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Comment by nathan_compton | Hacker News Reader

> A philosopher interested in the real world: something that became quite a rarity in later times...

Absolutely ridiculous. There are tons of contemporary, living, philosophers who are interested in literally every single one of the physical sciences. There are entire departments which specialize in philosophy of physics. There are philosophers that study biology, brains, computers, etc etc etc.

I've literally been in rooms where you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a philosopher deeply interested in physical reality.

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Do they see themselves as philosophers on the <topic> or <topic>icians who focus on philosophy?

Only a moron would consider the distinction material. Is Carlo Rovelli a theoretical physicist or a philosopher of physics. He would say "both" and would probably say that the two disciplines cannot be pursued independently. Was Ernst Mach, whose interests extended well beyond physics but whose basic philosophical questions about relationalism produced general relativity, count as a scientist, a physicist, or a philosopher? All three. What about Julian Barbour, head of the shape dynamics research program and noteworthy independent scientist, who is inspired by Mach to elaborate on purely relational theories of gravity? What about Terrance Deacon, whose (flawed by comprehensive) book on the distinction between living and non-living systems is probably the most cogent analysis of the subject I've ever read? Definitely a philosopher, but also clearly working on entirely physical material. What about Scott Aaronson? I could go on and on listing people who work in both physics and philosophy departments.

The idea that "philosophers" don't think about reality is just absurd. There are thousands of philosophers thinking directly about reality.

Guess I'm a moron, thank you for the enlightenment.

I disagree. Deeply interested in the idea of biology but not interested enough to work on biology puts you firmly out of the Spinoza category.

You can work on biology without physically being in a lab. Many neuroscientist spend more time writing simulations and analyzing data than they spend in a lab. Like how much time in the lab do you require at a minimum to be a "bona fide" "serious" philosopher.

Like I seriously want to know: how many philosophers have you personally met? How many conferences have you attended? How many papers did you read this year? Because only a person barely aware of what philosophers get up to could possibly believe that they aren't interested in reality.

I consider writing simulations and analyzing data as working on biology. I don't consider pontificating about biology to be.

Excuse my plain language, but it is dumb to baldly assert that all philosophy is pontificating.

I agree, that would be really dumb. While I am prone to saying and doing dumb things, I think it'd be sloppy to suggest that I made that assertion.

There's a set of things that include lab work, simulation, data analysis, etc that I consider doing biology, and another set of things that I consider philosophy of biology. The latter set includes pontification but also more analytical and serious work.

But it is still wrong to compare Spinoza's interest in optics to a contemporary philosopher of biology's interest in biology unless that person also does biology.

I don't hold philosophers to the impossible standard of classical polymaths, but I still don't feel a mere philosopher of X is as deeply interested in X as a practitioner of X.

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