Philosophy was the only useful thing that I learned in university...Not the substance, that was as you describe, but the approach--a stance of critical (somewhat) detachment--digging out (and then critically challenging) hidden assumptions and taken for granted frameworks of thinking... All other learning has/had a price -- learning how to do that, priceless.
M -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2012 9:53 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Re: Thoughts on the golden age Mike G. wrote: > On the below you are only half right... A lot of Anglo-Saxonia and > particulalry the Brits have been pre-occupied with the number of nits > they could parse from the hind side of whatever mangy analytical dog > might be roaming by... but there has also been some very interesting > Philosophy of Knowledge, Philsopohy of Science, Phenomenology, even > Existentialism which has been rather more true > (to) life -- FWIW. Near the end of my sophomore year I contemplated changing my major from chemistry to philosophy. After a little investigation, I came up with this synopsis: The goal of philosophy is to construct sentences which begin, "It may be said that...." The established philosopher strives to construct sentences which begin, "It may be said, without fear of contradiction, that...." (I stayed with chemistry. :-) That somewhat sophomoric observation (Hey, I was a sophomore, okay?) seems, in retrospect, to have contained a grain of truth. In any event, I was much more taken, a decade or so onward, with Warren McCulloch who described himself 60 or more years ago as an "experimental epistemologist." His and his contemporaries' approach has arborized, today, into cognitive neuroscience, neural modeling and similar domains. I still bog down trying to read stuff billed as philosophy, much the same as with economics. Well, I did confess that my perspective on philosophy was "notably under-informed". - Mike -- Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. /V\ [email protected] /( )\ http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
