When philosophers try to use philosophical methods to answer scientific questions it often feels nitpicky or vague. When scientists try to answer philosophical questions by way of the scientific method it feels reductive.
I think we need both approaches, but scientists and philosophers need to be willing to accept the limitations of their own methods.
I had a somewhat similar intellectual journey in undergrad, majoring in cognitive science. I've liked philosophy since around the end of highschool, but have for awhile suspected that mapping intuitions through psychological/experimental methods was the thing philosophers really needed to do. I went for cog sci partly for this reason, and for the hope that the philosophy classes might still be insightful.
But philosophy of mind was basically exactly what I feared it to be, in the extreme. Dumb, interminable josteling over intuitions disguised as logical thought.
The happy side of this is that I eventually got to reading (and understanding) Parfit's population ethics and got a sense of renewed hope that the arm chair intuition-wrangeling that I liked could be still important.
I ended up in psychology with the goal of studying how nonphilosophers think about philosophical issues (mostly metaethics). One troubling conclusion I've arrived at is that they don't think of morality in the way philosophers do, so many studies that begin with the presumption that nonphilosophers must fit into philosophical categories A, B, and C, and design their studies accordingly basically artificially force people to respond to questions in ways that give the illusion that people think like philosophers about the issues in question. It's taking a lot of work to show this is a mirage based on experimental methods and that people think in ways that differ (in at least some domains) from how philosophers think.
Personally, I'm not impressed with Parfit. Maybe he does better on population ethics than on metaethics but his arguments in metaethics are underwhelming.
Everyone has a super unique path through academics and it seems we are all still trying to answer the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I really enjoyed reading about how you came to where you are! Super interesting how you found your place.
The reason that I find your story so interesting Tommy, is because it suggests that you probably aren’t all that beholden to status quo interests. Does that sound right? If various radical ideas seemed to make sense, do you think you could back them even if their general acceptance would radically change academia in the fields that most interest you? Unfortunately I might be phrasing this question so generally that many respected professionals whose careers would be destroyed by the acceptance of certain ideas, would say that they’d back such ideas even at the expense of their own careers! Bullshit. So let me provide a more specific example. The following would be a radical idea which, if it were to become generally accepted, ought to belittle the work of many in academia today, and so ought to be fought bitterly if there were any true threat of acceptance. Does the following nevertheless make sense?
Science emerged from the ancient discipline of philosophy in recent centuries, of course, and it’s utterly transformed humanity. But it’s only done so in a roughly half measure way — “hard sciences” like physics have done well, while “soft sciences” like psychology have not. So what’s the difference? While many professionals make the self serving claim that mental and behavioral forms of science are “naturally soft”, I doubt this. Instead I suspect it’s mainly just been more difficult for us to consider ourselves as objectively as the outside world. Furthermore I suspect that the remaining domain of philosophy since the emergence of science, holds the key to the general advancement of science.
I believe that a community of respected professionals should be established whose only purpose would be to provide scientists with effective principles of metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology from which to do their work. And while I think such principles ought to help softer forms of science most, it seems to me that even fields like physics sometimes need a bit of foundational help as well.
So what do you think? I realize that this question might be a bit deep for a Sunday, so no worries about getting back to me soon!
I have no particular affinity for or stake in the way lines are currently drawn in academia, so I would have no problem with changes if I thought they were right. But I'm not actually sure what you're suggesting--philosophy of science already exists. There are philosophers of cognitive science, philosophers of physics, philosophers of biology, etc, etc. What are you suggesting here that isn't already the way things are done?
Right, there’s a central point to my position that could be better clarified. In modern philosophy, like ancient philosophy, there are no agreed upon understandings for the various questions that are pondered. And indeed, some today accuse the field of being a waste of time for this reason. In response philosophers tend to claim that these people fail to grasp how fundamentally different philosophy is from science. They say that agreed upon answers in philosophy aren’t appropriate and certainly should not be considered an end goal.
I neither question the importance of philosophical questions nor do I fault modern philosophers for their diverging professional opinions. The point of my question to you however is to ask if there’s any merit to the idea that science could improve with various agreed upon metaphysical, epistemological, and axiological understandings? Thus perhaps various harder forms of science like physics largely exist as such because they’re naturally less susceptible to this void than softer disciplines like psychology?
To me this makes sense, and though I appreciate that modern “philosophers of…” psychology, physics, and so on do provide insights, without agreed upon answers they also don’t provide a solution as I see it. I believe that various accepted metaphysical, epistemological, and axiological rules could help science function much better than it does today. Thus I’d like various groups to emerge whose exclusive purpose would be to provide principles from which to potentially better found science. And what should distinguish better principles from worse? I’d think that the function of science itself should demonstrate this by means of the apparent success or failure of what’s tried in science.
