David Cherryholmes wrote:
>I'm doing undergrad work in CompSci right now and I plan to do grad
>work in Biomed. How are you managing majors in Fine Arts and Sciences?
>I ask because I may be interested in doing something similiar, but I was
>under the impression that it was difficult, at best, and downright
>impossible at worst (depending on your school).
I at one point did three full-time programs and one half-time program
concurrently. I was often told that this was impossible. Ironically, I
think it was because everybody said it was impossible that it became
possible for me! I was energized by a passionate desire to prove that the
egalitarian presumptions in Sweden (where I did my undergraduate education)
were false.
I obtained enough background in computational neuroscience, mathematical
logic, physics and philosophy to start a PhD in any of them. So why did I
choose philosophy of science? Because I figured that when you do a PhD in
one of the sciences, you usually have to specialize very heavily in one
narrow area, whereas doing philosophy of science gives you more freedom to
pick the most interesting bits from several different fields and to get an
overview of the scientific edifice. To a considerable degree it actually
worked out that way for me. :-)
Anders Sandberg wrote:
>There is a difference between philosophy as a mental or social game
>and the study of how to live one's life in the best way. The former is
>not per se useful (it can be entertaining), but the second is in some
>sense what we all need and try to learn throughout life. A formal
>study of philosophy can be helpful to learn the second form if you pay
>attention to the relevant parts and ignore the games.
I have to say I'm not such a great fan of the
philosophy-will-teach-you-how-to-live approach.
But there are areas of philosophy where real progress is possible, and some
of these areas address important issues. The first thing to understand
about philosophy is that it is a very big cup of tea - if you dive in at
the wrong place, you can get a bad first impression, and you might never
reach the interesting stuff. I always find myself in a difficult position
when I'm supposed to defend Philosophy against the usual criticisms,
because to a very large extent I agree with them! But then I want to say
that there are parts of philosophy which should be excepted.
The philosophy that I'm interested in is continuous with science. There is
no sharp distinction; philosophy just tends to deal with the broader
issues, and with problems that haven't yet been clarified to the point
where the standard scientific techniques can be applied.
Moreover, I'm mostly interested in those problems the solution of which
might have practical benefits within a few decades (after which
superintelligences might be better able to tackle any remaining questions
much better than we can now). It's true that this attitude is very atypical
of academic philosophers.
So what problems of philosophy can potentially have such practical
relevance? Well, there's the foundations of probability theory - and my
theory of observational selection effects
(http://www.anthropic-principle.com), which can provide methodological
tools to address questions in cosmology, evolution theory, game theoretic
problems involving imperfect recall, whether there are other intelligent
civilizations in the universe, the future prospects of our own
civilization, whether there's evidence for the hypothesis that our world
was designed (perhaps by a posthuman civilization emulating our world on a
computer), and other such fascinating issues. Then, of course, there are
various ethical questions, the foundations of social choice theory, and
welfare economics. Many topics there that are of direct relevance to our
transhumanist ambitions.
In general, it seems to me that a philosophy position is at least as good a
base as any other for addressing the big questions about where we are and
where we're going - the sort of questions that we are constantly discussing
on this list. Of course, philosophy by itself impotent. But when mixed with
a deep understanding of several scientific fields (including economics!)
and emerging technologies, you get a potentially explosive compound.
Nick Bostrom
Department of Philosophy
Yale University
Homepage: http://www.nickbostrom.com
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