal? Is there progress that isn't either turning a problem into not-philosophy or, as one of the OP comments put it, preventing bad philosophy from muddying the conceptual waters? (The latter still counts as net value to the world if the bad philosophy in question is believed by people without being told by bad philosophers. Maybe that happens a lot -- I'm not sure.)
I don't believe there's consensus in this, as philosophy might be the only discipline tasked with defining itself. Still, this is as good an answer as any.
1. the goals of philosophy are clear (since you can tell that this guy's answer is absolutely incorrect--though you have yet to mention what you believe the goals of philosophy to be) but,
2. the questions will never be answered
So you're saying philosophy leads from clear goals to unanswerable questions. Paradoxical.
Socrates said "I know that I do not know." I would recommend that you bring a similar humility to attempted definitions of philosophy.
>But the goal of philosophy is not to rigorize its way out of existence.
doesn't mean you shouldn't put rigor in your response instead of giving, like, your opinion.
>linguistics -- understood as the science of language -- will never be able to, say, tell us what the connection is between the word and the world. How would it?
First of all to understand what you are even trying to say requires linguistics. Secondly, you seem to make an linguistic argument to inform a philosophical idea.
You seem to have a certain grasp on that subject or at least feel very strong about it.
Unfortunately your post didn't correct any (perceived) mistake, it was mostly a longer way to write "That's not true". Would you be so kind and expand that reply a bit, so that I might find pointers/key words to look up myself?
I have a beginner level interest in philosophy of mind. I can attempt to add some information on how "...and today we're seeing philosophy of mind turn to neuroscience." is very wrong.
Neuroscience studies various structures and mechanisms of nervous system and brain. Even when they seemingly discuss 'consciousness', they tend to simply mean 'awareness'. I think most are generally familiar with other aspects of neuroscience.
In phil. of mind there are categories of consciousness or lack thereof, though Phenomenal Consciousness is more popular area of study (experiential side of consciousness). One of the key subject in Philosophy of mind try to show whether mind can possibly be physical (ex readable article: http://organizations.utep.edu/Portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf), can mind be described computationally? (ex paper: http://consc.net/papers/rock.html) Phi. of mind also studies accesses of consciousness, study methods on how to go about studying contents of consciousness etc.
I've talked to neuroscientist who despise philosophers talking about conciseness and claim their ideas are silly or can be ignored. There has also been cases where big name neuroscientist proposed silly ideas about mind that philosophers wouldn't begin to consider.
> Neuroscience studies various structures and mechanisms of nervous system and brain. Even when they seemingly discuss 'consciousness', they tend to simply mean 'awareness'.
You should give neuroscientists more credit! Some of them are aware of the philosophical problems surrounding subjectivity, and have tried to tackle them [1]. That's one of my favoured scientific theories on the source of subjectivity.
I can also sympathize with the disdain with whic some neuroscientists view some philosophers of mind. They've debated some completely ridiculous theories of mind in order to rationalize human importance. These consciousness debates are following the arc of vitalism, which the science of biology eventually simply replaced, and I expect these neuroscientists see it as a waste of time for similar reasons.
That attention schema theory is interesting but it still doesn't solve the Hard Problem: why information about colors looks like colors, why information about surfaces feels like a surface... how a biological system could experience joy or sadness, orgasm or terror, etc. They seem to be solving the very narrow problem of self-awareness, but not awareness in general. And I'm pretty self-awareness isn't a prerequisite for general awareness. (Just ask experienced drug users.)
To be fair, no existing theory can explain subjective experience, so it's not a knock on that theory specifically.
There seem to be a subset of human beings who have convinced themselves they aren't conscious, even though it's not clear who they think they've convinced or who did the convincing. If you're one of them, that's okay... it's just not a conclusion I would personally endorse ("I" being whatever force is selecting the words that you're currently reading).
P.S. If something concludes that it's aware, then is it aware it has reached that conclusion? And if so, would that lead to an infinite regress? Perhaps that's what consciousness is... an infinite regress of awareness. :)
Maybe, but also may not be so: it would then cause infinite consciousness/"I" to arise in ~me(?)~, which seems odd. These are very confusing topic that very much interests me.
