1) Difference of Object.

You could have claimed

2) Indeterminacy of translation (like Kuhn and Feyerabend do)

Let us assume you have claimed 1 and 2.

Let us, with Putnam, separate concept from conception. The conception of an electron (or the sun) changes over time, but the concept remains somewhat the same. Sometimes, words change meaning, this is what happened for instance with apelido and sobrenome in portuguese which are the inverse of the spanish equivalents.

All this goes in your favor.

There is more.

Literature is not very cumulative, new novel books do not depend strongly on older novel books.
Fashion is not cumulative after a few generations: what people dress is not related with what people dressed one century ago.
Same goes for most of the arts, there is no connection between todays and very early days.

But this is of course false of most of physics (not all of physics, the use of alpha, beta and gama surely is not a REQUIREMENT for good physics, but F=MA is)

So there are things in the world that belong to the two categories:

1) Depends heavily on earlier theories.
2) Is independent of earlier theories.

Oddly enough, the more an area depends on old stuff, the more reason you have to read the newest stuff. This comes from the assymetries I have exposed.

Now, it is a question of figuring out what group does philosophy belong to, the one in which anything goes, or the one which relies on past information.

Generally speaking, the guideline for cumulativity is refering to things of the world that are stable. These are things such as people, elephants, personalities, species, electrons, quarks, the sun, orbits, money, death, life, love.

Those who declare philosophy is unrelated to these things, feel free to delve into the old ages of darkness, in which philosophers believed women had few teeth than man, Man is good by Nature (who knows about Woman), Man is bad by nature, God is great, There is a specific distance between the angels in heaven, earth elements tend downwards, We live in the best possible world and other very similar and reasonable claims, that every serious person should think about for years, specially when using government money.

Well, I’d better stop now, or else I’ll be reported for spamming.

I think the one thing that tickles me the most is that, from the beggining, you seem to assume that knowledge is cumulative – that is, that the knowledge we produce today just adds to the knowledge we had before, or rather, improves it, not being at all of a distinct kind than it. Which presumes, one way or another, that the we are dealing with the same object, and thus what was true back then about that object can’t possibly have turned false, nor contradict anything else about the object that is true right now(since it’s the same one from back then). If the object is the same now than it was before, then the knowledge we have know can’t contradict the knowledge we had then, but just add to it, because, when we say we know something about the object, we say we know that something is true about it. Therefore, our knowledge produced today can only add up to our knowledge from the past, and more than this, often (maybe most of the times) relies on past knowledge to be produced. Which, in one way or another implies, I believe, from what you proposed, that we should read more texts from actuality (in a broad sense) than from the distant past (again, in a broad sense – I know you specify those in your article, but I don’t think it’s really relevant doing that here).

Well, while it’s still possible that the consequence (i.e that we should read more recently published texts than old ones) is true, I have a lot of problems with the antecedent. Do different knowledges truly deal with the same, exact object? I know João said that reality is the same for everyone – but that, I believe, is a naive way of dealing with epistemics. Not to imply that reality is absolutely subjective and, thus, that we’re never, at all, talking minimally about the same thing – or, in other words, that our “worlds” don’t minimally converge – but just that I find no sense (or a very restrict sense) in talking of a reality which is absolutely independent of our subjective view and participation on it. I’m saying, yes, that our subjective standpoint is part of the definition of the very reality we aim to know about. Which implies that we’re never, truly, talking precisely about the same objects. But doesn’t, in my point of view, as contradictory as it may seem, imply that one knowledge is completely distinct from each other. If my belief on different realities for different subjects doesn’t mean that those realities don’t converge, likewise, my belief that the knowledge we had before from an object isn’t knowledge from the same object than the knowledge we have now, doesn’t mean that those knowledges don’t somehow converge. But that’s it: CONVERGE. I do believe that something is lost on the way. Wether or not what is lost is relevant, may be another question, relying, precisely, on that which we consider relevant, which, again, relies on our standpoint of view.

I know I’m extending myself way too much, and I could even more, but I’ll try to sum it up: What you propose on your article seems, to me, to assume that knowledge is cumulative. I tried to sketch some of the reasons why I don’t believe it is exactly like that. Reasons, therefore, that could make plausible for one to read more articles from the past than recent ones. Or, maybe not: maybe it just implies that we should read more from the past than we thought at first. Or maybe not even so; maybe it suffices to read just the ammount you suggested so we can get from the past what the present cannot offer us. At any rate, if one could show that the knowledge from the past does not deal with the same object as actual knowledge, then maybe one could find reasons why he should read more texts from the past than recent ones.

But, in all honesty, I don’t care too much for that. Like I said, I’m not really worried with the consequence of your implication. Rather, I’m worried about the antecedent. It does not bother me that it may be that, in general, people should read more recent publications than past ones. I have no grudge with that. But I do have problems with accepting, at first sight, that knowledge is cumulative. I may be persuaded of it, but right now I’m more inclined towards the position that it isn’t FULLY cumulative, but also not completely not-cumulative. I’ll be the first one to admit that it’s not an easy position to stand for, but nevertheless, it’s the one which seems more satisfying to me.

So, to make it yet even more clear: I’m not so much discussing wether or not your conclusion is true, as I’m discussing wether or not knowledge is cumulative. It’s not the only thing I’d like to discuss from your text, but it certainly strikes me as the one that I want the most to.

(Also, if João would like to join the discussion, I’d very much appreciate it. Obviously, he’s the one who disagrees the most with my position – which only makes it even more interesting if he can play his part here. )

Well, that’s everything from “that pale lad from logic class” for now.

This sounds reasonable, good (ethical concerned) people are much less prone to get to the power because of the contraints of their own conducts. They have much less options, in particular they are not allowed to cheat (say, killing, threatening or deceiving). An alternative could be saying that the end justify the means. And probably many have done that, maybe one could arguably say that Hitler tried to do that. That sounds like a dangerous strategy, because if you don’t achieve your goal you’ll end up doing more harm than good. And even more, people would probably not recognize your efforts as a good action (if that is important to you).

I think it’s fair to say the transhumanist community
is mostly interested in intelligence-amplification
— superintelligence rather than supersentience.
I share an interest in cognitive enhancement, but
in my opinion there is an important sense in which
a congenitally blind person with an IQ of 220, or
920, is just as ignorant as a congenitally blind
person with an IQ of 120. I worry more about our
ignorance in the latter sense than I do about our
limited reasoning powers. Psychedelic drugs can
briefly give us a tiny insight into how “blind” we
normally are; but we soon lapse into ignorance
again. Such is the state-dependence of memory.
If I’d never tried psychedelics, then I fear I would
be scornful of their significance because of the
incoherence of most users’ descriptions of their
effects. But using the blindness analogy again,
someone congenitally blind who is surgically
guaranteed the gift of sight can take years before
they can make sense of the visual world… at first
they are overwhelmed and confused by visual
stimuli.

I know that the question has no meaning, that was my point, you seem to know already. So, assuming personal identity is meaningless, both in “numerical” and “qualitative” senses, I suppose you would not do cryonics to preserve your personal identity. Would you still do cryonics only to preserve your memories and your personality, even if future beings could have better memories and better personalities?