Is philosophy dead ? and if so can we revive it ?
Almost recently the late Stephen Hawking declared:“Philosophy is dead”
I think in some respects he was right, the philosophy , as he mentioned , in our age is lagging the unbridled growth of our science and technology , and lost its main role in providing guidelines for human life developments.
But I think that doesn't necessarily means that the philosophy is dead or should die.
Instead it may imply that we must somehow revive our philosophy and review it even from the very dawn of the enlightenment age.
So mystically the late Hawking’s warnings about the inhabitability of our planet in near future can be the efect of the cause he quoted: "Philosophy is dead" !!
Can we revive or perhaps review our philosophy ?
Even from the very dawn of the enlightenment age ?
I think in some respects he was right, the philosophy , as he mentioned , in our age is lagging the unbridled growth of our science and technology , and lost its main role in providing guidelines for human life developments.
But I think that doesn't necessarily means that the philosophy is dead or should die.
Instead it may imply that we must somehow revive our philosophy and review it even from the very dawn of the enlightenment age.
So mystically the late Hawking’s warnings about the inhabitability of our planet in near future can be the efect of the cause he quoted: "Philosophy is dead" !!
Can we revive or perhaps review our philosophy ?
Even from the very dawn of the enlightenment age ?
Comments (77)
200 years ago relatively few people were educated, and there were educated experts in every field. The actual and real paucity of these experts rendered their opinions to be of value. Things that are universally available are assigned little appreciation or value. Today there are experts who are valued because they have functional skills that are not universal, mechanics, surgeons, mathematicians etc. These activities are valued because they are not universal.
Any fool however can claim ownership of philosophy, and democracy preaches that all opinions have a certain equality of sorts. Therefore the philosophy that is truly iconoclastic is lost within a tsunami of idiocy, self serving anger, and ego. Because the mass of men are now at least literate, philosophy is attended by a mass of literate fools, all tanned and oiled with their equality.
Equality has murdered philosophy.
Today we are living in an intellectual dark age. Expertise, valued opinion is dead because all are self professed experts in the realm of thought. I am a family physician by trade. I do not spend my day offering diagnosis that is based upon my 'expert' opinion, for the most part my time is spent confirming the preconceived diagnoses I am presented with. I have given up trying to argue a long time ago. Life is easier that way and patients are generally happier. The drugs don't kill and they mostly entertain the patient whilst nature effects her cure.
My daughter once told me 'Dad who needs a family physician when you have a smart phone?' Almost all the purveyors of thought must behave the same; the architect must bring form to the vision of his client, so to must the designer, the philosopher too must align his thought to the idiocy of the herd if that philosophy is to be deemed of value.
True philosophy resides like Zarathustra, far from the crowd. It lives in the mountains where it is safe and inaccessible. Presently it resides in the thought of the old Masters and it speaks with the quantum physicist in a language that is alien to the great mass of stinking thinking plebs.
Soon it may descend from the heights with a new idea, and we will recognise this as truth as soon as the herd have sentenced it to death.
M
But they haven't - philosophy just goes by different names these days. When people like Stephen Hawking think philosophy is dead, they think a certain kind of philosophizing is dead (and I think they're wrong on that account as well).
Or does he just draw media attention?
Philosophy has taught 'us' how to think carefully about common phenomena, matter, and ourselves and what we do. Few of us do it consistently well, as just pointed out, because to think constructively and objectively is difficult. The resultant conclusions are at most not going to be understood due to what seems to be their low 'face validity', and at best decried because they seem to be at counter-intuitive or just plainly wrong. Many will reach the same conclusions that are at variance with those of the philosopher and deem the philosopher to be inept or misapprehended.
Is philosophy dead? No more than music is dead, or materials science is dead, or ethical reasoning is dead, or morality is dead, or legal machinations are dead. Philosophy still has the rudiments at its feet to help us to climb into that vast tree of reasoning to figure out why something does what it does the way it does it, and if any part of that construction could be wrong or even furthered to good effect.