What I’ve said here may still seem a bit abstract however since I haven’t provided any specific rules that might help improve science. There is one principle of metaphysics, two principles of epistemology, and one principles of axiology that I personally use to help me distinguish good science from bad science. So maybe an example would help?
Bizarre how similar your undergrad experience was to mine. Went to Northeastern and one specific 20th century continental philosophy professor changed my life. Was honored to have him as a mentor until he recently passed. Pretty sure I wouldn’t give a shit or had finished my philosophy undergrad if it wasn’t for him.
Many points of interest, but as someone who had a motivational style that smacks of yours, and as someone who has had several "oh... that makes sense now" moments, see if any of these are that for you:
First was the distinction, in motivational psychology, of "the need to acheive" and the not-so flattering "the need to avoid failure." While I never really trust a dichotomy, "the need to avoid failure" captured me perfectly (with a little self-rationalization), in that I either wanted to do something so easy that failure was implausible, or something so hard that failure was expected. What makes me quite unsettled is some persistent, sustained-progress measure of success. "The middle" is not my world or my speed.
This showed up in many ways:
The mild-success while not trying, very satisfying. Playing basketball, I gravitated towards layups or half-court shots (not in games), free throws were nightmares. In video games, I would never follow standard builds and guides, and I would actively chase down some hidden gimmick to exploit (within reason cuz cheating stacked the deck the other way).
I was also diagnosed with ADHD (by a skeptical specialist rather than a dispensary) at the tender age of 35. It wasn't attention or hyperactivity, but "impulsiveness," as measured by, among other things, a funky test where you wait on some subtle pattern to identify and click a button. After a few minutes of it, when the novelty had faded, rather than "responding," I increased in errors of commission, explained to me as "trying to predict as if by some pattern rather than respond." Which... sounds like me.
I always associated "impulsive" with specific modes risk taking, while I was relatively safe on those fronts. But this type of impulse is based on a weaker "response inhibition." So, for example, I catch myself interrupting people, not to talk over them or even as much as them, but to redirect the overall conversation or update them on some small context, etc. Food near me, I eat. Food out of sight, mostly out of mind. 3 steps is too many for cooking, etc, but I can spend a whole day probing which bias combinations would result in the situations that get labeled and discarded without a second thought by thoughtful scientists.
So yeah, try that on for size. Also, I tend to write too much, like so, because one thought leads to the next, and there's always more to say...
Fantastic read, Tommy. Cool to hear this backstory. Some folks know from age 10 what they want to be. Some folks let their path follow interesting leads. I was one of the latter too.
Thanks! I'm happy to have had a more winding path, I think it's made my life a lot more interesting than if it had been a straight shot. We'll see what interesting places it leads to next! I hope you've enjoyed your winding path as well 😀
It's interesting that philosophy instruction wasn't (isn't?) looking outside of itself. You would think it was natural to look at the broader world to gather information and then begin to parse that into how it addresses the questions.
I feel like everyone should have philosophy in their life. For most its not going to be a career, but that doesn't matter. The big questions of reality are worth pursuing for their own sake.
I left academia after getting a Social Psychology Ph.D and I've spent the time since trying to rebuild the things I love about the social sciences while side-stepping the things that I find troublesome.
All of that is just to say that I think what you're doing here is the eternal quest --- the attempt to take the things we once loved, and do them right (i.e. in the way that aligns with our values, and doesn't feel like a contaminating compromise), and in doing so, find our love for them again.
I feel so nerdy for being excited from reading this piece. I’ve always wanted to be a writer but wound up doing English at uni, which I didn’t expect to happen even once I finished high school. And so far, I’ve had very similar thoughts, similar questions, especially now that I’m very focused on gender for my thesis. It’s an English lit thesis, but I feel I need psychology, anthropology, philosophy, politics as well. (A similar side note also is that I’ve always loved reading philosophy, but did ONE class and hated it.)
I had a similar experience. I did philosophy and psychology as an undergraduate, then an MA in philosophy (at Tufts), then a PhD in psychology at Cornell. I work in experimental philosophy and try to use empirical methods to address philosophical questions. I just stumbled into this blog and I'm looking forward to reading more.
When philosophers try to use philosophical methods to answer scientific questions it often feels nitpicky or vague. When scientists try to answer philosophical questions by way of the scientific method it feels reductive.
I think we need both approaches, but scientists and philosophers need to be willing to accept the limitations of their own methods.
Agreed!
I had a somewhat similar intellectual journey in undergrad, majoring in cognitive science. I've liked philosophy since around the end of highschool, but have for awhile suspected that mapping intuitions through psychological/experimental methods was the thing philosophers really needed to do. I went for cog sci partly for this reason, and for the hope that the philosophy classes might still be insightful.
