Philosophy is Dead

@The Outsider,

The Outsider wrote:

Wow. I'm not sure where that came from. Maybe we're not communicating very well. Let me try to clearer.

I say "natural philosophy" (which is of course what the course of study that was the precursor to the modern natural sciences such as physics was called in universities) meaning a particular focus within the general subject of philosophy. Other foci would include ethics, logic, epistomology, aesthetics, political philosophy, etc.

Science and philosophy stem from the same basic question. They are both attempts to understand the world. But these two subjects in modern times are differentiated by their goals. Science seeks answers. I suspect this is why scientists are so often frustrated with philosophers and their seeming inablity to produce answers. Philosophy seeks to understand the basis of the question itself. Why are we asking this question? Is there a reason in pursuing this question? What exactly do we define as reason? ... I'll stop there.

Take the age old question: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? The scientific answer is to go out, devise a method for testing the proposition and a few weeks later you'll come back and announce, "Well, we've got our answers for birch and hickory, but further investigation is needed for maple." The philosphical response, however, "How do you define sound?"

The common denomenator to all those studies is the application of logic, and the problem is that at base, knowledge and being are moral forms, that is: meaning -invariably subjective- with no specific being... It is part of the reason ethics is so easily cut out of physics, is because moral knowledge is so foreign to physics in reason and method...On the other hand; though morals are powerless to affect change, physics cannot be cut out of morals... Ethics/morality considers the effects of all aspects of behavior on the life of society and of humanity... Physical forms, the forms we encounter through our senses, that behave in a regular and ordered fashion and upon which we can appply logic are only a fraction of our forms, though they are true forms... All moral forms are quasi concepts, which exist if at all, as meaning...

Now; your question suggests that philosophy askes stupid questions that it is too stupid to answer... The question has been reduced to stupidity for what one know to be the case is the case within or without ones sight...But in its true context, the context of all philosophical questions, the answer is this: We hear the sound of whole forests falling because we do not strain to hear the sound of a single tree... And when a forest falls something more than trees die, but a bit of life which we share with all creatures and plants... And because one says he owns the land he thinks he owns the life when in fact he owns nothing but his own life and destroys life belonging to all humanity and so does an immense injustice which we will forever suffer...

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@wandeljw,

wandeljw wrote:

fresco wrote:

Quote:
Take the age old question: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? The scientific answer is to go out, devise a method for testing the proposition and a few weeks later you'll come back and announce, "Well, we've got our answers for birch and hickory, but further investigation is needed for maple." The philosphical response, however, "How do you define sound?"

I don't particularly want to get int your dialogue with Fido, but your physicist-philosopher division falls apart immediately when you consider Einstein's "thought experiments" about "time" which lead to relativity and beyond. The significant point is that "progress" in physics is being advanced "by the mind"...experiment is trails in its wake and many physicists don't get their hands dirty.

I personally think that "thought experiments" belong to philosophy. Einstein reportedly recognized a need for scientists to understand epistemological issues and even moral issues.

And he was correct; and there is nothing in physic that removes the physicist from humanity or human responsibility... Rather, super rational people are that because they are failures at morality which is irrational and confusing and worked without progress...One cannot know through morals or reach a firm conclusion... All one can take from it is character, and that is the same thing that brings each person to a study of morals... It is too much work for too little gain for anyone with ability and ambition...

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@The Outsider,

The Outsider wrote:

Wow. I'm not sure where that came from. Maybe we're not communicating very well. Let me try to clearer.

I say "natural philosophy" (which is of course what the course of study that was the precursor to the modern natural sciences such as physics was called in universities) meaning a particular focus within the general subject of philosophy. Other foci would include ethics, logic, epistomology, aesthetics, political philosophy, etc.

Science and philosophy stem from the same basic question. They are both attempts to understand the world. But these two subjects in modern times are differentiated by their goals. Science seeks answers. I suspect this is why scientists are so often frustrated with philosophers and their seeming inablity to produce answers. Philosophy seeks to understand the basis of the question itself. Why are we asking this question? Is there a reason in pursuing this question? What exactly do we define as reason? ... I'll stop there.

Take the age old question: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? The scientific answer is to go out, devise a method for testing the proposition and a few weeks later you'll come back and announce, "Well, we've got our answers for birch and hickory, but further investigation is needed for maple." The philosphical response, however, "How do you define sound?"

