[HN Gopher] Daniel Dennett has died
___________________________________________________________________
Daniel Dennett has died
Author : mellosouls
Score : 608 points
Date : 2024-04-19 15:33 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dailynous.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (dailynous.com)
| Bostonian wrote:
| RIP. His book Consciousness Explained (1992) was fascinating.
| canadiantim wrote:
| I've always heard it described as Consciousness Explained Away
| (1992); still tho, RIP
| markhahn wrote:
| Yes, it was traditional "philosphers of mind" who found him
| dismissive, mainly because those are all basically
| Mysterians.
|
| For instance, he cut Chalmers no slack on the incoherency of
| Philosophical Zombies.
| mannykannot wrote:
| The title promised more than it delivered, but nevertheless,
| Dennett's efforts in attempting to achieve that goal were a
| refreshing break from the incessant and fruitless bickering
| over whether the mind is a physical phenomenon.
| wzdd wrote:
| That isn't the witty riposte that it is apparently thought to
| be. It really does "explain away" consciousness by reducing
| it to plausible physical processes. This reduction also
| applies to things like qualia, which is where nonmaterialists
| get upset as qualia (or equivalents) are also invoked by
| people like Nagel and Chalmers to argue against the
| physicality of consciousness.
|
| The core argument from Nagel / Chalmers is that that there is
| a subjective element to consciousness which has no physical
| explanation. The reasoning for this is always an appeal to
| intuition. If you accept that there is "something that it is
| like" to see red, be a bat, etc, and that the "something that
| it is like" is above and beyond the physical processes of the
| brain -- the firing of neurons -- then you by definition
| cannot accept a purely physical explanation of consciousness.
| Dennett's book argues that this is mystical nonsense (or,
| charitably, wishful thinking) and the "something that it is
| like" is simply what happens when particular types of
| physical processes occur in the brain.
|
| It's no surprise, therefore, that "explained away" is a
| criticism if you're a nonmaterialist. But if you're a
| materialist, then "explained away" is actually a good thing
| and the purpose of the book.
| acqbu wrote:
| Rest in Peace, Legend!
| errantmind wrote:
| I had the opportunity to hear a guest lecture of his in Colorado
| a little over 15 years ago which inspired my further study of
| philosophy at the time. He had a keen mind and will be missed.
| dosinga wrote:
| The Mind's I: Fantasies And Reflections On Self & Soul with
| Douglas Adams is from quite some time ago, but as relevant as
| ever
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| Douglas R. Hofstadter (of GEB), not Douglas Adams
| apricot wrote:
| In the beginning, self-reference was created. This had made
| many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad
| move.
| johngossman wrote:
| I want to read this book
| kkarimi wrote:
| Probably the most interesting modern thinker that I remember from
| my 6 years of studying Psychology and Neuroscience. RIP
| mkmk wrote:
| Very nice profile of him from 2017:
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/daniel-dennett...
| RIP
| vlowther wrote:
| One of the great thinkers of the modern era. He will be missed.
| ricardo81 wrote:
| Enjoyed his participations in the "four horseman of the
| apocalypse"
|
| Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZefk4gzQt4 - From Bacteria
| to Bach and Back
|
| Apt for today's world.
|
| Could listen to him all day.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| _Non_ -apocalypse. That's the joke.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett
| DylanDmitri wrote:
| Really liked this essay on cognition -
| https://aeon.co/essays/how-to-understand-cells-tissues-and-o...
| ithkuil wrote:
| I must admit I always scoffed at philosophers, but then I started
| reading Dennett and not only I finally met a philosopher that I
| respected, but he helped me unlock what other philosophers are
| doing and I started to see philosophers as a whole in new light.
| klodolph wrote:
| You're not alone. I think a lot of people, especially in STEM,
| pooh-pooh philosophy at first.
|
| The problem is that in any field, if you start digging to
| understand the underlying concepts of that field and how they
| are defined, at some point you hit philosophy and start working
| with philosophical concepts.
|
| The other problem is that there's some real quack philosophy
| around, too. Various traps that philosophers sometimes fall
| into.
| keiferski wrote:
| Whom would you describe as a "quack" philosopher?
| klodolph wrote:
| I picked the wording of my comment carefully... "quack
| philosophy" is what I said, not "quack philosopher". That
| was very, very intentional.
|
| I don't think I have ever described somebody as a quack
| philosopher.
| keiferski wrote:
| Ok, then what works would you describe as quack
| philosophy? I don't think the distinction is really that
| relevant.
| klodolph wrote:
| Ok. I think the distinction is important, and relevant,
| and even critical. It is a distinction I will continue to
| make.
|
| I put the concept of "philosophical zombies" as quackery.
| At best, the p-zombie thought experiment shows that we
| haven't really come up with a definition of consciousness
| that explains what we want it to explain. Some people use
| p-zombies as part of a larger argument against
| physicalism. Chalmers published a modal logic argument
| against physicalism using p-zombies. One of the tricky
| things about modal logic is that it requires a deeper
| understanding of modal logic in order for you (you,
| someone reading a modal logic argument) to make good
| decisions about which propositions you are willing to
| accept in a modal logic argument. Since most people only
| have an intuitive understanding of modal logic, it is a
| good way to win an argument but a bad way to explain your
| position.
|
| I'd say that this work (p-zombies) is quackery in the
| sense that it's consistently directed at something which
| I consider to be unproductive, which is the work of
| undermining or attacking physicalism / physical monism.
| At some point, in these discussions, you end up having
| some argument about the semantics of ontology and how you
| define "existence". If your semantics for "existence"
| admits non-physical things to exist (like, if you're a
| Platonist), and you're having a conversation with someone
| who believes in physicalism, then I don't think either
| person in the conversation is going to get much out of
| it, other than a better way to explain their own
| position.
|
| Edit: I hope that paints a complete enough picture and
| covers the important parts of my complaints about
| p-zombies. I don't have my finger on the pulse of
| philosophy and I may be missing something important,
| maybe there's some really important argument p-zombies
| are used for, and maybe I don't understand Chalmers;
| that's always a risk. My main complaint here is that it
| seems to be some tool to make an argument against
| physicalism, but this tool doesn't help you understand
| physicalism, or help you understand its alternatives.
| It's just an argument that you can have between somebody
| who believes in physicalism and somebody who doesn't,
| where neither person will agree with the other one after
| hearing the argument.
| keiferski wrote:
| I can see how you would find that unproductive, but I
| don't know if it really counts as quackery.
|
| _Quack: 1) A practitioner who suggests the use of
| substances or devices for the prevention or treatment of
| disease that are known to be ineffective.
|
| 2) A person who pretends to be able to diagnose or heal
| people, but is unqualified and incompetent._
|
| The inside baseball term more relevant to what you're
| talking about, I think, is "talking past each other."
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/25655279
|
| A quack philosopher would seem to me to be someone that
| claims to be doing philosophy or interpreting the ideas
| of a philosopher, but doing so in an egregiously wrong or
| misleading manner.
|
| You also might want to check out this article for more on
| p-zombies, by the way:
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/
| klodolph wrote:
| > I can see how you would find that unproductive, but I
| don't know if it really counts as quackery.
|
| Oh, here's the thing--it's not actually important to
| argue about what the word "quackery" means. I've
| explained what I meant by "philosophical quackery", and
| if you want to talk about the content of what I wrote,
| then by all means, respond to the content.
|
| If, instead, you want to start a fight about what the
| word "quackery" means, and whether I was wrong to use it,
| then I'm out. That sounds like a waste of time.
| keiferski wrote:
| You used the word quackery, and I pointed out that this
| is an inaccurate term and that yes, the phenomenon you're
| describing is a thing called "talking past each other"
| and that it is a frequent criticism from within
| philosophy itself.
|
| I'm not sure what else there is to say here. If you call
| people something, perhaps it's important to actually know
| what that thing means? This seems to happen often in
| conversations critical of philosophy: terms are used
| unclearly, and the attempt to actually clarify those
| terms is hand-waved away as "I don't want to argue about
| definitions."
|
| So I think your criticism here is not that there are
| quack philosophical works, but that there are
| unproductive ones that do nothing but restate established
| positions. Which is definitely a true thing.
| klodolph wrote:
| > If you call people something, perhaps it's important to
| actually know what that thing means?
|
| "Quackery" is not some technical term here. It is a
| mistake to rely too much on technical definitions of
| words. If you rely too much on technical definitions and
| dictionary definitions for non-technical words, then you
| will probably misunderstand what people mean, relatively
| frequently.
|
| I could also insert some comment about the history of
| philosophy and modernism / post-modernism, here. If you
| take the stance that a word means something
| independently, in some kind of platonic sense, then you
| agree with the modernists. If you take the stance that a
| word's meaning comes from how it's interpreted by people
| who read it, you agree with the post-modernists.
|
| I'm just trying to use a word to convey some sort of
| meaning. If that word didn't convey the intended meaning
| to you, I can use different words. Which I did.
|
| > terms are used unclearly, and the attempt to actually
| clarify those terms is hand-waved away as "I don't want
| to argue about definitions."
|
| Terms are generally used unclearly, it is unavoidable.
| When I say that "I don't want to argue about
| definitions", what I mean is that I want to talk about
| subject X, and I used the word "quackery" to describe it.
| I want to talk about subject X, not about the definition
| of "quackery", which is irrelevant.
|
| A discussion about the word "quackery" is immaterial
| because I can clarify things by re-explaining subject X
| using different words. I did that--but apparently you are
| not interested in clarifications, because your actions
| indicate a greater interest in fighting over whether I
| used the word "quackery" correctly.
| keiferski wrote:
| > I'm just trying to use a word to convey some sort of
| meaning. If that word didn't convey the intended meaning
| to you, I can use different words. Which I did.
|
| Yes, and I thought I understood that meaning and
| addressed it when I said this is typically called
| "talking past each other."
|
| > So I think your criticism here is not that there are
| quack philosophical works, but that there are
| unproductive ones that do nothing but restate established
| positions. Which is definitely a true thing.
|
| Can you clarify how this _isn 't_ what you mean? How is
| what you're saying different from what I interpreted it
| as meaning?
| ithkuil wrote:
| I realized that it was mostly my problem of not
| understanding what philosophers do
| keiferski wrote:
| Yes, I think that's a common experience. Many people
| expect philosophers to be something like wise old village
| elders, whereas in reality they are more like lawyers
| working in extremely niche areas of law.
| bugbuddy wrote:
| Zizek comes to mind immediately. My younger self used to be
| more open minded but even then he was way out there and way
| too bombastic.
| keiferski wrote:
| Meh, Zizek may be redundant and attention-seeking, but I
| wouldn't call him a quack. He has done some legitimate
| work, even if I definitely wouldn't call myself a fan.
|
| I like his books, but someone like Alan Watts is much
| more prone to quackery, IMO.
| helboi4 wrote:
| Yeah Alan Watts is definitely way more of a quack. I like
| and respect Zizek though he's not a philosopher I rate
| highly.
| klodolph wrote:
| I think it's easy to get turned off by Zizek's kind of
| bombastic approach to explaining philosophy to lay
| people. It's also, I'd say, hard to develop sympathy for
| continental philosophy, especially if we are American,
| and a lot of his positions seem kind of like nonsense if
| you don't understand some of the underlying frameworks he
| uses (something he shares in common with a lot of
| continental philosophers) or if you don't bridge the
| wider gap between reader and writer that continental
| philosophers tend to have.
|
| Zizek has made comments about so many _different_ things,
| so publicly, that it's hard to avoid finding something
| you disagree with. But it's also hard to avoid finding
| something you agree with.
| kirubakaran wrote:
| Philosophers who study ducks' perception of reality
| keiferski wrote:
| Nagel really missed an opportunity to name his paper,
| "What Is It Like to Quack?" instead of "What Is It Like
| to Be a Bat?".
| lisper wrote:
| > a lot of people, especially in STEM, pooh-pooh philosophy
| at first.
|
| That's because a lot of philosophy is eminently pooh-pooh-
| able. There is a tiny minority of philosophers who are
| actually scientists pushing very hard on the boundaries of
| human knowledge. Dennett was one of them. Tim Maudlin is
| another. But the vast majority of people who self-identify
| professionally as philosophers, and especially the ones whose
| names are revered (I'm looking at you, Ludwig Wittgenstein
| [EDITED]), do work that seems to me to be little more than
| the obfuscation of trivial or false ideas.
| klodolph wrote:
| Could you elaborate on how Kant does work that seems to be
| little more than the obfuscation of trivial or false ideas?
| lisper wrote:
| Sorry, I made a mistake. I meant Wittgenstein, not Kant,
| who wrote one of the premier works of philosophical
| nonsense: the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1]. I
| believe that Wittgenstein himself once admitted that it
| was basically intended to be a practical joke kind of
| like the Sokal affair [2], but I can't find the reference
| right now. But some people seem to still take it
| seriously.
|
| The biggest problem in classical philosophy is that there
| were fundamental things they simply didn't know. In
| particular, anything written before 1936 doesn't have the
| benefit of Turing's results on universal computation, and
| so it suffers from all kinds of misconceptions about
| human exceptionalism. These mistakes are understandable,
| but nonetheless the products of ignorance, and should be
| of little more than historical interest today. But AFAICT
| contemporary philosophers still take them seriously.
