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On 2015-10-05 20:02, Dan TheBookMan wrote:<br>
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<div>On Oct 5, 2558 BE, at 9:09 AM, William Flynn Wallace <<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:foozler83@gmail.com">foozler83@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:</div>
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<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans
ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">Philosophers
could not even agree on the value of philosophy, I
think. </div>
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<div>That's the argument from disagreement. If you take the
argument from disagreement seriously, then shouldn't you apply
it to all endeavors? Do scientists all agree on X? No, well,
then X should be chucked out. X might be extended to all of
science. In any field -- science, math, history, music, what and
whether to have for lunch today -- you'll find a dissenter. </div>
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<div>(To pre-empt the argument that science or other fields all
have means of settling such disagreements: No, there are
dissenting voices there too. Not all scientists agree on how to
settle science questions. Not all historians agree... And so
forth.)</div>
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Disagreement does show that one should not be overconfident about a
conclusion, though. As I argued in my uploading ethics papers, the
fact that there is disagreement between reasonable people on whether
software can be conscious should be enough to make even
consciousness-sceptics agree that there is some chance that they are
wrong, and hence we better treat potentially sentient software
nicely (the opposite case, treating software nicely when it is
actually non-sentient, is not as bad as treating sentient software
badly). This approach works when some possibilities have a big and
different weights, but there are still nontrivial issues of what
counts as reasonable disagreement.<br>
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Philosophy might be the field that criticises itself most
vigorously. <br>
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<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans
ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">And just
why do they know any more about anything than the rest
of us do? </div>
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<div>I wouldn't presume they know more, though one can't be sure
until one familiarizes oneself with their work.</div>
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Exactly. People who discount philosophy frequently reinvent
philosophical wheels that have been in use for millennia. <br>
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Philosophers at least know what ideas have been tried before and how
they worked out. Many are also very good at critical reasoning about
abstract areas: when they make claims, they typically have
documented reasons for these claims. <br>
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We know a fair bit about what tasks humans can become expert in (see
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.researchgate.net/profile/James_Shanteau/publication/4815960_Competence_in_experts_The_role_of_task_characteristics/links/00b495373e3fe7630f000000.pdf">http://www.researchgate.net/profile/James_Shanteau/publication/4815960_Competence_in_experts_The_role_of_task_characteristics/links/00b495373e3fe7630f000000.pdf</a>
). Philosophy does pretty well on decomposing problems and using
formal decision aids. Depending on branch, one may look at static
things with agreed on properties (good for expertise building) or
messy human domains where there is little agreement on what is what
(bad). Some philosophers keep on applying the same method to a lot
of cases (good for becoming expert at the method), others jump
between methods (bad for method expertise). Feedback is typically in
the form of other philosophers criticising - useful for becoming an
expert on making good formal arguments, but real-world feedback is
clearly worth far more and less common. All in all, we should expect
philosophers to be really good at doing academic philosophy, pretty
good at analysing problems, decent in talking about real-world
situations where we get feedback on what works and doesn't work, and
hopeless in areas where there is no simple feedback. This is why I
prefer practical ethics and epistemology (real world data and
consequences!) to metaethics and metaphysics.<br>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University</pre>
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