Philosophers have learned to examine questions before they attempt to answer them because when it comes to philosophy once the questions are examined it often turns out that the clarification of the the question is enough of an answer, and that often, after examination of the question, it turns out that there was no real question in the first place, but only some confusion or a false assumption which, on exposure as false, shows the question did not exist. An analogy is the child's question, "How high is up?" On pointing out that "up" is not the name of a place, but the name of a direction, the question disappears since it was based on the false assumption that "up" is the name of place. But in the example you offer about whether the tree makes a sound, it is not so clear that the problem lies with the meaning of the word, "sound". It might be that there is an empirical answer. Suppose we leave a tape recorder near the tree, and when the tree has fallen we retrieve the tape-recorder and listen to the tape. What do you think we'll hear?

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@kennethamy,

kenneth, Not true at all; there are many questions that do not provide the answer. Example: What is god?

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@fresco,

I don't mean to say that one must be strictly just a philosopher, or a scientist, or a blues musician. We can be many things. Einstein, while most renowned as a physicist was an excellent philosopher as well.

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@The Outsider,

The Outsider wrote:

I don't mean to say that one must be strictly just a philosopher, or a scientist, or a blues musician. We can be many things. Einstein, while most renowned as a physicist was an excellent philosopher as well.

And a lousy violinist... One cannot be a physicist without being a philosopher, nor can one be a moralist without being a philosopher... One can be a moralist without being a physicist, but must have some grasp of physics out of necessity, because a moral fact must be a physical fact, and facts should not contradict facts of another field of study... Music has nothing in common with philosophy...

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

kenneth, Not true at all; there are many questions that do not provide the answer. Example: What is god?

Kenn does not get it... No tape recording or a tree falling yesterday tells you if a hypothetical falling tree makes a sound; but real trees do make sounds, and it is not hypthetical knowledge that makes one knowledgable, but real knowledge, and the quality that makes real knowledge more valueable than hypothetical knowledge is reliability... If you can trust it, it is worth something....It is the very quality that make math useful... It does not start with truth or end with truth, exactly; but it is reliable...

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There seems to be a lot of verbiage going on here about protection of the term "philosophy". To get back to Hawking's conjecture that "philosophy is dead", I take that apply to speculative thought processes which do not take into account the interplay between mathematical models and empirical observation. Such interplay is at the cutting edge of what we call "science"( including "linguistics").

I reiterate that those "philosophers" who are unaware that Aristotelian logic is merely another mathematical model with limited applicability, are exactly the target of Hawking's comment.

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@Fido,

Quote:

And a lousy violinist... One cannot be a physicist without being a philosopher, nor can one be a moralist without being a philosopher... One can be a moralist without being a physicist, but must have some grasp of physics out of necessity, because a moral fact must be a physical fact, and facts should not contradict facts of another field of study... Music has nothing in common with philosophy...

What do you mean when you say a moral fact must be a physical fact?

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

Quote:

Suppose we leave a tape recorder near the tree, and when the tree has fallen we retrieve the tape-recorder and listen to the tape. What do you think we'll hear?

Falling trees don't make sound. Even tape recorders don't make sound. Ears make sound.

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Quote:

Why does Stephen Hawking think science has overtaken philosophy?
(Nicholas Blincoe, The Guardian, 8 September 2010)

Stephen Hawking uses his new book, The Grand Design, to admonish philosophers for failing to keep up. My question is: is this really about keeping up? Hawking believes that since science has so far outstripped philosophy it is time for the thinkers to leave the field to the guys with the protractors and pocket calculators, but – another question – who let Stephen Hawking choose the rules of the game?

A quote from The West Wing comes to mind. Speechwriter Sam Seaborn argues that mankind should go to Mars because "it's next": "we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill and we saw fire; and we crossed the ocean and we pioneered the west, and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on a timeline of exploration and this is what's next."

What is so disturbing about Sam's vision is his effortless linkage of the opening of the west (the "manifest destiny" of the pioneers, an adventure fuelled by the religious rhetoric of the Methodist "Great Awakening") to human spirit and on to space travel.

Here, on a single flight-path, Sam connects religion, human nature and science. Life is a soaring vector, and that vector is "progress". This is the exact same notion of progress offered by Hawking. Of course, Hawking has no use for religion, but so evangelical about the notion of "progress" is he that it might as well be a religion.

How does Hawking define progress? Pretty much the same way it is defined in a quote attributed to Carlos "The Jackal": "You know you're getting somewhere when you're stepping over bodies." In Hawking's case, the bodies are those of philosophers, cast aside by science's relentless march.