Philosophy will be dead when our level of understanding ceases to change in any way, and when we cease to seek the arcane and unforeseen results of what we have just come to understand. I don't see sentient creatures such as ourselves closing the intellectual shop just yet.
Category error. Shows Hawking didn't know philosophy.:grin:
Perhaps Hawking was being poetic. Wish he'd finished the poem.
'The unexamined life is not worth living', said Socrates, which is to say that philosophy is the examination of life. And from where is one to examine life, but from the point of view of death? So philosophy has always been dead, and practical men have always despised it and got on with their unexamined lives.
The rapid development of technology in our age, especially in telecommunication and transportation, pushing us towards the phenomenon called globalization in one hand and the gap in economy , political maturity and technology , that's all elements of welfare and living standards between the developed and undeveloped countries in the other hand , caused the migrant crisis and clashes between cultures , religions and ethnicities resulting in extremism , inflaming racism and reinforcing segregative and anti migrant inclinations and politicians in the developed countries . (remember Br-exit and US president now at office).
A trend quite opposite globalization phenomenon that seems inevitable.
Also the growth of non-renewable energy consumption besides the growth of population, especially in the third world, caused the global warming trend and the prospective drought and desertification in many parts of the world .
In other words , our world(planet) is becoming smaller , while our cultures , religions and ethnicities , and in a nutshell: our identities , holds us apart and we behave as if we stay apart , as before .
Now I am asking:
Is modern and even postmodern philosophies were answering and do answer the needs of humans' way of thinking and behavior to help humans cope with the oncoming vicissitudes?
So again, in my first post, I referred to that scientist's opinion about the habitability of our planet in near future. not to confirm that " philosophy is dead" , but perhaps because it has to be reviewed to find its weak or even wrong points.
We don't actually need philosophy for that, as that is not unique to philosophy. I would even argue that there are other academic areas that do a better job at setting one for systematic thinking and comprehension.
No, that's plumbing and market gardening.
There are philosophers who think that science is dead. Hawking's quote could represent the other side of the extreme. What both extremes don't seem to realize is that philosophy is a science and that you have to integrate all information from all domains of knowledge in order to have a more objective and consistent worldview.
If philosophy was irrelevant, then how come Hawking failed to answer all of the philosophical questions that have been raised? Hawking didn't even answer numerous questions that have been raised by the philosophy of science, much less questions in political philosophy.
Philosophy makes progress by refining its arguments for and against various positions. Philosophy deals with non-empirical issues, so progress in science does nothing to establish philosophy as being irrelevant. How could it?
I agree, fields like history, the hard sciences, the social sciences, etc. have similar system analysis. However, philosophy taught well teaches how to analyze and synthesize any information- this tool can be useful in any given field. That's just the pragmatic use. The more holistic reason is that though these fields have their own systems to study, philosophical thinking can see where the pieces fit together, to understand a worldview, then question this for any contradictions, fallacies, and assumptions, and rework it, etc. So it has the specific function of rigorous critical thinking applied across any field (including its specialties in metaphysics, logic, ethics, epistemology, aesthetics, and philosophy of...fields). It also has the general function of synthesizing information and seeing how the sub-systems fit together in a more general worldview. It is understanding the significance of the systems and how they fit together as a whole.
I think science is a philosophy, to use your terminology. Science is actually a tool developed under the auspices of the analytic/objectivist/logical-positivist disciplines of philosophy. And it's a great tool. Its successes are well-known and obvious to all. But it isn't the only tool we need, and it shouldn't be used when another tool is more useful or appropriate. So I would say this:
What both extremes don't seem to realize is that science is a philosophy and that you have to integrate all information from all domains of knowledge in order to have a more objective and consistent worldview.
