RE: What's the point of philosophy any more?
March 27, 2018 at 6:23 am
(This post was last modified: March 27, 2018 at 6:32 am by I_am_not_mafia.)
OK take the example of Margaret Boden. She is an example of what I think philosopher should be. First off, I think she is fantastic. Her book 'Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man' was what got me interested in AI around the age of 14. She was editor of 'The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence' and later 'The Philosophy of Artificial Life' which I haven't read but do need to one day. I personally found her paper 'Is metabolism necessary? published in the British Journal of Philosophy of Science extremely useful in my own research. I went to a lecture she held where she argues that the single defining feature shared by every form of life is that it has a metabolism.
Is she a philosopher or a scientist? She has worked as a lecturer in philosophy and published and edited many books about philosophy, cognitive science and artificial intelligence, yet doesn't regularly program herself as far I know. At the very least she performs a very useful role as a philosopher who is very useful to have around scientists. But that's because she is extremely well read on the subjects that she discusses and understands exactly what the science is doing. She is every much part of the scientific process. When you're focused on trying to get something to work and then become focused on writing up your results, it's very useful to have someone be able to put it into a wider context for you or to refer to someone who has done this work for you. But this requires a level of knowledge as advanced as the specialists doing the grunt work.
But this is a typical example. There are many other specialist philosophers, such as those that do Philosophy of biology. Often it's an academic who used to do the work themselves but spent their time reading papers, getting funding and having their name on the papers of thei researchers they manage.
Is she a philosopher or a scientist? She has worked as a lecturer in philosophy and published and edited many books about philosophy, cognitive science and artificial intelligence, yet doesn't regularly program herself as far I know. At the very least she performs a very useful role as a philosopher who is very useful to have around scientists. But that's because she is extremely well read on the subjects that she discusses and understands exactly what the science is doing. She is every much part of the scientific process. When you're focused on trying to get something to work and then become focused on writing up your results, it's very useful to have someone be able to put it into a wider context for you or to refer to someone who has done this work for you. But this requires a level of knowledge as advanced as the specialists doing the grunt work.
But this is a typical example. There are many other specialist philosophers, such as those that do Philosophy of biology. Often it's an academic who used to do the work themselves but spent their time reading papers, getting funding and having their name on the papers of thei researchers they manage.
