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Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress
- nyc111 8y ago> Philosophy, in its purest form, contains the study of what it is to live a good human life. I don't think this a properly general definition of philosophy (although he says "contains",maybe he is not after generality). I would say philosophy is the science of definitions. This is why it is fundamental.
- aiNohY6g 8y agoI'd say "definitions in the concept space" out of which a specific "linguistic space" can emerge. Philosophy also studies the relationships between these concepts their articulations (topology), their moves (dynamics) and their consequences. At the very least.
- charlysl 8y agoBertrand Russell: Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge—so I should contend— belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy
- ILikeConemowk 8y agoThanks for this.
- nyc111 8y agoThis seems a qoute from the Introduction of his History of western philosophy [1]. But I think the next sentence is important too: Almost all the questions of most interest to speculative minds are such as science cannot answer, and the confident answers of theologians no longer seem so convincing as they did in former centuries. [...] To such questions no answer can be found in the laboratory. Theologies have professed to give answers, all too definite; but their very definiteness causes modern minds to view them with suspicion. The studying of these questions, if not the answering of them, is the business of philosophy. But I’m surprised that he considers that “all definite knowledge ... belongs to science.” Science, at least physics and astronomy, by definition, accept that their type of knowledge is provisional, always, and not definite. [1] https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/51485/in-which-publication-does-bertrand-russell-define-philosophy https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/51485/in-whic...
- charlysl 8y agoYou are right about the quote. It seems that what Russell considers definite knowledge is ... answer can be found in the laboratory. It depends on what is the best available method for proving, to the extent to which this is possible, a given hypothesis. Whenever an experimental method in the scientific sense is possible, then he considers that kind of knowledge definite. I agree that the fact that it is also provisional is confusing, but I think that it's just a matter of language in this case, maybe definite is not the best word. I agree that maybe his definition is not fully satisfactory. But this book's audience is lay people like me, it is not as much an academic work as a book of popular philosophy (like popular science). For this reason, he probably preferred to write engaging prose, rather than being totally precise but dry. I posted this quote because whenever there is an article about philosophy in HN, people invariably enter a debate as to what exactly is philosophy. I find that for the lay man his definition is very clear, simple, memorable and beautifully written. I find it very useful in practice, for people like me it is a powerful definition.
- nyc111 8y agoYes, I agree. He theologian's knowledge is definite in the sense of absolute. But knowledge gained in the lab is definitely knowledge under given circumstances, but absolute kndwledge. This turned out to be a good example about the importance of clear definitions of words in philosophical discussion.
- geoka9 8y ago> physics .. accept that their type of knowledge is ... not definite I think it's definite as long as the horse is spherical and in a vacuum. I mean a scientific theory that's built on such an assumption is definite knowledge, right?
- nyc111 8y agoI think you are being sarcastic, but I happen to agree with you that there are lots of physics theories based on spherical cow assumption.
- edna314 8y agoThat might have been true until the end of the 19th century. Everything afterwards contains a lot of different things. Sociology, psychology, economics, linguistics and what not.
- goto11 8y agoI don't think say Kierkegaard or Nietzsche can be reduced to just making definitions.
- tmalsburg2 8y agoWhy? Could you please elaborate(
- edna314 8y agoFor example take this quote from Nietzsche on the sentence "I think" from Beyond Good and Evil: >"When I analyze the process that is expressed in this sentence, 'I think,' I find a whole series of daring assertions that would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove—for example, that it is I who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego,' and, finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking—that I know what thinking is. Good luck convincing a skeptic like that to take your definitions for granted, or believe in any conclusions you draw from your definitions.
- boomboomsubban 8y agoI would guess that quote is Nietzsche attacking one of the most famous first principles in Western philosophy, Descartes' "I think, therefore I am." "I think" is too complex to be accepted a priori for him, he's not discounting definitions completely.
- edna314 8y agoI think, I would disagree in the sense that he was not only completely discounting on metaphysics, but also on ontology. Because one cannot write up a definition without using the word 'is' he must have been somewhat also completely discounting on definitions. His philosophy is in a sense Heraclitean because it is centered around 'becoming' rather than 'being'.
- Emma_Goldman 8y agoWhy do you think this? Philosophers don't write dictionaries; they write huge, creative and systematic theoretical treatises. Of course, that requires a certain amount of conceptual innovation - but so did Shakespeare's plays, and that doesn't mean that Macbeth is, in reality, just a very odd dictionary.