And even then, I would wonder whether an objective worldview is a good thing to aim for. :chin:
But what to do stats on? What counts as significant? What about necessity as opposed to contingency? What do the results mean? Why does it matter? And some things are not amenable or appropriate for statistics. It is subsumed in philosophical meta-analysis and theories of value, significance, and what is the case.
It is subsumed in science, literature, history, politics, art, etc. . . . They all do it, all by themselves.
Also, if "philosophy" is part of every other discipline, then we don't really need it as its own separate entity.
You are not bringing anything unique to the table.
Well, which is it? Is philosophy a science, or is science a philosophy? The key to understanding the relationship between philosophy and science is to realize that philosophy is a science. And the conclusions of one branch of the investigation of reality must not contradict those of another. All knowledge must be integrated.
At root, science identifies and integrates sensory evidence (which is the nature of reason). Science is essentially based, not on experiment, but on observation and logic; the act of looking under a rock or into a telescope is the quintessentially scientific act. So is the act of observing and thinking about your own mental processes--a scientific act is completely private. (Proof of one's conclusions to others comes later, but that is argumentative, not inquisitive.) Science is willing to accept and integrate information from any observational source, without concern about persuading other people.
What other tools are there and when would they ever be more appropriate than using logic/reason to integrate sensory information? Many people make this same claim but when I ask what other methods there are and when they would be better to use, I don't get an answer. Can you do any better?
Quoting Pattern-chaser
Objectivity is knowledge incarnate. Subjectivity is ignorance incarnate. Socrates said that knowledge is the greatest good and ignorance is the greatest evil. So, to have knowledge means you need to limit your subjective world view in favor of a more objective one.
I believe the statement infers that philosophy was and still is the way to express wisdom, knowledge, concepts, percepts, ideas, etc. A way to represent/relate the great to the small; the abstract (principles) to the practical. Philosophy is the language of wisdom, it doesn't die, it adapts. Perhaps philosophers are no longer regarded with as much esteem as Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and the like, but they don't need to be rockstars to represent their calling. Philosophy still exists; unfortunately, our absurd expectations blind us to its true value. I think Hawking remarked to the incongruity within the people who hailed him as a celebrity (as famous/popular) but who would not take the time to understand his teachings or venture into them. To him, "philosophy is dead," because, instead of attracting like minded people who would walk with him side by side as companions (as in the old days), it pulled to him 'dead-weights', people who did not understand the primary fundamental that 'a philosopher is first and foremost a student of life, not some guy professing to give answers to questions nobody asked or cared for'. In his aloneness, philosophy truly was dead.
That's because, originally, Philosophy included aspects of Physical Science, Metaphysical Philosophy, and Sociological Religion/Politics. Christianity made Philosophy subservient to the Church (Theology). Politics, as usual, revels in Sophistry. And Science has left both Religion and Philosophy in the dust as the best source of knowledge about the real world. What's left for modern Philosophy is the stuff that very few people care about : the esoteric topics we discuss on this forum. :smile:
PS___If you want to revive philosophy, simply ask "what's for dinner tonight?". In many modern families a heated debate will ensue. :razz:
Philosophy is dead! Philosophy remains dead! And we have killed her! How can we console ourselves, the murderers of all murderers! The holiest and the mightiest thing the world has ever possessed has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood from us? With what water could we clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what holy games will we have to invent for ourselves? Is the magnitude of this deed not too great for us? Do we not ourselves have to become philosophers merely to appear worthy of it?
Yeah, I think that philosophy spent too much time with the sciences, that started to believe and eventually convinced herself that she is one of them. And so tries to express herself as a set of propositions, the so-called philosophical propositions, where in fact there are none. This is because philosophy thinks in terms of science, and in science there are indeed scientific propositions.
Quoting Gnomon
Well, I guess you know a lot about that! :)
It is not only from celebrity physicists that philosophy gets a bashing. Philosophers themselves also appear very critical of philosophy, which seems to be self-contradictory, but is it really?
