Something I want to also point out: When philosophers actually *do* form a consensus around an idea, that idea almost immediately stops being thought of as a philosophy problem and starts being thought of as a 'common sense' fact. For example: In this video you cite an idea, that if there is truth in a field, earnest students of the field will independently converge on that truth. This idea *is* a philosophical theory, one that I studied in a summary called the Auman Agreement Hypothesis. It has almost universal acceptance among philosophers, only a tiny minority of professionals would not accept the AAH. The reason you have never heard of it is *because* the consensus is so complete. It's a purely historical footnote.
So the problem is then similar to the 'man shot' news story paradox. You don't report on when 'noone was shot today' so news feel more depressing than reality actually is. Similarly people only explore philosophical issues that are hotly contested so they get overrepresented in the philosophy curriculum.
@@cyberneticbutterfly8506 Yep! And in addition, plenty of things which were once hotly contested (e.g. Empiricism) are now common sense (Empiricism is one of the bases of *all scientific method*). So why do philosophers argue over millenia old questions then? Is it not obvious that there isn't a clear answer there? Well, because our society relies on taking a stand on these millenia old issues. For example, we all (mostly) agree Democracy is the better method of government, but Plato's criticisms of it are still relevant today and often used by dictators and even common folk (ever heard someone say "better a wise dictator than a lot of stupid rabble"? Plato.) So engaging with these questions and taking a side, even millenia after, is still important
not necesaryly Nicholas Carter people are still questioning whether logic has any basis and still asking how do you justify the very logic we use for everything we do which is kinda hopeless but hey you cant help but ask
The funniest way one of my philosophy professors described his job was basically to walk into a room full of people asking for answers, explain why the people offering those answers were wrong, then when asked for his own answer, tell the crowd that he doesn't know and leaves.
That’s funny. But what do you do with all the PhD guys who do pretend to have answers, despite those answers being already discredited by others? For example, philosophy of religion?
@@cyberneticbutterfly8506 That actually happens all the time in Physics classes. They will talk about Newtonian physics, then later tell you its wrong, and the tell you about relativity, then tell you its wrong, and tell you about quantum mechanics, then tell you its wrong, and that we don't really have a theory of everything yet. The simpler theories are still useful for understanding things though.
@@steverempel8584 No, there is a huge difference. Those simper theories are not wrong and they never were, but they are incomplete approximations, and useful in their own domain. These theories builds on each other (that's why they are useful even if incomplete) and represent different level of understanding something very complex and difficult. Imagine you want to describe how a ball rolling down a slope starting from QFT. It would be so long elaborate exhaustively and needlessly complicated no one would ever try to reach some workable conclusion from such a basic starting point. Alternatively, you can approximate, simplify, and get a child to solve some basic equations for the answer which is correct for 99,999% of purposes what you ever want to use it for. Now, imagine trying to predict precisely the workings of 3nm transistor with classical models. You'd probably have your results way off to what would be an acceptable level of error. Different scales and phenomenas, requires different theoretical tools for solutions, one does not invalidate the others. This is a very important difference. And yes it is obvious that even our best theories describing nature are still incomplete, but that is what the current frontiers are al about, the search continoues to explain which remained unexplained in the latest models
@@CraftyF0X As I see it, it is the same with the history of philosophy. They were all incomplete approximation from one specific angle. The added complexity is that you can only see that angle correctly if you know the historical context. And even more than in science, only retrospectively can one assess how much and in what sense they "approximated" the truth.
@@cliveadams7629 That's was my take away from college philosophy too. Without a means test (or as X puts it "a philosophy of philosophy"), its just centuries of apologetics for whatever school of thought takes your fancy. Epistemology should have been the 'Principia' and ontology the 'Origin of Species' for philosophy.
It is somewhat silly to complain about a lack of consensus in philosophy. From ancient times, starting with Aristotle, to the early 19th century, natural philosophy was the common term for the practice of studying nature. It was only then that the concept of ‚science‘ received its modern shape and new fields such as biology, physics and chemistry were emerging. With this history in mind it seems only natural that the philosophy of today is only left with the fundamental questions that can‘t be easily answered with double blind studies or by conducting experiments in a laboratory.
"Science" (or rather natural philosophy as you've pointed out) has only become more institutionalized and gardened by patents, not more exact or correct. It has become more stifled against fringe views and innovation and I guess that's enough for some people to be convinced that it's quintessentially objective now; I rather see science palliating it's own failures by stagnating the burgeoning of new hypotheses and deciding to curtail dissidence now that religion is dead and the jurisdiction of truth (and moreover of societal cohesion) has been delegated to it.
Thank you Mr. Brown, Im glad somebody actually pointed it out. Consensus is not a thing you should ever expect from philosophy, if you do, then you are missing the point. I also think that philosophy will never be forced to set aby boundaries, that's just plain silly. Although at least one point made in the video is valid - studying philosophy at a university doesnt make you a good philosopher. Imho knowing too much is worse than knowing little, for example: a good repairman will never carry a whole garage of tools when going to work because its obviously impractical, but he will know and see when his tools are not sufficient and will then gather what is required. In the end, that is what makes him a good repairman.
It’s not silly. It’s justly due since philosophy is still a major that people can take. If it is the “primitive” version of science, then why take it over actual science!😂 you’re silly
The thing is, we've got nearly 3 millennia of recorded philosophy behind us, and it's all intertextual. It's very difficult to understand modern philosophy without at least having some background on who came before and what they thought - when reading modern philosophical texts, often the authors will just drop in names and terms which have no meaning to anyone who hasn't had a broad grounding in older philosophical ideas. Another reason that philosophy courses resemble a history of philosophy is that philosophy doesn't make progress in the same way that science does. That's not to say that there's no such thing as philosophical progress, but if it does exist then it's quite hazy, non-linear, and not subject to the kind of checks that you get in empirical disciples. Someone might read some specific modern philosophical theory and raise half a dozen objections that someone else already came up with 300 years ago - to which someone else has already pointed out all the flaws. Which has also been heavily criticised. And so on. In a way, studying the history of philosophy is not only a prerequisite to being able to understand modern philosophy, it's also a way of discovering which ideas have already been explored, and to what extent. You basically can't hope to begin to have original ideas until you have a good understanding of what's come before, if for no other reason than that they often turn out to be entirely unoriginal. In this way, the aspiring academic actually saves themselves quite a lot of work. I'd also object to your caricature of philosophy courses being basically taxonomic, anyway. Personally, my undergraduate course was one in which we were encouraged to engage with the texts on a critical level, and to come up with our own ideas and objections if possible. This is the critical thinking and analysis that philosophy prospectuses brag about, and these are real skills that studying philosophy does hone - I feel embarrassed comparing some of my 1st year essays to my Masters research thesis, in terms of my level of critical engagement and analysis. If you want some empirical analysis (using an admittedly flawed metric), philosophy students come in joint 3rd with economics students in terms of highest IQ, behind maths and physics. So either the courses are doing something right, or people with high IQs are drawn to the subject (or some combination of both).
Lots of text, you can disagree with the video, but you should remamber if u ask 1000 people on the stree if they know any modern/current philosopher, it will probably come with near 0 answers, that tells you everything you need.
@@AngelTyraelGM and yet you will still have to go about your life with some philosophic presuppositions, so you can choose to be ignorant about the various views those who studied the subject(s) have come to and just live with whatever ones you have, or you can choose to engage with the material and find that you do have possibly unexamined presuppositions to your choices in life, and will probabaly personally come to a different, more detailed, and aware set of presuppositions for your life, which I will assume will not be the same as others, and already arent. Physics right now is having a whole fit about what the metaphysical conclusions are of some scientific findings, of which there is not a consensus.
@@AngelTyraelGM Also you ask 1000 people on the street and I almost guarantee you at least one will know Slavoj Zizek. But philosophers take a while to be really known, I'm sure a good amount people out of the 1000 will know some philosophers from the mid to late 20th century.
On the other hand, when some pure scientists (including Hawking) venture into deeper metaphysical explanations about the nature of things, one wishes they had taken some basic course in philosophy.
@@AntiCitizenX Very much so. But I find that these days the disrespect and condescension flows more frequently from the sciences towards the philosophy, rather than the other way (exception made for some pseudo-theologians in the fundamentalist camp whom nobody takes seriously).
@@videos_iwonderwhy : I disagree one hundred percent. The hatred came from the jealous humanities and philosophies first. And the reason that professional scientists (who are constantly attacked by various political and religious philosophies) have such disdain for modern philosophy is that most of modern philosophy is basically a standardless type of nihilism or solipsism which is extremely easy to get published in 'professional' journals simply by using the right form and 'buzzwords', hence the various Sokal hoaxes.
@@remo27 Perhaps we are not talking about the same thing. I am not talking about scientists attacking MODERN philosophy specifically. I am talking about scientists posing (poorly) as philosophers and at the same time attacking philosophy and theology in general as a useless waste of time.
@@videos_iwonderwhy Never really seen that except some atheistic scientists in the "Skeptics" community before it went all 'woke' . I guess someone like PZ Meyers?
As someone with an honours level degree in philosophy, let me give my two cents (be warned, very long): When someone asks me to define philosophy, I always reply “Thinking about stuff really hard.” Beyond the glib phrasing, it sort of captures what I want to convey, that: 1) Philosophy is about taking any topic and thinking it through. Philosophers would question and scrutinise anything they care to, taking nothing for granted and seeing where it leads. They would think about what X means if Y were the case, then how that would impact Z and so on. This can be done for any topic at all. Also, 2) Once you move beyond merely thinking - say, for example, you try to find out if Y actually is the case - then you’ve moved beyond philosophy. This seems like something anyone can do without having to go through the process of getting a degree. However, the breadth of questions that can be asked and thought about for any given topic isn’t immediately intuitive to most people. We take a lot for granted, constantly filling gaps in our knowledge with assumptions we don’t know we make. Therefore, it is useful to learn about what questions other people have asked in the past and the conclusions they came to. Some effect your life, some don’t. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have a greater understanding of how to see past the automatic assumptions we make and find new things to think about. This is also why philosophy departments value not teaching anything as ‘correct.’ It would go against the idea of finding anything to question if they taught “This part here, you don’t need to question that part.” You have to question that part just as much as you have to question any other part. All this is not to mention the traps our thinking can fall into. Cognitive biases and logical fallacies abound. Philosophers need to know about those too, so they can properly think about all the new things they can think about. In essence, philosophy education has the goal of teaching people what there is to think about and how to effectively think about it. Philosophical academia consists in small part of thinking about things other people have discovered about the world, and in large part thinking about and comparing the thoughts of other philosophers (hence the stagnation). That said, I am under no illusions regarding the usefulness of this enterprise in most cases. I didn’t just study philosophy, I picked it up as a dual degree while I was studying chemistry (and even with both degrees in hand, I don’t work in either field). There’s only so far one can get by just thinking about stuff. The only job you can get with an education in philosophy (and nothing else) is teaching philosophy. I don’t see philosophy as a field that should be valued by the discoveries it makes. An education in philosophy is useful when you take the skills you learn in dissecting hidden assumptions and scrutinising them effectively and apply them to something else (science, business, law, writing, etc). I value my own philosophy education because I learned some interesting things, learned how to analyse arguments/positions better (including my own) and how to communicate and argue my own positions more effectively. It must also be recognised that, despite the ideal goal of philosophical education, biases towards strongly held conclusions are usually too stubborn to overcome, even (and maybe especially) among those who engage in philosophy at the highest academic level. So, to answer your questions: when I go out and take a bunch of philosophy courses from the philosophy department to get my philosophy degree… What exactly am I studying? 1) A history of the most salient points of thought in certain topics (as subjectively identified by the department) and the conclusions those thinkers reached. 2) How to properly think and argue about such. 3) Academic writing skills. What knowledge or skills must I acquire in order to become an “expert” in the field? 1) A broad enough knowledge of historical and contemporary thought on the topic of your choice. 2) Identifying the hidden assumptions and logical shortcomings in an argument or position, including your own. 3) Academic writing skills. What separates the study of philosophy to the study of physics or art? Once you start studying the real world or applying what you’ve thought about to the real world, then you’ve gone beyond just philosophy. When you try and find out facts about the real world, that’s science. When you put your thinking into practice by making something, that’s art. How do we differentiate between a philosophical problem and a scientific one? If you make assertions about the real world and want to go beyond accepting them merely for the sake of argument, that’s a scientific problem. How do we measure the difference between good philosophy and bad philosophy? Good philosophy - that is, according to me, properly thinking about something - takes no assumption for granted, leaves no subsequently-uncovered avenue of inquiry or rebuttal unanalysed, and avoids all the traps of human cognition. Bad philosophy closes off avenues of inquiry, and falls into those cognitive traps. That’s my starting position on this, broadly speaking. For context, here are the courses I took in philosophy: - Entry-level epistemology & metaphysics - Entry-level social & political philosophy - Two courses on logic - Second-level social philosophy - Second-level epistemology & metaphysics - A course on Heidegger (which I hated) - A course on Hegel (which I hated even more) - Philosophy of science - Chinese philosophy - A capstone course on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason - An honours extension year where I wrote a (subpar to decent) thesis comparing different schools of scientific realism. Also, thank you AnticitizenX! The topic of my final essay for that capstone course was taking the arguments for the existence of god that Kant critiques in that book, comparing them to their modern counterparts and seeing if Kant’s critiques still hold up. Your Philosophical Failures series was a great starting point for that, so thanks a bunch!
Thanks for the detailed reply. It sounds like you mostly agree with everything presented, albeit with some caveats and clarifications (which is great). I feel your bit about “correct” answers is a little misguided. Simply having a consensus solution to some problem does not automatically mean the answer should be held or asserted dogmatically. For example, you are welcome to question a mathematical proof and derive it for yourself if you doubt it.
@@AntiCitizenX I think the main problem with that is you can always ask the question why that is the correct answer? Why Should I accept that answer? You may say "its empirically proven" but then I say "I don’t accept empiricism because human experience is nother more than an illusion.". "But Empiricism takes you to truth " you say. But then I say " well I only follow axiomatic truth and if there's an objective evidence that goes against reason than I have say do not follow that decause truth is Axiomatic not Correspondents. " This is acknowledged this fact. The founding father of philosophy Socrates also had in intuition about this. That the Foundation for knowledge, intelligence, Wisdom is not Reality or objectivity or God or Spirituality. It is the mind. Now I am not say that everything like solipsism. By Mind I am saying the sentience not just rational operator. I am saying no matter what is ( anything) It first must be grasped by the mind. And right now you can also criticise all I have say and maybe your right. But philosophy recognises this. And so It gives you the tools to find out The capital "T" Truth. Because Only and Mind can grasps the Ultimate Truth.
@@AntiCitizenX I get where you’re coming from with the correct answers thing. I was speaking about it practically in terms of teaching philosophy, not arguing against the idea of reaching consensus on philosophical topics. Like, what are they supposed to do? You’ve shown that there’s no consensus, so they can’t really be teaching things as consensus in most cases. As for why consensus hasn’t been reached in all this time (which I think is more to your point)? Beats me. If I had to speculate, I’d say it has something to do with the inconsequential nature of a lot of the topics in philosophy creating a lack of incentive to reach a consensus, it being outweighed by the desire to foster an attitude of questioning everything and learning as broad an array of positions as possible on any given topic. What is truth? Well, people have a vague, intuitive concept of truth anyway, so it’s not immediately obvious how answering that question to the degree of specificity in philosophical discourse would help people in their day-to-day lives. That, and a lot of it has nothing to do with anything we can easily detect or measure in principle. Scientific claims have an ultimate reference: the world. Lots of philosophical claims don’t have that. We can’t just say “Alright, let’s stop the arguing and find out for sure! Now what experiment can we conduct to differentiate 1- and 2-dimensional time travel?” You’re right that I largely agree with the video. It’s just that you demonstrated that philosophy lacks value in those ways that people often think it does (a point well taken), so I felt compelled to chime in with the value that philosophy does have in other ways. It’s best to think about it like studying literature. When studying literature, you look at examples of historical and contemporary works, preferably from different cultures, about various topics. Along the way you gain enjoyment from the authors/works you find interesting and you develop personal skills for analysing the features that characterise literary works (and, by extension, other works), judging their quality based on certain criteria (subjective or otherwise) and crafting literary works of your own. Replace literary works with arguments/ideas and you basically have philosophy. I’d be interested to see a study on people who study literature (literarians? philologists?) like the one you showed us for philosophers and see how much they agree on various topics in that field. Either way, studying literature is still worthwhile and so is philosophy.
though the question still stands - what dedicated field of philosophy is for? for example field of quantum physics, besides final goal of ANSWERING the REAL question of what our world on smallest possible scale is, engaged in 1) broad enough knowledge of historical and contemporary thought on the topic of (quantum) physics; 2) identifying the hidden assumptions and logical shortcomings in an argument or position on the topic; 3) academic writing skills on the topic. So, what philosophy is for, if every field of real knowledge already includes these questions along its specific core question? Seems that philosophy is a pretension to be the jack of all trades while in fact being the master of none :)
Theres an old joke something like: a genie offered a man a choice between more money then he could ever spend, or to become the wisest man who ever lived. The man chose wisdom and the genie granted his wish and then asked "how does it feel to be the wisest?" "I should have taken the money the man replied" I chose to become a philosophy major to find wisdom, and only after I searched through all of the classical knowledge, I realized I should have joined the sciences.
Yes. even if philosophy was what it claims to be... ...even then, if you want to find the truth, studying a field that concerns itself with finding and studying possible methods of finding truth won't help. you need to study a field which applies a specific method of finding truth that has been proven to work.
I didn't realize this was a "shit on philosophy" video with a guy who has no idea what he's talking about. He actually said that the age old question of what grounds morality has been empirically demonstrated, goes on to quote/agree with Hawking that philosophy is dead, says that questions about the fundamental nature of being is worthless, and that philosophers don't make any real progress in the world today. Wow. Just wow. And by the way, philosophy is not so cut and dry that everyone must all believe the same things. It's not a knock on philosophy that everyone doesn't always agree with one another. Philosophy lays out distinctions and different pathways where a person can assess the data and make up their own minds instead of just checking a box and believing what everyone else tells you to believe. The thing that makes philosophy awesome is that you begin to understand the many different views that are out there and decide which one you actually think is true based on the reasons available to you instead of just believing what someone told you. Remember...don't teach ppl what to think, teach them how to think so that they can come to believe what they think the evidence points to, not what everyone else already believes. Seems like you just want to be spoonfed dogma instead of learning about things and thinking for yourself. I get really baffled by philosophy bashers like this who think they are actually doing people a good service by bashing philosophy.
@@AntiCitizenX Your inability to track with what I said is not a criticism against it. I said nothing about evolution or cooperation, nor did I criticize it. I criticized your philosophy bashing and assuming that there has to be a philosophical consensus akin to a scientific consensus in order for it to be a valid field of inquiry. Maybe you should learn some philosophy to understand how to analyze what someone is saying to you ;)
@@egonzalez4294 why assume that I'm trying to make a counter argument? Look, if someone made a youtube video claiming that dogs are clearly superior to people, would you even bother to make a counter argument? Or would you just kinda laugh about and tell them how stupid that is? The fact is that Anticitizen made a bunch of claims that he needs to validate, and it's not my job to give a counter argument to nonsense. He claimed that philosophy has made no progress, which is just demonstrably false and absurd. He also claimed that in order for philosophy to be acceptable, there would need to be nearly unanimous agreement between all of them. What am I supposed to do with that other than just laugh at it? Hes the one who made the claim and it's his job to support that. Who says that everyone has to agree on something in a particular field in order for that field to be valid and make progress? Is Anticitizens philosophy that everyone in philosophy needs to agree in order for philosophy to be valid? If you cant see the issue with that, then it makes total sense for me to find you in the comment section of a video bashing on philosophy. Charitably, what he says borders on being self refuting. He uses philosophy and philosophical principles that have been put forth and explicated over time(aka philosophy progressing), and uses those very principles to undermine the validity of philosophy. It's just absurd. Philosophers come up with distinctions and carve out the conceptual landscape so that we can have these intelligent conversations with precision and progress as a species. Some things don't need to be refuted, they just need to be clearly stated so that everyone can easily see how utterly stupid they are.
I don't know about that. Today's philosophy departments, at least in the U.S., seem heavily dominated by the analytic tradition. The problems concerning morality that he brought up, especially concerning the trolley problem, are usually discussed by analytic philosophers.
@@thall77795 yeah, but his comments about lack of rigger, fuzzy definitions and dense incomprehensible writing are pretty common analytic takes, tbh. Plus throughout the video he generally uses continental philosophers as examples of the issues at hand, and analytic philosophers usually get a less harsh treatment. The one notable example is his use of wittgenstein in the thumbnail.
"the major questions of their field." Part of what makes something a major question is that people are unsure of the answer. If you look at a list of the "big questions" in any field, your selecting the questions that are hard to answer.
@@AntiCitizenX Ask mathmaticians and scientists for a list of biq questions and you get stuff like is P=NP and the nature of dark matter. The difference is that a few decades ago, "is the universe expanding?" and Fermats last theorem would have been on that list, and those are now answered. What makes philosophy a bad field is the lack of stuff everyone agrees on, not the existence of undecided questions.
@@Dan_1348 No, it will certainly be logical entirely. You don't even have a useful definition of philosophy. By the no free lunch theorem, philosophy could be any randomly imagined thing.
first up: I am not actually a philosopher, I'm a physicist by training, so grain of salt. I think you kind of hide a few important claims (some of which being normative): 1 - all questions worth asking have answers 2 - consensus implies progress towards finding a more accurate answer 3 - application and "progress" is what success is measured by I understand that questioning these is a hard sell, but if you for example consider the question "what is a woman?". There probably just isn't a sharp useful answer. But people worked the question and came up with ideas - for example gender performativity. Fewer and fewer people now think it's a good description of how gender works, but the thoughts and descriptions Butler put to paper trying to build up her theory undoubtedly helped many people. Some things also might not have one true nature that one theory can fully describe, maybe to capture some things you need multiple seemingly incompatible theories. In that case having multiple theories that start of kind of mushy and compatibleish that over time morph into more distinct theories with a dead zone in between might indicate that we are getting closer to describing that thing better. And this pattern is very common in philosophy. Lastly I want to say that I thing the criteria you outlined kind of indicate that what you want from a subject is for it to behave in a very specific way: theory, experiment, application (or the first two the other way around). Which may describe stuff like physics (though I would suggest looking at Feyerabend if you think that, it's probably a lot more complicated and messy), but it certainly doesn't describe fields like sociology or political science which are way closer to philosophy. I used to believe in the "physics superiority" thing, too. We have rigorous methods and great applications and are very successful. But honestly, reflecting on physics and reading some modern philosophy of science (in particular hussarl -whom I hate-, some surveys of social constructionism and Paul Feyerabend) made me change my mind. I realize now that "hard science" can never answer normative questions and that without some answers to some normative questions science cannot be done. So I rely on philosophers and sociologists to help me find (or pick) answers. I need them because I they compile a wide range of experiences together (eg the aforementioned Judith Butler with the trans experience that I don't have) and spend a lot of time examining many aspects I don't have the time to think about.
*1 - all questions worth asking have answers* If there is no answer, then "there is no answer" is the official answer, don't you think? *2 - consensus implies progress towards finding a more accurate answer* Not necessarily "more accurate," but it seems pretty self-evident that a total lack of consensus is strongly indicative of an institutional failure. *3 - application and "progress" is what success is measured by* As opposed to what, exactly? Stagnation and vacuous disuse? You are welcome to measure progress in that capacity, but it's not going to be very inspiring to the rest of the world.
*But people worked the question and came up with ideas - for example gender performativity. Fewer and fewer people now think it's a good description of how gender works, but the thoughts and descriptions Butler put to paper trying to build up her theory undoubtedly helped many people.* I fail to see how this contradicts any specific claims in the video. *I realize now that "hard science" can never answer normative questions and that without some answers to some normative questions science cannot be done.* By definition, there can be no objectively correct answer to a normative question, and I again fail to see how this is relates to any particular claims of the video. What are you disputing?
@@AntiCitizenX philosophy has genuinely made developments that helped a lot of people. Post modernism and critical theory have been essential tools in working to uncover institutional mechanism of oppression. Also: when do you suggest did this stagnation begin? Without Popper, physics would be way less successful and he published throughout the last century.
Philosophy never claims to provide "answers" or "consensus", it is simply the clay from which academic disciplines are carved out (another indicator of philosophy's progress). As philosophers David Chalmers and Ami Thomasson pointed out in their work, Analytic Philosophy is defined as "Concept-Engineering/Modification" (while Continental Philosophy is more "Concept Creation"). It DOES make progress in refining our concepts and this most certainly IS useful.
*Philosophy never claims to provide "answers"* That is categorically untrue. Everything about the nature of philosophy is geared specifically towards answering questions in accordance with sound arguments and following the arguments wherever they lead. I even gave you at least a half-dozen citations where philosophy departments admit this stuff openly.
@@Ashalmawia Nowhere in the annals of philosophy has a department or introductory textbook ever made it clear that philosophy is about “expanding the mind” rather than exploring the questions with some intent towards generating the truth. That is a complete fabrication of your own imagination. I even gave you multiple citations that contradict this idea. The very nature of philosophy is to explore questions that presumably have truthful answers. Even if it were all about mind expansion, then what does that mean? What value does it bring? How do I measure it? Is it really a good thing to expand one's mind when the expansion is little more than filling my brain with useless nonsense? That's not really solving the issue, my friend.
@@Ashalmawia Is this the comment section you were referring to? Is there a philosophy website or textbook that you can reference to support your point of view over his?
@@Ashalmawia You don't need to do anything you don't want to do, that is correct. Hitchen's Razors does apply however, even for a casual conversation. If we aren't willing to reference sources for our claims, we shouldn't be upset at all if the people dismiss our claims just as easily.
A little joke I saw once in an xkcd comic: "Situation: There are 14 competing standards Group of people: That's ridiculous! We need to develop one universal standard! Situation: There are 15 competing standards" I mean, it's kinda cute to see people throughout history presenting their new theory or metaphilosophy, proudly declaring they've found a fix for substantive or metaprocedural issues, and then proceeding to get their shit placed next in line on a reading list. If you're frustrated about how other people proceed with philosophy, telling people they should be doing it in *this* specific way doesn't help much because you're now stuck in the same rabble.
*If you're frustrated about how other people proceed with philosophy, telling people they should be doing it in this specific way doesn't help much because you're now stuck in the same rabble.* You're right. Let's not bother suggesting any standards whatsoever and let anyone publish whatever they want without any accountability or progress.
@@AR15ORIGINAL As things stand, philosophy is incapable of answering ethical questions. Philosophy is opinion and opinions are like assholes, i.e., everybody has one and they are all of equal value. In the words of Peter Boghossian: “I am not a relativist. I do not think that all ideas and all belief systems are equal or have equal merit. This idea is a cognitive and moral toxin. Relativism undermines the emancipatory potential of reason and rationality. It erodes the foundation of civilised societies and with it any hope that we should become more just or humane or more kind.”
@@francomartini4328 Well that's sort of the problem: there's an entire field (culture? tradition?) of ethics that is about how *unethical* it is to be humane and kind. Relativism is an attempt to respond to the fact that when two people with different universal ethical systems come together to try and prove who's correct, it literally fails something like 95% of the time, and the 5% of the time it does work, it's 2% A's becoming B's, and 2% B's becoming A's, and 1% becoming total nihilists. If you can't rationally prove your ethical position, all you're left with is that it's an aesthetic preference.
I think I actually agree with most of this video. A bit odd coming from me, a philosophy undergraduate. But I like to think that the philosophy department at the university I go to watched this video, went "yeah this is a problem", and straight up fixed it. We have 4 history of philosophy courses (I've taken 2). All other courses do not dive into the history of a subject. Historical debates are on occasion brought up, but say their solution is given (for example, in my metalogic course there was a brief mention of Skolem's Paradox and the Skolem vs Zermelo debate on it, but then promptly went back to proofs and theorems). And yes, I would definitely not major in philosophy if I had to read the history of philosophy before getting to the actually good stuff. Like most of my courses begins with papers from the 1950s onwards. My mental content course only had one piece of literature and it was Shea's project from 2012. It's absolutely amazing. I kinda enjoyed the history of philosophy when I was new at philosophy but I've since found it to be my second least favorite branch. I'm not convinced disagreement in philosophy is especially worse compared to other subjects such as economics, sociology and even physics (in some areas). Economics for instance, if every practitioner really does use the same evidence, have the same goals etc. then we should really have settled on the debates between which taxation policy have which causal effects and which economic school best matches reality etc. Even in physics there are debates and disagreements at the frontiers, such as the dark matter vs modified Newtonian gravity debate. I do agree though that philosophy needs to be naturalized. This is hardly new. That ethical intuitions developed as a consequence of cooperative game-theoretical evolutionary pressures is something I completely agree with and many philosophers have written about that aswell. I disagree that philosophy does not make progress, however. There's been especially massive progress in logic and computer science, with very fruitful interactions between these fields.
Thanks for the well thought out response. I’m curious why you credit developments in computer science as achievements in philosophy, though. I also dispute the idea that there is “just as much debate” in physics. There is definitely not. And where there is a debate, there are mechanisms and standards in place which are guaranteed to settle the debate over time. But you never find physics professors debating the merits of well established theories, let alone the most basic questions of the field.
@@cougar2013 Lol politics is one of the most useful things to study. Everything is political and people can learn a lot to how we got here and where we are going and understand tactics, arguments, precedent and how they fit into society. Far more useful than art.
The most fundamental flaw in this video is the idea that there should be any sort of orthodoxy or standards in philosophy. The very crux of philosophy is questioning established orthodoxy and standards, or to put another way, to create new ways of thinking.
*The most fundamental flaw in this video is the idea that there should be any sort of orthodoxy or standards in philosophy.* Orthodoxy does not mean "dogma." It just means "generally accepted consensus." You can have both orthodoxy and questioning at the same time. They are not exclusive. Read a damned dictionary. Also, how do you claim that this video is "flawed" when you literally just rejected the principle of standards by which to measure such a claim? The very nature of your argument is a self-contradiction.
@@AntiCitizenX OK, I yield to your counterpoints. However, you did not address my main argument, that philosophy is about creating new ways of thinking. P.S. If you reply to this comment, please don't resort to weak arguments like appeal to dictionary or (if it even can be called an argument) using foul language like "read a damned dictionary". I want to have an intelligent discussion here, not a shit slinging competition.
@@AdvocatusThei *you did not address my main argument, that philosophy is about creating new ways of thinking.* Okay, please kindly show me the citations to peer-reviewed articles, textbooks, lectures, and university prospectus pages that openly promote the study of philosophy as "creating new ways of thinking," and nothing else.
It's important to note that the question _"what separates beings from inanimate objects"_ was philosophy before it was biology, _"the study of logic"_ was philosophy before it was mathematics, and _"the study of the laws of the universe"_ was philosophy before it was physics. The point of philosophy is to study what we have no consensus over, and questions that seem "impossible" to settle. Once an area is settled, it's no longer of any concern to philosophy.
@@AntiCitizenX I thought that would be self evident. If we found an objective answer to "the meaning of life", it would surely stop being discussed by philosophers. In the same vein, physics left the realm of philosophy once we found (more or less) definite answers, while metaphysics is still discussed to this day, because we have none. Of course, "having no clear answer" is not the only trait necessary for a topic to be considered philosophy, but nonconsensus seems to be a major feature in almost all philosophical discussion since its inception.
@@AntiCitizenX In short, saying that "nonconsensus is bad for philosophy" feels to me like saying "faith is bad for religion". You may not like the concept of blind faith, and that is fine. However, faith is a _feature_ in the context of religion. Without faith, there is no religion.
@@luiz00estilo *In short, saying that "nonconsensus is bad for philosophy" feels to me like saying "faith is bad for religion".* Given that faith, in the religious sense, is pretty much a bad thing unto itself, so I'm not sure how this is a criticism. It's kind of like saying heroin is bad for junkies.
@@AntiCitizenX Given the comparison with heroin and junkies, it seems like you are assuming that "non-consensus" is always a bad trait for a field to have. It's worth noting that philosophy is *not* a science, nor does it claim to be. The rules of what makes a bad scientific field (lack of consensus on its theories being one of them) does not necessarily apply to non-scientific fields. Lack of consensus in what constitutes "good art" has never been a problem for those who study art. It is very much a debated topic, but the lack of agreement on it is almost a feature of the field. This seems to be a major problem mostly in the sciences. So, lets suppose that I am correct, and philosophy cannot possibly exist with complete agreement within the field, would you advocate for the end of philosophy?
I found this very interesting. For my two cents, I would say that something that definitely needs to happen is getting rid of philosophy of religion in its current form. In the English speaking world (hmm, well in the US and the uni WLC graduated from in England) for example, PoR is where philosophy is abused in the most obscene manner. I can think of no other subject where you can earn a doctorate defending a thesis that is not only riddled with, but is entirely built upon, fallacies so flagrant you couldn't get away with them even in philosophy 101 class. In any other area you'd never pass the basic classes if your work was 50% semantic sophistry and 50% fallacious reasoning, never mind qualify for entry to a PhD level degree. Yet we have clowns like William Lane Craig who earned a PhD, from a credible university, with his version of the cosmological argument.
My thoughts exactly. If philosophers want to be taken seriously, they need to expunge the frauds and con men from the profession. I would even argue that all of metaphysics is just an extension of this same practice.
4:14 Empiricism is a philosophical view in the first place Secondly, this is the entire point of philosophy classes. If you want clear directions of what will help you cope or be happy, go find a life coach 6:37 this is also the point in the first place: philosophers debate *which* methods that are permissible, *what* the goals are, *what* constitutes evidence, and they most definitely do not share the same arguments. this is why you're so upset: you fail to see that philosophy is not a field like the natural sciences where we can test things and confirm them. you cannot empirically say that it is right or wrong to kill an innocent person to save 2 others, etc etc. so yes, philosophy does teach thinking; but if you're looking for more practical or A to B type education, just study biology or something lol. its not for everyone
I read a book by Todd May about the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze that I think raised a good point: philosophy shouldn't be about what is merely "true", but rather what is interesting and remarkable. its a shame, then, that many academic philosophers, especially in ethics, seek merely to reinforce common opinion by establishing principles rather than challenging it.
philosophy teaches us, and unsettles us, by confronting us with what we already know ... It works by taking what we know from familiar unquestioned settings, and making it strange... Philosophy estranges us from the familiar, not by supplying new information, but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing. But, and here is the risk, once the familiar turns strange, it is never quite the same again. Self-knowledge is like lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be 'unthought' or 'unknown'. -Michael Sandel
@@charliewenger7682 Do you even know what "dogma" means? A generally accepted consensus, guided by a clear methodology, is not dogma. Dogma is when answers are asserted by rote authority and then all further questioning is denied. There's a very, very big difference.
@@AntiCitizenX I just think the kind of question philosophy asks are for many reason rather hard to find a consensus on. I'm not saying you want it to have a dogma, just that it would be the only realistic way to achieve a clear consensus
@@charliewenger7682 The simple fact that physicists, biologists, chemists, economists, historians, and mathematicians all generate consensus without the imposition of dogma should be a clear sign that questions can, indeed, be answers through methodology. It is also not as if the questions of philosophy are difficult to answer. For example, God's existence is very easy to settle, and it is the very lack of a methodology that allows Christians to assert their position out of dogma, rather than reason.
I disagree with what you assume is the purpose of Philosophy. I believe it is the study of logic, reasoning, and justification of ideas, and the study of actively doing these things in practice. It doesn't matter what ideas you're touting, it's about the underlying method of investigating if a position is sound or not. So while you've readily dismissed it as being this, I think this is what philosophy is. Perhaps not the love of wisdom, buy the ways in which we can reach wisdom, and how not to reach wisdom. It isn't an objective field, it favours more defensible positions over less defensible ones, so the content isn't necessarily the be-all-end-all of the discussion. It seems nonsensical to think of philosophical discussions to be solved, re-evaluation and new scientific findings cause shifts in what can be justified or justified well, so it naturally leads to the need to change one's view. I do agree that there is a strange fascination with past philosophers, and very little straying from those historical classics, but they seemed to lay more or less stable groundworks for a lot of the topics that could be considered. Good philosophy would then be the practice of evaluating how strong arguments are, and how to expose flaws, and how to reform the argument to patch the hole in it, and see if it still stands. Bad philosophy would be doing these things poorly. So TL;DR: I believe you're missing the point, and that you want philosophy to be something it isn't.
