Retitled: Modern philosophers are full of it!

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Agathon


You should see the fun I have trying to get the science people to understand that not every ethical problem can be solved by appealing to scientific fact, or that the Ontological Argument is not refuted by appealing to the Big Bang theory.

It sometimes takes ages to pound such simple ideas into their skulls.

The point here being that some science students are just as retarded as philosophy students?

[Unspeakable Horror]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Modern philosophers are full of ****

Fixed

I can´t believe I agree with you
See what you´ve done? Eventis is down because of this

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

The point here being that some science students are just as retarded as philosophy students?

No. The point being that each subject emphasizes modes of reasoning that can be absolutely counterproductive when applied to the other.

Some students asked me yesterday why we were talking about all these crazy thought experiments (Searle's Chinese Room was one of them - I've always hated that). The point is that common concepts such as "mind" are vague, and either need to be dispensed with a la the Churchlands, or sharpened so as to remove the vagueness and contradictions.

It sometimes takes a long time for people to realize that these sorts of concepts are supposed to be invariant across logically possible worlds rather than physically possible worlds. Hence the people who argue that we don't know whether we could in fact make an artificial brain or graft one half of a brain onto another are missing the fundamental point of the argument.

The same goes for those who think that giving examples of causes is a substitute for providing a coherent elucidation of what the term "cause" means.

[GePap]

Originally posted by molly bloom



And ?


Inventions become the mothers of necessity- however did people manage without the internet, or computers, or the transistor, or nasal hair clippers, or keyrings that identify where they are with sound, or Pokemon cards...

And yet somehow, societies and civilizations prospered for hundreds of years without any of them.

And vast numbers of people around the world still manage to get by without having broadband connection, or even a battery operated radio.


I suspect you could even manage with just one lavatory in your parents' house.

I doubt it. Another family member might need to use it at the same time as he....

I find it absurd how we are supposed to believe that computers are really as world changing as they seem. Computers make computation easier, and in the last 20 years have made communications easier- but as a medium, they are not as influential as Television or Radio, and in terms of making this eaiser, better modes of transport like railroads or internal combustion driven vehicles have had a FAR greater impact on your everyday life.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by molly bloom
And ?

Inventions become the mothers of necessity- however did people manage without the internet, or computers, or the transistor, or nasal hair clippers, or keyrings that identify where they are with sound, or Pokemon cards...

And yet somehow, societies and civilizations prospered for hundreds of years without any of them.

And vast numbers of people around the world still manage to get by without having broadband connection, or even a battery operated radio.

If you want to live like that, why don't you go there? I doubt they have much funding for technical studies...

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Agathon
No. The point being that each subject emphasizes modes of reasoning that can be absolutely counterproductive when applied to the other.

Some students asked me yesterday why we were talking about all these crazy thought experiments (Searle's Chinese Room was one of them - I've always hated that). The point is that common concepts such as "mind" are vague, and either need to be dispensed with a la the Churchlands, or sharpened so as to remove the vagueness and contradictions.

Church was a computer scientist, not a philosopher, btw

[Peter Triggs]

Church was a computer scientist, not a philosopher, btw

Except that Aggie is talking about Paul and Patricia Chuchland, who write about the Philosophy of Mind.

And actually Alonzo Church was a logician who (shock, horror) counts as a philosopher. In the Introduction to his Introduction to Mathematical Logic he puts forward a Fregean type of Philosophy of Language.

[Asher]

Originally posted by GePap
I find it absurd how we are supposed to believe that computers are really as world changing as they seem. Computers make computation easier, and in the last 20 years have made communications easier- but as a medium, they are not as influential as Television or Radio, and in terms of making this eaiser, better modes of transport like railroads or internal combustion driven vehicles have had a FAR greater impact on your everyday life.

That's because you don't understand the power and potential of computers. They're only seen as calculators and communications devices to people who lack foresight or insightfulness in general. You name a field and I can tell you how computers made it better, and there's not many other fields we can say that about.

