<story><title>Daniel Dennett has died</title><url>https://dailynous.com/2024/04/19/daniel-dennett-death-1942-2024/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>raddan</author><text>This is sad. I teach an upper-level undergraduate course on programming language theory, and one major component of the course is reduction proofs. Many students find proof by contradiction (reductio ad absurdum) to be a confusing concept. I have always directed those students toward Dennett’s helpful video (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;m.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=sVUMAqMmy7o&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;m.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=sVUMAqMmy7o&lt;/a&gt;) and most of them respond positively to Dennett’s lucid style. RIP.&lt;p&gt;FWIW, I have also seen the dismissive STEM attitude toward the philosophical tradition. It helps to remember that the philosophical tradition predates the scientific tradition significantly, and that it does not take logical positivism or reductionism as givens. Having studied both disciplines, I feel like philosophy has seriously enhanced my understand of the world even if I don’t use it in my day-to-day scientific work.</text></item><item><author>klodolph</author><text>You’re not alone. I think a lot of people, especially in STEM, pooh-pooh philosophy at first.&lt;p&gt;The problem is that in any field, if you start digging to understand the underlying concepts of that field and how they are defined, at some point you hit philosophy and start working with philosophical concepts.&lt;p&gt;The other problem is that there’s some real quack philosophy around, too. Various traps that philosophers sometimes fall into.</text></item><item><author>ithkuil</author><text>I must admit I always scoffed at philosophers, but then I started reading Dennett and not only I finally met a philosopher that I respected, but he helped me unlock what other philosophers are doing and I started to see philosophers as a whole in new light.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pgspaintbrush</author><text>STEM often overlooks the fundamental work that was done in philosophy that led to breakthroughs within STEM. For example, Claude Shannon&amp;#x27;s undergraduate philosophy course is what taught him boolean algebra, which ultimately led him to design digital circuits. 
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bentley.umich.edu&amp;#x2F;news-events&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;the-elegant-philosophy-of-ones-and-zeros&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bentley.umich.edu&amp;#x2F;news-events&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;the-elegant-p...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Daniel Dennett has died</title><url>https://dailynous.com/2024/04/19/daniel-dennett-death-1942-2024/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>raddan</author><text>This is sad. I teach an upper-level undergraduate course on programming language theory, and one major component of the course is reduction proofs. Many students find proof by contradiction (reductio ad absurdum) to be a confusing concept. I have always directed those students toward Dennett’s helpful video (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;m.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=sVUMAqMmy7o&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;m.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=sVUMAqMmy7o&lt;/a&gt;) and most of them respond positively to Dennett’s lucid style. RIP.&lt;p&gt;FWIW, I have also seen the dismissive STEM attitude toward the philosophical tradition. It helps to remember that the philosophical tradition predates the scientific tradition significantly, and that it does not take logical positivism or reductionism as givens. Having studied both disciplines, I feel like philosophy has seriously enhanced my understand of the world even if I don’t use it in my day-to-day scientific work.</text></item><item><author>klodolph</author><text>You’re not alone. I think a lot of people, especially in STEM, pooh-pooh philosophy at first.&lt;p&gt;The problem is that in any field, if you start digging to understand the underlying concepts of that field and how they are defined, at some point you hit philosophy and start working with philosophical concepts.&lt;p&gt;The other problem is that there’s some real quack philosophy around, too. Various traps that philosophers sometimes fall into.</text></item><item><author>ithkuil</author><text>I must admit I always scoffed at philosophers, but then I started reading Dennett and not only I finally met a philosopher that I respected, but he helped me unlock what other philosophers are doing and I started to see philosophers as a whole in new light.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kijin</author><text>I think it depends a lot on which tradition of philosophy one is first exposed to. Most STEM people will find Anglo-American analytic philosophy (where Dennett firmly belonged) much easier to approach than continental philosophy or the classical stuff, but unfortunately casual readers tend to get exposed to a lot more of the latter.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s like the first programming language you learned. It will shape your perception of what programming is all about for a long time afterward, and might even turn you away from programming altogether. But there are lots of programming languages, and they&amp;#x27;re just different ways to make the same silicon do something interesting!</text></comment>