What is Philosophy?
Is it “unintelligible answers to insoluble problems”? (Henry Adams)
Is a philosopher “a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there”? (Lord Bowen)
Is philosophy “a route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing”? (Ambrose Bierce)
In a recent post a comment was made about how nice it was to have three trained philosophers engaged in making comments.
But is anyone else even paying attention? Does what these trained philosophers say even matter?
Isn’t it true that:
“There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.” (William James)
“one cannot conceive of anything so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.” (Rene Descartes)
“The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as to seem not worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.” (Bertrand Russell)
Philosopher: “someone who doesn’t know what he is talking about but makes it sound like it’s your fault.”
Can any of our trained philosophers even offer a defense of philosophy beyond “it pays the bills”?
More specifically, what is the value of philosophy for an atheist?
[Changed Ambrose Pierce to Ambrose Bierce. HT: keiths]
Bruce,
Does he need to study metametaphilosophy before deciding to study metaphilosophy?
Neil,
The problem I have with you is that you are constantly claiming miscommunication (or worse yet, misrepresentation) where there is simply disagreement. I strongly suspect that you do this to avoid taking responsibility for your erroneous positions.
Classic example: In a recent thread, you accused me of misrepresenting you, despite the fact that I had backed up my interpretation with lengthy corroborating quotes from your own comments.
Walto asked you to clarify your position and point out where you had been misrepresented. Your response was laughable:
You knew you could neither back up your accusation nor defend your position, so you punted.
Why not simply admit your mistakes, Neil? Your position — that the difference between the geocentric and heliocentric models is just a change in coordinate system, a different way of looking at the same underlying reality — is simply wrong.
You would actually gain some respect by admitting your mistake. Instead, you’re doubling down and clinging to a bizarre and indefensible idea.
No one was willing to defend your position, and there was a reason for that.
It wasn’t a miscommunication or a misrepresentation — it was a disagreement. Your statements were clear, but they were obviously wrong.
I don’t see why. It seems to me a perfectly good point. Why would you describe an “un-caused first cause” as a “god”?
And if you did, what attributes would you ascribe to that god?
That you are not very receptive to analogies?
It’s not just me. I have seen this happen in your arguments with walto, with petrushka and with Alan. That is to say, you misunderstood there argument, yet were extremely confident that you were right in what you incorrectly took them to be saying. And you accused them of failing to take responsibility for their “erroneous” positions when it was you who were wrong all along.
Neil,
Links, please.
And we should probably take this to Noyau, since it’s off-topic.
There are several papers on that in my Hall book: In addition to a precis of his own views of how philosophy works by Hall, there are papers on his metaphilosophy by Richard Rorty, Reginald McLelland, and me: https://www.scribd.com/doc/180652304/Cover-Contents-Introduction-to-my-book-on-Everett-Hall-pdf (I’m sorry it’s so expensive!)
I do have some (hastily typed) excerpts relating to categories from Hall’s book somewhere that, if I can find, I’ll post here. Not a huge benefit for you, since my notes are riddled with typos and you do have the actual whole book to look at, but maybe some people will find the snippets interesting.
ETA: Oh, I see I put those up on scribd too. Prolly better to look at them there than for me to post 16 pages here. https://www.scribd.com/doc/61493351/Hall-on-Categories-Excerpts-From-Philosophical-Systems
No, metaphilosophy is itself philosophy, so metaphilosophy studies itself. So for all n>=0, meta^n philosophy is studied by metaphilosophy
One could even go so far as to say metaphilosophy is the study of all philosophies that do not study themselves. But maybe that would be a bad idea.
(ETA: Yes, I know that Russell allusion probably does not work that well. But I thought it was in the spirit of other comments on the thread).
I think it works! Does metaphilosophy study itself? If it does, it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t, it does.
Nice!
No, sorry. I’m not going to rehash this. You have clearly shown that you are incapable of seeing the problem which is, nevertheless, apparent to others. Rehashing would be a waste of time in that it would end up in the same talking past one another.
Bruce,
But that means Mung can’t study metaphilosophy before deciding to study philosophy, because metaphilosophy is itself philosophy. 🙂
I guess he’ll just have to take the plunge. Come on in, Mung, the water’s fine!