- nyc111 8y agoYou are right of course, generally they don’t but at least one philosoper I know of wrote a dictionary: https://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/volindex.html https://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/volindex.html But I think definitions are in the foundation of philosophy because if philosophers argue with badly defined or undefined words, the discussion turns into a discussion to assert academic authority. In this case, definitions of words are not explicit but implicit. I think this is what most people think philosophy is, ie sophistry. In computer languages I cannot use an undefined word. I would get an error message. It would be nice to institute a similar mechanism in philosophical discussions too.
- paganel 8y ago> I would say philosophy is the science of definitions It depends, I guess. If it matters I for one stand on Socrates's side when it comes to what philosophy is and I find definitions to be just "syntactic sugar", they don't bring anything new to the table. This is also one of the reasons for why I found Aristotle pretty boring, I think he started this trend with categorizing things and defining terms, without trying to explain why we do the things that we do. I also think that philosophy nowadays should stick to ethics and political philosophy, the physics and maths are too complicated and I honestly think that not even the mathematicians and physicists have a "grand view" of it all anymore. Case in point the pseudo-psychosis around the quantum theory thing and how, if proven "right" (whatever that means) it might obliterate the concept of free will (or vice-versa, I didn't really follow) and we might start killing each other out of the blue just because a physicist has proven a theory in some forsaken lab. That is not the case.
- AstralStorm 8y agoAxiomatized mathematics and logic too complicated, compared to undefined meanings in philosophy? There is no grand view in philosophy either, but millions of tiny conflicts coexisting from which no truth can be gleaned as the philosophers will wriggle out with sophistry. (Just like politicians for that matter.) It is a good old Wittgesteinian challenge. Hope so you define concept of free will in axiomatic logic? Should we start with axiom of choice perhaps?
- paganel 8y ago> Axiomatized mathematics and logic too complicated, compared to undefined meanings in philosophy? I agree that those two can be "simplified" to something that people who haven't a PhD in mathematics can talk and write about, but once we go to more advanced stuff things become really, really hard to describe in layman's terms, and as such they are not interesting from a philosophical point of view. I mean, things like a double integral or an Abelian group are indeed useful from an efficiency point of view, meaning that a technical society like ours needed them in order to build most of the stuff that surrounds us (bridges that don't fall at the first major earthquake, computers, rockets that have taken us to space) but they are completely and utterly useless at answering questions that have bugged us for thousands of years: why is it bad to randomly kill someone? Why is it bad to kill someone even if that potentially means a better economical prospect for me and my family? Why is it bad to kill at all? Why shouldn't we kill ourselves right here and now, thus avoiding future psychic and physical pains like illness or the disappearance of closed ones? These are all fundamental questions related to our very nature to which philosophy has offered some answers which have been satisfactory to some people, in any case, the rate of success has been much higher for philosophy compared to maths or physics when trying to find a satisfactory answer. > Should we start with axiom of choice perhaps? What does that say?
- visarga 8y agoI don't think philosophy is keeping up with the progress in AI, neuroscience and game theory. If it did, there would be less discussion about the 'Chinese room', qualia and 'hard problem' of consciousness. Instead, we'd head about embodiment, rewards, agents vs environments, learning, representation, exploration-exploitation tradeoff, and such. There are theories of language and meaning in philosophy, but in AI there are actual high dimensional representations for text and images, with their affordances and limitations. It's like comparing a drawing of a car with an actual working car, with its good and bad parts. Philosophy seems not to be keeping up the progress in the last 5 years, and it has been one hell of 5 years with amazing discoveries.
- dstrohmaier 8y agoI agree partially. It is true that philosophy cannot entirely keep up with scientific and technical developments, which is not surprising given the amount of resources that flow into philosophy compared to the money spent on STEM fields. That being said, philosophers hardly talk about the Chinese room and qualia these days. There is even a tiny move away from the hard problem of consciousness. See: https://philpapers.org/archive/CHATMO-32.pdf https://philpapers.org/archive/CHATMO-32.pdf Embodiment, to pick one of your examples is a huge topic in philosophy: https://philpapers.org/browse/embodiment-and-situated-cognition/ https://philpapers.org/browse/embodiment-and-situated-cognit... Also, there is me. I have a PhD in philosophy and work towards an MPhil in CS to cover the areas you mention. Some philosophers are on it, trying to keep up.
