JS Mill, free speech, and creationism/global warming

[KrazyHorse]

What a bunch of horse****.

Philosophy's job is to study the study of philosophy?

Great.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
If what I'm saying was first said 80 years ago, then this is a simple demonstration of how dumb filosofy is, given that I've never read anything about it.

"the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.” John Maynard Keynes


I suspect the influence of the TLP,and of other thinkers associated with Witt like Russel and Frege, is so pervasive, esp in the world of mathematics and by extension physics, that one could easily be influenced by them without acutally having read them.

Also I would say that figuring out the gist doesnt mean really understanding the full thought.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

The question of whether there are any questions other than empirical ones (in the broadest sense - IE scientific ones) that are not tautologies.

There definately are, but they're undecidable

Witt said that if a question is undecidable the question is meaningless - its a pseudoproblem. Im sorry I cant really explain or prove this - Witt does it in the TLP.

[KrazyHorse]

I suspect the influence of the TLP,and of other thinkers associated with Witt like Russel and Frege, is so pervasive, esp in the world of mathematics and by extension physics, that one could easily be influenced by them without acutally having read them.

My mathematics and physics teachers were not in the habit of discussing philosophers or philosophy.

Your argument is weak.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
What a bunch of horse****.

Philosophy's job is to study the study of philosophy?

Great.

If the only people who made assertions about pseudoproblems were professional philosophers, this would be a trivial job, agreed. I believe Witt believed that such pseudoproblems were posed, and answers asserted by all kinds of folks who ARENT professional philosophers, from politicians to theologians to social thinkers and perhaps even in some cases to scientists. Thats why phil had (per Wittgenstein) a job to do.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


Witt said that if a question is undecidable the question is meaningless - its a pseudoproblem. Im sorry I cant really explain or prove this - Witt does it in the TLP.

The continuum and aleph-one are perfectly well-defined concepts - in what sense can the question whether they're the same be meaningless?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse

I suspect the influence of the TLP,and of other thinkers associated with Witt like Russel and Frege, is so pervasive, esp in the world of mathematics and by extension physics, that one could easily be influenced by them without acutally having read them.

My mathematics and physics teachers were not in the habit of discussing philosophers or philosophy.

Your argument is weak.

If they had done so explicitly, then you would surely have remembered. Like I said, some things are conveyed without being quoted. I cant prove anything here or there as to how you learned any particular thing - merely that you assert something that was written 80 years ago doesnt prove you independently "invented" it. How many people on this board assert "common sense" about "liberty" whove never heard of Locke, or the obviousness of class warfare whove never read Marx? Witt IS part of the culture now, to some degree.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

The continuum and aleph-one are perfectly well-defined concepts - in what sense can the question whether they're the same be meaningless?

wittgenstein addressed the issue of mathematics at some length, IIRC.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


wittgenstein addressed the issue of mathematics at some length, IIRC.

The TLP predates Gödel's incompleteness theorem by almost a decade, so I guess he addresses it somewhere else?

[lord of the mark]

All mathematics is tautology.
Quoted in D MacHale, Comic Sections (Dublin 1993)

The process of calculating brings about just this intuition. Calculation is not an experiment.
Tractatus Logico Philosophicus

A mathematical proof must be perspicuous.
Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics

... mathematics is a motley of techniques and proofs.
Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics

There is no religious denomination in which the misuse of metaphysical expressions has been responsible for so much sin as it has in mathematics.
Culture and Value

With my full philosophical rucksack I can only climb slowly up the mountain of mathematics.
Culture and Value


The mathematician Pascal admires the beauty of a theorem in number theory; it's as though he were admiring a beautiful natural phenomenon. Its marvellous, he says, what wonderful properties numbers have. It's as though he were admiring the regularities in a kind of crystal.
(1941)


We could present spatially an atomic fact which contradicted the laws of physics, but not one which contradicted the laws of geometry.
Tractatus Logico Philosophicus (1922).

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

The TLP predates Gödel's incompleteness theorem by almost a decade, so I guess he addresses it somewhere else?

IIUC Godel did not invent mathematics.

Are you suggesting that this question is differnt in kind from mathematics in general?

[KrazyHorse]

Like I said, some things are conveyed without being quoted. I cant prove anything here or there as to how you learned any particular thing - merely that you assert something that was written 80 years ago doesnt prove you independently "invented" it

Yes. That's all very mystical. They holistically imparted my understanding of philosophy as total tautological bull****. Perhaps through some sort of gestalt.

Philosophy is useless garbage for the same reason that any other discipline which does not make any sense without intricate knowledge of its esoterica, which provides no ability to verify its conclusions and which provides no useful service to the outside world is garbage.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
All mathematics is tautology.

Duh. But it's difficult tautology

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


IIUC Godel did not invent mathematics.

Are you suggesting that this question is differnt in kind from mathematics in general?

Errr...yes.

The fact that certain questions which can be posed within a formal system cannot be decided by the rules of that formal system was quite different...to say the least.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Witt said that if a question is undecidable the question is meaningless - its a pseudoproblem. Im sorry I cant really explain or prove this - Witt does it in the TLP.

I'm using a different definition of undecidable:

A decision problem is called (recursively) undecidable if no algorithm can decide it, such as for Turing's halting problem.