Unified Knowledge for the Philosopher-Builder
Fields to bridge the gap between philosophy and building
I used to think the most valuable knowledge to gain (at least for my interests) was STEM-related: coding, engineering, mathematics, etc.
But as soon as I finished my studies and entered the working world, I realized I had an even deeper curiosity for a kind of knowledge that informs not only how to build things, but what to build.
In my rift between these questions, I carried on doing STEM-related work but oscillated back and forth between bringing a distinct social purpose in the work, yet working on somewhat narrower problems (AI for ecology and urban planning, RL for pandemic response policies) versus working purely on technical problems with broad applicability (AI for code, ML hardware accelerators).
It’s unsettling that my former focus on STEM knowledge does not answer the questions I now find most important.1 That the fields telling us how to build things (i.e. science, engineering, etc.) are a completely different mode and approach than those that help decide what to build (business, history, philosophy, ethics). What I really want is a single discipline that unites both: a coherent framework of theory and practice for the Philosopher-Builder.
I’m now taking time to reflect and build a more unified approach and world-view.
Can there be a more unified discipline that more smoothly transitions between questions of what to build, why to build it, and how?
Can my work have a clear feeling of social purpose, yet also have wide applicability?
If I want to disrupt entrenched, flawed systems, can I address these problems while simultaneously considering the earliest assumptions and the desired endgame?
I’m slowly coming to the opinion that there might be such an emerging set of interacting disciplines I can delve deeper into which can fill this gap. we can gradually develop and make more cohesive. Some examples:
Analytic Philosophy
Very broad, but a good formal grounding to get familiar with the techniques & approach philosophy has taken on since Whitehead & Russell; more recent work on logic/decision theory from MIRI, etc.
Academic rigor: high (philosophy that’s been translated into fully rigorous math — so a lot of it can end up just looking like math papers, but additionally includes more of the authors’ motivation & commentary explained alongside, i.e. what philosophy they were trying to get a formal handle on)
Algorithmic Information Theory (AIT)
A formulation of information theory and computational complexity using Kolmogorov-complexity
Formal foundation for models of universal intelligence like AIXI
Academic rigor: highest (essentially just formal math)
Philosophy of Science
In particular, the philosophy of biology and living systems / autopoiesis
Academic rigor: high; can vary by sub-field. Not all turns into math. But still high-quality academic work
Active Inference / Free Energy Principle (FEP) - Karl Friston
Puts a formalization on living systems, self-knowledge / self-modeling, understanding of boundaries (ego?)
Academic rigor: pretty high; varies. Friston is a legit scientist, though the exact value or contribution of FEP is debated. Others’ work in the field can vary.
Want to evaluate this critically against AIT / AIXI
Integral Theory (Ken Wilber)
I haven’t engaged much directly
But several people I respect and have learned a ton from in real-life interactions have been influenced by Wilber’s work
Meta-theory aiming to unify Western knowledge with Eastern meditative traditions.
Rigor: moderate (I think).
From what I’ve understood, the work never quite met the academic community’s standards.
Could nonetheless be useful as a comparative narrative — to understand a bunch of traditions at once, hold them up side by side before diving deeper into them.
More like the narratives one encounters by studying history. Each historian’s presentation may emphasize slightly different aspects of what occurred or why they occurred. It doesn’t mean any are wrong. It just means the insight we can get from storytelling and the standards we hold it to are a little fuzzier than more verifiable fields in science, or extremely verifiable fields like math.
This sits in a backdrop of wanting to learn more in general about history, geopolitics, (continental) philosophy, classics, etc. But a curriculum for those is a bit more established. The part I wanted more clarity on is what discipline(s) would then help me connect historical insight with scientific and engineering approaches — and what communities I would find with people who’ve thought critically about such challenges and can serve as examples of ways to make progress.
I treat academic disciplines as genres I can think and express myself in. Do I want to write a math paper? A science experiment? A philosophy paper? A fiction book? Early in life we learn a few basic genres of writing: fiction vs non-fiction, each being sub-divided a bit more (fiction → fantasy, romance, sci-fi, etc.; non-fiction → history, biography, science, math, etc.). But as I go deeper into reading the latest work in different fields of knowledge production, the more I see blurry lines and lots of subdivision. To a degree the splintering of fields is problematic and is an artifact of some imperfect incentives in our academic institutions. But in another sense I think there’s an opportunity to have such diversity on what type of knowledge each field produces, what ways of knowing it treats as valid. And there’s something about the disciplines I mentioned above where they seem to sit on some continuum that may enable the type of translational work I seek at this moment.
This is a much larger topic that I’ll surely have more to say about over time. I.e. exactly how the fields above all relate, and if / how they address the philosophy and builder itches simultaneously. I may at some point put out a more complete reading list in some of these areas as I find some my favorites!
And that most of the people I encounter in STEM fields have relatively shallow views on these questions, if any at all.