“Philosophy is dead” Quantum Physics, mid 20th century.
There have been several books listed already, so I’ll just toss in my suggestion, which is to go to a school bookstore (or Amazon) and pick up a Philosophy 101 book. (Actually, it may not be 101, in my school Phil 101 IIRC was actually a logic class and totally unrelated).
If you are really serious, you might want to go to a local college and Audit a philosophy class. Philosophy certainly isn’t my cup of tea, but it was still an interesting class.
I wouldn’t lose sleep over the philosophy issue, SMullen, since you obviously have a lot going for you. Nearly all highly intelligent people have blind spots (as it were), are incapable of grasping complex ideas outside their fields. Most of us specialize. Even those of us who can intellectually multi-task, can handle several disciplines, have areas of knowledge we simply cannot understand. Call it what you like, left brain, right brain issues, the inability of many of us to think in three dimensions (I’m hopeless at it). The days of an individual being able to comprehend all that is “knowable” and then being able to systematize that knowledge are long gone. Aesthetics makes little sense to a geophysicist; metaphysical speculation is of no use to an aerospace engineer. What’s the use or even the point of epistomology to an epidemeologist?
Modern philosophy has painted itself into an academic corner. It seems to have degenerated into snobbery, with schools of thought rather resembling country clubs. The increasingly obscure language makes it nearly inaccessible to the outsider, while the numbers of philosophers and those who read philosophy and concern themselves with it are shrinking. A larger issue would be: is philosophy dead? My guess is probably not, but it’s surely in eclipse at the moment.
Not at all. Just casual conversations about what we did in class that day (or that week). It sounded like my logic classes and their logic classes were completely different animals.
Don’t get me wrong–I’m certainly not dismissing (or insulting) philosophy based on conversations I had with students 30 years ago. I’m just explaining why I couldn’t build up any interest in it. I’d learn things in engineering, science, math, and computer classes and I could put them to use. I never saw how anyone but a philosophy teacher could actually use philosophy.
Well, as I mentioned, philosophy is sometimes thought of as the “Great Conversation.” So there is a structural problem with the univocal approach to philosophy. Unlike, say, the natural sciences, the point of philosophy isn’t to produce a single body of knowledge that is the Theory of X, it rather is to encourage a discursive approach to understanding its subject matter. You can’t get that with one person’s summation of the entirety of Western philosophy. Russell’s is particularly problematic is large part because of his renown; he doesn’t feel abashed about glossing over schools of thought he finds less satisfactory. A less celebrated thinker would perhaps feel more constrained to report on disfavored schools of thought more matter-of-factly.
This isn’t to diminish Russell’s (and of course, Whitehead’s, and it should be fascinating they diverged as greatly as they did in their later careers) considerable accomplishments, although, I think another problem is that Russell’s (now antiquated) school of thought is so natural, and as such, it is hard for us, so congenial to this way of thinking, to see when it is playing fast and loose with less familiar modes of thought. And while I think starting with Derrida is ambitious, to say the least; I think it is especially admirable to see an English speaker attempt to wrestle with modern Continental philosophy.
My professor in junior colloquium said that there is no starting point in philosophy. You could start with Plato; you could start with Quine (Quine himself was skeptical of the need to read any of ancient philosophy)–you jump in and you sink or you swim. Now, while I think Derrida might belie this notion, I think it is mostly true. I think a person could start with Descartes, or Locke, or Rousseau, even Frege and the early Russell, or McLuhan and Lyotard. My point isn’t to drop names, but to suggest that reading these thinkers themselves is the best introduction. The academic study of philosophy proceeds in just this way, even at its most rudimentary.