- visarga 8y agoThank you, I appreciate the links very much.
- wwweston 8y agoIt does seem that when one characterizes philosophy as engineering without the details, it's likely to look inferior to engineering.
- Emma_Goldman 8y ago
- MrScruff 8y agoCould someone with better understanding explain compatibalism to me? I’m struggling to grasp how it can allow for both determinism and free will.
- skissane 8y agoThere is no single universally agreed definition of the term "free will". So, it is possible to define "free will" in such a way that it is compatible with determinism (e.g., "my will is free if its decisions are the product of my ordinary processes of thinking–even if those ordinary processes are determined by natural laws–as opposed to the product of any extraordinary external interference such as drugs, brainwashing, mind control implants, etc"). Part of the dispute is over whether such a definition of "free will" matches people's everyday pre-philosophical usage, and also whether it works for the purposes of other disciplines in which the concept of "free will" might be invoked, such as ethics or law. Compatibilists would say it is close enough, and can be made to work for those purposes. Incompatibilists say it is a radical redefinition, and undermines those purposes.
- MrScruff 8y agoSo it seems the crux of the matter is how we regard the process of a person making a decision. A compatibilist would say that for the purposes of discussion we describe this event as the exercising of will, even though from a physics perspective the outcome could be predetermined. Is that correct? If so that seems similar to a recent discussion on Bohr's view of the irreducibility of biology to physics. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18104508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18104508
- skissane 8y agoCertainly that's one way a compatibilist could put it – that "free will" is part of psychology, which ultimately reduces to/emerges from/supervenes upon lower layers of biology/chemistry/physics which may be fundamentally deterministic. (Although exactly how deterministic they are may depend on which interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct.) A point worth adding – there are different forms of determinism. Physical determinism says people's decisions are predetermined by physical laws and initial conditions. Theological determinism says people's decisions are predetermined by God's will. A compatibilist could be either. (Although most compatibilists you'll encounter these days are in the physical not theological camp.)
- Veedrac 8y agoIs it just me or is the title not supported by the article?
- majewsky 8y agoJust you. :) It probably refers to this part: > Q: Your colleague David Chalmers has fretted that “there has not been large collective convergence to the truth on the big questions of philosophy,” such as God, free will and consciousness. Does this lack of convergence bother you? > A: I disagree with Dave here. Overwhelmingly most philosophers are atheists or agnostics, which I take to be convergence to the truth. Most are compatibilist about free will and believe in it, which I also take to be convergence to the truth. Almost all believe in consciousness and most don’t have a clue how to explain it, which is wisdom. It is not that there isn’t convergence, it is that the outliers who do not converge get much more attention than the great mass of convergers, who don’t particularly stand out.
- Veedrac 8y agoThis is a general claim about the highly educated. People with degrees are much more likely to be atheist, hold a coherent view about free will, and believe in consciousness without being able to explain it. This isn't evidence of philosophy making progress, because atheism among the educated is a scientific and cultural trend, the debate about consciousness is primarily an ancient fight about definitions, and believing in consciousness without being able to explain it is certainly not progress in any productive sense.
- yters 8y agoWhen most ancient philosophers were theists and believed in libertarian free will and an immaterial soul, was that a convergence to the truth, too?
- canhascodez 8y agoI'm not sure what point you're making. When people believed in a flat Earth, or geocentrism, or miracles, those things did not contradict empirical knowledge of the world. Since then, we have established empiricism as the most useful tool for examining the real world, and expanded the scope of human knowledge considerably. I'm not sure what about that you might take issue with.
- alister 8y agoSurprisingly, Ycombinator co-founder Paul Graham was a philosophy major for most of his college years. He has a lot to say about it in one of his essays: http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
- rimher 8y agoPaul Graham's blog is still full of pearls, thanks a lot for sharing. One thing that I think is missing in his essay is the fact that Wittgenstein in the end also realized that philosophy is incredibly effective as meditation, I still find that thinking about things is relaxing and cathartic.
