A remarkably good interview. But I have a quibble. You summed up with:
These tree-falling-in-a-forest arguments are a huge distraction from talking about how the world actually works.
I would maintain that philosophers have no business deluding themselves that they can usefully discuss how the world actually works. Leave that discussion to scientists. Philosophers do their best work generating models and viewpoints about how the world works, not facts about how the world works. They create fictions (though useful fictions). And in doing so, they need to pay some attention to exactly what words they use.
I will agree, though, that they waste time if they actually begin disputing what words ought to mean.
Like most naturalist philosophers, I don't see a sharp line between what philosophers and scientists should be doing. Philosophers are basically just the most theoretical kind of scientists. And when philosophers start using methods that aren't condoned by math or science, they tend toward crank-ness.
I don't get it. You don't think philosophers should dispute what words ought to mean?
Isn't sorting out terminology one of the more important jobs of the philosophy of science?
If not philosophers, who do you think should be doing that work?
There is a difference between concept analysis - which ideally ends with words having a useful meaning - and a different, less productive kind of analysis which ideally ends up with words in a discussion having the same meaning that they have outside the discussion.
Philosophers are indeed uniquely trained to conduct the first kind of analysis.
I think you're undervaluing symbols. Yes, there are many occasions when replacing them with substance (dis)solves all the problems. And many more occasions when moving to substance yields advantages. But grokking the symbols can still be worthwhile. It sheds light on the cognitive clustering of objective features. And symbols are involved in social conventions or social contracts, and those are important to understand. (Upvoted: I want to see more posts like yours.)
I agree with all this. For the purposes of this podcast and many other articles, I have focused on dissolving confusions that are caused by a misunderstanding of what symbols are for and how they work. I could write a great deal about the advantages of symbols and what our use of symbols can tell us about ourselves... it's just not a subject I've focused on in my narrow fields of interest.
good stuff Luke. as per usual.
ahref="http://lesswrong.com/lw/nv/replace_the_symbol_with_the_substance"this needs to be done Everywhere.
good stuff Luke. as per usual.
ahref="http://lesswrong.com/lw/nv/replace_the_symbol_with_the_substance"this needs to be done Everywhere.
good stuff Luke. as per usual.
ahref="http://lesswrong.com/lw/nv/replace_the_symbol_with_the_substance/"this needs to be done Everywhere.
This post is a bit of shameless self-promotion, but also a pointer to an example of Yudkowskian philosophy at work that LWers may enjoy, this time concerning philosophical theories of desire.
Episode 14 of my podcast with Alonzo Fyfe, Morality in the Real World, begins to dissolve some common philosophical debates about the nature of desire by replacing the symbol with the substance, etc. Transcript and links here, mp3 here. The episode can also probably serve as a big hint of where I'm going with my metaethics sequence.
Warning: Alonzo and I are not voice actors, and my sound engineering cannot compare to that of Radiolab.