My understanding is that there are a lot of developed theories in philosophy that tries to explain "ego/I/me" aspect of consciousness. A lot of it is highly technical material. I've been trying to fully understand the content of the book "The Transcendence of the Ego" by Satre for a while, where he claims:
"We should like to show here that the ego is neither formally nor materially in consciousness: it is outside, in the world. It is being of the world, like the ego of another." -- ie, gets rid of insider "I". Phenomenologically "I" being only a formal thing, not actual. (maybe-helpful discussion if you are interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNFWyYa7ef4)
Phenomenology, the subject, itself is very interesting. It's the most fundamental of sciences (previously thought it was physics).
> That attention schema theory is interesting but it still doesn't solve the Hard Problem: why information about colors looks like colors, why information about surfaces feels like a surface.
Because every sensation has to have some distinguishable characteristics from other sensation for functional purposes. That's not the hardest part of the hard problem, accounting for subjectivity was always the hard part. Certainly there are questions that aren't fully answered, but I think this paper demonstrates that neuroscience can and has started tackling the tough philosophical questions.
> They seem to be solving the very narrow problem of self-awareness, but not awareness in general. And I'm pretty self-awareness isn't a prerequisite for general awareness. (Just ask experienced drug users.)
I don't know what you mean. Certainly "altered states of consciousness" alter the operation of this attention schema theory, by altering signal strength of some perceptions and/or impeding the function of the attention schema apparatus somehow. I'm not sure what you think this means for this theory.
> There seem to be a subset of human beings who have convinced themselves they aren't conscious, even though it's not clear who they think they've convinced or who did the convincing.
You're grossly misrepresenting this position. I and others believe we don't have true subjective awareness. "Consciousness" is merely a label for a reducible phenomenon, like cars. So yes we are "conscious", but we don't mean the same thing you mean by "conscious", which carries far more ontological baggage that's only justified by weak thought experiments.
Finally, your cute yet all too common response begs the question by your use of "who", ie. no one needs convincing to begin with. In fact, if we're just automota then we're merely claiming that our perceptions yield a false conclusion about the existence of subjectivity. That's what it means to be an illusion.
> I don't know what you mean. Certainly "altered states of consciousness" alter the operation of this attention schema theory, by altering signal strength of some perceptions and/or impeding the function of the attention schema apparatus somehow. I'm not sure what you think this means for this theory.
I was just saying that subjective awareness doesn't require awareness of the self as observer. One can become engrossed in a movie without constantly thinking about one's place in relation to the movie. But on second thought, I'm probably misunderstanding some aspect of this theory, as this counterexample seems too obvious.
> I and others believe we don't have true subjective awareness.
I'm afraid this just makes no sense to me. Aren't you subjectively aware of the computer in front of your eyes? If you claim to not have "true subjective awareness", I'm curious what "true subjective awareness" would amount to.
An illusion is when our subjective experience of reality does not match actual reality, but to claim that our subjective experience is itself an illusion? That seems like a contradiction in terms.
Anyway, I'm sorry if this is coming across as flippant. I understand where your belief is coming from (I probably had it myself at one point) but it's just not the way I understand the world now.
For me, the knowledge that I have true subjective awareness is a basic first principle, along the lines of "I think, therefore I am". Maybe I'm a brain-in-a-vat and this is all virtual reality, but I'm definitely experiencing something. Are you trying to deny the fact that I have experiences and sensations, or something else? Maybe we're just talking past each other...
Also, what "weak thought experiments" are you referring to?
> One can become engrossed in a movie without constantly thinking about one's place in relation to the movie.
Being engrossed involves a suspension of awareness.
> I'm afraid this just makes no sense to me. Aren't you subjectively aware of the computer in front of your eyes? If you claim to not have "true subjective awareness", I'm curious what "true subjective awareness" would amount to.
