Philosophy falls under liberal arts and all liberal arts tend to express the obvious in new ways or perspective. Science on the other hand tries to explore new stuff.The greatest benefit of philosophy is it allows you to see the weaker side of almost everyone's viewpoint.Which will cause people to tolerate each other and explore new ideas with an open mind.But academic philosophy can get boring and pretentious pretty quickly.

all the good stuff has already been thought of. — RogueAI

What a feeble principle that is! As if only novelty has value.

I think he was right. The original stuff has already been thought of. There's been too many smart people for anyone to have missed anything fundamental by now. We need new perspectives. — RogueAI

Well, you cannot produce original insights by merely reading and rehashing the classics!

That is trivially obvious.

You will, instead, need to bring some interesting experience from looking at what people do in a particular practical field around you. The collection of philosophyOf(X) fields is much larger and ultimately also much more interesting than just X=philosophy itself.

A good example of an excellent epistemologist of X=randomness, is Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

I have read every single one of his Incerto books:

• Fooled by Randomness (2001)
• The Black Swan (2007)
• Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012)
• Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life (2018)

In my opinion, Taleb's books are pure genius.

You see, Taleb's experience is in finance. The finance industry uses and abuses ceremonial rituals in mathematics and science as smoke and mirrors. In reality, they just sell snake oil. Taleb also points out that the finance industry is not the only industry doing that, i.e. repackaging the superficial appearance and rituals of solid mathematics and serious science into costly snake oil. His Incerto books are fantastic, if only, because they remind us of the fact that we are entirely surrounded and outnumbered by dangerous gangs of deceptive liars.

NNT has his own subreddit of "groupies" discussing his every tweet or other public appearance. He has an impressive fan club ...

I think everyone should have to take a couple of intro-level philo courses. My son is going into Computer Science, and he could care less about philosophy, but they're making him take it. I told him, "it's good for you. It teaches you to be critical and think abstractly."

Yes, you can restate principles and there's value in that, but all the foundational level work has been done.

all the foundational level work has been done — RogueAI

That is not true!

For example, defining knowledge as a justified true belief is clearly unsustainable.

Edmund Gettier famously breached the stalemate in 1963 with his counterexample cases. The entanglement phenomenon also decisively breaches the classical JTB definition. The problem is now completely up in the air, even on the empirical side of things.

Furthermore, only empirical knowledge could possibly ever be correspondence-theory "true" and therefore JTB knowledge. Axiomatic fields such as mathematics, which are never correspondence-theory "true", are not knowledge in that approach. So, what are they then?

all the foundational level work has been done. — RogueAI

I haven't done it though, so I still need to do it. I ate a meal once, no point in doing it again.

My condolences.

Sounds like you had a really bad teacher there.

Maybe. I don't think anyone's done anything really important since Turing, and he wasn't even a philosopher. I think you'll see computation was the last bit of progress doing philosophy the old-fashioned way could achieve.

What contemporary philosophy have you read? And about what subjects?

That is not true!

For example, defining knowledge as a justified true belief is clearly unsustainable.

Edmund Gettier famously breached the stalemate in 1963 with his counterexample cases. The entanglement phenomenon also decisively breaches the classical JTB definition. The problem is now completely up in the air, even on the empirical side of things.

Furthermore, only empirical knowledge could possibly ever be correspondence-theory "true" and therefore JTB knowledge. Axiomatic fields such as mathematics, which are never correspondence-theory "true", are not knowledge in that approach. So, what are they then?

None of that is important. I think it is, because my degree's in it, but anyone else would be bored to tears. I've tried to explain the brilliance of Gettier's paper, and people get it, but the inevitable reaction is "so what?"

I think because people recognize what Gettier was getting at, clever as he was, was just a version of the old "how do we know what's real?" argument.

Oh, and whenever we philosopher undergrads would talk about Gettier, we would get so jealous!

I think he was right. The original stuff has already been thought of. There's been too many smart people for anyone to have missed anything fundamental by now. We need new perspectives. — RogueAI

I think he was right too. There's a saying which philosophers don't seem to pay heed to,

the least said, the soonest mended.

It's like with technology, the idea of machines is not new anymore but any new advancement is better than ideas without utility in our lives. I think philosophers need to say less and do more. I don't think the problem is new perspectives, it's that philosophers rarely intend to do anything beyond express ideas.

You seem to be working with a pretty narrow (capitalistic?) view of what is important.