|
| [1] https://www.wittgensteinproject.org/w/index.php?title
| =Tracta...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
| pdonis wrote:
| _> I meant Wittgenstein, not Kant_
|
| I think Kant would have been another justifiable example.
| I found Bertrand Russell's commentary on Kant to be apt:
|
| "Hume, with his criticism of the concept of causality,
| awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers--so at least he
| says, but the awakening was only temporary, and he soon
| invented a soporific which enabled him to sleep again."
| lisper wrote:
| > I think Kant would have been another justifiable
| example.
|
| He may well be, I just don't know that much about him.
| dsubburam wrote:
| What do you make of Wittgenstein's "no private language"
| argument?[1]
|
| I am not a professional philosopher, but I understand
| that that argument is offered as proof that "language is
| essentially social" (see article cited below), and so of
| some import.
|
| [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/
| lisper wrote:
| He's not wrong, but the right way to make this argument
| is in terms of Shannon's information theory. You don't
| need to resort to philosophical mumbo jumbo, as
| Wittgenstein did. And Wittgenstein actually had no excuse
| because Shannon published while Wittgenstein was still
| alive.
|
| This is the difference between the Wittgensteins and the
| Dennetts and Maudlins of the world. Wittgenstein just
| seems to be profoundly ignorant of science and how it
| applies to philosophical questions, while Dennett and
| Maudlin are really scientists first and philosophers
| second. Their work is chock full of references to actual
| scientific studies. Maudlin probably knows more about
| quantum physics than many physicists.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Information-theoretical arguments are powerful, but
| they're not the only worthwhile approaches. You can't use
| an information-theoretic argument to teach someone
| information theory, and they'll find it easier to grok
| the consequences of information theory if they have other
| concepts to relate it to. Having multiple different
| routes to a given understanding is useful.
|
| Wittgenstein was studying the _nature of language_ ,
| something closer to mathematics than to physics. And he
| came up with these ideas no later than 1933: Shannon only
| published his work on information theory in 1948. That
| Wittgenstein's later work was validated by advances in
| science _over a decade later_ suggests that
| "philosophical mumbo jumbo" does not characterise it
| well. Indeed, perhaps there's something to learn from it.
| glenstein wrote:
| >Wittgenstein just seems to be profoundly ignorant of
| science and how it applies to philosophical questions
|
| ??? If anything his criticism of his own work was that it
| was excessively represented language as being the kind of
| language used by the natural sciences, which was a narrow
| slice of the full breadth of possible ways language can
| be used to convey meaning. The very thing that makes his
| career so fascinating is that he was purely an
| engineering bro, who cared more about math and logic, and
| he brought that perspective into philosophy, and
| challenged philosophy as being nonsense when measured
| against the standards of the hard sciences. That's
| essentially what the Tractatus is, and also the reason
| why it was retrospectively regarded as dogmatic.
|
| Shannon's information theory is brilliant, but born out
| of an interest in formalisms related information
| transmission, and while it can be treated like it's in
| conversation with theories of semantic meaning, I don't
| think it was ever considered a specific repudiation of
| any particular approach. There was a whole century's
| worth of "ordinary language" philosophy in the anglo
| world guilty of much graver offenses in regarding
| uncritical assumptions about ordinary language as some
| kind of conceptual or informational bedrock, and the ways
| you apply Shannon to any of that, while I think you can,
| are non-obvious.
|
| > And Wittgenstein actually had no excuse because Shannon
| published while Wittgenstein was still alive.
|
| Tractatus came out something like 20 years before
| information theory, and by the time it was published he
| had already taken his late career "turn" to self
| criticism, but again, I don't think anyone treated
| Shannon like it was any specific commentary on his
| philosophy, the topics are rather remote and while they
| can "speak to" one another in a sense, a lot depends on
| how you build out your conceptual bridge between the two
| topics.
| jolux wrote:
| Wittgenstein later repudiated the line of inquiry that
| produced the Tractatus but I'm pretty sure he was quite
| serious about it when he published.
| d0odk wrote:
| Someone who is discrediting all of philosophy shouldn't
| confuse Wittgenstein and Kant.
|
| Further, Wittgenstein disavowed Tractatus as a failed
| project and completely revised his approach to
| philosophy. His most important and influential works came
| afterwards.
| lisper wrote:
| > Someone who is discrediting all of philosophy shouldn't
| confuse Wittgenstein and Kant.
|
| Getting the names confused is not the same as getting the
| people confused. My poster child for philosophical
| nonsense has always been the Tractatus. I just somehow
| got it into my head that it was written by Kant, not
| Wittgenstein (I've always been bad at remembering names)
| and I didn't bother to check because I was writing an HN
| comment and not a paper for publication.
| d0odk wrote:
| Okay, but you initially criticized Wittgenstein, the
| philosopher, not Tractatus, the work. Wittgenstein
| himself would agree that Tractatus is deeply flawed. He
| wrote his more influential works later, and they went in
| a completely different philosophical direction. You're
| criticizing a philosopher as "pooh-pooh-able" for a work
| that he personally disavowed and does not represent the
| positions he is best known for.
| lisper wrote:
| I was intending to criticize the _field_ , and in a shot-
| from-the-hip in a moment of some passion chose
| Wittgenstein as my example.
|
| > Wittgenstein himself would agree that Tractatus is
| deeply flawed.
|
| So I am vindicated. I'm not actually criticizing
| Wittgenstein for writing Tractatus; there's nothing wrong
| with writing nonsense. Lewis Carroll was a master. The
| problem is writing nonsense and not recognizing it as
| nonsense. I'm criticizing the field of philosophy for
| elevating Wittgenstein to iconic status after having
| written such manifest nonsense without recognizing that
| it is manifest nonsense. That is an indictment of the
| field, not the man.
|
| BTW, the reason that this is a touchy subject with me is
| that I did my masters thesis (in 1987) on the subject of
| intentionality [1] in AI. After wading through dozens of
| inscrutible papers I came to realize that the whole topic
| was basically bullshit [2], and that the problem had been
| completely solved by Bertrand Russell in 1905 [3], but no
| one seemed to have noticed. Even today the vast majority
| of philosophers (AFAIK) think this is still an open
| topic.
|
| And BTW, Russell's solution is beautiful and easy to
| understand. Frankly, I think it has been ignored
| _because_ it is easy to understand.
|
| [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intentionality/
|
| [2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intentionality/#In
| teInex
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Denoting
| glenstein wrote:
| >So I am vindicated
|
| I think there's a lot of confidently wrong histories
| being tossed around this thread, and it's not quite right
| to say he abandoned his old work as meaningless. He
| considered it dogmatic, but not nonsensical by any
| stretch.
| d0odk wrote:
| My gripe is that the commenter above cites early
| Wittgenstein as an example of the failure of philosophy
| as a whole, while ignoring (or perhaps being unaware)
| that later Wittgenstein is what is philosophical "canon".
| I'll concede there is some debate about how
| Wittgenstein's views evolved over his life and the extent
| to which he repudiated his earlier work. But I think
| you're going a bit far by characterizing what I said as
| "confidently wrong history," if that's directed at what I
| wrote.
| d0odk wrote:
| Have you read later Wittgenstein?
| lisper wrote:
| I've read (parts of) Critique of Pure Reason. Does that
| count?
| d0odk wrote:
| lol
| lisper wrote:
| I'll take that as a "no". What would you recommend?
| d0odk wrote:
| Critique of Pure Reason is Kant. I thought you were
| making a joke based on the earlier mixup between Kant and
| Wittgenstein. Late Wittgenstein is Philosophical
| Investigations. There are also good texts on philosophy
| of language that excerpt from the major authors
| (including Wittgenstein) without requiring you to read
| the entirety of their books.
| lisper wrote:
| Nope, not a joke. Just the same mistake I made
| originally. I guess I have conflated Kant and
| Wittgenstein in my mind even more thoroughly than I
| thought.
|
| My bad. I've gotten pretty overwhelmed with all the
| activity in this thread, and I'm trying to get some
| actual work done in between responses so I'm a little
| distracted.
| glenstein wrote:
| He disavowed is as comprehensive account of linguistic
| meaning, but I don't think he regarded it as false or
| meaningless, only that the full breadth of ways language
| conveyed meaning was wider than the account given in
| Tractatus.
| raddan wrote:
| I would love to see a reference to the claim that
| Wittgenstein regarded Tractatus as a joke. I took an
| analytic philosophy course as an undergrad that featured
| Wittgenstein prominently, and that prof certainly did not
| regard it unseriously.
|
| Anyone whose job it is to uncover the truth ought to be
| ant least a little curious about what we know and how we
| know it, and perhaps more importantly, whether there are
| true things that we can never know. These are mostly not
| scientific questions, but thinking about them helps us
| understand why science settled on the particular set of
| axioms that it did (eg, that there really is a world that
| exists independently of humans and their conception of
| it).
| lisper wrote:
| > I would love to see a reference to the claim that
| Wittgenstein regarded Tractatus as a joke.
|
| Apparently I was wrong about that too. According to
| another comment in this thread [1], he disavowed the work
| later, but intended it to be serious when he wrote it.
|
| It has always seemed like self-evident nonsense to me
| though.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40089100
| vehemenz wrote:
| I think your critique of philosophy would land better if
| you picked an easier target. The primary metaphor of the
| Tractatus (pulling up the ladder) often goes over
| people's heads.
| andybak wrote:
| The fact that you got Wittgenstein and Kant confused
| doesn't give me much faith in the depth of understanding of
| philosophy that led to your other opinions.
| keiferski wrote:
| Lol, yeah. For programmers unfamiliar with philosophy,
| this is like confusing Lisp with C. (Someone that is
| familiar with both might be able to make a better analogy
| here.)
| andybak wrote:
| You're not far off. I'm tempted to head off to write a
| "if philosophers were programming languages" post now.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| What the heck, I've got more hacker karma than the
| Digital Dalai Lama. I'll take -4 for the team and ask the
| English language for its own interpretation [1]:
|
| "In the high-stakes world of technology, where the choice
| of a programming language can either pave the way to
| efficiency or lead you into the depths of debugging hell,
| imagine if programming languages were as enigmatic and
| complex as the philosophers of yore. Here's how I
| envision this quirky universe.
|
| Plato: _HTML_
|
| Plato's ideal forms find their match in HTML. Much like
| Plato's theory, where objects in the physical realm are
| mere shadows of their perfect forms, HTML is but the
| scaffolding of web content, giving structure but relying
| on the more material CSS and JavaScript to breathe life
| into its skeletal outlines. HTML, the philosopher of the
| web, contemplates the essence of web structure in a cave
| of its own making, illuminated by the flickering screens
| of web developers trying to decode the shadows of their
| CSS frameworks.
|
| Aristotle: _Python_
|
| Aristotle, known for his logic and systematic approach to
| the physical world, would be Python. Just as Aristotle
| classified flora and fauna, Python organizes data with
| lists, tuples, and dictionaries, making it ideal for
| developers who seek clarity and readability. Python's
| philosophy is simple yet profound, mirroring Aristotle's
| quest for understanding through empirical observation and
| not-so-metaphysical methods.
|
| Descartes: _C++_
|
| "I think, therefore I am," proclaimed Descartes, and so
| would any program written in C++. C++, with its complex
| syntax and powerful capabilities, reflects Descartes'
| dualism. It can create almost metaphysical experiences in
| virtual realities but can also cause existential crises
| with its pointers and memory leaks, leading programmers
| to doubt everything, especially their choice of language.
|
| Nietzsche: _Assembly_
|
| Nietzsche, the philosopher of power, will to manifest,
| and the ubermensch, resonates with Assembly language. Not
| for the faint-hearted, Assembly is for those who dare to
| manipulate the very fabric of hardware. Like Nietzsche's
| writing, Assembly is tough to decipher, powerful in its
| capacity, and not commonly understood by the masses,
| often leaving one to ponder in solitude about the eternal
| recurrence of debugging sessions.
|
| Kant: _Java_
|
| Kant, who was all about rules and categorical
| imperatives, fits perfectly with Java. Java's platform-
| independent mantra--write once, run anywhere--is a stern
| dictate akin to Kant's moral imperatives. Both
| philosopher and language demand strict adherence to their
| defined structures and frameworks, leaving little room
| for moral or syntactic error.
|
| Sartre: _JavaScript_
|
| Existentialist par excellence, Sartre's notion of
| existence precedes essence is the lived reality of every
| JavaScript framework. Just when you think you understand
| the essence of the JavaScript ecosystem, a new library or
| framework pops into existence, challenging the very core
| of your understanding. Sartre's philosophy of radical
| freedom and existential angst mirrors the liberty and
| chaos of JavaScript's untyped, loosely structured syntax.
|
| Hegel: _Haskell_
|
| Hegel's dialectical method moves through thesis,
| antithesis, and synthesis, much like how Haskell
| approaches problems with its pure functional programming
| paradigm. It encourages developers to think in terms of
| transformations of data, often leading to a synthesis of
| solutions that are as elegant as they are abstract,
| reflective of Hegel's complex philosophical constructs.
|
| In this whimsical world where philosophers are
| programming languages, choosing the right one could well
| depend on whether you prefer the existential dread of
| debugging Sartre's JavaScript at 3 AM or contemplating
| the Platonic forms of your HTML content. In either case,
| the philosophical underpinnings of your chosen language
| might just lead to as many questions about the nature of
| reality as lines of code."
|
| 1: https://chat.openai.com/share/584f78d7-6a9e-438d-ab87-
| 02cebd...
