Professor Hanson has never learned any philosophy?

Monday, June 28th, 2010

I found Mencius Moldbug’s latest piece uninspiring. Like a media-savvy fighter, he tries to build up hype around his not-really-personal conflict with Professor Robin Hanson:

It is small wonder that Professor Hanson has never learned any philosophy.

This is the wrong insult to fling at Hanson, Aretae notes:

I ran into Robin Hanson the first time in ’95 or ’96, when Jimmy Wales was just a stocks guy who ran an internet philosophy discussion list (MDOP). Back then, Larry Sanger (the other founder of Wikipedia) was starting up a philosophy discussion group dedicated to foundationalist philosophy, and I joined.

Unless my memory is weaker than I think it is, over the course of a year or two, I became quite impressed with the insight and breadth of knowledge of one of the most insightful commentators on that list: Robin Hanson.
[...]
Of course, as I look up Robin’s CV, I see why he was on the philosophy list I was on. He has a masters in philosophy of science, and a master’s in physics.

D’oh!

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