[gepi79]

IMO, progress in philosophy leads to science. First you think and imagine (philosophy) then you try and know and have made progress (science).

From the article: Yes (with qualification) and yes. Already in Republic (Plato again!) we have an argument—a clear and compelling rational argument—that even the highest political office should be open to women. The argument? List what it takes to be a good leader of the state, then note the conditions that distinguish the sexes. There just is zero overlap between the two lists.

IMO there is not much of interest in philosophy regarding AI (except for the thinking and imagination of AI engineers). AI is still just computations as far as we know.

From the article: Almost all believe in consciousness and most don’t have a clue how to explain it, which is wisdom.

[YorkshireSeason]

   Already in Republic

Given that Plato's Republic was written over 2000 years ago, that's pretty weak a claim to progress in philosophy.

[gepi79]

IMO the interesting point was the approach:

- First thinking what could lead to progress.

- Then progress in the form of 2 lists that answer the question if women should be allowed for the highest political office.

[thanatropism]

Hubert Dreyfus claimed that AI was a test of the Cartesian theory of mind.

Dreyfus was also pretty much right about everything AI related from the 1960s on. It will take nothing short of a true self-driving car to refute something he said.

[gepi79]

Sorry, I have not spent time with the philosophy of other people. Could you explain what you mean, especially with regard to my previous comment ?

This is my opinion:

https://machineperson.org/ai.html

https://machineperson.org/existence.html

[thanatropism]

I can't.

The essential blocks of Dreyfus are in Martin Heidegger (which I also haven't studied in depth). Helping you obtain a partially understood, utilitarian version of my partially understood, utilitarian version of Dreyfus's partially understood, utilitarian version of Heidegger would be... enabling.

You really need to "spend time with the philosophy of other people" if you want to move ahead with the notions explored in those two links.

[gepi79]

Ok. I thought you might have something particular or obvious in mind by mentioning self driving cars.

https://machineperson.org/existence.html#self-awareness

I have spent some time to answer my own questions. But I have neither the motivation nor the time and maybe not even the intelligence to learn and to understand the ideas most philosophers.

[YorkshireSeason]

   First you think and imagine 
   (philosophy)

I'd suggest that's not a good characterisation of philosophy, because according to that characterisation, everybody is a philosopher and doing philosophy all the time. That definition is not specific enough to do the question discussed in the article justice.

The article defends (whether successful or not I'll leave open) philosophy against the common charge of not having progressed much recently, Whitehead's famous The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato being perhaps the most popular form this criticism takes (whether that does Whitehead justice is another question I'd like to leave open here).

Here is a definition of philosophy that is much closer to the concept of philosophy the article defends: philosophy is what academics who work in philosophy departments do.

   philosophy leads to science

I make a strong counterclaim: all progress in philosophy comes from progress in the hard sciences. As examples for my claim I put forward: quantum mechanics, general relativity, non-euclidean geometry, set theory and type theory as foundations of mathematics, Goede's incompleteness theorems, theory of (economic) games (leading to the first substantial progress in moral philosophy since Kant), AI/ML.

[gepi79]

Answering what is philosphy is philosophy. And thus, IMO, I am right.

> Philosophy is what academics who work in philosophy departments do.

IMO this is too restrictive. You reduce philosophy to a job title or diploma title. I guess, many philosophers would not agree with this definition.

> I make a strong counterclaim: all progress in philosophy comes from progress in the hard sciences.

I agree that new knowledge and new abilities lead to new ideas and questions and concerns. But philosophy is not limited to physics or chemistry; IMO the only hard sciences.

Physics and chemistry are hard sections within an open ended spectrum:

- The begin (1D view) or lower level layer (3D view) are unknown. Is string theory correct ? What are strings made of ? Is mental conscious the lower layer ? Is all a simulation ?

- The end (1D view) or upper layer (3D view) are soft science. Like biology, sociology, psychology, economics.

Regarding economics: Yanis Varoufakis: Live at Politics and Prose https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H38tZhPying&t=377

[Chathamization]

> IMO this is too restrictive. You reduce philosophy to a job title or diploma title. I guess, many philosophers would not agree with this definition.

I'd say that it is usually what we treat philosophy as when these discussions come up. As you said, it's probably too restrictive, and the truth is we're all philosophers to some degree, and all working off of certain philosophical underpinnings. But the article (and many philosophers) end up treating philosophy as the above poster describes ("what academics who work in philosophy departments do").

If we use a broad definition of philosophy then of course it is useful, and of course its changed over time (most would consider it progress, some wouldn't). But this doesn't seem to say anything about whether or not the small subsection of philosophers who work as academics in philosophy departments have made useful contributions recently. The fact that they struggle so much with this question suggest that they might not have.