| bitwize wrote:
| Wow, those are some... really arbitrary choices, but it
| would probably pass muster for an entertaining blogpost
| written by a twentysomething and posted to /r/programming
| -- or even here -- circa 2008.
| sdwr wrote:
| Sartre and Hegel are pretty solid, the rest feel tenuous
| at best
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I don't know, pretty hard to argue with Nietzsche's
| pairing with assembly. Unless you wanted to play the HDL
| card.
| anthk wrote:
| Nietzche is Lisp. Thus Spoke Zarathustra it's basically
| what a REPL does and means. Read, eval, print, loop.
| Learn, apply, teach, repeat. Data is code, a list it's
| both data and a function to evaluate if you wish.
| dudinax wrote:
| It's more like confusing intercal with brainfuck.
| lisper wrote:
| What can I say? I've always been bad with names.
| andybak wrote:
| OK. Names aside I'm not sure how much you know about
| Wittgenstein. I'm far from an expert but - he did largely
| refute the Tractatus later in life but reasons that are
| probably the opposite of what you're implying. If
| anything his later works attempts to be _less_ rigorous
| because he reached the conclusion that attempting rigour
| in language was deeply flawed.
|
| Like I said - I'm no expert and I've never read
| Wittgenstein first hand - but I do struggle when people
| casually dismiss the work of thousands of smart, sincere
| people over thousands of years.
| lisper wrote:
| > I'm not sure how much you know about Wittgenstein.
|
| Not much. But I don't have to know much to make my case
| here. All I have to do is point to the Tractatus, which
| really is manifest nonsense, and point out that
| publishing this bit of manifest nonsense didn't seem to
| hurt Wittgenstein's career much. Tractatus is not the
| only example of this sort of thing, just the one that
| sticks out in my mind as the most blatant.
|
| And this is not to say that Wittgenstein, or philosophy
| in general, never produced anything of value. But the
| problem is that to find the value you have to wade
| through all this horse shit, so it's so much more effort
| than it needs to be. A stopped clock is right twice a
| day. That doesn't mean there is any value in consulting
| it to find out what time it is.
| keiferski wrote:
| Calling something "manifest nonsense" while not
| understanding it, or even attempting to understand it,
| seems like a clear example of "manifest nonsense" to me.
| lisper wrote:
| You apparently failed to note this sibling comment:
|
| > Wittgenstein himself states that the Tractatus is
| nonsense in its closing pages.
|
| > My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who
| understands me finally recognizes them as senseless...
| keiferski wrote:
| Senseless and nonsense are not the same thing, and if you
| had read the book, you'd understand this.
| steppi wrote:
| Wittgenstein himself states that the Tractatus is
| nonsense in its closing pages.
|
| _My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who
| understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when
| he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He
| must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has
| climbed up on it.)_
|
| I think you may agree with the Wittgenstein of the
| Tractatus more than you realize. My understanding is that
| his main goal at that time was to show that many of the
| classic problems of metaphysics which plagued
| philosophers for centuries or more are literally just
| nonsense. He didn't write the Tractatus to convince
| regular people though, but to convince academic
| philosophers of his time. He earned his fame by being
| somewhat successful. Rather than making a logical
| argument for his point, I understand his aim as
| stimulating his audience to think things out for
| themselves by offering them carefully crafted nonsense
| that gave a fresh perspective.
|
| I think you just have no use for the Tractatus because
| you're not preoccupied with metaphysical questions.
| mcguire wrote:
| You do realize you are doing philosophy at this moment,
| right?
| lisper wrote:
| Sure, but this is just a casual conversation. The problem
| is not with philosophy per se, the problem is with the
| academic field, which assigns (IMHO) outsized importance
| to undersized ideas.
| samatman wrote:
| Well, as Kant put it: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof
| one must be silent".
| notresidenter wrote:
| Wittgenstein is not "pooh-pooh-able", not by a long shot.
| First of all, there are two really different philosophies
| belonging to Wittgenstein, the younger and the older, and
| the evolution between the two should be of interest to
| anyone, as it serves as essentially a cautionary tale about
| concepts and more generally abstractions, detached from
| empirical evidence.
|
| His philosophy does provide some interesting perspectives
| on language, even if I don't personally agree with his way
| of doing philosophy.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Science is a type of applied philosophy, because grasping
| what is knowable by a given set of truths and tools (and
| what isn't) helps one define the problem.
| lisper wrote:
| > Science is a type of applied philosophy
|
| This is typical philosophical nonsense. The word
| "philosophy" is so vaguely defined that _anything_ can be
| considered "a type of applied philosophy". So science
| may well be "a type of applied philosophy" but that's not
| what makes science special. What makes science special,
| the thing that distinguishes it from all other branches
| of human intellectual endeavor, is that (to quote
| Feynman) _experiment_ is the ultimate arbiter of truth.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Not truth per se, but scientific truth. For example you
| can't prove scientifically that your partner loves you :)
| Angostura wrote:
| "I'm going redefine these philosophers as scientists, so
| that I can ridicule philosophy more easily "
| vehemenz wrote:
| When you say "actually scientists" and "boundaries of human
| knowledge," you seem to be taking for granted naive views
| about metaphysical realism, scientific realism, and truth
| that are not trivial to defend, even for experienced
| philosophers.
|
| If you want to relegate philosophy to obfuscation and
| trivialities, a good starting place would be to demonstrate
| that you've made it past the undergraduate, foot stomping
| "science" phase that, honestly, not enough "actual"
| scientists seem to have made it past, bringing us mystical
| nonsense such as the many-worlds interpretation of quantum
| mechanics.
| lisper wrote:
| > you seem to be taking for granted naive views about
| metaphysical realism, scientific realism, and truth that
| are not trivial to defend, even for experienced
| philosophers.
|
| No, I'm not taking these things for granted. I am simply
| making the empirical observation that the scientific
| method has produced vastly more tangible progress than
| other methods, and it has produced this progress in areas
| that were previously believed to be inaccessible to
| science. Science _works_ in ways that no other method
| does.
|
| > mystical nonsense such as the many-worlds
| interpretation of quantum mechanics
|
| It's not mystical nonsense, it's a logical consequence of
| the mathematics of quantum mechanics. You may find it
| distasteful, but it's the way the world appears to be.
| You may not like the idea that clocks in space run faster
| than clocks on earth, but that is also manifestly how the
| world behaves.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > > mystical nonsense such as the many-worlds
| interpretation of quantum mechanics
|
| > It's not mystical nonsense, it's a logical consequence
| of the mathematics of quantum mechanics.
|
| It's an _interpretation_ of the mathematics of quantum
| mechanics. It 's not the only possible interpretation.
|
| > You may find it distasteful, but it's the way the world
| appears to be.
|
| Yeah? I agree that quantum appears to be the way the
| world works; show me your _concrete evidence_ for many
| worlds. You can 't do it.
| lisper wrote:
| > show me your concrete evidence for many worlds. You
| can't do it.
|
| Most people would agree that the sun emits light in all
| directions, but there is no way to prove it with concrete
| evidence. The only thing you can prove with concrete
| evidence is that the sun emits light in the direction of
| objects in our solar system that we can see. We infer
| that the sun emits light in all directions because that
| is the best explanation that accounts for the data that
| we have.
|
| Many-worlds is the same. We can't demonstrate their
| existence, we infer it from the current-best explanation
| that accounts for the data that we have.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > current-best explanation
|
| Many-worlds is by far _not_ accepted to be the "current-
| best explanation".
|
| It's a candidate. It's not clear it's right.
| lisper wrote:
| Sorry, I wasn't clear. The current-best explanation is
| not many worlds, it's the mathematical formalism of QM.
| Many-worlds is a logical consequence of that.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Many worlds is _one possible interpretation_ of the
| logical consequences of that. It 's not nearly as
| definite or clear-cut as you're making it sound.
| lisper wrote:
| It seems pretty clear cut to me. I've seen no argument
| against it that doesn't involve some logical fallacy. If
| you think you know of one please enlighten me.
| mcguire wrote:
| My understanding is that the best current interpretation
| of quantum mechanics is that there is no interpretation
| and that you just have to do the math.
| lisper wrote:
| Yes, that's right. But if you want to assign any meaning
| to the math, and in particular if you want to adopt an
| ontology where you exist, then the math leaves you no
| alternative than to conclude that parallel universes also
| exist (unless you resort to special pleading like the
| Copenhagen interpretation).
| shawn-butler wrote:
| When you look at the actual history of science, this path
| of "tangible progress" you rely on is shown mostly to be
| a constructed narrative.
| lisper wrote:
| And yet somehow your computer seems to work.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's not mystical nonsense, it's a logical consequence
| of the mathematics of quantum mechanics.
|
| Aren't the various interpretations of QM all empirically
| indistinguishable from within the universe, which is why
| they are interpretations and not, say, hypotheses?
| lisper wrote:
| It turns out that all of the various interpretations are
| more or less equivalent, with the exception of the
| various collapse theories, which are empirically testable
| and have so far all been falsified.
| fsckboy wrote:
| >> _mystical nonsense such as the many-worlds
| interpretation of quantum mechanics_
|
| > _It 's not mystical nonsense, it's a logical
| consequence of the mathematics of quantum mechanics_
|
| you're both wrong. What the many-worlds interpretation
| is, is _philosophy_. It 's thinking about what could be
| that would be explanatory, in the absence of being able
| to test it; just as atomic theory was philosophy before
| it was experimentally shown... and it's still philosophy
| to think about what has actually been shown, since it was
| not long after it was "shown" that indivisible atoms
| became divisible into fundamental particles, that they in
| turn turned out not to be fundamental either.
| abeppu wrote:
| > There is a tiny minority of philosophers who are actually
| scientists pushing very hard on the boundaries of human
| knowledge.
|
| It sounds like you've already started with the assumption
| that the only way to expand human knowledge is by "science"
| and the people doing it are "scientists"? Maybe that's an
| assumption worth investigating. How would you know if that
| was true? What experiment or empirical observation would
| one need to conduct to know that the only way to extend
| human knowledge is by "science"?
|
| I feel like you're trying to do a complement to some
| philosophers by saying that the good ones are honorary
| scientists, but perhaps there's more to know than objective
| truths about our specific material world.
| lisper wrote:
| > you've already started with the assumption that the
| only way to expand human knowledge is by "science"
|
| No. I'm not assuming anything. I am making the _empirical
| observation_ that the _most effective method_ for
| expanding human knowledge is science. The people who
| understand this and consequently put effort into studying
| science I call scientists, and I don 't intend that to be
| an honorary title but a genuine show of deep respect.
|
| (And I say this as someone with a Ph.D. in a STEM field.)
|
| > perhaps there's more to know than objective truths
| about our specific material world
|
| Like what?
| abeppu wrote:
| > I am making the empirical observation that the most
| effective method for expanding human knowledge is
| science.
|
| I think you're still basically begging the question here.
| Is it directly observable whether a belief is
| "knowledge", such that the efficacy of a method can be
| known by "empirical observation"? How would one know?
|
| > Like what?
|
| I think ethics are pretty important, but aren't about
| something that's objectively true in the world. One can
| know some of the characteristics of preference
| utilitarianism as an ethical model, for example.
|
| But in this conversation, perhaps the most important gap
| is epistemology. You feel confident you know what
| knowledge is and isn't and how one can arrive at it --
| did you arrive at that understanding by directly
| observing what is and is not knowledge in an objective
| external universe? What does it mean to know, or even for
| a belief to be "justified"?
|
| Since you brought up Kant, and then re-canted (rimshot),
| Kant had the analytic vs synthetic distinction on
| propositions, where synthetic propositions are those
| which depend on how their meaning relates to the world --
| i.e. can be true or false depending on what's true about
| the world. Math, logic, etc are analytic truths; we don't
| validate that e.g. arithmetic works the way we know it
| does by doing "experiments" and "empirical observations"
| of operations with large cardinality sets of physical
| objects.
| lisper wrote:
| > Is it directly observable whether a belief is
| "knowledge", such that the efficacy of a method can be
| known by "empirical observation"?
|
| Yes.
|
| > How would one know?
|
| Just look around you. You have computers, GPS, mRNA
| vaccines, etc. etc. etc. Those things were not produced
| by philosophers.
|
| > I think ethics are pretty important,
|
| I agree.
|
| > but aren't about something that's objectively true in
| the world.
|
| What can I say? You are simply wrong about that. Ethics
| are instincts produced by evolution. Like all instincts,
| they exist because they have survival value: genes that
| build brains with instincts about ethics reproduce better
| (in certain environmental niches) than genes that don't.
| Ethics are every bit as amenable to scientific inquiry as
| any other natural phenomenon.
|
| > we don't validate that e.g. arithmetic works the way we
| know it does by doing "experiments" and "empirical
| observations" of operations with large cardinality sets
| of physical objects
|
| Of course we do, because there are different ways of
| doing arithmetic. Some of them are better models of the
| world than others, and so those are the ones that we tend
| to think of as "the way" of doing arithmetic. But the
| only thing that makes standard arithmetic special is that
| it corresponds to the way that (parts of) the world work.
| abeppu wrote:
| > Just look around you. You have computers, GPS, mRNA
| vaccines, etc. etc. etc. Those things were not produced
| by philosophers.
|
| You're clearly not getting this. Yes, you can see the
| products of scientific progress. That's not the same as
| seeing the absence of knowledge produced by anyone else.
