JS Mill, free speech, and creationism/global warming

[Last Conformist]

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?

I'm suggesting that prior to Gödel it would be unlikely to occur to someone like Wittgenstein that the question is undecidable. In fact, I habour a suspicion that Wittgenstein assumed any well-defined mathematical question is decidable.

[Lul Thyme]

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?

Before Godel, mathematicians didn't really know there existed undecidable questions.

Most mathematicians implicitly assumed the contrary.

Basically, any ideas on the "philosophy of mathematics" pre-Godel pretty much have\had to be revised heavily in light of his results.

I'm not sure if you're aware, but since Godel, "undecidable" has a very precise mathematical meaning which is also used in computer science, and in logic.

If Witt.'s stuff is pre Godel, he's probably using the word in a much vaguer sense.

[Asher]

I think I ****ing pressed the wrong thread, this isn't about Anna Nicole Smith at all.

[Imran Siddiqui]

But it should be.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by 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.

Natural knowledge?

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.

"No ability to verify its conclusions" - that's what makes you able to dismiss it, right?

[Fake Boris]

Philosophy is such useless garbage... while such despicable beings as Herbert Marcuse were professing social freedoms in class, brilliant scientists were sending V2s into the air

[Aeson]

Philosophy brought us scientific method... it can't be all bad...

[Kuciwalker]

V2's the space program

[Kuciwalker]

And just a bit after Marcuse babbled about whatever it was, Salk developed the polio vaccine

[Odin]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
A scientific revolution occurs, according to Kuhn, when scientists encounter anomalies which cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within which scientific progress has thereto been made. The paradigm, in Kuhn's view, is not simply the current theory, but the entire worldview in which it exists, and all of the implications which come with it. There are anomalies for all paradigms, Kuhn maintained, that are brushed away as acceptable levels of error, or simply ignored and not dealt with (a principal argument Kuhn uses to reject Karl Popper's model of falsifiability as the key force involved in scientific change). Rather, according to Kuhn, anomalies have various levels of significance to the practitioners of science at the time. To put it in the context of early 20th century physics, some scientists found the problems with calculating Mercury's perihelion more troubling than the Michelson-Morley experiment results, and some the other way around. Kuhn's model of scientific change differs here, and in many places, from that of the logical positivists in that it puts an enhanced emphasis on the individual humans involved as scientists, rather than abstracting science into a purely logical or philosophical venture.

When enough significant anomalies have accrued against a current paradigm, the scientific discipline is thrown into a state of crisis, according to Kuhn. During this crisis, new ideas, perhaps ones previously discarded, are tried. Eventually a new paradigm is formed, which gains its own new followers, and an intellectual "battle" takes place between the followers of the new paradigm and the hold-outs of the old paradigm. Again, for early 20th century physics, the transition between the Maxwellian electromagnetic worldview and the Einsteinian Relativistic worldview was not instantaneous nor calm, and instead involved a protracted set of "attacks," both with empirical data as well as rhetorical or philosophical arguments, by both sides, with the Einsteinian theory winning out in the long-run. Again, the weighing of evidence and importance of new data was fit through the human sieve: some scientists found the simplicity of Einstein's equations to be most compelling, while some found them more complicated than the notion of Maxwell's aether which they banished. Some found Eddington's photographs of light bending around the sun to be compelling, some questioned their accuracy and meaning. Sometimes the convincing force is just time itself and the human toll it takes, Kuhn said, using a quote from Max Planck: "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

After a given discipline has changed from one paradigm to another, this is called, in Kuhn's terminology, a scientific revolution or a paradigm shift. It is often this final conclusion, the result of the long process, that is meant when the term paradigm shift is used colloquially: simply the (often radical) change of worldview, without reference to the specificities of Kuhn's historical argument.

A common misinterpretation of Kuhnian paradigms is the belief that the discovery of paradigm shifts and the dynamic nature of science (with its many opportunities for subjective judgments by scientists) is a case for relativism: the view that all kinds of belief systems are equal, such that magic, religious concepts or pseudoscience would be of equal working value to true science. Kuhn vehemently denies this interpretation and states that when a scientific paradigm is replaced by a new one, albeit through a complex social process, the new one is always better, not just different.

In one of his books on the philosophy of Biology, This is Biology IIRC, evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr made a good argument that the Kuhnian pattern isn't as obvious in Biology as it is in the physical sciences

[flash9286]

On Liberty was a good essay until the applications chapter.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Odin
In one of his books on the philosophy of Biology, This is Biology IIRC, evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr made a good argument that the Kuhnian pattern isn't as obvious in Biology as it is in the physical sciences

It's rather more difficult to construct a series of approximations in biology the way we do in physics.

[Odin]

Originally posted by LordShiva

The trick is not to be seduced by Popper's beautiful simplicity before reading further.

Doh!

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by 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.

Its not mystical at all, its the way societies work. Theres probably some work by some sociologist neatly tied up with chi squares and factor analysis to make it legit for you on that sort of thing. But im not looking it up for you, you'll just troll some more.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Lul Thyme


Before Godel, mathematicians didn't really know there existed undecidable questions.

Most mathematicians implicitly assumed the contrary.

Basically, any ideas on the "philosophy of mathematics" pre-Godel pretty much have\had to be revised heavily in light of his results.

I'm not sure if you're aware, but since Godel, "undecidable" has a very precise mathematical meaning which is also used in computer science, and in logic.

If Witt.'s stuff is pre Godel, he's probably using the word in a much vaguer sense.

Okay. Im sure the philosophy of mathematics had advanced since Witt, and im sure how thats integrated into the rest of phil is quite interesting. Too bad some folks want to cut off such investigations.