But philosophy of mind was basically exactly what I feared it to be, in the extreme. Dumb, interminable josteling over intuitions disguised as logical thought.
The happy side of this is that I eventually got to reading (and understanding) Parfit's population ethics and got a sense of renewed hope that the arm chair intuition-wrangeling that I liked could be still important.
I ended up in psychology with the goal of studying how nonphilosophers think about philosophical issues (mostly metaethics). One troubling conclusion I've arrived at is that they don't think of morality in the way philosophers do, so many studies that begin with the presumption that nonphilosophers must fit into philosophical categories A, B, and C, and design their studies accordingly basically artificially force people to respond to questions in ways that give the illusion that people think like philosophers about the issues in question. It's taking a lot of work to show this is a mirage based on experimental methods and that people think in ways that differ (in at least some domains) from how philosophers think.
Personally, I'm not impressed with Parfit. Maybe he does better on population ethics than on metaethics but his arguments in metaethics are underwhelming.
Everyone has a super unique path through academics and it seems we are all still trying to answer the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” I really enjoyed reading about how you came to where you are! Super interesting how you found your place.
Thanks! And yep, definitely still trying to figure out what I'll be when I grow up
The reason that I find your story so interesting Tommy, is because it suggests that you probably aren’t all that beholden to status quo interests. Does that sound right? If various radical ideas seemed to make sense, do you think you could back them even if their general acceptance would radically change academia in the fields that most interest you? Unfortunately I might be phrasing this question so generally that many respected professionals whose careers would be destroyed by the acceptance of certain ideas, would say that they’d back such ideas even at the expense of their own careers! Bullshit. So let me provide a more specific example. The following would be a radical idea which, if it were to become generally accepted, ought to belittle the work of many in academia today, and so ought to be fought bitterly if there were any true threat of acceptance. Does the following nevertheless make sense?
Science emerged from the ancient discipline of philosophy in recent centuries, of course, and it’s utterly transformed humanity. But it’s only done so in a roughly half measure way — “hard sciences” like physics have done well, while “soft sciences” like psychology have not. So what’s the difference? While many professionals make the self serving claim that mental and behavioral forms of science are “naturally soft”, I doubt this. Instead I suspect it’s mainly just been more difficult for us to consider ourselves as objectively as the outside world. Furthermore I suspect that the remaining domain of philosophy since the emergence of science, holds the key to the general advancement of science.
I believe that a community of respected professionals should be established whose only purpose would be to provide scientists with effective principles of metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology from which to do their work. And while I think such principles ought to help softer forms of science most, it seems to me that even fields like physics sometimes need a bit of foundational help as well.
So what do you think? I realize that this question might be a bit deep for a Sunday, so no worries about getting back to me soon!
I have no particular affinity for or stake in the way lines are currently drawn in academia, so I would have no problem with changes if I thought they were right. But I'm not actually sure what you're suggesting--philosophy of science already exists. There are philosophers of cognitive science, philosophers of physics, philosophers of biology, etc, etc. What are you suggesting here that isn't already the way things are done?
Right, there’s a central point to my position that could be better clarified. In modern philosophy, like ancient philosophy, there are no agreed upon understandings for the various questions that are pondered. And indeed, some today accuse the field of being a waste of time for this reason. In response philosophers tend to claim that these people fail to grasp how fundamentally different philosophy is from science. They say that agreed upon answers in philosophy aren’t appropriate and certainly should not be considered an end goal.
I neither question the importance of philosophical questions nor do I fault modern philosophers for their diverging professional opinions. The point of my question to you however is to ask if there’s any merit to the idea that science could improve with various agreed upon metaphysical, epistemological, and axiological understandings? Thus perhaps various harder forms of science like physics largely exist as such because they’re naturally less susceptible to this void than softer disciplines like psychology?
To me this makes sense, and though I appreciate that modern “philosophers of…” psychology, physics, and so on do provide insights, without agreed upon answers they also don’t provide a solution as I see it. I believe that various accepted metaphysical, epistemological, and axiological rules could help science function much better than it does today. Thus I’d like various groups to emerge whose exclusive purpose would be to provide principles from which to potentially better found science. And what should distinguish better principles from worse? I’d think that the function of science itself should demonstrate this by means of the apparent success or failure of what’s tried in science.
What I’ve said here may still seem a bit abstract however since I haven’t provided any specific rules that might help improve science. There is one principle of metaphysics, two principles of epistemology, and one principles of axiology that I personally use to help me distinguish good science from bad science. So maybe an example would help?
Great story. Congratulations and thanks for sharing.
Thank you for reading it.
Bizarre how similar your undergrad experience was to mine. Went to Northeastern and one specific 20th century continental philosophy professor changed my life. Was honored to have him as a mentor until he recently passed. Pretty sure I wouldn’t give a shit or had finished my philosophy undergrad if it wasn’t for him.
