Interesting statistics about academic philosophy

[Mudhammam]

Let me ask a simple question.  If the vast majority of high-level philosophers all agree with each other on most of the salient points of their world view. . . is any philosophy still being done at all?

Sure, why wouldn't there be? New arguments for a given dogma might be formulated, or old ones get refined or discarded; the increasingly frequent developments in the sciences force philosophers to return to old territory or explore new ground in logic and ethics, and to clarify or expand on definitions and their relation to physical or mental objects. I see no reason to think that an existing popular framework is an impediment to the fecundity of thought - contrarily it would likely be, so to speak, nourishing, as it is in the physical sciences.

I'd say the true philosopher must be, almost by definition, outside of the majority, since it is exactly the willingness to challenge those views most entrenched that gives philosophy its value.

It also seems to me that physical monists in an academic setting base that confidence on the commonality of their assumptions, rather than on the necessity of their conclusions. But this is not so much evidence for truth as evidence for minds too lazy to push the envelope in seeking it.

I guess it depends on what you perceive "pushing the envelope" to translate into on practical terms. Some might say that Deepak Chopra pushes the envelope with his mystical nonsense, or, to take someone with more intellectual respectability, Alvin Plantinga. I wouldn't really say that their willingness to put forth bold ideas in the minority camp makes their contributions a step nearer to truth, except insofar as error can illuminate.

[bennyboy]

My view is that when basic assumptions are no longer recognized as assumptions but rather as truths, then philosophers must backtrack to those assumptions, always keeping them in view. I don't know whether solipsism is true, for example, but if I lose view of that possibility, then I've abandoned an instence on what is provably real. And while this is pragmatic in terms of coming up with interesting views on life, it becomes a problem when I no longer believe an assumption is being made at all, and move on to the next battle, ignoring the one that should continue to rage on forever at that first step of the journey.

And that's the problem with academia. . . many of the philosopherlings will come up taking the elder's view as their own, without having really started with that first step, and will therefore not know about the many unproven, and unprovable assumptions, that they've catapulted past without any serious consideration.

[Alex K]

The Platonism bit surprises me. Really? Especially combined with a physical mind. Can.anyone who knows the least bit about neurology have good reasons to be a Platonist?

[Mudhammam]

The Platonism bit surprises me. Really? Especially combined with a physical mind. Can.anyone who knows the least bit about neurology have good reasons to be a Platonist?

As far as I can conceive it, there are ideas about "non-physical things" and then the non-physical things themselves. Numbers, for example, would be the ideas about NPT. What they represent about the world would be the NPT themselves. Other NPT might fall into those categories too... truth, value, etc. In that regards I don't see a conflict between Platonism and a physical mind.

But I was also surprised about that.

[bennyboy]

The Platonism bit surprises me. Really? Especially combined with a physical mind. Can.anyone who knows the least bit about neurology have good reasons to be a Platonist?

What about those do you see as mutually exclusive?

[Alex K]

The Platonism bit surprises me. Really? Especially combined with a physical mind. Can.anyone who knows the least bit about neurology have good reasons to be a Platonist?

What about those do you see as mutually exclusive?

Ok, so from my somewhat understanding of neural networks, and my complete layman's understanding of philosophy - we understand how neural networks process information and dynamically divide incoming signals into categories (reinforcement learning for example), and I simply think that old philosophers who could not possibly imagine such mechanisms at work in our heads, felt compelled to explain why we know categories of things, to explain the discreteness of categories - well, we recognize a chair for a chair independent of its detailed properties (material, color... it's always examples with chairs), so there must be some abstract idea of chairness which is a thing in idea space. Today, I would think, even our rudimentary understanding of the technical details of the mind make this much less compelling. A chair is a chair whenever the neural networks in our heads sort the incoming data into the category chair, which they have learned culturally. and that's it. My gut feeling is the abstract objects Nestor mentions, such as numbers, ideal straight lines, etc. can also be explained in this way as a property of our brains, not of the world, because what is a straight line but a category that the neural network in our heads has learned. I'm sure Nestor, who knows much more about philosophy than me, can comment whether I completely misunderstand things here.

[Mudhammam]

Ok, so from my somewhat understanding of neural networks, and my complete layman's understanding of philosophy - we understand how neural networks process information and dynamically divide incoming signals into categories (reinforcement learning for example), and I simply think that old philosophers who could not possibly imagine such mechanisms at work in our heads, felt compelled to explain why we know categories of things, to explain the discreteness of categories - well, we recognize a chair for a chair independent of its detailed properties (material, color... it's always examples with chairs), so there must be some abstract idea of chairness which is a thing in idea space. Today, I would think, even our rudimentary understanding of the technical details of the mind make this much less compelling. A chair is a chair whenever the neural networks in our heads sort the incoming data into the category chair, which they have learned culturally. and that's it. My gut feeling is the abstract objects Nestor mentions, such as numbers, ideal straight lines, etc. can also be explained in this way as a property of our brains, not of the world, because what is a straight line but a category that the neural network in our heads has learned. I'm sure Nestor, who knows much more about philosophy than me, can comment whether I completely misunderstand things here.