However, I have seen recommended a number of books in the “For Beginners” series, including Philosophy for Beginners. I’ve skimmed a few of these titles, and these seem to be engaged and enthusiastic intros to their subject matters (although not without their faults, but I suppose no primer is going to be ideal, again all the more reason to complement it with other works by other writers). Additionally, I’ve seen praise for Donald Palmer’s Looking at Philosophy and Does the Center Hold?. I don’t know how extensive their treatment of 20th century analytic philosophy would be, but on that front, Russell has written some decent introductions (for instance, “An Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy”) and Quine’s collection of essays From a Logical Point of View is superb, including the quite influential first two essays, “On What There Is” and “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (for the board’s always vigilant and zealous defenders of science, do note that Quine himself was a politically conservative math-and-science type, no PoMo hipster he).
I will endeavor to be much shorter here, not because the question is uninteresting, but because the not-short answer could only be a very long answer. Philosophy, like all dialectic, is helical. As developments outside of philosophy occur, philosophy will talk about them, see the implications that those developments have for our multiplicity of old theories and refine and extend and qualify those theories (to sublate them, if you want to be Hegelian about it). So, when decolonization was taking place across Africa and Asia, philosophy started talking about that, and seeing what decolonization meant for our old accounts and how what we saw from the West’s history colonization meant for our theories. And you can see, in rough forms, what things will do the same: Transgendered persons and our philosophies of self, identities, and society. Quantum physics and our philosophies of epistemology, science, mind, and free will. The changes and discoveries are only limited by the vagaries of human experience, which is to say, not very limited at all.
I believe that at some schools the Philosophy class called “Logic” is what was at my school called “Practical Reasoning”, where we learned things like how to determine whether an argument was sound, how to determine if a sound argument was valid, how to recognize common logical fallacies, etc. This would be very different from anything I’d expect to see in a math class, but it’s pretty useful. I could name some people I know IRL and SDMB posters who definitely would have benefited from such a class. I don’t know how often I’ve seen people make the mistake of thinking that affirming the consequent is a good way to get at the truth.
*A lot of what is involved in studying Philosophy at the undergraduate level is really the history of Philosophy. I don’t think it’s any more or less practical than studying any other kind of history. I’ll freely admit that in my day-to-day life I’ve rarely needed to draw upon my knowledge of the ideas of say Heraclitus, but I didn’t go to college just to learn things that would be of practical use in my day-to-day life.
Aside from history of Philosophy type classes, my Philosophy coursework also included practical reasoning, logic, ethics, and rhetoric, all of which I think anyone could use. Professionally speaking, my background in Philosophy has been useful to me in my career as a librarian, and it’s also a common undergrad major for people who go on to law school – several of my former classmates are now lawyers.
what does “it is what it is” have to do with A or not-A (which, while trivial, is important as an axiom in any formal logic)? Every time I’ve heard the phrase used, it meant “that’s just the way that (person, thing, or event) is, and there’s no use trying to change it.” As in, “yeah, it sucks that I have to work late today, but it is what it is”
ETA: oh, and an introductory formal logic class helped me immensely in my first discrete structures/functional programming class, as it cultivated a systematic way of thinking
They just sound so similar, I suspect that some dickhead freshman philosophy dropout brought it into the business world and made it fit everyday conversation.
This is wrong. There’s many logics that don’t have LEM as an axiom. Intuitionistic logics being the major example.
Can you recommend some readings to get up to speed on the basics of social choice theory?
Hi, all.
I am really learning a lot from people’s comments. mswas, your comment on the concept of value was very helpful. And Captain Awesome, I am really looking forward to being in a situation where I can tell that Jacques Derrida knock-knock joke.
I guess being unable to “get” philosophy really started bothering me when I read “Triton” by Sam Delany. I love Delany but when he gets philosophical I can’t help quoting his own character, the Mouse, to myself: “I am but a humble computer jock” (from “Nova”).
Hey, folks, it’s been real! Let’s do this again some time! (I just saw how busy this board is, as I was scrolling back to find this thread.)
