10 ms·

Unpublished and Untenured, a Philosopher Inspired a Cult Following

87 points by diodorus 8y ago

bitexploder 8y ago
Amusingly, the works of Epictetus we have are because one of his students, Arrian, recorded his teachings.
- psergeant 8y ago
  Kinda wondering why the geniuses who surround him haven’t just made endless tapes of interesting discussions and then had him ghost-written up
  - andreasvc 8y ago
    The article states he's perfectionist. He probably wouldn't be OK with that.
- gumby 8y ago
  Socrates/Plato as well.
  - jboynyc 8y ago
    More contemporarily, George Herbert Mead's influence is based mainly on his transcribed lectures contained in Man, Self and Society. Mead wrote a good deal during his lifetime, but always relatively short pieces that he never bothered to compile together into books or programmatic statements of his philosophical position.
  - FabHK 8y ago
    (as alluded to in the article.)
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago
  Same for Saussure, whose most-read work was a compilation of his notes by his students and colleagues after his death.
- nabla9 8y ago
  Stoicism and many other Greek philosophies were much deeper than just thinking different ideas and concept in abstract and writing them down. Stoic philosopher was someone who was living his life according to stoic philosophy. To learn philosophy and to become a philosopher was to enter training program where you live with the teacher and internalize the philosophy as way of life. Why would anyone read books about philosophy of bodybuilding and how to lift weights for years if they are not going go to go to gym and actually train? In a same way, you can't really become a Stoic philosopher by reading the books.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jhedwards 8y ago
"It is raining, but I don't believe it is raining" is certainly valid if I propose it as one possible thing happening in the world, and yet if I make that statement with the added context of "[I am asserting that right now] it is raining..." then it is clearly contradictory. Stripping away context makes the statement naturally ambiguous, and yet some decision is being made about what kind of context is "correct" or "logical"? Am I missing something here?
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  Even with the added context of "[I am asserting that right now] it is raining, but I don't believe it is raining" doesn't seem necessarily contradictory to me. The two parts could be being evaluated in different (possible) worlds. [While this may seem unlikely, here's one context: I'm hallucinating and am experiencing rain, but rationally I deduce that it can't actually be raining.] (Likewise "Santa Claus lives at the North Pole, but I don't believe in Santa Claus". - The first is evaluated within the world of Santa Claus mythology; the second in a world consistent with my beliefs.)
  - bencollier49 8y ago
    In both cases, the language you are using does not describe what you really mean. In the first instance: "I am experiencing a hallucination of rain, but it is not raining". In the second "The fictional character Santa Claus is said to live at the north pole. I do not believe Santa Claus is real". In both instances, precision prevents you from conflating two classes of belief. From your own perspective, it is quite impossible to state "I believe it is raining. It is not raining." This all seems to hinge on the issue of perspective. Very interesting stuff. Grateful to the "Herodotus38" for explaining it; I couldn't grok it from the article. I wonder if someone could extend this to put mathematical proofs in applied maths on a better footing.
    - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
      > In both cases, the language you are using does not describe what you really mean. In the first instance: "I am experiencing a hallucination of rain, but it is not raining". In the second "The fictional character Santa Claus is said to live at the north pole. I do not believe Santa Claus is real". That's not the case. Your sentences are not my intended readings. My original is perfectly expressible in (intensional) predicate logic: (Rain(w,t) ∧ ¬Rain(w',t)) (where w,w' are worlds, t is a time) The conflation of psychology and logic makes no sense to me.
_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
I haven't heard of Kimhi before this article, so my knowledge is only based on my reading of it, but I don't understand why we would want to collapse logic and psychology. Logic involves formal systems. Whether or not these formal systems provide a sound basis for thinking about actual causation in the world or even for thinking about our own thinking about causation is a separate issue.
- theaeolist 8y ago
  When is a formal system a logic and when is it not?
  - omeid2 8y ago
    Formal Systems can have non-logical axioms, which would make it non-logical?
gumby 8y ago
What I've seen of kimhi's drafts has been pretty dense, harder to read than Kripke(!), but important. In particular (IMHO) he ties a common thread from hermeneutics, continental deconstruction[+] and, for me, modern computational semantics, without the rigid and, IMHO, artificial platonism of American analytical philosophy. Why do I think it's important? When your cars have hand-built planners you can't really call them (except metaphorically) "self-driving" no matter how many CNNs you put in their vision system and to do so fakes you out to the point where you end up running over women pushing bikes because nobody thought to put in a handler for that case. [+] I mean the point of early Derrida, not the fatuousnes of most deconstructionist writing.
- isthatart 8y ago
  Links to drafts?
- hyperpape 8y ago
  "IMHO, artificial platonism of American analytical philosophy" Platonism has a meaning (or maybe more than one), and none of them describe any shared assumptions of 20th century/contemporary American philosophy. Please find a different term of abuse.
purplezooey 8y ago
My leg is being pissed on, therefore it must be raining.
biomene 8y ago
Assuming the article is correctly summarising his argument, this is the same critique that Hegel put forward of the distinction of Force and Expression: > It is often said that the nature of Force itself is unknown and only its manifestation apprehended. But, in the first place, it may be replied, every article in the import of Force is the same as what is specified in the Expression: and the explanation of a phenomenon by a Force is a mere tautology. What is supposed to remain unknown, therefore, is really nothing but the empty form of reflection-into-self, by which alone the Force is distinguished from the Expression — and that form too is something familiar. It is a form that does not make the slightest addition to the content and to the law, which have to be discovered from the phenomenon alone. Another assurance always given is that to speak of forces implies no theory as to their nature: and that being so, it is impossible to see why the form of Force has been introduced into the sciences at all. In the second place the nature of Force is undoubtedly unknown: we are still without any necessity binding and connecting its content together in itself, as we are without necessity in the content, in so far as it is expressly limited and hence has its character by means of another thing outside it. - G.W.F. Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, § 136
jhbadger 8y ago
But a lot of this dealing with assertions that may or may not be true in logic has been dealt with in a more rigorous way already as far back as the 1960s: Fuzzy Logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic. A belief like "I think it is raining" can be encoded as a 75% chance of it raining.
- nabla9 8y ago
  Fuzzy logic is just theory of vagueness. It's just one example of many-valued logic and reasoning involving predicates that are vague in nature. Kimhi's ideas seem to be deeper than that.
- lou1306 8y ago
  I see your point, but the phrasing is confusing: fuzzy logic is not the same as probability. "A 75% chance of it raining" typically means that it either rains or not. In a fuzzy setting, "I think it is raining" would be encoded as "the current weather is partially included in the Raining set, with membership greater than 0 but smaller than 1".
  - sjg007 8y ago
    This probably becomes Shrodeniger-esque. The observed and to act upon.
- hyperpape 8y ago
  That's not quite right. Your tactic might handle the Moorean absurdity ("it's raining but I don't believe that it's raining"), but there's a variant: "it's raining, and I'm certain that it's not raining" that it doesn't handle.
megamindbrian2 8y ago
Dang, this guy would understand my argument for what IS tested in science versus what people WANT to test with science. There is a huge gap especially in medical PRACTICE and drug DEVELOPMENT. I.e. What IS practiced versus what could be practiced if we (the participants) were safe and capable of developing. I.e. Often we try to prove something is correct and overlook proving something is incorrect.
blueprint 8y ago
I've been saying this for a decade. A statement contains an implicit statement of knowledge. But it's funny that this chap is lauded for it. I always get downvoted hard for it. Maybe because of who I'm saying it to in what context.
- blueprint 8y ago
  haha

