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Obviously I'm not talking about people like Quine; if that's your definition of "philosopher", Gödel himself would be a philosopher. You make good points, but
by jeromebaek 8y ago
Obviously I'm not talking about people like Quine; if that's your definition of "philosopher", Gödel himself would be a philosopher.
You make good points, but altogether my issue is that, at the current moment, few anglophone philosophers have more than a casual grasp of Gödel's theorem. How do I know that? I was in graduate school for philosophy, then dropped out, partly because philosophers who seriously engage in, e.g. both moral philosophy and computability theory are far and few between.
- pulisse 8y ago> philosophers who seriously engage in, e.g. both moral philosophy and computability theory are far and few between That's a quite a bit weaker of a claim than "philosophers don't understand Gödel's theorem". To back that up you need to point to some philosophers who (a) discuss Gödel's theorem in such a way that (b) they demonstrate their lack of understanding. As it is you're just claiming that one particular subfield of philosophy doesn't have much overlap with another. How is that an indictment of the field? There are few computer scientists working at the intersection of quantum computing and database theory. There are few physicists working at the intersection of biophysics and string theory. It's not a meaningful criticism unless there's reason to think that there is something in the intersection that practitioners are culpable for overlooking, and you haven't provided any such reason.
- jeromebaek 8y agoI think the reason is shallow thinkpieces like this :)
- pulisse 8y agoYou keep insulting people without argument. (And Cosma Shalizi is anything but a shallow thinker, as even a cursory perusal of his online notebooks should make evident.)
- dltnhic 8y agoI was perusing Princeton’s companion to mathematics a while back. If I recall correctly, after describing the theorems, the author states that much is written about their implications and that there is not enough room to discuss them. It seemed fair to me. People write many things on the internet, and it is still surprising to me how they choose to do that. I wouldn’t be concerned about most of it, particularly if it is about topics I know to be deep. I for one looked into some articles on the internet at some point, Godel or not, I made the mistake of thinking that they write what they knows of. As for godel, I’m sure you can find contemporary math/philosophers. Another example was in grad school in mathematics. I knew one particular thing was off but I couldn’t place it. A long time has passed since. Recently I came across a note from a math professor who had spent the time to go through all books covering the subject, and explains what everyone had missed. I agreed with him.
- coldtea 8y ago>That's a quite a bit weaker of a claim than "philosophers don't understand Gödel's theorem" That's because we're having a casual conversation, and the reader is supposed to pick up on context. This is not a proof or a paper.
- steve_gh 8y agoAt St Andrews University (where I studied Philosophy in the late 1980s), there were two (physically linked) Philosophy Departments. The Dept of Moral Philosophy, and the Dept of Logic and Metaphysics. An undergraduate Philosophy degree involved courses from both departments.