| And one would expect that truths revealed about the
| physical world we live in should of _course_ be the ones
| that give rise to physical artifacts you can point at.
|
| > Ethics are instincts produced by evolution.
|
| ... and yet, our ethical beliefs are not biologically
| determined, but change as a function of culture, and at
| least in part through the work of philosophers. Our
| beliefs about the importance of freedom, equality,
| fairness (or what those mean) change dramatically over
| decades, far too quick for genetics to have any
| contribution to the change.
|
| Re arithmetic, "the integers are closed under addition"
| is still something one can _know_ without making any
| observations of the world, even if standard addition were
| somehow not useful in making predictions about the
| physical world. Further, by arguing that the _importance_
| of mathematical knowledge is only its relationship to
| making predictions about physical reality, you are once
| again begging the question.
| lisper wrote:
| > That's not the same as seeing the absence of knowledge
| produced by anyone else.
|
| But that's not what you asked, and it's not what I
| claimed. I didn't say that philosophy is entirely devoid
| of value, only that a lot of it is.
|
| > our ethical beliefs are not biologically determined
|
| What difference does that make? A lot of your physical
| characteristics aren't biologically determined. That
| doesn't put them beyond the reach of scientific inquiry.
|
| > "the integers are closed under addition" is still
| something one can know without making any observations of
| the world
|
| Really? How do you know what the word "integer" means
| without making any observations of the world? How can you
| even become _aware_ of the _existence_ of the word
| "integer", let alone what it is that that word denotes,
| without making any observations of the world?
|
| > Further, by arguing that the importance of mathematical
| knowledge is only its relationship to making predictions
| about physical reality, you are once again begging the
| question.
|
| Am I? What is it that made you decide to write "the
| integers are closed under addition" if not some
| prediction on the effect that writing those words rather
| than some other words (like, say, "pandas are partial to
| purple parkas") would have on physical reality?
| abeppu wrote:
| > But that's not what you asked, and it's not what I
| claimed. I didn't say that philosophy is entirely devoid
| of value, only that a lot of it is.
|
| You claimed you can empirically observe "that the most
| effective method for expanding human knowledge is
| science", which I think requires you to observe the
| efficacy of all methods of expanding human knowledge.
|
| Regarding ethics, empirically gathering what people's
| ethical opinions are is surveying. This is distinct from
| knowledge about ethical systems. For example, preference
| utilitarianism sets the stage for social choice theory,
| in which theorems tell us about the properties and
| weaknesses of systems for groups of agents to
| collectively make choices (Arrow's theorem, Harsanyi's
| theorem etc).
|
| > Really? How do you know what the word "integer" means
| without making any observations of the world?
|
| I know the English word "integer" through interaction
| with the world; this does not mean that true properties
| of addition are "empirical" truths proceeding from
| science.
| lisper wrote:
| > requires you to observe the efficacy of all methods of
| expanding human knowledge
|
| I should have hedged with "all _known_ methods ". It's
| possible that someone might invent a more effective
| method (but I believe there is actually good reason to
| believe that this is not possible, but that's a tangent).
|
| > preference utilitarianism sets the stage for social
| choice theory, in which theorems tell us about the
| properties and weaknesses of systems for groups of agents
| to collectively make choices (Arrow's theorem, Harsanyi's
| theorem etc).
|
| Sure. So?
|
| Arrow's theorem is a great example. It's a _theorem_. It
| 's _math_. It 's not what is generally done under the
| rubric of "philosophy".
|
| > this does not mean that true properties of addition are
| "empirical" truths proceeding from science
|
| Yes it does. What is the "true" value of (say) 11 + 27?
| It could be 38, but it could also be 1 (mod 12) or 13
| (mod 24) any of which might be the "true" value depending
| on the application.
| abeppu wrote:
| > Ethics are instincts produced by evolution.
|
| I would also clarify: We have instincts _about_ ethics.
| This does not imply that ethics _are_ instincts, any more
| than having instincts about geometry implies that
| geometry is instincts or having instincts about physical
| quantities implies that measure theory is instincts.
| jll29 wrote:
| > You are simply wrong about that. Ethics are instincts
| produced by evolution. Like all instincts, they exist
| because they have survival value
|
| That sounds like a rather cheap version of evolution (and
| - not wanting to offend you, but in my view you sound
| rather too convinced that you have figured it all out for
| your own good).
|
| The way you map moral values on survival smells like
| Skinner's cheap way to explain language in terms of
| behavioral stimulus-response pairs: not an adequate
| explanation. Beware that for every Skinner, there may a
| Chomsky around the corner to give his views a run for his
| money.
| lisper wrote:
| > That sounds like a rather cheap version of evolution
|
| The format of an HN comment imposes some pretty serious
| constraints on communicating technical nuance and detail.
|
| > Beware that for every Skinner, there may a Chomsky
| around the corner to give his views a run for his money.
|
| Sure. Science is not a magic bullet. It can steer you
| astray. But in the long run it works better than any
| available alternative methodology.
| card_zero wrote:
| _Well,_
|
| The demarcation problem is distinguishing science from
| non-science.
|
| Karl Popper theorizes that falsifiability is what makes
| the difference.
|
| But there's nothing falsifiable about that theory! What
| would you test?
|
| If you accept that there are meaningful theories outside
| of science, this works out fine. If you don't, you'll
| struggle to say what science is.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Definitions are hardly a problem just for science (if
| they are a problem - science seems to doing OK
| regardless), and I feel they are particularly difficult
| for those with a strong commitment to the view that
| ethics must somehow be grounded in something irrefutably
| true. In fact, I vaguely suspect that Wittgenstein's
| later position with respect to the rule-following paradox
| was that seeking such grounding is a doomed pursuit, and
| he somewhat famously contended that philosophy was not
| concerned with problems, only linguistic puzzles.
|
| Perhaps rather paradoxically (at least if you see Popper
| as a champion of science over philosophy), Popper (who,
| in addition to his work on the philosophy of science,
| also wrote "The Open Society and its Enemies") felt that
| Wittgenstein was utterly wrong to deny that there are
| real philosophical problems.
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#RuleFoll
| Pri...
|
| https://ditext.com/wordpress/2019/06/26/puzzles-vs-
| problems-...
| card_zero wrote:
| Thank you, I knew there would be relevant Popper quotes
| about philosophy being meaningful, and I was trying the
| keyword "transempirical" without success. I forgot it was
| the underlying beef in the poker incident. :)
| samatman wrote:
| We're lucky that science just burst full-formed out of
| Zeus's forehead then.
|
| Or we might need a philosopher or two to help us invent
| it.
|
| So, if we all get mind-wiped and have to start over
| without this gift of the Gods, let's call the man who
| gets us back on track Francis Bacon, Jr.
|
| Why? _no particular reason_
| mcguire wrote:
| Unfortunately, there are questions that cannot be
| empirically answered. Some of those questions are
| important.
| lisper wrote:
| Like what?
| glenstein wrote:
| > But the vast majority of people who self-identify
| professionally as philosophers, and especially the ones
| whose names are revered (I'm looking at you, Ludwig
| Wittgenstein [EDITED])
|
| You could have picked so many good examples, instead you
| picked a legend of the 20th century. The first half of his
| career, centered on the Tractatus, even today is regarded
| as more or less on the right track as relates to how we use
| language to make the kinds of propositions found in the
| natural sciences (see modern philosopher A.C. Grayling's
| intro to his book where he says as much), but is less than
| a comprehensive view of the totality of meaning that it
| originally aspired to be.
|
| And if anything, his latter career would be _more_
| pertinent, not less, as he spent it perhaps as the 20th
| century 's most powerful advocate for the idea that
| philosophy spends too much time uselessly bewitching people
| with language. He was literally an engineering bro
| frustrated with pointless vagaries, known for flying into
| rages against what he regarded as frivolous philosophical
| nonsense. He might be the one guy from the 20th century who
| would most _agree_ with you about the excesses of pointless
| language.
| scoofy wrote:
| Philosophy is the birthplace of sciences, which is why most
| philosophers are dealing with some kind of metaphysics.
| Yes, there are some philosophers that continue their work
| after developing it from a metaphysics into a physics, but
| that's sort of besides the point. The _point_ of philosophy
| is to create the framework for empirical research.
|
| That you would deride Wittgenstein on a math/CS forum, when
| he is _literally the person who thought up the concept of
| truth tables_ , seems quite egregious.
|
| Yes, Wittgenstein is one of the most frustrating
| philosophers to read (I know, I took a class on his work),
| but his impact on the _development_ of computer science, as
| one of the main people trying to harness the logic of
| thought /language, seems obvious to me.
| jll29 wrote:
| Wittgenstein's discussion of what _all_ games have in
| common (nothing, really) led him to the notion of "family
| resemblances".
|
| Margaret Masterman, who was Wittgenstein's student in
| Cambridge, may have passed some of that on to her student
| Karen Sparck Jones -- later of TFIDF fame (Sparck Jones,
| 1972; [1]) --, and Karen's Ph.D. was on semantic
| clustering, which years later were published as a book
| [2]. Her husband Roger needham published a paper about
| the notion of a "clump" theory of meaning [3]. So it
| seems Wittgenstein put some precursor ideas to clustering
| (linkage?) out in the Cambridge air for others to pick
| up...
|
| [1] https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/e
| b026526...
|
| [2] https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.5555/22908
|
| [3] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&typ
| e=pdf&d...
| lisper wrote:
| > Philosophy is the birthplace of sciences
|
| Sure, just as alchemy is the birthplace of chemistry.
| That doesn't mean we should still be studying alchemy for
| anything other than its historical significance.
| scoofy wrote:
| No, this is an incorrect assessment. You have framed it
| as _post hoc_ , but the point is that _the philosophy_ is
| the development of ideas like, say, atomic theory in
| chemistry, or germ theory in medicine. Theories that
| define _the framework_ for study.
|
| New sciences happen very infrequently, but they happen,
| and when they do, they are typically created in
| philosophy departments. Computer science is the most
| recent, which came in large part from philosophy
| departments. Before that was psychology.
|
| Alchemy is exactly a framework-free type of empiricism.
| The _point_ of philosophy, and philosophy that happens in
| other sciences, is that we live inside of a model, and we
| interact with that model, and change the model while we
| are doing empirical research _using the rules of the
| model_. This is a type of reflexive framework
| development, where metaphysical ideas become _obvious_
| physics as people propose changes to the standard model
| we use.
|
| This dance between induction and deduction is exactly the
| field of philosophy.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Incorrect. Philosophers write about, "organize" and
| "codify" what people are doing in the trenches from trial
| and error. To say that the philosophers created the
| science is like saying that by dressing a man in a suit
| they have created life.
| scoofy wrote:
| I don't understand what you mean.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Just like we shouldn't study history, because it is in
| the past?
| GrumpySloth wrote:
| _> That you would deride Wittgenstein on a math /CS
| forum, when he is literally the person who thought up the
| concept of truth tables, seems quite egregious._
|
| That would be Charles Peirce, in the XIXth century, not
| Wittgenstein.
| hollerith wrote:
| Also, his philosophical works might be bad even if he had
| invented truth tables: it's not like the truth table was
| hard to find the way, e.g., Newtonian mechanics was.
| scoofy wrote:
| Peirce, apparently, did develop a equivalent form of
| truth table earlier, but it would be misunderstand the
| history of computer science to attribute them to Peirce.
| Just because someone had the idea first, doesn't mean
| that work is the source of the idea going forward.
|
| I think it's pretty clear that Wittgenstein's truth
| tables are those that guided the development of computer
| science.
|
| >In a manuscript of 1893, in the context of his study of
| the truth-functional analysis of propositions and proofs
| and his continuing efforts at defining and understanding
| the nature of logical inference, and against the
| background of his mathematical work in matrix theory in
| algebra, Charles Peirce presented a truth table which
| displayed in matrix form the definition of his most
| fundamental connective, that of illation, which is
| equivalent to the truth-functional definition of material
| implication. Peirce's matrix is exactly equivalent to
| that for material implication discovered by Shosky that
| is attributable to Bertrand Russell and has been dated as
| originating in 1912. Thus, Peirce's table of 1893 may be
| considered to be the earliest known instance of a truth
| table device in the familiar form which is attributable
| to an identifiable author, and antedates not only the
| tables of Post, Wittgenstein, and Lukasiewicz of 1920-22,
| but Russell's table of 1912 and also Peirce's previously
| identified tables for trivalent logic tracable to 1902.
|
| PDF of Anellis's paper:
| https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1108/1108.2429.pdf
|
| >But even if that conclusion is challenged, it is now
| clear that Russell understood and used the truth-table
| technique and the truth-table device. By 1910, Russell
| had already demonstrated a well-documented understanding
| of the truth-table technique in his work on Principia
| Mathematica. Now, it would seem that by 1912, and surely
| by 1914, Russell understood, and used, the truth-table
| device. Of course, the combination of logical conception
| and logical engineering by Russell in his use of truth
| tables is the culmination of work by Boole and Frege, who
| were closely studied by Russell. Wittgenstein and Post
| still deserve recognition for realizing the value and
| power of the truth-table device. But Russell also
| deserves some recognition on this topic, as part of this
| pantheon of logicians.
