Article 10 great ideas in philosophy from the past 50 years, according to one scientist

[C C]

https://bigthink.com/thinking/10-great-i...-50-years/

INTRO: I am a medical doctor and infectious disease scientist at the University of Washington, but I have long had an interest in philosophy. This goes back to my undergrad days at MIT, 50 years ago, where we were required to study various liberal arts. I ended up getting a minor in philosophy.

I have spent much of the past few years studying COVID, so it has been a nice mental break to ponder greater things once again. In this essay, I discuss what I believe to be ten of the most impactful philosophers and their ideas from the past 50 years... (MORE - details)

COVERED:

#1. John Rawls: Rational and political justice

#2. Julia Kristeva: Feminist justice

#3. Peter Singer: Animal rights

#4. Jerry Fodor: Mentalese

#5. Richard Dawkins: Memes

#6. Mary Midgley: Culture is natural

#7. Jean-François Lyotard: Postmodernism

#8. Henry Oruka: African sage philosophy

#9. Richard Rorty: Politics should shape philosophy

#10. James Lovelock: Gaia hypothesis

[Magical Realist]

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[Yazata]

https://bigthink.com/thinking/10-great-i...-50-years/

INTRO: I am a medical doctor and infectious disease scientist at the University of Washington, but I have long had an interest in philosophy. This goes back to my undergrad days at MIT, 50 years ago, where we were required to study various liberal arts. I ended up getting a minor in philosophy.

I have spent much of the past few years studying COVID, so it has been a nice mental break to ponder greater things once again. In this essay, I discuss what I believe to be ten of the most impactful philosophers and their ideas from the past 50 years... (MORE - details)

COVERED:

#1. John Rawls: Rational and political justice

#2. Julia Kristeva: Feminist justice

#3. Peter Singer: Animal rights

#4. Jerry Fodor: Mentalese

#5. Richard Dawkins: Memes

#6. Mary Midgley: Culture is natural

#7. Jean-François Lyotard: Postmodernism

#8. Henry Oruka: African sage philosophy

#9. Richard Rorty: Politics should shape philosophy

#10. James Lovelock: Gaia hypothesis

I don't think that I would consider any of those to be "great ideas".

My own list of important/interesting philosophical ideas of active recent interest might include (in roughly alphabetical order):

#1. Artificial Intelligence, the philosophical issues associated with

#2. Bayesianism, its many philosophical application

#3. Biology, countless issues in the philosophy of

#4. Causation, deepening understanding of

#5. Cognitive Science and its many philosophical applications

#6. Comparative Philosophy and the growing appreciation of philosophical traditions besides the Western (India etc.)

#7. Cosmology and our changing view of the broader universe around us

#8. Dispositions and counterfactuals

#9. Epistemology - recent developments in (formal, evolutionary, epistemological virtues etc.)

#10. Eudaimonia - revived interest in the old Greek questions about what human flourishing and the well-lived life might be

#11. Evolution and its many applications in philosophical explanations

#12. Externalism in the philosophy of mind

#13. Functionalism

#14. Game Theory

#15. Grounding

#16. Information, various philosophical ideas about its ontological status

#17. Justification, epistemic

#18. Language, philosophy of

#19. Logic - The 20th century saw an explosion of developments in the philosophy of

#20. Mathematics, philosophy of, joined at the hip to philosophy of logic

#21. Meaning - renewed interest in what it is

#22. Metaphysics and ontology - what is really real, how many kinds of reality are there, how do we know?

#23. Mind, philosophy of

#24. Morality, psychology of, evolutionary etc.

#25. Perception, philosophical accounts of, epistemic problems of, etc.

#26. Phenomenology - Lots of European developments, some rather flaky, some very good

#27. Physics and physicalism - no end of philosophical issues here

#28. Practical reason and pragmatics - how do people reason in real life situations?

#29. Quantum mechanics - philosophical issues with interpreting and understanding what it is telling us about reality

#30. Realism - about what, exactly?

#31. Relativism and social constructivism

#32. Religion - post-Christian philosophies of

#33. Science - countless problems in the philosophy of - explanation, reduction, progress, objectivity...

#34. Skepticism - in the philosophical as opposed to the ideological sense - How can we be sure we know anything?

#35. Social norms - their justification

#36. Testimony - we all depend on it, so what is its epistemic status?

#37. Truth - people insist on its importance, so what is it?

#38: Understanding - what is it to understand something?

That list could easily be twice as long, but that's enough.

It isn't so much a list of things that are important in contemporary philosophy, as it is a list of things that I personally think are important. (Is there really any objective fact of the matter to importance?)

There's a definite bias towards philosophical issues and problems that arise around the philosophy/science nexus. That's where my interests lie. Science and its deepening understanding of (or at least accounts of) the physical reality around us, is an inexhaustable source of philosophical questions about what is really going on.

It's also a very analytic list, as opposed to continental. Unlike the continentals (and the list that opened this thread) analytic philosophy isnt about discussing particular philosophers and their philosophies (Fichte, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Sarte, the trendy French theorists). Analytic philosophy organizes itself around philosophical problems to which individual philosophers make their individual contributions, without pretending to create grand systems which (supposedly) make sense of everything. (Or not, as with the postmodernists.)

[Magical Realist]

Wow Yazata! That's an impressive tally of philosophically interesting topics. I'm gonna keep it handy as food for thought and discussion.

[Magical Realist]

I think one of the best ideas of philosophy to come out recently is the idea of consciousness and the field of cognitive science that studies it. I can think of no other subject more universal and yet immediately relevant to man in his epic quest for meaning and purpose. We are all implicated in this miracle of consciousness and being. It is our essence and the defining trait making us who we are. Descartes was on the right track in his introspective investigations of mind and body. We need to take up his torch and come to understand this enigma of being physical yet conscious as the most important discovery in several millennia.