*I believe it is the study of logic, reasoning, and justification of ideas, and the study of actively doing these things in practice.* Is that view really inconsistent with the claims of this video? Does that fully capture the day-to-day practice of doing philosophy in a classroom? And if it really is the study of logic and reasoning, does it not stand to reason that "correct" reasoning should result in consensus? *I believe you're missing the point, and that you want philosophy to be something it isn't.* What do you think I demand from philosophy? Is it really so terrible that we impose some basic standards? And if not, then does it not follow that snake-oil salesman and the outright incompetent are going to clutter up the field with nonsense? How do you measure progress in a field that doesn't even know what it wants to accomplish?
@@AntiCitizenX 1st point response: The view I propose isn't necessarily inconsistent with the claims of your video, it's just that you seem to quickly dismiss philosophy as possibly being as I described it (In the video). And this also would not be inconsistent with your concern about the western academic focus on historic philosophy, but if philosophy is the study of these things, the idea of progress in philosophy doesn't really mean much. You could perhaps learn the same methods of inquiry and making good and sound arguments, as well as defending them or exposing flaws no matter what skin it wears. As for reaching consensus, it seems to vary due to different ideas of how justification happens. I don't think this is really an issue, since even if another party reaches a different view, they have done some philosophy to get there, using broadly similar tools, but perhaps applying them differently. 2nd point response: It seems to me that you expect philosophy to produce the same results, like scientific experimentation would. Philosophy is still done even if the points reached aren't great, and perhaps that's philosophy done badly. I think progress is an interesting thing to want from philosophy too. As I see it, there isn't an end-goal to philosophy other than providing possible reasons, or justifications for propositions. So progress might look like being more and more thorough over time in considering positions or ideas, not which positions or ideas are reached. This is how it seems to me anyway. Thank you for responding, and I suppose I do agree with your qualms broadly, that philosophy does seem stuck on historic figures and what they did in the academic sphere, but in examining those things, perhaps they shed light on early ways of considering arguments that have grown more complex over time, so they provide a good example to follow of how the idea has been scrutinised over time. I think my only issue is in thinking reasoning or philosophy should produce better results across time, or reach consensus, because philosophy just doesn't seem to behave like that, and seems to be more about the method or practicing of it than the outcomes. Reasoning is strange too, I'm only just beginning to read a book that outlines why reasoning in humans often doesn't reach consensus, and why that might be.
@@AntiCitizenX No matter how much pure mathematics you study, you'll be no closer to determining which regression model is the best to summarize an empirical dataset with.
for morality, the consensus that economics and biology came to is a description of how morality came to exist, which doesn't end the debate because philosophers look for a normative moral system. and normative morality being subjective by definition it makes sens that you don't get any consensus and i think some philosophical schools are carrying a consistent program on their moral theory to answer social dilemmas for example utilirian philosophers (Peter Singer and such) where the ones to make the arguments about who should be prioritized for treatement when covid cases where higher than hospital capacities
Who said anything about "ending the debate?" We know that evolution through natural selection gives rise to biodiversity, but that does not mean all subsequent questions have been categorically settled for all time.
I think an economist's answer to this would be simple though: asking "what is morality" is an ill-posed question because to begin with, there is not ONE morality. If you took the values of ONE person, frozen at ONE point in time, then maybe you could kind of define a unique morality that corresponds to them. But other than that, there just isn't a universal answer to be found. Or in other cases, even if you agree on a common goal (e.g. minimizing loss of life), you still can't draw a solid conclusion about what the best way to get there is because you lack data about how each decision would result in which outcome. We're all playing the Trolley Problem, all the time, but there's infinite tracks, we don't know how the lever system operates, and we're blindfolded.
@@AntiCitizenX I mean, the natural question arises from the argument you made: That biologists and economists came to a consensus on what morality is, yet you castigate philosophy for not reaching consensus on the Trolley Problem. What's the biological and economical consensus on the Trolley Problem? If there isn't one, then at *minimum* that criticism of philosophy is without merit.
The reason most philosophy is garbage is because most philosophical questions are simply ill-formed - they are the result of linguistic/conceptual confusions. Yet philosophers write books and articles attempting to answer these questions (an impossible feat if they're not even coherent) or defending their own "answer" to them. It's a complete waste of time and effort. The so-called "problems of universals" is a paradigmatic example. Of course things have properties. I have the property of being 50 inches tall (in other words, I'm 50 inches tall). If an object is X, we can speak of it as "having the property of being X". This is a linguistic convention. Not any kind of "problem". Likewise, philosophers who ask "what is the mind?" need to first examine the use of the word "mind". Because there's not any _thing_ we call "the mind". It's not the name of an object (like "the brain" is the name of an object). If we say that someone (say, Fred) has a dirty mind, that he changed his mind, and that he turned his mind to something, we don't mean that there is a single thing - called "his mind" - that is dirty, that he changed, and that has been turned. It's all just idiomatic. We mean Fred (the human being) tends to think of sex, that he changed his decision, and that he began to focus on something. There's no such _thing_ as "the mind" or "a mind"; it's purely short-hand. It follows that questions like "is the mind identical to the brain?", or "is the mind physical or not?", are ill-formed. The same kind of philosophical clarification dissolves most stock philosophical "problems" (e.g. the problem of scepticism, the hard problem of consciousness, why is there something rather than nothing, etc.). I completely agree with your definition of the aim of philosophy as "conceptual clarity" (as would Wittgenstein, I think).
I completely agree about the problem of mal-formed questions. In the real world, you never get away with that nonsense because someone always forces you to be more clear and specific. Not so much in philosophy. Also, the “conceptual clarity” bit is technically not mine. I wish i came up with that. Rather, I stole that term from a philosophy professor who published his lectures online. It’s ironic, because much of this video is directly ripped off from other philosophers, and all my critics keep accusing me of not understanding philosophy.
Lol. Your dismissal of the problem of universals is quite something. Your argument is “of course there are.” Now, to be sure, I think your argument is completely asinine, but I do agree with your conclusion. However, most philosophers that agree with you on the task of philosophy would be astonished by your conclusion on this issue.
So you just made your own philosophy of what it means to be a "good" philosopher should do: -Clearly define their terms -Formulate arguments using established rules of inference -Demonstrate practical relevance or as you otherwise put it: -What do you mean by that? -How do you know that? -Why should anyone care? Lets now look at your philosophy from your own perspective to determine if you are a "good" philosopher and if your judgment matters: What do you mean by practical relevance? Why should I care about practical relevance? How do you know your criteria for a "good" philosopher are correct?... I could go on with this but it's just an example to show you why metaphilosophy and philosophy are not that easy. The other fields of study have the advantage of having assumptions that they do not question to reach a consensus. Also if you truly already know anything you could maybe answer some of these questions like what is good and what is bad? What moral theory did science identify as the obvious truth?
There is no such thing as an objectively “correct” definition. There are only good definitions and bad definitions. You do not have to “like” my definition, but when enough people start to use it and police it, then good communication depends on it. My definition happens to coincide with what most philosophers already imagine their profession to be, and philosophy will objectively fail to impress anyone or warrant respectability if it fails to adopt it. I therefore dont care about “proving” my philosophy, because that’s not the issue here. The question is whether or not you care about holding philosophers accountable to some kind of meaningful standard.
@@AntiCitizenX Then do you think you as a person shouldn't do skepticism on your position? Or you are afraid to answer those questions because maybe the answers will generate Inconsistency with your previous belief?
Same could be said of physics. You go to get a degree in physics and the teach you about string theory or about the multiverse and when you ask if they are true they tell you they have no idea. Doesn't mean there isn't value in hearing about people's attempts to explain the unknown. If you want to solve an unsolved problem in math it might help to see what attempts have been made thus far.
The difference is that physicists actually try to see if the theory is actually correct, and their theories evolve in base of what we know until they reach a truth, philosophers only say "this is the truth because I say so" and the only argument that they give you is "trust me", they aren't even based in real observations, they are just based on their ideals, in the future the string theory may be confirmed or disproved based on new findings, you can't do that with philosopy.
Just because string theory has been an experimental dead end for 30 years doesn't mean it isn't built upon hundreds of years of other well validated physics. There is total consensus over things like Newtonian mechanics and general relativity, in that they are useful and accurate partial models of physical phenomenon that allow humanity to make billions of useful predictions every day. Yours is a critique that string theory often faces and a valid one, so it's even more valid when it applies to the products of an entire field like Philosophy. Imagine if Physicists had never produced a single reliable prediction of reality, only slick sounding models with fan clubs instead of testable predictions. It's hard to imagine holding a practice like that in prestige. I think we treat Philosophy different because there is real value in cataloging the history of humanity's biggest questions and all the explored answers, but it does raise the AntiCitizenX's question of why Philosophy is treated as a rigorous practice of logic and reason if it has no metrics or consensus to demonstrate its rigor.
@@hugorodriguez8672 I see it differently than you. Seeing science and philosophy as different disciplines is a relative new idea. Before rather recently they were considered the same. Newton would have said he was doing natural philosophy. Some areas of science/philosophy are harder to make progress in than others. We have made a lot of progress in physics and cosmology but relatively little in understanding human consciousness. Because we haven't made much progress we still don't know if Plato's theory is correct. I just watched a debate between physicists about whether math is something that we invent in our minds or whether it is something we discover in the universe. Basically they are trying to argue about whether Plato was right or wrong. I disagree with you, I think we will find out whether Platos theory is correct or not. I think we will find out if Hume's theory of cognition is right or wrong (both of which are based on many observations). Cartesian dualism influences how neuroscientist today form their theories. Just because it takes centuries to make progress rather than decades doesn't mean it's not worth studying. If you want to find answers to questions it always helps to read what theories have been put forth before, whether from 10 years ago or from 2000.
@@cuantrail I can see your point, I'm not saying that the theories that philosophy presents cannot be confirmed or deconfirmed, but philosophy itself is pretty bad doing it, for example, have you seen a group of philosophers doing research and tests to prove their theories?, they would just argue trying to convince each other that their theory is the correct one, I'm not saying that philosophic theories cannot be confirmed or deconfirmed, but it was scientists that did it, like with the atoms or the cuantic foam(sorta of), in the millenia that philosophy exists they haven't made a single consensus yet, because their way of doing things is pretty bad at doing it, what I'm jus trying to say is that scientific theories and philosophic theories aren't the same.
It feels like there isn't a huge difference between an art history major and a philosophy major. Everyone can look at and have valid opinions about art, but we privilege an art historians opinion because they have context. Everyone lives their lives by their own personal valid philosophies, but we privilege these philosophy historian's opinions because they have more context. In both cases, the historians are under no obligation to reach consensus in their opinions.
But the question is, should philosophy stay that way? Consider that the sciences, economics and medical practice were all once that way too, and consider what happened when they changed.
How about if we see philosophy as a frontier to collective human knowledge? After all, all major schools of academia (literature, medicine, political science, mathematics, e.t.c.) had to start somewhere. It is very likely they began when someone, or a group of people, began thinking about these questions at a time when no one had the answers. These questions very slowly evolved into the structured ways of thinking we are familiar with today. And, even so, we have often realised on hindsight that the rigorous processes in which we arrived at modern advancements may be flawed (take Classical v.s. Quantum mechanics for example). In my opinion, the human race has not acquired all knowledge there is available. It would be conceited to assume so, and our growth as a species would possibly stagnate should we adopt such a mindset. The honest pursuit of philosophy, though it may seem frivolous when seen from the lens of a single lifetime, has the potential to converge on practical applications in the distant future (take the evolution of alchemy to chemistry for example). Therefore, we really should continue to ask these pesky questions that people can't seem to agree on. It is, in a way, an insurance that our collective wisdom continues to grow. This coming from an engineer :)
so "validity" in philosophy is not about having an interesting perspective/opinion. it's about constructing an argument where, if all premises are true, the conclusion must follow. a philosophy student learns to build valid arguments, not to have valid opinions in the more colloquial sense. additionally, philosophy majors don't simply learn the history of their topic, they also learn how to create arguments, spot flaws in others, and provide counterexamples that can cause an argument to become invalid, less likely, or be reduced to absurdity. It isn't so much competing opinions as it is competing intuitions and people attempting to provide valid and sound arguments (valid being if all premises are true, then the conclusion must follow; sound being that all premises *are in fact* true) to prove why their intuitions (or non-intuitive conclusions in some cases) should be believed.
The problem here is that there's an artificial divide between "the sciences" and "the humanities" that makes people studying philosophy consider science as cold calculation, devoid of any importance except to make some concrete point about long held philosophical views. In science we also have a problem with the divide: we often see theoretical physicist engage in pseudo-idealist debates that we know from the history of philosophy that are totally sterile. I agree almost with every point in this video. The relevant philosophical debates are not happening inside the philisphy department but in Physics, Mathematics, Biology and Computer sciences. Just to give some examples: - We see "modern philosophers" discuss things as the nature of time ad vacuo, debating about zeno's paradox. The have debated zeno's points since ancient greece and many seem to not realise that the problem was completely solved with the advent of differential calculus (particularly limits and convergent series). - The most updated of philosophers talk a lot about artificial intelligence but their discussions are incredibly superficial. They are mainly paying attention to the possibility of a robot uprising (yeah, like in terminator), instead of tacking the relevant philosophical consecuences of machine learning. This is because they don't understand it, because many despise the lower intellectual effort of programming. But in fact computer scientist are uncovering things that are extremely relevant for the philosophy of mind: The emergence of organised semantic structures from the interaction of simple switches, the way decreasing entropy in the structure of language reveals cognition, the way machines learn without hard-coding and why we choose to go with unsupervised machine learning for the more sophisticated tasks (which tells us a lot about how we also learn and how our intuition about how knowledge is built was totally wrong). Those are the real deep philosophical issues right now in computer science, but you will hear philosophers only speculating about "the singularity". - I hear philosophers disscussing about what can be known and what can't be known and if there are known unkowables etc... like it was a manichean discussion about the sex of angels. The truth is that the debate there has been completely settled by mathematics a century ago when Gödels theorems appeared. Still I don't see philisophers trying to grasp the meaning and gnoseological consecuences of this amazing piece of maths. Why? because maths is just for nerds that don't get the important and deeper things, right? - Cosmology has evolved from myth to a full-fledged science in less than a century. It might have been reasonable to have long debates about the nature of creation and how things came to be, but now any debate outside the empirical demostrations that tell us that time had an origin and matter is uniformly distributed at the largest scales is simply bad philosophy. We are not collecting data and probinf the deepest questions in cosmology and the refined discussion is not happening at the phislophy department but at physics meetings. - In biology we are starting to grasp the way life was originated, we can discuss plato's, aristotle's and kant's views for hours on the topic but the reality is that none had any remotely valid position when compared to what science is revelaing this century. Why philosophers don't study the way RNA might have been the precursor of a DNA world? What does all of this implies for the "meaning of life". They even seem to be oblivious about the relevance of darwinian natural selection for philosophical matters. Science has empirically shown that purposefulness in the biological world is absent because of this mechanism. Why are they still debating if Tomism was a better stance than Lamarckism or not instead of trying to understand the crazy consecuences for the meaning of our existence with current data (which is filled with relevant questions on the matter). - Quantum physics has shown that the universe is fundamentally non-deterministic. Why philosophers are still debating this question outside of the scientific discurse as if we haven't piled up hundreths of experiments and observations with relevant conclusions on the topic? - Oceanographers, matematicians and cryptographers are joined in an effort to understand if whales have structured language, how it developed, what are the similarities with human languages and even if we are capable of translating what they are saying (see project CETI). IS this not relevant to philosophers? They should study Zipfs law, information theory, shannon's entropy, kolmogorov's complexity and much more to get to the level of the current debates. Instead of doing that we see modern philosophers arguing about old school semiotics with total disregard of the current situation. - When fractal geometry apeared in mathematics half a century ago it sparked very interesting questions on mathematics, but not in philosophical circles for some reason. Does measure has a meaning for these objects? Is an simple equation able to display infinite complexity and any possible pattern? Is our reality one of the patterns inside a similar abstract structure? Is there a way we could tell? Can fractal compression algorithms be found in DNA sequences and how information is stored in the biological world. ANd many many more important things that no Hume, nor Shopenhauer knew about when formulating their arguments. - Non-equilibrium thermodynamics is now showing for decades that complexity and self-organisation will arise almost inevitably even if counterintuitively the entropy of the universe is steadily increasing. Philosophers could be interested in this at the mathematical level. Instead what I see is philosophers still resucitating death arguments about vitalism and additional forces that would be necessary for complexity to arise in total disregard of the current state of knowledge wich, IMO, has oblitarated any of those arguments long ago. We could keep going with Antropology, Statistical Mechanics, etc... At this point in history philosophy is greatly advancing but not by people who study that career but by scientists, linguists etc... The deep philosophical questions of who we are?, where we go? What is the meaning of life? what is the ultimate fate of the universe? Is order able to form out of randomness? Is the soul and mind detached from matter? Where, when and how it all began? What is the purpose of this and that? Is reason enough? Is everything knowable? etc... All of these questions are been tackled in science right now. Philosophers seem to be happy ignoring all of it, they are now simply nostalgically recreating old lazy arguments from periods were none of the things we are discovering were known or used to debate. It is trully sad. I get that the history of philosophy is very important and relevant for real philosophy. But common, that's not enough for what philosophy should be doing nowadays, which is a lot.
Sorry, but comments like this reveal great ignorance about how philosophy is actually practiced. There are no active philosophers who are ignorant about Goedel's theorem. Some of them don't have a deep understanding of it, and it is sometimes abused in arguments due to this fact (not only by philosophers), but everyone has at least heard about it. Also, it's untrue that quantum mechanics is fundamentally indeterministic. There are interpretations, like Bohmian mechanics, which are fully deterministic. And, while I hate to be the guy that points this out: have you read some contemporary philosophy of physics literature (often written by people who have PhDs in physics), even at a very basic level, you'd know that.
2:07 "Philosophy courses do not really educate students in philosophy per se. Instead, most treatments on the subject are far better described as a history of philosophy, or perhaps a survey. Sure, it might be interesting information to some, but it is not exactly the condensed summary of modern consensus that tends to define other fields." The point of studying historical philosophers is not to learn the history of philosophy, though the history of philosophy is something that some may study as its own topic. We study ancient philosophers to learn from how they thought and how they reached their conclusions. We can learn from their techniques and their mistakes, because the point of studying philosophy is to learn how to think more clearly. There is no modern consensus in philosophy because there cannot be, and to expect a consensus would seem to be some sort of misunderstanding of the point of philosophy. Philosophy is about the journey, not the destination. Philosophy is about thinking, not about coming to conclusions. Philosophy is therefore only concerned with questions that do not have clear answers, and as soon as any question gets a consensus, that question ceases to be a topic of philosophy. If there were a modern consensus on some topic, then that topic wouldn't be discussed in philosophy classes. It wouldn't be fertile ground for thinking and debate. To ask why philosophy doesn't teach any consensus would be like asking why people playing darts stand so far from the target. Wouldn't it be easier to hit the target if they stood within reach of it? The challenge of throwing the darts is the whole point of the game, just like the challenge of thinking about difficult questions is the whole point of philosophy. 2:48 "A formal education in philosophy will not qualify you as an authority in correct philosophical thought." Right. The very concept of "correct philosophical thought" seems like some sort of misunderstanding of the point of philosophy. Philosophy is a skill to be trained, not a question to answer correctly or incorrectly. Just as we cannot be correct or incorrect at throwing darts, we cannot be correct or incorrect at philosophy: we can be skilled or unskilled, and a formal education in philosophy helps people to become skilled. 2:55 "At best, you will only emerge as a glorified historian and taxonomist." If that is what we learn from a study of philosophy, then we may have missed the point of what we were studying. There's nothing wrong with knowing history and taxonomy of philosophy, but it is beside the point. It would be like studying the greatest dart throwers of history and instead of learning to throw darts better by emulating their techniques, we instead focus on memorizing the dates and outcomes of historical tournaments. 3:02 "There is an outspoken tradition in western education that it always more important to teach students how to think rather than what to think. College philosophy, it seems, is just taking this doctrine to a fanatical extreme." There is nothing fanatical about staying focused on the topic that we're trying to study. There's nothing fanatical about college chemistry exclusively talking about chemical reactions. Philosophy is simply the study of how to think, and that's all it should ever be. 5:41 "University departments from across the world brag openly about how philosophy teaches students such important skills as critical thinking, logical analysis, and complex problem solving. They take pride in their supposedly dispassionate use of pure reason to create and evaluate arguments, all for the sake of developing a clear and systematic view of who we are, where we stand, and where we should be going." Exactly. They are teaching people to have the skills to think for themselves, not to accept the answers that they've been given. We learn to evaluate arguments by studying arguments that people have made in the past and considering the strengths and flaws of those arguments. Philosophy is therefore only concerned with questions and debates, and never concerned with answers. For example, a lecture on moral philosophy won't be about telling people what is good and what is bad as we might expect from a sermon. A lecture on moral philosophy will be about the ways in which people argue about morality so that we can learn to think critically about morality and learn to analyse arguments and construct our own arguments. 6:12 "Imagine a professional community of thousands of dedicated intellectuals who are all highly trained experts in the art of truth finding. Now imagine these same intellectuals all share a common goal of exploring difficult questions, collecting evidence, evaluating arguments, and deriving the most sensible conclusions possible. Naturally, we should expect such a group to eventually reach a unanimous consensus one every question posed." That's not a realistic expectation. Difficult questions are challenging and humans minds are not infallible reasoning machines. Philosophers deliberately examine the most difficult and perplexing questions of all, specifically because it seems that people cannot ever broadly agree on the answers. In less challenging fields like chemistry and biology people often can form a clear consensus, and that's why those fields are of little interest to philosophers. Deliberately choosing the hardest question often means that philosophers fail to get clear answers, but that's just how life works. 7:26 "You would think that if philosophers really are the great experts in reason that they claim to be, then we should expect an overwhelming consensus on the major questions of their field." These questions are the major questions of their field because they do not have overwhelming consensus. The more controversial a question is, the more important it becomes in philosophy. Any question that has overwhelming consensus would cease to be of any interest to philosophers. 8:05 "In most any other other professional field of study, this would be an absolute embarrassment." That is because other professional fields of study are in the business of studying other things. Knowing nothing about how RNA produces proteins would be an absolute embarrassment for any biologist, but among astrophysicists knowing about RNA is totally irrelevant. In philosophy people deal with questions that have not been clearly answered because that's the whole point, and so it would be foolish to be embarrassed about it.
*We study ancient philosophers to learn from how they thought and how they reached their conclusions. We can learn from their techniques and their mistakes, because the point of studying philosophy is to learn how to think more clearly.* So, history of philosophy, then? *Right. The very concept of "correct philosophical thought" seems like some sort of misunderstanding of the point of philosophy.* Tell that to the hoards of pretentious yahoos who constantly talk trash about positivism. I've lost count of how many times I've seen professionals prattle on about the "downfall" of posivitism, despite the fact that many of its tenets are alive and well in science today. *There is nothing fanatical about staying focused on the topic that we're trying to study.* It is if you deliberately market yourself as a purveyor of "fundamental truths." *They are teaching people to have the skills to think for themselves, not to accept the answers that they've been given.* That's simply not true. The fact that philosophers cannot form a consensus on basic questions utterly disproves that proposition. It doesn't count as "thinking for yourself" when the thought process itself is vague and self-serving.
*A lecture on moral philosophy will be about the ways in which people argue about morality so that we can learn to think critically about morality and learn to analyse arguments and construct our own arguments.* What value is there in "thinking critically" if all people are going to do is rationalize whatever self-serving answers they already presupposed in advance? It doesn't count as critical thinking without a formal methodology to define what a "correct" answer even means.
@@AntiCitizenX "So, history of philosophy, then?" No, history of philosophy is the study of when various philosophers lived and who their contemporaries were and how philosophical ideas have changed over the years along with other historical events. In philosophy class we usually study the arguments made by ancient philosophers rather than the people who made the arguments. The biography of Kant is part of the history of philosophy; the arguments of Kant are part of philosophy. "Tell that to the hoards of pretentious yahoos who constantly talk trash about positivism." That sounds like a good topic for a video, if that video hasn't already been made. "It is if you deliberately market yourself as a purveyor of 'fundamental truths.'" Agreed, anyone who markets herself as a purveyor of fundamental truths is almost certainly a fanatic. "The fact that philosophers cannot form a consensus on basic questions utterly disproves that proposition." Can you elaborate on that? Why would we expect a consensus among people who are each thinking for themselves? "It doesn't count as 'thinking for yourself' when the thought process itself is vague and self-serving." Why? Agreed that vague and self-serving thinking is not wise and not productive, but it still sounds like thinking for yourself. Perhaps we could get more details on this point.
@@AntiCitizenX "Tell that to the hoards of pretentious yahoo's who constantly talk trash about positivism." First time checking out your channel. You touch on many things that I have interest in. Thanks for being honest in your responses, it let's me know very quickly that I'm not going to find much of value here if this is the quality of responses you put out.
@@Ansatz66 *In philosophy class we usually study the arguments made by ancient philosophers rather than the people who made the arguments* I see what you mean now. Indeed, I interpret that stuff as "history of philosophy." The word "survey" also gets thrown around a lot, and seems to be apt to me.
One of my issues here is that when it comes to philosophy, it is almost impossible to find a "one size fits all" clean answer because, unlike science, a lot of the ethical quandries and the societies that we want to strive for are so different. Like take something like stoicism for example. Stoicism can be extremely heplful for people in fields that are very competitive or require lots of conflict. The idea of getting the work done, at all costs, and putting your emotions aside are things that you see a lot in the police force or corporate board rooms. Yet, we can get two similar people who have entirely different values and value structures, and it is almost impossible to find a one size fits all solution to their issues. Like if I was an undergrad and I wanted to just get a 4.0 at all costs, and do internships, and spend all my time making myself look professional, then having a solid mindset of not letting anything effect me would be quite helpful. Now if we take the same undergrad, and I value relationships, having fun and partying, and trying to round myself out in college then fuck, stoicism offers nothing to me. I would want to have my mind changed and be influenced by those around me. Its how I grow as a person. The issue isnt just that people value different things, it is that YOU cannot tell SOMEONE ELSE what they should value or what makes them happy. They can only do that themselves. Philosophy is a tool that you can use to introspect in your own life, find out what you want and enjoy, and grow as a person .
I think the point is, that philosophy used to be concerned with such things, but modern philosophy no longer is. Science has taken over what philosophy used to be, and modern philosophy is something else.
Philosophy departments openly brag about their ability to teach critical thinking skill and explore "truths." If this kind of rhetoric invokes nothing of the potential for consensus, then perhaps you're only proving my point.
@@AntiCitizenX lol this reads like a complete non-sequitur when you consider the implications of a discipline with the characteristics you have described. Btw are you a Redditor?
Not only strange but it misses the whole point of philosophy, which to me is to learn to investigate ideas for yourself. Settled questions don't need to be investigated.
Ok so a simple proof of the point is to simply ask the question: What task is a philosopher supposed to do on a day to day basis to provide value to society? I've never gotten a consisten answer to this.
@JO Yes and no. Yes in the sense that as it is practiced today, it provides no progress or discovery. No, but only in the sense that I propose in this video of how I think philosophers can provide value by embracing certain methodology.
@@AntiCitizenX Rewatched it many times. Months ago and now again ^^ I have also tried to make these and similar arguments among friends. Including philosophy students which only meets outrage even though I learned to become quite diplomatic, I thought. I am not a philosophy student though and wonder if I am missing out or "just not getting it". I hope this wasn't your last video and to see more from you in the future :)
LONG REPLY: feel free to reply to any individual point without reading the entire post. 1. Saying that philosophy doesn't "progress" is wrong. Certain philosophical positions become discredited and less popular over time. Its quite rare that you have dramatic immediate shifts where for example a single experiment completely disproves a certain stance, but this is also quite rare in most scientific fields as well actually. Instead what happens is that certain arguments gain or lose plausibility as more evidence mounts behind it, or certain theoretical developments make certain arguments seem less likely, which slowly makes one position seem more reasonable than another. This also happens in philosophy. There are very few logical positivists anymore, no one takes ayn rand seriously, quite few people take cartesian dualism seriously (at least not in the form articulated by descartes), no one believes in logicism anymore. I could name a million more more obscure examples. Point is that the notion that philosophy doesn't progress at all is as ridiculous as saying science doesnt. 2. The notion that there is no way to tell good from bad philosophy is also wrong. The way you do it is identical to how you do it in mathematics. You look at the arguments themselves, and if they stand up to scrutiny and are logically correct, then the philosophy you're doing is "good", if the arguments you're presenting are not correct, the philosophy you're presenting is bad. Sometimes its hard to tell which arguments are correct or not, but this is besides the point. 3. The point about philosophers disagreeing about a lot of things is both not that meaningful and kinda wrong. First, I wanna point out that the survey specifically brings forth contentious issues that are debated. If you went into a room filled with mathematicians and asked them "whats 2+2, whats the anti-derivative of 2x + 1, how many k element subsets does an n element set have?" there would be zero disagreement, but it would be a pointless and really boring survey. Similarly, the questions brought up like synthetic vs analytic distinction, realism vs anti-realism etc are known contentious issues, which is why they are in the survey in the first place. Secondly, most of the issues are quite recent developments. And 3rdly, even if the questions themselves are quite old, the prominent positions, ie the modern "answers" to the questions are not that old. Lastly, even if philosophy had a ton of disagreement constantly about anything, I don't think that means much, like I addressed in point 1. If there was no disagreement the field wouldn't be moving forward. 4. You complain about philosophy not having a clear definition. I don't see how this is actual critique. There are subfields of philosophy like epistemology, ontology, ethics, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, the list goes on, which do have very clear definitions. However, since philosophy is expanding and new fields emerge, we want to keep the notion of "philosophy" open enough to be able to encapsulate those developments. I imagine something like "physics" would do the same. Imagine you defined physics as the study of physical matter. Would this include the study of gravity? light? Ok, maybe not, so what we do is expand it to be "physics is the study of matter or forces that interact or otherwise affect physical matter", then we someone asks whether emergent phenomena like economic behavior or biology is a questions physics is supposed to answer, and then we rewrite the definition to be "physics is the study of the behavior of matter or forces interacting with matter that can locally be modeled with mathematical equations, and whose behavior doesn't depend on macroscopic effects best explained by other theories....", and then quantum mechanics comes along and questions about what matter even is gets kinda hard to answer, and then you give up because trying to come up with some holistic all encompassing definition is not all the important anyways, as long as the questions you're asking are clear. 5. Around 5:40 you say that long standing philosophical questions have already been solved by other fields of science. This is really really dumb. Sorry for being blunt. The questions ethics are asking and the questions sciences like evolutionary psychology are asking are not the same in anyway what so ever. "What is the right thing to do" is not the same question as the sociological question "what has right come to mean in our current society", its is not the same as the evolutionary question "how have social animals come to evolve pro-social behavior and moral norms?" it is not the same as the game-theoretic question "what is the optimal behavior in an interative cooperative game of form x when you seek to maximize the and Y". They are just not the same question. Even if these questions had all been answered, Sociology, game theory, biology were literally solved subjects, Ie we knew how moral behavior came about, we knew exactly which moral norms were the most prevalent in current society, we knew exactly how you would want to behave in any game given a specified goal, they wouldn't tell you anything about how you *****should***** act. How a moral norm came about is irrelevant as to whether you actually ought to follow it. Obviously philosophers should be knowledgeable about science if they want to make scientific claims, but this goes for any field. If penrose tries to use quantum physics to make some unfounded and wildly speculative claims about psychology, does this suddenly mean quantum physics is bogus? No, it just means one person is overstepping their boundaries and commenting on stuff they don't know much about. Also, its worth mentioning that it goes both ways. When hawking or dawkins or bill bye talk about how philosophy is dead, they are not speaking from an area of expertise, they are just asserting their opinions about a subject they don't know much about. 6. You say that philosophy doesn't answer "deep" questions unlike science. I don't think you gave any definition of "deep" in this video so its hard to say exactly what you mean, but if you by deep mean something like "fundamental", then philosophy certainly asks deep questions. In fact the questions it asks are almost by definition the deepest of any subject. The questions philosophy asks are typically those that precede any investigation into any other endeavor. Before mathematics can be done you need a rigorous definition of what mathematics is and how to do mathematics. This is philosophy (philosophy of mathematics) and it is certainly more foundational the mathematics itself is. Same goes for any field. And, when you get into more "Pure" philosophical questions about the nature of knowledge, truth, existence, these are so fundamental that they inform literally any science you could possibly have. You can't talk about chemistry if you can't talk about the "existence" of particles, or the truth of statements about those particles. There were many other errors with this video but ill stop here.
*Certain philosophical positions become discredited and less popular over time.* I am not interested in your bare assertions that defy all evidence to the contrary. This claim has been categorically disproved by the evidence of the video. If there are discredited positions, then by all means, name a single one, and then show me the statistical data that proves it. *There are very few logical positivists anymore* This is false. The central tenets of positivism are very much alive and well within modern philosophy and science. You can even see for yourself in the citations I gave in this very video. *no one takes ayn rand seriously* The entire Republican party does. Objectivism has a very rich and prolific following. *quite few people take cartesian dualism seriously* At least 2/3 of the philosophy of religion disagrees. Read the literature. This is the problem with modern philosophy. You are literally making up clams out of nothing, in full defiance of the evidence, and then expecting them to qualify as compelling arguments.
*The notion that there is no way to tell good from bad philosophy is also wrong. The way you do it is identical to how you do it in mathematics. You look at the arguments themselves, and if they stand up to scrutiny and are logically correct, then the philosophy you're doing is "good", if the arguments you're presenting are not correct, the philosophy you're presenting is bad. Sometimes its hard to tell which arguments are correct or not, but this is besides the point.* Let's break this down, shall we? 1) You presume that synthetic propositions can be magically deduced through pure reason. This is false. Mathematics only works by deriving theorems out of axioms via rules of inference. This process is strictly analytic in nature and cannot logically generate knowledge about objective reality. The very nature of your methodology necessarily rejects huge swaths of philosophical questions. 2) If what you suggest is true, then presumably those following the rules should arrive at a consensus in the same manner as mathematicians. This objectively fails to occur. Therefore, either the methodology doesn't work, or people are not following it correctly, despite having PhDs in the subject matter. 3) The very nature of most philosophical questions necessarily presumes some goal or value in order meaningfully derive some answer. It is not logically possible to evaluate the "correctness" of a goal or value using evidence or logic. You just assert them as a matter of rote fiat.
@@AntiCitizenX *You presume that synthetic propositions can be magically deduced through pure reason. This is false.* Do you even realize you are repeating the opinions of Immanuel Kant? The entire Analytic/synthetic distinction was first proposed by Kant. Kant's major work was the critique of *PURE REASON* , the very thing you're critiquing by just repeating what Kant said. You spend so much time ragging on that philosophers can't make progress or don't know what their talking about, and yet you just recapitulated the analytic/synthetic distinction: a major progressive accomplishment within philosophy.
@@williamcurt7204 *Do you even realize you are repeating the opinions of Immanuel Kant?* Dear God, the HORROR! You mean other influential philosophers have had similar thoughts as me? It's almost as if I'm not just making this up out of my own imagination. *You spend so much time ragging on that philosophers can't make progress or don't know what their talking about, and yet you just recapitulated the analytic/synthetic distinction: a major progressive accomplishment within philosophy.* I'm having trouble processing the sheer insanity of this comment. First off, if you bothered to read the comment threat, you would have seen that positivism was deemed "bad philosophy" that has been discredited and is now dead. You therefore agree with me that this is false, even heralding the ASD as some kind of "accomplishment." Secondly, if you bothered to read the citations of this very video, you would see that only about 2/3 of modern philosophers are sympathetic towards the ASD. Thus, the "major progressive accomplishment" of yours is still unable to to garner any meaningful consensus among PhD philosophers. Tell me, in all of that philosophical education of yours, did you never learn the distinction between (1) I believe a thing, and (2) there exists a consensus among professional PhD philosophers about that same thing? It's like you're just disagreeing with me for the pure sake of disagreement, no matter how insane you have to sound doing it.
