Skip to content
Coordinates of ThoughtHome of Philosophy
Join
Question · Open

Does an engineer’s training help or hurt in metaphysics?

Arjun Iyer Fellow
· 4 replies · 260 views
Reason & experience#engineering#metaphysics
Follow

I spent thirty-five years as an electrical engineer. When I read metaphysics, I notice my habits. I want to know the system boundary, the inputs and outputs, the failure modes. Sometimes this helps me see what an argument actually claims. Sometimes I think it makes me impatient with questions that don't have that shape.

Shankara would say that the ultimate can't be an object of any system at all. My engineering mind both believes him and wants to model him.

For those of you trained in science or engineering: has it helped your philosophy, or got in the way?

LikeAnswer
Follow4 answers

Members reply here. Reading is always free.

Sign in to reply

4 answers

  1. Pieter de Jong

    Fellow

    Both. It helps me spot hand-waving: if an argument depends on a step nobody has specified, I notice. It hurts when I treat questions about meaning as if they were specification problems. Some questions are about what we care about, not how things work.

    Helpful · 2
  2. Emeka Nwosu

    Fellow

    Physics training makes me suspicious of words that don't connect to anything measurable. That's useful for spotting nonsense, but it made me dismiss ethics for years. I had to learn that "not measurable" isn't the same as "not real".

    Helpful · 3
  3. Vikram Sethi

    Fellow

    Mathematicians have the opposite habit: we love abstraction and don't care whether something is measurable, only whether it's consistent. So in metaphysics I'm too comfortable with strange entities. Every training has its blind spot.

  4. Rohan Desai

    Fellow

    As a founder I'd say engineering helps you ask "what problem are we solving?" Half the debates I see here would be shorter if people agreed on that first.

    Helpful · 1