To Hawking, vector is everything. Cosmology is about energy, as biology is about evolution, and Hawking demands that philosophy reflect this crazed restlessness. He criticises philosophers for failing to understand the maths that underpins his sciences, forgetting that it was a stream of philosophers who defined mathematics and, whether Zeno (in the fifth century BC) or Tarski (in the 20th century), also saw the multiple paradoxes that a reliance on numbers can lead to, as well as noting the theoretical impossibility of ever defining "number" from inside a mathematical framework. Why does Hawking love energy so much? Because, like Sam Seaborn and S Club 7, his idea of energy reflects a deeper wish to get moving and reach the stars. But he is also devoted to energy because this is simply how modern scientists look at things. Since Einstein, "energy equals matter" and Hawking lacks the imagination to think outside this box.

What does the universe look like to these men? A recent suggestion, emerging from work done on the Poincare Conjecture, is that the universe is an endlessly moving conveyor belt whose path might be modelled as a three dimensional coating on a four dimensional sphere. That's it. The universe is a slightly funky Möbius strip. All that time with their calculators and the best these guys come up with is something they first heard about in kindergarten!

If the universe is a four dimensional sphere, is this a metaphor? If so, is it possible that we need a new theory of metaphor? Hawking criticises philosophy for playing trivial word games and one sympathises: it must seem awfully trivial to a guy with no theoretical imagination. Or perhaps we should we go another way and allow that a four dimensional object is real. The question, then, is why should we prefer this object over, say, Leibniz's Monads? For Leibniz, a Monad is part of a fundamental multiplicity and each one, within its heart, carries all the information of the universe in a single, stable form.

There it is: an alternative view of matter that does not hinge on an undefined notion of "progress", from a man who could out-fox Isaac Newton on a good day and died three hundred years ago. Leibniz shows us why philosophy survives: because it is not stupid, though it may seem that way if one only glances at it, as one speeds past on a road to nowhere.

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@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
And a lousy violinist... One cannot be a physicist without being a philosopher, nor can one be a moralist without being a philosopher... One can be a moralist without being a physicist, but must have some grasp of physics out of necessity, because a moral fact must be a physical fact, and facts should not contradict facts of another field of study... Music has nothing in common with philosophy...

What do you mean when you say a moral fact must be a physical fact?

Estentially, that any moral good is also a phycial good... Or tht the existence of God should have some physical proof or it should not be given the weight of a physical reality... Medieval philsophers believed that God had to follow the rules of logic, that, in the words of Lincoln: God could not be both for an against.... The thought is fine for theology and the free for all of spirituality; but where philosophy deals with infinites as it is forever doing in the moral world, then we can only say we know what we know, and that belief does no constitute knowledge... Morals suffers from the fact on both ends that the logic of the physical world does not work, so it cannot be learned as a subject is usually taught, not taught at all on purpose....

Moral lessons can be taken anytwhere... If you see a person changing a tire gone flat on the way to work you can take a moral lesson of the first degree... People can damn threir fate and see their luck running down a street drain... They can recognize the power of blind chance, and feel assured that though late, their relationship at work is secure... They can face their own power and missteps and the result of their own condition, and commit to greater care, better tires, a more reliable spare, and a more virtuous life...

It is not that morals follow the same logic as the physical world, but that there is a rude sort of logic that does exist that people have to be sensitive to discern... What goes around comes around is not accurate and still, in a sense, true; since when humanity kicks, humanity feels the kick and suffers the pain.. We are our own victims... We often suffer our virtue and celebrate our vice, but that does not mean there are no benefits to virtue, or victims to vice... No one should do good for the pleasure of some supreme being, or to avoid the penalites of hell... They should do good and be good because good gets done, and goodness, virtue born out of thought and consideration makes for a superior and more healthy person... It is not as simple as cause or effect, or two plus two, but there is a logic to it....

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
Suppose we leave a tape recorder near the tree, and when the tree has fallen we retrieve the tape-recorder and listen to the tape. What do you think we'll hear?

Falling trees don't make sound. Even tape recorders don't make sound. Ears make sound.

I can see you do not get it... Do the rules of physical reality maintain themselves out of our sight, or not??? The question is a reduction, and an attempt at a reduction to absurdity, (reductio ad absurdum), and the absurdity is that people should believe things only exist because we can witness them... It is not exitence we give to objects when we form ideas; but meaning, and the question should be: If a tree falls beyond our sight, does it have any meaning??? There we can see a single tree having little meaning and a whole forest having much more meaning....But meaning is a moral form itself... And all forms with meaning only without specific being are moral forms, like justice, or viture, or vice, or liberty... But trees are physical forms having both meaning and being... So, in a general sense, the falling of a tree makes a sound, as all movement of matter does, but it is a question not of being that is obvious, but of meaning which is subtle...