- xamuel 8y agoFrom that article: >Twenty-six years later, I still don't understand Berkeley. I have a nice edition of his collected works. Will I ever read it? Seems unlikely. This is like buying a book about React, putting it on your shelf, not reading it, and then complaining that React is too difficult. In my opinion, the lack of equations makes philosophy harder, because it's easier to delude yourself. You can read a chapter, parse all the individual words, completely miss the point, and say to yourself, "I read it, it was pointless". The only productive way to approach philosophy is as a paper-writer. Don't just glaze your eyes over Berkeley, rather, read Berkeley with the determination to go and write an original research paper in response. Now, that paper might very well have a title like "Berkeley's Blunders", but you have to be able to articulate it.
- nestorD 8y agoHe seems to have kept writing philosophy, his essays are in line with his proposal for philosophy : > The test of utility I propose is whether we cause people who read what we've written to do anything differently afterward.
- mapcars 8y agoPhilosophy to me is a kind of fanciful thinking. Article mentions something about being "purely theoretical", but is your life theoretical or real? If it's real you can't approach it by pure theory. As well as there is much more to life than just thinking.
- brobdingnagians 8y agoAncient philosophers didn't believe it was purely theoretical. They thought it was a way of gaining wisdom and living a good life (or study of physics, but again, practical). But, then again, it is kind of an equivocation to say that most modern philosophy is philosophy in the sense it was taken before. It was taken to be highly practical in days of yore.
- claudiawerner 8y agoIt's worth noting that a good part of the continental tradition since Marx doesn't view it as purely theoretical either, after all: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it."
- tkyjonathan 8y agoPhilosophy is the study of concepts. To get to something purely theoretical, you need to abstract the precepts of your original concepts. Then it becomes a floating abstraction. Take for example Einstein: he found some mathematical formulas, proved they were right and then used them as the abstraction for everything else. His example of 'what if I stand on a train traveling at the speed of light and it gets hit by lightning' is no longer something that you can prove in reality. Ideally, you need precepts and concepts to work together and keep validating that your concepts work in reality.
- AstralStorm 8y agoMathematics and logic are more of a study of concepts than philosophy, highly contaminated by language and imprecision, could ever warrant to be. (These are earliest branches out of philosophy by the way.) Use of natural language makes most of the ideas entertained by philosophy highly ambiguous until they get formalized. Even ethics can be strictly formalized in a more advanced logic system, making the ideas and applicability clear. Or are we trying for something more complex, such as creativity?
- opaque 8y ago> So pure theory is not for everyone. But if you love theory, philosophy is the top of the heap of all the disciplines. I think calling philosophy "theory" is a bit of a reach. Theories (Relativity, Quantum, Evolution) draw on, and can be falsified by, direct evidence. Philosophy is more argumentation on subjects that won't have scientific basis (morality, meaning of life) or don't yet have one and may never (consciousness).
- amelius 8y agoBut remember that the scientific method itself is defined by philosophers, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper
- Emma_Goldman 8y agoYou are confusing 'scientific theory' with the term 'theory', which is far looser, i.e. a system of ideas.
- n4r9 8y ago"Theory" is a much broader term than "scientific theory", which is what you're defining. For example, in mathematics you have the "theory of natural numbers", or in art you have the "anti-essentialist theory". These aren't required to be hypotheses about the real-world. Rather they are like frameworks or languages which enable us to discuss and explore complex structures.
- opaque 8y agoPerhaps I'm inclined to read it that way from working in physics, which is divided into theory and experiment. He also refers to 'experimentalists' in the preceding sentence, which adds to the effect. Also if you take the fully general meaning, it's so vague I don't understand how it's something you can 'love', but then maybe that's why I'm not a Philosopher. Edit: The author's work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Maudlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Maudlin is all on the Theoretical Physics / Philosophy boarder, in which "theory" vs "experiment" is the more common usage.
- Emma_Goldman 8y agoInteresting interview. "Already in Republic (Plato again!) we have an argument—a clear and compelling rational argument—that even the highest political office should be open to women.' What is not specified here is the sense of 'rationality' that is required of moral realism. It is not enough that something be coherently deduced from stated premises, because we can state different premises, use different categories, and make different distinctions. What is required is that there is a sense in which we can all be rationally compelled through argumentation to adopt the same premises, categories and distinctions. And that is, frankly, absurd and untrue. 'People are free when they are unconstrained and can act as they will to act.' Again, the argument depends on (i) that you accept the post-Hobbesian account of negative liberty, and not the Hegelian account of positive liberty, or the neo-Roman account of liberty as freedom from domination, or the various socialist accounts of liberty (and again, whether we do goes back to the first point viz. what premises we start from, and what categories we use); (ii) and upon specifying what it is to be 'constrained', especially whether this involves mental, and not just physical, interference.