For example, Heidegger, as it says here in this wikipedia article about the death of god:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_is_dead#Explanation
*god is dead
But of course, if there are no philosophical statements, then it is not self-refuting, and Hawking could be right. But I doubt that Hawking knew himself what he was talking about.
It is alive in ontology and epistemology.
It is dead in logic, which is now mathematics. It has never been alive in metaphysics, because infinite regress does not work. It has never worked in ethics either, because it cannot compete with religious law.
Yes. Logical Positivism was an attempt to bring metaphysical Philosophy closer to physical Science. But it missed the point of Metaphysics : to understand "things" that are not material, but mental.
This is not what I am thinking. It is difficult to describe.. Not "things" that you can understand, in the normal sense of understanding. Let's say irrational stuff, pro-logic. In this sense, it is logic that killed philosophy.
Maybe what you have in mind is Intuition versus Reasoning. Philosophy has always been a logical rational approach to the world. But, it cannot abandon the Intuition that sparks a chain of reasoning. Philosophy without Logic or Reasoning would be Faith and Religion. But to depend on logic alone, is the mistake of Logical Positivism. Man cannot live by logic alone.
That is a complete misunderstanding.
Logic is also based on faith, and very much so, because of the 14 speculative, unjustifiable, and otherwise arbitrary axioms of propositional logic. Pure reason does not mean "free from otherwise unjustifiable premises". It means "free from sensory input".
Therefore, the fact that religion rests on system-wide premises merely puts it in the deductive-axiomatic domain as opposed to the empirical domain. There is nothing wrong with that, because if there were, there would also be something fundamentally wrong with mathematics.
Furthermore, religious law is a formal system, just like any theory. For example, Islamic law has a largely mechanical epistemology, very much like mathematics, and when written in formal language, Islamic law is machine verifiable, just like all sound knowledge.
Furthermore, all attacks on religion would also apply to any subdiscipline in mathematics, including logic itself. The reason why atheists pick religion as a target, is simply because it looks like an easier target than mathematics. This wrong perception is caused by Christianity, because, unlike Orthodox Rabbinic Judaism and Islam, Christianity is not and has never been a formal system.
Quoting Wikipedia on the 'living' magisterium of the Church
Martin Luther tried to defend himself at his trial through scripture and reason, i.e. by treating religion as a mechanically-verifiable formal system, but the Church explicitly rejected such procedure. Still, the refusal to treat religion as as formal system is very much unique to Christianity. It generally does not apply to other religions.
Therefore, the entire idea that religion would not be a sound formal system is solely based on western ethnocentrism. It is simply an error.
Well, it's semantics, like philosophers nowadays say. Of course, reasoning and intuition are important to our way of thinking. But is that philosophy? Or just reasoned and intuited thinking, in other words, a tautology? Why does philosophy have to approach the world logically and rationally, and not illogically and irrationally, also?
The thought that philosophy is dead and has been dead for a long time now, or maybe even that it never was alive to begin with, has come to me only recently, and I would like to explore it. So I am prepared to take a rather extreme position, just for the hell of it, or out of plain curiosity that needs satisfaction, see what happens. They say that curiosity killed the cat, but they also say that satisfaction brought her back! :)
So I am gonna go ahead and say that philosophy died along with the ancient world, maybe as way back as the time of Aristotle. And since then, we haven't been philosophizing, but rather putting nails on her coffin. And that philosophers, especially of the modern day, are all phonies, like Holden in The Catcher in the Rye would say.
Great point. Everyone likes to make fun of philosophers!
Philosophy is dead and the over specialization killed it.
Cosmology, mathematics, doctines, etc... have whiddled down the emphasis of the subject but...but.. its more needed now then ever before.
The lack of philosophy has given us bad science, politics, curruption, and uncreativity.
I have a solution ot revive it.