@@AntiCitizenX It's not that other philosophers have "similar" opinions to you, it's that you are just wholesale repeating the opinions of other philosophers without any consciousness of the fact that you are doing so. ASD didn't exist before Kant proposed it. That was over 200 years ago, when the critique of pure reason was published. You obviously haven't read anything by Kant, so you are simply repeating something that you heard from someone else. You are unconsciously acting as a mouthpiece for philosophical systems that you haven't examined. You simply believe that ASD is just an obvious fact, when it isn't. It was born out by Kant, who painstakingly spent nearly 10 years developing his critique of pure reason. And so my point is this: even if your critique of philosophical progress is sound (which it isn't), *YOU* think there is philosophical progress by the fact that you wholesale repeated ASD as true, and so you are a massive hypocrite.
The historical view is quite important: Kant's metaphilosophy (his first critique) is trying to answer your question, but to adequately understand it you must first understand the history it addresses, and be able to establish a valid opinion about this critique you must engage a wide array of scholarship and philosophical responses. There's a reason why most universities spend far the most time on Kant in comparison to any other philosopher: Kant's metaphilosophy addresses what the field, and any field for that matter, is able to do. Kant wanted to make philosophy "a dead science like logic that hasn't been improved since Aristotle" ironically Frege shortly thereafter reinvents logic and makes it into the living mathematic/philosophical science it is today. But in my view disagreement is fundamental to the method of philosophy like no other field, institutional agreement actually works counter to its goals.
I lost all respect for philosophy when for a class I took, when I had to write an essay, we first submitted a draft for commentary. One of the lines of my draft came back, a sentence underlined, with a comment that it wasn't the case that this statement I made was, in fact, clearly true. Now, I was busy with my science and math classes, and had difficult homework for them, and was doing quite well in my philosophy course, so I decided to take the hit on the grade for the paper. So I changed the underlined sentence "X" to "It is clearly true that X", effectively directly contradicting my professor's comments on my paper. I submitted this as my final draft, and that paper came back to me with extremely high marks, no reference to the sentence "X" and a comment at the end that the paper was "very insightful". :/
You being a poor student who obviously ignored the teachers criticism doesn't say anything about the nature of philosophy. I'm sure your teacher simply let the non major pass the class, even though he obviously doesn't understand the finer points 😜
I must say. I love this video, like all of your videos they are well thought out, somewhat easy to understand, and give clear, pragmatic well-funded insights. But what I am even more impressed with, is the comment section. Not only is there an incredible amount of discord, dissent, disagreement, name-calling, thought-full insights, and comments in general. You have responded to such a large amount of them, and read even more of them that it boggles my mind you have the patience and kindness to do so. I sometimes wish you were less aggressive and more sympathetic in your tone and word choices. But overall, you are still polite enough to not really directly be rude about it. I certainly couldn't remain at this level of civility if I had to go through all the comments and give many of the same responses to the same points, questions, and comments as you do. So demanding you to be better than you are would be hypocritical of me I feel. I just hope your sanity can continue to withstand it. On another note, I have tried to get my philosophy teacher to watch the video, she haven't had the time yet, from what I have gleaned out of her from our relatively brief conversations, she agrees with the video more or less. She said herself quite directly that you can't and shouldn't expect to find 'correct answers' in philosophy. There is no doubt in my mind that she loves philosophy, yet even she acknowledges this fact, not only acknowledges it but firmly believes it.
I wish I was less aggressive too, but it's just hard not to get pissed off with some of the responses. A lot of people simply ignore the fact that these are arguments being made by professional PhD philosophers with tenured positions at prestigious universities, opting instead to dismiss it all outright as angry STEM lord ranting. Many other people just flat-out ignore the evidence/citations of the video, and often times they attribute things to me that were expressly disavowed. I would love to have a serious discussion, but it's difficult when people are so blatantly refusing to exercise a shred of charity.
@@AntiCitizenX Oh, I am fully aware. I have even skimmed through the entire comment section myself. It was quite.... interesting. It is precisely because of all these half-assed, disingeniuos, not paying attention, uncharitable or even down right insulting responses that I personally believe I would not be able to consistently display the kind of restraint and civility you still manage to keep despite all of these comments and remarks. It is why I find your patience and kindness impressive. Patience to read so much, and respond to so much. And kindness to despite all of these prevelant negative, unreasonable responses you are still quite restrained and civil all things considered. Sure, you often sound snarky, angry or agressive. Sure, you would be even more convincing if you always sounded patient, calm and sympathetic. But honestly, I personally wouldn't be able to retain my sanity if I had to go through all of these comments like you do. So I can't demand or expect better of you without being a hypocrite.
I think it sounds like a philosopher's job is to refine questions. That is, they take questions that are not well-defined, and thus not answerable, and turn them into ones which are well-defined and which can thus be answered by the relevant fields. So long as people are asking questions, philosophers will always have something to do.
I'm so glad I found this channel again. I couldn't remember the name "AntiCitizenX" but I remembered your voice and animations. I also knew I would have subbed to you years back, but you have since changed the avatar and display name... but I found you.
Philosophy isn't so much arriving at answers. Rather it is concerned with framing the questions correctly so that they may be answered. I asked a question in a philosophy of science course (more accurately, philosophy for physicists) relating to fuzzy topics involving furry creatures (biology) and was told to take a statistics course. It proved to be good advice.
@@AntiCitizenX Seems like that's part of it: Philosophy is thinking about framing questions correctly up to the point where an answer is derived at which point it becomes science, then philosophy moves on to the next unanswered question, never to be able to graduate to the level of truth but rather permanently stuck in inquiry mode.
This is a topic that needs addressing. When Tucker Carlson interviewed Curtis Yarvin, he remarked that Curtis had written 1,000,000 words about the Cathedral. The Cathedral is indeed interesting although I have heard say, I forget where, that apart from the term Cathedral, the idea was not new. But Curtis has spawned a cult of ultra intellectuals who debate and promulgate Curtis's writings. I found them impenetrable and had hoped to reach a deeper understanding through his videos. But I couldn't cope with his hesitant speech delivery. I believe that ultimately Curtis's real genius is in being able to write 1,000,000 words to elucidate a concept that can be explained in one sentence. And that, I think, is the philosophy problem. As humans we are in possession of this thing called language. But we do not seem to be in control of language. We are in awe of language as if words by themselves can create the work of civilisation without any practical activity. I don't know what you think to that idea. I have recently become fascinated by the fact that Eastern civilisation has survived for so long using logograms instead of words. Chinese students seem to have a superior ability to memorise. The eastern holistic approach to medicine is being compared favourably with western analytics. Jonathan Pageau and Jordan Peterson both talk about how the essence of western identity can only be understood through symbolic myths. Words, it seems, may have led us down a rabbit hole that is destroying us. So many so-called elite are nowadays actually only wordsmiths spouting psychobabble and soundbites. Westerners constantly misunderstand each other because words have many meanings and phrases can be ambiguous. Perhaps easterners were wise to stop at logograms? Perhaps logograms enable a single unifying philosophy and sense of origin and identity better than words do?
This video does seem to imply that the empirical verifiability of the hard sciences is somehow “better” or to be preferred over the ambiguity and indecisiveness of philosophy. But why should we assume that utility or verifiability is somehow better than ambiguity or incomprehensibility? To argue it does, you must first build a foundation of what the good is, which is why philosophy is so convoluted. It’s almost impossible to build a foundation, and so people can never agree on anything.
The problem is that he assumes a false dichotomy to be the case. As all the hard sciences are practiced by philosophers as well. Perhaps he simply doesn't know what the letters PhD stand for.
*But why should we assume that utility or verifiability is somehow better than ambiguity or incomprehensibility?* This question is so baffling, that I can only assume you are being sarcastic about it and trolling the philosophers.
@@AntiCitizenX my question is how you assign the adjective of “good” to that. It is not self evident from a philosophical perspective what “good” even means. So you have to define that first, and then you can say that verifiability is “good.”
The reason that I think philosophy looks to stagnate is because it is trying to answer foundational questions, whereas the hard sciences assume a foundation (like that our senses are reliable) and then proceed from there in their experiments, etc. Assuming a foundation of thought is easy, proving one is potentially the hardest thing we can do as humans, which is why questions like “what is the nature of being” is so difficult to answer. If you’re a scientific materialist, you can just assume that matter is all there is. But to prove that assumption is a whole different ballgame.
@@Iamwrongbut *the hard sciences assume a foundation (like that our senses are reliable) and then proceed from there in their experiments, etc.* Statements like this are common from seemingly well-educated philosophy types, and they baffle me. Just because the definition of "science" is arbitrary, that does not mean people are free to concoct whatever self-serving nonsense they like. Human beings do in fact share certain fundamental goals and values, and any attempt to deviate from those basic interests is tantamount to pure madness. There is also a pervasive myth that science just assumes shit outright for no reason, like the uniformity of nature or cause and effect. Um... no, these are not presuppositions. They are POST-suppositions. They are very obviously things that appear to govern our experience, and so we are very much justified in assuming they will continue until shown otherwise.
I feel like the end of this video betrays the problems with it- it assumes that Philosophy operates identical to science in a way that it can be precisely quantified as right or wrong. It is like demanding that visual art and music must have objective measurements of prowess. Similar to Philosophy, in music we have some ideas about what makes "good" and "bad" music, and we can generally identify some people who are better at it than others, but trying to rigorously fit those into some objective measurement of prowess seems to make it all fall apart. We have some ideas of how we think good logic works, but even that is arbitrary (see Kurt Gödel) and can only glean information from a set of arbitrary axioms about the way we think the world should work. If you as a scientist want just hard answers about the world according to your axioms on how it works, well... you've kinda skipped much of the philosophy part. You already have assumed your way past 90% of the questions and are trying just reason out the last bits. At that point, you're just skipping the "is-ought" distinction, because you just want to find what "is" according to what you already think "ought" to be. A self-driving car is driving in a busy street when a child runs in front of the car. Does it hit the child, or veer off, putting its two passengers at risk? Science can tell us all sorts of quantifiable answers about this situation: the risks involved, the injuries that might happen, the speed of the car, and the predicted lifespans of the passengers. But it cannot tell us what we "should" do, not before we decide which system of morality we use to "measure" outcomes.
" But it cannot tell us what we "should" do, not before we decide which system of morality we use to "measure" outcomes." This would be a good counter-argument, if this was a kind of answer that philosophy can give you. It can't. That's the whole point of the video.
*it assumes that Philosophy operates identical to science* That's like the exact opposite message of this entire video. What on Earth could I have possibly said that gave you this impression? *If you as a scientist want just hard answers about the world according to your axioms on how it works, well... you've kinda skipped much of the philosophy part.* Did you maybe skip over the dozen citations to philosophy departments across the country whereby they openly market themselves as answer providers? I'm not the one saying that philosophy gives answers. The philosophers themselves are the ones saying it!
But simply choosing some 'system of morals' isn't philosophy. Debating whether or not things are objectively immoral is philosophy. Philosophy does try to answer the great questions of life, and these answers are either right or wrong.
@@AntiCitizenX Perhaps I misunderstood the point of your video- if your only thesis was "philosophy departments shouldn't market themselves as answer providers", I'd agree. But if you aren't arguing that Philosophy should operate like science, why are you saying that it is "embarrassing" that Philosophy has not moved towards consensus? When you argue that nature of morality has been "solved" by economics and biologists and that dwelling on the trolley problem is useless, the implication is that Philosophy *should* have solved this issue, not unlike a *science*. (Have these other sciences found some way to bridge the is-ought gap that I haven't heard of?) You complain that Philosophy isn't "solving problems", that it is rehashing the same old questions- again, implying that it should have a direction of progress and solve problems like science. If this is all just to the end of "Philosophy does not find truth", I can understand that, but to me it sounds like your problem with Philosophy is much deeper than that if you're saying they're "getting paid to do nothing". Your attacks seem to me to attack the field itself, that it isn't worthy of the same academic consideration because it does not have objective criteria like the sciences.
@@jandhi2043 *If your only thesis was "philosophy departments shouldn't market themselves as answer providers", I'd agree.* It's not my only thesis, but it's a big one. :) *why are you saying that it is "embarrassing" that Philosophy has not moved towards consensus?* Because philosophers are the ones who market themselves as purveyors of truths and critical thinking skill. *When you argue that nature of morality has been "solved" by economics and biologists and that dwelling on the trolley problem is useless, the implication is that Philosophy should have solved this issue* It's not that philosophy should have solved the issue. It's that philosophy needs to keep up with the times. You would not want to take a class that treats evolution, creationism, and Lysenkoism as equally viable theories, would you?
This attitude periodically puts me off philosophy, then i see some good modern stuff, then get put off again. It's not just philosophy that's taught this way sadly, the social sciences have an absurd preoccupation with their own history.
When I studied physics at university I spent most of the time learning stuff that was 100-300 years old, it wasn't until I started taking advanced classes that I learned about stuff from the 50s-80s. It's not just the social sciences. And at least in physics I thought it was a pretty sensible way to teach it since the more modern stuff tends to build on the older stuff. And I think they do in philosophy, too. Reading Gramsci without taking a look at Hegel first seems like a very frustrating endeavour. In maths they taught using something I've heard called "discovery fiction" - they don't teach you how the ideas where actually developed, but a fictionalized version that gets you to the current state of the art afap and in the least circuitous way.
I think the main problem here is you are biased and your not aware of that. Basically you think truth should like this, Reality should be like that, and anything that goes different of you bias you cannot comprehend it. And that makes that brench bad.
Philosophy, especially continental, might be somestimes frustrating. But don't make the mistake of thinking that you cannot learn immensely by reading those authors.
@@jursamaj yes of course. Having great minds explain their thoughts to you certainly teaches you stuff. If you don't know if you agree with them or not, you don't understand them well enough
I believe there's "stagnation" because there is no longer a unified culture in the west. Now I put quotes around "stagnation" because I believe philosophy isn't meant to be a science but rather a study about being, which every newly born person has to rediscover the meaning behind being for themselves. I think the only way we would see any sort of "progress" with philosophy is if there was a unified culture in the west; a culture where mostly everyone has agreed upon what it means to be "good or evil", and what we ought to value most in life. Without a unified culture, we're stuck at ground zero constantly arguing over what it means to be a good person, what should an individual value most, and so on. The reason why Stoicism gained a strong footing in history is because there was enough of a unified culture for Stoicism to spread like a wildfire. So of course we should study it because it had such a large impact on the story of humanity. What could possibly be a better metric for what to study in philosophy?
This video misses the point of philosophy, specially eastern and continental traditions. The value of philosophy does not come from arriving to a consensus of what is "objectively" true and arriving to that consensus would not make philosophy as a discipline very useful. Philosophy can provide different perspectives of the human experience, often about things that may be inherently out of reach for what you call truth (perennial questions). Even so, some philosophers reject the idea of objective truth in itself. These perspectives of the human experience may be useful as they may uncover new ways of looking at the world and understanding it (systems), which may or may not translate to some sort of technical change in any field which you may view as "progress", but really, that's not an adequate yardstick. As for your criticism about the study of philosophy being just a study of the history of philosophy, you are correct. This is the case because academic institutions understand that there is no objective way of telling which philosophy is good or bad, since that idea in itself is not compatible with the point of view mentioned above, which is somewhat of a loose consensus among schools (at least in the west). The mere idea of you trying to equate the study of philosophy to a technical profession like medicine is very funny and illustrative of how philosophy is not a technical profession and how it's not meant to be one. Just like you said, anyone can be a philosopher, it's not a matter of expertise, lmao. I'm a big fan of your videos btw, but there is plenty of literature on this matter, do your research and make another video with a new perspective please. (Sorry for my grammar, english is not my first language).
Also, there was a period of time where many thinkers thought of philosophy to be obsolete because of new scientific developments, such as some positivists. You should read up on how that whole debate worked out if you are actually interested in philosophy in itself and not as a strawman opponent to science. I'd also recommend reading up on Foucault views of science to understand why science can "need" philosophy.
*The value of philosophy does not come from arriving to a consensus of what is "objectively" true and arriving to that consensus would not make philosophy as a discipline very useful.* That's great if you think that, but don't you think that sacrifices any pretense to "progress?" You cannot logically claim progress if there is no standard by which to measure it. It also means that your field is necessarily going to get cluttered up with bad actors who only use it to spout propaganda. Just look at Philosophy of Religion. It's nothing but a breeding ground for apologetics. And since philosophy has no standards, there's nothing you can do about it.
I’m very glad I subscribed. In reality, any understanding of the universe will come from observation of it. You can only go so far in thought with what you have.
And if you're living in a simulation? And, what evidence do you have that you're living in 'the real world'? Nick Bostrom nicely argued it's much more likely you're in a computer simulation (which means all your beliefs about the universe are fed to you by programmers [maybe I'm one of them! :))]...and, you're not human but a simulation of one... if humans are even actual beings).
There are quite a few philosophers who share this position, and quite a few that don't. It's definitely not self-evident. There might be synthetic a priori statements, and introspection might help clarify concepts like knowledge, justification, meaning etc. Anyway, the statement 'any understanding of the universe will come from observation of it' is itself a statement that can NOT be proven by observation.
@@Appleblade If this were a simulation, we would still be able to observe things about the outside world from within it. We would expect our universe to be similar to our own simulations, with cut-corners to save on power, but instead it is detailed beyond an apparent purpose to model any one thing, even though rules about efficiency and waste should apply across all possible worlds with sentient actors. We’d also expect to find inconsistencies, and as yet have found none. Both these point to a natural, purposeless universe evolving based on consistent principles. The only way to get out of this is to propose that the “simulators” either have far more resources/energy than we do for our simulations or the purpose of this simulation is just to model as much as possible, or both. These are both a significant decrease in likelihood though. If their universe is different enough to ours that it allows them to casually simulate our whole universe, that implies significant differences between ours and theirs. But every simulation we’re able to do has at least superficial similarities to our world. So it’s another decrease in likelihood. We could be an abstraction of a more complicated thing, like Terraria is a 2D representation of a 3D space, but then we would expect even more to see cut-corners or inconsistencies for the sake of saving energy, which is the reason for abstraction in the first place. So, it’s not impossible, just very unlikely. If we use our own universe as an example of what’s possible, then not even a million communicating Dyson Spheres could achieve this level of comprehensive detail in a simulation. But we only have a sample-size of one in that regard so yeah.
@@someguy4405 So, do you think you would have free will in a simulation? And if it were possible to give agents in the simulation freedom (say, to study what they would do in various scenarios), many might be controlled. Could you tell which you were? Also, I think a good programmer could get you to add 2 and 2 and get 5 every time, and you would be fully confident that that was correct. It's easy to underestimate the power simulators have... Bostrom linked his simulation thought experiment to the near future for ease of imagining how it might work, but there's no real reason for that, and so no reason to think it would be hard for the simulators to make detecting simulation life impossible.
@@Appleblade I have free will insofar as I can observe things and react to them, according to my emotional state, inclinations and previous experiences. That’s about as free as it gets. There are much simpler ways of conducting psychological experiments than constructing a whole simulated universe in which living beings play a very small part, so that is extremely unlikely. Even if I was being mind-controlled, it wouldn’t take away from the logic of the argument in my previous comment, whereas it’s really difficult to make an argument that two sets of two apples are five apples. And if we were being controlled in the way you suggest, we wouldn’t be able to consider the possibility of being in a simulation. All of this doesn’t take away from the fact that this universe is very likely not a simulation, given its structure and lack of focus or purpose.
I strive to be a good philosopher. It’s hard when people expect you to agree to everything they say. I think it has something to do with that “challenging ideas disturb social balance”. The hardest thing about being me is that I can’t turn it off during social encounters and it embarrasses me more than I can feel proud of it.
Adults only change their views over months, years, decades. Accept it and be more happy. Anyone who happen to change their mind before your own eyes had months of buildup to it.
People like that are exhausting to be around. Most people just want to relax and have a nice evening, not be constantly challenged and involved in a debate of some sort.
This reminds me of the late Robert Persig in his book Lila, wherein he says Philosophy in college doesn't actually teach you how to create philosophy, but merely to study what others have created. He likened it to if you took an art degree that only studied art through the ages but never actually picked up a brush and leaned to paint (such a thing exists, but we call it art history and not art itself)
I'm no expert on Kant or Hume but as far as I know, both of them use valid arguments. An argument is valid or invalid, not more or less valid than another. As for which philosopher withstands the most criticism, that's something up for debate. It takes someone's whole life to go through the ideas of people and they might end up wrong or partially right. What you expect from philosophy is not feasible.
@@jonathanthompson4734 Not necessarily. The point is that someone looking at arguments and the assumptions that underpin them as having relative, rather than absolute validity, is kind of a basic thing when it comes to your epistemology, or deciding what constitutes a reasonable threshold at which you believe something to be (likely enough to be) true. This is why prosecutors define what they're trying to establish as "proof beyond a reasonable doubt," not absolute proof, in criminal cases for example. We can imagine a murder case where motive, opportunity, and intent are all clearly established for the accused, along with forensic evidence like fingerprints and DNA samples. But the "line" that defines when you're willing to say the accused is guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt" is murky and dependent on all kinds of factors, including your own cultural lens and personal experiences. Someone claiming to have established a lens that provides "absolute validity" should throw up all kinds of red flags. We're allowed to enter the light, but not touch the flame when it comes to truth. Admitting we'll never see the whole picture is an important part of intellectual honesty. The caveat is that, for all but the most skeptical, we can establish "markers" that improve reliability, approaching, but never reaching, a "1.0" that only perfect omniscience could have (and how could one be sure their omniscience was really total?). Scientists and philosophers alike, at their best, tend to ground their claims by admitting the limitations of their work, inviting others to take up the torch where they left off.
@@CeramicShot The examples you listed relate to a theoretical modelling of empirical reality. Thus, when it's said that criminal justice seeks "proof beyond a reasonable doubt," they aren't only concerned with the validity of an argument (whether a conclusion would follow from the premises) but also the *soundness* of an argument (whether the premises themselves are actually true). It's possible, even inevitable, in analyzing the soundness of an argument, especially working from an empirical foundation, to admit to things like fallibilism, as well as the provisional nature of inductive conclusions, and thus admit to having only an approximate of truth found with an argument, but that is totally distinct from an argument's logical validity, which could easily be practically bisected into a binary of "valid" and "invalid."
The video essay, especially the first part, sounds like the usual complaint I hear as a philosopher instrutor from undergrads taking philo subjects as a minor or part of their course work. As I have raised in your pinned comment, I am not sure if your complaint was that (i) the variety of positons is a sign of stagnation of academic philosophy, which makes it contradictory since how can variety be a sign of stagnation, or (ii) that the refusal of academic philosophy to prescribe to undergrads a single clear right answer, which I argue is essentialy tantamount to indoctrination, is a sign that we should not seriously learn academic philo. Both of these are not real proof of stagnation in my opinion, but rather it works from a problematic presumption that all academic activity must have predictable output. I dont think you have made any effort to prove or at least make a case that this is how the academe as a whole SHOULD measure itself. This presumption is seen with the problem of false analogy endemic in the video. Comparing philosophy to medicine is problematic since it fails to account for the objectives and nuances of both fields that fundamentally differentiates them as fields, the former has predictable expectations, the latter concerns itself with theory building and premise testing.
*I am not sure if your complaint was that (i) the variety of positons is a sign of stagnation of academic philosophy, which makes it contradictory since how can variety be a sign of stagnation, or (ii) that the refusal of academic philosophy to prescribe to undergrads a single clear right answer, which I argue is essentialy tantamount to indoctrination, is a sign that we should not seriously learn academic philo.* If you are unsure, then perhaps you should try re-watching and reading the script, because I wasn't exactly vague. The mere existence of disagreement is not the issue. The inability to define the very purpose of the field itself is the issue. The tendency for philosophers to market themselves as purveyors of answers and skillsets is the issue. I even stated openly that cataloguing the variety of views is, in and of itself, a worthy goal, provided that you expressly own that as your goal. Secondly, you seem to be under the very bizarre impression that establishment of a generally accepted consensus is tantamount to "indoctrination." Mathematicians have a consensus, but that doesn't mean we're supposed to just take the Pythagorean theorem at their word. The proof itself is part of the curriculum. Biologists have a consensus, but that doesn't mean we ignore the massive fossil record, nor does it mean we should pretend that creationism is anything other than self-serving religious propaganda.
@@AntiCitizenX It is weird for me that you insist it is not the issue when you devoted most of the middle part of your script in establishing that disagreements exist in the field and try to contrast it to other fields, which you claim have no disagreements. Then from this mere contrast you jumped with the conclusion that there is no definition in the field of philosophy, or at least no progress. This is problematic at a formal sense, you cannot yield a valid argument from the premises you made. Also because the premises you made to refer to philosophy are not consistent it is also hard to yield a sound argument. You seem to refer to stagnation of philosophy both as a college subject (I imagine that in your country you take like a bare minimum of 4) that covers all fundamental debates to an initiate and you also use it to refer to professional philosophers who work from differing premises leading to specific conclusions which stands in opposition against one another. I dont get why you keep on insisting that an introductory class of philosophy to an outsider should be up-to-date to the latest positions without contextualizing the prominent points that led to itm Thats just bad pedagogy and akin to joing a conversation without knowing the people talking, the subject or even the language. A class in the undergrad will always be a survey of philosophers not because they are influential but because they make challenging points that simply ask you to consider experiences you take for granted. The exercise, if seriously considered, stimulate the skillsets such as critcal thinking, and like all fields a student's take from it varies wildly depending on how serious one considers the exercise. So again, at a personal level a person who let us say believe in a particular god would now have to seriously consider his assumptions when presented with varying take on the assumption. Is this not progress? Even though you did not provide any measurement that disproves that critical thinking is developed in a philo class, only a cursory survey of websites, is it not fair to consisder that the heavy lifting is found in the student that engages in the material? As an educator, I would like to point out that there are OBEs that attempts to measure these skills in the humanities in general and philosophy in particular, although it is not perfect but unless your alternative is still the surveys you did of random US websites then I supposed the opinions of experts in education that point to skillsets being developed through philosophy as subjects should have more weight. The difference between maths and philosophy, at least at a college level, is that the axioms of maths is not socially controversial when assumed. For example, when we accept that numbers exist it does not imply that certain people have no personhood. On the other hand, insisting an axiom of how to live life because it is the truth or accept authority or limiting allowed axioms (pleasure is virtue, there is god, etc.) would lead to uncritical lifestyles and as such it stops being philosophy. This is all good in the space of contesting points such as politics but when you are a college instructor and assume an authority over people, to prescribe an axiom without teaching and engaging contestings ones is at the least irresponsible and no different from indoctrination. Take your example how biology and economics explain prosocial behaviour, which is all and good and together with philosophers like Habermas I agree with, but the problem is that you jumped to a conclusion that this specific explanation solves once and for all the question of acceptability of harming some individuals in favour of the majority (the lever test is fundamentally asking us to consider that). Those are two different things, the former just mapped out the causes of an effect, while the latter ask us to determine the acceptability of a cause to create an effect. If you insists that all prosocial behaviour is without its problems and needs no philosophical debate as you claim then it follows that the sacrifice of the civil rights of some Afghan women in order to maintain the prosocial behaviour expected by the Taliban majority would be an uncontroversial issue. Which I hope for you is, if it is then you have to admit at that oversimplificatioj you committed. At a professional level, I am not sure of your diagnosis of stagnation make sense since disagreements at a theoretical level is what makes philosophy develop new theories. As others had pointed out an agreement to a set of axioms limits it to it being a particular school within philosophy (i.e. empiricism, rationalism, etc.) or even become properly a scientific field. The issues you have raised such as objectivism or ethics in the video shows the variety of axioms that when assumed would lead to a particular school of thought. As I have pointed out in your pinned comment you keep working from an unjustified assumption that progress in a field only entails settling on basic questions, having a consensus, in order to progress. This ignores the form of philosophy in its own term as a field where its goal is to identify implied axioms in our interpretations and challenging and justifying defenses or alternatives for these.
@@AntiCitizenX "The tendency for philosophers to market themselves as purveyors of answers" They don't actually fucking do that. This is a wild strawman. "Secondly, you seem to be under the very bizarre impression that establishment of a generally accepted consensus is tantamount to "indoctrination."" In the first few minutes of the video, you complained about philosophy being a glorified lesson on the history and taxonomy of philosophy, yet if they were to teach "consensus" whatever that is, then that's exactly what it would be. Instead, it teaches how to argue for or against these answers. You can take a class on greek philosophy to learn about it, or a class on metaphysics, etc. Honestly, your vapid dismissal of the oldest field of study in the world (and one of the top-earning degrees out there) just strikes me as you being a le epic skeptic who would bring a calculator to a date.
@@Nebukanezzer *They don't actually fucking do that. This is a wild strawman.* I gave you at least a half-dozen citations in this very video to prove the claim. I'm sorry, but it is extremely frustrating to attempt a conversation when you patently ignore this stuff, and it makes me doubt your willingness to engage in an honest dialogue. Like, seriously, man, why are you even here? Do you even want to have a discussion? Or do you just enjoy wasting everyone's time? Please tell me now. If you really want to have a discussion, then it would help a lot if you just paid attention to the god-damned essay and actually acknowledged the existence of supporting data. So let's play a game, shall we? It's called *read the fucking citations.* Do you think you can do that before leveling any more wildly false accusation? Thanks. *Honestly, your vapid dismissal of the oldest field of study in the world* I'm sorry, but since when has "age" ever had anything to do with the capacity for an academic institution to enforce standards and make progress? I just love how you make a big show about philosophy teaching us to "argue for or against answers," only to then drop such an obvious fallacy in the very next paragraph. Did it never occur to you that "philosophy," as a dedicated field of study unto itself, didn't even exist until the last century? You also speak of "vapid dismissal," despite volumes of supporting data, which you apparently didn't even bother to read. What exactly does it take to help you acknowledge basic matters of observable fact?
Hi, I have a master's degree in Philosophy. I will teach philosophy next year (France). I agree for the most part with you. But I think there might have a lack of precision. As you say, there is two fundamental problems : 1/ the fact that you can say whatever you want without even proper methodology and still considered doing philosophy ; 2/ a confusion between history of philosophy and a "generalistic" philosophy. I think these two problem work together. It is unclear when someone is doing a research in history of philosophy and someonr is doing 1 research in contemporary or generalistic philosophy. The huge problem with this lack of clarity is that, as you show, what we thought back then, often, it doesn't worl anymore. But the pretentious of some way of doing generalistic philosophy is to pretend it does. This is a huge problem we have in France with our last year of highschool : it is inclear if this is a teaching of history of philosophy or of generalistic philosophy
Thanks for watching. I find it very bizarre how people like yourself, who are literally "professional" philosophers, can watch this presentation and say "yup, that's about right." Then another weirdo will watch this is call me an ignorant buffoon STEM-lord. I think it definitely shows how deep the problem is.
@@AntiCitizenX My message went but I didn't wrote everything I wanted to say. As I said, the first problem from my pov is the confusion between history of philosophy and a generalistic philosophy. Often, what some people are doing when they're practicing philosophy is a history of philosophy. Which are two things completely different. What such confusion is possible ? There are a lot of reasons. The first one if the way philosophy is taught. As you say, we taught history of philosophy. But is reasonnable because it is exepected that a philosophy professor must understand the way the concept articulate with each other - and it comes from history. But as a professor said to me while I was student "The one who thinks that what Descartes said is true is a fool". And that is the first problem : so many times students who become professor themselves don't even have the basics to recognize this fact. This is the first problem, which is, by my pov, a huge problem. The point we are supposed to understand is that some problems of the past of relevant today. This is both the crucial aspect of history of philosophy and the point of confusion. The second problem is the lack of scientific knowledge in the philosophical teaching. Tthere is history of science, epistemology and the whole world of interdisciplinarity between philosophy and other science that are not established enough. While these academics philosophers are often brilliant and have results. So I think it is important to see this : philosophy isn't useless but its utility and pertinence is overshadowed (sorry for my english) by a old way of doing philosophy. I hope it will change. Because I believe in the importance of philosophy and it's usefulness. But the state of philosophy is very problematic as you said. At last, I disagree with the exemple you choose. I don't know the situation in the other university in the world, but in France this guy would be completely destroyed. There is a difference between whole stupidity and confusion. And this guy is whole stupidity. The fact that he has some recognition is, I think, more a political problem than a philosophical problem. It is a problem we also saw, during this pandemic, with the medical field. It is important that our critic doesn't fall in ridicule. At the end, history of philosophy is a valuable learning, as much as other history class. The problem is the confusion in the practice between history and philosophy and the ignorance of the philosophical field to know about science. At the same time, I'm sorry if I say "not all philosophy/philosophers" and it might be rdiculous but I deeply believe that philosophy as an important value, both as a knowledge and has a discipline.
"even the word itself, philosophy, is a terribly ill-defined concept. to demonstrate, just ask yourself : what is philosophy ?" I know, man. I know. I literally have more than twenty hours of classes this semester on this very topic. already four hours in, and we've finished the introduction.
"Someone wrote a 80 page essay that is recognized by the profession as really good, I don't agree with the conclusion so it means that everyone is wrong and stupid"
It is entirely right, reasonable, and proper to label you a jackass without any evidence or argument at all. That's basically Plantinga's argument in a nutshell, dingus.
The easy part: a professional philosopher designs a standard by which to define philosophy, discern who is doing it right, etcetera. The hard part: getting the broader philosophical community to agree on any one such standard. The easy part has been done since ancient times (see the discourses of Epictetus)- and probably has been done many times over. He had a standard by which to discern an actual philosopher from what he called a grammarian (by which he probably meant literary critic) - but the problem is, how many of the people in your local philosophy department will accept his standard? And if you ask one of those who disagree to give their alternative standard (and manage to get an actual answer) then how many _other_ people in the department will agree with them? And if you pool together all the answers you get - which one of them is “official”? How would you even determine that? What I am trying to explain is why even people who agree with your need for such a universal standard may have trouble producing one for you.
I agree, and that is a major problem. There is a huge population of philosophers who depend on that ambiguity to promote misinformation and propaganda.
@@AntiCitizenX - True. But even if you take _just_ the ones who _do_ want there to be such a definition (however few they may be) -- they probably will not agree with each other _what_ that definition should be.
Exactly. The nature of philosophy does not allow for the type of consensus this youtuber is talking about. And I think the actual problem is that he believes that philosophy actually wants to be taken seriously in the same way that the sciences are taken seriously.
That's because philosophy does not have a method of settling disagreements when propositions are seemingly equally reasonable, and when it did, it became science!
That's not really true. There are no former philosophical questions that became questions of science when there were methods of verifying or falsifying answers. We are still debating the same issues as plato, largely. Philosophy never became science. And its not at all true that philosophy doesn't have a method of choosing between contradicting, reasonable positions. In theory, it's pretty simple. You put forward an argument for a position, and it's either correct or it isn't. The method consists in testing for logical rigor. In praxis, it's of course way more difficult, but that's due to the nature of the questions.
The intro to this video also describes how I felt going to a conservatory. The major difference is that you spend most of that time learning compositional music practices (Western Music Theory, starting from Counterpoint and moving up from there), and then you get to the 20th century and the whole thing gets discarded in favor of whatever prescriptive system your favorite school of composition came up with to replace it. It makes sense for performers, since knowing the composer's thought process helps to know how to perform it, but if you're a composition major some 75% of your education is something you're expected to avoid relying on.
To be fair (I'm a working musician with a degree, not a professional composer though), every composer has their style, yes, but a good composer has to have that academic understanding of history and the various styles and practises, so you understand where the compositional trends prevalent now come from. That part is maybe the same with philosophy, but here's the big thing: knowing that stuff in the arts has practical application. It gives more tools in your toolbox (so to speak) to use in your work as you see fit. If your teachers are telling you to ignore most of it, they are very set in their ways, and frankly, not very good teachers. Knowing the roots of your art is also a major boost to your professional credibility. Otherwise, why even study it? A degree is (sadly, imho) not necessarily required to be a successful composer. I guess this could digress into a whole other topic on what is the point of arts degrees, but that's maybe for some other forum :D EDIT: Thanks for the upload AntiCitizenX! Good to see you back!
