Williamson seems to be making a semantic argument rather than arguing anything concrete. Or at least, the 6 claims he’s making seem to all be restatements of “philosophy is a science” without ever actually arguing why “a science” makes philosophy equivalently easy than other things labeled “a science”. For example, I can replace “philosophy” in your list of claims with “religion”, with the only claim that seems iffy being 5
Religion is a science.
It’s not a natural science (like particle physics, organic chemistry, nephrology), but not all sciences are natural sciences — for instance, mathematics and computer science are formal sciences. Religion is likewise a non-natural science.
Although astrology differs from other scientific inquiries, it differs no more in kind or degree than they differ from each other. Put provocatively, theoretical physics might be closer to religion than to experimental physics.
Religion, like other sciences, pursues knowledge. Just as mathematics peruses mathematical knowledge, and nephrology peruses nephrological knowledge, religion pursues religious knowledge.
Different sciences will vary in their subject-matter, methods, practices, etc., but religion doesn’t differ to a far greater degree or in a fundamentally different way. (6) Religious methods (i.e. the ways in which religion achieves its aim, knowledge) aren’t starkly different from the methods of other sciences.
Religion isn’t a science in a parasitic sense. It’s not a science because it uses scientific evidence or because it has applications for the sciences. Rather, it’s simply another science, not uniquely special. Shmilliamson says, “Religion is neither queen nor handmaid of the sciences, just one more science with a distinctive character, just as other sciences have distinctive character.”
Religion is not, exceptionally among sciences, concerned with words or concepts. This conflicts with many religious thinkers who conceived religion as chiefly concerned with linguistic or conceptual analysis, such as Maimonides, or Thomas Aquinas.
Religion doesn’t consist of a series of disconnected visionaries. Rather, it consists in the incremental contribution of thousands of researchers: some great, some mediocre, much like any other scientific inquiry.
But of course, this claim is iffy for philosophy too. In what sense is philosophical knowledge not “starkly different from the methods of other sciences”? A key component of science is experiment, and in that sense, religion is much more science-like than philosophy! Eg see the ideas of personal experimentation in buddhism, and mormon epistemology (ask Claude about the significance of Alma 32 in mormon epistemology).
I’m not saying religion is a science, or that it is more right than philosophy, just that your representation of Williamson here doesn’t seem much more than a semantic dispute.
In particular, the real question here is whether the mechanisms we expect to automate science and math will also automate philosophy, not whether we ought to semantically group philosophy as a science. The reason we expect science and math to get automated is the existence of relatively concrete & well defined feedback loops between actions and results. Or at minimum, much more concrete feedback loops than philosophy has, and especially the philosophy Wei Dai typically cares about has (eg moral philosophy, decision theory, and metaphysics).
Concretely, if AIs decide that it is a moral good to spread the good word of spiralism, there’s nothing (save humans, but that will go away once we’re powerless) to stop them, but if they decide quantum mechanics is fake, or 2+2=5, well… they won’t make it too far.
I’d guess this is also why Wei Dai believes in “philosophical exceptionalism”. Regardless of whether you want to categorize philosophy as a science or not, the above paragraph applies just as well to groups of humans as to AIs. Indeed, there have been much much more evil & philosophically wrong ideologies than spiralism in the past.
Whether experiments serve as a distinction between science and philosophy, TW has a lecture arguing against this, and he addresses this in a bunch of papers. I’ll summarise his arguments later if I have time.
To clarify, I listed some of Williamson’s claims, but I haven’t summarised any of his arguments.
His actual arguments tend to be ‘negative’, i.e. they goes through many distinctions that metaphilosophical anti-exceptionalists purport, and for each he argues that either (i) the purported distinction is insubstantial,[1] or (ii) the distinction mischaracterised philosophy or science or both.[2]
He hasn’t I think addressed Wei Dai’s exceptionalism, which is (I gather) something like “Solomonoff induction provides a half-way decent formalisms of ideal maths/science, but there isn’t a similarly decent formalism of ideal philosophy.”
I’ll think a bit more about what Williamson might say about that Wei Dai’s purported distinction. I think Williamson is open to the possibility that philosophy is qualitatively different from science, so it’s possible he would change his mind if he engaged with Dai’s position.
E.g., one purported distinction he critiques is that philosophy is concerned with words/concepts in a qualitatively different way than the natural sciences.
To clarify, I listed some of Williamson’s claims, but I haven’t summarised any of his arguments.
I think even still, if these are the claims he’s making, none of them seem particularly relevant to the question of “whether the mechanisms we expect to automate science and math will also automate philosophy”.
Williamson seems to be making a semantic argument rather than arguing anything concrete. Or at least, the 6 claims he’s making seem to all be restatements of “philosophy is a science” without ever actually arguing why “a science” makes philosophy equivalently easy than other things labeled “a science”. For example, I can replace “philosophy” in your list of claims with “religion”, with the only claim that seems iffy being 5
But of course, this claim is iffy for philosophy too. In what sense is philosophical knowledge not “starkly different from the methods of other sciences”? A key component of science is experiment, and in that sense, religion is much more science-like than philosophy! Eg see the ideas of personal experimentation in buddhism, and mormon epistemology (ask Claude about the significance of Alma 32 in mormon epistemology).
I’m not saying religion is a science, or that it is more right than philosophy, just that your representation of Williamson here doesn’t seem much more than a semantic dispute.
In particular, the real question here is whether the mechanisms we expect to automate science and math will also automate philosophy, not whether we ought to semantically group philosophy as a science. The reason we expect science and math to get automated is the existence of relatively concrete & well defined feedback loops between actions and results. Or at minimum, much more concrete feedback loops than philosophy has, and especially the philosophy Wei Dai typically cares about has (eg moral philosophy, decision theory, and metaphysics).
Concretely, if AIs decide that it is a moral good to spread the good word of spiralism, there’s nothing (save humans, but that will go away once we’re powerless) to stop them, but if they decide quantum mechanics is fake, or 2+2=5, well… they won’t make it too far.
I’d guess this is also why Wei Dai believes in “philosophical exceptionalism”. Regardless of whether you want to categorize philosophy as a science or not, the above paragraph applies just as well to groups of humans as to AIs. Indeed, there have been much much more evil & philosophically wrong ideologies than spiralism in the past.
Whether experiments serve as a distinction between science and philosophy, TW has a lecture arguing against this, and he addresses this in a bunch of papers. I’ll summarise his arguments later if I have time.
To clarify, I listed some of Williamson’s claims, but I haven’t summarised any of his arguments.
His actual arguments tend to be ‘negative’, i.e. they goes through many distinctions that metaphilosophical anti-exceptionalists purport, and for each he argues that either (i) the purported distinction is insubstantial,[1] or (ii) the distinction mischaracterised philosophy or science or both.[2]
He hasn’t I think addressed Wei Dai’s exceptionalism, which is (I gather) something like “Solomonoff induction provides a half-way decent formalisms of ideal maths/science, but there isn’t a similarly decent formalism of ideal philosophy.”
I’ll think a bit more about what Williamson might say about that Wei Dai’s purported distinction. I think Williamson is open to the possibility that philosophy is qualitatively different from science, so it’s possible he would change his mind if he engaged with Dai’s position.
An illustrative strawman: that philosophers publish in journals with ‘philosophy’ in the title would not be a substantial difference.
E.g., one purported distinction he critiques is that philosophy is concerned with words/concepts in a qualitatively different way than the natural sciences.
I think even still, if these are the claims he’s making, none of them seem particularly relevant to the question of “whether the mechanisms we expect to automate science and math will also automate philosophy”.