In the next 20+ years we're going to see it continue to progress to the level of artificial life and virtual reality, on top of what we know computers as for today.

Computers are not equal to the Personal Computer, which is what I think is your main misunderstanding. Computer Scientists do more than design Microsoft Word and Outlook...

[Odin]

Not this argument again.


I think if people in this country had a few philosophy (espicially ethics and logic) classes in school the Family Values (tm) and the "OMG, teh sanctity of human life, OMG, OMG, OMG!!!11!!!" groups would lose thier hot air.

[Sandman]

You only need to look at the appalling arguments put forward for the war in Iraq to see the need for philosophy.

[Spiffor]

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse

It's not a strawman when you said:

And they were the first to introduce naturalistic explanations of phenomena.

Yes, its strawman, IMO. What I wrote is compatible, for example, with what I said about Katrina not being naturalistic. So my position isn't as simplistic, and hence as easy to demolish as you let on.

But enough of what I think. Lets return to what the historians think. Mind you, I'm no expert. I was just saying in my own words what I think a lot of historians are claiming. I just got hold one of my books on history of science. Here's how the historians put it (my translation):

The Greek thinkers were the first to eliminate the gods or other supernatural forces as elements in the explanation of physical or biological phenomena.

The importance of their speculations resides in the fact that they gave us the first example of a purely naturalistic explanation of the world.

So maybe the historians are not saying that the Greeks were the first to introduce naturalistic explanations. Maybe they're actually saying that the Greeks were the first to push toward a fully naturalistic explanation of the world, toward the elimination of the mythological elements, which were preponderant. I hope you can at least agree with that.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
And actually Alonzo Church was a logician who (shock, horror) counts as a philosopher. In the Introduction to his Introduction to Mathematical Logic he puts forward a Fregean type of Philosophy of Language.

From wiki:

Alonzo Church (June 14, 1903 – August 11, 1995) was an American mathematician and logician who was responsible for some of the foundations of theoretical computer science.

[Agathon]

So maybe the historians are not saying that the Greeks were the first to introduce naturalistic explanations. Maybe they're actually saying that the Greeks were the first to push toward a fully naturalistic explanation of the world, toward the elimination of the mythological elements, which were preponderant. I hope you can at least agree with that.

Anaximander is the first person to put forth a unified, universal and naturalistic explanation of the kosmos. He is the first known expounder of the notion of ????, which is the fundamental explanatory notion in Ancient Greek science and the concept that unites the Ionian Naturalists.

It is a mistake to think that this is entirely different from an explanation in terms of God, since most later Greek thinkers attempted to identify God with the ????, although the big difference is that this God is not in any way a personal God, rather more like the fundamental originating and sustaining force of the universe. Xenophanes, of course, does it his own way, so he is a little different.

Anaximander believed that the first principle was the unlimited and that all other things originated from this by a process of peeling off. Anaximenes thought that everything was made of air and that the differences in the world were the result of condensation and rarefaction. Heraclitus thought that fire was the ???? and that the other elements proceeded from it by a process of upward and downward change.

One reason that some of the Greeks were inclined to make the first principle a living being is that they needed a self moving entity in order to explain the derivative motion of everything else. Living things, or things with souls (not souls as we think of them though) were a prime example of self moving entities.

But what is true is that the explanation of a hurricane as God's wrath would have seemed to them as absurdly funny. The Presocratic philosophers explanations of natural phenomena are bad explanations to be sure, but they are recognizably the same sort of explanations offered by modern science.

[Agathon]

One of the main puzzles in interpreting what is left of presocratic philosophy is getting clear about what ???? means. I'm of the opinion that the early thinkers did not have a well defined concept of it and that the subsequent train of Greek naturalistic thought was an attempt to clarify it.

Parmenides of course denies that any such explanation is possible, and he inaugurates a series of thinkers who attempt to show how it is, and how change can be rationally explained. One result of this is Atomism, which has proved a surprisingly durable theory.