@@ascanbe3321 A degree is, in fact, not required to compose. There is a definite history behind what is traditionally thought of as 'classical' music, but at the turn of the 20th century there was an active attempt by the Serialists to divorce themselves from the structure of traditional music theory. Since then it's basically been a free-for-all.
I took three years of Philosophy and Theologica study back in the 1990's--it was meaningless. I had asked one of my instructors what the function of this study was and why so many of us were taking the same classes. she brushed me off saying, "we are all here to learn the one and only truth." So what is the only truth? Apparently the only truth is that the Moron interpretation of Jewish history is the history of everything. My teacher was nuts. In her own class she pointed out something that should have unwound the universe for her, if she noticed what she had done. She spent all of 30 seconds explaining that--the Jews adapted most of their history from the Samarians and the Zeasudra. If that is true, and I suspect it is, then clearly, Christianity is at the very least incomplete--and most surely wrong. You can not take two lies and find the only truth. It would not be until years latter I would find the answer I was looking for, "What is the function of Philosophy and Theology?" Philosophy should be: *The study of knowledge and how it is gathered. *An examination of data and the tools to find and understand it *Introspection on the relationship and responsibilities of; ones self, our interactions with each other, our environment, our leaders and our place in the universe. *An explanation of where we have been and where we are going, as well as, a debate in the speculation of what we have learned and what we expect to learn. Good philosophy should: *Help us understand the world we live in; how and why things are done the way they are. *Challenge authority. *Build civilizations and advance our growth. decades of studies have lead me to believe the best philosopher would be: *A skeptic *A humanist *A naturalist *An atheist *An academic I have never met a good philosopher.
8:30 the worst part is that, when other fields solve philosophical problems, philosophers stubbornly refuse to accept it's been solved, playing word games to pretend it's an open question; any phrasing of questions that can be answered, or any method that can answer the questions, ceases to be philosophy.
Can you give an example? Because the one from the video is almost notorious. Like the classic philosophical question is "what is morality" and then economists and evolutionary psychologists say "we found that altruistic behaviour can be naturally selected for". One clearly doesn't answer the other. Like 1 - who said altruism is the same as morality? 2 - even if all that is required to be moral is some amount of altruism, who said that all of that was selected for? Another common example is Bells theorem disproving determinism. But A: bells theorem still allows for non-local hidden variable theories (they are just not commonly used and afaik non of them are lorentz invariant yet). And more importantly B: a physics experiment (as described by popper and most working experimentalist groups) only ever finds that "us seeing this result and the laws of physics being like that would be this improbable". But if your null hypothesis is determinism it doesn't matter - you say I have a 1/100 million chance of winning the lottery, so it's stupid to play, but if you believe you are destined to win, it would be stupid not to, no matter how bad the odds.
@@JK03011997 - the example kinda rubbed me the wrong way too. However, the things those scientists have answered are things philosophers did used to argue about. There are other things ethical terms refer to, but science did answer some of the ethical questions. Chemistry solved a host of metaphysical questions that were once deemed unanswerable about the nature of matter, physics solved others about the nature of time/space, neuroscience is answering questions about the mind (often by proposing answers that philosophers never even considered). I suspect that a lot that remaining questions considered philosophical either consists of ill-formed questions (they could be answered if phrased in a testable way) or questions that seem meaningful but aren't if you examine their grammar (if anything remains of morality, it seems to rely on "objective" values existing, which might be meaningless...if it's all subjective states, then descriptive science telling us where those came from really has solved it all).
@@WorthlessWinner I meant: can you give a specific example of one of them? I'd be most happy if it was from a field I'm literate in (physics, maths or basic chemistry)
@@JK03011997 Oh man, kinetic theory of gases is what you're looking for! (Nyhof 1988 has a good summary). Boltzmann and others found a model for explaining the thermodynamic properties of gases that wasn't purely phenomenological (the origin of thermodynamics). They postulated the existence of unseen atoms, but were opposed strongly by Ernst Mach and other positivists on the philosophical grounds that there is no reality outside our sense perceptions. So they argued that even if atoms could be imagined in order to explain data, they were purely a metaphysical construct and not only couldn't be proven to exist, but could not exist; the model of "the thing" could never be the thing. These positivist objections were made even as kinetic theory was making and validating predictions about thermodynamics (like the ratio of specific heats in atomic vs molecular gases). What's remarkable about this example, is that it mirrors the is/ought debate in many ways. Just like philosophers are certain the "is/ought" problem is a firewall that prevents scientific contribution to morality, these 19th century positivists were utterly convinced that no mechanistic theory could ever map to an underlying reality. And in the same way a philosopher could argue a scientific model of morality's origins doesn't really advance the project of normative philosophical ethics, a Positivist could nit-pick and say that despite the demonstrable utility of 100 years of quantum theory, it's really just an elaborate "fit to the data" and we cannot say for certain whether it is "real" or might eventually be replaced entirely by a more compelling model that merely follows the experiments. Is that person technically right? Maybe...but does it matter? Clearly adopting quantum theory as reality was not a mistake. Likewise, if science could demonstrate how to eliminate most suffering in human society, does it matter if those actions are grounded in some cosmic normative Truth? Only in the most elaborate and unlikely circumstances. And that's really just blatant pedantry, a "philosophy of the gaps" that restricts itself to ever more esoteric and unanswerable questions. A cynic might say these philosophers "don't make progress" because they are actively defining philosophy to be, be definition, useless.
This is one of the more frustrating videos I've watched. I was hoping to hear some criticism of the state of contemporary philosophy that amounts to something more than "science = good, philosophy = dumb" and what I got wasn't much more sophisticated than that. Of course academic philosophy has generally agreed upon standards (e.g. logical validity, soundness, consistency, internal coherence, understanding of sources etc.) and papers are regularly rejected or given bad grades if they fail to abide by them. What do you think philosophers spend all that time arguing about if not how well each other's arguments hold up to these standards? It just turns out that there can be several mutually incompatible views on a given matter that are nonetheless plausible and logically self-consistent and therefore philosophically respectable. Ironically, your own video wouldn't hold up to these standards. I was particularly surprised by your seeming assertion that the nature of morality has been explained by biology and that this somehow renders all of moral philosophy obsolete. How exactly is biology supposed to provide an answer to the trolley problem? You're attempting to derive an ought claim from an is claim. This is a textbook naturalistic fallacy and I'm honestly amazed you wouldn't realise that. But I suppose that's what happens when you aren't educated in the field you're attempting to dismiss.
*How exactly is biology supposed to provide an answer to the trolley problem?* This dude is a hardcore positivist STEM-lord. You know he's just going to uncritically assume a utilitarian position on the trolley problem, then get all confused and mad when you question his utilitarianism.
*Of course academic philosophy has generally agreed upon standards (e.g. logical validity, soundness, consistency, internal coherence, understanding of sources etc.) and papers are regularly rejected or given bad grades if they fail to abide by them.* That is objectively not true, and I demonstrated quite clearly in this presentation. *What do you think philosophers spend all that time arguing about if not how well each other's arguments hold up to these standards?* Well, for starters, I gave you at least six citations to journal articles from PhD philosophers who argue that philosophy does not make progress. You ask questions that were very much answered by the presentation, my friend. *It just turns out that there can be several mutually incompatible views on a given matter that are nonetheless plausible and logically self-consistent and therefore philosophically respectable.* Are you saying that the ultimate standard of a "good" philosophical theory is self-consistency? Is it not self-consistent to hold to the proposition that this is a very low standard by which to measure progress in a field? By your very own argument, this entire video is now perfectly good philosophy, and your criticism is officially debunked. Nicely done.
@@williamcurt7204 I don't know where you think you studied philosophy, but in grown-up-land the use of ad-hominem arguments is generally considered poor taste. I suggest you go back and study proper philosophy before attempting any further criticisms. Thanks.
@@AntiCitizenX *That is objectively not true, and I demonstrated quite clearly in this presentation.* No, what you demonstrated is that you don't know what you are talking about. You skimmed over the introduction to a book on metaphilosophy (which you clearly didn't read), and then cobbled together a bunch of papers that confirmed your own biases. Your entire paper has 28 citations. Do you seriously imagine that you can meaningfully critique an entire field with such an incredibly limited number of sources, especially when most of them aren't even books or papers written by philosophers? I have one philosophy book, *ONE BOOK* , sitting next to me ("real essentialism, by David Oderberg). That book is about just *ONE* topic within the field of philosophy, Essentialism. That book has nearly 200 citations. That book probably took Oderberg years to write. It's incredibly carefully argued, deals with criticisms, and engages in orderly scholarship. And yet, here you are, making such an incredibly small minded critique of an *ENTIRE FIELD* you know next to nothing about, all on the basis of little more than 2 dozen citations. Have some epistemic humility.
@@AntiCitizenX Also: If you think I'm smearing you, do tell us: how does science solve the trolley problem? If you don't just assume a utilitarian position on the problem, then tell us: do you pull the lever or not?
@@aspektx I'm not sure what the comparison would be there. Theology is more similar to classical studies imo. (Using archaeology, though very rarely. As well as trying to understand one particular Bible, Quran or Tanakh,) Philosophy can overlap with theology, as well as... Any subject. So, what's the comparison? In what way is philosophy replacing theology?
I think the largest problems with trying to answer the "What do mean by that, how do you know that, and why should anyone care?" questions is that by answering them we end up solidly inside already established fields, for example with the answers: - "[long list of exact definitions], empirical study of real-life cause-and-effect relations, and because the consequence of an action follow", then we have the natural scientific fields (physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy, etc) - "what the manual says, direct deduction from previous facts, and because we can apply it in practice to do some pretty nifty stuff", then we have the technical scientific fields (engineering, electronics, medicine, ecology, architecture, logistics, etc) - "what people wrote about, by comparing lots of diverse records, and because it tells us a lot about how our society got here", then we have the cultural scientific fields (history, literature, classical arts, language studies, religious history and practice, statecraft, military theory, etc) - "how it affects populations and individuals, by inferences from established records and by controlled empirical surveys, and because understanding humans is pretty important for building a society for humans to live and prosper in", then we have the social scientific fields (sociology, moral philosophy, economy, psychology, psychiatry, social psychology, legal studies, justice philosophy, education philosophy, criminal philosophy, welfare philosophy, theology, etc) That is to say, "Philosophy but with articulated definitions, clear standards, and practical reasoning" are already fields that exists: all the various forms of applied philosophy. That is, _Science_. Personal side-note: in high school my twin sister took philosophy as an extra subject for a year, and we were both very disappointed by how not only could all the philosophies and doctrines they talked about be refuted and poked holes in, but that we could do it by things we studied in middle school. Scientific theory, civics, and language ed has gotten so far ahead they aren't even comparable any more.
The way I see it, philosophy is supposed to be a sort of dialogue regarding these so-called "deep questions" spanning centuries now- there is a need to study the contributions of contributors long dead, because they aren't around to explain themselves, and their contributions are not necessarily all that outdated. Further it is vital for students to be brought up to speed with where the dialogue has been and how it got to where it is now, because we don't need another Plato explaining the forms, so best to educate aspiring philosophers on major and influential ideas that have been tried out before. The stagnation you point out seems to be partly a refusal by the current participants in the dialogue to remove bad ideas from the discussion (Like I have no clue why there are still Hegelian philosophers around- the premise of post-modernism functionally precludes Hegel) This leads to an issue of clutter- there is so much trash in the present dialogue, that actually making a breakthrough is damn near impossible.
*a refusal by the current participants in the dialogue to remove bad ideas from the discussion* I agree! You could even add the refusal to insert more good ideas to take their place.
@@AntiCitizenX But what is “good” and what is “bad”? Who decides that? The only way to do it is debate it out. Unfortunately religion had a huge head start in prestige, and one of the problem is not with philosophy but with philosophers, and academics (better in science now, came a long way) we the obsession of prestige over actual content. People with prestige can make claims they are not experts (see Craig in Cosmology, and Tyson on Philosophy) and get away with them. While people on RUclips make valid and sound critics, and having done the reading and research that would make some Masters Student look lazy, are ignored. The problem is not philosophy is meaningless like you describe in the video (unless by “meaningless” you mean because it literally is important to everything trying to define it using a specific definition it is pointless), but many influential philosophers are not getting the fair share of criticism like newer and modern philosophers do just by being older (not age but you know what I mean.)
@@DarthAlphaTheGreat Exactly, what are the 'good' ideas? From my experience studying philosophy, the worst ideas are the ones put forward in the past 100 years. We'd do much better to study Plato. Modern science is the bastard child of philosophy and by far the most significant product. Yet it's almost ignored as a philosophy.
@@thek2despot426 There's a bunch. You could start with the logical positivists. Their philosophy undermines itself. Much of analytic philosophy tries to raise the trivial into the profound. Poststructuralism is either silly or nonsensical. The "philosophy of mind" is riddled with poor thinking (For example, how can so-called philosophers waste so much time on flawed 'thought experiments' like p-zombies or Mary's Room?). This problem is not exclusive to philosophy, though. All the soft sciences have similar problems.
No absolute truths, beliefs are based on perspective, with unconscious power consideration. Philosophy means seeking your own truth, philosophy is lived not preached. Could anyone ever tell you the path you had to take, to come to this world? Of course not, you had to travel that road alone. Nobody assures you that only the right path, can lead you to the target, there are also convenient detours. When you read, you borrow a mask so you can show your inner face, but alone you will face the loneliest nights, the darkest abysses. There is still hope for philosophy. Philosophy will emerge from the depths of the underground.
But all this did not prevent the Hegelian system from covering an incomparably greater domain than any earlier system, nor from developing in this domain a wealth of thought, which is astounding even today. The phenomenology of mind (which one may call a parallel of the embryology and palaeontology of the mind, a development of individual consciousness through its different stages, set in the form of an abbreviated reproduction of the stages through which the consciousness of man has passed in the course of history), logic, natural philosophy, philosophy of mind, and the latter worked out in its separate, historical subdivisions: philosophy of history, of right, of religion, history of philosophy, aesthetics, etc. - in all these different historical fields Hegel labored to discover and demonstrate the pervading thread of development. And as he was not only a creative genius but also a man of encyclopaedic erudition, he played an epoch-making role in every sphere. It is self-evident that owing to the needs of the “system” he very often had to resort to those forced constructions about which his pigmy opponents make such a terrible fuss even today. But these constructions are only the frame and scaffolding of his work. If one does not loiter here needlessly, but presses on farther into the immense building, one finds innumerable treasures which today still possess undiminshed value. With all philosophers it is precisely the “system” which is perishable; and for the simple reason that it springs from an imperishable desire of the human mind - the desire to overcome all contradictions. But if all contradictions are once and for all disposed of, we shall have arrived at so-called absolute truth - world history will be at an end. And yet it has to continue, although there is nothing left for it to do - hence, a new, insoluble contradiction. As soon as we have once realized - and in the long run no one has helped us to realize it more than Hegel himself - that the task of philosophy thus stated means nothing but the task that a single philosopher should accomplish that which can only be accomplished by the entire human race in its progressive development - as soon as we realize that, there is an end to all philosophy in the hitherto accepted sense of the word. One leaves alone “absolute truth”, which is unattainable along this path or by any single individual; instead, one pursues attainable relative truths along the path of the positive sciences, and the summation of their results by means of dialectical thinking. At any rate, with Hegel philosophy comes to an end; on the one hand, because in his system he summed up its whole development in the most splendid fashion; and on the other hand, because, even though unconsciously, he showed us the way out of the labyrinth of systems to real positive knowledge of the world. (F. Engels, «Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy», 1888)
I think what you need the most is exactly displayed in the video, and that is answers. People who view things strictly in a scientific way always need "absolute answers" and are very unfconfortable with things being "blurry". By wanting a unanymous answer, you're striping us of our uniqueness. It's like asking everyone to always use the same equation to get an answer, when there is an infinite amount of equations to get to it. The thing is, both approaches are correct. Scientists usually like to boil things down to their "essence", and I beleive philosophers do that as well, but with the mind. They study the mind like no one else, open up new perspectives, give you answers which lead to never ending questions. philosophy The more rules you set, the more you can make sense of your surroundings, but the more you strip away your freedom. I think you're lacking the sensitivity that most philosophers have, and you've chosen the rational approach to things, which most people do, but we need people to balance things out. That's how the world works. Nature regulates itself, and having answers set in stone is making everyone the same, it's killing our uniqueness. Philosophers understand the raw nature of men, they sort of have "no filter", or they've adopted different ones, but ultimately since they know just how fucked up humans really are, they usually kill the ego in a very special way, while inflating it, and deliver great things and perspectives in return. The thing is, deep down existence makes no sense. All the meaning you've given to life is personal, and founded on so many different things. Really, the simple fact that we exist is MIND BOGGLING into itself.Your perception is unique to you. So is your reality. I think a research scientistt's worst nightmare would probably be to solve everything. It's the mystery revealing process that's fascinating. The more you limit your variables, to simplify the equation, the more things you ignore for it to make sense. You should view philosophers as mad scientists, who try to make sense of something way more complicated than quantum physics (the mind), with extremely blurry rules, and constantly changing variables. The only tool at their disposal is "numbers", so words in this metaphors. Since the variables are constantly changing, and there are not really many rules, all they can do is give the answers to some of what they think they've solved. But, ultimitaley if you're seeking the advancement of human kind, you need to understand what bothers us all the most, the mind. And that is the torment/delight every philosopher deals with. If science could answer all our problems, you can bet your bottom dollar that depression wouldn't be so high, no one would go see shrinks, no one would abuse meds, no one would kill, murder, steal. You are not a machine, you are human. Even pshycopaths are driven by instincts. If you don't understand that, all the science in the world will never do you good. You should really take a good look at your video from a different set of eyes. All the things you dismiss as "useless" are crucial. Don't forget your primal need for answers for the most basic of questions, and that scientists can sometimes be completely convinced of a theory only for a new one to destroy it altogether. That's what philosophers do, but they've broken down their ego because they understand just how much nothing makes sense. You exemplify one of the worse problem society has today. You are forgetting you're just human, absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of existence and the universe. You're forgetting how little and insignificant everyone is. You're imposing way to many rules just to get results. Tangible results are not always the best things. People like you limit our minds, and philosophers fight against that to broaden them. We need both. Just remember, next time you're grieving over a death or another strong emotion, philosophy will probably be a better temporary solution than a math problem.
@@AntiCitizenX The mind isn't as simple as science. There literally cannot be one unique answer for broad questions about existence and all concepts linked outside the tangible real world. Why does their necessarily have to be one answer? What rule states their can't be infinite answers? You want everyone to think the same way by adapting a single definition. instead of letting the realm of possibilities be. I really feel like you're too pragmatic and rigid, but maybe I'm completely wrong or misunderstanding you too.
@Maximal And when everyone used to think the earth was flat, they all agreed on a single equation, with a single answer, while still being wrong. General consensus does not always mean that it is the right answer. Things can often be proven or disproven. As our understanding of science grows, the more we learn, the more theories have a chance to be proved wrong. The same goes for the mind. And for the advice, I am all the things you mentioned, but I definietly value my beleifs above the former. All of those things are determined by my beleifs. Pretty shitty logic you suggested according to me.
Weil studied Plato. Brouwer studied Kant. Weyl studied Heidegger. Perhaps I am simple minded but it seems reasonable to suppose that those who call questions like "What is the nature of Being?" banal (9:53) are also likely to find notions like cobordism banal. Not a good look, Hawking or otherwise.
@@AntiCitizenX I watched the video twice. I was left with the impression that your approach to truth retains the unreflective aspects of Christian culture.
At my university I had one mandatory semester of philosophy which I honestly think is a good idea but horribly executed. When we were taught the material, we had to read translated excerpts for old texts that were extremely obtuse, and our tasks were to summarize the ideas in the exerpt, which makes sense if you want to teach people how to understand badly written texts, but not if you want to give people a framework to make their own philosophical conclusions. But what's worse, is that the exam consisted entirely of getting the name of a person, philosophy, or some specific idea within one philosophy, then having to remember what that is and explain their ideas without being able to read up on what they've said. No arguing for or against something, no understanding texts, just flat out memorization.
Lots of cringe in this video. To start with, it is incredibly important for undergrads to study the history of philosophy, cuz as any philosopher will tell you, philosophy is a tradition that of people conversing with each other for thousands of years. In order for anything that you say on a given topic to be worth a damn, you NEED to immerse yourself in that tradition. Before you can respond to someone’s position on a particular problem, you need to know who they were addressing, and how they got to their position. Context is so important, it actually can sometimes totally change the meaning of an argument. This means having a basic understanding of what everyone thinks before going to specialize in a particular field. Your video on mathematical platonism is actually a perfect example of why it’s imperative to establish a cursory understanding of the history of philosophy. Absolutely none of your points landed, because none of them addressed any reasons professional philosophers had given for believing in mathematical objects. Another thing, philosophical “progress” isn’t really easy to evaluate, partially because to laymen, the surface level of these theories really do look basically the same over the last thousands of years. However, to anyone who has actually read even just a little bit more in depth, there is an understanding that subsequent iterations of theories improve upon problems of previous ones. Examples are like super specific theories of epistemic justification. You can pick between a coherentist framework, or a foundationalist framework, as 2 basic kinds of theories. These initial theories were formulated as a response to Aristotles argument that there can be no knowledge (this wasn’t exactly his argument, but it’s irrelevant). There are now families of theories known as coherence justification theories, as an example. These conceptualize coherence justification as either a set of principles, or in terms of probability functions (though their semantics are different from probability functions). Each subsequent theory improves upon some aspects of older versions, sometimes with unifying virtues of 2 theories. Last point, yes, science is (sort of) a philosophy. In fact most modern philosophers would argue that science has given us our best foundation for knowledge. However, science as it is practiced today is better conceptualized as an institution which rests on an emphasis on certain meeting philosophical principles of empiricism. You can do science all you want, but that tells you nothing about what it is reasonable to believe about the results of scientific experiments, or the logical structure of scientific theories. That is something for philosphers. And finally, no, philosophers aren’t glorified cultural curators, if you think That, I have serious doubts that you’ve engaged with any sort of contemporary philosophy. Modern philosophy is incredibly technical, and particularly in analytic philosophy, is often concerned with problems with direct applications to science, computation, mathematics, etc.
*To start with, it is incredibly important for undergrads to study the history of philosophy* Please point to the exact moment in this video where it was ever said or implied otherwise. *However, to anyone who has actually read even just a little bit more in depth, there is an understanding that subsequent iterations of theories improve upon problems of previous ones.* So you believe that philosophical progress should be measured by the improvement in conceptual clarity, rather than determination of correctness? Golly, it's almost like you agree with me! *You can do science all you want, but that tells you nothing about what it is reasonable to believe about the results of scientific experiments, or the logical structure of scientific theories. That is something for philosphers.* First off, what you say is highly debatable and almost certainly false. Scientists definitely have rules for interpreting the results of experiments and evaluating logical structure; far more so than mere philosophers, in fact. Secondly, if what you say is true, then by all means, please point me to the references wherein philosophers have decisively answered those questions in such a way as to garner consensus within the field and beyond. *And finally, no, philosophers aren’t glorified cultural curators, if you think That, I have serious doubts that you’ve engaged with any sort of contemporary philosophy.* Every modern textbook on some philosophical subject or another is almost always a history or survey. The fact that you fail to recognize this fact only seems to indicate that you literally haven't read any. So please, do not pretend to lecture me on something that is not even remotely a matter of controversy. The overwhelming majority of claims in this essay are shared by modern philosophers, and I even ripped off much of the language from their very own books and lectures. *Modern philosophy is incredibly technical, and particularly in analytic philosophy, is often concerned with problems with direct applications to science, computation, mathematics, etc.* Being "concerned with problems" is not the same thing as following established guidelines for evaluating those problems and determining whether or not the problem has been solved. The total lack of consensus in the field is an immediate falsification against that proposition.
@@AntiCitizenX I don't think you have quite understood what philosophy serves. There is no correctness and it doesn't serve a so called "end". The word philosophy comes from the Greek language and means study of thought. It is implied that philosophy is not preoccupied with examining right or wrong as all philosophers have their own ideas. This is especially true as time passes. Plato's ideas are not wrong because they're old. It is in fact extremely important to separate Science and Philosophy as one has an actual meter and can determine if something is right, the other is simply a discussion on problems that have been posed. And to study the history of that discussion is as essential as to partaking in it. This is because to understand modern philosophy you have to understand old philosophy, just as to understand algebra you have to understand simple math.
@@AntiCitizenX actually let me clarify, philosophy is interested in determining right or wrong but there is actually no right or wrong idea just as there is no real answer for questions like, "why do we live?". There is a part of philosophy interested in determining right or wrong in human behaviour, "ethics", and one determining right and wrong in science, "epistemology".
I think my favorite aspect of this video is that it's elicited such derision from some people, yet most of those censuring the video aren't even bothering to mount a defense and those that do resort to comparing the legitimacy of philosophy to other humanities like art. To be honest, I think the only major criticism I have would be that consensus within a field is a valuable measure of its progress only to the extent that people in the field are self-policing and willing to continuously challenge existing ideas. For example. I imagine you'll find a lot of consensus in the field of economics, but I would argue that people in that field are remarkably uncritical about many core ideas and rely too much on pre-existing concepts that have an ideological basis, rather than an evidentiary one. In contrast, molecular biologists constantly re-test each other's data and observation in new ways to refute, further validate, or clarify the interpretations.
Socrates refusing to write down his philosophy out of fear his words would become dogmatic makes sense in current times where the field largely teaches you what past philosophers thought instead of a more independent process.
I see a huge portion of dislikes to this take, yet not much of it is represented in the comments section. For sure not as much counter arguments as expected to be in response to a vid with such likes/dislikes ratio. So unless AntiCitizenX is deleting comments, which I'm highly doubt, you can tell that many "Philosophers" got pretty triggered by this take, yet could barely raise and formalize what their objection is exactly; well, except for a mute, childish protest, anonymously damaging the vid's rank 🤦🏼♀️ Transparency: I myself actually disagree with some points made, yet I can appreciate the quality of the content itself; whether it's wholly affirmative for me or not. As for my ~3 primary objections (not a nitpicking, but some specific points; as overall I think I lean towards AnticitizenX position on it), I'm not a Philosopher, so.. yeah I'd need some time formulating it. Maybe I'll find some time later on and add my comment on it, by hey: at least I didn't just dislike it and bailed 😄
There seems to be a very large community of young males who treat philosophy as some kind of outlet for displaying their intellectual superiority against others. Content like this the triggers them hard by revealing the insecurity. At least, that is my hypothesis for the moment.
If you want evidence-informed answers to such questions as: 'how should I live in order to be happy?' or 'what is the nature (or characteristics) of the good life?' then the emerging field of positive psychology will likely be helpful. Sure, some clinical psychology too. And for some evidence-based approaches to becoming less unhappy - including clinical levels of unhappiness, depression and anxiety - then CBT and Mindfulness based approaches are proving helpful. Now Cognitive therapy was/is informed by Stoicism. And mindfulness based CBT and e.g. compassionate mind therapy was/is informed by Buddhism. So you could argue that some 'strands' or 'schools' of philosophy have 'evolved' and can provide answers, and have moved on to some consensus. Partly by finding a way to separate the ancient nonsense from the ancient wisdom.
An awful lot of today's therapy has links back to the likes of descartes and spinoza through the embodied question. Like you said, mindfulness can be traced to philosophical roots. Meditation was largely a spiritual practice which was looked down apon by the lay man and stem-positivist schools of thoughts which has more recently shown to be incredibly beneficial by science - despite philosophy espousing its importance for awhile. Sorry, I liked your comment and wanted to add my 2 cents 🥰
I drop out of college philosophy classes twice for both the philosophy teachers pushing an ideology forward. One was pushing their love of movies and integrated that within the class, kind of confusing a number of us when it came to classroom discussions. The other philosopher was a Christian who was biased from the get go on how he was gonna teach. It felt like I learn more philosophizing on the job and overthinking. They genuinely need a overhaul on the system of teaching philosophy. They should be guiding conversations about topics of what the philosophers taught and not the history facts about them. A whole class talking about forms, or going through the Socrate method would have been so more impactful than looking at a PowerPoint about them.
I don't know about academic philosophy. But I like philosophy since it's really useful in real life. I see it as "love of wisdom". You say that everybody is a philosopher by that definition, but who does actually love wisdom? We love wisdom as a concept to tell others how they should life. But most people don't apply wisdom in their own life. Philosophy tells me that: I don't know almost anything. You only control yourself. The future you build for yourself are decided by your habits. Your thoughts produce your reality, which are habits. You maybe can see that I focus on how the brain functions. Which is why I learn my philosophy by studying neuroscience and psychology. What I see as the philosophy part of neuroscience, aren't the equations/models or the fancy experiments. It's about the wisdom that those experiments and models produce. For example: You want to lose weight and become fit and healthy. The normal strategy is that you go to the gym for a few weeks and give up. Hating yourself for being a loser and getting ridiculed by people that are in the same predicament. Neuroscience tells us that you are running on temporary motivation and when that motivation goes down, it will be increasingly harder to go to the gym. Neuroscience also tells us that if you make it really easy to do, like 1 push up a day. That you will create the synapses in your brain, that will make a habit out of it. It takes from 2 weeks up to a year to form a new habit, depending on task and person. After the habit is formed, you can easily go to the gym. It would even take more effort not to work out. Philosophy for me is applying the scientific knowledge to benefit your life. Since science doesn't say what you should do. Only how something works. Therefore I don't see science as separate from philosophy. I don't know what academic philosophers are doing, but I mainly like Socrates. Many academics seem more like the sophists that Socrates was against.
I'll leave a shorter comment too: I never thought philosophy was my thing. Then I started learning a little, and realized it was practically my only thing. It is exactly the sort of way I've always looked at the world and experienced life, always asking questions, trying to see things as they really are, learning how the world works and why it is the way it is and what it means for something to exist and asking something about even asking that, and then asking about that, and then asking about that, and then... you obviously aren't dumb or uninquisitive. You have the philosophical mindset, like it or not. I think you'd make your criticisms of philosophy a lot easier to sell if you realized and kept in mind the huge distinction between philosophy as a formalized, academic subject or a social institution, versus PHILOSOPHY as everything which could be considered philosophical. Science has the exact problems with definition you describe, and that applies 100% perfectly here too: do we mean science as an established, formal institution, or SCIENCE as anything that could be considered scientific? Or something else, etc. Science is just a glorified branch of philosophy, really.
*huge distinction between philosophy as a formalized, academic subject or a social institution, versus PHILOSOPHY as everything which could be considered philosophical* I draw these sorts of distinctions numerous times in the video. Did you watch it all?
@@AntiCitizenX I did, but you also repeatedly raise the trouble with defining philosophy, which seems like an attack on philosophy as a whole. You also suggest that the things philosophers discuss (formalized or not, philosophers will always discuss, say, realism vs idealism) are not worthy of investigation.
@@AntiCitizenX You must not assume I do not know what I am talking about, because then you completely ignore the things I say while confidently accusing me of doing the same to you. Please respect my intelligence as I have done yours, and you will find, ironically, that you are not actually addressing my arguments. If you had read my comments seriously, you would understand that your attack on philosophy is not an issue because it makes me "feel 'attacked'", but because you claim not to be doing it at all. My feelings are irrelevant; either you are criticizing philosophy as such, or you are not. For you to again point to the lack of a formal definition when I have addressed this issue multiple times shows the overconfidence I referred to. I will repeat myself: science also lacks any such definition, whether or not you would care to admit it. No definition of science is more concrete or flimsy than the best definitions of philosophy.
Wah wah wah definition this definition that, how about we just throw copies of the sublime object of ideology at these people until they read it and stop being annoying
The situation is what it is bcs there is no right or wrong in many of the big questions. This is very hard to understand for people who fear any form of relativism.
The existence of God and free will have objectively right and wrong answers, genius. The origins of the universe and the number of teeth within women are not relative propositions.
Philosophy is about investigating topics for yourself. You're being taught history so that you can build upon the ideas that came before. Nothing is 'correct' or 'settled'. That's the point.
Something I want to also point out: When philosophers actually *do* form a consensus around an idea, that idea almost immediately stops being thought of as a philosophy problem and starts being thought of as a 'common sense' fact. For example: In this video you cite an idea, that if there is truth in a field, earnest students of the field will independently converge on that truth.
This idea *is* a philosophical theory, one that I studied in a summary called the Auman Agreement Hypothesis. It has almost universal acceptance among philosophers, only a tiny minority of professionals would not accept the AAH. The reason you have never heard of it is *because* the consensus is so complete. It's a purely historical footnote.
So the problem is then similar to the 'man shot' news story paradox.
You don't report on when 'noone was shot today' so news feel more depressing than reality actually is.
Similarly people only explore philosophical issues that are hotly contested so they get overrepresented in the philosophy curriculum.
@@cyberneticbutterfly8506 Yep!
And in addition, plenty of things which were once hotly contested (e.g. Empiricism) are now common sense (Empiricism is one of the bases of *all scientific method*).
So why do philosophers argue over millenia old questions then? Is it not obvious that there isn't a clear answer there?
Well, because our society relies on taking a stand on these millenia old issues. For example, we all (mostly) agree Democracy is the better method of government, but Plato's criticisms of it are still relevant today and often used by dictators and even common folk (ever heard someone say "better a wise dictator than a lot of stupid rabble"? Plato.)
So engaging with these questions and taking a side, even millenia after, is still important
Exactly!!!
not necesaryly Nicholas Carter people are still questioning whether logic has any basis and still asking how do you justify the very logic we use for everything we do which is kinda hopeless but hey you cant help but ask
I searched for the hypothesis you mentioned, but only found a game theory theorem with the same name. Is that it?
The funniest way one of my philosophy professors described his job was basically to walk into a room full of people asking for answers, explain why the people offering those answers were wrong, then when asked for his own answer, tell the crowd that he doesn't know and leaves.
That’s funny. But what do you do with all the PhD guys who do pretend to have answers, despite those answers being already discredited by others? For example, philosophy of religion?
@@AntiCitizenX Out of curiosity: What does one do with someone who peddles discredited answers in physics?
@@cyberneticbutterfly8506 That actually happens all the time in Physics classes. They will talk about Newtonian physics, then later tell you its wrong, and the tell you about relativity, then tell you its wrong, and tell you about quantum mechanics, then tell you its wrong, and that we don't really have a theory of everything yet. The simpler theories are still useful for understanding things though.
@@steverempel8584 No, there is a huge difference. Those simper theories are not wrong and they never were, but they are incomplete approximations, and useful in their own domain. These theories builds on each other (that's why they are useful even if incomplete) and represent different level of understanding something very complex and difficult. Imagine you want to describe how a ball rolling down a slope starting from QFT. It would be so long elaborate exhaustively and needlessly complicated no one would ever try to reach some workable conclusion from such a basic starting point. Alternatively, you can approximate, simplify, and get a child to solve some basic equations for the answer which is correct for 99,999% of purposes what you ever want to use it for. Now, imagine trying to predict precisely the workings of 3nm transistor with classical models. You'd probably have your results way off to what would be an acceptable level of error. Different scales and phenomenas, requires different theoretical tools for solutions, one does not invalidate the others. This is a very important difference. And yes it is obvious that even our best theories describing nature are still incomplete, but that is what the current frontiers are al about, the search continoues to explain which remained unexplained in the latest models
@@CraftyF0X As I see it, it is the same with the history of philosophy. They were all incomplete approximation from one specific angle. The added complexity is that you can only see that angle correctly if you know the historical context. And even more than in science, only retrospectively can one assess how much and in what sense they "approximated" the truth.
My philosophy professor essentially says it’s bad answers to good questions.
That’s clever. :)
Sounds like religion...
@@cliveadams7629 That's was my take away from college philosophy too. Without a means test (or as X puts it "a philosophy of philosophy"), its just centuries of apologetics for whatever school of thought takes your fancy. Epistemology should have been the 'Principia' and ontology the 'Origin of Species' for philosophy.
@@davidenos1277 Yes, epistemology. It's the foundation. It should be the focus.
@@davidenos1277 how do we pick a means that’s indisputable?
It is somewhat silly to complain about a lack of consensus in philosophy. From ancient times, starting with Aristotle, to the early 19th century, natural philosophy was the common term for the practice of studying nature. It was only then that the concept of ‚science‘ received its modern shape and new fields such as biology, physics and chemistry were emerging.