- resters 8y agoI think an interesting follow-on question to his answer would have been "... and using similar reasoning what big things does society get wrong? What freedoms/rights are suppressed inappropriately?"
- eli_gottlieb 8y ago>What is not specified here is the sense of 'rationality' that is required of moral realism. It is not enough that something be coherently deduced from stated premises, because we can state different premises, use different categories, and make different distinctions. What is required is that there is a sense in which we can all be rationally compelled through argumentation to adopt the same premises, categories and distinctions. And that is, frankly, absurd and untrue. I'd think that defining "rationality" as "a sense in which one can be rationally compelled through argumentation to (verbally) adopt premises, categories, and distinctions" is circular. You end up sorta just defining "rational" as "the thing we do in the Agora".
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- brobdingnagians 8y agoSounds like a clever, witty, and charming guy. Would be very interesting to talk to him; I like his style of talking. Curiously ironic that he cites a consensus in personal belief in atheism and agnostics among philosophers (at least, modern philosophers, most philosophers in history believed in God..) as a good reason for philosophy not accepting the existence of God, which appears to be a popularity contest (and echo-chamber), then later in discussing a scientific belief says "This I do believe, but have no proof." Sounds like some faith to me... (and I agree that there is probably a surprisingly simple and elegant theory underlying all of physics, based on what I understand and see of the universe) Of course, I've found that most atheists tend to have faith in science without actually understanding science (though plenty do understand the science) and have some personal, emotional reason for not believing in God rather than a well-thought out chain of reasoning; but most people believe things for personal and emotional reasons, so it isn't surprising. It is always a bit humorous to ask them why they believe in science or what it is they believe and get back answers based on a fanatical devotion to, and blind trust in, the priesthood of "pseudo-"scientists like Dawkins, who makes all sorts of unsupported meta-physical claims in his books. I would always encourage atheists to investigating with an open mind, and to learn more about their system of beliefs, and more about logic. They should do what they believe is correct, and should always seek the truth, but be open to discovery of truth even when they may not like it. Most real scientists have a healthy skepticism towards the correctness of at least part of their own theories.
- malmsteen 8y agoThe point of science is that its supposed to be verifiable/ provable at least by someone. Its "trust" (in that "someone" or "group of people" who can prove it)... not "faith". Faith is when its literally unprovable by anyone but you still believe it. Its completely different.
- cyborgx7 8y agoI've explained this to people a couple of times who make the "faith in science" argument. The difference is that you -can- verify it, not that you did verify it. Your terminology of trust vs. faith is great. I will incorporate it into my arguments in the future.
- dghf 8y ago> Hasn’t quantum mechanics demolished the hope that science will make reality intelligible? > Not in the least. As Bell said, study Bohm’s pilot wave theory and you see that everything can be explained perfectly well, with no funny business at all logically or conceptually. We are stuck with non-locality, as Bell proved, but maybe in the end you need non-locality for the deep simplicity of law that I anticipate. I'm not a physicist, but isn't dumping locality a bit of a bigger deal than this quote suggests?
- gus_massa 8y agoYes, it is! I think that Bohm’s pilot wave theory is appealing to non technical people because it replace all the scary equations of quantum mechanics with a wave and a particle. The trick is that the wave has a scary equation, and the interaction of the wave and the particle has a scary equation, but you can hide the scary equations behind a nice animated graph of a wave and a ball. For a nonrelativistic particle, the pilot wave is equivalent to the other quantum mechanics interpretations. The other interpretations can be extended to the special relativity case, moreover all the work in the last 50 (or more) years in particle physis use the extended versions. Nobody know how to extend the pilot wave theory, and perhaps it's impossible.
- crazygringo 8y agoI think you're being quite disrespectful in claiming that Bohm's theory is only appealing to "non technical" people, because it hides "scary" parts. The appeal of Bohm is that it results in QM that is deterministic, without needing to resort to ill-defined notions of collapse. I'm quite sure "hiding the scary equations" has absolutely zero to do with it, and it honestly comes across as offensive to suggest that it is.
