Comment by davesims | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davesims | Hacker News Reader

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What a fantastic response! I'm so heartened to see this as the top comment. The article is completely absurd, of course, but unfortunately represents a bizarre sort of anti-intellectualism that is running rampant through academic communities which are coming closer and closer to declaring outright that philosophy as a discipline, and not just particular philosophers, is irrelevant and has been superseded by a specific form of dogmatic, reductionist science.

The breathtaking category mistake in this sentiment is not only disturbing from an abstract point of view, it is cause for deep concern for the future of human inquiry, if we continue to naively demand that all knowledge of the world be communicated in one form or another of bayesian/cartesian modeling, under a watered-down, diluted Popperian epistemological regime (exemplified in the OP's blog title, "Less Wrong".)

I have to take issue with one aspect of your response, though. I lay the blame for this trend, unsurprisingly, at the feet of Descartes himself. The article's sentiment towards Aristotle and Plato and indeed all previous philosophy is first expressed, with nearly the same dismissive arrogance (albeit couched much more subtly for political reasons) in Descartes' Discourse on Method. The Discourse is in fact a much more eloquent (naturally) and far-reaching version of the exact same argument in the OP. It is Descartes' naive dualism and reductionism, as well as his not-so-subtle dismissal of medieval and ancient philosophy, for precisely the same reasons found in this article, that laid the groundwork for the current large anti-intellectual, naively reductionistic trend.

Kudos on the Alexander citation -- I think if you dig deeply into his philosophical and metaphysical roots, you'll find a similar suspicion of naive Cartesian dualism, and a rejection of the simplistic mechanistic metaphors that animate it.

I believe it is in fact this rejection, coupled with a return to more confidence in formal realities, closer to the specific philosophical bent of works like Aristotle's Poetics, that is the basis Alexander's entire project. Note that Alexander has received more attention in many ways outside of his discipline (such as in the software community), for precisely his criticism of the radicalized Cartesian/modernist tendencies in contemporary architecture.

That's interesting! My understanding of Descartes comes from the book Descartes' Bones, which frustrated me in some ways but made an argument about Descartes that I found very interesting: when Descartes wrote his Discourse on Method, he was a Christian who felt his works very strongly connected with the existing works of the Church. He was not an advocate of discarding all non-mechanistic discovery so much as he advocated reexamining what we already knew. It was philosophers who came after him who began to argue that perhaps the mechanistic model could function in its own right, without connection to any other existing school of knowledge.

I haven't read Discourse myself yet, unfortunately: it's in a long queue of works which is currently taken up by Alexander's The Nature of Order, a wonderful but long read. I was led to believe that Descartes argued his new method should be added to existing ones rather than replace them entirely – am I wrong in thinking this way?

"I was led to believe that Descartes argued his new method should be added to existing ones rather than replace them entirely – am I wrong in thinking this way?"

Actually I think you are, but it is of course complicated. My read of the Discourse (certainly not original with me!) traces a sequence of subtle but nevertheless explicit rejections of each category of Descartes' own education: mathematics, physics, metaphysics, aesthetics, etc.

Descartes flatters his masters on the one hand while on the other "provisionally" rejecting every single one of them, never to return. This is the birth of modernism. The rejection of the past, the 'blank slate' of a hypothetical 'view from nowhere' acutely expressed in Descartes' notion of Radical Doubt (in the Meditations on First Philosophy). Descartes argues that, like a city built by multiple architects over many centuries, contemporary knowledge in the 17th Century was brilliant and confused all at once, at odds with itself and incapable of 'clear and distinct' ideas. Therefore he proposes that he himself embark on a provisional quest for certain knowledge, not because of his own genius, but because it is possible that a single philosopher with clarity of purpose can achieve what centuries of confused development cannot. It is an intoxicating proposition, and we moderns have yet to let go of its promise.

That's quite an interesting read. Now I want to read Discourse and see if that's how I see Descartes' arguments myself. Bleh... so damn much to read.

Awesome. With your interests and obvious clarity of expression, I'd suggest you pop the Discourse near the top of the queue! What's needful at this point in history, imo, is as many inquisitive, acute minds as possible re-engaging these debates in their original subtlety.

Why can't I find a company to work for with people like you guys?

I'm actually unemployed and looking for work right now. If you find a company that wants guys like me working for them, let me know! ;-)

Can you briefly explain or point to something brief that explains the specific things that are significantly harmful or incorrect with relation to Descartes' Discourse on Method?

I agree with you that dogmatism is probably a negative thing, unless the dogmatism enforces being non-dogmatic. My shallow reading of Popper and Descartes seems to indicate that they are dogmatic about not being dogmatic, so I really quite like their dogma.

Any other problems with reductionism would be especially interesting.

Any answers to the classic regress argument would also be appreciated, I am not very clever and neither are my acquaintances - we haven't seemed to find anyone to convince us why "A proves B" is epistemically useful...though surely there is some argument

[C PROVES why "A proves B"], and surely some argument

{D PROVES why [C proves why "A proves B"]}, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regress_argument

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Tortoise_Said_to_Achil...

Well said. I fear your humility may be more like that of Socrates, and I'm about to be hoisted on the petard of my own unexposed ignorance. I have to run at the moment but I'll come back to this tomorrow and hopefully have something useful to contribute. Thanks for the parley!

"[Philosophy] has been superseded by a specific form of dogmatic, reductionist science."