|
| >In this paper I have shown that neither the truth-table
| technique nor the truth-table device was "invented" by
| Wittgenstein or Post in 1921-22. The truth-table
| technique may originally be a product of Philo's mind,
| but it was clearly in use by Boole, Frege, and Whitehead
| and Russell. The truth-table device is found in use by
| Wittgenstein in 1912, perhaps with some collaboration
| from Russell. Russell used the truth-table technique at
| Harvard in 1914 and in London in 1918. So the truth-table
| technique and the truth-table device both predate the
| early 1920s.
|
| PDF of Shosky's relevant paper: https://mulpress.mcmaster
| .ca/russelljournal/article/download...
| GrumpySloth wrote:
| I suspected Frege, which is why I went looking for a
| source, but found Peirce instead. Good catch.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| You know w think philosophy is a disease to be cured ...
| identify himself as philosopher is most shameful word you
| can say to him. He is anti-philosophy all his life.
|
| Even his early work is about let us do this and done all
| philosophy so we as the whole humanity no need to do this
| rubbish anymore, be silence now as all done and for what
| cannot be said ... he go to teach kids (and quite horrible
| as a teacher btw).
|
| W as a P ... crazy
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| "tiny minority of philosophers who are actually scientists"
|
| Aren't you just re-categorizing to fit what you want.
|
| "I don't like this field, so I'll cherry pick people I do
| agree with and re-define them to be in a different group
| that I'm more comfortable with".
|
| Can't I say the same thing.
|
| "Those Biologist aren't really scientist, they are just
| writing down observations not following the scientific
| method".(I've heard this argument on HN before).
|
| Philosophers are the original scientist.
|
| Is every philosopher today pushing boundaries and creating
| something new? No.
|
| Is every scientist today pushing boundaries and creating
| something new? Also No.
| xpe wrote:
| Let's make this testable. Tell me what percentage of
| technical people, defined however you like, generally view
| philosophy as a waste of time. (This could even be a
| thought experiment for now.)
|
| Of these people how many of them come to their conclusion
| based on careful reasoning? Based on broad knowledge of
| philosophy?
|
| My prior expectation would be that these numbers are very
| low. I would expect that people who dismiss philosophy do
| so from a position of relative ignorance.
|
| This is not blame; the broader context matters: educational
| curricula, teaching quality, life experience, curiosity,
| competing interests, etc.
|
| Let's put the shoe on the other foot. How much applied
| computer science is worth reading? If you put a typical
| example of it in front of me (the code professionals write
| for example), I'm probably going think it is a hot mess. It
| becomes more bearable if I interpret it as a sequence of
| economically and culturally constrained suboptimal
| decisions. The same goes for philosophy.
| lisper wrote:
| > I would expect that people who dismiss philosophy do so
| from a position of relative ignorance.
|
| That's entirely possible. It's even possible that my
| assessment is based on ignorance. I am certainly not an
| expert in the philosophical literature, and even more
| certainly not an expert in it recently. The last time I
| looked seriously at the philosophical literature at all
| was decades ago and maybe things have changed. But I _am_
| an expert in science, and computer science in particular
| (I have a Ph.D.) and so I can say with some authority
| that the philosophy literature that I looked at back in
| the day exhibited a profound ignorance of basic results
| in CS and math, and also a pretty profound lack of common
| sense. I found a _lot_ of papers that were tackling non-
| problems that were based on false assumptions, the moral
| equivalent of fake proofs that 1=0 where the object of
| the game is to spot the flaw in the reasoning. And
| spotting the flaw in the reasoning wasn 't even
| challenging. It was just obvious.
|
| It also seems to me that a lot of what is nowadays called
| philosophy is just pretty transparent cover for religious
| apologetics.
|
| Now, as you say, I could be wrong. I'm not an expert. If
| I'm wrong, I welcome being enlightened. But if you want
| to take that on I think you will find that I am not
| completely clueless. I suggest you start with citing an
| example other than Dennett or Maudlin of someone you
| think is doing good work in philosophy nowadays.
| raddan wrote:
| This is sad. I teach an upper-level undergraduate course on
| programming language theory, and one major component of the
| course is reduction proofs. Many students find proof by
| contradiction (reductio ad absurdum) to be a confusing
| concept. I have always directed those students toward
| Dennett's helpful video
| (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sVUMAqMmy7o) and most of them
| respond positively to Dennett's lucid style. RIP.
|
| FWIW, I have also seen the dismissive STEM attitude toward
| the philosophical tradition. It helps to remember that the
| philosophical tradition predates the scientific tradition
| significantly, and that it does not take logical positivism
| or reductionism as givens. Having studied both disciplines, I
| feel like philosophy has seriously enhanced my understand of
| the world even if I don't use it in my day-to-day scientific
| work.
| kijin wrote:
| I think it depends a lot on which tradition of philosophy
| one is first exposed to. Most STEM people will find Anglo-
| American analytic philosophy (where Dennett firmly
| belonged) much easier to approach than continental
| philosophy or the classical stuff, but unfortunately casual
| readers tend to get exposed to a lot more of the latter.
|
| It's like the first programming language you learned. It
| will shape your perception of what programming is all about
| for a long time afterward, and might even turn you away
| from programming altogether. But there are lots of
| programming languages, and they're just different ways to
| make the same silicon do something interesting!
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| In a sense that is a myth. Guess this is based on the
| idea of silicon and Turing complete.
|
| The silicon argument might be right if we treat it on its
| own. Input, process and output. But one think of the
| system where the silicon or multiple of them plus some
| analogue or biological input and output. It is not the
| same. The process affect the speed and response ... you
| can imagine one use lisp, basic or cnn to drive a car ...
| can you.
|
| The turning complete is not physical as above and real
| world ish. Hence it sound all true. But people forgot we
| do not have unlimited memory. Our tur8ng complete is in
| practice not.
|
| To sum it all may be we kick human out of the loop all
| silicon and human language might have a chance the same
| using the same language (but still physical real world
| above ...)
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I was introduced to the concepts of proof
| by contradiction and by induction in the final year or two
| of high school, but that was fifty years ago in England.
|
| Perhaps finding it confusing is a recent development.
| strongbond wrote:
| Me too, fifty years ago in Wales
| spacechild1 wrote:
| Me too, 20 years ago in Austria.
| rsktaker wrote:
| Me too, 3 months ago in California.
| pgspaintbrush wrote:
| STEM often overlooks the fundamental work that was done in
| philosophy that led to breakthroughs within STEM. For
| example, Claude Shannon's undergraduate philosophy course
| is what taught him boolean algebra, which ultimately led
| him to design digital circuits.
| https://bentley.umich.edu/news-events/magazine/the-
| elegant-p...
| jhbadger wrote:
| Although formal logicians are quite isolated in
| philosophy departments -- while their colleagues are
| debating whether Plato or Kant had a better idea of what
| it meant to be "good", the logicians are basically doing
| math with symbols rather than numbers.
| jampekka wrote:
| Ethics are discussed very little in current philosophy,
| at least in the analytical tradition. Plato is mostly of
| historical interest, and of Kant's work it's mostly
| philosophy of mind, epistemology and metaphysics.
|
| Logicians are somewhat different in studying formal
| systems, and there are strong links to (foundations of)
| mathematics. But logics are typically developed and
| analyze to study some otherwise philosophically motivated
| questions.
| pxc wrote:
| That's true, but in a way this is a good thing for CS
| students. In schools with analytic philosophy
| departments, you can expect to find a logician there. So
| every CS student can stop by their philosophy department
| and meet the logician, and when they do, they'll find
| someone who they can connect and communicate with in a
| similar way that they already (by junior or senior year,
| certainly) do with their math and CS theory instructors.
| Yes, they're specialized, but they're still guaranteed to
| be philosophically literate and they can help bridge some
| really interesting topics for CS students.
|
| And they probably know other people in the department who
| teach things that might be interesting to a STEM student
| even if that student hardly knows it yet.
| virissimo wrote:
| jhbadger: But logicism, the idea that all of math can be
| reduced to logic, is itself a controversial philosophical
| thesis!
| jancsika wrote:
| > It helps to remember that the philosophical tradition
| predates the scientific tradition significantly, and that
| it does not take logical positivism or reductionism as
| givens.
|
| That's an interesting point.
|
| I think there's also a cost to that-- philosophy lugs
| around a lot of pre-scientific baggage that is poorly
| specified but historically important. Free will comes to
| mind, especially within the Christian history of resolving
| the apparent contradiction of horrific natural/manmade
| evils existing in the face of an omniscient, omnipotent,
| and benevolent god.
|
| There are of course other historical contexts to notions of
| free will. But when philosophers talk about any of these in
| places where laypeople here them, it seems like those
| historical contexts are gone and they end up strongly
| implying a general purpose free will that is neither well-
| specified or in some cases even coherent.
|
| It would be like a bunch of programmers debating
| "functions," with one meaning functional programming,
| another meaning any programming language where functions
| are a first-class citizen, and yet another meaning the set
| of all keywords "function" or "FUNCTION" in any programming
| language in history. That's not going to be a fruitful
| discussion.
|
| So I'd speculate people in STEM can smell the lack of
| systematic thinking in some of these discussions and
| unfortunately throw the baby out with the bathwater.
|
| Edit: clarification
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Any competent philosopher will define terms, often
| spending most of their time defining terms!
|
| It be be tautological, but a lack of systemic thinking
| makes a discussion bad philosophy, or epistemic bunk as
| they say in the trade.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| I think his point was that, lets say some philosophers or
| programmers, are having a detailed discussion. But are
| overheard by lay-people, maybe mid-argument, without the
| background, having not heard the definitions, would
| takeaway a lot of misunderstandings.
|
| Or maybe his point, in a discussion like this on HN, a
| lot of people are jumping into the conversation in-the-
| middle, without catching up on the history.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| For that example my exposure is shocking when first exposed
| to this line of argument. Is sq root of 2 is rational?
| Assume it is ... Never heard of his example. But that is
| better as it involves no maths.
| xpe wrote:
| I find philosophy essential even though many philosophers
| can be painful and/or seemingly irrelevant to read. Still,
| I think I'm at a point now, where finding intellectual
| discomfort is preferable to not.
| sampo wrote:
| > I think a lot of people, especially in STEM, pooh-pooh
| philosophy at first.
|
| A lot of philosophy ignores biology, sometimes even physics.
| In topics where biology would be immensely relevant, like
| with philosophy of mind. Dennett didn't try to ignore
| biology, he was deeply aware and well read in biology as
| well.
| cogman10 wrote:
| This seems like a really weird statement to me.
|
| Most of the philosophy I'm familiar with is concerned with
| abstract notions and concepts like morality. I'm really
| having a hard time seeing how biology or physics would
| inform it one direction or another.
|
| Like, what sort of biology would have made Kant's notions
| of morality different?
| glenstein wrote:
| Kant used Newtonian assumptions about the time and space,
| treating them as absolute, and treating them not as
| properties of physics but necessary preconditions for us
| being able to experience anything.
|
| Relativity overturned those Newtonian assumptions on
| which Kant depended, although he might say we
| nevertheless have to experience time as constant and
| space in three dimensions, regardless of how those things
| turn out to "really" work, since that's the only way we
| can do it.
|
| So it's no longer obvious that time and space are just
| given absolutely, and due to that, they no longer make
| for a comfortable starting point for philosophical
| assumptions. If nature itself is different, then _we_
| might not even be experiencing it that way in the first
| place.
|
| More tentatively, I think our advancing understanding of
| how brains and machines embody concepts, our
| understanding of the differences of biological creatures
| combined with new physics, is suggestive at a bare
| minimum that reality could be experienced differently,
| and/or that we can understand how we experience these
| things empirically with better knowledge about brains,
| instead of asserting that everything is governed at the
| outset by this or that philosophical assumption.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > Kant used Newtonian assumptions about the time and
| space, treating them as absolute, and treating them not
| as properties of physics but necessary preconditions for
| us being able to experience anything.
|
| Ok... this is non sequitur. It really doesn't matter that
| time moves at different speeds for any of Kant's
| philosophical positions. 2 people could be traveling at
| 0.5c and 0.00000001c and that makes no difference in Kant
| morals on how they should behave.
|
| And, practically speaking, unless there's a drastic
| development in propulsion the only bearing relativity has
| on day to day life is making sure the GPS works
| correctly. It is, otherwise, completely non-impactful to
| anyone beyond astrophysicists.
| glenstein wrote:
| >no difference in Kant morals on how they should behave.
|
| This wasn't about Kant's morals. This was about the idea
| that Newtonian conceptions of space and time familiar to
| Kant were necessary preconditions to experience.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _Relativity overturned those Newtonian assumptions on
| which Kant depended, although he might say we
| nevertheless have to experience time as constant and
| space in three dimensions, regardless of how those things
| turn out to "really" work, since that's the only way we
| can do it._"
|
| I think you are more wrong than right here. My
| understanding (informed by Onora O'neill, Dan Bonevac,
| and various Stanford Encyclopedia entries :-)) is that
| Kant does not specifically depend on Newtonian
| assumptions but that human perceptions _have to be
| mediated_ by time and space. Instead of overturning Kant,
| relativity and QM put _even more distance_ between what
| we, as mortal, physical beings, can perceive versus
| whatever is really going on in the world.
|
| Kant's project was to discover, given all of that, what
| anyone can say about things like ethics. He even goes so
| far to say that what he is trying to do is universal and
| he would like it to apply to other forms of intelligent
| beings.