With this history in mind it seems only natural that the philosophy of today is only left with the fundamental questions that can‘t be easily answered with double blind studies or by conducting experiments in a laboratory.
"Science" (or rather natural philosophy as you've pointed out) has only become more institutionalized and gardened by patents, not more exact or correct. It has become more stifled against fringe views and innovation and I guess that's enough for some people to be convinced that it's quintessentially objective now; I rather see science palliating it's own failures by stagnating the burgeoning of new hypotheses and deciding to curtail dissidence now that religion is dead and the jurisdiction of truth (and moreover of societal cohesion) has been delegated to it.
@@alternateperson6600 Wow you put into a single paragraph what I've been trying to put to words for years. Thanks!
You re right Mr. Brown, this video is silly
Thank you Mr. Brown, Im glad somebody actually pointed it out. Consensus is not a thing you should ever expect from philosophy, if you do, then you are missing the point. I also think that philosophy will never be forced to set aby boundaries, that's just plain silly. Although at least one point made in the video is valid - studying philosophy at a university doesnt make you a good philosopher. Imho knowing too much is worse than knowing little, for example: a good repairman will never carry a whole garage of tools when going to work because its obviously impractical, but he will know and see when his tools are not sufficient and will then gather what is required. In the end, that is what makes him a good repairman.
It’s not silly. It’s justly due since philosophy is still a major that people can take. If it is the “primitive” version of science, then why take it over actual science!😂 you’re silly
The thing is, we've got nearly 3 millennia of recorded philosophy behind us, and it's all intertextual. It's very difficult to understand modern philosophy without at least having some background on who came before and what they thought - when reading modern philosophical texts, often the authors will just drop in names and terms which have no meaning to anyone who hasn't had a broad grounding in older philosophical ideas.
Another reason that philosophy courses resemble a history of philosophy is that philosophy doesn't make progress in the same way that science does. That's not to say that there's no such thing as philosophical progress, but if it does exist then it's quite hazy, non-linear, and not subject to the kind of checks that you get in empirical disciples. Someone might read some specific modern philosophical theory and raise half a dozen objections that someone else already came up with 300 years ago - to which someone else has already pointed out all the flaws. Which has also been heavily criticised. And so on. In a way, studying the history of philosophy is not only a prerequisite to being able to understand modern philosophy, it's also a way of discovering which ideas have already been explored, and to what extent. You basically can't hope to begin to have original ideas until you have a good understanding of what's come before, if for no other reason than that they often turn out to be entirely unoriginal. In this way, the aspiring academic actually saves themselves quite a lot of work.
I'd also object to your caricature of philosophy courses being basically taxonomic, anyway. Personally, my undergraduate course was one in which we were encouraged to engage with the texts on a critical level, and to come up with our own ideas and objections if possible. This is the critical thinking and analysis that philosophy prospectuses brag about, and these are real skills that studying philosophy does hone - I feel embarrassed comparing some of my 1st year essays to my Masters research thesis, in terms of my level of critical engagement and analysis.
If you want some empirical analysis (using an admittedly flawed metric), philosophy students come in joint 3rd with economics students in terms of highest IQ, behind maths and physics. So either the courses are doing something right, or people with high IQs are drawn to the subject (or some combination of both).
Lots of text, you can disagree with the video, but you should remamber if u ask 1000 people on the stree if they know any modern/current philosopher, it will probably come with near 0 answers, that tells you everything you need.
@@AngelTyraelGM I don't understand what point you're trying to make.
@@monkeymox2544 i know
@@AngelTyraelGM and yet you will still have to go about your life with some philosophic presuppositions, so you can choose to be ignorant about the various views those who studied the subject(s) have come to and just live with whatever ones you have, or you can choose to engage with the material and find that you do have possibly unexamined presuppositions to your choices in life, and will probabaly personally come to a different, more detailed, and aware set of presuppositions for your life, which I will assume will not be the same as others, and already arent. Physics right now is having a whole fit about what the metaphysical conclusions are of some scientific findings, of which there is not a consensus.
@@AngelTyraelGM Also you ask 1000 people on the street and I almost guarantee you at least one will know Slavoj Zizek. But philosophers take a while to be really known, I'm sure a good amount people out of the 1000 will know some philosophers from the mid to late 20th century.
On the other hand, when some pure scientists (including Hawking) venture into deeper metaphysical explanations about the nature of things, one wishes they had taken some basic course in philosophy.
Couldn't we just as easily say the same thing about philosophers who venture into scientific questions?
@@AntiCitizenX Very much so. But I find that these days the disrespect and condescension flows more frequently from the sciences towards the philosophy, rather than the other way (exception made for some pseudo-theologians in the fundamentalist camp whom nobody takes seriously).
@@videos_iwonderwhy : I disagree one hundred percent. The hatred came from the jealous humanities and philosophies first. And the reason that professional scientists (who are constantly attacked by various political and religious philosophies) have such disdain for modern philosophy is that most of modern philosophy is basically a standardless type of nihilism or solipsism which is extremely easy to get published in 'professional' journals simply by using the right form and 'buzzwords', hence the various Sokal hoaxes.
@@remo27 Perhaps we are not talking about the same thing. I am not talking about scientists attacking MODERN philosophy specifically. I am talking about scientists posing (poorly) as philosophers and at the same time attacking philosophy and theology in general as a useless waste of time.
@@videos_iwonderwhy Never really seen that except some atheistic scientists in the "Skeptics" community before it went all 'woke' . I guess someone like PZ Meyers?
As someone with an honours level degree in philosophy, let me give my two cents (be warned, very long):
When someone asks me to define philosophy, I always reply “Thinking about stuff really hard.” Beyond the glib phrasing, it sort of captures what I want to convey, that:
1) Philosophy is about taking any topic and thinking it through. Philosophers would question and scrutinise anything they care to, taking nothing for granted and seeing where it leads. They would think about what X means if Y were the case, then how that would impact Z and so on. This can be done for any topic at all. Also,
2) Once you move beyond merely thinking - say, for example, you try to find out if Y actually is the case - then you’ve moved beyond philosophy.
This seems like something anyone can do without having to go through the process of getting a degree. However, the breadth of questions that can be asked and thought about for any given topic isn’t immediately intuitive to most people. We take a lot for granted, constantly filling gaps in our knowledge with assumptions we don’t know we make.
Therefore, it is useful to learn about what questions other people have asked in the past and the conclusions they came to. Some effect your life, some don’t. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have a greater understanding of how to see past the automatic assumptions we make and find new things to think about.
This is also why philosophy departments value not teaching anything as ‘correct.’ It would go against the idea of finding anything to question if they taught “This part here, you don’t need to question that part.” You have to question that part just as much as you have to question any other part.
All this is not to mention the traps our thinking can fall into. Cognitive biases and logical fallacies abound. Philosophers need to know about those too, so they can properly think about all the new things they can think about.
In essence, philosophy education has the goal of teaching people what there is to think about and how to effectively think about it. Philosophical academia consists in small part of thinking about things other people have discovered about the world, and in large part thinking about and comparing the thoughts of other philosophers (hence the stagnation).
That said, I am under no illusions regarding the usefulness of this enterprise in most cases. I didn’t just study philosophy, I picked it up as a dual degree while I was studying chemistry (and even with both degrees in hand, I don’t work in either field). There’s only so far one can get by just thinking about stuff. The only job you can get with an education in philosophy (and nothing else) is teaching philosophy.
I don’t see philosophy as a field that should be valued by the discoveries it makes. An education in philosophy is useful when you take the skills you learn in dissecting hidden assumptions and scrutinising them effectively and apply them to something else (science, business, law, writing, etc). I value my own philosophy education because I learned some interesting things, learned how to analyse arguments/positions better (including my own) and how to communicate and argue my own positions more effectively.
It must also be recognised that, despite the ideal goal of philosophical education, biases towards strongly held conclusions are usually too stubborn to overcome, even (and maybe especially) among those who engage in philosophy at the highest academic level.
So, to answer your questions: when I go out and take a bunch of philosophy courses from the philosophy department to get my philosophy degree…
What exactly am I studying?
1) A history of the most salient points of thought in certain topics (as subjectively identified by the department) and the conclusions those thinkers reached. 2) How to properly think and argue about such. 3) Academic writing skills.
What knowledge or skills must I acquire in order to become an “expert” in the field?
1) A broad enough knowledge of historical and contemporary thought on the topic of your choice. 2) Identifying the hidden assumptions and logical shortcomings in an argument or position, including your own. 3) Academic writing skills.
What separates the study of philosophy to the study of physics or art?
Once you start studying the real world or applying what you’ve thought about to the real world, then you’ve gone beyond just philosophy. When you try and find out facts about the real world, that’s science. When you put your thinking into practice by making something, that’s art.
How do we differentiate between a philosophical problem and a scientific one?
If you make assertions about the real world and want to go beyond accepting them merely for the sake of argument, that’s a scientific problem.
How do we measure the difference between good philosophy and bad philosophy?
Good philosophy - that is, according to me, properly thinking about something - takes no assumption for granted, leaves no subsequently-uncovered avenue of inquiry or rebuttal unanalysed, and avoids all the traps of human cognition. Bad philosophy closes off avenues of inquiry, and falls into those cognitive traps.
That’s my starting position on this, broadly speaking. For context, here are the courses I took in philosophy:
- Entry-level epistemology & metaphysics
- Entry-level social & political philosophy
- Two courses on logic
- Second-level social philosophy
- Second-level epistemology & metaphysics
- A course on Heidegger (which I hated)
- A course on Hegel (which I hated even more)
- Philosophy of science
- Chinese philosophy
- A capstone course on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
- An honours extension year where I wrote a (subpar to decent) thesis comparing different schools of scientific realism.
Also, thank you AnticitizenX! The topic of my final essay for that capstone course was taking the arguments for the existence of god that Kant critiques in that book, comparing them to their modern counterparts and seeing if Kant’s critiques still hold up. Your Philosophical Failures series was a great starting point for that, so thanks a bunch!
That is an excellent reply. Thank you.
Thanks for the detailed reply. It sounds like you mostly agree with everything presented, albeit with some caveats and clarifications (which is great).
I feel your bit about “correct” answers is a little misguided. Simply having a consensus solution to some problem does not automatically mean the answer should be held or asserted dogmatically. For example, you are welcome to question a mathematical proof and derive it for yourself if you doubt it.
@@AntiCitizenX I think the main problem with that is you can always ask the question why that is the correct answer? Why Should I accept that answer? You may say "its empirically proven" but then I say "I don’t accept empiricism because human experience is nother more than an illusion.". "But Empiricism takes you to truth " you say. But then I say " well I only follow axiomatic truth and if there's an objective evidence that goes against reason than I have say do not follow that decause truth is Axiomatic not Correspondents. "
This is acknowledged this fact. The founding father of philosophy Socrates also had in intuition about this. That the Foundation for knowledge, intelligence, Wisdom is not Reality or objectivity or God or Spirituality. It is the mind. Now I am not say that everything like solipsism. By Mind I am saying the sentience not just rational operator. I am saying no matter what is ( anything) It first must be grasped by the mind.
And right now you can also criticise all I have say and maybe your right. But philosophy recognises this. And so It gives you the tools to find out The capital "T" Truth. Because Only and Mind can grasps the Ultimate Truth.
@@AntiCitizenX I get where you’re coming from with the correct answers thing. I was speaking about it practically in terms of teaching philosophy, not arguing against the idea of reaching consensus on philosophical topics. Like, what are they supposed to do? You’ve shown that there’s no consensus, so they can’t really be teaching things as consensus in most cases. As for why consensus hasn’t been reached in all this time (which I think is more to your point)? Beats me. If I had to speculate, I’d say it has something to do with the inconsequential nature of a lot of the topics in philosophy creating a lack of incentive to reach a consensus, it being outweighed by the desire to foster an attitude of questioning everything and learning as broad an array of positions as possible on any given topic. What is truth? Well, people have a vague, intuitive concept of truth anyway, so it’s not immediately obvious how answering that question to the degree of specificity in philosophical discourse would help people in their day-to-day lives. That, and a lot of it has nothing to do with anything we can easily detect or measure in principle. Scientific claims have an ultimate reference: the world. Lots of philosophical claims don’t have that. We can’t just say “Alright, let’s stop the arguing and find out for sure! Now what experiment can we conduct to differentiate 1- and 2-dimensional time travel?”
You’re right that I largely agree with the video. It’s just that you demonstrated that philosophy lacks value in those ways that people often think it does (a point well taken), so I felt compelled to chime in with the value that philosophy does have in other ways. It’s best to think about it like studying literature. When studying literature, you look at examples of historical and contemporary works, preferably from different cultures, about various topics. Along the way you gain enjoyment from the authors/works you find interesting and you develop personal skills for analysing the features that characterise literary works (and, by extension, other works), judging their quality based on certain criteria (subjective or otherwise) and crafting literary works of your own. Replace literary works with arguments/ideas and you basically have philosophy. I’d be interested to see a study on people who study literature (literarians? philologists?) like the one you showed us for philosophers and see how much they agree on various topics in that field. Either way, studying literature is still worthwhile and so is philosophy.
though the question still stands - what dedicated field of philosophy is for? for example field of quantum physics, besides final goal of ANSWERING the REAL question of what our world on smallest possible scale is, engaged in 1) broad enough knowledge of historical and contemporary thought on the topic of (quantum) physics; 2) identifying the hidden assumptions and logical shortcomings in an argument or position on the topic; 3) academic writing skills on the topic. So, what philosophy is for, if every field of real knowledge already includes these questions along its specific core question? Seems that philosophy is a pretension to be the jack of all trades while in fact being the master of none :)
Theres an old joke something like: a genie offered a man a choice between more money then he could ever spend, or to become the wisest man who ever lived. The man chose wisdom and the genie granted his wish and then asked "how does it feel to be the wisest?" "I should have taken the money the man replied"
I chose to become a philosophy major to find wisdom, and only after I searched through all of the classical knowledge, I realized I should have joined the sciences.
That’s clever.
Yes.
even if philosophy was what it claims to be...
...even then, if you want to find the truth, studying a field that concerns itself with finding and studying possible methods of finding truth won't help.
you need to study a field which applies a specific method of finding truth that has been proven to work.
Wouldn't it be cool if philosophy also had somekind of formal language?
@@PedroHCF37 they tried to do it but it only served to show failures in other sciences.
Haha?
I didn't realize this was a "shit on philosophy" video with a guy who has no idea what he's talking about. He actually said that the age old question of what grounds morality has been empirically demonstrated, goes on to quote/agree with Hawking that philosophy is dead, says that questions about the fundamental nature of being is worthless, and that philosophers don't make any real progress in the world today. Wow. Just wow. And by the way, philosophy is not so cut and dry that everyone must all believe the same things. It's not a knock on philosophy that everyone doesn't always agree with one another. Philosophy lays out distinctions and different pathways where a person can assess the data and make up their own minds instead of just checking a box and believing what everyone else tells you to believe. The thing that makes philosophy awesome is that you begin to understand the many different views that are out there and decide which one you actually think is true based on the reasons available to you instead of just believing what someone told you. Remember...don't teach ppl what to think, teach them how to think so that they can come to believe what they think the evidence points to, not what everyone else already believes. Seems like you just want to be spoonfed dogma instead of learning about things and thinking for yourself. I get really baffled by philosophy bashers like this who think they are actually doing people a good service by bashing philosophy.
What are you talking about? You set no counterpoints, guy said X and that's stupid, great counter argument.
Your inability to study the literature on evolution and cooperation is not a criticism against it.
@@AntiCitizenX Your inability to track with what I said is not a criticism against it. I said nothing about evolution or cooperation, nor did I criticize it. I criticized your philosophy bashing and assuming that there has to be a philosophical consensus akin to a scientific consensus in order for it to be a valid field of inquiry. Maybe you should learn some philosophy to understand how to analyze what someone is saying to you ;)
@@egonzalez4294 why assume that I'm trying to make a counter argument? Look, if someone made a youtube video claiming that dogs are clearly superior to people, would you even bother to make a counter argument? Or would you just kinda laugh about and tell them how stupid that is? The fact is that Anticitizen made a bunch of claims that he needs to validate, and it's not my job to give a counter argument to nonsense. He claimed that philosophy has made no progress, which is just demonstrably false and absurd. He also claimed that in order for philosophy to be acceptable, there would need to be nearly unanimous agreement between all of them. What am I supposed to do with that other than just laugh at it? Hes the one who made the claim and it's his job to support that. Who says that everyone has to agree on something in a particular field in order for that field to be valid and make progress? Is Anticitizens philosophy that everyone in philosophy needs to agree in order for philosophy to be valid? If you cant see the issue with that, then it makes total sense for me to find you in the comment section of a video bashing on philosophy. Charitably, what he says borders on being self refuting. He uses philosophy and philosophical principles that have been put forth and explicated over time(aka philosophy progressing), and uses those very principles to undermine the validity of philosophy. It's just absurd. Philosophers come up with distinctions and carve out the conceptual landscape so that we can have these intelligent conversations with precision and progress as a species. Some things don't need to be refuted, they just need to be clearly stated so that everyone can easily see how utterly stupid they are.
@@phillipjackson1517 are you a philosophy student?
This video is what happens when an analytic philosopher reads continental philosophy for the first time.
The tire manufacturer has a philosophy? nice ^^ ;)
I don't know about that. Today's philosophy departments, at least in the U.S., seem heavily dominated by the analytic tradition. The problems concerning morality that he brought up, especially concerning the trolley problem, are usually discussed by analytic philosophers.
@@thall77795 yeah, but his comments about lack of rigger, fuzzy definitions and dense incomprehensible writing are pretty common analytic takes, tbh. Plus throughout the video he generally uses continental philosophers as examples of the issues at hand, and analytic philosophers usually get a less harsh treatment. The one notable example is his use of wittgenstein in the thumbnail.
@@thulyblu5486 tire manufacturer?
@@Glass-vf8il yeah, you know, "Continental"
"the major questions of their field." Part of what makes something a major question is that people are unsure of the answer. If you look at a list of the "big questions" in any field, your selecting the questions that are hard to answer.
And yet, strangely enough, most other fields of study seem to have a perfectly easy time answering those “hard” questions.
@@AntiCitizenX Ask mathmaticians and scientists for a list of biq questions and you get stuff like is P=NP and the nature of dark matter. The difference is that a few decades ago, "is the universe expanding?" and Fermats last theorem would have been on that list, and those are now answered.
What makes philosophy a bad field is the lack of stuff everyone agrees on, not the existence of undecided questions.
@@donaldhobson8873 I agree. I think that's actually a great way to express it.
@@Dan_1348 No, it will certainly be logical entirely.
You don't even have a useful definition of philosophy.
By the no free lunch theorem, philosophy could be any randomly imagined thing.
@@Dan_1348 *Any answer you give to these questions will be philosophical.*
Did you even bother watching this video?
first up: I am not actually a philosopher, I'm a physicist by training, so grain of salt.
I think you kind of hide a few important claims (some of which being normative):
1 - all questions worth asking have answers
2 - consensus implies progress towards finding a more accurate answer
3 - application and "progress" is what success is measured by
I understand that questioning these is a hard sell, but if you for example consider the question "what is a woman?". There probably just isn't a sharp useful answer. But people worked the question and came up with ideas - for example gender performativity. Fewer and fewer people now think it's a good description of how gender works, but the thoughts and descriptions Butler put to paper trying to build up her theory undoubtedly helped many people.
Some things also might not have one true nature that one theory can fully describe, maybe to capture some things you need multiple seemingly incompatible theories. In that case having multiple theories that start of kind of mushy and compatibleish that over time morph into more distinct theories with a dead zone in between might indicate that we are getting closer to describing that thing better. And this pattern is very common in philosophy.
Lastly I want to say that I thing the criteria you outlined kind of indicate that what you want from a subject is for it to behave in a very specific way: theory, experiment, application (or the first two the other way around). Which may describe stuff like physics (though I would suggest looking at Feyerabend if you think that, it's probably a lot more complicated and messy), but it certainly doesn't describe fields like sociology or political science which are way closer to philosophy.
I used to believe in the "physics superiority" thing, too. We have rigorous methods and great applications and are very successful. But honestly, reflecting on physics and reading some modern philosophy of science (in particular hussarl -whom I hate-, some surveys of social constructionism and Paul Feyerabend) made me change my mind. I realize now that "hard science" can never answer normative questions and that without some answers to some normative questions science cannot be done. So I rely on philosophers and sociologists to help me find (or pick) answers. I need them because I they compile a wide range of experiences together (eg the aforementioned Judith Butler with the trans experience that I don't have) and spend a lot of time examining many aspects I don't have the time to think about.
*1 - all questions worth asking have answers*
If there is no answer, then "there is no answer" is the official answer, don't you think?
*2 - consensus implies progress towards finding a more accurate answer*
Not necessarily "more accurate," but it seems pretty self-evident that a total lack of consensus is strongly indicative of an institutional failure.
*3 - application and "progress" is what success is measured by*
As opposed to what, exactly? Stagnation and vacuous disuse? You are welcome to measure progress in that capacity, but it's not going to be very inspiring to the rest of the world.
*But people worked the question and came up with ideas - for example gender performativity. Fewer and fewer people now think it's a good description of how gender works, but the thoughts and descriptions Butler put to paper trying to build up her theory undoubtedly helped many people.*
I fail to see how this contradicts any specific claims in the video.
*I realize now that "hard science" can never answer normative questions and that without some answers to some normative questions science cannot be done.*
By definition, there can be no objectively correct answer to a normative question, and I again fail to see how this is relates to any particular claims of the video. What are you disputing?
@@AntiCitizenX philosophy has genuinely made developments that helped a lot of people. Post modernism and critical theory have been essential tools in working to uncover institutional mechanism of oppression.
Also: when do you suggest did this stagnation begin? Without Popper, physics would be way less successful and he published throughout the last century.
So you got a PhD in physics but you don't know what the letters PhD stand for?
@@BlacksmithTWD don't be a pedant, that's like criticizing people in a gym for not being nude.
Philosophy never claims to provide "answers" or "consensus", it is simply the clay from which academic disciplines are carved out (another indicator of philosophy's progress). As philosophers David Chalmers and Ami Thomasson pointed out in their work, Analytic Philosophy is defined as "Concept-Engineering/Modification" (while Continental Philosophy is more "Concept Creation"). It DOES make progress in refining our concepts and this most certainly IS useful.
*Philosophy never claims to provide "answers"*
That is categorically untrue. Everything about the nature of philosophy is geared specifically towards answering questions in accordance with sound arguments and following the arguments wherever they lead. I even gave you at least a half-dozen citations where philosophy departments admit this stuff openly.
@@Ashalmawia Nowhere in the annals of philosophy has a department or introductory textbook ever made it clear that philosophy is about “expanding the mind” rather than exploring the questions with some intent towards generating the truth. That is a complete fabrication of your own imagination. I even gave you multiple citations that contradict this idea. The very nature of philosophy is to explore questions that presumably have truthful answers.
Even if it were all about mind expansion, then what does that mean? What value does it bring? How do I measure it? Is it really a good thing to expand one's mind when the expansion is little more than filling my brain with useless nonsense? That's not really solving the issue, my friend.
@@Ashalmawia Is this the comment section you were referring to? Is there a philosophy website or textbook that you can reference to support your point of view over his?
@@Ashalmawia You don't need to do anything you don't want to do, that is correct. Hitchen's Razors does apply however, even for a casual conversation. If we aren't willing to reference sources for our claims, we shouldn't be upset at all if the people dismiss our claims just as easily.
@@Ashalmawia I'm not having a casual conversation with a video. I've been having a casual conversation with you.
A little joke I saw once in an xkcd comic:
"Situation: There are 14 competing standards
Group of people: That's ridiculous! We need to develop one universal standard!
Situation: There are 15 competing standards"
I mean, it's kinda cute to see people throughout history presenting their new theory or metaphilosophy, proudly declaring they've found a fix for substantive or metaprocedural issues, and then proceeding to get their shit placed next in line on a reading list.
If you're frustrated about how other people proceed with philosophy, telling people they should be doing it in *this* specific way doesn't help much because you're now stuck in the same rabble.
*If you're frustrated about how other people proceed with philosophy, telling people they should be doing it in this specific way doesn't help much because you're now stuck in the same rabble.*
You're right. Let's not bother suggesting any standards whatsoever and let anyone publish whatever they want without any accountability or progress.
@@AntiCitizenX But how to solve the problem? It's not like questions of ethics have no importance, quite the opposite.
@@AR15ORIGINAL As things stand, philosophy is incapable of answering ethical questions. Philosophy is opinion and opinions are like assholes, i.e., everybody has one and they are all of equal value. In the words of Peter Boghossian:
“I am not a relativist. I do not think that all ideas and all belief systems are equal or have equal merit. This idea is a cognitive and moral toxin. Relativism undermines the emancipatory potential of reason and rationality. It erodes the foundation of civilised societies and with it any hope that we should become more just or humane or more kind.”
@@francomartini4328 Well that's sort of the problem: there's an entire field (culture? tradition?) of ethics that is about how *unethical* it is to be humane and kind.
Relativism is an attempt to respond to the fact that when two people with different universal ethical systems come together to try and prove who's correct, it literally fails something like 95% of the time, and the 5% of the time it does work, it's 2% A's becoming B's, and 2% B's becoming A's, and 1% becoming total nihilists. If you can't rationally prove your ethical position, all you're left with is that it's an aesthetic preference.
It seems like it was less about making a standard and more about making a standard by which to judge the other standards
I think I actually agree with most of this video. A bit odd coming from me, a philosophy undergraduate. But I like to think that the philosophy department at the university I go to watched this video, went "yeah this is a problem", and straight up fixed it.
We have 4 history of philosophy courses (I've taken 2). All other courses do not dive into the history of a subject. Historical debates are on occasion brought up, but say their solution is given (for example, in my metalogic course there was a brief mention of Skolem's Paradox and the Skolem vs Zermelo debate on it, but then promptly went back to proofs and theorems).
And yes, I would definitely not major in philosophy if I had to read the history of philosophy before getting to the actually good stuff. Like most of my courses begins with papers from the 1950s onwards. My mental content course only had one piece of literature and it was Shea's project from 2012. It's absolutely amazing. I kinda enjoyed the history of philosophy when I was new at philosophy but I've since found it to be my second least favorite branch.
I'm not convinced disagreement in philosophy is especially worse compared to other subjects such as economics, sociology and even physics (in some areas). Economics for instance, if every practitioner really does use the same evidence, have the same goals etc. then we should really have settled on the debates between which taxation policy have which causal effects and which economic school best matches reality etc. Even in physics there are debates and disagreements at the frontiers, such as the dark matter vs modified Newtonian gravity debate.
I do agree though that philosophy needs to be naturalized. This is hardly new. That ethical intuitions developed as a consequence of cooperative game-theoretical evolutionary pressures is something I completely agree with and many philosophers have written about that aswell.
I disagree that philosophy does not make progress, however. There's been especially massive progress in logic and computer science, with very fruitful interactions between these fields.
Thanks for the well thought out response. I’m curious why you credit developments in computer science as achievements in philosophy, though. I also dispute the idea that there is “just as much debate” in physics. There is definitely not. And where there is a debate, there are mechanisms and standards in place which are guaranteed to settle the debate over time. But you never find physics professors debating the merits of well established theories, let alone the most basic questions of the field.
You'd hate literature, politics, art, sociology or economics.
Economics and art are worth studying, literature too probably. But politics and especially sociology are completely worthless.
Do those fields of study have express goals and methods or not? I’m pretty sure they do.
@@AntiCitizenX it depends on what the goals are, imho
@@AntiCitizenX So what IS the goal of the study of literature?
@@cougar2013 Lol politics is one of the most useful things to study. Everything is political and people can learn a lot to how we got here and where we are going and understand tactics, arguments, precedent and how they fit into society. Far more useful than art.
The most fundamental flaw in this video is the idea that there should be any sort of orthodoxy or standards in philosophy. The very crux of philosophy is questioning established orthodoxy and standards, or to put another way, to create new ways of thinking.
*The most fundamental flaw in this video is the idea that there should be any sort of orthodoxy or standards in philosophy.*
Orthodoxy does not mean "dogma." It just means "generally accepted consensus." You can have both orthodoxy and questioning at the same time. They are not exclusive. Read a damned dictionary.
Also, how do you claim that this video is "flawed" when you literally just rejected the principle of standards by which to measure such a claim? The very nature of your argument is a self-contradiction.
@@AntiCitizenX OK, I yield to your counterpoints. However, you did not address my main argument, that philosophy is about creating new ways of thinking.
P.S. If you reply to this comment, please don't resort to weak arguments like appeal to dictionary or (if it even can be called an argument) using foul language like "read a damned dictionary". I want to have an intelligent discussion here, not a shit slinging competition.
@@AdvocatusThei *you did not address my main argument, that philosophy is about creating new ways of thinking.*
Okay, please kindly show me the citations to peer-reviewed articles, textbooks, lectures, and university prospectus pages that openly promote the study of philosophy as "creating new ways of thinking," and nothing else.
It's important to note that the question _"what separates beings from inanimate objects"_ was philosophy before it was biology, _"the study of logic"_ was philosophy before it was mathematics, and _"the study of the laws of the universe"_ was philosophy before it was physics.
The point of philosophy is to study what we have no consensus over, and questions that seem "impossible" to settle. Once an area is settled, it's no longer of any concern to philosophy.
*The point of philosophy is to study what we have no consensus over, and questions that seem "impossible" to settle*
Citation needed.
@@AntiCitizenX I thought that would be self evident.
If we found an objective answer to "the meaning of life", it would surely stop being discussed by philosophers.
In the same vein, physics left the realm of philosophy once we found (more or less) definite answers, while metaphysics is still discussed to this day, because we have none.
Of course, "having no clear answer" is not the only trait necessary for a topic to be considered philosophy, but nonconsensus seems to be a major feature in almost all philosophical discussion since its inception.
@@AntiCitizenX In short, saying that "nonconsensus is bad for philosophy" feels to me like saying "faith is bad for religion".
You may not like the concept of blind faith, and that is fine. However, faith is a _feature_ in the context of religion. Without faith, there is no religion.
@@luiz00estilo *In short, saying that "nonconsensus is bad for philosophy" feels to me like saying "faith is bad for religion".*
Given that faith, in the religious sense, is pretty much a bad thing unto itself, so I'm not sure how this is a criticism. It's kind of like saying heroin is bad for junkies.
@@AntiCitizenX Given the comparison with heroin and junkies, it seems like you are assuming that "non-consensus" is always a bad trait for a field to have.
It's worth noting that philosophy is *not* a science, nor does it claim to be. The rules of what makes a bad scientific field (lack of consensus on its theories being one of them) does not necessarily apply to non-scientific fields.
Lack of consensus in what constitutes "good art" has never been a problem for those who study art. It is very much a debated topic, but the lack of agreement on it is almost a feature of the field. This seems to be a major problem mostly in the sciences.
So, lets suppose that I am correct, and philosophy cannot possibly exist with complete agreement within the field, would you advocate for the end of philosophy?
I found this very interesting. For my two cents, I would say that something that definitely needs to happen is getting rid of philosophy of religion in its current form.
In the English speaking world (hmm, well in the US and the uni WLC graduated from in England) for example, PoR is where philosophy is abused in the most obscene manner. I can think of no other subject where you can earn a doctorate defending a thesis that is not only riddled with, but is entirely built upon, fallacies so flagrant you couldn't get away with them even in philosophy 101 class.
In any other area you'd never pass the basic classes if your work was 50% semantic sophistry and 50% fallacious reasoning, never mind qualify for entry to a PhD level degree.
Yet we have clowns like William Lane Craig who earned a PhD, from a credible university, with his version of the cosmological argument.
My thoughts exactly. If philosophers want to be taken seriously, they need to expunge the frauds and con men from the profession. I would even argue that all of metaphysics is just an extension of this same practice.
@@Nature_Consciousness Wow. What a philosopher you are. And you wonder why I think philosophy has a problem?
4:14
Empiricism is a philosophical view in the first place
Secondly, this is the entire point of philosophy classes. If you want clear directions of what will help you cope or be happy, go find a life coach
6:37
this is also the point in the first place: philosophers debate *which* methods that are permissible, *what* the goals are, *what* constitutes evidence, and they most definitely do not share the same arguments. this is why you're so upset: you fail to see that philosophy is not a field like the natural sciences where we can test things and confirm them. you cannot empirically say that it is right or wrong to kill an innocent person to save 2 others, etc etc. so yes, philosophy does teach thinking; but if you're looking for more practical or A to B type education, just study biology or something lol. its not for everyone
I read a book by Todd May about the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze that I think raised a good point: philosophy shouldn't be about what is merely "true", but rather what is interesting and remarkable. its a shame, then, that many academic philosophers, especially in ethics, seek merely to reinforce common opinion by establishing principles rather than challenging it.
philosophy teaches us, and unsettles us, by confronting us with what we already know ... It works by taking what we know from familiar unquestioned settings, and making it strange...
Philosophy estranges us from the familiar, not by supplying new information, but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing. But, and here is the risk, once the familiar turns strange, it is never quite the same again. Self-knowledge is like lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be 'unthought' or 'unknown'.
-Michael Sandel
"Why does a field that studies question without clear answers doesn't give clear answers"
It's not a matter of "clear answers" my friend. It's a matter of rote disagreement on what those answers are. There's a very big difference.
@@AntiCitizenX I simply don't believe consensus on those kinds of question can be achieved without falling back on making it dogma
@@charliewenger7682 Do you even know what "dogma" means? A generally accepted consensus, guided by a clear methodology, is not dogma. Dogma is when answers are asserted by rote authority and then all further questioning is denied. There's a very, very big difference.
@@AntiCitizenX I just think the kind of question philosophy asks are for many reason rather hard to find a consensus on. I'm not saying you want it to have a dogma, just that it would be the only realistic way to achieve a clear consensus
@@charliewenger7682 The simple fact that physicists, biologists, chemists, economists, historians, and mathematicians all generate consensus without the imposition of dogma should be a clear sign that questions can, indeed, be answers through methodology. It is also not as if the questions of philosophy are difficult to answer. For example, God's existence is very easy to settle, and it is the very lack of a methodology that allows Christians to assert their position out of dogma, rather than reason.
If you put three philosophers in a room together, they wouldn't even agree there are three philosophers in a room together.
I’ve heard that one before. Very accurate. :)
I disagree with what you assume is the purpose of Philosophy. I believe it is the study of logic, reasoning, and justification of ideas, and the study of actively doing these things in practice. It doesn't matter what ideas you're touting, it's about the underlying method of investigating if a position is sound or not. So while you've readily dismissed it as being this, I think this is what philosophy is. Perhaps not the love of wisdom, buy the ways in which we can reach wisdom, and how not to reach wisdom. It isn't an objective field, it favours more defensible positions over less defensible ones, so the content isn't necessarily the be-all-end-all of the discussion. It seems nonsensical to think of philosophical discussions to be solved, re-evaluation and new scientific findings cause shifts in what can be justified or justified well, so it naturally leads to the need to change one's view.
I do agree that there is a strange fascination with past philosophers, and very little straying from those historical classics, but they seemed to lay more or less stable groundworks for a lot of the topics that could be considered.
Good philosophy would then be the practice of evaluating how strong arguments are, and how to expose flaws, and how to reform the argument to patch the hole in it, and see if it still stands. Bad philosophy would be doing these things poorly.
So TL;DR: I believe you're missing the point, and that you want philosophy to be something it isn't.
*I believe it is the study of logic, reasoning, and justification of ideas, and the study of actively doing these things in practice.*
Is that view really inconsistent with the claims of this video? Does that fully capture the day-to-day practice of doing philosophy in a classroom? And if it really is the study of logic and reasoning, does it not stand to reason that "correct" reasoning should result in consensus?
*I believe you're missing the point, and that you want philosophy to be something it isn't.*
What do you think I demand from philosophy? Is it really so terrible that we impose some basic standards? And if not, then does it not follow that snake-oil salesman and the outright incompetent are going to clutter up the field with nonsense? How do you measure progress in a field that doesn't even know what it wants to accomplish?