87 points by diodorus 8y ago

bitexploder 8y ago

Amusingly, the works of Epictetus we have are because one of his students, Arrian, recorded his teachings.

psergeant 8y ago
Kinda wondering why the geniuses who surround him haven’t just made endless tapes of interesting discussions and then had him ghost-written up
- andreasvc 8y ago
  The article states he's perfectionist. He probably wouldn't be OK with that.
gumby 8y ago
Socrates/Plato as well.
- jboynyc 8y ago
  More contemporarily, George Herbert Mead's influence is based mainly on his transcribed lectures contained in Man, Self and Society. Mead wrote a good deal during his lifetime, but always relatively short pieces that he never bothered to compile together into books or programmatic statements of his philosophical position.
- FabHK 8y ago
  (as alluded to in the article.)
Mediterraneo10 8y ago
Same for Saussure, whose most-read work was a compilation of his notes by his students and colleagues after his death.
nabla9 8y ago
Stoicism and many other Greek philosophies were much deeper than just thinking different ideas and concept in abstract and writing them down. Stoic philosopher was someone who was living his life according to stoic philosophy. To learn philosophy and to become a philosopher was to enter training program where you live with the teacher and internalize the philosophy as way of life. Why would anyone read books about philosophy of bodybuilding and how to lift weights for years if they are not going go to go to gym and actually train? In a same way, you can't really become a Stoic philosopher by reading the books.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

jhedwards 8y ago

"It is raining, but I don't believe it is raining" is certainly valid if I propose it as one possible thing happening in the world, and yet if I make that statement with the added context of "[I am asserting that right now] it is raining..." then it is clearly contradictory. Stripping away context makes the statement naturally ambiguous, and yet some decision is being made about what kind of context is "correct" or "logical"? Am I missing something here?