True subjective awareness requires ontologically committing to dualism, because subjectivity is then irreducible. By which I mean that no account for true first-person experience is possible using only third-person objective facts.
> An illusion is when our subjective experience of reality does not match actual reality, but to claim that our subjective experience is itself an illusion? That seems like a contradiction in terms.
That definition of illusion begs the question, like I said, so I categorically reject it. If you eliminate the dependency on "subjective experience of reality" you get "perception of reality does not match actual reality", which is exactly what I said.
> For me, the knowledge that I have true subjective awareness is a basic first principle, along the lines of "I think, therefore I am".
Ah, but this too begs the question! The fallacy-free version is "this is a thought, therefore thoughts exist".
> Also, what "weak thought experiments" are you referring to?
I don't know that I'd say infinite. I mean, sit back and really focus on being aware that you're aware that you're aware... how many layers can you manage? 3? 12? 100?
All that's required to show that philosophy's aim is not to eliminate itself are a few examples of philosophical questions that are not reducible to scientific ones. Naturally the author of the quoted post could still argue that those examples are in fact reducible. They'd be wrong, but I'm sure they could attempt an argument. That's philosophy.
Here are some articles from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the mentioned topics that should point you in the right direction to start thinking for yourself about whether these questions are reducible to the empirical sciences:
What is change? How do we know what we know? What is the relationship between speech and the thing spoken of? What is the relationship between knowledge and the thing known?
To some extend the difference between a science of X and philosophy of X is, that scientists try to answer the question and philosophers try to understand the question. For example, "How does a particle move under constant force." A physicist is content with just describing the movement of the particle, a philosopher will start thinking about questions like, "What is a force?" and "What is a particle?" and go on to question if these are in some sense necessary categories etc.
Being a bit crude, I'd say that natural philosophy became natural science, philosophy of language became linguistics, and philosophy of mind became neuroscience in the same sense that primates "became" humans. The old ones still exist, but we generally don't particularly care about what they have to say anymore.
This is more than a bit crude in my opinion. For example, philosophy of mind "becomes" neuroscience in the sense that sometimes philosophical questions become scientifically tractable. But we certainly haven't managed to translate _every_ interesting philosophical problem for any field, let alone philosophy of mind, into science. Assuming we have is actually a bit absurd.
You could maybe get away with saying that we're fairly confident that _at some point_ we'll be able to accomplish such a feat (translating all interesting problems into scientifically decidable ones), but even that would be a super hairy/controversial assertion.
Physics is arguably the most successful branch of science (at least in terms of the accuracy of its predictions), and yet physics hasn't resolved the basic dispute between Hume and Kant regarding the nature of causality and objective reality.
Same thing is likely to hold vis-a-vis neuroscience and philosophy of mind.
Let me ask this - if/when the issues regarding the nature of causality and objective reality are finally resolved, will this be a result in physics or in natural philosophy?
I suspect it couldn't be a physics result, because the question is something like "Why does the universe follow natural laws at all" and/or "what IS a natural law, in metaphysical terms" ?
I would be surprised if that were true for more than the tiniest fraction of continental Europeans. By "care," I mean, "will notice or be affected by any output of ongoing philosophical study." Of course educated people, even us benighted Americans, still care about our old favorite philosophers from centuries past.
> Philosophy of language has /not/ become linguistics, philosophy of mind has /not/ become neuroscience, and only a subset of natural philosophy has become natural science.
They didn't say Philosophy of X has become Science of X, they said When a component of Philosophy of X becomes rigorous it becomes part of Science of X.
Does the philosophy say anything about the meaning of the words 'broadly' and 'simplistic' because with those two modifiers in place this can be argued as the tendency of philosophy (but then most things can be argued so who cares).
That certain philosophical questions posed by Socrates have remained philosophical in nature does not make the claim invalid, just as the fact that many of the writings of Aristotle dealt with subjects that are no longer in the purview of philosophy does not conclusively prove the claim.
I guess I would have to say if anything invalidates the claim it is just that they have not exactly established what it means to have a point, nor shown that philosophy in a unified state has such a point that covers the whole.