Neil,
Another accusation you can’t back up, eh, Neil?
walto,
No, it’s actually consistent.
Metaphilosophy studies philosophy and is part of philosophy.
Sociology of science studies science and is part of science.
keiths,
I was using Bruce’s def., not a sensible one.
ETA: I.e., Bruce’s Russellian, joke def.
Okay. Either way, we need to get Mung to take the plunge. And petrushka!
By the way, Mung, it’s “Bierce”, not “Pierce”.
Yes, that was the “joke” in the Buridan link.
Thanks!
Wow geeze
God is if nothing else un caused and the “first” cause of all things.
Any entity that is caused is not God no exceptions. That is pretty much the minimal definitional hurdle between deity and non-deity
quote:
…he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality……….To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.
(1Ti 6:15-16)
end quote:
Lots of God’s other attributes can be inferred from this one definitional axiom but not all of them. That is why I’m not a huge fan of this sort of argument
Philosophers are expert at this kind of attribute inference they spend lots of idle hours just thinking about this stuff
I’m sorry EL I just don’t have the patience to further detail what should be common knowledge. The unmoved mover has been cussed discussed and re-cussed for about 3 thousand years. I’m not sure how you missed it
anyway
Check it out This might help get you started
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover
peace
I disagree with Russell’s scientism though.
What if you ask a mathematician, a mineralogist, a historian, or any other man of learning how he can know that his “definite body of truths” are both true and certain, and whether or not his science can answer that question?
That only science gives definite knowledge is itself a philosophical stance, not a scientific one.
Hey Neil Rickert I just want to say you are the man.
Thank you for your attempts at neighborhood policing.
Peace
Did Russell and Godel ever meet? I like to imagine the odd thin bespectacled sickly Godel turning the confident Russell into a bowl of mumbling jello at a bar over some beers with the Liar’s paradox.
I think it would make a good Monty Python sketch.
peace
fifth,
Pretty unlikely. Russell knew his paradoxes. He even discovered his own:
Russell’s Paradox
fifth,
I didn’t miss it, and I doubt that Lizzie did either.
I’m looking for someone who can respond to the challenge I posed to Mung:
Mung seems reluctant. Are you up to the challenge, fifth?
Here is a quote of Godel discussing Russell’s response to his ideas
from here
http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/3951/did-russell-understand-g%C3%B6dels-incompleteness-theorems
quote:
Russell evidently misinterprets my result; however he does so in a very interesting manner.
end quote:
Now that is funny I don’t care who you are 😉
peace
fifth,
It’s interesting that you want to see Russell as a buffoon being turned into a “bowl of mumbling jello” at the hands of Gödel.
That wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Gödel was a theist and Russell a famous atheist, would it? Just a hunch on my part. 🙂
Yes, it is a philosophical position that science at its best gives us better knowledge than other forms of knowing — but just pointing out this out isn’t much of an objection. It does entail that some scientists are mistaken to believe that the successes of science put philosophy out of the business altogether, but it doesn’t entail that there’s no good philosophical case to be made for the epistemological superiority of science (at its best) over other forms of knowing.
However, it turns out that science at its best is extremely difficult, so I don’t think that science alone is going to put all other forms of knowledge out of business. This is less obvious in the natural sciences than in the social sciences. But it is true in both cases — there are First Nations whose indigenous, local knowledge of their ecosystems contains truths that scientific ecology is only slowly rediscovering, and in many communities, people understand truths about their social relations that sociologists and anthropologists have a hard time figuring out.
One of the things that philosophy of science is good for is articulating the criteria between good science and bad science. I would very much like to live in a world where public policy is informed by philosophy of science as well as by science, so that policy-makers are led astray less often by bad science.
That is probably part of it but mostly I’m just a huge fan of Godel’s contribution, I think it is the biggest thing to happen in philosophy in a very very long time.
I think lots of the misplaced confidence in the omnipotent power of Sciencey stuff is due to Godel not filtering down to the masses yet.