- Koshkin 8y ago> ill-defined notions of collapse Actually, the wavefunction collapse is a very well defined mathematical construct; so, if you are ignoring or trying to avoid it, you are literally "hiding the scary equations."
- tkyjonathan 8y agoA bit off-topic, but philosophy has a huge underground following now. Even I started to get into philosophy of systems (general systems theory) as well as pure topics like epistemology, ethics, aesthetics and logic. If you are out of Uni and never learnt it while in Uni, I recommend looking into Objectivism.
- myWindoonn 8y agoI can see why this guy is popular. I wonder whether he'd be so quick to dismiss Gödel and Quine if presented with an utterance like, "This sentence is true, but cannot be proven true by any human nor any human-crafted device." I'm quite confident that this sentence is true, but cannot put forth a proof which would convince anybody; at the same time, just like any other mathematical object, its proof is generated by the observer, who convinces themselves of its truth while simultaneously acknowledging the paradox. Gödel's entire point was that this formulation was rigorous and could not be escaped by a mere change of (syntactic or semantic) venue. Turing's point was that this formulation extends to computation and effective methods of producing results. Quine's point was that it is the quotation mark, and not the self-reference, that leads to the incompleteness/inconsistency. I probably wouldn't mind so much, but he seems like the kind of guy who believes in physical cause and effect.
- foldr 8y agoAre Gödel and Quine mentioned in the article?
- igravious 8y agoQuotation marks enable self-reference. To quote myself, "Quotation marks enable self-reference". To quote myself again, “To quote myself, "Quotation marks enable self-reference".”. A formulation is that which is formal (Gödel) and the act of forming (Turing). A computation is the act of computing (Turing) and that which is computable (Gödel). The less said about Quine the better.
- naasking 8y ago> Gödel's entire point was that this formulation was rigorous and could not be escaped by a mere change of (syntactic or semantic) venue. Well that's not true, because there exist logics that are both consistent and complete, they simply don't have the expressive power of full arithmetic. This is a syntactic or semantic change, depending on how you frame it.
- jan888 8y agoCan you give an example of a consistent and complete logic?
- aeneasmackenzie 8y agoPhilosophy has made progress -- backwards. Most developments since the end of the scholastic era have been failures.
- MrCream 8y ago100%. I was cringing throughout this entire article - first off, Philosophy in scientific journal. Those two domains are innately distinct from eachother. When people start talking about science and intermixing philosophy I cannot help but cringe. People need to really read and understand Aristotle before attempting the enlightenment authors, then the postmoderns. This whole article was nothing short of nonsense
- 08-15 8y ago> No amount of just grinding out the digits and checking will ever prove it: there are always more digits to check. This guy doesn't know how mathematical proofs work. If the above was close to reality, nobody could ever proof Fermat's major theorem, because there are "always more triples of numbers to check". > All Gödel did was find a clever way to construct a provably unprovable mathematical fact. That not what Gödel did, and certainly not all he did. Gödel demonstrated that number theory expressed in first order logic is incomplete, i.e. admits more than one model. He did that by constructing a statement that is true in the smallest model, but does not have a proof, because it is false in others. With these ignorant statements, Maudlin just reinforced my opinion that philosophers are simply professional bullshitters.
- wwarner 8y agoI don't know if it makes him ignorant, but I agree the statement sweeps the philosophical issues Gödel addressed under the rug. There were two major works of the 20th century that would never have been attempted if the authors had known of Gödel's proof. First, Whitehead and Russel's Prinicpia Mathematica, which attempted to "describe a set of axioms and inference rules in symbolic logic from which all mathematical truths could in principle be proven". The other was Wittgenstein's Tractatus, which was a similar attempt to provide a foundation for language. To be fair, Gödel's theorem didn't end scientific inquiry, and I'm sure that Maudlin knows about these titanic failures. I'd like to know what he thinks of them.
- codeulike 8y agoYou're taking that bit out of context. In that sentence he's talking about a very specific thought experiment in which we constuct a theory that certain digits in the root of 17 and the 27th power of pi match. I think his arbitrary example is supposed to be an analogy of Godel's work. Example: let’s say that the decimal expressions of the square root of 17 and pi to the 27th power “match” just in case either they have the same digit in the tenths place, or the same two digits in the next two places, or the same three digits in the next three places, etc. The point of his example here is that the 'match' is defined in never-ending terms. If the 10th digit doesn't match, you check the next two. If they don't match, you check the next three. And so on. You can go on comparing digits forever, even though finding a 'match' becomes less and less likely.
