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I think you missed the part where I said that Git intentionally _doesn't_ take a stance. Or rather, it defers the commitment, a bit like Schrodinger in regard t

by zukzuk 8y ago

I think you missed the part where I said that Git intentionally _doesn't_ take a stance. Or rather, it defers the commitment, a bit like Schrodinger in regard to his cat. I guess what we agree on is that the problem goes away (kind of) as soon as that deferred commitment is made — but the problem goes away only for that particular instance, not in general. What I'm arguing is that dismissing these philosophical problems as just nonesense rooted in the vagueness of language is missing the point. If nothing else, these paradoxes lay bare the vagueness of language, but moreover they beg the question of why language is so vague. What's more, it turns out that making language more precise — as we've tried to do with computers and mathematics — doesn't seem to solve the problems at all. In fact, it seems to lead to even more trouble, as, for example, the designers of Subversion or Mercurial eventually discovered.

ucaetano 8y ago
> What I'm arguing is that dismissing these philosophical problems as just nonesense rooted in the vagueness of language is missing the point. Oh, I agree, I don't think they are nonsense at all, and they do force us to think about the way we communicate and so on. That's why I call them the Schrodinger's Cat of philosophy, while they only exist until you decide to solve them, they do force us to think about how we view the world. But then you end up in another problem for philosophy: if what remains after you remove all the natural sciences is just the problems that humans create due to language, law, understanding, etc. and all of those are covered in subject-specific human sciences (law, linguistics, psychology, behavioral economics, etc.), what is left for philosophy? Apparently, this is covered partially by this week's NPR Philosophy Talk: https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/does-science-over-reach https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/does-science-over-reach

by zukzuk 8y ago

ucaetano 8y ago

> What I'm arguing is that dismissing these philosophical problems as just nonesense rooted in the vagueness of language is missing the point. Oh, I agree, I don't think they are nonsense at all, and they do force us to think about the way we communicate and so on. That's why I call them the Schrodinger's Cat of philosophy, while they only exist until you decide to solve them, they do force us to think about how we view the world. But then you end up in another problem for philosophy: if what remains after you remove all the natural sciences is just the problems that humans create due to language, law, understanding, etc. and all of those are covered in subject-specific human sciences (law, linguistics, psychology, behavioral economics, etc.), what is left for philosophy? Apparently, this is covered partially by this week's NPR Philosophy Talk: https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/does-science-over-reach https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/does-science-over-reach