Not contempt. I'm puzzled. Hence the question:
Why is it that philosophy does not build on prior work
in the same way mathematics does?
The answer Glen gave is quite satisfying: they're not expected to,
they're on the frontier figuring out the right questions to be
addressing. Math is the cleanup squad.
This makes philosophy much easier to understand: just wait until they
tickle your fancy, then apply formalism to make it last. Philosophy
is not constructive. I think I knew that but hadn't put it into words.
-- Owen
On Jul 10, 2009, at 10:48 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
Glen,
What you have written below is beautifully said. I often feel that
Owen's
contempt for philosophy arises from bulldozing everything he finds
contemptible into a pile and calling it philosophy. I know so many
mathematicians who dip back into philosophy from time to time to
agree with
the proposition that nothing that not been formalized is worth talking
about.
But I do think that you and I and others may have contributed to his
contempt by failing to articulate where we have made progress and, in
particular, where the arguments of one of us has improved or
corrected the
argument of the other. Or perhaps, even, to reveal problems that we
have
uncovered that we now find insoluble. It would be interesting to
make a
list of points of agreement between us on the subject of emergence.
Owen is correct that Wittgenstein would not necessarily be our ally
in such
a project, since he seems to have come to regard philosophy as
nothing more
than a tool for its own destruction. .
His aphorism, "That of which we cannot speak [clearly?] we should
pass over
in silence" cuts so many ways.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
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