Not sure of the 'specific form' of science you are refering to, but I would hardly call science dogmatic. True, it dogmatically follows the 'Scientific Method', but that is a process to get at the truth. It does not dogmatically accept any ideas. It questions and tests, and if a cherished idea is proven wrong -- out it goes. Clearly, philosophy can't do that. They still teach Plato in philosophy, but they no longer teach Ptolemy in science.

Science, as the broad quest for knowledge, scientia, is not dogmatic, or at least ideally it is not. But modern science certainly has dogmas, and gladly admits them. Methodological Naturalism is the biggie. It is useful as a kind of provisional phenomenological reduction that brackets some questions and some kinds of answers (formal, teleological, aesthetic), in favor of others (mechanistic, reductionistic).

In theory as long as the reduction remains provisional, it has tremendous explanatory power. In practice, it far too often becomes a de facto metaphysic, unwarranted and unproven within its own assumptions. There are plenty of critics of this tendency in the last hundred years, but mostly they have been ignored: Husserl, Bergson are two of the most prominent. A more obscure student of both Husserl and Heidegger, Hans Jonas, has been extremely helpful to me personally, particularly his Phenomenon of Life, as a rigorous critique of reductionism that retains a high view of science on the one hand and doesn't founder and wander off into religious/atheistic debates on the other.

I appreciate your responses in this thread, I feel I have learned something from them. I want to make sure I am reading you correctly here:

>>>as long as the reduction [of Methodological Naturalism] remains provisional, it has tremendous explanatory power. In practice, it far too often becomes a de facto metaphysic, unwarranted and unproven within its own assumptions.

It seems like Karl Popper is saying something identical here: >>>"A naturalistic methodology (sometimes called an "inductive theory of science") has its value, no doubt.... I reject the naturalistic view: It is uncritical. Its upholders fail to notice that whenever they believe to have discovered a fact, they have only proposed a convention. Hence the convention is liable to turn into a dogma." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)#Karl_Po...

I will try to synthesize the two previous paragraphs here: "Methodological Naturalism assumes that what humans can observe is the only way to gain more knowledge about the observable AND unobservable world. It is helpful for addressing immediate concerns of the observable world. However, let's not pretend that its usefulness somehow makes it true. Predicting the FUTURE is difficult, so let's hedge our bets in case things start getting weird."

Do you agree that your statement and his are equivalent, or are there some differences? If there are no significant differences, is my statement a reasonable synthesis?

Popper seems to express my (and I'm assuming yours and his own) sentiment about naturalism with his concept of falsifiability, which science seems to have accepted. In my opinion that is science taking a very good thing from a modern philosopher.

Great question. Instead of trying to reconcile my weak prose with a giant like Popper, I'll instead try to summarize my understanding of him, taken mainly from my reading Objective Knowledge and Conjectures and Refutations. Let me know if this helps.

With Popper it's important to put things in context. He's reacting to the developments in Positivism/Verificationism and the rather famous problems it had. Falsification is related to Methodological Naturalism in that both are provisional hedges against unwarranted leaps within science, the problem of induction in particular (see: Hume and induction), as well as the historic difficulties in establishing the relationship between subject and object -- what I think in my mind and what I know about the world external to my mind (see: well, Hume and Kant).

Popper's view is that science is must be understood as merely conventional, not declarations of objective truth about the state of the world. So, falsification is a way of acknowledging this limitation while establishing a language for moving science forward within its appropriate boundaries. We no longer say a scientific theory is "verified," or even that one "believes" it to be true (Popper doesn't "believe in belief") -- this would imply a direct statement of truth about the world. Rather, we say we have a conjecture that has not been falsified. All of science, as "Objective Knowledge," is really the collection of language in books and articles and journals (what Popper calls "World Three") that contain the most useful conjectures that have been accepted by convention into the community, that have not been falsified.

This is why the idea of "falsifiability" is so important. If something has no criteria by which it can be shown to be false, then it cannot qualify as a candidate for citizenship in World 3.

This works as a provisional, conventional set of boundaries around science and useful guideposts that show the best kind of science as rooted in empirical experience and observation.

>Methodological Naturalism assumes that what humans can observe is the only way to gain more knowledge about the observable AND unobservable world. It is helpful for addressing immediate concerns of the observable world. However, let's not pretend that its usefulness somehow makes it true. Predicting the FUTURE is difficult, so let's hedge our bets in case things start getting weird

The Thomist Philosopher Edward Feser often uses the metaphor of a metal dectector when discussing Methodological Naturalism. It runs roughly like... (paraphrased and typed quickly on IE6 [yes kill me])

"Science acts on the assumption of methodological naturalism and that's okay. It's like a metal detector that only detects metal but dectects it with great accuracy. What is wrong is that many times the method is made into a metaphysic which is philosophically hard to maintain and which simply does not follow from the facts.

That a metal dectector has never detected wood is obvious because the metal detector isn't for detecting word. The Baconian project ignored teleological forces because, per Bacon, such teleology is hard to analyze within a scientific framework. Science has therefore focused on Material and Efficent causation. However, just because a method effectly locates material and efficent causes doesn't mean that other causes don't exist just as a metal dectector not detecting wood does not mean that wood does not exist. Therefore the argument for reductive materialism from the successful, that is treating methodological naturalism as the whole and complete story, is fundementally in error and incomplete."

It dogmatically accepts the method, and no other. That means it's either the correct method in every sphere, which is obviously false, or there are spheres in which it is not correct, in which case science is insufficient.

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