What do you mean? Free from empirical data? Free from experience? But then, from where does pure reason get its input? Where does it come from?
Quoting alcontali
Ah, I remember Godel saying that he was fond of Islam, finding it a consistent idea of religion and open-minded. This is what he was talking about, right?
Quoting alcontali
So you are saying that Islam is being caught in the crossfire, because of christianity?
Please do tell! :smile:
Yeah, it's like they have it in them to be ridiculed, there's something about them. Just like our teachers at school that we used to hang them notes on their back, saying "I'm an idiot", or "hit me". :lol:
That is just a definition.
Quoting Wikipedia on Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason', the definition of 'Pure Reason'
Ok, this is probably new bait for some of the Kant haters here ...
Quoting Pussycat
I did not know that Gödel was fond of Islam. Napoleon was apparently too. I would have to find original material in which Gödel explains his views on Islam. I like Islam a lot because usul al-fiqh turns it into a formal system. That was a revelation to me because it means that religion does not have to be mere bullshit.
Quoting Pussycat
Yes.
The disaster at Martin Luther's trial in Worms has set the world on fire. It is horrible what happened there. Instead of discrediting just itself, or even just the Bible, the Church has successfully managed to discredit all possible religion in the western world. Duh.
:clap:
:death: :flower:
Only when death (i.e. human Mortality) becomes (medically/technologically) optional will (the need for) religion die. Likewise, when ignorance (of ignorance, especially) is no longer an inescapable, or inexhaustable, aspect of human Existence will philosophy be dead and buried.
So news of their respective demises is still very much premature. Both endeavors have been flattered by countless generations of undertakers - barkers at shadows - whom themselves in their turn have also been undertaken and will continue to be reaped grimly, no doubt, for countless generations to come.
Quoting LD Saunders
Yes - performative contradiction (e.g. like the assertion (by logical positivists) that 'only empirically verifiable statements are meaningful', which, of course, is not itself an 'empirically verifiable statement' and therefore is, in its own terms, meaningless). Folks have to watch out for those sneaky presuppositions (& damn entailments too).
The ontology of X, and the epistemology of X, will not die as long as X does not die.
(X is any knowledge subject, actually.)
Category theory maybe. :smirk:
Yeah, general abstract nonsense. On the one side, I really like its "nonsensical" touch and feel, but on the other side, I haven't been able to find anything surprising to do with it. So, I will have to leave it open ...
It is being used in quantum mechanics, hoping one day to replace physics!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_quantum_mechanics
With category theory, physics becomes time-less and space-less. So it is very suitable for merging relativity theory with quantum mechanics, since the main problem there is that these two theories have a completely different notion of time.
Philosophy is not dead and won't ever be dead, naturally, the medium and nature of the discourse will change over time but not a problem unless you're sentimental.
I would say that many of us won't accept the philosophical ideas that we don't like as being philosophical. Nonetheless, they are.
Also, even if people don't call what they're doing philosophy but something else instead, it's still philosophy.
Right. All areas of knowledge and informed opinion involve philosophy.
Hawking suggested that to save humanity we should move out into space. We haven’t gotten past the moon and haven’t been there in over 40 years. Many intelligent people even doubt if we ever really even got there. 1969 technology?
Hawking was doing ethics and metaphysics in his life work, and the dolt didn’t even realize it.
So do you think that philosophy has something to do with knowledge, and/or ignorance? And that when we stop being ignorant, then philosophy will die as a result? Maybe because it served its use and is no longer needed?
In a perfect world, the latter uses of either martial arts or philosophy would be unnecessary, as such attacks would not be made to begin with, but in the actual world it is unfortunately useful to be thus prepared; and even in a perfect world, with no external attackers, martial arts and philosophy are both still useful for their internal development and exercise of the body, mind, and will.
~Albert Einstein
:fire:
(NB: By stupidity I understand ... inadvertent harm to oneself and/or others, especially for no appreciable gain (e.g. playing lose-lose games), from making judgments on the basis of not knowing that (and what) one does not know (i.e. maladaptive conduct.))