In retrospect of it’s difficult to see how otherwise smart folk’s like Russell could not see the importance and universality and self-evident nature of incompleteness.That is what makes it all seem so comedic to me.
peace
Mung,
Those who present you with absurdities can make you commit analogies.
(With apologies to Voltaire.)
fifth,
Science isn’t generally about proofs or completeness, so Gödel’s result hasn’t had a broad impact on it (computer science being an exception). On the other hand, Gödel’s result had a huge impact on math and logic, of course.
Russell certainly saw the importance of Gödel’s result, and he said so, but it’s hardly universal or self-evident.
It applies only to certain formal systems, so it isn’t universal.
Had it been self-evident, someone would have proven it before Gödel did. People were thinking about these issues, after all.
That you would think that explains a lot about your actions here.
And makes me smile 😉
peace
I’m all ears, fifth. Tell me what’s wrong with my statement.
I agree.
Keiths said
and
Apparently in keiths’ world mathematics and Logic are not universal and an un -caused first cause is not necessarily divine.
You couldn’t make this up with this stuff if you tried
I’m only surprised that it takes the ignorant bible thumping Neanderthal to point out the silliness.
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
I’ll agree with keiths, that Gödel’s theorem is specific to mathematics and mathematical logic. It is unlikely that it has any relevance to physics or other empirical sciences.
And can you avoid the name calling?
A formal system S is “complete” just in case, for any formula p constructed in S, either p or ~p is theorem of S.
In that sense of “complete”, first-order logic is complete. What Godel proved is that arithmetic is not complete.
That’s all that the incompleteness theorem proves. Nothing more, nothing less.
What name calling has fifthmonarchyman engaged in?
fifth,
You’re getting a substantial portion of your education here at TSZ. Computability, Kolmogorov complexity, transcendental numbers, lossy vs. non-lossy, and now Gödel. You’ve come here with serious misunderstandings of all of these and we’ve provided correction.
But does everything have to be taught to you? Can’t you do some disciplined research (with the emphasis on “disciplined”) on your own?
Torkel Franzén:
Not according to the ancient Greeks. Various of the Gods in their Pantheon were conceived. Or does that not count as being caused?
fG
Oh? What’s that? Mung thinks Mung has spotted a opportunity to show how someone is wrong and takes it?
Well, there you go Mung. fifthmonarchyman has called fifthmonarchyman a ignorant bible thumping Neanderthal.
Nobody has previously defined “name calling” as “names that are told to others but not myself” and as such fifthmonarchyman has clearly indulged in name calling. The fact that he called himself those names is irrelevant. Names were called.
So, does that answer your question?
Check the last line of the comment that I linked to.
Any system is that is sufficiently complex so as to contain a statement similar to the liar’s paradox is necessarily incomplete. That includes any system that utilizes mathematics in the formulation of it’s theorems.
That is pretty much a universal application in my book. At lest it’s universal as far as any thing that is rigorous or interesting goes.
Peace
PS
sorry I called myself a name my intent was not to denigrate myself. It was more in the spirit of a lovable nickname
I’m the world worst at grammar and capitalization so I’m not the person to point this out but in this case the capitol G is very important to the argument.
The characters in the Greek pantheon were not capitol G gods that is why the Greeks came up with the concept of the unmoved mover in the first place
peace
God and TRVTH.
Argument ad punctum.
Perhaps I am too sensitive to “neanderthal”. However, as we learn more about Neanderthal’s, it seems to me that maybe we should drop the negative connotations.
The way I took it was that you were essentially saying this is how the people here perceive you and you are going to live up to it, the implied assumption being that theists are neanderthal like to the non-theists here.
Which I think is a bit presumptuous. I, for example, don’t have a particular problem with theists. In fact, I don’t care and would probably never ask you about your thoughts on the matter in real life. I’m just not that interested.
On the other hand, when theists say they have evidence for god or intelligent design then I’m all ears. And when they fail to provide such evidence…..
What can a “G” type god do that a “g” cannot?
OMagain,
Doesn’t need turtles.
Oh, the “everything has a cause apart from the thing which I want to exist which conveniently is the single exception to the rule that I insist everything else has to follow, that everything has a cause”.
Is that all? 🙂
Well, you have to admit, that IS kind of a biggie.