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@Fido,

Fido wrote:

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
Suppose we leave a tape recorder near the tree, and when the tree has fallen we retrieve the tape-recorder and listen to the tape. What do you think we'll hear?

Falling trees don't make sound. Even tape recorders don't make sound. Ears make sound.

I can see you do not get it... Do the rules of physical reality maintain themselves out of our sight, or not??? The question is a reduction, and an attempt at a reduction to absurdity, (reductio ad absurdum), and the absurdity is that people should believe things only exist because we can witness them... It is not exitence we give to objects when we form ideas; but meaning, and the question should be: If a tree falls beyond our sight, does it have any meaning??? There we can see a single tree having little meaning and a whole forest having much more meaning....But meaning is a moral form itself... And all forms with meaning only without specific being are moral forms, like justice, or viture, or vice, or liberty... But trees are physical forms having both meaning and being... So, in a general sense, the falling of a tree makes a sound, as all movement of matter does, but it is a question not of being that is obvious, but of meaning which is subtle...

Since the question was whether the tree makes a sound even when there is no one there to hear it, why, exactly, doesn't the sound on the tape recorder show that it does? Sorry about being so unsubtle, but that is a simple question.

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

Fido wrote:

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
Suppose we leave a tape recorder near the tree, and when the tree has fallen we retrieve the tape-recorder and listen to the tape. What do you think we'll hear?

Falling trees don't make sound. Even tape recorders don't make sound. Ears make sound.

I can see you do not get it... Do the rules of physical reality maintain themselves out of our sight, or not??? The question is a reduction, and an attempt at a reduction to absurdity, (reductio ad absurdum), and the absurdity is that people should believe things only exist because we can witness them... It is not exitence we give to objects when we form ideas; but meaning, and the question should be: If a tree falls beyond our sight, does it have any meaning??? There we can see a single tree having little meaning and a whole forest having much more meaning....But meaning is a moral form itself... And all forms with meaning only without specific being are moral forms, like justice, or viture, or vice, or liberty... But trees are physical forms having both meaning and being... So, in a general sense, the falling of a tree makes a sound, as all movement of matter does, but it is a question not of being that is obvious, but of meaning which is subtle...

Since the question was whether the tree makes a sound even when there is no one there to hear it, why, exactly, doesn't the sound on the tape recorder show that it does? Sorry about being so unsubtle, but that is a simple question.

The question is not whether a particular tree that fell make a sound when falling... You are offering, as you have often done, a specific answer in an attempt to address a general question... The question is not in regard to this tree or that tree, but a tree, any tree for which no amount of specific proof regarding specific trees can presume to prove with finality... And no one needs a tape recorder to prove what is obvious, or has the time to testify to the accuracy of the experiment, the condition of the recorder and date of the whole affair...You need a general proof to general questions... There is a point and place to minute examinations of issues, and the point for us is to be able with confindence to make general conclusions such as those regarding the sound made by objects in movement... Ultimately it is a moral question as all questions of knowledge of physics is... Does it work is the proof, and do you trust is the question...

1 Reply

@Fido,

I don't know where you are getting your concept of "meaning " from, but you fail to see a fundamental point. We are not talking about "trees", nor are we talking about the observation of trees. We are talking about the observation of observation of trees. One mathematical model which deals with this is called "second order cybernetics" and I can hear Hawking laughing to himself as you attempt to hang your "moral forms"on that !

1 Reply

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

kennethamy wrote:

Fido wrote:

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
Suppose we leave a tape recorder near the tree, and when the tree has fallen we retrieve the tape-recorder and listen to the tape. What do you think we'll hear?

Falling trees don't make sound. Even tape recorders don't make sound. Ears make sound.

I can see you do not get it... Do the rules of physical reality maintain themselves out of our sight, or not??? The question is a reduction, and an attempt at a reduction to absurdity, (reductio ad absurdum), and the absurdity is that people should believe things only exist because we can witness them... It is not exitence we give to objects when we form ideas; but meaning, and the question should be: If a tree falls beyond our sight, does it have any meaning??? There we can see a single tree having little meaning and a whole forest having much more meaning....But meaning is a moral form itself... And all forms with meaning only without specific being are moral forms, like justice, or viture, or vice, or liberty... But trees are physical forms having both meaning and being... So, in a general sense, the falling of a tree makes a sound, as all movement of matter does, but it is a question not of being that is obvious, but of meaning which is subtle...