What is important is if philosophy is meaningful to people. Plato, Socrates and Aristotle are meaningful to a lot of people. We still quote them, thousands of years later. Gettier isn't. It doesn't matter except to a small group of people if knowledge is a true belief or justified true belief. It doesn't make a difference in their lives and it doesn't cause them to wonder about things.

People generally know more about the Kardashians than a single philosopher living or dead. Are you sure you want to pin importance on what the average Joe thinks is interesting?

It doesn't matter except to a small group of people if knowledge is a true belief or justified true belief. — RogueAI

That actually matters a whole lot to everyone, whether they care to know it or not. At least, if you want a fuctioning democracy!

We had a functioning democracy before Gettier. Maybe consciousness will finally be figured out. Although, if it was going to be, it probably would have already happened by now.

Not really. And still not. The people are voting on all sorts of issues without knowing why.

But furthermore, you didn't answer multiple points/questions of mine:
1. Which contemporary philosophy have you read?
2. Do you really think the people who put more importance in the Kardashians than in Plato should be determining the value of philosophy? Or what role philosophy plays in your own life?

People generally know more about the Kardashians than a single philosopher living or dead. Are you sure you want to pin importance on what the average Joe thinks is interesting? — Artemis

As Lincoln wrote - of the average Joes, for the average Joes, and by the average Joes. The contempt philosophy shows for average Joes is one if the reasons it is irrelevant.

What is important is if philosophy is meaningful to people. Plato, Socrates and Aristotle are meaningful to a lot of people. We still quote them, thousands of years later. Gettier isn't. It doesn't matter except to a small group of people if knowledge is a true belief or justified true belief. It doesn't make a difference in their lives and it doesn't cause them to wonder about things. — RogueAI

Also - if JTB is on the cutting edge of unresolved philosophical questions, philosophy is in big trouble. The Gettier paper was written when I was 11 years old, 56 years ago.

For example, defining knowledge as a justified true belief is clearly unsustainable.

Edmund Gettier famously breached the stalemate in 1963 with his counterexample cases. The entanglement phenomenon also decisively breaches the classical JTB definition. The problem is now completely up in the air, even on the empirical side of things. — alcontali

What in God's name difference does it make if JTB or TB is true? Who has ever cared about that other than a few people with too much time on their hands? Who cares how we define knowledge? This is probably what the professor in the OP was talking about - this is the kind of crap philosophers are forced to waste their time on.

25 years ago, I was prepared to go into philosophy graduate school. A philo of science professor talked me out of it. His argument was essentially: all the good stuff has already been thought of. You'll spend your days writing papers on meaningless trivialities until you get tenure.

I think he was right. The original stuff has already been thought of. There's been too many smart people for anyone to have missed anything fundamental by now. We need new perspectives. — RogueAI

I agree that the field of academic philosophy is a crap career choice but I don't at all agree that 'it's all been done'. A great deal of what was important about it has been forgotten, or rather, subsequent generations no longer grasp what was important about it. Thinking that it's all been done is typical of consumer capitalism, which has to keep inventing new stuff at a frantic pace and regards the whole of the past as a graveyard. The Western philosophical tradition has inexhaustible riches, but you have to understand how to mine it.

The contempt philosophy shows for average Joes is one if the reasons it is irrelevant. — T Clark

You got it the wrong way around. The Joe's show contempt for philosophy and so philosophy moves on without them.
But you can start a Philosophy of Kardashians if you like. Subject #1 whether tis nobler in the mind to use matte or glossy lipstick. :snicker:

What in God's name difference does it make if JTB or TB is true? Who has ever cared about that other than a few people with too much time on their hands? Who cares how we define knowledge? This is probably what the professor in the OP was talking about - this is the kind of crap philosophers are forced to waste their time on. — T Clark

Not sure.

I keep getting irate remarks from @fishfry in another thread because I refuse to read up on the nitty-gritty details of the cutting-edge research on the Continuum Hypothesis (in math). He seems to insinuate that my point of view -- I have to draw the line somwhere, don't I? -- is pure evil.

So, let's say that there is some kind of (relatively small) fan club for bleeding edge research on JTB, while everybody else clearly does not give a flying fart. Isn't that the case for almost *everything* ?

By the way, who the hell would ever have thought that there is complete fan club with greater-than-life pop stars to be found in the "epistemology of randomness"?

Taleb and Nobel laureate Myron Scholes have traded personal attacks, particularly after Taleb's paper with Espen Haug on why nobody used the Black–Scholes–Merton formula.

People are even still siding in the notorious insult fest between David Hilbert and Luitzen Brouwer, even though the antagonists are now dead already (for decades). I surely side with David Hilbert for 100%, and I keep throwing vitriol at Luitzen Brouwer, who in my opinion, is the accomplice of Satan.