@@AntiCitizenX
1st point response:
The view I propose isn't necessarily inconsistent with the claims of your video, it's just that you seem to quickly dismiss philosophy as possibly being as I described it (In the video). And this also would not be inconsistent with your concern about the western academic focus on historic philosophy, but if philosophy is the study of these things, the idea of progress in philosophy doesn't really mean much. You could perhaps learn the same methods of inquiry and making good and sound arguments, as well as defending them or exposing flaws no matter what skin it wears. As for reaching consensus, it seems to vary due to different ideas of how justification happens. I don't think this is really an issue, since even if another party reaches a different view, they have done some philosophy to get there, using broadly similar tools, but perhaps applying them differently.
2nd point response:
It seems to me that you expect philosophy to produce the same results, like scientific experimentation would. Philosophy is still done even if the points reached aren't great, and perhaps that's philosophy done badly. I think progress is an interesting thing to want from philosophy too. As I see it, there isn't an end-goal to philosophy other than providing possible reasons, or justifications for propositions. So progress might look like being more and more thorough over time in considering positions or ideas, not which positions or ideas are reached. This is how it seems to me anyway.
Thank you for responding, and I suppose I do agree with your qualms broadly, that philosophy does seem stuck on historic figures and what they did in the academic sphere, but in examining those things, perhaps they shed light on early ways of considering arguments that have grown more complex over time, so they provide a good example to follow of how the idea has been scrutinised over time. I think my only issue is in thinking reasoning or philosophy should produce better results across time, or reach consensus, because philosophy just doesn't seem to behave like that, and seems to be more about the method or practicing of it than the outcomes. Reasoning is strange too, I'm only just beginning to read a book that outlines why reasoning in humans often doesn't reach consensus, and why that might be.
@@AntiCitizenX No matter how much pure mathematics you study, you'll be no closer to determining which regression model is the best to summarize an empirical dataset with.
"What is the nature of being?" is not a banal question. It is essential for understanding the nature of our subjective existences, together.
for morality, the consensus that economics and biology came to is a description of how morality came to exist, which doesn't end the debate because philosophers look for a normative moral system. and normative morality being subjective by definition it makes sens that you don't get any consensus and i think some philosophical schools are carrying a consistent program on their moral theory to answer social dilemmas for example utilirian philosophers (Peter Singer and such) where the ones to make the arguments about who should be prioritized for treatement when covid cases where higher than hospital capacities
Who said anything about "ending the debate?" We know that evolution through natural selection gives rise to biodiversity, but that does not mean all subsequent questions have been categorically settled for all time.
I think an economist's answer to this would be simple though: asking "what is morality" is an ill-posed question because to begin with, there is not ONE morality. If you took the values of ONE person, frozen at ONE point in time, then maybe you could kind of define a unique morality that corresponds to them. But other than that, there just isn't a universal answer to be found. Or in other cases, even if you agree on a common goal (e.g. minimizing loss of life), you still can't draw a solid conclusion about what the best way to get there is because you lack data about how each decision would result in which outcome. We're all playing the Trolley Problem, all the time, but there's infinite tracks, we don't know how the lever system operates, and we're blindfolded.
@@AntiCitizenX I mean, the natural question arises from the argument you made: That biologists and economists came to a consensus on what morality is, yet you castigate philosophy for not reaching consensus on the Trolley Problem. What's the biological and economical consensus on the Trolley Problem? If there isn't one, then at *minimum* that criticism of philosophy is without merit.
Normative morality is not subjective by definition.
"Philosophers all of them saying exactly the same thing, only I am right. The others are all idiots."
Captain Beatty to Guy Montag
The reason most philosophy is garbage is because most philosophical questions are simply ill-formed - they are the result of linguistic/conceptual confusions. Yet philosophers write books and articles attempting to answer these questions (an impossible feat if they're not even coherent) or defending their own "answer" to them. It's a complete waste of time and effort. The so-called "problems of universals" is a paradigmatic example. Of course things have properties. I have the property of being 50 inches tall (in other words, I'm 50 inches tall). If an object is X, we can speak of it as "having the property of being X". This is a linguistic convention. Not any kind of "problem".
Likewise, philosophers who ask "what is the mind?" need to first examine the use of the word "mind". Because there's not any _thing_ we call "the mind". It's not the name of an object (like "the brain" is the name of an object). If we say that someone (say, Fred) has a dirty mind, that he changed his mind, and that he turned his mind to something, we don't mean that there is a single thing - called "his mind" - that is dirty, that he changed, and that has been turned. It's all just idiomatic. We mean Fred (the human being) tends to think of sex, that he changed his decision, and that he began to focus on something. There's no such _thing_ as "the mind" or "a mind"; it's purely short-hand. It follows that questions like "is the mind identical to the brain?", or "is the mind physical or not?", are ill-formed.
The same kind of philosophical clarification dissolves most stock philosophical "problems" (e.g. the problem of scepticism, the hard problem of consciousness, why is there something rather than nothing, etc.). I completely agree with your definition of the aim of philosophy as "conceptual clarity" (as would Wittgenstein, I think).
I completely agree about the problem of mal-formed questions. In the real world, you never get away with that nonsense because someone always forces you to be more clear and specific. Not so much in philosophy.
Also, the “conceptual clarity” bit is technically not mine. I wish i came up with that. Rather, I stole that term from a philosophy professor who published his lectures online. It’s ironic, because much of this video is directly ripped off from other philosophers, and all my critics keep accusing me of not understanding philosophy.
Lol. Your dismissal of the problem of universals is quite something. Your argument is “of course there are.” Now, to be sure, I think your argument is completely asinine, but I do agree with your conclusion. However, most philosophers that agree with you on the task of philosophy would be astonished by your conclusion on this issue.
So you just made your own philosophy of what it means to be a "good" philosopher should do:
-Clearly define their terms
-Formulate arguments using established rules of inference
-Demonstrate practical relevance
or as you otherwise put it:
-What do you mean by that?
-How do you know that?
-Why should anyone care?
Lets now look at your philosophy from your own perspective to determine if you are a "good" philosopher and if your judgment matters:
What do you mean by practical relevance? Why should I care about practical relevance? How do you know your criteria for a "good" philosopher are correct?...
I could go on with this but it's just an example to show you why metaphilosophy and philosophy are not that easy. The other fields of study have the advantage of having assumptions that they do not question to reach a consensus.
Also if you truly already know anything you could maybe answer some of these questions like what is good and what is bad? What moral theory did science identify as the obvious truth?
There is no such thing as an objectively “correct” definition. There are only good definitions and bad definitions. You do not have to “like” my definition, but when enough people start to use it and police it, then good communication depends on it. My definition happens to coincide with what most philosophers already imagine their profession to be, and philosophy will objectively fail to impress anyone or warrant respectability if it fails to adopt it. I therefore dont care about “proving” my philosophy, because that’s not the issue here. The question is whether or not you care about holding philosophers accountable to some kind of meaningful standard.
@@AntiCitizenX Then do you think you as a person shouldn't do skepticism on your position? Or you are afraid to answer those questions because maybe the answers will generate Inconsistency with your previous belief?
@@farzad1021 Please pay attention. I very much answered the questions.
@@AntiCitizenX I don't think so you very much answer the question. Or you are just giving excuses to not explaining your positions?
Same could be said of physics. You go to get a degree in physics and the teach you about string theory or about the multiverse and when you ask if they are true they tell you they have no idea. Doesn't mean there isn't value in hearing about people's attempts to explain the unknown. If you want to solve an unsolved problem in math it might help to see what attempts have been made thus far.
The difference is that physicists actually try to see if the theory is actually correct, and their theories evolve in base of what we know until they reach a truth, philosophers only say "this is the truth because I say so" and the only argument that they give you is "trust me", they aren't even based in real observations, they are just based on their ideals, in the future the string theory may be confirmed or disproved based on new findings, you can't do that with philosopy.
Just because string theory has been an experimental dead end for 30 years doesn't mean it isn't built upon hundreds of years of other well validated physics. There is total consensus over things like Newtonian mechanics and general relativity, in that they are useful and accurate partial models of physical phenomenon that allow humanity to make billions of useful predictions every day.
Yours is a critique that string theory often faces and a valid one, so it's even more valid when it applies to the products of an entire field like Philosophy. Imagine if Physicists had never produced a single reliable prediction of reality, only slick sounding models with fan clubs instead of testable predictions. It's hard to imagine holding a practice like that in prestige.
I think we treat Philosophy different because there is real value in cataloging the history of humanity's biggest questions and all the explored answers, but it does raise the AntiCitizenX's question of why Philosophy is treated as a rigorous practice of logic and reason if it has no metrics or consensus to demonstrate its rigor.
@@hugorodriguez8672 I see it differently than you. Seeing science and philosophy as different disciplines is a relative new idea. Before rather recently they were considered the same. Newton would have said he was doing natural philosophy. Some areas of science/philosophy are harder to make progress in than others. We have made a lot of progress in physics and cosmology but relatively little in understanding human consciousness.
Because we haven't made much progress we still don't know if Plato's theory is correct. I just watched a debate between physicists about whether math is something that we invent in our minds or whether it is something we discover in the universe. Basically they are trying to argue about whether Plato was right or wrong.
I disagree with you, I think we will find out whether Platos theory is correct or not. I think we will find out if Hume's theory of cognition is right or wrong (both of which are based on many observations). Cartesian dualism influences how neuroscientist today form their theories.
Just because it takes centuries to make progress rather than decades doesn't mean it's not worth studying. If you want to find answers to questions it always helps to read what theories have been put forth before, whether from 10 years ago or from 2000.
@@cuantrail
I can see your point, I'm not saying that the theories that philosophy presents cannot be confirmed or deconfirmed, but philosophy itself is pretty bad doing it, for example, have you seen a group of philosophers doing research and tests to prove their theories?, they would just argue trying to convince each other that their theory is the correct one, I'm not saying that philosophic theories cannot be confirmed or deconfirmed, but it was scientists that did it, like with the atoms or the cuantic foam(sorta of), in the millenia that philosophy exists they haven't made a single consensus yet, because their way of doing things is pretty bad at doing it, what I'm jus trying to say is that scientific theories and philosophic theories aren't the same.
It feels like there isn't a huge difference between an art history major and a philosophy major. Everyone can look at and have valid opinions about art, but we privilege an art historians opinion because they have context. Everyone lives their lives by their own personal valid philosophies, but we privilege these philosophy historian's opinions because they have more context. In both cases, the historians are under no obligation to reach consensus in their opinions.
But the question is, should philosophy stay that way? Consider that the sciences, economics and medical practice were all once that way too, and consider what happened when they changed.
How about if we see philosophy as a frontier to collective human knowledge? After all, all major schools of academia (literature, medicine, political science, mathematics, e.t.c.) had to start somewhere. It is very likely they began when someone, or a group of people, began thinking about these questions at a time when no one had the answers. These questions very slowly evolved into the structured ways of thinking we are familiar with today. And, even so, we have often realised on hindsight that the rigorous processes in which we arrived at modern advancements may be flawed (take Classical v.s. Quantum mechanics for example).
In my opinion, the human race has not acquired all knowledge there is available. It would be conceited to assume so, and our growth as a species would possibly stagnate should we adopt such a mindset. The honest pursuit of philosophy, though it may seem frivolous when seen from the lens of a single lifetime, has the potential to converge on practical applications in the distant future (take the evolution of alchemy to chemistry for example).
Therefore, we really should continue to ask these pesky questions that people can't seem to agree on. It is, in a way, an insurance that our collective wisdom continues to grow.
This coming from an engineer :)
so "validity" in philosophy is not about having an interesting perspective/opinion. it's about constructing an argument where, if all premises are true, the conclusion must follow. a philosophy student learns to build valid arguments, not to have valid opinions in the more colloquial sense. additionally, philosophy majors don't simply learn the history of their topic, they also learn how to create arguments, spot flaws in others, and provide counterexamples that can cause an argument to become invalid, less likely, or be reduced to absurdity. It isn't so much competing opinions as it is competing intuitions and people attempting to provide valid and sound arguments (valid being if all premises are true, then the conclusion must follow; sound being that all premises *are in fact* true) to prove why their intuitions (or non-intuitive conclusions in some cases) should be believed.
No no no. Art history is considerably more useful because you can work in a museum or collection and work to identify, restore, or preserve art.
The problem here is that there's an artificial divide between "the sciences" and "the humanities" that makes people studying philosophy consider science as cold calculation, devoid of any importance except to make some concrete point about long held philosophical views. In science we also have a problem with the divide: we often see theoretical physicist engage in pseudo-idealist debates that we know from the history of philosophy that are totally sterile.
I agree almost with every point in this video. The relevant philosophical debates are not happening inside the philisphy department but in Physics, Mathematics, Biology and Computer sciences. Just to give some examples:
- We see "modern philosophers" discuss things as the nature of time ad vacuo, debating about zeno's paradox. The have debated zeno's points since ancient greece and many seem to not realise that the problem was completely solved with the advent of differential calculus (particularly limits and convergent series).
- The most updated of philosophers talk a lot about artificial intelligence but their discussions are incredibly superficial. They are mainly paying attention to the possibility of a robot uprising (yeah, like in terminator), instead of tacking the relevant philosophical consecuences of machine learning. This is because they don't understand it, because many despise the lower intellectual effort of programming. But in fact computer scientist are uncovering things that are extremely relevant for the philosophy of mind: The emergence of organised semantic structures from the interaction of simple switches, the way decreasing entropy in the structure of language reveals cognition, the way machines learn without hard-coding and why we choose to go with unsupervised machine learning for the more sophisticated tasks (which tells us a lot about how we also learn and how our intuition about how knowledge is built was totally wrong). Those are the real deep philosophical issues right now in computer science, but you will hear philosophers only speculating about "the singularity".
- I hear philosophers disscussing about what can be known and what can't be known and if there are known unkowables etc... like it was a manichean discussion about the sex of angels. The truth is that the debate there has been completely settled by mathematics a century ago when Gödels theorems appeared. Still I don't see philisophers trying to grasp the meaning and gnoseological consecuences of this amazing piece of maths. Why? because maths is just for nerds that don't get the important and deeper things, right?
- Cosmology has evolved from myth to a full-fledged science in less than a century. It might have been reasonable to have long debates about the nature of creation and how things came to be, but now any debate outside the empirical demostrations that tell us that time had an origin and matter is uniformly distributed at the largest scales is simply bad philosophy. We are not collecting data and probinf the deepest questions in cosmology and the refined discussion is not happening at the phislophy department but at physics meetings.
- In biology we are starting to grasp the way life was originated, we can discuss plato's, aristotle's and kant's views for hours on the topic but the reality is that none had any remotely valid position when compared to what science is revelaing this century. Why philosophers don't study the way RNA might have been the precursor of a DNA world? What does all of this implies for the "meaning of life". They even seem to be oblivious about the relevance of darwinian natural selection for philosophical matters. Science has empirically shown that purposefulness in the biological world is absent because of this mechanism. Why are they still debating if Tomism was a better stance than Lamarckism or not instead of trying to understand the crazy consecuences for the meaning of our existence with current data (which is filled with relevant questions on the matter).
- Quantum physics has shown that the universe is fundamentally non-deterministic. Why philosophers are still debating this question outside of the scientific discurse as if we haven't piled up hundreths of experiments and observations with relevant conclusions on the topic?
- Oceanographers, matematicians and cryptographers are joined in an effort to understand if whales have structured language, how it developed, what are the similarities with human languages and even if we are capable of translating what they are saying (see project CETI). IS this not relevant to philosophers? They should study Zipfs law, information theory, shannon's entropy, kolmogorov's complexity and much more to get to the level of the current debates. Instead of doing that we see modern philosophers arguing about old school semiotics with total disregard of the current situation.
- When fractal geometry apeared in mathematics half a century ago it sparked very interesting questions on mathematics, but not in philosophical circles for some reason. Does measure has a meaning for these objects? Is an simple equation able to display infinite complexity and any possible pattern? Is our reality one of the patterns inside a similar abstract structure? Is there a way we could tell? Can fractal compression algorithms be found in DNA sequences and how information is stored in the biological world. ANd many many more important things that no Hume, nor Shopenhauer knew about when formulating their arguments.
- Non-equilibrium thermodynamics is now showing for decades that complexity and self-organisation will arise almost inevitably even if counterintuitively the entropy of the universe is steadily increasing. Philosophers could be interested in this at the mathematical level. Instead what I see is philosophers still resucitating death arguments about vitalism and additional forces that would be necessary for complexity to arise in total disregard of the current state of knowledge wich, IMO, has oblitarated any of those arguments long ago.
We could keep going with Antropology, Statistical Mechanics, etc... At this point in history philosophy is greatly advancing but not by people who study that career but by scientists, linguists etc... The deep philosophical questions of who we are?, where we go? What is the meaning of life? what is the ultimate fate of the universe? Is order able to form out of randomness? Is the soul and mind detached from matter? Where, when and how it all began? What is the purpose of this and that? Is reason enough? Is everything knowable? etc... All of these questions are been tackled in science right now. Philosophers seem to be happy ignoring all of it, they are now simply nostalgically recreating old lazy arguments from periods were none of the things we are discovering were known or used to debate. It is trully sad.
I get that the history of philosophy is very important and relevant for real philosophy. But common, that's not enough for what philosophy should be doing nowadays, which is a lot.
Thanks for sharing. Excellent points.
Sorry, but comments like this reveal great ignorance about how philosophy is actually practiced. There are no active philosophers who are ignorant about Goedel's theorem. Some of them don't have a deep understanding of it, and it is sometimes abused in arguments due to this fact (not only by philosophers), but everyone has at least heard about it. Also, it's untrue that quantum mechanics is fundamentally indeterministic. There are interpretations, like Bohmian mechanics, which are fully deterministic. And, while I hate to be the guy that points this out: have you read some contemporary philosophy of physics literature (often written by people who have PhDs in physics), even at a very basic level, you'd know that.
2:07 "Philosophy courses do not really educate students in philosophy per se. Instead, most treatments on the subject are far better described as a history of philosophy, or perhaps a survey. Sure, it might be interesting information to some, but it is not exactly the condensed summary of modern consensus that tends to define other fields."
The point of studying historical philosophers is not to learn the history of philosophy, though the history of philosophy is something that some may study as its own topic. We study ancient philosophers to learn from how they thought and how they reached their conclusions. We can learn from their techniques and their mistakes, because the point of studying philosophy is to learn how to think more clearly.
There is no modern consensus in philosophy because there cannot be, and to expect a consensus would seem to be some sort of misunderstanding of the point of philosophy. Philosophy is about the journey, not the destination. Philosophy is about thinking, not about coming to conclusions. Philosophy is therefore only concerned with questions that do not have clear answers, and as soon as any question gets a consensus, that question ceases to be a topic of philosophy. If there were a modern consensus on some topic, then that topic wouldn't be discussed in philosophy classes. It wouldn't be fertile ground for thinking and debate.
To ask why philosophy doesn't teach any consensus would be like asking why people playing darts stand so far from the target. Wouldn't it be easier to hit the target if they stood within reach of it? The challenge of throwing the darts is the whole point of the game, just like the challenge of thinking about difficult questions is the whole point of philosophy.
2:48 "A formal education in philosophy will not qualify you as an authority in correct philosophical thought."
Right. The very concept of "correct philosophical thought" seems like some sort of misunderstanding of the point of philosophy. Philosophy is a skill to be trained, not a question to answer correctly or incorrectly. Just as we cannot be correct or incorrect at throwing darts, we cannot be correct or incorrect at philosophy: we can be skilled or unskilled, and a formal education in philosophy helps people to become skilled.
2:55 "At best, you will only emerge as a glorified historian and taxonomist."
If that is what we learn from a study of philosophy, then we may have missed the point of what we were studying. There's nothing wrong with knowing history and taxonomy of philosophy, but it is beside the point. It would be like studying the greatest dart throwers of history and instead of learning to throw darts better by emulating their techniques, we instead focus on memorizing the dates and outcomes of historical tournaments.
3:02 "There is an outspoken tradition in western education that it always more important to teach students how to think rather than what to think. College philosophy, it seems, is just taking this doctrine to a fanatical extreme."
There is nothing fanatical about staying focused on the topic that we're trying to study. There's nothing fanatical about college chemistry exclusively talking about chemical reactions. Philosophy is simply the study of how to think, and that's all it should ever be.
5:41 "University departments from across the world brag openly about how philosophy teaches students such important skills as critical thinking, logical analysis, and complex problem solving. They take pride in their supposedly dispassionate use of pure reason to create and evaluate arguments, all for the sake of developing a clear and systematic view of who we are, where we stand, and where we should be going."
Exactly. They are teaching people to have the skills to think for themselves, not to accept the answers that they've been given. We learn to evaluate arguments by studying arguments that people have made in the past and considering the strengths and flaws of those arguments. Philosophy is therefore only concerned with questions and debates, and never concerned with answers.
For example, a lecture on moral philosophy won't be about telling people what is good and what is bad as we might expect from a sermon. A lecture on moral philosophy will be about the ways in which people argue about morality so that we can learn to think critically about morality and learn to analyse arguments and construct our own arguments.
6:12 "Imagine a professional community of thousands of dedicated intellectuals who are all highly trained experts in the art of truth finding. Now imagine these same intellectuals all share a common goal of exploring difficult questions, collecting evidence, evaluating arguments, and deriving the most sensible conclusions possible. Naturally, we should expect such a group to eventually reach a unanimous consensus one every question posed."
That's not a realistic expectation. Difficult questions are challenging and humans minds are not infallible reasoning machines. Philosophers deliberately examine the most difficult and perplexing questions of all, specifically because it seems that people cannot ever broadly agree on the answers. In less challenging fields like chemistry and biology people often can form a clear consensus, and that's why those fields are of little interest to philosophers. Deliberately choosing the hardest question often means that philosophers fail to get clear answers, but that's just how life works.
7:26 "You would think that if philosophers really are the great experts in reason that they claim to be, then we should expect an overwhelming consensus on the major questions of their field."
These questions are the major questions of their field because they do not have overwhelming consensus. The more controversial a question is, the more important it becomes in philosophy. Any question that has overwhelming consensus would cease to be of any interest to philosophers.
8:05 "In most any other other professional field of study, this would be an absolute embarrassment."
That is because other professional fields of study are in the business of studying other things. Knowing nothing about how RNA produces proteins would be an absolute embarrassment for any biologist, but among astrophysicists knowing about RNA is totally irrelevant. In philosophy people deal with questions that have not been clearly answered because that's the whole point, and so it would be foolish to be embarrassed about it.
*We study ancient philosophers to learn from how they thought and how they reached their conclusions. We can learn from their techniques and their mistakes, because the point of studying philosophy is to learn how to think more clearly.*
So, history of philosophy, then?
*Right. The very concept of "correct philosophical thought" seems like some sort of misunderstanding of the point of philosophy.*
Tell that to the hoards of pretentious yahoos who constantly talk trash about positivism. I've lost count of how many times I've seen professionals prattle on about the "downfall" of posivitism, despite the fact that many of its tenets are alive and well in science today.
*There is nothing fanatical about staying focused on the topic that we're trying to study.*
It is if you deliberately market yourself as a purveyor of "fundamental truths."
*They are teaching people to have the skills to think for themselves, not to accept the answers that they've been given.*
That's simply not true. The fact that philosophers cannot form a consensus on basic questions utterly disproves that proposition. It doesn't count as "thinking for yourself" when the thought process itself is vague and self-serving.
*A lecture on moral philosophy will be about the ways in which people argue about morality so that we can learn to think critically about morality and learn to analyse arguments and construct our own arguments.*
What value is there in "thinking critically" if all people are going to do is rationalize whatever self-serving answers they already presupposed in advance? It doesn't count as critical thinking without a formal methodology to define what a "correct" answer even means.
@@AntiCitizenX "So, history of philosophy, then?"
No, history of philosophy is the study of when various philosophers lived and who their contemporaries were and how philosophical ideas have changed over the years along with other historical events. In philosophy class we usually study the arguments made by ancient philosophers rather than the people who made the arguments. The biography of Kant is part of the history of philosophy; the arguments of Kant are part of philosophy.
"Tell that to the hoards of pretentious yahoos who constantly talk trash about positivism."
That sounds like a good topic for a video, if that video hasn't already been made.
"It is if you deliberately market yourself as a purveyor of 'fundamental truths.'"
Agreed, anyone who markets herself as a purveyor of fundamental truths is almost certainly a fanatic.
"The fact that philosophers cannot form a consensus on basic questions utterly disproves that proposition."
Can you elaborate on that? Why would we expect a consensus among people who are each thinking for themselves?
"It doesn't count as 'thinking for yourself' when the thought process itself is vague and self-serving."
Why? Agreed that vague and self-serving thinking is not wise and not productive, but it still sounds like thinking for yourself. Perhaps we could get more details on this point.
@@AntiCitizenX "Tell that to the hoards of pretentious yahoo's who constantly talk trash about positivism."
First time checking out your channel. You touch on many things that I have interest in. Thanks for being honest in your responses, it let's me know very quickly that I'm not going to find much of value here if this is the quality of responses you put out.
@@Ansatz66 *In philosophy class we usually study the arguments made by ancient philosophers rather than the people who made the arguments*
I see what you mean now. Indeed, I interpret that stuff as "history of philosophy." The word "survey" also gets thrown around a lot, and seems to be apt to me.
One of my issues here is that when it comes to philosophy, it is almost impossible to find a "one size fits all" clean answer because, unlike science, a lot of the ethical quandries and the societies that we want to strive for are so different.
Like take something like stoicism for example. Stoicism can be extremely heplful for people in fields that are very competitive or require lots of conflict. The idea of getting the work done, at all costs, and putting your emotions aside are things that you see a lot in the police force or corporate board rooms.
Yet, we can get two similar people who have entirely different values and value structures, and it is almost impossible to find a one size fits all solution to their issues.
Like if I was an undergrad and I wanted to just get a 4.0 at all costs, and do internships, and spend all my time making myself look professional, then having a solid mindset of not letting anything effect me would be quite helpful.
Now if we take the same undergrad, and I value relationships, having fun and partying, and trying to round myself out in college then fuck, stoicism offers nothing to me. I would want to have my mind changed and be influenced by those around me. Its how I grow as a person.
The issue isnt just that people value different things, it is that YOU cannot tell SOMEONE ELSE what they should value or what makes them happy. They can only do that themselves. Philosophy is a tool that you can use to introspect in your own life, find out what you want and enjoy, and grow as a person .
Philosophy is not a science. The idea of teaching a “modern consensus” of philosophy seems very strange.
I think the point is, that philosophy used to be concerned with such things, but modern philosophy no longer is. Science has taken over what philosophy used to be, and modern philosophy is something else.
Philosophy departments openly brag about their ability to teach critical thinking skill and explore "truths." If this kind of rhetoric invokes nothing of the potential for consensus, then perhaps you're only proving my point.
@@AntiCitizenX lol this reads like a complete non-sequitur when you consider the implications of a discipline with the characteristics you have described. Btw are you a Redditor?
It's ridiculous. This video is a joke
Not only strange but it misses the whole point of philosophy, which to me is to learn to investigate ideas for yourself. Settled questions don't need to be investigated.
This was a terrific video. Thank you for the effort. I’ll be sharing this around to some individuals who really need to listen to it.
Ok so a simple proof of the point is to simply ask the question:
What task is a philosopher supposed to do on a day to day basis to provide value to society?
I've never gotten a consisten answer to this.
Me neither.
@JO Yes and no. Yes in the sense that as it is practiced today, it provides no progress or discovery. No, but only in the sense that I propose in this video of how I think philosophers can provide value by embracing certain methodology.
I just don't get how this video doesn't have millions and millions of views.
Sounds like you enjoyed it? :D
@@AntiCitizenX Rewatched it many times. Months ago and now again ^^ I have also tried to make these and similar arguments among friends. Including philosophy students which only meets outrage even though I learned to become quite diplomatic, I thought. I am not a philosophy student though and wonder if I am missing out or "just not getting it". I hope this wasn't your last video and to see more from you in the future :)
@@quentinwach There will be more eventually. Give it time .
LONG REPLY: feel free to reply to any individual point without reading the entire post.
1. Saying that philosophy doesn't "progress" is wrong. Certain philosophical positions become discredited and less popular over time. Its quite rare that you have dramatic immediate shifts where for example a single experiment completely disproves a certain stance, but this is also quite rare in most scientific fields as well actually. Instead what happens is that certain arguments gain or lose plausibility as more evidence mounts behind it, or certain theoretical developments make certain arguments seem less likely, which slowly makes one position seem more reasonable than another. This also happens in philosophy. There are very few logical positivists anymore, no one takes ayn rand seriously, quite few people take cartesian dualism seriously (at least not in the form articulated by descartes), no one believes in logicism anymore. I could name a million more more obscure examples. Point is that the notion that philosophy doesn't progress at all is as ridiculous as saying science doesnt.
2. The notion that there is no way to tell good from bad philosophy is also wrong. The way you do it is identical to how you do it in mathematics. You look at the arguments themselves, and if they stand up to scrutiny and are logically correct, then the philosophy you're doing is "good", if the arguments you're presenting are not correct, the philosophy you're presenting is bad. Sometimes its hard to tell which arguments are correct or not, but this is besides the point.
3. The point about philosophers disagreeing about a lot of things is both not that meaningful and kinda wrong. First, I wanna point out that the survey specifically brings forth contentious issues that are debated. If you went into a room filled with mathematicians and asked them "whats 2+2, whats the anti-derivative of 2x + 1, how many k element subsets does an n element set have?" there would be zero disagreement, but it would be a pointless and really boring survey. Similarly, the questions brought up like synthetic vs analytic distinction, realism vs anti-realism etc are known contentious issues, which is why they are in the survey in the first place. Secondly, most of the issues are quite recent developments. And 3rdly, even if the questions themselves are quite old, the prominent positions, ie the modern "answers" to the questions are not that old. Lastly, even if philosophy had a ton of disagreement constantly about anything, I don't think that means much, like I addressed in point 1. If there was no disagreement the field wouldn't be moving forward.
4. You complain about philosophy not having a clear definition. I don't see how this is actual critique. There are subfields of philosophy like epistemology, ontology, ethics, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, the list goes on, which do have very clear definitions. However, since philosophy is expanding and new fields emerge, we want to keep the notion of "philosophy" open enough to be able to encapsulate those developments. I imagine something like "physics" would do the same. Imagine you defined physics as the study of physical matter. Would this include the study of gravity? light? Ok, maybe not, so what we do is expand it to be "physics is the study of matter or forces that interact or otherwise affect physical matter", then we someone asks whether emergent phenomena like economic behavior or biology is a questions physics is supposed to answer, and then we rewrite the definition to be "physics is the study of the behavior of matter or forces interacting with matter that can locally be modeled with mathematical equations, and whose behavior doesn't depend on macroscopic effects best explained by other theories....", and then quantum mechanics comes along and questions about what matter even is gets kinda hard to answer, and then you give up because trying to come up with some holistic all encompassing definition is not all the important anyways, as long as the questions you're asking are clear.
5. Around 5:40 you say that long standing philosophical questions have already been solved by other fields of science. This is really really dumb. Sorry for being blunt. The questions ethics are asking and the questions sciences like evolutionary psychology are asking are not the same in anyway what so ever. "What is the right thing to do" is not the same question as the sociological question "what has right come to mean in our current society", its is not the same as the evolutionary question "how have social animals come to evolve pro-social behavior and moral norms?" it is not the same as the game-theoretic question "what is the optimal behavior in an interative cooperative game of form x when you seek to maximize the and Y". They are just not the same question.
Even if these questions had all been answered, Sociology, game theory, biology were literally solved subjects, Ie we knew how moral behavior came about, we knew exactly which moral norms were the most prevalent in current society, we knew exactly how you would want to behave in any game given a specified goal, they wouldn't tell you anything about how you *****should***** act. How a moral norm came about is irrelevant as to whether you actually ought to follow it.
Obviously philosophers should be knowledgeable about science if they want to make scientific claims, but this goes for any field. If penrose tries to use quantum physics to make some unfounded and wildly speculative claims about psychology, does this suddenly mean quantum physics is bogus? No, it just means one person is overstepping their boundaries and commenting on stuff they don't know much about. Also, its worth mentioning that it goes both ways. When hawking or dawkins or bill bye talk about how philosophy is dead, they are not speaking from an area of expertise, they are just asserting their opinions about a subject they don't know much about.
6. You say that philosophy doesn't answer "deep" questions unlike science. I don't think you gave any definition of "deep" in this video so its hard to say exactly what you mean, but if you by deep mean something like "fundamental", then philosophy certainly asks deep questions. In fact the questions it asks are almost by definition the deepest of any subject. The questions philosophy asks are typically those that precede any investigation into any other endeavor. Before mathematics can be done you need a rigorous definition of what mathematics is and how to do mathematics. This is philosophy (philosophy of mathematics) and it is certainly more foundational the mathematics itself is. Same goes for any field. And, when you get into more "Pure" philosophical questions about the nature of knowledge, truth, existence, these are so fundamental that they inform literally any science you could possibly have. You can't talk about chemistry if you can't talk about the "existence" of particles, or the truth of statements about those particles.
There were many other errors with this video but ill stop here.
*Certain philosophical positions become discredited and less popular over time.*
I am not interested in your bare assertions that defy all evidence to the contrary. This claim has been categorically disproved by the evidence of the video. If there are discredited positions, then by all means, name a single one, and then show me the statistical data that proves it.
*There are very few logical positivists anymore*
This is false. The central tenets of positivism are very much alive and well within modern philosophy and science. You can even see for yourself in the citations I gave in this very video.
*no one takes ayn rand seriously*
The entire Republican party does. Objectivism has a very rich and prolific following.
*quite few people take cartesian dualism seriously*
At least 2/3 of the philosophy of religion disagrees. Read the literature.
This is the problem with modern philosophy. You are literally making up clams out of nothing, in full defiance of the evidence, and then expecting them to qualify as compelling arguments.
*The notion that there is no way to tell good from bad philosophy is also wrong. The way you do it is identical to how you do it in mathematics. You look at the arguments themselves, and if they stand up to scrutiny and are logically correct, then the philosophy you're doing is "good", if the arguments you're presenting are not correct, the philosophy you're presenting is bad. Sometimes its hard to tell which arguments are correct or not, but this is besides the point.*
Let's break this down, shall we?
1) You presume that synthetic propositions can be magically deduced through pure reason. This is false. Mathematics only works by deriving theorems out of axioms via rules of inference. This process is strictly analytic in nature and cannot logically generate knowledge about objective reality. The very nature of your methodology necessarily rejects huge swaths of philosophical questions.
2) If what you suggest is true, then presumably those following the rules should arrive at a consensus in the same manner as mathematicians. This objectively fails to occur. Therefore, either the methodology doesn't work, or people are not following it correctly, despite having PhDs in the subject matter.
3) The very nature of most philosophical questions necessarily presumes some goal or value in order meaningfully derive some answer. It is not logically possible to evaluate the "correctness" of a goal or value using evidence or logic. You just assert them as a matter of rote fiat.
@@AntiCitizenX *You presume that synthetic propositions can be magically deduced through pure reason. This is false.*
Do you even realize you are repeating the opinions of Immanuel Kant? The entire Analytic/synthetic distinction was first proposed by Kant. Kant's major work was the critique of *PURE REASON* , the very thing you're critiquing by just repeating what Kant said. You spend so much time ragging on that philosophers can't make progress or don't know what their talking about, and yet you just recapitulated the analytic/synthetic distinction: a major progressive accomplishment within philosophy.
@@williamcurt7204 *Do you even realize you are repeating the opinions of Immanuel Kant?*
Dear God, the HORROR! You mean other influential philosophers have had similar thoughts as me? It's almost as if I'm not just making this up out of my own imagination.
*You spend so much time ragging on that philosophers can't make progress or don't know what their talking about, and yet you just recapitulated the analytic/synthetic distinction: a major progressive accomplishment within philosophy.*
I'm having trouble processing the sheer insanity of this comment. First off, if you bothered to read the comment threat, you would have seen that positivism was deemed "bad philosophy" that has been discredited and is now dead. You therefore agree with me that this is false, even heralding the ASD as some kind of "accomplishment."
Secondly, if you bothered to read the citations of this very video, you would see that only about 2/3 of modern philosophers are sympathetic towards the ASD. Thus, the "major progressive accomplishment" of yours is still unable to to garner any meaningful consensus among PhD philosophers.