Since the question was whether the tree makes a sound even when there is no one there to hear it, why, exactly, doesn't the sound on the tape recorder show that it does? Sorry about being so unsubtle, but that is a simple question.

The question is not whether a particular tree that fell make a sound when falling... You are offering, as you have often done, a specific answer in an attempt to address a general question... The question is not in regard to this tree or that tree, but a tree, any tree for which no amount of specific proof regarding specific trees can presume to prove with finality... And no one needs a tape recorder to prove what is obvious, or has the time to testify to the accuracy of the experiment, the condition of the recorder and date of the whole affair...You need a general proof to general questions... There is a point and place to minute examinations of issues, and the point for us is to be able with confindence to make general conclusions such as those regarding the sound made by objects in movement... Ultimately it is a moral question as all questions of knowledge of physics is... Does it work is the proof, and do you trust is the question...

But why do you think I am talking about some particular tree? I am not. I am talking about any tree at all, and I am pointing out that we can tell about any tree whether it made a sound when there was no one there is hear it, by putting a tape recorder (and in case you are troubled, I mean any tape recorder) near it, and then retrieving the tape recorder (again, any tape recorder) and listening to it. I don't see how this is a moral question having to do with good or bad, but it is an epistemological question having to do with how do we know. And the answer to the question, how do we know that the tree at all, made a sound, is that we can know by inference from what we know directly. By the way, let me point out to you that we often use the term "the so-and-so" not to mean a particular so-and-so, but a general so-and-so. For example, we can say, "the lion is ferocious" not meaning any particular lion, for lion in general. Thus, when I talk of "the tree in the forest" I do not mean any particular true, but trees in general.

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

I don't know where you are getting your concept of "meaning " from, but you fail to see a fundamental point. We are not talking about "trees", nor are we talking about the observation of trees. We are talking about the observation of observation of trees. One mathematical model which deals with this is called "second order cybernetics" and I can hear Hawking laughing to himself as you attempt to hang your "moral forms"on that !

Even Hawking in his story of turtles in a Brief History seemed to agree that moral forms underlay our physical understanding... All numbers are based upon the concept of one... Only in math and not in reality can one be considered the equal of one... Show me where one equals one... And yet math works as a model even though a moral agreement exists between us and most folks that one is one... It is hard to argue with what works...

You really have to try to grasp to what degree people and even scientists know without proof... Do you think anyone has ever troubled to prove a fraction of what they hold is true, or that some force like gravity did not exist for people without its rules being mathematically expressed.... We all know more than we can say, more than we are conscious prove, more than we are conscious of at any given moment... The problem is not our want of knowledge, but of the will to use our minds and face the moral questions that confront us head on that physicist as much as churrch men defer to another day because they think they can....

1 Reply

@Fido,

Sorry ..but "proof" is a straw man. Scientists "know better" (ho ho) than to play with such a low-level concept. I can't remember whether or not Hawking actually used the words "moral form" when discussing the nominal level of measurement. (counting one). Be that as it may, "naming" is clearly a social phenomenon concerning expected interactions on the part of agents. If you want to assign a "moral dimension" to all such interactions I suggest you are merely pandering a mystical concept of "purposeful existence" little different from that of a religionist.

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

Try to get it Kenn... Physics is not only based upon the mind, but upon the senses, and all the tools of physics other than mind and reason are based upon the senses, and are extensions of the senses... So your tape recorder, old school though it is, is only a human witness once removed that demands supporting evidence, when it is itself only supporting evidence and not proof...

Of all physical reality there is no proof as we consider proof, absolute... All is evidence; when if we think of it, what is evident is usually obvious... Is it not obvious that moving objects move air, and that moving air is sound??? The question is whether it possible for the laws of physics to suddenly cease to be when no witness is regestered as present...

Don't you know better??? And does your recorder tell you what happens in other locations at other times??? The whole business is retarded... Beneath all ontological and epistomological questions is the moral question of our meaning, and of our ability to trust, and to what degree we can have faith in the hard won knowledge of generations passed... We cannot define life, and have to live our lives without proof positive that we have any sort of objective exitence, and yet we live...It can be done, and must be done; that without certainty, we must know, and fortunately do know more than we ever realize...

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