| glenstein wrote:
| > is that Kant does not specifically depend on Newtonian
| assumptions but that human perceptions have to be
| mediated by time and space
|
| I understand the point about mediation, and I tried to
| speak to it directly in the portion you quoted. You are
| exactly right about the way Kant uses that in his
| argument. It's flexible enough that it can be understood
| as resilient, I think.
|
| I tried show how science can nevertheless speak to it in
| several ways. One is the convenient equivalence between
| Kant's necessary conditions and nature as we understood
| it at the time. That equivalence makes it easier to be
| comfortable positing time and space _as we understand
| them_ as necessary conditions that are prior to nature.
| It would be harder (but not impossible!) to entertain if
| there was daylight between what we believed our faculties
| to be and what we believed the natural world to be, if
| what was "necessary" was something different than what
| we thought we experienced (such as, say, a singular loaf
| of unified spacetime). An implication of Kant's view, as
| I understood him, was that we should be ready to believe
| it's different anyway, but nevertheless, it's easier to
| swallow when it perfectly aligns with how we thing the
| world really is.
|
| Second, for a different way of stating a similar point,
| if time and space are non-newtonian in some important
| way, we may have to understand that _that_ is what we
| experience in the first instance, and we would have to
| wrestle with the fact that our intuitions may attest to a
| variety of possible underlying necessary conditions.
| (Wittgenstein has been mentioned in this thread, so for a
| paraphrase of something he supposedly said, in reply to a
| student noting that it looks like the sun goes around the
| earth: "What would it look like if the earth went around
| the sun?" So it may be with the nature of our faculties.)
|
| Third, as we gain deeper understanding of brain functions
| of ourselves and other creatures, we may have inroads to
| how certain of our conscious experiences depend on
| conceptual abstractions or models. And if so, it
| transforms it into an open empirical question rather than
| one where we are simply stuck presuming necessary
| conditions. Kant might insist that that is all already
| through the lense of our faculties such as they are, but
| we, with more information, would be increasingly
| comfortable just not entertaining them as we get
| increasingly robust empirical understandings of conscious
| experience.
|
| None of these is a "defeater" argument by itself and
| there's a lot that can be talked about here of course,
| but I think given 21st century science, if Kant were
| trying to present his vision for the first time we might
| find it more challenging to reconcile with what we know
| of the natural world.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| >Relativity overturned those Newtonian assumptions
|
| Only in *very* specific situations which are extremely
| extremely extremely unrelated and WELL out of both
| practical and theoretical bound to the human perception
| of reality.
|
| Relativity is kind of the trivia of physics, it really
| has not informed much technology apart from a few things
| in space - compare this to, say, quantum electrodynamics
| which tells us why weird stuff happens in things we've
| made quadrillions of (not to mention quantum computing,
| etc.)
|
| The only time we would have ever brushed up against it
| naturally _might_ have been when we put clocks into space
| so that we could better send nukes into other parts of
| the globe.
| xpe wrote:
| Relativity did overturn the previous assumptions! It
| converted what were assumptions into the consequences of
| another theory.
| sampo wrote:
| "Morality and Evolutionary Biology" in
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-biology/
| scoofy wrote:
| This honestly makes sense to me. Philosophy basically teaches
| you how to think about things really well. When talking about
| STEM folks, however, you're already dealing with _extremely
| analytical_ people, but to them, analytical thinking is just
| intuitive.
|
| Spending a bunch of time figuring out why something that
| seems obvious _is_ obvious probably seems like a waste of
| time to a lot of people, but it can certainly help in the
| long run. We can 't see our own blindspots, so even if
| something seems obvious, I think it's useful to understand
| it.
| rvense wrote:
| The amusing thing is that these quick dismissals of
| philosophy are all instances of philosophical thought.
| Usually neither good, nor consistent, nor original thought,
| but nevertheless.
| omginternets wrote:
| One of the most delicious ironies in life is to ask these
| people why they think philosophy is poo-poo, and then revel
| in the fact that their answer is exactly philosophical in
| nature.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| That mindset frustrated me a lot in university. My school
| required a pretty broad survey of academia, with a class each
| in lower and upper division math, science, history,
| philosophy, and theology to graduate, and there were a lot of
| students (especially, for whatever reason, engineers) who
| _hated_ it.
|
| To a t, these people were dullards. They rarely had deep
| knowledge about anything, most of the time not even about the
| field they professed such dedication to. The entire point of
| an undergraduate education is to establish a foundation of
| baseline knowledge to allow you to contextualize new
| information, and if you don't engage with it, there's not a
| lot of opportunities to make up for it later.
| renewiltord wrote:
| That's because the majority of Philosophy courses are History
| of Philosophy courses whereas other logic-oriented fields
| occupy less time on "History of". While top departments like
| Princeton still focus on the quality of the arguments, they
| do devote entire course lengths to readings of ancient
| philosophers which are less elucidative about logic and
| reasoning than they are about the History of Philosophy.
|
| In comparison, the Seven Bridges of Konigsberg is a bare
| introduction in Graph Theory and Hamilton carving
| quarternions into Broom Bridge is an amusing aside before you
| get to the meat of the subject. A lecturer might amuse you
| with Kekule's dream before telling you about a Benzene ring
| but the ring is the thing, not the dream.
|
| Philosophy is a field with time-translation symmetry but is
| taught akin to fields without (e.g. Literature, History,
| Sociology). Fields without TTS need you to build up from the
| replay log. But fields with TTS can do something far better:
| they can distill "truths" into snapshots. Consequently, as a
| child I read about Galois Theory without reading _Analyse
| d'un Memoire sur la resolution algebrique des equations_ or a
| translation thereof.
|
| _Conjectures and Refutations_ shows how to accelerate
| through a replay log, indexing at key-frames so that we don
| 't need to play every frame to get to the conclusions we're
| searching for. Good field. Bad practice.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Having done a deep dive in philosophy at one point, the vast
| majority of it is ego stroking half-nonsense designed to be
| maximally unintelligible, because academics tolerate
| ridiculous amounts of jargon and equate hard to understand
| with meaningful or important. People like Robert Nozick,
| Thomas Nagel, John Searle and David Chalmers are by far the
| exception rather than the rule.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| The philosophers that did STEM seem to be the good ones.
|
| Its the artsy types that only read Sartre and Heidigger an
| Derrida, and never got their hands dirty by working in a
| lab, doing sufficiently higher level math, engineered and
| built modern tech are the annoying ones.
| naasking wrote:
| Philosophy, like every field, follows Sturgeon's law: 90% of
| it is crap.
| swatcoder wrote:
| I was on the opposite side of that when I was young and first
| read his work. I eagerly read piles and piles of philosophy and
| quickly shelved any interest in him and his work as building on
| completely unconvincing premises.
|
| But many many years later, there's been a lot of churn in whose
| work I value and whose I don't. I wouldn't be surprised if I
| see his work in a very different light now. This news may be
| what gets me yo pick it up again and find out.
| sameoldtune wrote:
| I enjoyed him mostly for his crusade against philosophy
| purporting that the mind has something other than a physical
| basis. Modern day philosophers that want to resurrect the
| "mind body problem" and panpsychism and the "hard problem of
| consciousness".
|
| He consistently argues that studying consciousness and
| perception is difficult but not impossible, and we will
| slowly make progress in this scientific endeavor just like
| all others we have attempted thus far. In philosophy circles
| he is sometimes derided as having too scientific a mindset,
| but that is what draws me to him. He's very endearing to
| listen to as well--very idiosyncratic.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The hard problem hasn't died so it doesn't need
| resurrecting. (Unless you redefine the hard problem into an
| easy one that is :))
| naasking wrote:
| It is slowly dying, just like vitalism before it.
| aragonite wrote:
| Dennett himself (like his teacher Quine) is very deflationary
| about the kind of philosophy practiced by most of his
| colleagues. See e.g. his "Higher-order truths about chmess"
| (https://sci-hub.ru/10.1007/s11245-006-0005-2):
|
| > Some philosophical research projects ... are rather like
| working out the truths of chess. A set of mutually agreed upon
| rules are presupposed -- and seldom discussed -- and the
| implications of those rules are worked out, articulated,
| debated, refined. So far, so good. Chess is a deep and
| important human artifact, about which much of value has been
| written. But some philosophical research projects are more like
| working out the truths of chmess. Chmess is just like chess
| except that the king can move two squares in any direction, not
| one. I just invented it -- though no doubt others have explored
| it in depth to see if it is worth playing. Probably it isn't.
| It probably has other names. I didn't bother investigating
| these questions because although they have true answers, they
| just aren't worth my time and energy to discover. Or so I
| think. There are just as many a priori truths of chmess as
| there are of chess (an infinity), and they are just as hard to
| discover...
| gavmor wrote:
| > I just invented it -- though no doubt others have explored
| it in depth to see if it is worth playing. Probably it isn't.
| It probably has other names.
|
| Ah, I believe this is the same "mess we're in" from Joe
| Armstrong's eponymous 2014 Strange Loop conference talk[0]:
|
| > This is a device that we can imagine. I try to find a big
| sausage machine where you put sausage meat, you know, you
| turn the handle. So we put all programs into it, and we turn
| the handle, and a smaller number of programs come out. Then
| we can throw away all the other programs. And that breaks the
| second law of thermodynamics. The trouble with software, you
| see, its complexity increases with time. We start with one
| program, and it splits and becomes two programs and four
| programs.
|
| > Files and systems, they mutate all the time. They grow in
| entropy. Disks are absolutely huge. And there's all these
| problems with naming. Naming's horrible. If you've got a file
| or something, what file name should it be? What does it have?
| What directory should I put it in? Can I find it later?
|
| (68% match)
|
| > When you have an idea, you have a little box and you type
| something into the box. I've done this, I've implemented it.
| You have a little box and then there's a little icon,
| Sherlock Holmes at the bottom. You type this stuff into the
| box and you press the Sherlock Holmes button. And the idea is
| that will find among all my files that I'm interested in, the
| most similar thing to what I've just put in this box. So I
| want it to find the most similar thing to this new thing. And
| then I want to know, is it different? So once it's found
| them, it makes a list of them in order.
|
| (64% match)
|
| Edit: Just had the revelation that I am posting these quotes
| straight out of a RAG on the transcript of his talk.
|
| 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXe3HUG2l4
| xanderlewis wrote:
| > just as many a priori truths of chmess as there are of
| chess (an infinity)
|
| I guess Mr Dennett never came across the ideas of Mr Cantor.
|
| [Yes, yes... I know they're both countable.]
| ajb wrote:
| A useful rule of thumb for evaluating a field you're not
| familiar with is 'Sturgeon's law'. Sturgeon's law is a
| refutation of claims of the form "don't bother looking at that
| because 90% of it is crap". The law states that 90% of
| _everything_ is crap, and hence such claims prove too much.
| dotsam wrote:
| Sad news. I aspire to be as intellectually acute in old age as
| Dennett was. His recent autobiography was engaging, although
| somewhat too indulgent at times. I admire how he created a life
| and a world-view that worked so well for him.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| What do you mean old age? He died at the same age that our
| (most likely) President will be next year.
| dustfinger wrote:
| Consciousness Explained [1] absolutely filled me with wonder
| during my university days.
|
| [1]: https://www.amazon.ca/Consciousness-Explained-Daniel-C-
| Denne...
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Incredibly sad news. I don't have much to add but to share some
| of my favorite work by him, one is an essay exploring Jaynes idea
| of the Bicameral Mind, and another is a talk he gave on Ontology
| and Philosophy of Science. Always admired his ability to bridge
| disciplines and look at ideas from a slightly unorthodox angle.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx5OZ1AZ5Vk
|
| https://www.julianjaynes.org/pdf/dennett_jaynes-software-arc...
| ggpsv wrote:
| Oh, I did not know about this essay! Thank you for sharing.
|
| To others reading this, this short essay [0] by Julian Jaynes
| is a good introduction to his idea of the Bicameral Mind. He
| later developed the idea further in his book "The Origin of
| Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind". If
| you've watched the series "Westworld", how the androids begin
| to develop something akin to consciousness is inspired by
| Jaynes' ideas.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.julianjaynes.org/resources/articles/consciousnes...
| johngossman wrote:
| Thank you! Great essay.
| superb-owl wrote:
| Unlike most of you, I strongly disliked Dennett's philosophy. But
| he seemed like a wonderful human, and he always made me think.
| atentaten wrote:
| What do you dislike about it?
| foldr wrote:
| Dennett and Fodor had a lot of amusing (though sometimes
| rather bitter) exchanges. Here's a review by Fodor that gives
| a critical perspective on some of Dennett's work:
| https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v25/n05/jerry-fodor/why-
| woul...
| pdonis wrote:
| I found Dennett's responses to Fodor to be spot on. I think
| Fodor simply could not grasp what Dennett was actually
| talking about--and Fodor was not the only one.
| foldr wrote:
| Dennett's response concedes all of Fodor's main points
| and proceeds via innuendo and ad hominem. But there you
| have it. Dennett was important and influential, and is
| worth reading, but his appeal as a philosopher has always
| been a mystery to me.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Dennett 's response concedes all of Fodor's main
| points and proceeds via innuendo and ad hominem_
|
| I strongly disagree, but I doubt we'll resolve that here.
|
| _> his appeal as a philosopher has always been a mystery
| to me._
|
| Not to me, but again, we won't resolve that here. We
| agree that he was important and influential, and that's
| what matters for this discussion in his memory.