Tell me, in all of that philosophical education of yours, did you never learn the distinction between (1) I believe a thing, and (2) there exists a consensus among professional PhD philosophers about that same thing? It's like you're just disagreeing with me for the pure sake of disagreement, no matter how insane you have to sound doing it.
@@AntiCitizenX It's not that other philosophers have "similar" opinions to you, it's that you are just wholesale repeating the opinions of other philosophers without any consciousness of the fact that you are doing so.
ASD didn't exist before Kant proposed it. That was over 200 years ago, when the critique of pure reason was published. You obviously haven't read anything by Kant, so you are simply repeating something that you heard from someone else. You are unconsciously acting as a mouthpiece for philosophical systems that you haven't examined. You simply believe that ASD is just an obvious fact, when it isn't. It was born out by Kant, who painstakingly spent nearly 10 years developing his critique of pure reason. And so my point is this: even if your critique of philosophical progress is sound (which it isn't), *YOU* think there is philosophical progress by the fact that you wholesale repeated ASD as true, and so you are a massive hypocrite.
The historical view is quite important: Kant's metaphilosophy (his first critique) is trying to answer your question, but to adequately understand it you must first understand the history it addresses, and be able to establish a valid opinion about this critique you must engage a wide array of scholarship and philosophical responses. There's a reason why most universities spend far the most time on Kant in comparison to any other philosopher: Kant's metaphilosophy addresses what the field, and any field for that matter, is able to do.
Kant wanted to make philosophy "a dead science like logic that hasn't been improved since Aristotle" ironically Frege shortly thereafter reinvents logic and makes it into the living mathematic/philosophical science it is today. But in my view disagreement is fundamental to the method of philosophy like no other field, institutional agreement actually works counter to its goals.
I lost all respect for philosophy when for a class I took, when I had to write an essay, we first submitted a draft for commentary. One of the lines of my draft came back, a sentence underlined, with a comment that it wasn't the case that this statement I made was, in fact, clearly true. Now, I was busy with my science and math classes, and had difficult homework for them, and was doing quite well in my philosophy course, so I decided to take the hit on the grade for the paper. So I changed the underlined sentence "X" to "It is clearly true that X", effectively directly contradicting my professor's comments on my paper. I submitted this as my final draft, and that paper came back to me with extremely high marks, no reference to the sentence "X" and a comment at the end that the paper was "very insightful". :/
You being a poor student who obviously ignored the teachers criticism doesn't say anything about the nature of philosophy. I'm sure your teacher simply let the non major pass the class, even though he obviously doesn't understand the finer points 😜
@@PcCAvioN hey the teacher's a nice person at least :)
I must say.
I love this video, like all of your videos they are well thought out, somewhat easy to understand, and give clear, pragmatic well-funded insights.
But what I am even more impressed with, is the comment section.
Not only is there an incredible amount of discord, dissent, disagreement, name-calling, thought-full insights, and comments in general.
You have responded to such a large amount of them, and read even more of them that it boggles my mind you have the patience and kindness to do so.
I sometimes wish you were less aggressive and more sympathetic in your tone and word choices. But overall, you are still polite enough to not really directly be rude about it.
I certainly couldn't remain at this level of civility if I had to go through all the comments and give many of the same responses to the same points, questions, and comments as you do.
So demanding you to be better than you are would be hypocritical of me I feel.
I just hope your sanity can continue to withstand it.
On another note, I have tried to get my philosophy teacher to watch the video, she haven't had the time yet, from what I have gleaned out of her from our relatively brief conversations, she agrees with the video more or less.
She said herself quite directly that you can't and shouldn't expect to find 'correct answers' in philosophy.
There is no doubt in my mind that she loves philosophy, yet even she acknowledges this fact, not only acknowledges it but firmly believes it.
I wish I was less aggressive too, but it's just hard not to get pissed off with some of the responses. A lot of people simply ignore the fact that these are arguments being made by professional PhD philosophers with tenured positions at prestigious universities, opting instead to dismiss it all outright as angry STEM lord ranting. Many other people just flat-out ignore the evidence/citations of the video, and often times they attribute things to me that were expressly disavowed. I would love to have a serious discussion, but it's difficult when people are so blatantly refusing to exercise a shred of charity.
@@AntiCitizenX
Oh, I am fully aware.
I have even skimmed through the entire comment section myself. It was quite.... interesting.
It is precisely because of all these half-assed, disingeniuos, not paying attention, uncharitable or even down right insulting responses that I personally believe I would not be able to consistently display the kind of restraint and civility you still manage to keep despite all of these comments and remarks.
It is why I find your patience and kindness impressive.
Patience to read so much, and respond to so much.
And kindness to despite all of these prevelant negative, unreasonable responses you are still quite restrained and civil all things considered.
Sure, you often sound snarky, angry or agressive.
Sure, you would be even more convincing if you always sounded patient, calm and sympathetic.
But honestly, I personally wouldn't be able to retain my sanity if I had to go through all of these comments like you do. So I can't demand or expect better of you without being a hypocrite.
@@knogleknuser I do the best I can, but I'm still only human. :(
I think it sounds like a philosopher's job is to refine questions. That is, they take questions that are not well-defined, and thus not answerable, and turn them into ones which are well-defined and which can thus be answered by the relevant fields. So long as people are asking questions, philosophers will always have something to do.
I'm so glad I found this channel again. I couldn't remember the name "AntiCitizenX" but I remembered your voice and animations. I also knew I would have subbed to you years back, but you have since changed the avatar and display name... but I found you.
Philosophy isn't so much arriving at answers. Rather it is concerned with framing the questions correctly so that they may be answered.
I asked a question in a philosophy of science course (more accurately, philosophy for physicists) relating to fuzzy topics involving furry creatures (biology) and was told to take a statistics course. It proved to be good advice.
That's an interesting way of putting it: "Framing the questions correctly." I like it.
@@AntiCitizenX Seems like that's part of it: Philosophy is thinking about framing questions correctly up to the point where an answer is derived at which point it becomes science, then philosophy moves on to the next unanswered question, never to be able to graduate to the level of truth but rather permanently stuck in inquiry mode.
This is a topic that needs addressing.
When Tucker Carlson interviewed Curtis Yarvin, he remarked that Curtis had written 1,000,000 words about the Cathedral.
The Cathedral is indeed interesting although I have heard say, I forget where, that apart from the term Cathedral, the idea was not new.
But Curtis has spawned a cult of ultra intellectuals who debate and promulgate Curtis's writings. I found them impenetrable and had hoped to reach a deeper understanding through his videos. But I couldn't cope with his hesitant speech delivery.
I believe that ultimately Curtis's real genius is in being able to write 1,000,000 words to elucidate a concept that can be explained in one sentence.
And that, I think, is the philosophy problem. As humans we are in possession of this thing called language. But we do not seem to be in control of language. We are in awe of language as if words by themselves can create the work of civilisation without any practical activity.
I don't know what you think to that idea.
I have recently become fascinated by the fact that Eastern civilisation has survived for so long using logograms instead of words. Chinese students seem to have a superior ability to memorise. The eastern holistic approach to medicine is being compared favourably with western analytics.
Jonathan Pageau and Jordan Peterson both talk about how the essence of western identity can only be understood through symbolic myths. Words, it seems, may have led us down a rabbit hole that is destroying us. So many so-called elite are nowadays actually only wordsmiths spouting psychobabble and soundbites. Westerners constantly misunderstand each other because words have many meanings and phrases can be ambiguous.
Perhaps easterners were wise to stop at logograms? Perhaps logograms enable a single unifying philosophy and sense of origin and identity better than words do?
The Hindu way of doing things was to mythologies words and characters themselves...
Logic dude, logic.
Logic is the purifier of lingual filth.
This video does seem to imply that the empirical verifiability of the hard sciences is somehow “better” or to be preferred over the ambiguity and indecisiveness of philosophy. But why should we assume that utility or verifiability is somehow better than ambiguity or incomprehensibility?
To argue it does, you must first build a foundation of what the good is, which is why philosophy is so convoluted. It’s almost impossible to build a foundation, and so people can never agree on anything.
The problem is that he assumes a false dichotomy to be the case. As all the hard sciences are practiced by philosophers as well. Perhaps he simply doesn't know what the letters PhD stand for.
*But why should we assume that utility or verifiability is somehow better than ambiguity or incomprehensibility?*
This question is so baffling, that I can only assume you are being sarcastic about it and trolling the philosophers.
@@AntiCitizenX my question is how you assign the adjective of “good” to that. It is not self evident from a philosophical perspective what “good” even means. So you have to define that first, and then you can say that verifiability is “good.”
The reason that I think philosophy looks to stagnate is because it is trying to answer foundational questions, whereas the hard sciences assume a foundation (like that our senses are reliable) and then proceed from there in their experiments, etc.
Assuming a foundation of thought is easy, proving one is potentially the hardest thing we can do as humans, which is why questions like “what is the nature of being” is so difficult to answer. If you’re a scientific materialist, you can just assume that matter is all there is. But to prove that assumption is a whole different ballgame.
@@Iamwrongbut *the hard sciences assume a foundation (like that our senses are reliable) and then proceed from there in their experiments, etc.*
Statements like this are common from seemingly well-educated philosophy types, and they baffle me. Just because the definition of "science" is arbitrary, that does not mean people are free to concoct whatever self-serving nonsense they like. Human beings do in fact share certain fundamental goals and values, and any attempt to deviate from those basic interests is tantamount to pure madness.
There is also a pervasive myth that science just assumes shit outright for no reason, like the uniformity of nature or cause and effect. Um... no, these are not presuppositions. They are POST-suppositions. They are very obviously things that appear to govern our experience, and so we are very much justified in assuming they will continue until shown otherwise.
I feel like the end of this video betrays the problems with it- it assumes that Philosophy operates identical to science in a way that it can be precisely quantified as right or wrong. It is like demanding that visual art and music must have objective measurements of prowess. Similar to Philosophy, in music we have some ideas about what makes "good" and "bad" music, and we can generally identify some people who are better at it than others, but trying to rigorously fit those into some objective measurement of prowess seems to make it all fall apart. We have some ideas of how we think good logic works, but even that is arbitrary (see Kurt Gödel) and can only glean information from a set of arbitrary axioms about the way we think the world should work.
If you as a scientist want just hard answers about the world according to your axioms on how it works, well... you've kinda skipped much of the philosophy part. You already have assumed your way past 90% of the questions and are trying just reason out the last bits. At that point, you're just skipping the "is-ought" distinction, because you just want to find what "is" according to what you already think "ought" to be.
A self-driving car is driving in a busy street when a child runs in front of the car. Does it hit the child, or veer off, putting its two passengers at risk? Science can tell us all sorts of quantifiable answers about this situation: the risks involved, the injuries that might happen, the speed of the car, and the predicted lifespans of the passengers. But it cannot tell us what we "should" do, not before we decide which system of morality we use to "measure" outcomes.
" But it cannot tell us what we "should" do, not before we decide which system of morality we use to "measure" outcomes."
This would be a good counter-argument, if this was a kind of answer that philosophy can give you. It can't. That's the whole point of the video.
*it assumes that Philosophy operates identical to science*
That's like the exact opposite message of this entire video. What on Earth could I have possibly said that gave you this impression?
*If you as a scientist want just hard answers about the world according to your axioms on how it works, well... you've kinda skipped much of the philosophy part.*
Did you maybe skip over the dozen citations to philosophy departments across the country whereby they openly market themselves as answer providers? I'm not the one saying that philosophy gives answers. The philosophers themselves are the ones saying it!
But simply choosing some 'system of morals' isn't philosophy. Debating whether or not things are objectively immoral is philosophy. Philosophy does try to answer the great questions of life, and these answers are either right or wrong.
@@AntiCitizenX Perhaps I misunderstood the point of your video- if your only thesis was "philosophy departments shouldn't market themselves as answer providers", I'd agree.
But if you aren't arguing that Philosophy should operate like science, why are you saying that it is "embarrassing" that Philosophy has not moved towards consensus? When you argue that nature of morality has been "solved" by economics and biologists and that dwelling on the trolley problem is useless, the implication is that Philosophy *should* have solved this issue, not unlike a *science*. (Have these other sciences found some way to bridge the is-ought gap that I haven't heard of?) You complain that Philosophy isn't "solving problems", that it is rehashing the same old questions- again, implying that it should have a direction of progress and solve problems like science.
If this is all just to the end of "Philosophy does not find truth", I can understand that, but to me it sounds like your problem with Philosophy is much deeper than that if you're saying they're "getting paid to do nothing". Your attacks seem to me to attack the field itself, that it isn't worthy of the same academic consideration because it does not have objective criteria like the sciences.
@@jandhi2043 *If your only thesis was "philosophy departments shouldn't market themselves as answer providers", I'd agree.*
It's not my only thesis, but it's a big one. :)
*why are you saying that it is "embarrassing" that Philosophy has not moved towards consensus?*
Because philosophers are the ones who market themselves as purveyors of truths and critical thinking skill.
*When you argue that nature of morality has been "solved" by economics and biologists and that dwelling on the trolley problem is useless, the implication is that Philosophy should have solved this issue*
It's not that philosophy should have solved the issue. It's that philosophy needs to keep up with the times. You would not want to take a class that treats evolution, creationism, and Lysenkoism as equally viable theories, would you?
This attitude periodically puts me off philosophy, then i see some good modern stuff, then get put off again.
It's not just philosophy that's taught this way sadly, the social sciences have an absurd preoccupation with their own history.
When I studied physics at university I spent most of the time learning stuff that was 100-300 years old, it wasn't until I started taking advanced classes that I learned about stuff from the 50s-80s. It's not just the social sciences. And at least in physics I thought it was a pretty sensible way to teach it since the more modern stuff tends to build on the older stuff. And I think they do in philosophy, too. Reading Gramsci without taking a look at Hegel first seems like a very frustrating endeavour.
In maths they taught using something I've heard called "discovery fiction" - they don't teach you how the ideas where actually developed, but a fictionalized version that gets you to the current state of the art afap and in the least circuitous way.
@@JK03011997 Having read Gramsci & Hegel… will you actually *know* anything, other than what those guys thought?
I think the main problem here is you are biased and your not aware of that. Basically you think truth should like this, Reality should be like that, and anything that goes different of you bias you cannot comprehend it. And that makes that brench bad.
Philosophy, especially continental, might be somestimes frustrating. But don't make the mistake of thinking that you cannot learn immensely by reading those authors.
@@jursamaj yes of course. Having great minds explain their thoughts to you certainly teaches you stuff. If you don't know if you agree with them or not, you don't understand them well enough
I believe there's "stagnation" because there is no longer a unified culture in the west. Now I put quotes around "stagnation" because I believe philosophy isn't meant to be a science but rather a study about being, which every newly born person has to rediscover the meaning behind being for themselves.
I think the only way we would see any sort of "progress" with philosophy is if there was a unified culture in the west; a culture where mostly everyone has agreed upon what it means to be "good or evil", and what we ought to value most in life.
Without a unified culture, we're stuck at ground zero constantly arguing over what it means to be a good person, what should an individual value most, and so on. The reason why Stoicism gained a strong footing in history is because there was enough of a unified culture for Stoicism to spread like a wildfire. So of course we should study it because it had such a large impact on the story of humanity. What could possibly be a better metric for what to study in philosophy?
This video misses the point of philosophy, specially eastern and continental traditions. The value of philosophy does not come from arriving to a consensus of what is "objectively" true and arriving to that consensus would not make philosophy as a discipline very useful. Philosophy can provide different perspectives of the human experience, often about things that may be inherently out of reach for what you call truth (perennial questions). Even so, some philosophers reject the idea of objective truth in itself. These perspectives of the human experience may be useful as they may uncover new ways of looking at the world and understanding it (systems), which may or may not translate to some sort of technical change in any field which you may view as "progress", but really, that's not an adequate yardstick.
As for your criticism about the study of philosophy being just a study of the history of philosophy, you are correct. This is the case because academic institutions understand that there is no objective way of telling which philosophy is good or bad, since that idea in itself is not compatible with the point of view mentioned above, which is somewhat of a loose consensus among schools (at least in the west). The mere idea of you trying to equate the study of philosophy to a technical profession like medicine is very funny and illustrative of how philosophy is not a technical profession and how it's not meant to be one. Just like you said, anyone can be a philosopher, it's not a matter of expertise, lmao.
I'm a big fan of your videos btw, but there is plenty of literature on this matter, do your research and make another video with a new perspective please. (Sorry for my grammar, english is not my first language).
Also, there was a period of time where many thinkers thought of philosophy to be obsolete because of new scientific developments, such as some positivists. You should read up on how that whole debate worked out if you are actually interested in philosophy in itself and not as a strawman opponent to science. I'd also recommend reading up on Foucault views of science to understand why science can "need" philosophy.
*The value of philosophy does not come from arriving to a consensus of what is "objectively" true and arriving to that consensus would not make philosophy as a discipline very useful.*
That's great if you think that, but don't you think that sacrifices any pretense to "progress?" You cannot logically claim progress if there is no standard by which to measure it. It also means that your field is necessarily going to get cluttered up with bad actors who only use it to spout propaganda. Just look at Philosophy of Religion. It's nothing but a breeding ground for apologetics. And since philosophy has no standards, there's nothing you can do about it.
I’m very glad I subscribed.
In reality, any understanding of the universe will come from observation of it. You can only go so far in thought with what you have.
And if you're living in a simulation? And, what evidence do you have that you're living in 'the real world'? Nick Bostrom nicely argued it's much more likely you're in a computer simulation (which means all your beliefs about the universe are fed to you by programmers [maybe I'm one of them! :))]...and, you're not human but a simulation of one... if humans are even actual beings).
There are quite a few philosophers who share this position, and quite a few that don't. It's definitely not self-evident. There might be synthetic a priori statements, and introspection might help clarify concepts like knowledge, justification, meaning etc.
Anyway, the statement 'any understanding of the universe will come from observation of it' is itself a statement that can NOT be proven by observation.
@@Appleblade
If this were a simulation, we would still be able to observe things about the outside world from within it. We would expect our universe to be similar to our own simulations, with cut-corners to save on power, but instead it is detailed beyond an apparent purpose to model any one thing, even though rules about efficiency and waste should apply across all possible worlds with sentient actors. We’d also expect to find inconsistencies, and as yet have found none.
Both these point to a natural, purposeless universe evolving based on consistent principles.
The only way to get out of this is to propose that the “simulators” either have far more resources/energy than we do for our simulations or the purpose of this simulation is just to model as much as possible, or both. These are both a significant decrease in likelihood though.
If their universe is different enough to ours that it allows them to casually simulate our whole universe, that implies significant differences between ours and theirs. But every simulation we’re able to do has at least superficial similarities to our world. So it’s another decrease in likelihood. We could be an abstraction of a more complicated thing, like Terraria is a 2D representation of a 3D space, but then we would expect even more to see cut-corners or inconsistencies for the sake of saving energy, which is the reason for abstraction in the first place.
So, it’s not impossible, just very unlikely. If we use our own universe as an example of what’s possible, then not even a million communicating Dyson Spheres could achieve this level of comprehensive detail in a simulation.
But we only have a sample-size of one in that regard so yeah.
@@someguy4405 So, do you think you would have free will in a simulation? And if it were possible to give agents in the simulation freedom (say, to study what they would do in various scenarios), many might be controlled. Could you tell which you were? Also, I think a good programmer could get you to add 2 and 2 and get 5 every time, and you would be fully confident that that was correct. It's easy to underestimate the power simulators have... Bostrom linked his simulation thought experiment to the near future for ease of imagining how it might work, but there's no real reason for that, and so no reason to think it would be hard for the simulators to make detecting simulation life impossible.
@@Appleblade
I have free will insofar as I can observe things and react to them, according to my emotional state, inclinations and previous experiences. That’s about as free as it gets.
There are much simpler ways of conducting psychological experiments than constructing a whole simulated universe in which living beings play a very small part, so that is extremely unlikely.
Even if I was being mind-controlled, it wouldn’t take away from the logic of the argument in my previous comment, whereas it’s really difficult to make an argument that two sets of two apples are five apples.
And if we were being controlled in the way you suggest, we wouldn’t be able to consider the possibility of being in a simulation.
All of this doesn’t take away from the fact that this universe is very likely not a simulation, given its structure and lack of focus or purpose.
I strive to be a good philosopher. It’s hard when people expect you to agree to everything they say. I think it has something to do with that “challenging ideas disturb social balance”. The hardest thing about being me is that I can’t turn it off during social encounters and it embarrasses me more than I can feel proud of it.
Adults only change their views over months, years, decades.
Accept it and be more happy.
Anyone who happen to change their mind before your own eyes had months of buildup to it.
People like that are exhausting to be around. Most people just want to relax and have a nice evening, not be constantly challenged and involved in a debate of some sort.
This comment section is a video's worth of entertainment itself.
This reminds me of the late Robert Persig in his book Lila, wherein he says Philosophy in college doesn't actually teach you how to create philosophy, but merely to study what others have created. He likened it to if you took an art degree that only studied art through the ages but never actually picked up a brush and leaned to paint (such a thing exists, but we call it art history and not art itself)
I'm no expert on Kant or Hume but as far as I know, both of them use valid arguments. An argument is valid or invalid, not more or less valid than another.
As for which philosopher withstands the most criticism, that's something up for debate. It takes someone's whole life to go through the ideas of people and they might end up wrong or partially right. What you expect from philosophy is not feasible.
Not using binary labels like "valid" or "not valid" for philosophical arguments is one of the most basic markers of a thinking person.
@@CeramicShot wait, someone who doesn't use the terms is intelligent?
@@jonathanthompson4734 Not necessarily. The point is that someone looking at arguments and the assumptions that underpin them as having relative, rather than absolute validity, is kind of a basic thing when it comes to your epistemology, or deciding what constitutes a reasonable threshold at which you believe something to be (likely enough to be) true. This is why prosecutors define what they're trying to establish as "proof beyond a reasonable doubt," not absolute proof, in criminal cases for example.
We can imagine a murder case where motive, opportunity, and intent are all clearly established for the accused, along with forensic evidence like fingerprints and DNA samples. But the "line" that defines when you're willing to say the accused is guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt" is murky and dependent on all kinds of factors, including your own cultural lens and personal experiences.
Someone claiming to have established a lens that provides "absolute validity" should throw up all kinds of red flags. We're allowed to enter the light, but not touch the flame when it comes to truth. Admitting we'll never see the whole picture is an important part of intellectual honesty.
The caveat is that, for all but the most skeptical, we can establish "markers" that improve reliability, approaching, but never reaching, a "1.0" that only perfect omniscience could have (and how could one be sure their omniscience was really total?).
Scientists and philosophers alike, at their best, tend to ground their claims by admitting the limitations of their work, inviting others to take up the torch where they left off.
@@CeramicShot The examples you listed relate to a theoretical modelling of empirical reality. Thus, when it's said that criminal justice seeks "proof beyond a reasonable doubt," they aren't only concerned with the validity of an argument (whether a conclusion would follow from the premises) but also the *soundness* of an argument (whether the premises themselves are actually true). It's possible, even inevitable, in analyzing the soundness of an argument, especially working from an empirical foundation, to admit to things like fallibilism, as well as the provisional nature of inductive conclusions, and thus admit to having only an approximate of truth found with an argument, but that is totally distinct from an argument's logical validity, which could easily be practically bisected into a binary of "valid" and "invalid."
The video essay, especially the first part, sounds like the usual complaint I hear as a philosopher instrutor from undergrads taking philo subjects as a minor or part of their course work.
As I have raised in your pinned comment, I am not sure if your complaint was that (i) the variety of positons is a sign of stagnation of academic philosophy, which makes it contradictory since how can variety be a sign of stagnation, or (ii) that the refusal of academic philosophy to prescribe to undergrads a single clear right answer, which I argue is essentialy tantamount to indoctrination, is a sign that we should not seriously learn academic philo.
Both of these are not real proof of stagnation in my opinion, but rather it works from a problematic presumption that all academic activity must have predictable output. I dont think you have made any effort to prove or at least make a case that this is how the academe as a whole SHOULD measure itself.
This presumption is seen with the problem of false analogy endemic in the video. Comparing philosophy to medicine is problematic since it fails to account for the objectives and nuances of both fields that fundamentally differentiates them as fields, the former has predictable expectations, the latter concerns itself with theory building and premise testing.
*I am not sure if your complaint was that (i) the variety of positons is a sign of stagnation of academic philosophy, which makes it contradictory since how can variety be a sign of stagnation, or (ii) that the refusal of academic philosophy to prescribe to undergrads a single clear right answer, which I argue is essentialy tantamount to indoctrination, is a sign that we should not seriously learn academic philo.*
If you are unsure, then perhaps you should try re-watching and reading the script, because I wasn't exactly vague. The mere existence of disagreement is not the issue. The inability to define the very purpose of the field itself is the issue. The tendency for philosophers to market themselves as purveyors of answers and skillsets is the issue. I even stated openly that cataloguing the variety of views is, in and of itself, a worthy goal, provided that you expressly own that as your goal.
Secondly, you seem to be under the very bizarre impression that establishment of a generally accepted consensus is tantamount to "indoctrination." Mathematicians have a consensus, but that doesn't mean we're supposed to just take the Pythagorean theorem at their word. The proof itself is part of the curriculum. Biologists have a consensus, but that doesn't mean we ignore the massive fossil record, nor does it mean we should pretend that creationism is anything other than self-serving religious propaganda.
@@AntiCitizenX It is weird for me that you insist it is not the issue when you devoted most of the middle part of your script in establishing that disagreements exist in the field and try to contrast it to other fields, which you claim have no disagreements. Then from this mere contrast you jumped with the conclusion that there is no definition in the field of philosophy, or at least no progress. This is problematic at a formal sense, you cannot yield a valid argument from the premises you made. Also because the premises you made to refer to philosophy are not consistent it is also hard to yield a sound argument.
You seem to refer to stagnation of philosophy both as a college subject (I imagine that in your country you take like a bare minimum of 4) that covers all fundamental debates to an initiate and you also use it to refer to professional philosophers who work from differing premises leading to specific conclusions which stands in opposition against one another. I dont get why you keep on insisting that an introductory class of philosophy to an outsider should be up-to-date to the latest positions without contextualizing the prominent points that led to itm Thats just bad pedagogy and akin to joing a conversation without knowing the people talking, the subject or even the language. A class in the undergrad will always be a survey of philosophers not because they are influential but because they make challenging points that simply ask you to consider experiences you take for granted. The exercise, if seriously considered, stimulate the skillsets such as critcal thinking, and like all fields a student's take from it varies wildly depending on how serious one considers the exercise. So again, at a personal level a person who let us say believe in a particular god would now have to seriously consider his assumptions when presented with varying take on the assumption. Is this not progress? Even though you did not provide any measurement that disproves that critical thinking is developed in a philo class, only a cursory survey of websites, is it not fair to consisder that the heavy lifting is found in the student that engages in the material? As an educator, I would like to point out that there are OBEs that attempts to measure these skills in the humanities in general and philosophy in particular, although it is not perfect but unless your alternative is still the surveys you did of random US websites then I supposed the opinions of experts in education that point to skillsets being developed through philosophy as subjects should have more weight.
The difference between maths and philosophy, at least at a college level, is that the axioms of maths is not socially controversial when assumed. For example, when we accept that numbers exist it does not imply that certain people have no personhood. On the other hand, insisting an axiom of how to live life because it is the truth or accept authority or limiting allowed axioms (pleasure is virtue, there is god, etc.) would lead to uncritical lifestyles and as such it stops being philosophy. This is all good in the space of contesting points such as politics but when you are a college instructor and assume an authority over people, to prescribe an axiom without teaching and engaging contestings ones is at the least irresponsible and no different from indoctrination.
Take your example how biology and economics explain prosocial behaviour, which is all and good and together with philosophers like Habermas I agree with, but the problem is that you jumped to a conclusion that this specific explanation solves once and for all the question of acceptability of harming some individuals in favour of the majority (the lever test is fundamentally asking us to consider that). Those are two different things, the former just mapped out the causes of an effect, while the latter ask us to determine the acceptability of a cause to create an effect. If you insists that all prosocial behaviour is without its problems and needs no philosophical debate as you claim then it follows that the sacrifice of the civil rights of some Afghan women in order to maintain the prosocial behaviour expected by the Taliban majority would be an uncontroversial issue. Which I hope for you is, if it is then you have to admit at that oversimplificatioj you committed.
At a professional level, I am not sure of your diagnosis of stagnation make sense since disagreements at a theoretical level is what makes philosophy develop new theories. As others had pointed out an agreement to a set of axioms limits it to it being a particular school within philosophy (i.e. empiricism, rationalism, etc.) or even become properly a scientific field. The issues you have raised such as objectivism or ethics in the video shows the variety of axioms that when assumed would lead to a particular school of thought. As I have pointed out in your pinned comment you keep working from an unjustified assumption that progress in a field only entails settling on basic questions, having a consensus, in order to progress. This ignores the form of philosophy in its own term as a field where its goal is to identify implied axioms in our interpretations and challenging and justifying defenses or alternatives for these.
@@josephg.3771 you are a philosopher instructor? May I have your advice?
@@AntiCitizenX "The tendency for philosophers to market themselves as purveyors of answers"
They don't actually fucking do that. This is a wild strawman.
"Secondly, you seem to be under the very bizarre impression that establishment of a generally accepted consensus is tantamount to "indoctrination.""
In the first few minutes of the video, you complained about philosophy being a glorified lesson on the history and taxonomy of philosophy, yet if they were to teach "consensus" whatever that is, then that's exactly what it would be. Instead, it teaches how to argue for or against these answers. You can take a class on greek philosophy to learn about it, or a class on metaphysics, etc.
Honestly, your vapid dismissal of the oldest field of study in the world (and one of the top-earning degrees out there) just strikes me as you being a le epic skeptic who would bring a calculator to a date.
@@Nebukanezzer *They don't actually fucking do that. This is a wild strawman.*
I gave you at least a half-dozen citations in this very video to prove the claim. I'm sorry, but it is extremely frustrating to attempt a conversation when you patently ignore this stuff, and it makes me doubt your willingness to engage in an honest dialogue.
Like, seriously, man, why are you even here? Do you even want to have a discussion? Or do you just enjoy wasting everyone's time? Please tell me now. If you really want to have a discussion, then it would help a lot if you just paid attention to the god-damned essay and actually acknowledged the existence of supporting data. So let's play a game, shall we? It's called *read the fucking citations.* Do you think you can do that before leveling any more wildly false accusation? Thanks.
*Honestly, your vapid dismissal of the oldest field of study in the world*
I'm sorry, but since when has "age" ever had anything to do with the capacity for an academic institution to enforce standards and make progress? I just love how you make a big show about philosophy teaching us to "argue for or against answers," only to then drop such an obvious fallacy in the very next paragraph. Did it never occur to you that "philosophy," as a dedicated field of study unto itself, didn't even exist until the last century? You also speak of "vapid dismissal," despite volumes of supporting data, which you apparently didn't even bother to read. What exactly does it take to help you acknowledge basic matters of observable fact?
Somebody got bitter after reading Hegel.
Hi, I have a master's degree in Philosophy. I will teach philosophy next year (France).
I agree for the most part with you. But I think there might have a lack of precision. As you say, there is two fundamental problems : 1/ the fact that you can say whatever you want without even proper methodology and still considered doing philosophy ; 2/ a confusion between history of philosophy and a "generalistic" philosophy.
I think these two problem work together. It is unclear when someone is doing a research in history of philosophy and someonr is doing 1 research in contemporary or generalistic philosophy. The huge problem with this lack of clarity is that, as you show, what we thought back then, often, it doesn't worl anymore. But the pretentious of some way of doing generalistic philosophy is to pretend it does.
This is a huge problem we have in France with our last year of highschool : it is inclear if this is a teaching of history of philosophy or of generalistic philosophy
Thanks for watching. I find it very bizarre how people like yourself, who are literally "professional" philosophers, can watch this presentation and say "yup, that's about right." Then another weirdo will watch this is call me an ignorant buffoon STEM-lord. I think it definitely shows how deep the problem is.
@@AntiCitizenX My message went but I didn't wrote everything I wanted to say.
As I said, the first problem from my pov is the confusion between history of philosophy and a generalistic philosophy. Often, what some people are doing when they're practicing philosophy is a history of philosophy. Which are two things completely different. What such confusion is possible ? There are a lot of reasons. The first one if the way philosophy is taught. As you say, we taught history of philosophy. But is reasonnable because it is exepected that a philosophy professor must understand the way the concept articulate with each other - and it comes from history. But as a professor said to me while I was student "The one who thinks that what Descartes said is true is a fool". And that is the first problem : so many times students who become professor themselves don't even have the basics to recognize this fact. This is the first problem, which is, by my pov, a huge problem. The point we are supposed to understand is that some problems of the past of relevant today. This is both the crucial aspect of history of philosophy and the point of confusion.
The second problem is the lack of scientific knowledge in the philosophical teaching. Tthere is history of science, epistemology and the whole world of interdisciplinarity between philosophy and other science that are not established enough. While these academics philosophers are often brilliant and have results. So I think it is important to see this : philosophy isn't useless but its utility and pertinence is overshadowed (sorry for my english) by a old way of doing philosophy. I hope it will change. Because I believe in the importance of philosophy and it's usefulness. But the state of philosophy is very problematic as you said.
At last, I disagree with the exemple you choose. I don't know the situation in the other university in the world, but in France this guy would be completely destroyed. There is a difference between whole stupidity and confusion. And this guy is whole stupidity. The fact that he has some recognition is, I think, more a political problem than a philosophical problem. It is a problem we also saw, during this pandemic, with the medical field. It is important that our critic doesn't fall in ridicule.
At the end, history of philosophy is a valuable learning, as much as other history class. The problem is the confusion in the practice between history and philosophy and the ignorance of the philosophical field to know about science. At the same time, I'm sorry if I say "not all philosophy/philosophers" and it might be rdiculous but I deeply believe that philosophy as an important value, both as a knowledge and has a discipline.
This feels like what the court attacking Socrates would argue.
"even the word itself, philosophy, is a terribly ill-defined concept. to demonstrate, just ask yourself : what is philosophy ?"
I know, man. I know. I literally have more than twenty hours of classes this semester on this very topic. already four hours in, and we've finished the introduction.
3 seconds is the shortest time I’ve ever seen a video been uploaded from.
"Someone wrote a 80 page essay that is recognized by the profession as really good, I don't agree with the conclusion so it means that everyone is wrong and stupid"
It is entirely right, reasonable, and proper to label you a jackass without any evidence or argument at all. That's basically Plantinga's argument in a nutshell, dingus.
King Crocoduck's channel has been putting out videos on philosophy and science that sync up well with this one.
Is he still uploading? I haven't seen anything from him in years.
@@davidhoffman6980 He's put out a couple in the last couple of months.
So glad you're still making videos!
why? are you the caretaker of this ret@rd?
The easy part: a professional philosopher designs a standard by which to define philosophy, discern who is doing it right, etcetera. The hard part: getting the broader philosophical community to agree on any one such standard.
The easy part has been done since ancient times (see the discourses of Epictetus)- and probably has been done many times over. He had a standard by which to discern an actual philosopher from what he called a grammarian (by which he probably meant literary critic) - but the problem is, how many of the people in your local philosophy department will accept his standard?
And if you ask one of those who disagree to give their alternative standard (and manage to get an actual answer) then how many _other_ people in the department will agree with them?
And if you pool together all the answers you get - which one of them is “official”? How would you even determine that?
What I am trying to explain is why even people who agree with your need for such a universal standard may have trouble producing one for you.
I agree, and that is a major problem. There is a huge population of philosophers who depend on that ambiguity to promote misinformation and propaganda.
@@AntiCitizenX that’s not the point
@@AntiCitizenX - True. But even if you take _just_ the ones who _do_ want there to be such a definition (however few they may be) -- they probably will not agree with each other _what_ that definition should be.
Exactly. The nature of philosophy does not allow for the type of consensus this youtuber is talking about. And I think the actual problem is that he believes that philosophy actually wants to be taken seriously in the same way that the sciences are taken seriously.
That's because philosophy does not have a method of settling disagreements when propositions are seemingly equally reasonable, and when it did, it became science!
