[Ham] Krimel just confessed to me his belief that "Philosophy is simply disappearing, and the sooner the better." As you seem to think that pragmatic solutions are the most important problem to address, I assume you share his opinion.
I had intended to take up the importance of "definitions" with you, but, under the circumstances, it would be an exercise in futility. [Krimel] I "confessed" to you? Would that be "confessed" as in what parishioner does to a priest? Or perhaps what one does in a "private" correspondence? It certainly could not mean "confessed" as in revealing something hidden. Or as in, an admission of guilt. This is a point I have made several times in the past. Philosophical speculation as been steadily dissolving into western culture. At some point I think we would all be happy to see it retained as the vestigial "P" in the degrees awarded in other disciplines. As I said in our "private" correspondence, philosophy: "...is being transformed into something better. Newton and Galileo were natural philosophers, as was Aristotle. Ever since the time of the Greeks, science has been eating philosophy. Philosophy isn't even a course requirement in most colleges today and the departments are among the smallest on most campuses. This is because all of the philosophers got real jobs, doing real things in areas that could previously only be pursued through speculation. On the other hand scientists for the past 100 years have made contributions to philosophy that beggar the contributions of the philosophers. Einstein, Bohr and Bohm come easily to mind as do Gould, Wilson, Skinner, Dawkins and even Sheldrake." I supposed I could add more names to the list, Descartes, Pascal, Poincare, Liebniz, Goethe, James, Whitehead, Freud, and Jung. Furthermore, philosopher who have not been actively involved in scientific activities have been involved in explaining the meaning of what scientists have had to say. That would include Locke, Mills, Hume, Kant, Russell, Popper, Dewey, Wittgenstein, Sartre, Kuhn, Rorty, Dennett, Searle... awe hell pretty much all of them. Your repeated claim that philosophy has something to as about matter which can have no meaningful impact is simply confused. If it can not be experienced; if it has no consequences whatever on anything that can be experienced; if no criteria can be established for evaluating its truth claim; then what of it? We have a perfectly legitimate field for the kind of inquiry you hold in such high esteem. It's called fiction. In your case as I also noted in our "private" correspondence the motivation seems transparently theological. It is your conviction about the reality of God that drives your conclusions. You have constructed an elaborate house of cards to support you inner conviction/ "intuition" that there is meaning and purpose in the universe. You remind me of a quote from Douglas Adams that I have trotted out at least once before but it is worth repeating. "O Deep Thought Computer," he said, "the task we have designed you to perform is this. We want you to tell us..." he paused, "...the Answer!" "The answer?" said Deep Thought. "The answer to what?" "Life!" urged Fook. "The Universe!" said Lunkwill. "Everything!" they said in chorus. Deep Thought paused for a moment's reflection. "Tricky," he said finally. "But can you do it?" Again, a significant pause. "Yes," said Deep Thought, "I can do it." "There is an answer?" said Fook with breathless excitement." "A simple answer?" added Lunkwill. "Yes," said Deep Thought. "Life, the Universe, and Everything. There is an answer. But," he added, "I'll have to think about it." A sudden commotion destroyed the moment: the door flew open and two angry men wearing the coarse faded-blue robes and belts of the Cruxwan University burst into the room, thrusting aside the ineffectual flunkies who tried to bar their way. "We demand admission!" shouted the younger of the two men elbowing a pretty young secretary in the throat. "Come on," shouted the older one, "you can't keep us out!" He pushed a junior programmer back through the door. "We demand that you can't keep us out!" bawled the younger one, though he was now firmly inside the room and no further attempts were being made to stop him. "Who are you?" said Lunkwill, rising angrily from his seat. "What do you want?" "I am Majikthise!" announced the older one. "And I demand that I am Vroomfondel!" shouted the younger one. Majikthise turned on Vroomfondel. "It's alright," he explained angrily, "you don't need to demand that." "Alright!" bawled Vroomfondel banging on an nearby desk. "I am Vroomfondel, and that is not a demand, that is a solid fact! What we demand is solid facts!" "No we don't!" exclaimed Majikthise in irritation. "That is precisely what we don't demand!" Scarcely pausing for breath, Vroomfondel shouted, "We don't demand solid facts! What we demand is a total absence of solid facts. I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!" "But who the devil are you?" exclaimed an outraged Fook. "We," said Majikthise, "are Philosophers." "Though we may not be," said Vroomfondel waving a warning finger at the programmers. "Yes we are," insisted Majikthise. "We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons, and we want this machine off, and we want it off now!" "What's the problem?" said Lunkwill. "I'll tell you what the problem is mate," said Majikthise, "demarcation, that's the problem!" "We demand," yelled Vroomfondel, "that demarcation may or may not be the problem!" "You just let the machines get on with the adding up," warned Majikthise, "and we'll take care of the eternal verities thank you very much. You want to check your legal position you do mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job aren't we? I mean what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?" "That's right!" shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!" Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
