Phenomenology of Mind

What Hacker News says

1. bborOct 2024
   Why are you so confident that Philosophy isn't the superclass to "science"? How could you hope to start on any science without philosophy, much less arrive at a definition for the term? I could maybe see mathematics without philosophy, as I mentioned above, but physical science/physics/"science" is inherently subjective. That doesn't mean truth doesn't exist, of course -- but I'd have to get into philosophy to explain why I think all of that ;). The best defense for philosophy by far is that you can't criticize it without engaging in it, and "it all seems obvious to me, just use common sense"-style citations are much less convincing than ones to long famous books.

   More provacatively: have you engaged with it? I know that's a big ask, but it's also a bit unfair IMO to write off a field without taking the time to understand it. For example, Aristotle founded multiple scientific fields, including the big two -- Physics and Biology -- and established a theory of mind that still has immense sway in the west to this day. Kant was a reknowned scientist before he started into philosophy (even having a good claim to "first to show the existence of galaxies"), and the quote above is from A Critique of Pure Reason (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4280/4280-h/4280-h.htm#chap1...) where he establishes cognitive science:

     From all that has been said, there results the idea of a particular science, which may be called the Critique of Pure Reason.... Such a science must not be called a doctrine, but only a critique of pure reason; and its use, in regard to speculation, would be only negative, not to enlarge the bounds of, but to purify, our reason, and to shield it against error—which alone is no little gain.
   

   Hegel built on this directly with his famous book The Phenomenology of Mind, of which I highly recommend the short preface titled On Scientific Cognition. I don't think there could be a more clear piece of evidence that these were the leading thinkers of their time on matters of systematic thought, aka science.

   Without the academy, we'd have no Francis Bacon, no Newton or Liebniz, no Einstein or Bohr, and definitely no Popper, Kuhn, Carnap, Wittgenstein, Chomsky, or any of the other amazing modern thinkers on how to improve our scientific endeavors. This one's less verifiable but I imagine it hits home the most: I don't even think we'd have Turing without Boole, Russell, and Whitehead to draw from.

   ...sorry, clearly I'm a bit sensitive ;) It's frustrating being valued for your puzzle solving abilities (aka SWE) much more highly than your engagement with science, as I'm sure you can relate to or imagine!

   Show morethread
2. undefined_user4Sep 2018
   Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind. It blew my mind.
   thread
3. mtdewcmuAug 2014
   I found some references, including this one[1]:

   "As far as the philosophy of history is concerned, what is the first trait of the Hegelian vision of the Napoleonic hero ? A famous passage is often quoted. It is an extract from the letter Hegel addressed from Iena to his friend Niethammer, October 13th, 1806, when he had just finished writing The Phenomenology of Mind : " I saw the Emperor -this soul of the world- go out from the city to survey his reign; it is a truly wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrating on one point while seated on a horse, stretches over the world and dominates it. " (Correspondance, T. I, p.114)."

   "Napoleon soul of the world" makes a pretty good search phrase[2].

   [1] http://www.napoleon.org/en/reading_room/articles/files/napol... [2] https://www.google.com/#q=emperor+napoleon+this+soul+of+the+...

   Show morethread