It's amazing the impact a single mentor can make!
Loved it, neuroscience and philosophy are so much closer than when I was in school (early 70s). At least it's being taught now.
Thanks
Many points of interest, but as someone who had a motivational style that smacks of yours, and as someone who has had several "oh... that makes sense now" moments, see if any of these are that for you:
First was the distinction, in motivational psychology, of "the need to acheive" and the not-so flattering "the need to avoid failure." While I never really trust a dichotomy, "the need to avoid failure" captured me perfectly (with a little self-rationalization), in that I either wanted to do something so easy that failure was implausible, or something so hard that failure was expected. What makes me quite unsettled is some persistent, sustained-progress measure of success. "The middle" is not my world or my speed.
This showed up in many ways:
The mild-success while not trying, very satisfying. Playing basketball, I gravitated towards layups or half-court shots (not in games), free throws were nightmares. In video games, I would never follow standard builds and guides, and I would actively chase down some hidden gimmick to exploit (within reason cuz cheating stacked the deck the other way).
I was also diagnosed with ADHD (by a skeptical specialist rather than a dispensary) at the tender age of 35. It wasn't attention or hyperactivity, but "impulsiveness," as measured by, among other things, a funky test where you wait on some subtle pattern to identify and click a button. After a few minutes of it, when the novelty had faded, rather than "responding," I increased in errors of commission, explained to me as "trying to predict as if by some pattern rather than respond." Which... sounds like me.
I always associated "impulsive" with specific modes risk taking, while I was relatively safe on those fronts. But this type of impulse is based on a weaker "response inhibition." So, for example, I catch myself interrupting people, not to talk over them or even as much as them, but to redirect the overall conversation or update them on some small context, etc. Food near me, I eat. Food out of sight, mostly out of mind. 3 steps is too many for cooking, etc, but I can spend a whole day probing which bias combinations would result in the situations that get labeled and discarded without a second thought by thoughtful scientists.
So yeah, try that on for size. Also, I tend to write too much, like so, because one thought leads to the next, and there's always more to say...
Cheers!
I can understand all that but it doesn't resonate super well with my experiences, sorry!
All good! I wouldn't expect it to, but just in case. Thanks for checking it out!
Knew you skipped school a lot but didn’t know you were at the bookstore
It was a big blow to me when Chapters in Trinity Common closed down, I spent so much time in there.
By the way, people seem to like your paid subscriber note: https://substack.com/@tommyblanchard/note/c-66449407
Thanks mom
lol
Apparently I’m bold and salty
That sounds about right.
Have you thought about being a social media influencer? That Note has more “likes” than anything else I've posted 😂
I’m ready for my 15 minutes of fame! 😜
A few of us had lunch there once a week, funny we didn’t run into you. 😉
You must just not have seen me, I was pretty inconspicuous with my hair
What a life story. Humor is on point. Thanks for sharing!
Fantastic read, Tommy. Cool to hear this backstory. Some folks know from age 10 what they want to be. Some folks let their path follow interesting leads. I was one of the latter too.
Thanks! I'm happy to have had a more winding path, I think it's made my life a lot more interesting than if it had been a straight shot. We'll see what interesting places it leads to next! I hope you've enjoyed your winding path as well 😀
It's interesting that philosophy instruction wasn't (isn't?) looking outside of itself. You would think it was natural to look at the broader world to gather information and then begin to parse that into how it addresses the questions.
I feel like everyone should have philosophy in their life. For most its not going to be a career, but that doesn't matter. The big questions of reality are worth pursuing for their own sake.
I left academia after getting a Social Psychology Ph.D and I've spent the time since trying to rebuild the things I love about the social sciences while side-stepping the things that I find troublesome.
All of that is just to say that I think what you're doing here is the eternal quest --- the attempt to take the things we once loved, and do them right (i.e. in the way that aligns with our values, and doesn't feel like a contaminating compromise), and in doing so, find our love for them again.
I feel so nerdy for being excited from reading this piece. I’ve always wanted to be a writer but wound up doing English at uni, which I didn’t expect to happen even once I finished high school. And so far, I’ve had very similar thoughts, similar questions, especially now that I’m very focused on gender for my thesis. It’s an English lit thesis, but I feel I need psychology, anthropology, philosophy, politics as well. (A similar side note also is that I’ve always loved reading philosophy, but did ONE class and hated it.)
I had a similar experience. I did philosophy and psychology as an undergraduate, then an MA in philosophy (at Tufts), then a PhD in psychology at Cornell. I work in experimental philosophy and try to use empirical methods to address philosophical questions. I just stumbled into this blog and I'm looking forward to reading more.
Very cool! I'm a subscriber and have seen you around on Notes (and in comments), happy to have you on board!