Hacker News Reader

Comment by notjoemama | Hacker News Reader

Back to the concept rather than an individual, isn't part of the problem that STEM fields feed back into actionable ways, but perhaps philosophy doesn't?

For example, if a new exo-planet were found to have a certain chemical make up that our current understanding didn't agree with, that would go back to theoretical physics and mathematics, where they might discover a way to better describe the discovery. That then becomes a new model that allows us to recognize a new pattern of solar system formation, etc etc.

There's a practical application to STEM work. In what way is there a practical application in philosophy? Is it isolated to educating people on broader more complex thought?

View on HN

I think this is the point. You are discrediting Philosophy, but that is where science and math came from. You don't go back and say "man Plato was such a waste, lets toss out western civilization".

The point is someone has to start somewhere, and frequently philosophy is the field that tackled open ended questions. Once the questions get 'solved', it gets spun off into another branch of science.

Philosophy is the startup of science, the leading edge. Once it become a 'common' ordinary science, it gets re-named, re-packaged as 'the accepted way'.

It is happening a lot right now, because so many STEM people building AI are suddenly arm-chair philosophers coming up with 'new' questions, that are really 'old'. So the whole field is re-discovering philosophy.

So, when your boss is asking you to design a better way of hiding the waste products from your industrial projects that you know could hurt folks-- that's a good place where having some ethical principles might help.

Without those principles, people are often left with "I am just doing my job" and "this is what any person would do, right"?

Whereas a lot of us won't do certain things because, say, if everybody did them they'd be self contradictory (Kant) or when we look at the overall utility of dumping toxic waste into a river we might it has some larger negative consequences for society (Mill).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com