I keep getting irate remarks from fishfry in another thread because I refuse to read up on the nitty-gritty details of the cutting-edge research on the Continuum Hypothesis (in math). He seems to insinuate that my point of view -- I have to draw the line somwhere, don't I? -- is pure evil. — alcontali

None of that is remotely true. You started talking about set theory here ... https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/317954 . Note that YOU were the one who first brought up set theory in that thread. I corrected some of your errors and you started making wild extrapolations of things you didn't understand. I called you out on your additional errors. A perusal of that thread will confirm my account.

I don't care if you study set theory or not. But if you pretend to understand more than you do and make elementary errors, I'll surely correct you. And point out that you like to throw out buzzwords without understanding their meaning. In that particular thread you came off like a bs artist and you got called on it.

I corrected some of your errors and you started making wild extrapolations of things you didn't understand. — fishfry

Well, I have said that Woodlin's work is surely interesting, but that Woodlin himself admits that it is not finished, and that I will read up on the details when he does finally finish his work. In the meanwhile, I agree that I refuse to read up on the difference between cardinals that are "extremely large", "super huge", or otherwise "incredibly out-sized". These things are obviously not the same! Ok. happy now?

I will read up on the details when he does finally finish his work. — alcontali

LOL. One (you, me, anyone) would need a Ph.D. in set theory and several years of specialized postdoc work, and probably more than that, just to read what he's done so far. You keep making this laughable claim that you'll deign to read his work when he's done. You're embarrassing yourself.

Ok. happy now? — alcontali

You bluffed and got called. Have a nice evening.

Your Philoscience prof was probably correct. My impression is that the the old whore of philosophy has been more than adequately plowed. However, I doubt that either AI or aliens will change the situation.

Our putative replacements (computers and aliens) will have to deal with the same problems every other conscious, knowing species have had to deal with.

LOL. One (you, me, anyone) would need a Ph.D. in set theory and several years of specialized postdoc work just to read what he's done so far. You keep making this laughable claim that you'll deign to read his work when he's done. You're embarrassing yourself. — fishfry

I just read Woodlin's conclusion: "unfinished work". The details of Woodlin's work are indeed "hard" and take a long time to understand. So, yes, I will skip the thing.

Still, Woodlin's work is certainly not the hardest stuff I have ever run into (or started reading). For example, I consider ZK-STARK theory ("Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge") to be much, much harder. The core ZK-STARK tutorial is subdivided in the following topics:

• Homomorphic Hiding
• Blind Evaluation of Polynomials
• The Knowledge of Coefficient Test and Assumption
• How to make Blind Evaluation of Polynomials Verifiable
• From Computations to Polynomials
• The Pinocchio Protocol
• Pairings of Elliptic Curves

Especially "Blind Evaluation of Polynomials" is pure genius but I find it really, really "hard".

Some of the guys who wrote this stuff have Ph.D's but almost none of the programmers does. For example, Vitalik Buterin successfullly reimplemented ZK-SNARK in the Ethereum code base, and he never even went to university. He is in his early twenties, and did not have the time for that, because Vitalik was too busy being some kind of cryptocurrency pop star.

Quite a few of the Ph.D crowd will say that they understand the stuff, but when push comes to shove, they will not be able to implement it, not even to save themselves from drowning. So, don't show me the Ph.D piece of paper. Show me your source code instead. If you really want to know about Ph.D's then read the article "Why can't programmers ... program?" Seriously, as Linus Torvalds said: "Talk is cheap, my friend."

Another reason why Vitalik does not have a Ph.D in set theory is because he really does not need one to wipe the floor with you in set theory, if he so desires. Furthermore, nowadays, you are much better off doing some advanced crypto, if you want to be some kind of math super star.

So, yes, if you want to discuss "hard" stuff, then let's at least pick something I can make money with.

The market capitalization of the ZCash cryptocurrency is around 400 million dollars now. So, at least we would know what we are doing it for. There is just one catch. The ZCash people are working on the upgrade to ZK-STARK now. That is what has really discouraged me from "completely" reading up on their theory, and figuring out the related function libraries. They are going to throw it away!

So, you may think that advanced set theory is too "hard" to read, but sorry, it is a walk in the park compared to what we do, when we do what it takes to get the software to run. Furthermore, the real question is: Is it really worth it?

By the way, the only thing that postdocs (as well as associate lecturers) have in common is that they can't pay their bills (from their food stamps).