I personally do not believe it has a point, but then I don't believe any of things that are being argued as outgrowths of philosophy have points either.
I don't think that's fair, any more than it would be fair to say mathematics is the hypothesis phase either. Mathematics might be used to build scientific theories, but mathematics itself is self-contained and doesn't need to reference the physical world at all. The goals of mathematics, the methods mathematicians use and the results they produce are largely orthogonal to the physical world.
This might be less true for areas of applied math, but that just shows how the boundaries of any field are fuzzy. The same for philosophy: most of it deals with questions—and, subsequently, arguments and answers—that are fundamentally distinct from science. There are certain areas classically part of philosophy that have become the subject of physics or psychology or the social sciences, but these parts do not characterize philosophy as a whole.
It's not controversial, it's just not what philosophy is I think.
Far be it from me to be able to give a precise (much less consise) definition of what it is exactly, but it's not merely the hypothetical phase when doing science.
Immediately metaphysics comes to mind as a philosophical field that is 'unscientific' in the sense that sometimes(mostly?) advances are not made by empirical measurements in an axiomatic system, but by convoluted and extreme thought-experiments with 0 experimental underpinnings.
Another example is pointed out above, in the philosophy of mind, about the fundamental difference between seeing an experience happen (for example with a brain scan/direct measurement of neurons) and actually experiencing something. That is not something that you can easily touch with science/surveys/brainscans/etc.
> philosophy of mind has /not/ become neuroscience
Instead it remains stuck in the past, refusing modern understanding. Much of the subset of natural philosophy that didn't become natural science is the stuff that didn't make the cut - i.e the junk.
> The answerer has either no actual grasp of the history or content of philosophy, or has simply decided, apparently by fiat, to discard all but the most narrow positivism-flavored slice as nonsense.
Yeah yeah, and if you don't believe in god, you don't understand the bible well enough. Same old story.
Phil. of mind and neuroscience has different subject of study, in most cases, beyond the basics, they can just ignore each other. I think you might have a very bad misunderstanding of what philosophy is.
If not helpful, you may choose to look it up on Internet on specifics of topic of study, not sure what sort of substance would suffice.
If you want to look at a sort of caricatured version of this science-vs-philosphy-misunderstanding discussion, you may choose to watch this: https://youtu.be/9tH3AnYyAI8
I re-iterate my comparison to religion, theistic philosopher reason similarly about the soul/god/etc.
philosophical junk. There's a reason "neuroscientists despise philosophers talking about conciseness".
> silly ideas about mind that philosophers wouldn't begin to consider
What authority do philosophers have to label anything silly?
> they study different things
Reminds me of the claims made about religion vs science, that science can only study the 'physical', where religion is needed to explore the 'spiritual'.
> I re-iterate my comparison to religion, theistic philosopher reason similarly about the soul/god/etc.
I'd guess most philosophers of mind would love to understand how - or show that mind is indeed physical. But it is not as simple a job as it might seem; like any rigorous subject, you'll have to have familiarity of the subject matter to understand why that is the case (and if you are looking for argument, one can't hope to summarize many years of technical papers and necessary background on a HN comment)
> What authority do philosophers have to label anything silly?
They are the expert of their field, why wouldn't they have authority there? If I throw out some idea about physics, I'd guess physicists should have first authority to decide whether my idea is silly.
> Reminds me of the claims made about religion vs science, that science can only study the 'physical', where religion is needed to explore the 'spiritual'.
As far as I'm aware, philosophy of mind has absolutely no religious motivations. Most are proponent of some physicalist theory, but many of those would probably say -we are not fully there yet to show how it is possible.
Many universities offer undergrad, masters and phd level work in this subject. Could be helpful to know why you think it is not rigorous.
> Do you have this understanding?
Like I said, I have a beginner level interest in the subject, ie, I have taken a undergrad. level relevant course in psychology and one in philosophy of mind, and occasionally read related books.
