From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sun May 29 2005 - 10:33:30 MDT
Paul Fidika wrote:
>
> Bombast yes, philosophy no. I recall Jaynes (most deservedly) deriding
> Popper and writing:
>
> "Philosophers are free to do whatever they please, because they don't
> have to do anything right."
But Jaynes *was* a philosopher of science. That business with the Mind
Projection Fallacy - that's philosophy of science if ever I heard it. And
good philosophy, too. _Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman_ is philosophy of
science. The moral is not that philosophy of science is useless, but that it
is extremely difficult to get good philosophy of science out of someone who
thinks of himself as primarily a professional philosopher. I do not call it
impossible. In all the ages of humankind, I expect it has been done at least
once. It only becomes hopeless if you have no knowledge of science and no
feel for mathematics and trust your own intuitions.
> I agree that there is of course much yet to be done and that Bayes does not in
> itself present a complete solution, but I very much doubt that you'll
> find any further help in the literature of philosophy.
What is "A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation" if not philosophy
of science?
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://intelligence.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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