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| Dennett is a mainstream eliminitavist, his appeal is that
| he removes extra fluff around philosophical concepts like
| consciousness and the brain. In a world where half the
| consciousness gurus are talking about unproven quantum
| stuff, souls, ghosts, aliens, gods, we need a Dennett to
| keep us grounded in reality as we ponder these mysteries
| that nobody knows the answers to.
|
| His only weakness was occasionally indulging in
| speculation himself (like his Multiple Drafts) - he was
| better at eliminating speculation rather than offering
| it, regarding consciousness at least.
|
| I highly recommend his talks on Closer To Truth (on
| YouTube) and all those videos actually.
| dudinax wrote:
| Dennett wasn't particularly good at speculating, but then
| almost nobody is.
| Simplicitas wrote:
| A philosopher who appreciated engineering. RIP Daniel Dennett.
| dsubburam wrote:
| I liked the debate he had with Sapolsky, where he explained why
| free will is compatible with determinism (arguments that were new
| to me), and that Sapolsky's book ("Determined") did not grapple
| with those arguments.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYzFH8xqhns&t=2273s
| johngossman wrote:
| I just watched this recently and thought "he looks old." But he
| was as sharp as ever. I hope my brain still works right up to
| the end
| spmurrayzzz wrote:
| Breaking the Spell is a book I still recommend to friends today.
| Sad to hear.
| mamonster wrote:
| Whilst he is probably the most respectable member of the "Four
| Horsemen"(Hitchens is probably the most revered but his early
| death seems to have given him a halo, a lot of his arguments
| would not stand up today), New Atheism will end up IMO as
| something that is seen very negatively by posterity(very little
| of it stands up today as anything more than fedora tipping).
| Jun8 wrote:
| Whether you like his theories and positions or not, he was a
| great philosopher, an influential thinker, and an interesting
| character.
|
| NY Times interview with him:
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/27/magazine/dani...
|
| NYer profile:
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/daniel-dennett...
|
| Interesting thread on /r/askphilosophy on philosophers' pushback
| against him:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/2cs8kz/do_ma...
|
| Big loss indeed, RIP.
| Fripplebubby wrote:
| For anyone who enjoyed the titles of those links but found that
| there was just, _something_ in the way of really digging into
| them, try:
|
| NY Times interview with him: https://archive.ph/knd9C
|
| NYer Profile: https://archive.ph/Snm8g
| Mesopropithecus wrote:
| RIP. When I wasn't sure what to make of Goedel, Escher, Bach, his
| writings tipped the scale. Thanks!
| AlbertCory wrote:
| So sad. I was on the team that brought him to Google, and my task
| was to get his signature on the video release form. Here's the
| talk:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q_mY54hjM0
|
| I told him that his book _Darwin 's Dangerous Idea_ was one of
| the few where, when I got to the end, I immediately wanted to go
| back to the beginning and read it again.
|
| He said, "I'm not sure that's a good thing."
| greentxt wrote:
| He was nothing if not honest. Truly the best of the New
| Athiests and deserving of almost Rorty-esque fandom.
| dwh452 wrote:
| Very sad for me, he was one of my favorite thinkers and his
| books were the few that made me feel smarter after having read
| them. His thinking tools remain a great aid to my thinking. The
| reason for this post though, is to mention that Darwin also
| died on April 19th.
| eternauta3k wrote:
| Could you explain his answer?
| n4r9 wrote:
| My guess: Dennett took it to mean that his exposition wasn't
| clear enough to the layman first time round and was
| disappointed by this.
|
| C.f. the famous quote attributed to Einstein "If you can't
| explain it to a six-year-old, you don't understand it
| yourself.". (Does anyone know if he actually said anything
| like that?)
| datascienced wrote:
| Could also mean it ended up for this reader as being
| entertainment. Wanting to read again because it is joyful.
|
| In terms of learning I can't read a book and remember it
| all. I would need to apply it.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| That's what I meant: there was so much to think about
| that I'd gain a whole lot by reading it again.
|
| What _he_ meant: well, he 's dead now, isn't he?
| pdonis wrote:
| I first came across Daniel Dennett through Douglas Hofstadter,
| when I read The Mind's I because I liked Godel, Escher, Bach.
| Once I had read Dennett's contributions to The Mind's I, I
| started looking up everything I could find of his writings; I
| think at this point I've read every one of his books and a fair
| number of his papers. He will be missed. RIP.
| hobbescotch wrote:
| Very sad news. Had the pleasure of having him be the keynote
| speaker at an aesthetics conference some friends and I organized
| during uni. Brilliant mind. RIP
| tum92 wrote:
| Had the pleasure of taking a course of his in undergrad as a
| newly decided philosophy major. The material was excellent and
| right up my alley, but more than anything I was stunned by how
| fluidly and clearly he communicated. Huge loss
| tony_cannistra wrote:
| I had the same experience, except I was definitely not a Phil
| major. He had a "class for every major" where we read chapters
| of the book he was writing (Toolkit for Thinking) and basically
| gave him feedback. It was an amazing strategy for him to get
| reviews on his book that way from totally non-Phil folks. And
| my name is in the book!
| Fripplebubby wrote:
| Great teacher, great writer. I took one of his undergrad
| classes, and one day I went in to his office hours to chat - I
| still remember how relieved he was that I wasn't there to try
| to debate with him about God, that I wanted to talk about
| something else! I think that happened to him quite a lot due to
| his reputation.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Good to finally have the question of whether he is conscious or
| not definitely resolved.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Can't say I met or knew him, but his essays in "The Mind's I" and
| "Brainstorms" are what got me to pursue tech as a teenager in the
| early 90s. Along with Hofstader, his ideas were foundational to
| hacker culture. What a time to go, where there has been a kind of
| cog.sci winter for the last 20 years, but the last year of LLMs
| has forced philosophy of mind back into the public consciousness.
| Though largely today under the guise of "AI Safety" and
| "alignment," Dennet's articulations form the tools we're going to
| be using to reason about ethics as they relate to these things we
| think of as minds - and regarding how we relate to these things
| that increasingly resemble other minds. Without too much
| lionizing (even though he has, however, just died), it would be
| hard to say that new ideas in philosophy as a whole have had more
| impact in a lifetime or more than that.
|
| A lot of very clever people disagreed strongly with him. However,
| since not one of them could deny they were shaped by the forces
| they opposed, those controversies became the shape of his own
| huge and formidable influence. I'm sure he would want to be
| remembered for something else, and I have the sense
| sentimentality was not his thing at all, but his popularization
| the term "deepity," was in the character of many of his ideas,
| where once you had been exposed to one, it yielded a perspective
| you could afterwards not unsee.
|
| I hope an afterlife may provide some of the surprise and delight
| he brought to so many in this one.
| fsckboy wrote:
| I'm afraid an afterlife would not leave Dennett in good humor.
| pmarreck wrote:
| I think it would.
|
| Even if he was wrong about it, it's important to air the
| thinking around it regardless of belief.
|
| The proposition, for example, that consciousness is basically
| an illusion without empirical basis, one would have to take
| up as belief, I guess (paradoxically), since to most of us,
| that would seem like gaslighting (i.e., "if your conclusion
| is that Descartes was wrong and that we can't even know we
| are conscious, then I beg to differ")
| arduanika wrote:
| I'm guessing that was GP's joke.
|
| Similar to Vonnegut's joke at a memorial service for Asimov
| at the American Humanist Society: "Isaac is up in Heaven
| now".
|
| It's amusing that when I searched for the exact quote just
| now, I found this HN comment from 2011, on the "in memoriam"
| thread for Dennett's fellow horseman:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3360710
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Whether Dennett was right or wrong about a deity, he's
| meeting his maker ;-)
| undershirt wrote:
| God forgive us. May his memory be eternal.
| samatman wrote:
| > _Along with Hofstadter, his ideas were foundational to hacker
| culture._
|
| Dennett was an influential thinker, probably more so than
| Hofstadter overall, but I can't agree with this assessment. For
| one thing, he became widely known after _Consciousness
| Explained_ , in 1992, which is simply too late to be
| foundational to hacker culture, which was well and truly
| founded by then.
|
| I won't broaden my case here, lest anything I say be
| interpreted as speaking ill of the dead. I'm certain he was a
| major influence for many who post here, yourself included, and
| I don't intend to detract from that.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Maybe _you_ discovered Dennett after 1992, but he was a well-
| known and widely published philosopher long before.
|
| "Elbow Room: the varieties of free will worth wanting" was a
| landmark work and was published in 1984.
|
| "The Minds I" (w/Hofstadter) was, relatively speaking, a
| hugely popular work published in 1981.
|
| In 1993, the cover of "Dennett and his critics" began
|
| > Daniel Dennett is arguably one of the most influential yet
| radical philosophers in America today.
|
| Doesn't sound much like someone who "became widely known"
| after a book published in 1992.
| ska wrote:
| You both have a point. Hacker culture was well established
| by the 70s, so still a decade before Dennett's earlier
| works.
|
| I do think its true that some of his work has resonated
| with many people who _also_ resonate with "hacker
| culture".
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Hacker culture was _not_ well established by the 70s,
| simply because so few people worked with computers in
| that decade. You can certainly trace its roots back to at
| least 1970, but it really did not become established
| then.
|
| What most people identify as "hacker culture" today arose
| in tandem with (a) relatively affordable "personal"
| computers (b) modem-based communication.
|
| The rise of these two things is more or less entirely
| cotemporal with the most productive phase of Dennett's
| career.
| Optimal_Persona wrote:
| What do you mean by "cog.sci winter of the last 20 years"?
|
| The research of Dr. Bruce Perry, Bessel van der Kolk and others
| into the effects of trauma on brain development, behavior and
| social functioning has had a profound impact on the
| understanding of cognition, the mind-body continuum, and the
| treatment of human suffering in this time frame.
|
| https://earlylearningnation.com/2023/02/author-bruce-perry-a...
| stevofolife wrote:
| I think what he means is that many of the seminal work
| related to cognitive science were produced back then. For
| example, Chomsky, Minsky, John Searle, David Chalmers and
| many more.
|
| Things still move during winter, just not as much.
| bbor wrote:
| Beautifully said, honestly brought me some solace. Echoing your
| endorsement of _Brainstorms_ -- I expect /hope this will be his
| enduring legacy!
|
| Death touches us all, but I totally agree, it especially hurts
| me to see these AI pioneers passing away right when so many
| groundbreaking cognitive science discoveries are being made.
| _Especially_ in the cases of Dennett's "opposition" like Lenat
| (and soon Chomsky...) where they die appearing "disproven" or
| "outmoded" by LLMs in the eyes of Silicon Valley celebrities
| like Hinton and Friedman. Oh well, I'm sure their time on their
| earth has prepared them for a little bit of criticism and
| uncertainty, a-la Schopenhauer's "Only with time, however, will
| the period of my real influence begin, and I trust that it will
| be a long one."
|
| Luckily, Dennett is under no such cloud, and he died more or
| less a hero in my eyes; certainly among the most influential
| Connectionist philosophers (+ Dreyfus & Clark?), who seemed
| very helpful in re-legitimizing ML. I, for one, don't think it
| would be odd to see philosophers like Dennett and Hofstadter in
| a Turing Award announcement someday...
| seydor wrote:
| AI safety is moralism of the boring kind, not even some new
| moral philosophy. AFAIK Dennett did not hold strong moral
| positions , let alone moralist, so i feel he was orthogonal to
| it
| xpe wrote:
| What moralism is interesting to you?
| rthrfrd wrote:
| Very sad to hear. We'll certainly miss having his perspective to
| ground us in this era of AI hyperbole, as thousands of engineers
| start confronting the ambiguities of consciousness with
| incongruent mental frameworks.
| pixelmonkey wrote:
| Looks like dailynous.com server is having trouble responding
| (likely due to HN). But a cached copy of the page is here:
|
| http://archive.today/kHPfz
|
| Daniel Dennett was an important philosopher of mind, whose
| Wikipedia page is here:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett
|
| When I studied philosophy in college (2002-2006), his ideas were
| among the most discussed and debated at NYU's philosophy
| department. I always enjoyed his thoughts and writings, even if I
| often didn't agree with them. RIP.
| pbsladek wrote:
| Love his work. Sad to see him go.
| abeppu wrote:
| In 2022, a GPT-3 model fine-tuned on Dennett's writing was good
| enough that "Dennett experts" could only pick a real Dennett
| quote from a list of 5 quotes about 50% of the time. I don't know
| that anyone's tried on newer models. He's gone, but I wonder if
| we could continue to get insights from him for a while longer.
|
| https://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2022/07/results-comput...