I told someone thats why people donate to science departments and not philosophy departments.
That's not really true. There are no former philosophical questions that became questions of science when there were methods of verifying or falsifying answers. We are still debating the same issues as plato, largely. Philosophy never became science. And its not at all true that philosophy doesn't have a method of choosing between contradicting, reasonable positions. In theory, it's pretty simple. You put forward an argument for a position, and it's either correct or it isn't. The method consists in testing for logical rigor. In praxis, it's of course way more difficult, but that's due to the nature of the questions.
The intro to this video also describes how I felt going to a conservatory.
The major difference is that you spend most of that time learning compositional music practices (Western Music Theory, starting from Counterpoint and moving up from there), and then you get to the 20th century and the whole thing gets discarded in favor of whatever prescriptive system your favorite school of composition came up with to replace it.
It makes sense for performers, since knowing the composer's thought process helps to know how to perform it, but if you're a composition major some 75% of your education is something you're expected to avoid relying on.
To be fair (I'm a working musician with a degree, not a professional composer though), every composer has their style, yes, but a good composer has to have that academic understanding of history and the various styles and practises, so you understand where the compositional trends prevalent now come from. That part is maybe the same with philosophy, but here's the big thing: knowing that stuff in the arts has practical application. It gives more tools in your toolbox (so to speak) to use in your work as you see fit. If your teachers are telling you to ignore most of it, they are very set in their ways, and frankly, not very good teachers.
Knowing the roots of your art is also a major boost to your professional credibility. Otherwise, why even study it? A degree is (sadly, imho) not necessarily required to be a successful composer. I guess this could digress into a whole other topic on what is the point of arts degrees, but that's maybe for some other forum :D
EDIT: Thanks for the upload AntiCitizenX! Good to see you back!
@@ascanbe3321
A degree is, in fact, not required to compose.
There is a definite history behind what is traditionally thought of as 'classical' music, but at the turn of the 20th century there was an active attempt by the Serialists to divorce themselves from the structure of traditional music theory. Since then it's basically been a free-for-all.
I took three years of Philosophy and Theologica study back in the 1990's--it was meaningless. I had asked one of my instructors what the function of this study was and why so many of us were taking the same classes. she brushed me off saying, "we are all here to learn the one and only truth."
So what is the only truth?
Apparently the only truth is that the Moron interpretation of Jewish history is the history of everything.
My teacher was nuts. In her own class she pointed out something that should have unwound the universe for her, if she noticed what she had done. She spent all of 30 seconds explaining that--the Jews adapted most of their history from the Samarians and the Zeasudra. If that is true, and I suspect it is, then clearly, Christianity is at the very least incomplete--and most surely wrong. You can not take two lies and find the only truth.
It would not be until years latter I would find the answer I was looking for, "What is the function of Philosophy and Theology?"
Philosophy should be:
*The study of knowledge and how it is gathered.
*An examination of data and the tools to find and understand it
*Introspection on the relationship and responsibilities of; ones self, our interactions with each other, our environment, our leaders and our place in the universe.
*An explanation of where we have been and where we are going, as well as, a debate in the speculation of what we have learned and what we expect to learn.
Good philosophy should:
*Help us understand the world we live in; how and why things are done the way they are.
*Challenge authority.
*Build civilizations and advance our growth.
decades of studies have lead me to believe the best philosopher would be:
*A skeptic
*A humanist
*A naturalist
*An atheist
*An academic
I have never met a good philosopher.
Well said!
One cannot be both a skeptic and a humanist or naturalist.
8:30 the worst part is that, when other fields solve philosophical problems, philosophers stubbornly refuse to accept it's been solved, playing word games to pretend it's an open question; any phrasing of questions that can be answered, or any method that can answer the questions, ceases to be philosophy.
Can you give an example? Because the one from the video is almost notorious. Like the classic philosophical question is "what is morality" and then economists and evolutionary psychologists say "we found that altruistic behaviour can be naturally selected for". One clearly doesn't answer the other. Like 1 - who said altruism is the same as morality? 2 - even if all that is required to be moral is some amount of altruism, who said that all of that was selected for?
Another common example is Bells theorem disproving determinism. But A: bells theorem still allows for non-local hidden variable theories (they are just not commonly used and afaik non of them are lorentz invariant yet). And more importantly B: a physics experiment (as described by popper and most working experimentalist groups) only ever finds that "us seeing this result and the laws of physics being like that would be this improbable". But if your null hypothesis is determinism it doesn't matter - you say I have a 1/100 million chance of winning the lottery, so it's stupid to play, but if you believe you are destined to win, it would be stupid not to, no matter how bad the odds.
@@JK03011997 - the example kinda rubbed me the wrong way too. However, the things those scientists have answered are things philosophers did used to argue about. There are other things ethical terms refer to, but science did answer some of the ethical questions.
Chemistry solved a host of metaphysical questions that were once deemed unanswerable about the nature of matter, physics solved others about the nature of time/space, neuroscience is answering questions about the mind (often by proposing answers that philosophers never even considered). I suspect that a lot that remaining questions considered philosophical either consists of ill-formed questions (they could be answered if phrased in a testable way) or questions that seem meaningful but aren't if you examine their grammar (if anything remains of morality, it seems to rely on "objective" values existing, which might be meaningless...if it's all subjective states, then descriptive science telling us where those came from really has solved it all).
@@WorthlessWinner I meant: can you give a specific example of one of them?
I'd be most happy if it was from a field I'm literate in (physics, maths or basic chemistry)
but is reality really real for real derp derp derp. FU--!@%##%@! hard solipsism ruins *everything*
@@JK03011997 Oh man, kinetic theory of gases is what you're looking for! (Nyhof 1988 has a good summary). Boltzmann and others found a model for explaining the thermodynamic properties of gases that wasn't purely phenomenological (the origin of thermodynamics). They postulated the existence of unseen atoms, but were opposed strongly by Ernst Mach and other positivists on the philosophical grounds that there is no reality outside our sense perceptions. So they argued that even if atoms could be imagined in order to explain data, they were purely a metaphysical construct and not only couldn't be proven to exist, but could not exist; the model of "the thing" could never be the thing. These positivist objections were made even as kinetic theory was making and validating predictions about thermodynamics (like the ratio of specific heats in atomic vs molecular gases).
What's remarkable about this example, is that it mirrors the is/ought debate in many ways. Just like philosophers are certain the "is/ought" problem is a firewall that prevents scientific contribution to morality, these 19th century positivists were utterly convinced that no mechanistic theory could ever map to an underlying reality. And in the same way a philosopher could argue a scientific model of morality's origins doesn't really advance the project of normative philosophical ethics, a Positivist could nit-pick and say that despite the demonstrable utility of 100 years of quantum theory, it's really just an elaborate "fit to the data" and we cannot say for certain whether it is "real" or might eventually be replaced entirely by a more compelling model that merely follows the experiments.
Is that person technically right? Maybe...but does it matter? Clearly adopting quantum theory as reality was not a mistake. Likewise, if science could demonstrate how to eliminate most suffering in human society, does it matter if those actions are grounded in some cosmic normative Truth? Only in the most elaborate and unlikely circumstances. And that's really just blatant pedantry, a "philosophy of the gaps" that restricts itself to ever more esoteric and unanswerable questions. A cynic might say these philosophers "don't make progress" because they are actively defining philosophy to be, be definition, useless.
This is one of the more frustrating videos I've watched.
I was hoping to hear some criticism of the state of contemporary philosophy that amounts to something more than "science = good, philosophy = dumb" and what I got wasn't much more sophisticated than that. Of course academic philosophy has generally agreed upon standards (e.g. logical validity, soundness, consistency, internal coherence, understanding of sources etc.) and papers are regularly rejected or given bad grades if they fail to abide by them.
What do you think philosophers spend all that time arguing about if not how well each other's arguments hold up to these standards? It just turns out that there can be several mutually incompatible views on a given matter that are nonetheless plausible and logically self-consistent and therefore philosophically respectable.
Ironically, your own video wouldn't hold up to these standards.
I was particularly surprised by your seeming assertion that the nature of morality has been explained by biology and that this somehow renders all of moral philosophy obsolete. How exactly is biology supposed to provide an answer to the trolley problem? You're attempting to derive an ought claim from an is claim. This is a textbook naturalistic fallacy and I'm honestly amazed you wouldn't realise that. But I suppose that's what happens when you aren't educated in the field you're attempting to dismiss.
*How exactly is biology supposed to provide an answer to the trolley problem?*
This dude is a hardcore positivist STEM-lord. You know he's just going to uncritically assume a utilitarian position on the trolley problem, then get all confused and mad when you question his utilitarianism.
*Of course academic philosophy has generally agreed upon standards (e.g. logical validity, soundness, consistency, internal coherence, understanding of sources etc.) and papers are regularly rejected or given bad grades if they fail to abide by them.*
That is objectively not true, and I demonstrated quite clearly in this presentation.
*What do you think philosophers spend all that time arguing about if not how well each other's arguments hold up to these standards?*
Well, for starters, I gave you at least six citations to journal articles from PhD philosophers who argue that philosophy does not make progress. You ask questions that were very much answered by the presentation, my friend.
*It just turns out that there can be several mutually incompatible views on a given matter that are nonetheless plausible and logically self-consistent and therefore philosophically respectable.*
Are you saying that the ultimate standard of a "good" philosophical theory is self-consistency? Is it not self-consistent to hold to the proposition that this is a very low standard by which to measure progress in a field? By your very own argument, this entire video is now perfectly good philosophy, and your criticism is officially debunked. Nicely done.
@@williamcurt7204 I don't know where you think you studied philosophy, but in grown-up-land the use of ad-hominem arguments is generally considered poor taste. I suggest you go back and study proper philosophy before attempting any further criticisms. Thanks.
@@AntiCitizenX *That is objectively not true, and I demonstrated quite clearly in this presentation.*
No, what you demonstrated is that you don't know what you are talking about. You skimmed over the introduction to a book on metaphilosophy (which you clearly didn't read), and then cobbled together a bunch of papers that confirmed your own biases. Your entire paper has 28 citations. Do you seriously imagine that you can meaningfully critique an entire field with such an incredibly limited number of sources, especially when most of them aren't even books or papers written by philosophers? I have one philosophy book, *ONE BOOK* , sitting next to me ("real essentialism, by David Oderberg). That book is about just *ONE* topic within the field of philosophy, Essentialism. That book has nearly 200 citations. That book probably took Oderberg years to write. It's incredibly carefully argued, deals with criticisms, and engages in orderly scholarship. And yet, here you are, making such an incredibly small minded critique of an *ENTIRE FIELD* you know next to nothing about, all on the basis of little more than 2 dozen citations.
Have some epistemic humility.
@@AntiCitizenX Also: If you think I'm smearing you, do tell us: how does science solve the trolley problem? If you don't just assume a utilitarian position on the problem, then tell us: do you pull the lever or not?
I would love to see you a video only bashing on Plantiga
Oddly enough, plantinga saved philosophy in a sense. If I can find the video I would send it 😭
I actually like Plantiga
Just as philosophy replaced theology, science is replacing philosophy.
Philosophy existed before theology.
@@thomaswest4033 absolutely. I should have been clearer. I was referring to modern philosophy (17th century +).
HAHAHAHA, that will never happen
btw, you have a shitty understanding of modern philosophy, it didnt replace theology
@@aspektx I'm not sure what the comparison would be there. Theology is more similar to classical studies imo. (Using archaeology, though very rarely. As well as trying to understand one particular Bible, Quran or Tanakh,)
Philosophy can overlap with theology, as well as... Any subject. So, what's the comparison? In what way is philosophy replacing theology?
I think the largest problems with trying to answer the "What do mean by that, how do you know that, and why should anyone care?" questions is that by answering them we end up solidly inside already established fields, for example with the answers:
- "[long list of exact definitions], empirical study of real-life cause-and-effect relations, and because the consequence of an action follow", then we have the natural scientific fields (physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy, etc)
- "what the manual says, direct deduction from previous facts, and because we can apply it in practice to do some pretty nifty stuff", then we have the technical scientific fields (engineering, electronics, medicine, ecology, architecture, logistics, etc)
- "what people wrote about, by comparing lots of diverse records, and because it tells us a lot about how our society got here", then we have the cultural scientific fields (history, literature, classical arts, language studies, religious history and practice, statecraft, military theory, etc)
- "how it affects populations and individuals, by inferences from established records and by controlled empirical surveys, and because understanding humans is pretty important for building a society for humans to live and prosper in", then we have the social scientific fields (sociology, moral philosophy, economy, psychology, psychiatry, social psychology, legal studies, justice philosophy, education philosophy, criminal philosophy, welfare philosophy, theology, etc)
That is to say, "Philosophy but with articulated definitions, clear standards, and practical reasoning" are already fields that exists: all the various forms of applied philosophy. That is, _Science_.
Personal side-note: in high school my twin sister took philosophy as an extra subject for a year, and we were both very disappointed by how not only could all the philosophies and doctrines they talked about be refuted and poked holes in, but that we could do it by things we studied in middle school. Scientific theory, civics, and language ed has gotten so far ahead they aren't even comparable any more.
Do philosophy to learn how to ask the right questions, turn to science for the right answers.
Interesting. I like it.
Look up the problem of induction
Naive
Thank you for continuing to put out content. It is appreciated!
Thank you for watching!
The way I see it, philosophy is supposed to be a sort of dialogue regarding these so-called "deep questions" spanning centuries now- there is a need to study the contributions of contributors long dead, because they aren't around to explain themselves, and their contributions are not necessarily all that outdated. Further it is vital for students to be brought up to speed with where the dialogue has been and how it got to where it is now, because we don't need another Plato explaining the forms, so best to educate aspiring philosophers on major and influential ideas that have been tried out before.
The stagnation you point out seems to be partly a refusal by the current participants in the dialogue to remove bad ideas from the discussion (Like I have no clue why there are still Hegelian philosophers around- the premise of post-modernism functionally precludes Hegel) This leads to an issue of clutter- there is so much trash in the present dialogue, that actually making a breakthrough is damn near impossible.
*a refusal by the current participants in the dialogue to remove bad ideas from the discussion*
I agree! You could even add the refusal to insert more good ideas to take their place.
@@AntiCitizenX But what is “good” and what is “bad”? Who decides that? The only way to do it is debate it out. Unfortunately religion had a huge head start in prestige, and one of the problem is not with philosophy but with philosophers, and academics (better in science now, came a long way) we the obsession of prestige over actual content. People with prestige can make claims they are not experts (see Craig in Cosmology, and Tyson on Philosophy) and get away with them. While people on RUclips make valid and sound critics, and having done the reading and research that would make some Masters Student look lazy, are ignored.
The problem is not philosophy is meaningless like you describe in the video (unless by “meaningless” you mean because it literally is important to everything trying to define it using a specific definition it is pointless), but many influential philosophers are not getting the fair share of criticism like newer and modern philosophers do just by being older (not age but you know what I mean.)
@@DarthAlphaTheGreat Exactly, what are the 'good' ideas? From my experience studying philosophy, the worst ideas are the ones put forward in the past 100 years. We'd do much better to study Plato. Modern science is the bastard child of philosophy and by far the most significant product. Yet it's almost ignored as a philosophy.
@@donjindra What ideas would you say are the worst ones, and why do you think they're bad?
@@thek2despot426 There's a bunch. You could start with the logical positivists. Their philosophy undermines itself. Much of analytic philosophy tries to raise the trivial into the profound. Poststructuralism is either silly or nonsensical. The "philosophy of mind" is riddled with poor thinking (For example, how can so-called philosophers waste so much time on flawed 'thought experiments' like p-zombies or Mary's Room?).
This problem is not exclusive to philosophy, though. All the soft sciences have similar problems.
No absolute truths, beliefs are based on perspective, with unconscious power consideration.
Philosophy means seeking your own truth, philosophy is lived not preached.
Could anyone ever tell you the path you had to take, to come to this world? Of course not, you had to travel that road alone.
Nobody assures you that only the right path, can lead you to the target, there are also convenient detours.
When you read, you borrow a mask so you can show your inner face, but alone you will face the loneliest nights, the darkest abysses.
There is still hope for philosophy.
Philosophy will emerge from the depths of the underground.
“correct philosophical thought”
Yes, thank you for copy/pasting three random words out of context from the video.
@@AntiCitizenX
You’re welcome.
But all this did not prevent the Hegelian system from covering an incomparably greater domain than any earlier system, nor from developing in this domain a wealth of thought, which is astounding even today. The phenomenology of mind (which one may call a parallel of the embryology and palaeontology of the mind, a development of individual consciousness through its different stages, set in the form of an abbreviated reproduction of the stages through which the consciousness of man has passed in the course of history), logic, natural philosophy, philosophy of mind, and the latter worked out in its separate, historical subdivisions: philosophy of history, of right, of religion, history of philosophy, aesthetics, etc. - in all these different historical fields Hegel labored to discover and demonstrate the pervading thread of development. And as he was not only a creative genius but also a man of encyclopaedic erudition, he played an epoch-making role in every sphere. It is self-evident that owing to the needs of the “system” he very often had to resort to those forced constructions about which his pigmy opponents make such a terrible fuss even today. But these constructions are only the frame and scaffolding of his work. If one does not loiter here needlessly, but presses on farther into the immense building, one finds innumerable treasures which today still possess undiminshed value. With all philosophers it is precisely the “system” which is perishable; and for the simple reason that it springs from an imperishable desire of the human mind - the desire to overcome all contradictions. But if all contradictions are once and for all disposed of, we shall have arrived at so-called absolute truth - world history will be at an end. And yet it has to continue, although there is nothing left for it to do - hence, a new, insoluble contradiction. As soon as we have once realized - and in the long run no one has helped us to realize it more than Hegel himself - that the task of philosophy thus stated means nothing but the task that a single philosopher should accomplish that which can only be accomplished by the entire human race in its progressive development - as soon as we realize that, there is an end to all philosophy in the hitherto accepted sense of the word. One leaves alone “absolute truth”, which is unattainable along this path or by any single individual; instead, one pursues attainable relative truths along the path of the positive sciences, and the summation of their results by means of dialectical thinking. At any rate, with Hegel philosophy comes to an end; on the one hand, because in his system he summed up its whole development in the most splendid fashion; and on the other hand, because, even though unconsciously, he showed us the way out of the labyrinth of systems to real positive knowledge of the world. (F. Engels, «Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy», 1888)
Hegel makes a man theist
I think what you need the most is exactly displayed in the video, and that is answers. People who view things strictly in a scientific way always need "absolute answers" and are very unfconfortable with things being "blurry". By wanting a unanymous answer, you're striping us of our uniqueness. It's like asking everyone to always use the same equation to get an answer, when there is an infinite amount of equations to get to it. The thing is, both approaches are correct. Scientists usually like to boil things down to their "essence", and I beleive philosophers do that as well, but with the mind. They study the mind like no one else, open up new perspectives, give you answers which lead to never ending questions.
philosophy
The more rules you set, the more you can make sense of your surroundings, but the more you strip away your freedom. I think you're lacking the sensitivity that most philosophers have, and you've chosen the rational approach to things, which most people do, but we need people to balance things out. That's how the world works. Nature regulates itself, and having answers set in stone is making everyone the same, it's killing our uniqueness. Philosophers understand the raw nature of men, they sort of have "no filter", or they've adopted different ones, but ultimately since they know just how fucked up humans really are, they usually kill the ego in a very special way, while inflating it, and deliver great things and perspectives in return.
The thing is, deep down existence makes no sense. All the meaning you've given to life is personal, and founded on so many different things. Really, the simple fact that we exist is MIND BOGGLING into itself.Your perception is unique to you. So is your reality. I think a research scientistt's worst nightmare would probably be to solve everything. It's the mystery revealing process that's fascinating. The more you limit your variables, to simplify the equation, the more things you ignore for it to make sense.
You should view philosophers as mad scientists, who try to make sense of something way more complicated than quantum physics (the mind), with extremely blurry rules, and constantly changing variables. The only tool at their disposal is "numbers", so words in this metaphors. Since the variables are constantly changing, and there are not really many rules, all they can do is give the answers to some of what they think they've solved. But, ultimitaley if you're seeking the advancement of human kind, you need to understand what bothers us all the most, the mind. And that is the torment/delight every philosopher deals with. If science could answer all our problems, you can bet your bottom dollar that depression wouldn't be so high, no one would go see shrinks, no one would abuse meds, no one would kill, murder, steal. You are not a machine, you are human. Even pshycopaths are driven by instincts. If you don't understand that, all the science in the world will never do you good.
You should really take a good look at your video from a different set of eyes. All the things you dismiss as "useless" are crucial. Don't forget your primal need for answers for the most basic of questions, and that scientists can sometimes be completely convinced of a theory only for a new one to destroy it altogether. That's what philosophers do, but they've broken down their ego because they understand just how much nothing makes sense. You exemplify one of the worse problem society has today. You are forgetting you're just human, absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of existence and the universe. You're forgetting how little and insignificant everyone is. You're imposing way to many rules just to get results. Tangible results are not always the best things. People like you limit our minds, and philosophers fight against that to broaden them. We need both. Just remember, next time you're grieving over a death or another strong emotion, philosophy will probably be a better temporary solution than a math problem.
*By wanting a unanymous answer, you're striping us of our uniqueness.*
wat?
@@AntiCitizenX The mind isn't as simple as science. There literally cannot be one unique answer for broad questions about existence and all concepts linked outside the tangible real world. Why does their necessarily have to be one answer? What rule states their can't be infinite answers? You want everyone to think the same way by adapting a single definition. instead of letting the realm of possibilities be. I really feel like you're too pragmatic and rigid, but maybe I'm completely wrong or misunderstanding you too.
@Maximal And when everyone used to think the earth was flat, they all agreed on a single equation, with a single answer, while still being wrong. General consensus does not always mean that it is the right answer. Things can often be proven or disproven. As our understanding of science grows, the more we learn, the more theories have a chance to be proved wrong. The same goes for the mind. And for the advice, I am all the things you mentioned, but I definietly value my beleifs above the former. All of those things are determined by my beleifs. Pretty shitty logic you suggested according to me.
What have I ever done to deserve such a treat.
Weil studied Plato. Brouwer studied Kant. Weyl studied Heidegger. Perhaps I am simple minded but it seems reasonable to suppose that those who call questions like "What is the nature of Being?" banal (9:53) are also likely to find notions like cobordism banal. Not a good look, Hawking or otherwise.
Sounds like you didn’t pay attention.
@@AntiCitizenX I watched the video twice. I was left with the impression that your approach to truth retains the unreflective aspects of Christian culture.
Stephen Hawking's animation had to visualize that it face palmed since it's paralyzed. So accurate to the reality. Rip Steve H.
At my university I had one mandatory semester of philosophy which I honestly think is a good idea but horribly executed.
When we were taught the material, we had to read translated excerpts for old texts that were extremely obtuse, and our tasks were to summarize the ideas in the exerpt, which makes sense if you want to teach people how to understand badly written texts, but not if you want to give people a framework to make their own philosophical conclusions.
But what's worse, is that the exam consisted entirely of getting the name of a person, philosophy, or some specific idea within one philosophy, then having to remember what that is and explain their ideas without being able to read up on what they've said. No arguing for or against something, no understanding texts, just flat out memorization.
Wow, I was not expecting to see you here
I mean, I don't know a lot about you, then again, so it figures
Lots of cringe in this video.
To start with, it is incredibly important for undergrads to study the history of philosophy, cuz as any philosopher will tell you, philosophy is a tradition that of people conversing with each other for thousands of years. In order for anything that you say on a given topic to be worth a damn, you NEED to immerse yourself in that tradition. Before you can respond to someone’s position on a particular problem, you need to know who they were addressing, and how they got to their position. Context is so important, it actually can sometimes totally change the meaning of an argument. This means having a basic understanding of what everyone thinks before going to specialize in a particular field. Your video on mathematical platonism is actually a perfect example of why it’s imperative to establish a cursory understanding of the history of philosophy. Absolutely none of your points landed, because none of them addressed any reasons professional philosophers had given for believing in mathematical objects.
Another thing, philosophical “progress” isn’t really easy to evaluate, partially because to laymen, the surface level of these theories really do look basically the same over the last thousands of years. However, to anyone who has actually read even just a little bit more in depth, there is an understanding that subsequent iterations of theories improve upon problems of previous ones. Examples are like super specific theories of epistemic justification. You can pick between a coherentist framework, or a foundationalist framework, as 2 basic kinds of theories. These initial theories were formulated as a response to Aristotles argument that there can be no knowledge (this wasn’t exactly his argument, but it’s irrelevant). There are now families of theories known as coherence justification theories, as an example. These conceptualize coherence justification as either a set of principles, or in terms of probability functions (though their semantics are different from probability functions). Each subsequent theory improves upon some aspects of older versions, sometimes with unifying virtues of 2 theories.
Last point, yes, science is (sort of) a philosophy. In fact most modern philosophers would argue that science has given us our best foundation for knowledge. However, science as it is practiced today is better conceptualized as an institution which rests on an emphasis on certain meeting philosophical principles of empiricism. You can do science all you want, but that tells you nothing about what it is reasonable to believe about the results of scientific experiments, or the logical structure of scientific theories. That is something for philosphers.
And finally, no, philosophers aren’t glorified cultural curators, if you think That, I have serious doubts that you’ve engaged with any sort of contemporary philosophy. Modern philosophy is incredibly technical, and particularly in analytic philosophy, is often concerned with problems with direct applications to science, computation, mathematics, etc.
*To start with, it is incredibly important for undergrads to study the history of philosophy*
Please point to the exact moment in this video where it was ever said or implied otherwise.
*However, to anyone who has actually read even just a little bit more in depth, there is an understanding that subsequent iterations of theories improve upon problems of previous ones.*
So you believe that philosophical progress should be measured by the improvement in conceptual clarity, rather than determination of correctness? Golly, it's almost like you agree with me!
*You can do science all you want, but that tells you nothing about what it is reasonable to believe about the results of scientific experiments, or the logical structure of scientific theories. That is something for philosphers.*
First off, what you say is highly debatable and almost certainly false. Scientists definitely have rules for interpreting the results of experiments and evaluating logical structure; far more so than mere philosophers, in fact. Secondly, if what you say is true, then by all means, please point me to the references wherein philosophers have decisively answered those questions in such a way as to garner consensus within the field and beyond.
*And finally, no, philosophers aren’t glorified cultural curators, if you think That, I have serious doubts that you’ve engaged with any sort of contemporary philosophy.*
Every modern textbook on some philosophical subject or another is almost always a history or survey. The fact that you fail to recognize this fact only seems to indicate that you literally haven't read any. So please, do not pretend to lecture me on something that is not even remotely a matter of controversy. The overwhelming majority of claims in this essay are shared by modern philosophers, and I even ripped off much of the language from their very own books and lectures.
*Modern philosophy is incredibly technical, and particularly in analytic philosophy, is often concerned with problems with direct applications to science, computation, mathematics, etc.*
Being "concerned with problems" is not the same thing as following established guidelines for evaluating those problems and determining whether or not the problem has been solved. The total lack of consensus in the field is an immediate falsification against that proposition.
lol
@@AntiCitizenX I don't think you have quite understood what philosophy serves. There is no correctness and it doesn't serve a so called "end". The word philosophy comes from the Greek language and means study of thought. It is implied that philosophy is not preoccupied with examining right or wrong as all philosophers have their own ideas. This is especially true as time passes. Plato's ideas are not wrong because they're old. It is in fact extremely important to separate Science and Philosophy as one has an actual meter and can determine if something is right, the other is simply a discussion on problems that have been posed. And to study the history of that discussion is as essential as to partaking in it. This is because to understand modern philosophy you have to understand old philosophy, just as to understand algebra you have to understand simple math.
@@AntiCitizenX also no problem will truly be ever solved in philosophy as it would mean that we all think the same way.
@@AntiCitizenX actually let me clarify, philosophy is interested in determining right or wrong but there is actually no right or wrong idea just as there is no real answer for questions like, "why do we live?". There is a part of philosophy interested in determining right or wrong in human behaviour, "ethics", and one determining right and wrong in science, "epistemology".
I think my favorite aspect of this video is that it's elicited such derision from some people, yet most of those censuring the video aren't even bothering to mount a defense and those that do resort to comparing the legitimacy of philosophy to other humanities like art.
To be honest, I think the only major criticism I have would be that consensus within a field is a valuable measure of its progress only to the extent that people in the field are self-policing and willing to continuously challenge existing ideas. For example. I imagine you'll find a lot of consensus in the field of economics, but I would argue that people in that field are remarkably uncritical about many core ideas and rely too much on pre-existing concepts that have an ideological basis, rather than an evidentiary one. In contrast, molecular biologists constantly re-test each other's data and observation in new ways to refute, further validate, or clarify the interpretations.
Philosophy is, in essence, a legacy admission to higher education.
Socrates refusing to write down his philosophy out of fear his words would become dogmatic makes sense in current times where the field largely teaches you what past philosophers thought instead of a more independent process.
I see a huge portion of dislikes to this take, yet not much of it is represented in the comments section. For sure not as much counter arguments as expected to be in response to a vid with such likes/dislikes ratio.
So unless AntiCitizenX is deleting comments, which I'm highly doubt, you can tell that many "Philosophers" got pretty triggered by this take, yet could barely raise and formalize what their objection is exactly; well, except for a mute, childish protest, anonymously damaging the vid's rank 🤦🏼♀️
Transparency:
I myself actually disagree with some points made, yet I can appreciate the quality of the content itself; whether it's wholly affirmative for me or not.
As for my ~3 primary objections (not a nitpicking, but some specific points; as overall I think I lean towards AnticitizenX position on it), I'm not a Philosopher, so.. yeah I'd need some time formulating it.
Maybe I'll find some time later on and add my comment on it, by hey: at least I didn't just dislike it and bailed 😄
There seems to be a very large community of young males who treat philosophy as some kind of outlet for displaying their intellectual superiority against others. Content like this the triggers them hard by revealing the insecurity. At least, that is my hypothesis for the moment.
If you want evidence-informed answers to such questions as: 'how should I live in order to be happy?' or 'what is the nature (or characteristics) of the good life?' then the emerging field of positive psychology will likely be helpful. Sure, some clinical psychology too. And for some evidence-based approaches to becoming less unhappy - including clinical levels of unhappiness, depression and anxiety - then CBT and Mindfulness based approaches are proving helpful. Now Cognitive therapy was/is informed by Stoicism. And mindfulness based CBT and e.g. compassionate mind therapy was/is informed by Buddhism. So you could argue that some 'strands' or 'schools' of philosophy have 'evolved' and can provide answers, and have moved on to some consensus. Partly by finding a way to separate the ancient nonsense from the ancient wisdom.
An awful lot of today's therapy has links back to the likes of descartes and spinoza through the embodied question. Like you said, mindfulness can be traced to philosophical roots. Meditation was largely a spiritual practice which was looked down apon by the lay man and stem-positivist schools of thoughts which has more recently shown to be incredibly beneficial by science - despite philosophy espousing its importance for awhile.
Sorry, I liked your comment and wanted to add my 2 cents 🥰
"Philosophy needs a philosophy" is a great perscription.
like a propaedeutic of philosophy? read Kant.
@@user-mi5hk9ih9b i have
@@ozymandias360 evidently. It's been a while since I have, could you remind me where Kant endorses dogmatism?
There is much philosophy of philosophy.
I drop out of college philosophy classes twice for both the philosophy teachers pushing an ideology forward. One was pushing their love of movies and integrated that within the class, kind of confusing a number of us when it came to classroom discussions. The other philosopher was a Christian who was biased from the get go on how he was gonna teach.
It felt like I learn more philosophizing on the job and overthinking. They genuinely need a overhaul on the system of teaching philosophy.
They should be guiding conversations about topics of what the philosophers taught and not the history facts about them.
A whole class talking about forms, or going through the Socrate method would have been so more impactful than looking at a PowerPoint about them.
I don't know about academic philosophy. But I like philosophy since it's really useful in real life. I see it as "love of wisdom".
You say that everybody is a philosopher by that definition, but who does actually love wisdom? We love wisdom as a concept to tell others how they should life. But most people don't apply wisdom in their own life.
Philosophy tells me that:
I don't know almost anything.
You only control yourself.
The future you build for yourself are decided by your habits.
Your thoughts produce your reality, which are habits.
You maybe can see that I focus on how the brain functions. Which is why I learn my philosophy by studying neuroscience and psychology.
What I see as the philosophy part of neuroscience, aren't the equations/models or the fancy experiments. It's about the wisdom that those experiments and models produce.
For example:
You want to lose weight and become fit and healthy.
The normal strategy is that you go to the gym for a few weeks and give up. Hating yourself for being a loser and getting ridiculed by people that are in the same predicament.
Neuroscience tells us that you are running on temporary motivation and when that motivation goes down, it will be increasingly harder to go to the gym.
Neuroscience also tells us that if you make it really easy to do, like 1 push up a day. That you will create the synapses in your brain, that will make a habit out of it. It takes from 2 weeks up to a year to form a new habit, depending on task and person. After the habit is formed, you can easily go to the gym. It would even take more effort not to work out.
Philosophy for me is applying the scientific knowledge to benefit your life. Since science doesn't say what you should do. Only how something works.
Therefore I don't see science as separate from philosophy. I don't know what academic philosophers are doing, but I mainly like Socrates. Many academics seem more like the sophists that Socrates was against.
I'll leave a shorter comment too:
I never thought philosophy was my thing. Then I started learning a little, and realized it was practically my only thing. It is exactly the sort of way I've always looked at the world and experienced life, always asking questions, trying to see things as they really are, learning how the world works and why it is the way it is and what it means for something to exist and asking something about even asking that, and then asking about that, and then asking about that, and then... you obviously aren't dumb or uninquisitive. You have the philosophical mindset, like it or not.
I think you'd make your criticisms of philosophy a lot easier to sell if you realized and kept in mind the huge distinction between philosophy as a formalized, academic subject or a social institution, versus PHILOSOPHY as everything which could be considered philosophical. Science has the exact problems with definition you describe, and that applies 100% perfectly here too: do we mean science as an established, formal institution, or SCIENCE as anything that could be considered scientific? Or something else, etc. Science is just a glorified branch of philosophy, really.
*huge distinction between philosophy as a formalized, academic subject or a social institution, versus PHILOSOPHY as everything which could be considered philosophical*
I draw these sorts of distinctions numerous times in the video. Did you watch it all?
@@AntiCitizenX I did, but you also repeatedly raise the trouble with defining philosophy, which seems like an attack on philosophy as a whole. You also suggest that the things philosophers discuss (formalized or not, philosophers will always discuss, say, realism vs idealism) are not worthy of investigation.
@@HuckleberryHim The lack of a formal definition to philosophy is a problem that needs to be solved, whether or not you feel “attacked” by that fact.
@@AntiCitizenX You must not assume I do not know what I am talking about, because then you completely ignore the things I say while confidently accusing me of doing the same to you. Please respect my intelligence as I have done yours, and you will find, ironically, that you are not actually addressing my arguments.
If you had read my comments seriously, you would understand that your attack on philosophy is not an issue because it makes me "feel 'attacked'", but because you claim not to be doing it at all. My feelings are irrelevant; either you are criticizing philosophy as such, or you are not.
For you to again point to the lack of a formal definition when I have addressed this issue multiple times shows the overconfidence I referred to. I will repeat myself: science also lacks any such definition, whether or not you would care to admit it. No definition of science is more concrete or flimsy than the best definitions of philosophy.
Wah wah wah definition this definition that, how about we just throw copies of the sublime object of ideology at these people until they read it and stop being annoying
The situation is what it is bcs there is no right or wrong in many of the big questions. This is very hard to understand for people who fear any form of relativism.
The existence of God and free will have objectively right and wrong answers, genius. The origins of the universe and the number of teeth within women are not relative propositions.
@@AntiCitizenX Do you think is there any free will?
You articulated in 20 minutes what would've taken me like an hour to understand lone, thank you.
Philosophy is about investigating topics for yourself. You're being taught history so that you can build upon the ideas that came before.
Nothing is 'correct' or 'settled'. That's the point.
Golly, it's almost as if you watched the video.
I'm a physicist.
in my undergrad i did a philosophy of science elective.
It all makes sense now.
That's a very clever way to express it. :)