Quoting Pussycat
I think it's a sustained self-examination (Socrates) which exposes to us that we, in fact, do not know or understand what we think - take for granted - we know or understand, and thereby helps us to align our expectations (i.e. judgments) with whatever is the case.
Like when we cannot be 'ignorant of our ignorance' or the eye cannot not see itself or there are no more 'unknown unknowns' ... but that's waiting on a train - apotheosis - that'll never come. No, Pussy, philosophy is an 'infinite task', or as Pierre Hadot says "a spiritual exercise" ...
... like 'hygiene' (or public health). :sweat:
Quoting Pfhorrest
:clap: :cool:
What is philosophy's purpose?
So you are saying that philosophy offers some kind of protection? Do you think it is also used for offensive purposes? Or, using your analogy, is it like karate, as it was taught by Mr Miyagi at least, "only for defence"? :)
But anyway, if what you say is so, then there is a lot of psychology involved in philosophy, and whatever "knowledge" one receives from it, it is a different kind of knowledge - if any, if we can call this knowledge - than the one used in epistemology. Just as one that knows how to fight, or play the piano, we wouldn't call this knowledge per se. Also, I am not sure who the enemy really is.
But this is not how it is used nowadays, is it? Taking a course on philosophy of X, to use alcontali's syntax, does not teach you your ignorance of X. Well, maybe at the beginning of the course, but then when you graduate, you say, "ah now I know!". So I think it has the opposite result.
Quoting 180 Proof
Again, one can hardly say that contemporary philosophy professors are "spiritual teachers".
The pursuit of wisdom. Wisdom, in turn, does not merely mean some set of correct statements, but rather is the ability to discern the true from the false, the good from the bad; or at least the more true from the less true, the better from the worse; the ability, in short, to discern superior answers from inferior answers to any given question.
To that end, philosophy must investigate questions about what our questions even mean, investigating questions about language; what criteria we use to judge the merits of a proposed answer, investigating questions about being and purpose, the objects of reality and morality respectively; what methods we use to apply those criteria, investigating questions about knowledge and justice; what faculties we need to enact those methods, investigating questions about the mind and the will; who is to exercise those faculties, investigating questions about academics and politics; and why any of it matters at all.
The tools of philosophy can be used against that end, but I prefer to call that "phobosophy" instead.
Given Tarski's undefinability of truth, any system has no other choice but to receive its fundamental truths from a higher meta-system.
Tarski beautifully modelled this problem in convention T in his semantic theory of truth.
It is the higher system that provides us with the truth about our own system, which appears in our own system out of the blue as axioms.
From there on, our own system can indeed deductively discern some of the true from the false, but this ability will -- unless it is a trivial system -- necessarily be incomplete or inconsistent (Gödel's first incompleteness theorem).
Our system will also not know about itself whether it is incomplete or else inconsistent, because any capacity to discern between both, will automatically make it inconsistent (Gödel's second incompleteness theorem).
It sounds like you still want a solution to David Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem:
Quoting Wikipedia on Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem
My point is that there is something wrong here, something fishy going on. :brow:
Philosophy is not so much dead as it is stuck at the end of a blind canyon.
There is no way forward except to retrace one's steps and re-examine the assumptions that have been made, particularly the implicit one's that are not even realised are assumptions. And then proceed from there.
But Tarski's and Godel's theorems work within a very strict - formal - mathematical framework. Do you think we can extrapolate them to the real world?
Well, rather: extrapolate them to how we perceive the real world. Stephen Hawking lectured the following on the subject:
Quoting Stephen Hawking on Gödel and the End of Physics
Or perhaps the more sensible thing to do would be to abandon any attempt to define 'truth' or even to use it in any formal system.
How we perceive scientifically the real world. I mean, if the only means of perception we have is science, but is it? This is scientism, which may be right of course.