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
Even with the added context of "[I am asserting that right now] it is raining, but I don't believe it is raining" doesn't seem necessarily contradictory to me. The two parts could be being evaluated in different (possible) worlds. [While this may seem unlikely, here's one context: I'm hallucinating and am experiencing rain, but rationally I deduce that it can't actually be raining.] (Likewise "Santa Claus lives at the North Pole, but I don't believe in Santa Claus". - The first is evaluated within the world of Santa Claus mythology; the second in a world consistent with my beliefs.)
- bencollier49 8y ago
  In both cases, the language you are using does not describe what you really mean. In the first instance: "I am experiencing a hallucination of rain, but it is not raining". In the second "The fictional character Santa Claus is said to live at the north pole. I do not believe Santa Claus is real". In both instances, precision prevents you from conflating two classes of belief. From your own perspective, it is quite impossible to state "I believe it is raining. It is not raining." This all seems to hinge on the issue of perspective. Very interesting stuff. Grateful to the "Herodotus38" for explaining it; I couldn't grok it from the article. I wonder if someone could extend this to put mathematical proofs in applied maths on a better footing.
  - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    > In both cases, the language you are using does not describe what you really mean. In the first instance: "I am experiencing a hallucination of rain, but it is not raining". In the second "The fictional character Santa Claus is said to live at the north pole. I do not believe Santa Claus is real". That's not the case. Your sentences are not my intended readings. My original is perfectly expressible in (intensional) predicate logic: (Rain(w,t) ∧ ¬Rain(w',t)) (where w,w' are worlds, t is a time) The conflation of psychology and logic makes no sense to me.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago

I haven't heard of Kimhi before this article, so my knowledge is only based on my reading of it, but I don't understand why we would want to collapse logic and psychology. Logic involves formal systems. Whether or not these formal systems provide a sound basis for thinking about actual causation in the world or even for thinking about our own thinking about causation is a separate issue.

theaeolist 8y ago
When is a formal system a logic and when is it not?
- omeid2 8y ago
  Formal Systems can have non-logical axioms, which would make it non-logical?

gumby 8y ago

What I've seen of kimhi's drafts has been pretty dense, harder to read than Kripke(!), but important. In particular (IMHO) he ties a common thread from hermeneutics, continental deconstruction[+] and, for me, modern computational semantics, without the rigid and, IMHO, artificial platonism of American analytical philosophy. Why do I think it's important? When your cars have hand-built planners you can't really call them (except metaphorically) "self-driving" no matter how many CNNs you put in their vision system and to do so fakes you out to the point where you end up running over women pushing bikes because nobody thought to put in a handler for that case. [+] I mean the point of early Derrida, not the fatuousnes of most deconstructionist writing.

isthatart 8y ago
Links to drafts?
hyperpape 8y ago
"IMHO, artificial platonism of American analytical philosophy" Platonism has a meaning (or maybe more than one), and none of them describe any shared assumptions of 20th century/contemporary American philosophy. Please find a different term of abuse.

purplezooey 8y ago

My leg is being pissed on, therefore it must be raining.

biomene 8y ago

Assuming the article is correctly summarising his argument, this is the same critique that Hegel put forward of the distinction of Force and Expression: > It is often said that the nature of Force itself is unknown and only its manifestation apprehended. But, in the first place, it may be replied, every article in the import of Force is the same as what is specified in the Expression: and the explanation of a phenomenon by a Force is a mere tautology. What is supposed to remain unknown, therefore, is really nothing but the empty form of reflection-into-self, by which alone the Force is distinguished from the Expression — and that form too is something familiar. It is a form that does not make the slightest addition to the content and to the law, which have to be discovered from the phenomenon alone. Another assurance always given is that to speak of forces implies no theory as to their nature: and that being so, it is impossible to see why the form of Force has been introduced into the sciences at all. In the second place the nature of Force is undoubtedly unknown: we are still without any necessity binding and connecting its content together in itself, as we are without necessity in the content, in so far as it is expressly limited and hence has its character by means of another thing outside it. - G.W.F. Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, § 136

jhbadger 8y ago

But a lot of this dealing with assertions that may or may not be true in logic has been dealt with in a more rigorous way already as far back as the 1960s: Fuzzy Logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic. A belief like "I think it is raining" can be encoded as a 75% chance of it raining.

nabla9 8y ago
Fuzzy logic is just theory of vagueness. It's just one example of many-valued logic and reasoning involving predicates that are vague in nature. Kimhi's ideas seem to be deeper than that.
lou1306 8y ago
I see your point, but the phrasing is confusing: fuzzy logic is not the same as probability. "A 75% chance of it raining" typically means that it either rains or not. In a fuzzy setting, "I think it is raining" would be encoded as "the current weather is partially included in the Raining set, with membership greater than 0 but smaller than 1".
- sjg007 8y ago
  This probably becomes Shrodeniger-esque. The observed and to act upon.
hyperpape 8y ago
That's not quite right. Your tactic might handle the Moorean absurdity ("it's raining but I don't believe that it's raining"), but there's a variant: "it's raining, and I'm certain that it's not raining" that it doesn't handle.

megamindbrian2 8y ago

Dang, this guy would understand my argument for what IS tested in science versus what people WANT to test with science. There is a huge gap especially in medical PRACTICE and drug DEVELOPMENT. I.e. What IS practiced versus what could be practiced if we (the participants) were safe and capable of developing. I.e. Often we try to prove something is correct and overlook proving something is incorrect.

blueprint 8y ago

I've been saying this for a decade. A statement contains an implicit statement of knowledge. But it's funny that this chap is lauded for it. I always get downvoted hard for it. Maybe because of who I'm saying it to in what context.

blueprint 8y ago
haha