Maybe you do have a full explanatory theory of qualia, of other mind, transcendence of objects in perception, unification of consciousness, how consciousness leads to another, forming the concept of "I" in addition to "me", how to speak of contents of consciousness in their own right and so on.
If you you have a complete explanation of mind in physical term, please do share or write some papers on some journals so people can slow down on AIs and start building a mind.
> Many universities offer undergrad, masters and phd level work in this subject. Could be helpful to know why you think it is not rigorous.
Do you consider the fact that universities offer philosophy courses proof of authenticity? Are religious studies proof of god?
I consider non-analytic philosophy non-rigorous on the basis that the tools of thought are subjective, emotive and rely on juggling poorly defined concepts with little empirical verification.
> Maybe you do have a full explanatory theory of
Nice try. But the burden isn't on me to clarify dubious concepts.
Do you have a full theory of the holy trinity?
> highlight some of the basic problems
> so people can slow down on AIs and start building a mind
pure philosophy will not solve these problems. can you point me to a philosophy paper that has made any progress in "building a mind"? What is the philosophical method for interrogation an empirical phenomenon?
Philosophy is not some sort of church where everyone praise some emotionally agreed upon idea... You seems to be turning this into some sort of us vs. them game based on your faulty projections, so I hope to stop here. (Btw, If you are getting your ideas about philosophy from popular youtube channels like https://www.youtube.com/user/schooloflifechannel or https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtNgK6MZucdY... , maybe I can understand why you have such misunderstandings)
-----------
If you happen to be interested anytime, you can start with some very introductory resources I bothered to look up for you (most are video, they are easy to consume):
+ Donald Hoffman - computational theory of mind, someone closer to HN's demographic (https://youtu.be/cUhrK82seVY)
In the unlikely case that you become very interested, you can look up "Introduction to philosophy of mind syllabus" and go through the materials and/or books of your choice on the subject.
-----------
> What is the philosophical method for interrogation an empirical phenomenon
That would go into philosophy of science, which I have absolutely no familiarity with. I'm guessing, to a philosopher of science, 'empirical' isn't such a simple subject as recording something that scientist would call it. I did watch this very interesting video once about phil. of science: https://youtu.be/5ng-t0o7E-w
> You seems to be turning this into some sort of us vs. them game based on your faulty projections
Really, how so? you're the one assuming the authority of philosophy, not me. How are my projections 'faulty'? You just keep pivoting, and claiming there to be some counterpoint, somewhere, even though you can't seem to supply them yourself.
> you can start with some very introductory resources
No thanks, implicit to this move is the suggestion that I need to read "very introductory" material. I don't.
> That would go into philosophy of science, which I have absolutely no familiarity with
That was the nicer way of putting it, he is generally made fun of(or maybe that's my bubble, can't be sure) for oversimplifying philosophical subject matters...
It doesn't mean that all areas have been proven, or that they all will be.
It is often that topics of philosophy have generated real outcomes, it may very well seem that philosophy -> real world outcome.
And consider the forum. It's not as if this is a university course in philosophy.
You seem to have found one thing to nitpick and ignored the rest of the response. Respectfully, I suggest you hang the ax back up, and stop pushing the pedal on the stone.
More entry level nonsense, pure empiricism was undone by the problem of induction. Philosophy has generated several theories of probability, your "science" is contributing towards ruin risk with advocacy of GMO's and via Taleb && NESCI I know GMO's are not safe. Your "science" has done little progress without industry following a profit motive, of which science owes it's progress to industry and also much of it's credit.
"Universities are good at claiming credit, and little else."
All work of Aristotle is philosophy.
Aristotle's work includes syllogistic logic.
Syllogistic logic clarifies mathematical inference.
Mathematical inference is part of mathematics.
Therefore, some philosophy clarifies mathematics.
It strikes me that this is similar to the 'no true ai' paradox, where as soon as a program can do something, such as beat a human at chess, then it stops being AI and starts being just computation. As soon as something philosophical becomes rigerous or well understood, we stop calling it philosophy and start calling it mathematics.