And after all, in both Tarksi and Godel, both concepts of proof and truth are extremely well defined. In the case of the real world however, even from a scientific outlook, they are completely vague: you can conjure them as you see fit. What is truth? What is proof? (well, not the TPF user)
Quoting alcontali
Yeah, I remember reading it some years back. But the next sentence in his lecture, I think is important: "Without it, we would stagnate".
And also: "Godel’s theorem ensured there would always be a job for mathematicians. I think M theory will do the same for physicists".
So, in the above, Hawking draws the analogy between Godel's theorem and M theory, believing that M theory is to the real/physical world what Godel's theorem is to the mathematical equivalent. And therefore we will ad infinitum be looking for answers, which is a good thing, because otherwise we would stagnate. Stagnation, that comes from complete knowledge of how stuff works, is for Hawking the worst that can happen to us. And therefore he is relieved.
This lecture was given in 2002. But then in 2010, after the publication of his book, "The Grand Design", he has a change of heart.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/09/11/stephen.hawking.interview/index.html
"Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion," Hawking replied. "The scientific account is complete. Theology is unnecessary."
Wow! "The scientific account is complete"!
Putting theological statements aside (or maybe not), he now believes that M-theory gives a complete description of reality! So I couldn't help it back then and send him an e-mail, well actually not to him because the probabilities of an answer would be next to zero, but to his co-author Leonard Mlodinow, and referring to the 2002 lecture, I asked him what made him change his mind, but I didn't get an answer, duh. :) So I am still curious.
Yeah, I think Aristotle was along the same lines, if I remember correctly. Socrates also. After all, if you don't praise your own house, it will fall down on you, like they say. But saying "to any given question", this opens philosophers up, it makes them vulnerable to ridicule. And there you have Aristophanes in his "Clouds", having Socrates wondering about a flea's long jump.
Quoting Pfhorrest
For sure, all these are part of our public and private investigations. But what of philosophy? What is its agenda? What does philosophy want?
Quoting Pfhorrest
One could also use the term foolosophy.
Thanks for the malaprop! It complements my own foolery.
Perhaps the topic question of this thread should be (more prosaically - pardon the heideggerian echo) reformulated:
Is thinking dead? and if so can we revive it? :chin:
How so? Pursuing some question may be ridiculous, but philosophy is just about finding ways to pursue questions, not about picking which questions to pursue.
Quoting Pussycat
What does running want? An activity isn't the kind of thing that has wants. It's a means. Why run? To get somewhere fast, or for exercise maybe. Why do philosophy? I already answered that.
Mathematics has no direct empirical take on the world. Its models are always abstract Platonic worlds. It is through its influence on empirical disciplines (such as science) that it affects our real-world view. There are obviously other empirical disciplines such as history with its historical method. However, in my impression, history does not use the language nor the invariants of mathematics.
Quoting Pussycat
There is no proof in empirical disciplines, simply because proof about the physical universe is impossible. The regulatory framework in use in science with which they attempt to maintain correspondence between their logic sentences and the physical universe is obviously far from perfect. Falsificationism is merely a best-effort endeavour.
Quoting Pussycat
Any link to that?
I would be surprised if Hawking has ever repeated the "God of Gaps" ideological conjecture.
I personally think that Tarski's convention T is an elegant and adequate workaround for the undefinability of truth. The video below explains convention T in approximately 10 minutes and in a surprisingly simple way:
Well I watched your video. It seems that the main aim of the T convention was to avoid the so called 'liar paradox'.
But as mentioned/discussed in another thread (Statements are true?), there is no paradox if the assumption that statements are 'true' or 'false' is not made.
Without the requirement for statements to be 'true' or 'false' but that instead 'true' or 'false' are merely labels that can be appended to a statement, there is no paradox nor problem. It would not even be paradoxical for a statement to be labelled as both 'true' and 'false'.