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| > I wonder if we could continue to get insights from him
|
| I think so. His views were somewhat rigid and materialist. As a
| de-fluffer, he's great, and I'm sure he will continue to be
| quoted especially as we make progress on AI and get into the
| nuts and bolts of consciousness. In particular which things are
| extraneous or peripheral to the problem itself.
| goodgoblin wrote:
| I was unpacking and yesterday from a move and saw a copy of his
| "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" book and remembered he time he answered
| a fan email I sent to him with the simple reply "It's always nice
| to receive an email such as yours." - here's to hoping you are
| wrong about the soul Dan!
| raoof wrote:
| consciousness is like a joke, if you think it needs an
| explanation you already miss it. I struggled with myself to
| convince Dennett that his conscious so much that I ended up
| losing it myself I hope you don't make the same mistake that I
| did
| scoofy wrote:
| My background is in Analytic Philosophy, so I'm fairly familiar
| with Dennett. His rise to prominence during the early 2000's
| seemed appropriate given the huge shift in American religious
| belief. Though, I still certainly understand that folks can be
| exasperated by that movement, I just don't think that you can
| experience a 30% drop in religious affiliation, in a single
| generation, without annoying people.[1]
|
| I read his book _Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural
| Phenomenon_ , which I found really interesting in that I'd never
| thought about religion as a concept being an evolutionary
| adaptive (or "hijacking") feature. I found it fascinating, though
| not profound. That said, I think some of the best philosophical
| work is just that. Really insightful ideas that make perfect
| sense once you think about them, you just probably wouldn't take
| the time to think about them.
|
| 1. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/how-u-s-
| reli...
| carlinm wrote:
| Sad to hear this. I had read his book "Elbow Room" back when I
| had been diving more deeply into free will and the various
| viewpoints associated. I don't know that I found it convincing
| but it was an interesting peek into the compatibilist argument.
| pknerd wrote:
| I am sorry that I did not know about him but mentioning of
| "Consciousness" in the linked article made me to google about his
| books. One of the book is "Consciousness Explained", I wonder
| whether it is for layman like me who do not know much about it?
| johngossman wrote:
| I would say it is. As usual, need to be aware that his
| conclusions are controversial. But the whole area is
| mkehrt wrote:
| It's extremely oriented towards laymen, and if you think it
| sounds interesting, you will probably enjoy it a lot. (Even if
| you don't agree with its conclusions)
| codeulike wrote:
| Its a great book, you might not agree that it 'explains'
| consciousness but it will give you a lot of new ways to think
| about it and it references a lot of interesting research.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Sad news. I loved "Minds I". After that he was always quantum
| entangled with Douglas Hofstadter for me. RIP a cool and fun
| philosopher, Mr. Dennett.
| mihaitodor wrote:
| Really terrible news... So glad I got to meet him in person in
| Dublin in 2018 when he gave a talk at
| https://www.tcd.ie/biosciences/whatislife and hung out for a chat
| in the lobby. He had this wonderful Gandalf-worthy cane that I'm
| not sure how he managed to manoeuvre when boarding airplanes.
| tombert wrote:
| I was one of those irritating edgy atheist teenagers (and am
| still kind of an irritating edgy atheist adult), so I used to
| have plenty of Daniel Dennett quotes in my back pocket when
| arguing with people online.
|
| He will be missed by me.
| alex201 wrote:
| I've never quite seen eye to eye with Daniel Dennett. His
| tendency to reduce the inexplicable to what he's confident he
| understands has always made me wonder if a challenging childhood
| might have fostered his distrust of the mysterious. Whenever I
| admire Nobel Prize laureates like Roger Penrose, who argue that
| consciousness isn't just software running on the brain's
| hardware, I can't help but feel a twinge of pity for Dennett and
| his like-minded peers. I can almost hear him reflecting, 'Wow,
| that was a wild ride, but boy, was I cranky! I wish I could have
| another go at it.
| n4r9 wrote:
| > made me wonder if a challenging childhood might have fostered
| his distrust of the mysterious
|
| Why this, and not simply an urge to understand things?
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| There is an infinity of mysterious things one could posit,
| including an infinity of mutually incompatible mysteries. How
| do you decide which mysteries are worthy of consideration?
|
| Personally, I think starting with things are known to exist,
| which have a physical basis, is a great start, and untestable
| assumptions should be kept to a minimum. Just because it would
| be delightful to contemplate that ornately feathered
| technicolor quantum unicorns are actually underlying all of
| reality, it isn't productive to consider until there is a
| reason to.
|
| Penrose is no doubt a genius of high order in his domain, but
| consciousness is not one of his domains. Saying consciousness
| is the result of quantum effects in microtubules explains
| nothing -- it is just a very tiny rug which one could imagine
| is hiding the truth, as all the larger scale hiding places have
| been inspected and found lacking.
|
| You'd think that with the stunning (and mostly unexpected)
| success of LLMs would expose the fact that simple, soul-free,
| mechanistic computations can produce some really amazing
| capabilities. The human brain is orders of magnitude larger
| than GPT4, plus it has a wildly more complex architecture than
| today's neural networks. To me, it takes little imagination to
| see how everything could be explained in purely physical terms.
| astrange wrote:
| > Saying consciousness is the result of quantum effects in
| microtubules explains nothing -- it is just a very tiny rug
| which one could imagine is hiding the truth, as all the
| larger scale hiding places have been inspected and found
| lacking.
|
| It also doesn't conflict with physicalism. I think he's
| trying to argue that consciousness would need more than you
| can do with a classical computer, but it doesn't seem to
| imply that. Classical computers are made of hardware
| components that rely on quantum effects to work, but that
| doesn't make them "quantum computers".
| astrange wrote:
| Being a Nobel laureate isn't evidence that you're right about
| anything after that. I'm sorry you'd like the supernatural to
| be true but you should find some ghosts first if you want
| anyone to believe in them.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Something more descriptive in the title would be helpful like
| "Daniel Dennett, philosopher and cognitive scientist, has died"
| dredmorbius wrote:
| "<Name> has died" is something of an HN convention:
|
| <https://hn.algolia.com/?q=%22has+died%22>
| bbor wrote:
| RIP to a legend. If you haven't heard of him and are interested
| in the more philosophical side of AI I think he's at his best in
| dialogue with others, so I highly recommend skimming this 1993
| round table that made me fall in love with him. I can't find the
| stamp, but I know at some point he excitedly describes machine
| learning research to some guffaws from his interlocutors -- quite
| funny and vindicating in hindsight.
|
| https://youtu.be/RVrnn7QW6Jg?si=jenbni0Rg1dX5fd4
|
| At ~01:50:00, he talks very poignantly about death, the soul, and
| immortality. Obviously this video is 30 years old now, but I
| doubt he changed much and it seems his philosophy left him with
| good tools to handle the specter of death. Godspeed Dennett, the
| world is in your debt...
|
| Some other, perhaps more lighthearted timestamps:
|
| - @ 01:00:00; A Nagel discussion culminating in "I think we're
| making tremendous progress on knowing what it's like to be a
| bat!" Truly a Silicon Valley optimist before it was cool.
|
| - at 01:12:00; He tells a fun robotics story to back up his
| belief in the tractability of neurophilosophy.
|
| - @ 01:40:00; he discusses his general philosophy for the mind
| and why he thinks our brains can be broken down into a recursive
| hierarchy of agential machines.
|
| - 00:24:00 is the moment that made me love him. Love to hate him,
| perhaps! Like a more prestigious, less directly-aggressive Gary
| Marcus.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| I can also recommend this discussion.
|
| It makes me sad that Sheldrake is the last participant
| standing. Not because I want Sheldrake to die, but rather
| because it reminds me all those great thinkers are now thinking
| no more.
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| Dennett on Closer To Truth (just uploaded)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHvIXe4DOEc
| n4r9 wrote:
| Like others here, I found Consciousness Explained to generate a
| huge perspective shift in my worldview.
|
| My (now) wife and I went to see him speak in June 2012 in King's
| College Cambridge, on the event of Alan Turing's 100th birthday:
| https://philevents.org/event/show/2205
|
| I don't remember all the details, but I think he spoke about
| Turing's ideas about evolution and computers. It might be similar
| to this article from roughly the same time (though paywalled):
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/06/-a-pe...
|
| The only other talk I remember going to was Simon Singh (author
| of Fermat's Last Theorem) giving a great presentation on (and
| demonstration of!) the Enigma machine.
| spacetimeuser5 wrote:
| Ok. And how many professors of medicine and doctors die under
| 120. Monkeys got really cheap headset.
| arduanika wrote:
| With no disrespect to the other three, Dennett always struck me
| as the most serious and intellectually modest of the Four
| Horsemen. He mostly stuck to his own lane of academic expertise,
| and used the proper caveats when venturing out of it. He didn't
| lean on rhetorical flourish, strawman his opponents, or overstate
| his case. The other three are a lot of fun, but maybe there's
| something to be said for boring.
|
| He spoke at my college once, and came off as nuanced and
| considerate. I think I disagree with him about consciousness, but
| I'm not informed enough to know for sure. What's clear is that he
| was a constructive part of the conversation in his field.
| JoeJonathan wrote:
| Plenty of disrespect to the other three from me (and I say this
| as an atheist). Sam Harris's (pro-Buddhist) atheism is hardly
| anything more than Islamophobia in disguise.
| naasking wrote:
| I'm always confused by these Islamophobia charges.
| Christianity has similar backwards and violent rhetoric.
| Before the Reformation, non-Christians were right to fear
| Christians. Has Islam had a similar reformation of its
| violent precepts?
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| I find it interesting that there is no mention of this on the
| cnn/foxnews homepage. If a philosopher of his standing died in
| France, I'm sure it would be on the front of Le Monde and Figaro
| CreepGin wrote:
| I also find it interesting that I graduated from Tufts (2011)
| and took a Philosophy class in 2010, and yet today is the first
| time I heard about Professor Dennett. I do wish I'd known him
| and his works earlier though. His notion of conciousness being
| a narrative created by the brain resonates well with me.
| Flatcircle wrote:
| Probably won't be going to heaven. (No offense)
| datascienced wrote:
| Is that because of unrepented sin, or heaven not existing.
| Flatcircle wrote:
| The latter
| JabavuAdams wrote:
| Wow, not that old.
| darreninthenet wrote:
| What books would people recommend starting with by this guy?
| abecedarius wrote:
| _The Mind 's I_ made the biggest impression on me. I don't know
| if that generalizes, you not being a 1980s teen now.
| codeulike wrote:
| I read Consciousness Explained 30 years ago and at first I was
| miffed that it didn't touch on the possibilties of Quantum
| mechanics and consciousness, a buzzword idea that I was keen on
| at the time. But then every chapter was so fascinating -
| blindsight, p-zombies, Libet, the cartesian theatre.
|
| If I can sum up in a very simple way, as a philosopher he was
| pointing to a simple but hard to grasp idea:
|
| Consciousness probably isn't what we think it is. Most of our
| preconceptions about it are likely wrong. Because we're right in
| it all the time, it seems like we 'know' things about it. But we
| don't. Quick example: our visual consciousness seems continuous.
| But we know from saccades that it can't be.
| meowface wrote:
| For the record, 30 years later most consciousness researchers
| still believe it's unlikely that quantum mechanics plays a
| special role in consciousness. It of course remains plausible,
| since we still don't have the true answers yet, but hypotheses
| like Penrose's have not yet been found to be credible.
|
| I really like your summary of some of his ideas, though.
| glennonymous wrote:
| I sent an unsolicited 25 page paper about memes that I wrote, as
| just some (fairly pretentious!) guy without a college degree, to
| Professor Dennett, in the early oughts. And he just went ahead
| and read the thing and gave me very kind feedback on it.
|
| I'm sure he was a busy person, and didn't have any obligation to
| respond to me, at all. It touched me deeply. What a generous and
| gracious soul he was.
|
| I mean these words in a non-supernatural way, of course. :-D A
| toast to Mr. Dennett's wonderful memory.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| NY Times obit: <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/19/books/daniel-
| dennett-dead...>
|
| Paywall: <https://archive.is/EIsGd>
| tempaway3845751 wrote:
| _So I 'm going to speak about a problem that I have and that's
| that I'm a philosopher.
|
| When I go to a party and people ask me what do I do and I say,
| "I'm a professor," their eyes glaze over.
|
| When I go to an academic cocktail party and there are all the
| professors around, they ask me what field I'm in and I say,
| "philosophy" -- their eyes glaze over.
|
| When I go to a philosopher's party and they ask me what I work on
| and I say, "consciousness," their eyes don't glaze over -- their
| lips curl into a snarl.
|
| And I get hoots of derision and cackles and growls because they
| think, "That's impossible! You can't explain consciousness." The
| very chutzpah of somebody thinking that you could explain
| consciousness is just out of the question.
|
| ... It's very hard to change people's minds about something like
| consciousness, and I finally figured out the reason for that. The
| reason for that is that everybody's an expert on consciousness.
| ... with regard to consciousness, people seem to think, each of
| us seems to think, "I am an expert. Simply by being conscious, I
| know all about this." And so, you tell them your theory and they
| say, "No, no, that's not the way consciousness is! No, you've got
| it all wrong." And they say this with an amazing confidence.
|
| And so what I'm going to try to do today is to shake your
| confidence. Because I know the feeling -- I can feel it myself. I
| want to shake your confidence that you know your own innermost
| minds -- that you are, yourselves, authoritative about your own
| consciousness. That's the order of the day here._
|
| From Daniel Dennett's TED talk, 2003
|
| https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_the_illusion_of_consci...
| caturopath wrote:
| He's in a better place now.
| Ologn wrote:
| I have seen him on television and Youtube, reading these comments
| it seems his books are interesting as well.
|
| I very much enjoyed him in the documentary series "A Glorious
| Accident", the show featuring him was -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_bv7rDB5e8
|
| and the show in the series featuring a round table of him,
| Stephen Jay Gould, Freeman Dyson, Oliver Sacks and him is
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVrnn7QW6Jg
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-04-19 23:00 UTC)