[Helpful_Bunny]

I'm not going to insult one of the patrons of these pages, however, I do note:

Paul is the author of On Lisp (Prentice Hall, 1993), ANSI Common Lisp (Prentice Hall, 1995), and Hackers & Painters (O'Reilly, 2004). He has an AB from Cornell and a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard, and studied painting at RISD and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence.

What I learned from trying to study philosophy is that the place to look is in other fields. If you understand math or history or aeronautical engineering very well, the most abstract of the things you know are what philosophy is supposed to be teaching.

It depends what type of Philosophy you're studying. Formal Logic: I can see the argument that with a strong Mathematical background & CS, you've already learned (most) of the tricks (although, this largely misses the point that most of the great Mathematicians of the 20th C also dabbled in the Philosophy of Logic - famously Gödel etc).

The other kind of Philosophy inhabits the same mental space as Art (ahhh, Florence!). This is a common issue with American Nationals, as American (and to some degree, British) philosophy is mired in Behaviorism, Philosophy of the Mind (which does make me cry a little inside when they don't keep up with neuroscience or even know anything about Complex Systems Theory) and other schools.

Ethics and Morality? Reaching those Creative spaces of the Sublime and so forth? Aesthetics? All fields I assumed the author would be interested in, given his Artistic leanings, and all fields that Philosophy is very useful to read on.

And, as a friendly note: I'm not sure aeronautical engineering can teach you much on that, barring of course: if you build it wrong, Death is certainly going to be the Horizon you hit.

[eshvk]

> Philosophy of the Mind (which does make me cry a little inside when they don't keep up with neuroscience or even know anything about Complex Systems Theory)

Can you explain more on this? I understand more neuroscience/complex systems than I do philosophy; back in school, I became skeptical of the meaningfulness of the research done in complex systems. I would be curious as to what you think it can contribute to philosophy.

[Helpful_Bunny]

I'm unsure of how technical to make this, or what your background is, however:

Let's take a "classic" of Dennett's[1], against the "brain in a vat"[2]; from what you know about feedback loops or dynamical systems would the proposition of imagining a 'brain in a vat' ever make sense to you? (Note: it's not merely a Matrix style imagining, you have to prove it's not happening - you may well consider this a pointless experiment, of course).

I suspect not. That is to say, if you learned about Complex Systems prior to reading the debate over 'brain in a vat', the entire argument would probably strike you as absurd (I may be projecting here, feel free to say otherwise). This is where I presume Paul is coming from: "Well obviously no, what a waste of time". However, proving it logically is precisely what a lot of Philosophers have spent time doing (as opposed to wiring the brain up, not something that was technically possible until very recently). There's value in the logic of it, and the thought, because it is such a common human misconception (that the mind / consciousness is separate to the body, or the world or the universe).

Does that make sense?

[1]http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness.ht... [2]http://www.iep.utm.edu/brainvat/#H5

[samth]

I think you'll find that (a) Dennett knows a lot of things you're assuming he doesn't, (b) that whether a brain in a vat is plausible is not easily answered by appeal to complex systems theory, and (c) that the role of thought experiments in philosophy is more complicated than you make it out.

Also, the link to TED is broken.

[Helpful_Bunny]

Well, thank you for the hostile tone.

a) I in no way critiqued Dennett - in fact, you'll notice that my last statement about how mind / consciousness is not separate to the body, or the world or the universe is explicitly his position (of course, he is deeper than that, but at the level of my response, it was clearly in line with his thought).

b) That was the point: how you failed to understand that I was making a Category case I'm not sure. We are, after all, responding to the accusation that "No philosophy is worth reading". I was making an argument of how a Scientific / STEM background might make philosophy seem "pointless", and was taking the position of the argument, not my own, and attempting to answer it gently (it's called empathy, dear, learn some).

c) You've totally misunderstood my entire argument, and as such I think it embarrassing on your behalf that you've been so confrontational.

I'll disengage - you failed to understand what was being said, you failed to acknowledge that I was uncertain of how technical to make the argument, so pitched it at a Ted Talk level, and you were rude. Not interested, especially if you cannot understand the point being made.

I have fixed the link, however.