- gbustomtv5 8y agoInteresting that he brings up the story of Er. Plato made all the arguments when it comes to philosophy’s why and how. The story of Er is the comprehension test at the end of the book. Sadly, Tim did not pass the Er’s test.
- AgentME 8y agoWhat is the intended interpretation of Er?
- gbustomtv5 8y agoNot sure “intended interpretation” can be used to describe anything in the Republic. The Republic is written to guide human souls out of the cave. Can the curious readers find the truth themselves in the story of Er upon careful examination? Is Er a philosopher? Does a philosopher need rewards described by Er? Can a philosopher choose an inconspicuous life (especally after the disussion of the philosopher’s life earlier in the book)? Can you take a story given in a book as the truth without examination after prose was denied place in the Republic? All is up to the reader.
- lisper 8y ago"Popper was kind of an egocentric jerk." Oh, the staggering irony of responding to the charge that philosophers don't produce anything worthwhile with an ad hominem. Res ipsa loquitur.
- imh 8y agoYou missed the "Nope, see above." part right before your quote.
- lisper 8y agoNo, I didn't miss it. The fact that the ad hominem was accompanied by another argument does not change the fact that it was an ad hominem. (The other argument was also mostly bogus IMHO, but making that case would take a lot longer.) UPDATE: actually, I've changed my mind. The other argument can also be dispensed with rather quickly: "Only the philosophers always make a good choice, because the ultimate thing they study, at the end, is the Form of the Good itself. Philosophy, in its purest form, contains the study of what it is to live a good human life. As Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being." And what if, after decades of study, you come to the realization that Socrates was wrong and you have actually wasted your life? What if "the good life" actually involves not worrying so much about what is "the good life" and just getting on with it, going to baseball games, hiking in the woods, building a shed in the back yard?
- winchling 8y ago>the unexamined life is not worth living [...] not worrying so much about what is "the good life" Unexamined, not overexamined.
- memonkey 8y agoPointing out a single fallacy in the context of the whole argument seems pretty facile to me.
- lisper 8y ago
- ripsawridge 8y agoThe only thing our world needs now is a reorientation away from growth at all costs into a mode of life that values the simple, the close by, the cheap. I don't see this guy giving a damn about that problem. Instead he tosses off bon mots about Popper and Gödel, and intones comfortably that in his view his peers have the right idea because they converge on atheism/agnosticism. Wow. The world is saved. There is a class of people who value a "small life," the kind we all need to adopt: zen monks. Unfortunately, such people are afflicted by the disease of irrationalism in their ideas about God, or some similar concept that offends the sensibility of the excessively rational so much that they can only paint Belief in the most lurid colors. Highly unfashionable to study such people. Instead, a professional philosopher keeps giving interviews, attending conferences and publishing papers. I'll be glad when we can no longer afford them. I also apologize for my lack of charity but there it is.
- camelNotation 8y agoI like you. There's been a total over-correction away from religion and we've lost sight of why it evolved in the first place. Social scientists have long known that there is nothing rational about the decisions we make, and certainly not in groups. Religion may have led us to quite a bit of violence in the past and might not have given us self-driving cars, but simply understanding the universe is not going to be enough to save the world when we are all still driven moment to moment by our emotional predispositions. We need a way to engineer and shape our emotions and and our collective psyche - something religion evolved to do. Science is a valuable tool for good, but it is limited by our own lack of virtue in how we use it. I think a lot of people dislike that idea because religion, unlike science, doesn't offer us any certainty. We're addicted to an illusion of certainty in a world where our actual lived reality is always uncertain. We need to get over that. Certainty is a lie.
- louwrentius 8y agoReligion is not about certainty or uncertainty but about a higher purpose, about meaning. This life, this pain, this suffering needs to amount to something or why bother continuing? Religion doesn't seem the answer, it always creates more problems than it solves. It thrives on suffering. Because suffering creates a need for religion, it sustains itself this way. Can we find meaning and purpose in our existence in a way that isn't so detrimental to quality of life, now and in our future?