Interesting... I would probably agree that Plato's forms are much less compelling with regards to explaining how particulars relate to universals, or vice versa, given the far more elaborate understanding of different cognitive functions - which, as you say, includes reinforcement learning - that we possess against the ancients. Of course, it seems to some extent that how our brains process the signals it translates to be appearances of three-dimensional objects, and then the mental cues it associates with them, will be somewhat arbitrary, i.e. determined by the series of accidents that comprise so much of evolutionary history. I doubt bats, for example, would experience objects - like chairs - similar to how we do... But I'm not so sure we can say quite the same thing about the apparently intrinsic values expressed in arithmetic and geometry. They would appear, to my mind anyway, to relate to the world in a way that is the complete opposite of arbitrariness or convention... almost as if there is a necessity to their properties both in relation to world and with respect to themselves, and I cannot see how neutral networks could account for that.

[bennyboy]

With regard to neural networks, I'm not so sure. Is it that our ideas are expressions of our neural activity, or is it that our neural structures have adapted to the reality of those ideas which underlie the objects we perceive?

[Pyrrho]

Ok, so from my somewhat understanding of neural networks, and my complete layman's understanding of philosophy - we understand how neural networks process information and dynamically divide incoming signals into categories (reinforcement learning for example), and I simply think that old philosophers who could not possibly imagine such mechanisms at work in our heads, felt compelled to explain why we know categories of things, to explain the discreteness of categories - well, we recognize a chair for a chair independent of its detailed properties (material, color... it's always examples with chairs), so there must be some abstract idea of chairness which is a thing in idea space. Today, I would think, even our rudimentary understanding of the technical details of the mind make this much less compelling. A chair is a chair whenever the neural networks in our heads sort the incoming data into the category chair, which they have learned culturally. and that's it. My gut feeling is the abstract objects Nestor mentions, such as numbers, ideal straight lines, etc. can also be explained in this way as a property of our brains, not of the world, because what is a straight line but a category that the neural network in our heads has learned. I'm sure Nestor, who knows much more about philosophy than me, can comment whether I completely misunderstand things here.

Interesting... I would probably agree that Plato's forms are much less compelling with regards to explaining how particulars relate to universals, or vice versa, given the far more elaborate understanding of different cognitive functions - which, as you say, includes reinforcement learning - that we possess against the ancients. Of course, it seems to some extent that how our brains process the signals it translates to be appearances of three-dimensional objects, and then the mental cues it associates with them, will be somewhat arbitrary, i.e. determined by the series of accidents that comprise so much of evolutionary history. I doubt bats, for example, would experience objects - like chairs - similar to how we do... But I'm not so sure we can say quite the same thing about the apparently intrinsic values expressed in arithmetic and geometry. They would appear, to my mind anyway, to relate to the world in a way that is the complete opposite of arbitrariness or convention... almost as if there is a necessity to their properties both in relation to world and with respect to themselves, and I cannot see how neutral networks could account for that.

This reminds me of an idea I encountered long ago (so long ago that it hardly matters now if it was true then) that most mathematicians were platonists with respect to mathematics. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy states "Mathematical platonism enjoys widespread support and is frequently considered the default metaphysical position with respect to mathematics."  But it would be interesting to see a poll of mathematicians.

Thinking back on the expressed attitudes of my mathematics teachers, I do not recall any of them saying they had any other position, though I do not recall all of them talking about this.

[Faith No More]

This reminds me of an idea I encountered long ago (so long ago that it hardly matters now if it was true then) that most mathematicians were platonists with respect to mathematics. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy states "Mathematical platonism enjoys widespread support and is frequently considered the default metaphysical position with respect to mathematics."  But it would be interesting to see a poll of mathematicians.

Thinking back on the expressed attitudes of my mathematics teachers, I do not recall any of them saying they had any other position, though I do not recall all of them talking about this.

My dad bought me a book a while back that was a bunch of short essays from different people about the nature of math, and it's been a bit since I've read it, but I remember seeing a fairly good mix between people that felt it was Platonic and others that weren't really convicned at all. Maybe that was a purposeful selection by the editor, though. The biggest impression I got from the book, however, was that no one really knows what math actually is.