It sounds like some of the fundamentals are the same. I had to look up “affirming the consequent” (thanks for the link) because I’d never heard of it. As it turns out, the concept was taught in first-year logic for me too, but engineers and mathematicians use the rule in different context.
My logic classes definitely had proofs, but we spent a lot of time on logic/truth tables, basic logic gates, and computer applications of logic.
That’s actually kind of a hard question. Social Choice theory is somewhat technical, so until you get used to the language and notation, it can be a tough grind.
This paper by Roger Myerson summarizes some basic findings of social choice theory. You can probably get something out of the beginning before the author assumes you are familiar with set theory. The other place to start is Amarya Sen’s dated but wonderful Collective Choice and Social Welfare. For a nontechnical treatment of rational choice in general, try Mick Laver’s Private Desires, Political Action. This is not a great book, but it occasionally is funny and you really might enjoy it.
If you have some time on your hands and have nothing better to do with your life than learn some set theory, then you can really attack social choice. You can give parts if this a read. This is a Very Good Book, but it hurts. A lot.
May I refer you to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy? For all your philosophizing needs.
I’ve been cited for Cruelty to Metaphors before, but I think computer programming and philosophy have a lot in common. First, a look at computer programming as a means to an end. We start with a given language, and structure it so that it does what we want: usually take in input, and produce some sort of output.
Philosophy users a combination of language and logic, which many here have already described pretty well, to construct the frameworks of their “programs.” The language is really just a way to communicate here, it’s really the logic that’s doing the heavy lifting.
The purpose of these “programs” is to answer the big questions. Why are we here? Is there a God? Is there really a “me”? Like we’re users in some big mainframe, trying to figure out what sort of Operating System and accounts we have by creating and running programs from the command line…all why knowing full well that we may not conclusively get the answers were looking for, or be able to rely on them since we’re working within a system (thus limiting our own perceptions).
The key to getting along with Philosophy is realizing there is no finished, completed, “correct” state. There’s the logic and rational arguments to chew on, much like we do with code. But any given philosopher is just trying to move the bits of language and logic around to try and get the results they expect to see. No matter how sound their combination of words and logic gets, it’s still just the program: they’re starting with a set of input parameters or criteria, and working their way to some sort of sound conclusion.
And then they sit back while other Philosophers tear apart their starting criteria to show how their conclusions are flawed. Or attack their logic and reasoning. Or just call them silly buggers and go out for beer. In the end, I think the best description of Philosophy for the computer programmer is: think of your customer (manager, whatever) trying to write their own software because they know what they want!
Hi, all.
InkBlot, your argument is interesting. You bring up one reason I might not “get” philosophy. I rarely ask the big questions. Several years ago I realized that it was OK with me that there were some things I didn’t understand. (I’m not being sarcastic here!) I believe in God and I realized that “logically”, there would always be some things that God knew and I didn’t. I used to fight that when I was younger. But at some point I just quit fighting and decided to let God be God and let me be me.
Also, when I’m not pounding a keyboard I go a lot on intuition. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that if a philosopher has an intuition, he or she feels compelled to deck it out or cover it up with a lot of words. I just enjoy my intuition.
And hey, InkBlot, thanks a lump for the memories. I got taken to a psychiatrist when I was 6 and I was shown the standard (I guess) set of inkblots. I try not to think about that. It wasn’t any fun.
Well then let me ask you. What personal benefits could it have for me?
Well, you know what Socrates said about the unexamined life.
I have a suggestion to add. If you want to read some philosophy—that is, the original source material itself, and not just books about philosophy, some good ones of which have already been recommended in this thread—start with Plato’s dialogues. Many philosophers are very hard to read, for various reasons (like that they’re writing for other philosophers rather than for the layman, or that they’re better at coming up with ideas than at explaining them), but Plato, in a good translation, is quite accessible, even entertaining. And if, as Alfred North Whitehead said, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato,” it’ll give you a background for other philosophy that you go on to study.
I dunno. What does benefit you personally?