The liar paradox is not used in the proof strategy for the undefinability the truth. The main consideration is Carnap's diagonal lemma:
So, let's try to define a truth predicate. We will now face the following situation:
So, we will know of a particular sentence that it is true but the truth predicate will say that it is false, and the other way around. That is clearly inconsistent.
Quoting A Seagull
In Carnap's diagonal lemma, the truth of a sentence is an externally supplied label. The whole question is whether this externally supplied label can be replaced by a predicate. It cannot, because that would lead to contradictions.
Quoting A Seagull
Actually, it isn't.
There are logic systems that are many-valued (additional values other than just true and false) or where the truth status of a sentence is many-valued.
I am not sure what the impact of many-valued logic would be on Carnap's diagonal lemma, which the underlying reason for the undefinability of truth. At first glance, it may mean that all combinations of truth value for the sentence and the truth value for a truth predicate will be populated. In that case, a truth predicate will still be undefinable.
Concerning incompleteness, making fixes to the logic will also not fix the problem. At the core you have the consideration that a theory with infinite model size will have a model for each infinite cardinality and therefore have an infinite number of models (Löwenheim–Skolem theorem). That allows for facts to be true in one model but false in another. That kind of true facts will never be provable from the theory, because provability requires this fact to be true in all models.
Quoting alcontali
And because of this distinction between the formal/mathematical/non-empirical/logical world and the real world which is nothing like the other, we should be really suspicious of attempts made to reconcile the two.
Tarski's theorem is good for maths, brilliant even, but when it tries to apply itself to the real world, then it is an abomination.
Quoting alcontali
I've given the link in my post.
Well, they are not being "reconciled". Science uses the language of mathematics to maintain consistency in what it says. Mathematics does not tell science what to say. It only tells science how to say it while eliminating quite a bit of the risk of contradicting itself.
It is a bureaucracy of formalisms (mathematics) that helps maintaining consistency in another bureaucracy of formalisms (science).
Quoting Pussycat
Mathematics never tries to apply itself to the real world.
Mathematics is not an empirical discipline. It is deductive from first principles only.
I don't know what scientists can do with Tarski's theorem within their own work. Scientists are otherwise really good at using mathematics to their benefit. Their use of mathematics is certainly not considered to be an abomination.
When Hawking says:
[quote=Hawking]What is the relation between Godel’s theorem and whether we can formulate the theory of the universe in terms of a finite number of principles? One connection is obvious. According to the positivist philosophy of science, a physical theory is a mathematical model. So if there are mathematical results that can not be proved, there are physical problems that can not be predicted.[/quote]
... he makes the error of applying Godel's theorem to physics and the real world. There is no connection, let alone an obvious one. If one thing is obvious, this is Hawking's misinterpretation of the theorem.
EDIT: Ah yes, almost forgot. If in his 2002 lecture it was obvious for Hawking that Godel's theorem proved that scientific knowledge will never be complete, why then in 2010 he said that "the scientific account is complete"? Most probably another "obvious"! :D I am fed up hearing about obvious connections and conclusions. :worry:
Well, it is still clearly his field that would need to make such connection, because mathematics itself will certainly not make any.
He may indeed have incorrectly made the connection.
Still, that can only be assessed by subjecting his connection to the empirical regulatory framework of his field. In my opinion, he may have wanted to provide the paperwork required by the regulations in his own field along with a mechanical procedure to verify the paperwork.
Therefore, I would agree with a decision of the bureaucracy to reject his hypothesis about that connection for failing to submit the paperwork required for that purpose.
But what of, what about philosophy?
At the end of Book VII of Plato's Republic, Socrates discusses with Glaucon the current state of philosophy, and what needs to be done in order to have people trained in it:
Oh, Socrates, you were a jokester, among many other things. The old will learn to run, and the young will toil. Cause it's true that you can't teach an old dog new tricks.